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cleabellanov · 1 year ago

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Swifties!! You know coney island (feat. The National) right?

Well, hear me out.

Spoilers for Loki season 2 ahead!!!

For short, it's so Lokius (or just Loki's fate) after the end of season 2 it hurts.

And for long...

"Break my soul into two looking for you/ But you're right here".

Loki is looking over his friends...especially over Mobius, since we heard his voice echo at the end of time and making Loki manage a heartbreaking smile of acceptance. They're both looking for each other, because they're now separated, but they're RIGHT HERE at the same time.

"If I can't relate to you anymore, then who am I related to?"

The clear discrepance of Mobius's life at the TVA is given by him meeting Loki. After he leaves, there's no point for M to stay there anymore. So he leaves, because who is he related to now?

"And if this is the long haul how did we get here so soon"

OUUUCH! The long haul=a journey that takes a lot of time and effort. Isn't that what happened in S2E6, with Loki trying again and again to fix the Loom and save everyone? Oh yes it is! But it still seemed too soon when he had to leave, and to protect everyone with the cost of remaining alone.

"I'm sitting on a bench in Coney Island, wondering 'where did my baby go' "

Mobius, at the end of the season, standing alone, letting time pass. He wasn't exactly on a bench in Coney Island, but I swear that's what he was wondering.

Sorry for not making you my centerfold

So, in the song, this apology is meant for something that is already over, a cause-effect situation.

But in my perspective, it can also be a resolution. Because Loki DID make the people she cared about the centerfold. And not only them, but those people, those lives HWR didn't care about. Now, they're the top page of the story Loki chose to rewrite and the burden he chose to bear. Until that moment, it didn't work out, no matter how hard he tried. But then the realisation hits in, after the conversation with Mobius in the time theatre. And the hardest, impossible choice is made.

Over and over

Lost again with no surprises

Dissapointments close your eyes

And it gets colder and colder

As the sun goes down"

The repetition both "over" and "colder" in the chorus feel like a call back to the finale's events. How, over and over, for centuries and only he knows how many tries, Loki tries to rewrite the story. To save his friends, yes, but also the existence of the Multiverse.

And that didn't work. Now, that the sun doesn't shine (BUT IT WILL. IT HAS TO.) it gets colder and colder. It's very important to note that the sun did shine on Mobius and Sylvie...but Loki wasn't there.

"Do you miss the rogue who coaxed you into paradise and left you there?"

First, some synonyms, for better understanding (evermore will be evermore)

rogue=a dishonest person, a villain; coaxed= persuaded into doing something

This is the exact opposite of where we see Loki now. He's a hero. He's THE hero!! But the beautiful thing about this is how he evolved, how their character has one of, if not even the biggest, arcs in the MCU. The part I want to point out in this lyric is the first one, the question: Do you miss? Does she, without ever wanting to change anything, miss that rogue, the self that got her here? The one in Ragnarok, who was finally working things out with Thor? And the "left" too! Because he's here now, but there's...no one left next to him.

OK HERE IS MY FAVOURITE ONE

"Cause we were like the mall before the internet it was the one place to be

THE MISCHIEF, the gift-wrapped suburban dreams"

The mall before the internet? Like this disconnected place where you lose the notion of time? Like the TVA, with Loki and Mobius together, working on that TemPad, for example. It is the one place to be for them, and when together, they both try to protect it.

The mischieffff. Loki's betrayal, choosing to leave with Sylvie when Mobius trusted him in this mission. Him being the literal God of Mischief. The "Come on, you're the God of Mischief" from Mobius in s2e2. And this is not even the only mischief regarding them, it's the whole TVA in season 1 and how all of its workers were being lied to.

The gift wrap as an imaginery for them traveling through timelines to find Sylvie, then Ravonna and Miss Minutes. When this is sweet at first (or sticky as cracker jack hehe) but it turns out to be more. To be difficult. And overall, the whole theme of the song remisces their story and its beautiful, irregular flow.

"Were you waiting at our old spot/ In the tree line, by the gold clock/ Did I leave you hanging every single day?"

Our old spot.

In the tree line, by the gold clock.

What a charming way to hear Loki's choice to stay, and the place that happened, be described. Also, the timelines look like a tree. The gold clock, also representative for the tva.

PLUS Loki's throne at the end of time is literally the tree of life (Yggradsil).

"And when I walked up to the podium I think that I forgot to say your name"

Because before Loki left, and walked up to the "podium" down to the loom, he didn't say goodbye. We got that in season 1. Not now.

"When the sun goes down / The sight that flashed before me was your face"

The sun going down is at a present time. It's still there, but it will be gone soon.

Yet the flash is in the past : it was. For the God of Stories, time is infinite, but that one "let time pass" from Mobius is SO important it got to Loki and made them smile. HE FUCKING SMILED. (alright maybe smile is not the word but if I choose to make myself believe that for my own comfort then so be it)

Alright, that's kinda it. I'll never listen to this song the same way <3

#taylor swift #owen wilson #tom hiddleston #evermore #The National #loki spoilers #mcu #loki #loki series #mobius #coney island #i mean like #time husbands #oh no if I think about it this is also ineffable husbands but I won't go into that #taylors version #i'm sorry

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yingren · 3 months ago

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ren prefers not to think of this as captivity. in his mind, dan heng is free to leave whenever he chooses. and yet, he never asks to. perhaps it’s because he knows the most likely outcome would be ren refusing, but the absence of even an attempt — no bargaining, no negotiating — lingers like an unspoken weight between them. dan heng insists that the astral express will find him. maybe they will, if luck is on their side. but ren dismisses it as little more than an excuse, a convenient way for dan heng to avoid facing this head-on. because the truth is, the express has never been a part of this. not once has ren seen that red-haired woman near dan heng when he has been close enough for ren to feel him. their meetings have always been just the two of them, untouched by outside interference, and ren intends to keep it that way. this is not a matter for anyone else. not a conflict to be solved with the help of outsiders. there is no force, no savior, no convenient resolution waiting beyond their reach. ren refuses — blatantly, vehemently refuses — to believe that anything or anyone else could unravel what they have become. this is theirs alone. their past catching up with them. their burden to bear.

leave it to dan heng to lie there, wrists and ankles bound, yet still summon the audacity to correct ren — to draw a clear distinction between jealousy and possessiveness as if he holds the upper hand. it is almost irritating enough for ren to miss the weight of what dan heng is truly saying, the way his words, earnest yet veiled, carry something far more telling. possessiveness. not jealousy, but something deeper, something more visceral. dan heng speaks as if claiming what has always been his, whether ren likes it or not. because this — whatever name it might have, if it even deserves one — is not something he can share. not with anyone. dan heng, possessive. dan heng, ren’s. the thought stirs something tangled and restless within ren, a storm of emotions barely restrained. he was already reeling at the mere notion of dan heng with someone else, the unwanted, festering ache of it. but now, that possibility is replaced by something just as consuming, if not more so. the realization that dan heng does not even want that. that he chooses this. desires it with the same fervor, the same unshakable gravity that keeps pulling them back into each other’s orbit. because they are bound. bound in a way that makes looking past each other impossible. bound in a way that leaves no room for another path.

❝ did someone else touch you ? ❞ because therein lies the real issue, and ren has no intention of sidestepping it when it looms so prominently in his mind. it is a childish revelation, an immature sting of realization — to have believed, even for a moment, that dan heng might falter so easily before just any craftsman. that he might pause, captivated, and be swayed. immature, ren brands it as, because the truth of it infuriates him. that someone else was sought out, someone whose skills might surpass his own, someone who could provide what he cannot. it gnaws at him, that quiet, festering resentment, the bitter edge of inadequacy sharpened by jealousy he cannot name nor tame. and jealousy, that is a language he does not know how to speak. or rather, one he speaks only in jagged insults and fists thrown at the nearest opportunity. a dialect written in runes too cryptic for him to decipher, an affliction that does not lend itself to words. dan heng calls it shallow, but ren feels it deep in his bones. because it is not as simple as possessiveness, possessiveness is easy. being possessive is instinct, effortless, like breathing. but jealousy? jealousy is something else entirely. jealousy is a sickness.

ren’s hand remains still, resting over dan heng’s chest, directly above the steady, unyielding rhythm of his heart. he could take it if he wanted to — tear it free from its cage of bone and sinew, let it beat in his palm like a fragile, dying thing. he could sink his teeth into it, let the blood coat his lips, warm and metallic, and make dan heng watch as it drips, drips, drips down his chin in thick, glistening rivulets. maybe then, he’d get the kind of reaction he craves. something unguarded. something real. his fingers tighten, curling into the fabric of dan heng’s shirt, and he pulls himself closer. the mattress shifts beneath them, weight tipping toward the center until there is barely a sliver of space left between them, save for ren’s own arm, wedged between their chests like a flimsy barrier. it does little to stop the heat of proximity, the way his body aligns with dan heng’s as if pulled by something inevitable. his hand lingers, suspended in the moment, before it begins to move. a slow ascent, deliberate and calculated, fingertips ghosting over the taut lines of dan heng’s chest, feeling the quiet strength beneath his touch. they trail upward, brushing against the exposed ridges of his collarbones, sharpened edges that peek through skin stretched thin over lean muscle. the kind of touch that is not quite tender, not quite cruel, hovering in the space between. testing. tempting. waiting for something, anything, to crack. ❝ try telling me more about being possessive. ❞ fingers curl around dan heng’s neck without applying any real pressure, palm pressed to the side of his throat. ❝ could it be that what you feel is not possessiveness, but greed ? imbibitor lunae has always been just that. greedy. ❞

Sometimes, Dan Heng cannot differentiate the two, a preferable lie, a reluctant truth, they run parallel to one another, coexisting in a tenuous truce that leaves him to speculate when it was he stopped being able to explicitly see where they diverged. He wants to blame ren, condemn him, for how much time has been engulfed by the hunter’s relentless pursuit of that elusive, deplorable sinner. How much of Dan heng’s short-lived freedom had been tarnished by ren’s encroaching shadow, it’s more difficult now to find alcoves of respite amongst their tumultuous relationship. It did not matter if their intentions changed, if either stood at that precipitous edge and acknowledged the other, they were eternally bound to provoke one another, as if it were a vile caricature of a bond dispersed upon the corrosive winds of time. Now, ren’s piercing gaze shifts, the harsh edge of crimson hungrily circling his pupils recedes into something less hostile, as if he were contemplating Dan Heng and not facing a diatribe by his belligerent tongue. It’s worse like this, that tendency to mock docility by not sinking his blade in preemptively and bearing down on him with enough hatred to fill his heaving lungs. This quiet side of ren felt frangible, a volatile demeanour that dithered between fervent violence and a tenderness so unbearable that it made Dan Heng tremble. It felt like weakness, like a vulnerability he could only ever experience at his hands, no one else understood quite so much and so little of Dan Heng. When they’re this close, ren’s breath disturbing the tousled darkness of his hair, he almost gets swept up in its ferocious current. He petitions for his inert gaze to find another place to adhere to but ren’s countenance is compelling, even when he rescinds his forbearance and his mouth curves into a sinister scowl. How had Dan Feng found that visage to be a solace and not the inauguration of his involuntary captivity he could not fathom. ❝ even now —❞ he mutters dryly, embittered by the way ren could spontaneously decide he was either a perpetuator a thousand deceits or being wholly honest with him. It would not be ren if things were easy, in the same vein Dan Heng would not be himself if not for the implacable way he retaliates when bitten first. ❝ you believe I would lie to you. ❞ sedation had coiled beneath his skin, coaxed his eyes to become leaden, pursed his mouth in the incredulity of that traitorous act. Did they really owe each other sincerity, even if they had both acquiesced to no longer incessantly attempting to slaughter one another upon sight how could he say for certain what that instinct would devolve into now. Despite knowing it to be futile he strains against the restraints, letting out a frustrated noise suspended between a deep, guttural growl and an onslaught of profanity. He was still at ren’s mercy, being appraised like something to be kept, ren should know better than most that vidyadhara’s did not possess the subservience necessary to be domesticated.

He doesn’t like it like this, gentle, the simple act of carding his fingers through Dan Heng’s hair felt foreboding, it would take only a breath, only a heart-beat, for another jolt of white-hot agony to carve through him at ren’s behest. However, he doesn’t, carefully preserving this facade of kindness until Dan Heng’s stomach violently churns, revolting. The worst thing, the thing that makes this abhorrent closeness sink to the marrow of his bones, is how despite having most of his control back he doesn’t recoil sharply from that touch, the absence of that instinct is disconcerting. It leaves him to reel as ren puerilely flicks his forehead, as if he were administering an obligatory punishment for his behavior. He blinks, slowly, his pupils constricting and then slowly filling out again, he had expected worse — that wasn’t the torture he had envisioned. Dan Heng stares after him as he rolls onto his back, inspecting a rather suspicious looking moisture stain on the ceiling before he speaks again. Jealousy. There were a plethora of emotions Dan Heng harboured, often, they were quieter than most, not repressed but kept close, as if he were guarding them. Much of what he does is spurred on by those emotions, they have a natural tendency to compel him to his feet even when he knows that it’s wrong, dangerous. When his heart commanded he bury cloud piercer between ren’s ribs, when it begged him in earnest to flee, when he stared and stared and still found no remedy to the emptiness left in ren’s wake, how could he do anything but listen. ❝ Possessiveness and jealousy are not one and the same.❞ he regards him cautiously, as if the intention behind those fingers is to push beyond that partition of skin and with morbid curiosity seize his trembling heart. ❝ What you have made me feel is not so shallow as jealousy.❞ it was terrible though, an atrocious thing, whatever prowled beneath Dan Heng’s ribs because of ren could not be beheld with anything less than prudence. If that changed — if he changed, he doesn’t know how he would return to anything remotely resembling normal. ❝ Is that how it makes you feel, jealous ? knowing someone else touched it ? ❞

#altarfates #replies.#kills phainon <3

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warsofasoiaf · 3 years ago

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Your view on the ending is clear—when Dany and Jawn Snow die defeating The Others, they won’t do it because they’re the chosen heroes in some messianic prophecy. The catalyst will be doing what’s right, ensuring humanity will dream of a spring Jon and Dany will never see. Does Aegon’s silly prophecy change your perspective on the end game?—TBH

In terms of the greater themes? No.

I do think that the revelation of Jon Snow's parentage is still going to be deeply traumatic for him, a source of pain rather than comfort. His entire existence created a great deal of suffering for the entire Seven Kingdoms, a civil war birthed out of a prince's overriding desire to fulfill this prophecy. His mother died because his biological father was too engrossed with this prophecy and his uncle and grandfather were murdered by his *other* grandfather because they objected to what they saw as Lyanna's kidnapping. Across Westeros, thousands of people died and even more undoubtedly died of starvation and disease due to pilfered granaries and burned fields. The secret of Jon Snow's parentage involves this whole prophecy won't fill him with strength, purpose, or clarity, it's an inherited burden of guilt that the only reason he exists is because of this bullshit and that caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people. What's going to ground him are his experiences, the loyal friendships he had with bookish Sam or jovial tall-talker Tormund. What will ground him is knowing that his adoptive father would stoically bear dishonor to keep this prophecy and any hidden daggers due to his parentage safe, even from his best friend Robert. This notion of Eddard, doing the hard thing because it's the right thing to do, is what will motivate Jon, and this really throws the whole "fulfill the prophecy, save the world" deal into question. Jon won't give a shit about the prophecy and will probably resent it. Ultimately, I think that's perfectly fine, a good lancing of the fantasy Chosen One, but I thought that was already suitably serviced by the Prince that was Promised prophecy that had already been established.

Dany is much the same, the explosion at King's Landing is going to change her conception of her entire return. It's no longer going to be a glorious return to restore the honor of her cruelly usurped house, her actions and those of her insane father turned King's Landing into a conflagration of innocent lives. This moment will be Daenerys's long dark moment of the soul. All of the previous moments in her POV chapters where she fears: "Am I mad? Do I carry the taint?" will come to fruition here. She will believe that she has the taint, in that moment. But where a villain would simply embrace the power and revel in the joy of a fearful populace submitting out of fear like Cersei, and another might simply toss themselves from the cliffs in despair for their crimes, Daenerys will instead go north. The crime still happened, but the Others are the wildfire of King's Landing across the whole of existence, a cold flame that will burn out all life. This is what will ground Daenerys - ending the slavers led to destruction in Astapor, but the slaves that followed her did have their freedom, and better lives besides. Grey Worm acknowledged it so that he maintained his vermin name, a dehumanizing process of the Unsullied that he adopted as a badge of honor to recognize Dany's actions. So when she goes north, it won't be for the destiny of House Targaryen or the burden of leadership - those aggrandizing notions burned down in the capital. It will be for the Grey Worms of the world to pick their own names rather than have everyone live on as faceless slaves even past the point of death. And again, that's already well-served by the Prince that was Promised prophecy and Aemon's regretful musings in Sam's chapters.

I don't think this particular element hurts Aegon's characterization - he has no idea that the prophecy won't matter. I think this is more of a Doylistic shortfall - emphasizing the prophecy only to have it not matter at the end seems like a silly way to add to the bait-and-switch given how complete and well-crafted the story beats appear to me in the previously-predicted version. All of the things that Aegon's "go west, young man" prophecy would enhance were already serviced quite adequately by Rhaegar's focus on the Prince that was Promised prophecy, and it matters much more significantly because Rhaegar's actions loom so large over the main novel series and it reinforces the message that chasing prophecy burns you every time. This doesn't really add anything to that, but instead just muddies up the intervening years by introducing a new contextual piece of information that frequently doesn't jibe with the actions as they've been given. Hence why I say it feels tacked-on, because it only services to answer one superficial question (why did Aegon go west) without providing follow-through. Without seeding Fire and Blood and/or the World of Ice and Fire with things that could enhance the revelation, it doesn't appear like a remarkable twist that recontextualizes previous actions or adds clarity, it looks like a "isn't this neat?" thing to throw into the mix without thinking carefully of how it interacts with the already-moving parts.

Thanks for the question, TBH.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#predictions #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #aegon's conquest #prophecy #aegon i targaryen #aegon the conqueror

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hedgy-hog · 3 years ago

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Could I get a blurb about Kylo Ren (if you write him) comforting his S/O while she's having a panic attack? 💕

Hi! I have never written for Kylo before so I’m unsure of how this came out, but I hope you enjoy it 💕 This is just a head’s up that it’s canon Kylo so he’s definitely not the best at this kind of stuff, but he tries.

Kylo Ren x GN Reader

Words: 1.04k

CW/Tags: Anxiety, Panic Attacks

The teetering thought of this current problem only adds to your racing mind. You wish to reach out, try any way you can. But you know he is busy; he’s always busy. You’ll only feel like a burden if you rip him away from something important. You’re unsure of where this came from in the first place – the stressors, the lack of sleep, worrying about his whereabouts; it all seems to add up into a plethora of panic. You curl in on yourself on a suddenly uncomfortable mattress, hoping this will pass.

Far across the ship, he feels it, a rift. Something’s amiss, and for a moment he can’t pinpoint it. It feels so familiar, something he has felt inside himself time and time again. It wanes and crashes against him, finally pinpointing the matter when he feels his breath hitch. It reverberates through the mask, and he’s quick to shoot up from his seat, leaving the datapad he had been occupying in his wake as he storms out of the conference room. Silence follows in his wake, no one daring to object to his sudden disappearance as he stomps through the halls.

Every ache flows through him, every pulse of your heart racing in his ears and battering against his skull. You’re hurting, your heart is hurting, and he has to at least try to fix it. Every guard and trooper parts for him, his path clear and quick. Your unease grows greater the closer he gets to you, silent pleas in your racing mind to get this to stop. He aches for you, this familiar feeling like second nature and at the same time, something entirely new. He wishes he could call out to you, yet he is uncertain in which words to use.

He doesn’t announce his entrance, the blaster door sliding open and advancing into your chambers. His mask hisses as it’s pulled from his face and plopped in a place he’ll soon forget. He’s befuddled at the sight of you curled up into yourself, although he could never say he has not found himself in the same position. He remembers those long nights at the temple, rain beating down upon his hut as he found purchase on his cot just like this.

A pair of hazel eyes bearing into you is what pulls your head up from your little cocoon, your own eyes wide and teary, embarrassed that he has to see you like this. You attempt to choke out his name, although nothing comes out from your parted lips, the inner middle part chapped from your ministrations. Kylo stands there, uncertain how to approach this. His eyes scan over you, taking in every inch in case you’re hurt. His breathing mimics yours, short, heaving, mind almost clouded over with identical feelings. There is not a scratch on you other than your swollen lips, thankfully, Kylo concluding you worried them with your teeth to keep yourself quiet. He’s stuck in place, all language foreign to him at this moment. His body consists of ferrocrete, frozen in place. He knows how he deals with these feelings, quick to burn through them with burning lungs, a raw throat, and broken equipment. But you will not break a single thing. Something so precious, so inexplainable.

Your trembling hand makes room for him in hopes he gets the message. You wish to have him near you, identical breathing, wide eyes and all. It’s almost like gazing into a mirror – even with opposite features, the countenance is the same. His brain whirrs, crying in split notion. Half tells him to run, to pick his mask back up, and make a great escape until his breathing regulates. Half tells him to give in, to slink into this too-small bed to face this. Whatever comes later, it doesn’t matter. For now, he can’t leave you like this. He follows suit in your request, sitting on the edge of the bed first to toe out of his boots before slinking in. Still, he’s almost motionless, looking upon you for any sign of discomfort or relief.

Finally, you find the strength to say his name, a low whisper, almost inaudible. He hears it alongside his pulse, breathing calming if only for a moment. You try your best to follow suit, following the rise and fall of his chest to regulate yours. The pattern is not as slow as you need, but it’s a start. You reach for him, his brows furrowing the closer your hand moves. But the moment your hand comes in contact with the pleats of his sleeve, a minuscule wave of relief washes from you to him. You needed him here, even with his wide eyes and unspoken comforts, just knowing you’re not alone is a start. He’s unsure of how this started. He’s unsure how to ask what the cause of this was. But he knows now that neither of you is alone at this moment. His hand finds yours, the smooth leather of his glove patting against the top – a silent reminder of his presence.

With all of the strength you have left, you curl into his tense form, hoping your warmth can ease his muscles. He’s still lost, unsure of where to go from here, but he will do what he can to calm you. Almost uncertain, his arm finds purchase around you, hand resting at the base between your shoulder blades. His lips purse, air pushing through in a “sh” in hopes that is enough. But for now, he is enough. It takes some time, but eventually, your breathing evens out, your heart no longer racing, your stomach no longer flipping. You can breathe again, and Kylo, in return. It evens out, that unease you both shared. His hand inches up and down your back, almost a ghost of a touch until he finds you asleep. He’s uncertain how to go about this, how to ask what bothered you so when you’re awake and ready, but he’ll try. Over and over, he’ll repeat the question in his mind, changing the wording, the inflection, anything for it to sound normal. But there’s time for that. Now, he’ll keep you close, let you sleep, calm in knowing it is dreamless.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren/reader #kylo ren fanfiction #kylo ren blurb #tw panic attack #tw anxiety

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ignitification · 4 years ago

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Two Sides of the Same Coin.

So, I actually hinted at this in my Yoichi Shigaraki's post - but as I found myself thinking about it, it becomes even more clear that the parallels between Deku/Bakugou and Yoichi/2nd User are way too many to be ignored (and that at the same time, they can be applied to Deku and Shigaraki).

Now, I'd have to consider in this post that the 1st and 2nd movie are, if not canon, an alternative universe which directly links back to the main story (as we saw with the Compression Gauntlet made by Melissa in the 1st movie, and which Izuku sports in Ch. 309).

But at the same time, I am not going to mention of some implication which might be related to this post entailed the possibility of Heroes Rising and Bakugou or one of his ancestors being an OfA user because of two reasons: I. because I am not a fan of the theory and II. because as things stand now, it has little to no relevance for the post.

Now, onto the main part: if we think about it, it makes absolutely sense that a foreshadowing of the relationship between Izuku and one or both of his counterparts is shown through the Vestiges of OfA. As I already wrote in the past (and I am particularly referring to this post), the Vestiges are somehow an enclosed space where Izuku is free to explore the Consciousness of his own Quirk. At the same time, it allows him to have insight in himself and occasionally others from within the same environment. Point in case, this happens with Shigaraki - when after touching him through AfO's Quirks's wires, Shigaraki (possessed by AfO, that is) enters the Vestiges.

This narrates of the fact that, mostly - appearances are not everything. I guess, this is also why the Vestiges look like a piece of crumbled building; not only because they managed to fully shape after the power evolved - which means through Toshinori towards Izuku - but also that the Vestiges are a kind metaphor for the people inhabiting the Vestiges. If the Vestiges are a shared consciousness formed due to the embers of an identity left in it and embed with a personality before being passed, it means that there is a sort of personalisation of OfA. Well, that should have been clear when Horikoshi made Izuku develop Shoot Style, and manifest OfA in different ways from All Might - freeing Izuku form the shackles that is his admiration for the hero. But most importantly it also means that this personalisation comes from within, while the power and that is, the core and the shared value of these people, stays fundamentally the same. Which is then represented by the Vestiges. But, the fact that this Quirk Personalization makes its way through the cracks on a shared identity, is evident in the fact that every user if free to decide whether to acknowledge the other (and foremost Izuku) and what to think of the situation. As the 2nd User speaks, he is still not entirely convinced that Izuku's is the way to go (I wonder, whether the fact that Izuku cannot properly speak also depends on the fact that User 2 and 3 haven't fully accepted Izuku yet).

This brings us forward to the notion of Hero, of Saving and the 'Room'. As it is clear by the panels above, 2nd User and Izuku play the role of Saviours, offering a help which is thought maybe not needed, but it is offered all the same. It is also at the beginning of a life-long journey, even if Izuku and Bakugou's comes way much after. Yoichi considers 2nd his hero, and the initiator of the story. Bakugou considers Izuku not his hero, but at the same time - Izuku, time after time, 'saves' Bakugou and offers him a hand to get out of the room full of himself in which society closed him in. But, these consideration, in my opinion, fit more the Shigaraki and Izuku storyline.

First of all, notwithstanding everything, Shigaraki is the main 'antagonist' of the story. He's the leader of the LOV, and while not the brain of the operation, he is still the one who puts in practice. He is the one actually influenced by AfO. He is the one, again, to be closed off from the world by AfO. Same as for Yoichi - as a form of absolute control. AfO encloses in a definite space, both mentally and physically Yoichi and Tomura both. He wants from them to be dependent of him. Wants them to be grateful to him for what he has done. Because he is the one who saved them, who gave them the necessary power and helped them survive in this world. It is not a case, that looking-wise Yoichi and Tomura are so similar, especially after the 'Hibernation' Tomura went through. And this scenario also brings to mind the way Shigaraki's body gets hijacked by AfO's consciousness, and Shigaraki tries to fight it - but instead, he is put to 'sleep' and rest, as to recover - because of the amount of energy used during the battle against the heroes.

As for the Hero part played by the 2nd User in the original scenario, Izuku is the one most likely to represent it in the upcoming occasions. Lately, there has been a lot of speculations about Izuku saving or not Shigaraki (the whole Vestige talk is after all, about Shigaraki and Izuku), but in the end, as said countless times: the set up talks clearly. Izuku is dead set on offering the tentative hand to Tomura, because in the Vestiges he saw that Shigaraki Tomura is nothing else than an identity created by AfO out of spite, hatred and manipulation. It's a mask, which Tomura executes as its best capabilities.

And if Izuku, who is the one who actually puts the seed of ‘But after all, maybe, there IS something to save, if you can understand what made villains the way the are’ is, despite the double expressed by Ni-sama, the hero of this scenario - on a very evident side that Shigaraki, or rather, Shimura Tenko, is the one who embodies the concept of Salvation and Destruction (Restoration), that is at the core of the entire manga series (and of course, of the ideology brought forward by the OfA users). Izuku Midoriya is, after all, walking the same steps of the 2nd user: going to save someone tossed aside and in AfO’s control, giving birth to a new stage of society and consequently reality. It’s a change in tide. The beginning of something new, and the end of something long overdue. It’s the beginning of a new, reformed society which does not see murder as a way of salvation, but rather understands that Heroes can show and bring forward another way, while working on themselves and working to save the villains. And it’s, at the same time, the End of an era holding Heroes in the highest regard, and glorifying power and strength (All Might’s Quirk. Endeavour, even the criteria of the UA entrance tests). An Era which held All Might accountable for everyone else, too - and made him bear the burden. An Era which made society lazy and uninvolved with the villains and the ugly side of themselves (which I already explored in this take). As Yoichi puts it, it’s thanks to him that the OfA’s story begins - and it may be because of Izuku that it ends, as it will fulfil its greatest mission: to free the world from AfO and to save Shigaraki Tomura.

This is why, the parallels between becoming a hero, and offering a hand to someone who probably never even consider the possibility of needing it, is a foreshadowing for what is likely to go down between Izuku and Tomura.

But as always, parallels, even when everything, still might be just a perception of the real situation. A perception of a situation which is where different, also similar because, as we all know - history is a fickle thing and it has a terrible habit of always repeating itself.

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lovekindled · 1 year ago

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alexander still isn't sure what he was expecting, but this is somehow impossibly worse than anything he'd ever imagined. the hope that he could stand this close to henry and behave normally is laughable now, as ridiculous as the notion of eventually overcoming their breakup. there's no doubt in his mind now that he will never get over him, that he'll have to continue living his life carrying around a henry-shaped hole in his heart. hearing his own name, the same word that had once been pressed lovingly into his skin, whispered reverently between kisses and hushed confessions, makes every muscle in his body tense. emotions are resurfacing and he doesn't know what to do with any of it, where to put the anger and the sadness, but most importantly, where to put all the love he has for henry now that he doesn't want it. does he even want to get rid of it? it might've meant a burden for a prince to bear, but for him it was a blessing.

it's good to see you, my friend. a few months ago, the words would've made him laugh incredulously. some time before that, it would've made him burst into tears or perhaps explode in anger. now, there's not much he can do aside from swallowing around the lump in his throat and stare back at him helplessly. the first words they exchange in months and it's a blatant lie. alex can tell that he's as shaken by the interaction as him, and the most vindictive side of himself thinks good, yet it's quickly overpowered by regret and concern. he blinks and watches henry leave, awfully reminiscent of their last night together. foolish enough not to remind himself that it's not his place to feel responsible for henry's mood change, he's hurrying behind the man before he can truly think it through. it wouldn't be the first time he throws himself off a cliff without thinking, driven only by hope. he follows the prince outside of the room and prays to find him alone. perhaps a masochist decision, fueled by the knowledge that they might not get another chance to talk. henry may be able to move on like it's easy; alex was never able to simply let go, not of his grudges and certainly not of his love.

“ i can see why y'all had to marry your fucking cousins. ” it's meant to be a joke, yet as it bounces off the walls of the thankfully empty and spacious hallway, alex can tell it falls short. he clears his throat and tries again, the unexpected burst of courage making him take a step closer. “ you okay? ” it's a stupid question, because there's not an inch of henry he isn't familiar with, and his body language speaks for itself. a sudden surge of resentment overcomes him, a reminder that he should be the one barely holding it together after facing the man that broke his heart. “ just— jesus. i know that if it were up to you we'd never see each other again, but can we at least be civil? ” they were still, after all, the first son of the united states and the prince of wales. they would continue to hold these titles, and if not, the renown of having once been part of two of the most important families in the world. “ i'm really fucking trying here, h. ” if his voice wavers in the middle of the sentence, he doesn't acknowledge it.

he'd tried to get out of it: silently scoured for alternative plans, even considered feigning illness, in order to have a legitimate alibi to provide in lieu of his attendance. removing himself from difficult situations appears to be his preferred method of self-preservation. alas, his duties always come first. he’d known from the moment the social engagement was included in his agenda. pez’s charities, though far from minuscule, were no match for a soirée with world leaders. the palace had no reason to excuse him, and henry was not about to reveal what he’s kept hidden his entire life. it’d do no good, he suspects. he knows the values they are meant to uphold. were the crown to find out about his ill-advised entanglement with america’s most eligible, decidedly-male and seemingly-straight bachelor, henry would still be rooted in the same spot, sporting the same greyscale outfit, waiting for a different shoe to drop.

to say he has privately stressed about reuniting with alex is an understatement. time and space are all good and dandy replacements for closure until they are ripped from his hands, like a ratty security blanket. henry has talked himself from the ledge more times than he can count, only to immediately grow anxious about hypotheticals once again. mentally, he’s revised every possible scenario. it helped, he thinks. his heart does not fall out of his chest when actual living, breathing alex, and not the ghost from his imagination is in front of him. “ alex... ” the hoarse utterance could be interpreted as a greeting, rather than the suppression of a gutpunch. his title sounds foreign from the first son’s mouth. he hides his disappointment, as he really isn’t entitled to it. though he desperately wants to, he does not stare at the mouth that has called him by many names both in fondness and taunt. he has no right to do that, either.

with their hand joined clinically, but evocative of early days of their rivarly-turned-friendship, henry accepts alex’s prompting, playing a part he’s played a million times before. the performer in him nods, smiles for the pictures, and responds: “ it's good to see you, my friend. ” regrets imminently follows his words. salt in a wound, a sentiment that might hurt both of them equally. except he has no way of knowing. he looks at alex because he has to. he wishes for the eternal moment to be ever with every fiber of his being. had he been too cruel? was alex back to hating him? before henry can find an answer in the face he fancied for years, alex retreats. the prince can breathe again. except alex looks back, and henry is a deer in the headlights, his faux gleeful expression almost entirely faded, his lips beginning to quiver. it’s nothing like he imagined. and it’s too much. too much. he clears his throat, and offers his apologies to those in close vicinity, including the cause of his lament. “ will you excuse me for a minute? ” expensive shoes carry him past and across the room, a hurried pace that grazes alex’s shoulder and ultimately determines that was all the contact with the other that he can handle without losing his sanity.

#ya te dije que sólo vendría a responderte a ti #alex claremont díaz: int.#alex & henry: andthe6.#andthe6

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sequinsmile-x · 4 years ago

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From The Heart

They had been on the brink of something, something they both thought could have been extraordinary, before the skeletons came out of her closet and tore it all apart.

Chapter 1

Words: 3.4k

Warnings: Mature, some smut

Read on A03 via this link, or under the cut

The apartment was small and nondescript. Tucked away down a Parisian street most people wouldn’t look twice at. It had never felt like home to her. Still unfamiliar to her seven months down the line as she frantically packs a small bag, JJ’s words echoing around her head. She packs just the basics, hoping beyond anything that this is it. That she is going home for good. She doesn’t think much of it as she leaves the apartment for the final time, knowing that even if they fail, if they can’t stop Ian and she has to go back into hiding, she won’t be coming back here. She pushes the keys back through the letterbox and takes a deep breath as she walks away, shedding her anonymity as she goes.

Emily Prentiss was coming back from the dead. _____________

As soon as she lands in the US she feels anxious. The fear she had felt in the lead up to her showdown with Ian scratching back up her spine. The tightness in her chest that had never gone away tightening around her heart, making it feel like it was in a vice. Her lungs cramped, her chest feeling like it was too full of fear for her to take in a deep breath. It felt like everyone was watching her, like they all knew who she was. Like they knew what she had done.

The driver whose job it is to take her to Quantico asks her if she is ok. He meets her with a fake name written on some card, the same name that had been on the passport she had travelled with. Emily nods and says she is fine, lets him take her small suitcase and smiles when he jokes that she is travelling light. She’s distracted, her mind on seeing the team. She wants to see them desperately, see the people she considered her family before her life fell to pieces around her.

She thinks of Aaron and it makes her ache. The memory of how close they came to being something had haunted her for so long. They had gone on exactly two dates before Ian Doyle tore through everything, leaving her life, and the lives of those she loved, in tatters.

Their first date was an accident. The rest of the team had gone to their rooms leaving them alone, and Emily suggested they went for dinner, neither of them tired enough to sleep yet. They found a diner not too far from their hotel and settled there, both ordering an almost absurd amount of food they could never finish, as if they wanted an excuse to stay for longer than necessary. Their conversation flowed easily as they ate, the waitress pouring them more coffee as the night went on, her wry smile at their slightly shy behaviour obvious to them both.

The feelings for him she had always pushed down simmered a little too close to the surface. They talked about Jack and Sergio mixed in with stories from their childhoods, and they seemed to realise at the same time how much they were enjoying themselves. The thing that had always remained unsaid between them shining bright, both of them wanting it to ignite.

Aaron kissed her cheek at her hotel room door. As he pulled away she grabbed his chin, stopped him from going any further as she pressed her lips briefly to his just so she knew what it felt like. Something in her had shifted in that moment, the feel of his lips, softer than she’d imagined, making her feel something that felt absurd given how quick it had been. She dreamt about him that night.

He must have felt it too, because their second date wasn’t an accident. He’d called her, his voice uncharacteristically nervous as he asked her to dinner again. He didn’t take her to a fancy restaurant, well aware of her distaste of small plates and overly expensive food, but to a place he liked to take Jack to. The wait staff knew him, and asked him about his son, and Emily remembered the warmth that had spread through her body at the idea that he would take her somewhere that was usually just for him and Jack.

That night she learnt she could fluster Aaron. The usually stoic unit chief stumbled over his words as she placed her hand a little too high on his thigh, his eyes drawn to her lips most of the evening as she told him things he didn’t know about her.

He had insisted on walking her to her apartment, despite it being in the opposite direction to his own home, and he kissed her. Properly this time, leaving her breathless against her apartment door with the promise of a third date.

Then Sean Macallister called, and nothing was the same, and Emily had been left wishing she had insisted he come up to her apartment that night. That she’d had one night with him, something she could have clung onto in the months that followed.

She had pulled away immediately. Suddenly rebuffing any attempts he made to get her alone, to talk to her about whatever was going on. Emily knew if anyone was able to pull it from her, to make her admit to her demons that were now chasing them all, it would have been him.

Aaron had told her once, just before she had walked away from the team, that it was ok if she had changed her mind. If there was something about him that she didn’t want that he would let it slight, and he wouldn’t let it affect their friendship.

It almost broke her. The promise that it wasn’t him on the tip of her tongue before she swallowed it back. His safety was more important to her than anything else. Even how he felt about her.

Emily had a vague memory of Aaron visiting her in Bethesda. The feel of his hand in hers, his lips pressed against her forehead. Whispered promises against her skin that he would bring her home, that Ian would pay for what he had done to her. That he would take her on that third date. _____________________

The thought of the promised third date had kept her going in Paris. The notion that after everything, all that he had learned about her and what she had done, he had still wanted her. Emily had thought about all of the team often in the long lonely days of her isolation from the world, but none of them more than him. She wondered how he was doing. Knowing that the burden of making the decision to fake her death would weigh heavily on him.

She wondered what he had told Jack, his sweet little boy, who she loved more than she thought she should. Emily had many sleepless nights wondering if Jack thought she was dead too.

When sleep found her she dreamt of Aaron often. Something that she once thought was when turning into an if only as the months dragged on.

When she sees him for the first time she realises her dreams hadn’t done him justice. _____________________

Emily puts all of her own thoughts aside as soon as she enters the conference room. She bears the feelings of the team, takes in their shock and their emotions and holds it in her chest. She feels like she deserves it. Derek’s words as she lay dying on the floor of a warehouse had run on a loop in her head for months. Penelope’s voicemail was a curse as she tried and failed to find sleep.

Aaron’s visit to her in the hospital was vague to her. A memory she wasn’t always sure was real. She stays to talk to him, her bravery now Ian was dead taking her by surprise.

As soon as she’s standing opposite Aaron in his office, the Senate Committee done and behind them, she feels unsure. She wonders if too much time has passed, if too many things have happened. If her harsh words towards him in the wake of Ian’s return, her fear pushing him away rather than letting her pull him closer like she truly wanted, had damaged the tentative start to a relationship that they could have had.

Aaron grabs her hand, his thumb running over her wrist. “Do you want to get out of here?” He clears his throat. “Go to mine and talk?”

Emily smiles at him and nods, grateful that this might be the one thing Ian Doyle hadn’t taken from her. _____________________

Aaron looks at her in a way she isn’t sure she deserves. Like she's made of something precious. He guides her into his apartment with his hand on her lower back. Emily can feel the heat of his skin through her shirt and it makes her close her eyes and take in a deep breath.

“Do you want a drink?” He asks, his voice soft as if he worries she will bolt at any second.

Emily smiles at him as he puts down his briefcase, she watches as he neatly puts his keys on the hook by the door and sets the alarm. A routine that she is glad to be privy to.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” She grasps her hand in front of herself, trying to stop herself from digging at the skin around her thumbnails.

He brings them both over a glass of wine each and encourages her to sit on the couch. She takes in how tidy the apartment is, how it looks like no one has lived in it in weeks.

“Where’s Jack?” She asks, not missing how he stiffens slightly.

“He’s away with Jessica and her parents.” He answers, taking a sip of his wine before setting his glass down. “I had to come back so quickly there wasn’t time for them to change their plans.”

It hurts, a burning in her chest that tells her she had caused this. That she had driven him away from his son, from his home to a country on the other side of the world. She wants to ask there and then what Jack knows, if he thinks she is dead, but she doesn’t think she can bear it yet.

“I’m sorry, Aaron.” She says, her smile trembling as she looks at him. “I messed everything up.”

“You could have come to me, Emily.” Aaron replies, his eyes as hard as she’d seen them since she walked into the conference room. “I would have helped.”

“He would have killed you.” She answers, as sure now as she was then. Time had done nothing to change her mind about her decision making. “He would have killed all of you.”

“Em-”

“Clyde said you threatened him.” She interrupts, changing the subject. She didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say, the self sacrificing tendencies she knew would have cost him his life. “He wasn’t impressed.” She smiles at him, and it doesn’t quite reach her eyes but he returns it.

“Well.” Aaron says, averting his gaze from hers. “I meant it.” He clears his throat and places his glass of wine down on the coffee table. “I would have done anything to keep you safe.”

“I know you would have.” She replies, placing her own wine glass down. She leans forward and hugs him before she can think better of it, her body relaxing as he wraps his arms around her. “I am sorry.”

“I know you are.” Aaron says, turning his head to press a kiss to her cheek. It reminds her of that first date, back when everything was simple and Ian Doyle was a name she’d thought she would never have to say out loud again. A secret she could have taken to her grave.

Emily pulls back and looks at him, cupping his cheek before she can stop herself. Emily kisses him, the desperate need to know if it was like she’d remembered, if it was like she’d dreamt about all those months she was away. It was somehow better.

She feels his hand drift under her shirt, having somehow untucked it from her skirt. His skin scalds hers, his palm spanning almost her entire back. She pulls back from him and runs her thumb over his bottom lip. She avoids eye contact with him, whispering the fear that had put her heart in a vice since the moment his apartment door closed behind them. “I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be.”

It’s the most honest thing she has said to him, her fear that he wants more than she can give briefly overrides her desire. Aaron hooks a finger under her chin and tilts her head to make her look at him.

“I’ll take whatever you can give.”

She stares at him, seeing all of her options laid out in front of her. She could walk away now and she knows he wouldn’t hold it against her, that on some level he understands that this is as bad of an idea as she does.

Emily doesn’t want to walk away . She wants this, she wants him. More than she thinks she has ever wanted anything. She lets herself have it, have him. Needing to prove to herself that Ian didn’t steal everything like she had told herself he had on cold lonely nights in Paris. That, despite it all, she still had Aaron.

She doesn’t say anything else. Her answer is to kiss him fiercely, licking the inside of his mouth before he can question her, before he can be the voice of reason in this. He responds in kind, his hands squeezing tightly against her skin in a way she knows will leave marks in the morning.

Emily pushes his jacket off of his shoulders, and it lands on his couch behind him, discarded for him to find creased in the morning. He pulls her closer, hands wandering over clothes and bare skin. Her skirt rises up and allows her to throw a leg over his lap, both of them moaning as she sits on him.

Aaron suddenly pulls back from her, his hands cupping her cheeks to hold her in place when she desperately tries to kiss him again, not wanting her brain to have the chance to kick in.

“Emily.” He says, desperation in his tone she doesn’t recognise. He rests his forehead against hers, his eyes closed as he tries to be the rational one. “Are you sure?”

She licks her lips, heaves in a breath.

“Yes.” She kisses him gently, the softest one they have exchanged since she kissed him for the first time outside her hotel room close to a year ago. “I’m sure.”

He stares at her, as if he is trying to figure out if this is the right thing for them. She doesn’t give him the chance to apply logic to it. She surges forward and kisses him again, her hands around the back of his neck, holding him to her. He breaks away from her long enough to encourage her to stand. He gets them to his bedroom, his tie goes missing along the way when he stops them to push her against the wall, his mouth against her neck and the top of her collarbone as she undoes the top few buttons of his shirt.

Emily tenses when he goes to lift her shirt, the reality of what he was about to see breaking through. The first person except for her and her doctors to see the scars she was only just used to. Aaron senses her hesitation, rests his forehead against hers.

“Em.” He breathes out, his hand against the bare skin of her back. “It’s ok.” He kisses her, the tenderness behind it enough to make her want to cry. “You’re beautiful.” He kisses her again. “You always have been. You always will be.”

He presses his lips to her neck and she’s lost, the feeling of what he was doing to her body outweighing any feelings of self doubt. He removes his shirt first, gently undoing the buttons she hadn’t and revealing the silver scars across his skin. Emily can’t help herself as she trails her fingers over them, her lips against the one at the top of his chest.

He shivers, and she knows she is the first to have seen him like this. That she is the first person who has seen the scars left behind by the man who tried to take everything from him. She had seen them once before, when he was still unconscious in the hospital, his vitals dipping as the doctors tried to save his life. She hadn’t understood the growing feelings she’d had for him then. Or she had at least ignored them, resolute to stuff them back into the box that they had escaped from.

Aaron pauses, his hands gripping her a little tighter. He opens his mouth to speak, to provide some explanation that she already knows about what she has seen. She raises her hand to his mouth, pressing her fingers to his lips.

“It’s ok.” She says, smiling as she repeats his own words back at him. “All I see is you, not him.”

He smiles at her, kissing her fiercely, only breaking their connection to lift her shirt from her head. Emily sucks in a breath as his finger traces the scar over her breast, the smell of her burning flesh lingering at the edge of her senses as she remembers how Ian had marked her, how the surgeons had only been able to do so much. Aaron kisses her skin, his lips trialing a path down her body until he is dropping to his knees. Pressing affection into the constellation on her abdomen, the skin still pink from where it had healed. There were times when she could still feel the table leg through her, the sharp pain followed by numbness she had felt in that warehouse in Boston.

Now all she felt was Aaron. All she could hear were the words of praise he said against her skin, and something far too close to love settles over her. She pushes it back, not wanting to feel it, and she pulls him upwards, tugging at him until he follows and is towering over her again.

The gentleness ends there. She ends up on the bed, her back pressed against his quilt and her legs spreading for him to settle in. He takes her apart, twice, with his fingers and tongue before he enters her, their fingers linked on the mattress next to her. He presses his forehead to hers as they both come apart together, something that they had both wanted for longer than they would admit culminating in one moment.

It takes them a while for their breathing to even out, for him to shift to lay next to her, pulling her half on top of him as he pulls the quilt over them as their bodies cool.

Emily isn’t sure what to say. She traces her finger over the mark she had sucked onto his chest, and feels him doing the same across her collarbone.

“We should have done that a long time ago.” She says, the tightness in her chest easing when she feels him laugh.

He presses a kiss to the top of her head, and she feels any remaining tension in her melt away as his hand skates up her ribs, pulling her closer to him.

“We should do that again.” He says, tilting her head to kiss her properly. “Although you might have to give me 20 minutes.”

Emily cups his cheek, her thumb running over his jaw line. “I really missed you.”

“I missed you too, Em.”

Aaron drifts to sleep below her, his breathing evening out under her cheek. As the fingers he had been running up and down her spine slow to a stop Emily thinks he might be the only person who truly understood her.

She hopes it’s enough.

#Hotchniss #hotchniss fic #hotchniss fanfic #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #hotchniss smut #season 7 au #Criminal Minds #CM fanfic #CM AU

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wallgirl · 4 years ago

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The Little Nereid Part 17

Record of Ragnarok fanfiction

Poseidon x OC

Word count: 1,800

Dynamene, youngest of the 50 Nereids, has lived most of her adolescence as a servant alongside her sisters at Poseidon’s palace. But with her coming-of-age birthday and other developments, what she initially thought was just admiration of her master blossoms into something stronger and more passionate… and painful. Loving someone like Poseidon is not easy period, let alone as your first love. But Dynamene is young and naïve, and all she wants is a chance to be at the sea god’s side.

Categories and warnings: Romance, angst, unrequited love, coming-of-age, earn-your-happy-ending, slow-burn (ish); no sexual content. Graphic violence parts 15 and 16.

Updated regularly; will have about 20 parts total.

Warning for this chapter: references to injury and blood, largely at the end of the chapter. Avoid if squeamish.

—

Am I dead?

It was the first thought to arise as she woke out of a thick haze. Tiny motes of dust drifted before her, but when her eyes tried to focus on them, they seemingly disappeared. Had they been there at all?

She blinked rapidly to clear her vision. Before her was an endless expanse of black, completely impenetrable and all encompassing. She instinctively knew that it went on forever, despite not being able to see anything besides her own pale body. She felt some sort of tepid liquid beneath her feet - was it water? - but couldn't bring herself to look down past her shoulders. She remembered in horrific blurs what had happened to bring her to this place, and feared what she might see there.

But I don't feel any pain. Could it be...? Dynamene looked hesitantly down at herself. Her white peplos stretched clean and untorn across her intact chest. She pressed her skin hesitantly, but felt no pain. It was as if the wound had never existed.

Now that she had gotten her bearings, she turned about in hopes of spotting something, anything, in the endlessness. Is this purgatory? Dynamene knew that when deities perished, so did their souls. Their consciousness ceased to exist along with their body. I think, therefore I am. I must not be dead. So what's going on? A neutral silence did nothing to sate her curiosity. Is this it?

Seconds ticked by with no change. A feeling of dread sunk in her chest. No, this can't be it. I still had so much I wanted to do.

I was such a fool.

She thought of her family, and her final argument with Ianeira. I'm sorry. I should have listened. She pursed her lips as she fought back tears. If this is the end, I apologize. I didn't mean to hurt you all. I wish I could change it. I wish I could see you again.

Then, suddenly, there was something bright that stood out against the void before her, a long, long ways away. It seemed to call to her in the distance with its brilliant white light. With nothing else to do and no answers to her questions, Dynamene ran toward it. Her feet splashed through the black water, droplets lit by the faint glow emanating from her being.

She stopped, breathless, after what might have been a few seconds or a few hours. The something had taken on the shape of a person, a bit taller than her, and with their back largely turned to her. Dynamene stepped forward cautiously, allowing their features to come into focus.

It was him, standing there before her in the black. His body emitted an eerie white glow, just like hers. She stood in bewilderment for several moments. She could only see the edge of his cheek with the way he was turned, no other part of his face. Dynamene was at a loss. "Why are you here?"

There was no answer. He didn't even move. Was he really there? Was it just a figment of her wounded body's imagination? She curled her fingers uncertainly as she considered reaching out to see if she was merely hallucinating.

Then his face tilted slightly towards her, making it clear he had heard her. Still, he refused to show himself to her entirely, and Dynamene's eyes widened. There was something in the bowed angle of his head...

Are you ashamed?

As if trying to dispel the notion, he finally stepped to face her completely. His colors looked washed out in the white glow, while the faint shadows traced the edges of his face. It seemed he was at last in a place every bit as fittingly ethereal as he was. But he continued to remain silent, and Dynamene's gaze shifted away in frustration.

"You're the one who brought me here. So why have you come now?" She couldn't veil the accusation in her voice. "I tried to tell you. But you didn't stop. You killed me."

Here in this endless vacuum of existence, Poseidon held no power over her. She was already on death's door, that much seemed certain. He couldn't harm her now. Dynamene was free to speak her mind completely. "Why didn't you believe me? Did you call me to your room just to kill me?" There was more bite to her tone now. "Was my love only a burden to you?" Her accusations echoed across the space.

His gaze finally flickered to meet hers. She felt no joy from it, only a strange sensation of tired defeat. Her shoulders slumped. "I suppose I'm going to disappear forever now, aren't I?" She twisted her peplos with guilty hands. "And I... I brought it on myself. I didn't listen to my family. I didn't see... I didn't understand. They'd warned me."

Nothing in his somber expression changed, but the shadows had deepened across his face. He took a single step closer to her, and she looked up at him with a miserable expression. Then he lifted one hand to clasp over hers, stilling her worried fidgeting. "I didn't mean to bring you here, Dynamene."

Her lower lip trembled, and she had to look away as he continued. "I thought you were a fake sent to replace the real you. I thought someone might've abducted you. I couldn't hear your heartbeat; your appearance had changed; I sensed strange magic about you."

So you didn't mean to hurt me, yet... "So your first response was to maim?" Dynamene pulled her hands away. "You would've lost the only chance to find me if your theory had been true."

"I-" Poseidon's words came to a stop mid-breath. It was the first time she'd ever heard him halt in the midst of a sentence. She turned her eyes back to him in confusion. He looked at war with himself; what was it that he'd meant to say? He took a moment to settle on a fitting response as his expression smoothed back out into stoicism. "I allowed my rage to get the better of me."

Her mouth nearly fell open. Poseidon was admitting fault. He had just, before a mere Nereid, confessed that his emotions had got the better of him.

Emotions spurred on by the thought that she might've been harmed.

She looked away as she absorbed this. The little motes of dust had returned, flickering gently in their light. They danced in little waves, fading in and out of sight. Poseidon had gone against the appearance he fought so hard to maintain for her. He cared about her. His heart had thawed at last, just as she'd wanted.

But there was no change within her heart except something bittersweet that ached. Her bleak expression remained as she looked up at him.

"Do you not forgive me?" He asked in a hushed voice. A vulnerability she didn't recognize had crept into his words.

Dynamene pursed her lips, thinking desperately about how to respond. Do I forgive you?

I... I think I do.

I do forgive you, but it doesn't change the way I feel right now.

That terror I experienced, that agonizing pain... You say you didn't mean to inflict it on me.

But how many countless others have you taken in the same way, with no regret? Your own brother, the Titans... People who have wronged you. People who would do you harm. And people who you perceived to have slighted you. Now I finally understand it all.

You did them the same harm, and you didn't feel anything.

"I forgive you," she whispered, but the words were meaningless. This wasn't about forgiveness. Something nameless had changed beneath the current.

He lifted his hand to gently smooth back her unruly bangs. His dark eyes drank in her face, even as she remained largely unaffected by his gesture. The girlish infatuation of before was completely extinguished. Now disappointment prevailed in her eyes.

But regardless, his feelings were unchanged. Now, for the very first time, they were truly alone. He finally admitted his desire for her to himself, even though he still didn't understand it. And as he leaned down closer to her, his eyes closed for the first time as he allowed himself to become immersed in his emotions.

And despite her disillusionment and sorrow, she loved him yet. A man of ice who had thawed only for her. Allowing him to enfold her in his embrace, her lips met his.

Two beings of light, entwined in the dark.

---

Dynamene gasped, a ragged, excruciating sound. Poseidon drew back in shock, staring down at her with sharp eyes. She coughed violently, wracking her thin body with the effort. Poseidon quickly lifted her shoulders to help clear her airway. Lifewater dripped from her lips, tainted red with his own blood. It was then that he understood what had happened. Before, when he had bit his lips in anger...

His blood was reviving her. Poseidon immediately bit his lip again and kissed her once more, pushing his blood into her. He forced several breaths of air into her, desperately willing her to keep breathing, before moving back to monitor the effect.

The flesh around her wounds had stopped disintegrating, though they were not healing. She gave another gasp for air, then fell silent.

He wasn't going to give up. He removed one glove and tore through the skin of his finger with his teeth. The gash began to drip blood, and he held it above her open mouth. As drop by drop ran down her throat, she began to move once more. He squeezed his hand, willing the blood to run faster, to hurry her revival.

After many agonizing seconds, Dynamene's eyelids twitched. Her bleary eyes opened slowly and focused on him. The sound of dripping lifewater stopped.

Poseidon exhaled. He rebandaged her chest, pulled her back into his arms, and stood. She was healing. She would live. Now to get out of this forsaken place and back to the palace. She would need more medical care as soon as possible.

Dynamene's eyes remained open, but she said nothing. Even if she had wanted to, her body wouldn't have been able. Her drowsy gaze didn't leave his face once. Something was ending now, but for however long as they had, she just wanted to drink him in. Poseidon... Her Poseidon. Just hours ago, this would have been a dream come true. Now, where had that exhilarated part of her gone? Had it remained behind in the blackness of that silent space? Had their conversation even taken place, or was it just a feverish dream?

What's changed?

No, I don't need to ask. I know.

Just let me enjoy this while it lasts. While I can still see you so close like this, and be in your arms, without any regrets.

She allowed her sore body to rest limply against his, and despite the speed at which he moved through the water to bring them home, her gaze never wavered.

---

We're going to the end now. I can't believe it. This is my longest fanfiction ever. I've gotten to know Dynamene so well. I don't think she'll leave my mind, even after the fic is finished.

I spent the most time on this chapter because I had a very specific mood for it in mind that required a lot of editing and re-writing. I let it sit for a few days before going back and putting more meat into the gaps. That's how I prefer to write - get the important stuff out first, and garnish with detail later.

There was this song by Kaskade that I thought about a lot with this chapter. It's called Borrowed Theme. Maybe I should've titled this chapter that, but that feels a little childish. The title kind of references a different song, anyway lol

#record of ragnarok #poseidon #shuumatsu no valkyrie #poseidon x oc #fanfiction

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vibraniumwing · 4 years ago

Text

i’ve got you, always. [2]

an oliver wood x reader wherein oliver tries to bring the walls the reader built because of a past heartbreak down. will he manage to do that or break his own along the way?

WARNING: angst, effects of toxic relationships mentioned.

A/N: so @harrysweasleys planted this idea into my mind about how oliver wood and y/n’s love blossomed after her heartbreak with fred. (if you do not know that, please do read this before continuing.) so i’ve broken this down into two parts due to the fact that it was too long. i hope you guys enjoy this, i promise things would look brighter in this one.

i’ve broken this down into two parts, find the first part here.

---

It’s been nearly four years since he left Hogwarts, since he left you.

Oliver was doing good, life was going great for him. He was a reserve player for Puddlemere United, he has met a ton of people due to his passion. However, there was still a missing piece within him. A piece that no amount of money and materials can fill in.

He still missed you.

---

“C’mon! Hurry Up!” Oliver’s voice shouted through the chaos as they rushed to the main warzone at Hogwarts, the adrenaline pumping as he saw the school he once attended and deemed as a second home in ruins as flashes of green and red ensued the field, leading a group of his old Quidditch teammates down into the field.

“Professor!” Olive was quick to shout, immediately spotting McGonagall who was tending to students running from left to right. “Tell us where to go, we’re on it.” Katie, an old student and former member of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team added upon nearing the woman.

McGonagall had easily directed them inside the castle, telling them to spread out and assist whoever they could and care for themselves along the way. Oliver sprinted along the hallways- or what was left of it- as he casted spells left and right to shield students from their impending misfortune.

He had run into familiar faces along the way, bumping into Harry once as they both fled their separate ways and from afar he spotted a certain ginger who was running frantically through the crowd, fighting his way through threats; looking for someone amongst the sea of what it seems like never-ending people.

That’s when he heard it, your familiar voice stood out from the loud crashes of walls. “I’d rather die knowing I didn’t live a life under a monster!” He heard it as clear as day, running to over where you are, he immediately casted, “Stupefy!” which sent the death eater flying away, taking you in his arms in a tight hug.

“You have to be more careful, lass.” His voice was rather broken as you took your face in his hands, letting out a shaky breath as he took in your rather relieved smile. He didn’t know what took over him but tears suddenly filled his eyes, the pent up emotions he had overwhelming him as his posture relaxed visibly.

Holding his hands, you let out a soft chuckle, “I’m alright, Oli. Thanks to you, of course.” a shaky sigh soon following as the fear soon slowly sunk in. You leaned into his touch, finding warmth and safety in his touch before giving him a big smile. “We best be off now and fight our way ‘til dawn, Oli. Thank you so much for saving me.”

His heart was jumping out of his ribcage at the sight of you leaning into him, engraving that into his mind as he nodded. “Promise me you’ll be safe, (Y/N).” He said, voice dripping of seriousness as he readied himself to let you go. This earned an eye roll from you but a big smile nonetheless, nodding eagerly, “Of course, Oli. Thank you once again.”

With a reluctant sigh, he quickly placed a kiss to your forehead and let you go, “I’ve got you, (Y/N). Always.” he said, showing you a bright smile as he and you both ran your separate ways. The sudden course of energy flowed through him, making him feel invincible almost instantly.

“Oh and Wood! Whatever you do, don’t tell Weasley you saw me!” Your voice rang out once more, making him stop dead in his tracks. His head whipped to where you were but all he saw was you saving the twin of the man you just said not to mention your existence to.

What do you mean by that exactly?

---

The sun slowly shined through the broken walls of the Great Hall, multiple people either crying or just in a trance due to the whirlwind of events that just happened within just a few hours.

Oliver was by the bleachers, tending to a few first years who were severely injured when he saw a glimpse of your clothes walk away from the castle. He handed the cloth to the boy, “Can you tend to this for a bit?” To which the younger nodded, taking the cloth from him.

He was quick on his feet and ran to you, catching you in the nick of time as well. His hand grasped onto your wrist, making you twirl around to be greeted by the same honey-colored eyes you’ve seen just a few hours back.

And there it was again, the butterflies you’ve sworn to ban from your stomach, it’s back.

“Oli! I’m so glad you’re okay” You breathed out, taking him into your arms for a hug, heaving a sigh of relief at the sudden burden lifting of your chest. You placed your hands on his shoulders, eyes inspecting all over his face and visible skin, looking for any sort of abrasion on his skin, “Are you hurt anywhere?”

This made him laugh rather loudly, shaking his head, “I’m all good. This is nothing I can’t handle, if I survived nasty bludgers to my stomach, pretty much I can handle anything.” He said, smiling at you rather happily before remembering the reason why he approached you in the first place.

“Would you mind telling me why you asked me to keep you hidden from a specific Weasley, (L/N)?” He suddenly asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his rather tattered jeans, eyes watching how your hands went back to your sides as your body tensed up at the question, clearly caught off guard.

“We aren’t together anymore.” You explained, gently leaning against the bridge as you crossed your arms, now sparing him a sad smile; despite successfully pushing the memories away, you’ve never really recovered from the fear of loving someone and just have them let go in the end. Ever since the day Fred left, your heart sealed the deal of never loving anyone again.

Taking his silence as a notion to continue, “I caught him kissing another girl one night, then when I gained courage to officially break things off, that was also the day that he and George left Hogwarts. I couldn’t bear to see him today after everything he’s put me through.” You further explained, the fear creeping back into your mind as tears started to fall.

Oliver didn’t even hesitate to pull you into his arms, engulfing you in a tight hug to silence the sobs that slipped past your lips. He held a subtle scent of cinnamon and ash wood, making you sink into his embrace further, not wanting to let go from the warmth he emitted.

His hands found its way back to your cheeks, cupping them as his thumb prodded against your skin that glistened with tears, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you through it, love.” His voice gentle as he spoke, afraid of ruining the fragile moment. You smiled at his caring tone, leaning into his touch once more.

“(Y/N), I know this may come as a surprise, and I'll accept whatever reaction you may have, but I just want you to know that I’ve got you, always. I know you’re still going through a lot right now because of your emotions, but I’d be more than happy to help you through it all.” He suddenly said, sincerity dripping with every word he spoke, despite the erratic pacing of his heart.

“I’ve loved you since Godric knows when and I just can’t stand seeing you like this. I won’t mind how long it would take, I’d love you every second of it and even more.” He ended his confession, a shy yet hopeful grin on his lips as he stared at you, readying himself for the probable rejection.

You were stunned into silence, shocked that someone has loved you all his life without the certainty of him receiving the same love back, that someone stayed despite of you losing yourself for another person. Your judgement easily wanted to reject him, to leave him hanging and just protect your heart, but a small part of you just yearned to be held like how he was holding on to you, to feel the warmth and affection he had easily given you over the course of your discussion right now.

All of these emotions were coursing through your body as he patiently waited for your answer, eyes never leaving his rather calm expression; how he reminded you of the same warmth he had always given you back in the day.

“Just promise me to always be truthful and that you won’t hurt me, Oli. I’ll try and learn to love once again, just please promise me this.” Your voice quietly spoke, searching for the sincerity that never left the brunette’s face.

“Of course, (Y/N). I promise to give you what you deserve. I’ve got you, always.”

---

And he did hold on to his promise, Oliver had always been so patient with you; giving you the space you need when you ask for it, the attention, affection and love always there despite him going out to train on a daily basis.

He’d always visit your small business and help out when he’s off from Quidditch training, be proud of all that you have done. He has treated you with the utmost respect and understood days where you just can’t control your emotions and help you through the toughest days and weeks; Oliver had always been there.

Nearly a year into his promise, you’ve realized how much you have fallen for the male, realizing how he effortlessly broke down the walls of fear and hatred for love and replaced it with warmth and security.

How your heart would flutter when you hear him laugh at your rants and stories from the customers you would encounter, how he would always be gentle when tending to you, how we kept the end of his promise, how he only made you feel that you were worth the fight and patience; that’s when you knew you love him.

---

The two of you were sat by the garden of your childhood home, the sun shining through the spaces in between the leaves as you two sat by the bench swing under the tree. You asked him to accompany you to your family dinner and he gladly accepted the offer, even clearing out his schedule for you.

It was still quite early so the two of you decided to kill some time by your backyard, your younger cousin immediately finding him interesting and decided to keep you guys some company, settling himself by Oliver’s lap. His feet were gently swinging the bench as he held unto him, lulling him gently to sleep. “Looks like Theo had grown quite attached to you.” You whispered, giggling softly at the sight.

A soft chuckle resonated from his lips, shrugging lightly as he spoke, “I’ve got my way with kids, what can I say?” tone light and easy as to not wake the child up while his hand rubbed on his back soothingly.

Maybe it was how he looked at that exact moment that you knew you wanted this forever or just the way your heart pulsed out of beat that made you say, “Oli, I love you.” Your eyes were trained on him as you had sincerity painted all over your features, cheeks as red as the sweater he was wearing at the realization of what you just said, “I’m sorry, that didn’t mean to come out-”

“(Y/N), you have no idea how long I’ve wished for you to say those words to me, you don’t have to apologize for any of it. I love you too.” Were his words, tears forming in eyes as his whole body was suddenly filled with gratitude and warmth, Oliver was never the one to cry, but hearing those words from you were enough to move him to tears, knowing that you meant that by heart.

Now wrapped upon comfortable silence, the two of you had the biggest smiles as your hands were now interlocked, his thumb caressing your skin gently. “(Y/N)! Oliver! You guys come in now, dinner’s almost ready and we’re about to take pictures!” your mother called out, hand waving to rush you guys back in.

The two of you looked at each other knowingly before getting up from the seat, his hands cradling Theo as you made your way inside, immediately greeted by your uncles and aunts who you haven’t seen in quite a while.

“Merlin’s beard, who might this be then?” One of your uncles asked, staring straight at your companion who instantly straightened up despite rocking your cousin in his arms gently. He was about to answer when you spoke up, “This is Oliver Wood, a former schoolmate, one of Puddlemere United’s reserve players and most importantly, my boyfriend.” introducing him with a proud smile as you take his free hand in yours, squeezing it gently. This earned hollers from your cousins and older relatives, making your cheeks a warmer hue than how it was already.

He looked rather surprised at the last thing you put, giving you a did you just say what I think you just did? Which you returned with a subtle nod, smiling happily as your cousin took baby Theo in her arms, quietly thanking him. “Before you even ask, you already know my answer, Oli.” you immediately said, reaching up to peck his cheek before leaving him to help out with your parents.

That’s when he knew that he wanted this for eternity.

---

Oliver’s heart was erratic as he touched the small velvet box in his pocket as he led you to the very same place where you first confessed your love for him, smiling at the sight of you nervous and trying to peek through the blindfold, squeaking gently as he let you go, gentle music now filling the quiet space, melding with the noises of the grasshoppers that echoed through.

“You can remove your blindfold now, love.” He said from behind you, to which you happily complied, eyes instantly catching the rather intimate candle-lit dinner set up under the tree, tears springing into your eyes as you searched for your boyfriend, turning around to see him standing with a bouquet of your favorite flowers which he handed off to you.

“This is going to be really cheesy but a year ago, today, a very special girl said something to me under this very same tree. A year ago today, was also the day that I knew that I wanted her- this- for the rest of my life.” He started off, a nervous smile displayed on his lips as he grabbed the same small box from pocket, getting ready to kneel down.

“I know that we haven’t been together for the longest, but being with you for a year was enough to convince me that I would never find another. You might have beaten me to say I love you first, but I want to be the last person you’d ever say it to. So, (Y/N) (L/N), will you marry me?” He finished off, your vision blurred with tears as it was greeted by a simple yet elegant diamond ring.

You were at a loss for words as happiness overwhelmed you, only managing to let out a small “yes” as you opened your arms for him, to which he easily found himself in, capturing your lips in a kiss before slipping the ring on your finger.

“I love you so much, (Y/N)”

“I love you as much, Oliver.”

---

“Are you really sure about this, darling?” He questioned you one last time as his eyes wandered through Diagon Alley, seeing the rather large moving figure of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes come closer.

You had asked if it was alright to personally give your invitation to George, to which he happily agreed, the unnerving feeling of you seeing the man’s twin still present despite the never-ending reassurance that you gave him that it was alright, that you can handle yourself.

“I am, Oli. Don’t worry too much, I’ll be fine.” You answered, finally reaching the front door of the shop. Your hands slipped from his as you grabbed the invitation from your bag, placing a chaste kiss on his lips in the process. “Don’t miss me too much, Mr. Wood”

He laughed softly, waving as you entered the shop, “I’ll try not to!” he answered, peeking through the glass of the door. A wide smile on his lips as you were now greeted by the ginger, nodding at his direction as you pointed at him from the outside, to which the latter waved happily, giving him a thumbs up in approval.

What happened next however, made his blood boil. He knew that Fred would be surprised to see you, but to see him take you in his arms was enough for him to rush inside and blast a hard punch across the man’s face, loathing how he treated you in the past. His better judgement, however, told him not to intervene and just trust your words.

His jaw was clenched shut as he watched the scene unfold, how he subtly heard you voice say that you didn’t want any part of him anymore, that you were done and you were happy with him.

With those words said, a sudden wave of tranquility washed over him as pride swelled over his chest, a big smile on his lips as he welcomed your figure with a warm hug, placing a gentle kiss to your forehead before wiping the tears that managed to escape your eyes, “Are you alright, princess?”

You nodded, not moving from his grasp as you captured his lips in a kiss, conveying how thankful you are for him, how thankful you are that he taught you how to love once again. “I am, love. I’m just so thankful for you, I love you.”

He smiled once more, resting his forehead against yours as he spoke, “You know I love you too, love. You don’t have to thank me for anything.”

“And why is that?”

“Because as a girl told me one too many times before, I’ve got you, always.”

general taglist: @theweasleyslut @violetravens @starlightweasley @eunoia-kth ( i can’t tag you :<)

#oliver wood #oliver wood x reader #oliver wood x y/n #oliver wood fics #oliver wood fic #oliver wood fluff #oliver wood angst #oliver wood imagine #oliver wood imagines

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rosecolouredmind · 4 years ago

Text

Savior

Nicholas Scratch x Reader

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Part Two:

The Morningstar

For a moment, you panicked.

You were in an unfamiliar place and everything was the color of blood. As if the chilling red wasn’t enough, there was an uncomfortable cold seeping into your skin, like bugs needling their way into your pores. Everything felt...wrong. You felt your body getting smaller and the space around you getting larger, daunting. A persistent, grating ringing in your ears was making your head throb; the crown of your head to the bottom of your toes, a...feeling. A wrong feeling. Your head, your chest, your bellybutton; discomfort clenched tight and refused to let you go, but it was deeper than that. This atmosphere, this place. The screaming red, the screaming silence, the screaming sounds. Hopelessness. Despair. Doom. You can’t do this.

You can’t do this.

Your senses were going haywire as you tried to find your bearing, crashing to your knees in a dry heave. Your chest felt as if it was caving in, your tears twinkling like raindrops on their way down. You can’t do this, why did they send you here? Why did it feel like this? A gasp, a clutch of the chest, and a desperate look up --

And there he was.

Your eyes landed on a figure a few feet in front of you, studying you in surprise and interest. His appearance was handsome, but his bearing—

He stood as if he stood before the world, lying beneath his feet. He emitted a dark dominance, a dark arrogance, all-encompassing. It was encompassing you as it encompassed the world, it seemed; and deeper, an inherent cruelty you’d never want to experience beckoning beneath the darkened irises staring at you. He began rotating around you, his figure seeming to blend into the lengthened shadows, towering over you. You felt like a prey animal surrounded by not just one, but a pack of violent predators stalking you just behind the darkness. Eyes glued to your trembling figure, searching for the best way to devour it.

You were terrified.

“And who might you be?” he drawled, circling you.

Your heart would have just about fallen out of your chest if it were possible, a startled gasp ripping from your throat. Your breath began to quicken, sharp inhalations through your nose causing you to go lightheaded. You were completely lost, you lost your thoughts, you lost your senses, you lost your damn mind coming here --

“Answer me girl,” a sharp demand pierced the air. Your body began to tremble as you started to mutter.

Fate is with me.

You nearly cracked under the pressure, the rising pressure;

Yes, for a moment, you panicked.

But then you started to focus on your core, the small area of your body where your fate lies within you. Stelas carried their fate, their star, with them at all times. It was inherently a part of them, and like destined, it began to help you now.

“GIRL.”

You slowly began to circulate your energies, every rotation lessening the burden placed on your body by another fold.

You felt as if you could breathe again.

“I am Fate coming to warn you,” you breathed. You took your time rising to your feet, and by the time you came to your full height you were back to yourself again. Your powerful, fates-blessed self.

And you were here to fulfill your destiny.

“I, Stela (Y/n), consular of the fates, have come to take control of my domain, Lucifer Morningstar. And that begins with you.”

For a moment, the man just gaped at you. Then, a booming laugh rumbled through his body as he threw his head back, the shadows dancing around flaring up with the rise of his voice, reminiscent of hellfire.

How fitting, your eyes could have rolled right out of your head.

“Fate? What does fate have to do with me? And of all things, it comes to me in the form of some weak little girl?” he sneered.

Any intimidating effect Lucifer had had gone out the window the moment you clocked the irritatingly childish lilt in the man’s voice.

“Not even God himself could control me, let alone you dastardly little “fate” slaves.”

The man is a child.

Biting back the urge to comment on his little jab at your occupation, you continued along your explanation.

“I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but you have a fated star now, Morningstar. You have a soul. That means Fate has officially locked onto you, whether you like it or not. This is causing problems, you are causing problems. And it is my job to fix it,” you replied firmly.

“You are clearly mistaken, there’s no possible way for the fates to contain me or my existence. I am simply above all! I am Lucifer Morningstar!”

“Is that what you’d like to name your very real star of fate, then? The Morningstar? It would only be proper,” you mocked. The aghast look on his face had you sniggering, the now chaotic strands of shadows that were twirling about wildly behind Lucifer amusing you greatly.

“You dare mock me, you filthy little girl?”

The rage in his voice was clear, but that only made you even more certain that Earth’s resident dark lord had even less maturity than you did, and that was saying something.

He continued to bellow and whoop at you for a good minute, unable to get closer due to your conflicting energies.

Earth had now become your domain, after all, so even after just arriving you were able to exert a small amount of influence.

But at some point, his rage had melted into stone cold fury, and you were reminded of why the man in front of you had earned the title of the Devil himself. He threw a mean tantrum when he wanted to, and you felt a small bit of that fear from earlier seeping into you again.

“No.” he hissed, his form warping above you, the beautiful face he displayed earlier having been replaced with the head of a goat. The Baphomet, you realized. The conceptualization of his status here on Earth, and your reminder that this man is still a celestial, and this situation is not normal.

This man, this being represented everything it meant to not have a soul.

“I am the Dark Lord! Satan, the DEVIL; your kind shall have NO control over me!” he spat viciously, the rank saliva sputtering from his mouth and spattering onto your face. The goat head was grotesque, his figure was grotesque, the surroundings grotesque. Lucifer was truly angry, and you felt it was about time to calm down the situation.

You close your eyes for a moment, reminding yourself of who you are and why you are here. The very existence of Lucifer’s should be nonexistent soul was why you were sent here, meant to commune with Satan himself. A figure you’d only heard nightmares about, stuff of fiction as far as you’d been concerned. Earth was a fairytale to you and should have stayed as one, and yet now you were here.

As a celestial, it should have normally been impossible for the fates to grasp his tangible sould, yet here he was. And as somewhere chock full of them, Earth should have been impossible for the Constellation Map to grasp and assign, yet here you were.

Fate was truly cruel at times indeed.

“How about we figure out how this happened then? This situation is clearly not working out for either of us,” you finally suggested. “You are the Devil. But where has the Devil found himself a soul?”

As curses were rained down upon you, it took you a few moments to realized that they weren’t directed at you, but at someone else. The current bane of Lucifer’s existence, and according to him, the real cause of all of this, the —

“Fucking witches! Traitors, all of them! They dared to defy their god and trap me here; those bitches! I’ll kill them all!” the ungodly screeching continued as you stared dumbly for a moment, your brows furrowing.

“Trap? This isn’t hell?”

The deeply offended look on the man’s face said all you needed to know, the interruption clearly not welcome and apparently very off mark.

“Of course it isn’t, you bloody idiot! This is merely the mindscape of the poor fool they stuck me in here with; I’ve only merely tampered with it. My underworld is much more impressive and intimidating.”

Despite the childish delivery, you couldn’t help but shiver at the notion that this place was merely an illusion Lucifer put on. You could only imagine what the poor souls actually stuck in hell must be going through.

It took quite a while for you to calm Lucifer down enough to extract the full story out of him, and if you were to be honest you were quite impressed with the sheer balls on the Greendale coven along with their sense of self-preservation.

“That explains the appearance of your star. Your soul must be entangled with the person you’re trapped here with. His star…” you trailed off, eyebrows furrowing. In the star chart, alongside the Dark Lord’s fated star was a dim, dying one. The Morningstar was obviously feeding off of the energy of the lesser one, weakening it’s owner’s connection to their fate.

What this meant for that person, you don’t know.

After coming upon this thought, you finally register the faint sound you realize had faded into the background this entire time. It sounded like light sobbing, the kind a person lets out once they’ve exhausted themselves past emotional intensity and fallen into a pure hopelessly pitiful state of despair.

Your eyes wander around the space, trying to find the source of the noise. Finally, they land upon a small figure hunched in a far corner. Watching carefully, you observe an adolescent boy rocking back and forth, hands over his head and mumbling to himself. He did not seem well, and it wasn’t until a closer look into his core did you notice the same odd split in his soul you clocked in Lucifer when you first confirmed with your own eyes it’s existence. It was the most miserable soul you’d ever seen.

The horror is quick to spread through you, the dizzying effect ignored as you twirl yourself around to face Lucifer again.

“Is that him? The boy you’re trapped with? Why is he like that? Have you been torturing him this entire time?”

Your anger was prominent, and Lucifer’s attention snapped over to the boy. His eyes narrowed and he let out a long, drawn out hiss. The boy’s body shuddered violently, and his already small frame seemed to shrink into itself even more. Rage crept through your veins as you watched the scene, intense pity and disgust shocking your core.

“Ah, yes, him. The bloody idiot volunteered to be the acheron, for my insolent daughter no less,” he claimed indignantly. “It is only right that he be punished for his offense.”

Lucifer continued to insult the boy who hailed from the same coven of witches that betrayed him, and you’d finally had enough.

“Shut up.” You inflected, voice thick with irritation. Ignoring the same offended and murderous look Lucifer has given her several times through their exchange so far, you raise your palm, cutting off any attempt at retribution.

‘If you want things to go back to normal, we need to work together. Whatever you are, you’re under my domain now. That means you help me, I help you. If you don’t,” you shrugged. “You and this entire world will more than likely be destroyed. Doesn’t mean much more than a demotion for me, but for you…”

Honestly, you were definitely underexaggerating the ramifications for yourself should you fail at your assignment. But you were also 100% telling the truth that the Dark Lord didn’t really have a choice in complying with you if he wanted things to go back to how they were. The man seemed aware of that, because he immediately began pacing, his voice once again an insanely thunderous growl.

“I WILL KILL THEM FOR THIS. THEY SHALL SUFFER FOR ALL ETERNITY. THEIR SOULS ARE MINE, YOUR SOUL,” he suddenly snaps his head in the direction of the boy, “IS MINE.”

Lucifer’s attempt at launching himself at the boy, shadows surging and flames of hellfire dancing in his eyes, frightened you beyond belief, and you found yourself forming a sigil from your studies before you could really even properly register what you were doing.

And then suddenly, quiet.

Author’s Note: Please request if you’d like to be added to the tag list. Thank you!

#nick scratch x reader #Nicholas scratch x reader #the chilling adventures of sabrina #Sabrina #Sabrina Spellman #Netflix #Ambrose x reader #prudence x reader #x reader #CAOS

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robininthelabyrinth · 5 years ago

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I need to know what u think of an AU where JC is the one who dies (sacrificing his life to save WWX) instead of JYL, he’s not as angry with WWX bc JYL is still alive so when he sees his brother about to get murdered he just steps in front of him while JYL and WWX see :) I don’t even know what I want u to do with this? Give me some headcanons? Is it a prompt? Idk I just want u to to see what u make of this (I promise JC is my fav but my mind likes to make me suffer :p)

It wasn’t a matter of conscious thought when Jiang Cheng threw himself between that cultivator’s sword and Wei Wuxian’s unguarded back, all his defenses down in the face of Jiang Yanli’s pleading, same as always; it was just instinct. Wei Wuxian was always the troublemaker, the crazy one, and Jiang Cheng always the one being dragged along; he’d long ago learned to spend all his time watching his shixiong’s back, keeping him away from dogs, away from angry shopkeepers, away from any harm. It was instinct, just as it had been the day he’d thrown himself out into the street to distract the Wens, and he’d always justified that instinct because he knew that Wei Wuxian would do the same for him.

Though – he didn’t know that anymore, not after everything that happened recently. Wei Wuxian had made him all the promises in the world, to stand by his side through wind and lightning, and he’d seemed to have no issue abandoning those promises, picking the remnants of the Wen sect over the remnants of the Jiang sect without a moment’s hesitation and not even the courtesy of an explanation.

The Yiling Patriarch was all but a stranger to him, and Jiang Cheng still didn’t understand why.

So it was probably stupid of him to react as if the person being stabbed at was Wei Wuxian, not the Yiling Patriarch – stupid of him to give up his life for someone who didn’t care about him nearly as much as Jiang Cheng cared for him.

But that’s why it wasn’t a thought. It was instinct.

He heard someone scream “Jiang Cheng!” as if their heart were breaking, and he thought for a moment that it was Wei Wuxian again, the one who loved him best. Wei Wuxian, not the Yiling Patriarch, who threw him to the dogs over and over again, put his sect at risk of utter destruction a second time over, just to indulge himself and his bizarre fixation on saving the Wens at the expense of everyone else. Who didn’t care about their duty to their sect, to their parents - who didn’t care about him at all.

Jiang Cheng’s heart hurt. It was probably just the sword that’d just been driven through it, though.

Hands grasped at his clothing, pulling him back; his sister’s face had lost all blood, and Wei Wuxian looked as if his world had ended – he wasn’t sure why. Jiang Yanli had her son to care for, a new life in Lanling that she refused to abandon even if Jin Zixuan was now gone; Wei Wuxian had his Wens, his new cultivation – perhaps it was some little regret, far too late, for the Jiang sect that would now come to grief, leaderless, the end of their family line and the disappointment of their ancestors. Jiang Cheng’s final and most absolute failure.

Jiang Cheng looked at them both, the ones he loved the most and who had left him without a single glance backwards, and found with his last breath that he had nothing to say to them.

He closed his eyes so they wouldn’t have to.

The battlefield was full of corpses, and Jiang Yanli didn’t care about a single one of them.

“Do you think he can be brought back, the way Wen Ning was?” she asked, holding the corpse in her arms as if it were still the baby brother she sang songs to as a child, the little crybaby who was so fierce on the outside and so soft on the inside. She had been able to lie to herself with Jin Zixuan’s body – he almost looked as though he were sleeping, head on the pillow beside her own – but Jiang Cheng had never slept well in his life, his brow always furrowed as if he was worrying about something even in his dreams, and the blank peace on his face was so wrong that she couldn’t bear to look at him.

She wasn’t asking Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian had only stopped the massacre when Lan Wangji, of all unlikely people, had bodily tackled him; everyone had always said that the Second Jade was like oil and water with her A-Xian, but he’d unexpectedly taken their side in this battle and was even now letting a barely-conscious Wei Wuxian sob Jiang Cheng’s name into his collar. He looked silently at her, his gaze a quiet reminder that her question was inappropriate – one Ghost General had already been enough to cause all of this tragedy, and certainly no one would ever accept another as a sect leader.

She looked steadily back at him, indicating in return that she didn’t give a damn about the standing of the Jiang sect if it meant she wouldn’t have to bury her baby brother.

Lan Wangji hesitated, looking down at Wei Wuxian. “You cannot stay at Yiling,” he finally said. “After this…”

They’d killed people from virtually every sect; no matter who had sympathized with Wei Wuxian before this or how much they felt he was wronged, they would have no choice but to raise up arms against him.

Jiang Yanli understood. They would be fugitives, condemned by all. She didn’t care. “Will you help us?”

He nodded and stood, Wei Wuxian cradled as gently in his arms as she held Jiang Cheng in hers.

“Will you come with us?” she asked. Anyone who loved her brother enough to defy his sect, to stain his untainted blade with the blood of his own kin, deserved a chance to court him properly, if she hadn’t misunderstood his intentions; she didn’t think she had, not with the expression so clear on his silent face.

“I will help you,” he said, and that wasn’t an answer, wasn’t the one she wanted, but it would have to do for now. “Let us go.”

It was Jin Zixuan who figured it out, oddly enough. Perhaps it was because he was an outsider, looking at the situation without affection to blur his eyes.

“You gave him your golden core,” he said, less than a week into his resurrection – Lan Wangji had been very efficient in his help, not only finding a new place to hide Jiang Yanli and the remaining Wens but also returning to Lanling to steal Jin Zixuan’s corpse and little Jin Ling before returning to his own sect at the first sign that Wei Wuxian would awaken from his coma. He hadn’t sent word since that time, whether from regret or other reasons; their only consolation was that there was no news of his death. “That’s why you couldn’t do anything other than demonic cultivation – is that right?”

Wei Wuxian looked at him through blood-red eyes. “Get lost,” he said; the phrase made up the majority of his vocabulary, these days, and because he refused to curse his shijie he mostly ended up not talking to her at all.

“Wen Qing was a famous doctor – she could have figured out a way to do it, and that would explain why you felt so indebted to them,” Jin Zixuan continued. “You never told him because you didn’t want to burden him. But instead you left him without any reason, any explanation: he must have felt that you abandoned him because you didn’t want him.”

“Get lost!”

“You broke his heart,” he said, and looked down at Jiang Cheng’s body – still perfectly preserved, but unmoving. The resurrection spell had already failed three times. “No wonder he doesn’t want to return.”

“I did it for him!” Wei Wuxian screamed, tears of blood dripping down his cheeks. “He didn’t – he wouldn’t – he has to come back!”

Jin Zixuan said nothing.

They ended up back in Yunmeng, rather unexpectedly; the new leadership of the Lotus Pier, a distant branch cousin who’d survived the massacre because he’d been night-hunting elsewhere, had all but begged Jiang Yanli to return. Against all odds her reputation had survived the massacre at the Nightless City; the loving wife, sister, and shijie that nearly sacrificed herself to save what lives she could and to banish the dreadful Yiling Patriarch who was never seen again from that day forth – she was very nearly regarded as an incarnation of the goddess of mercy.

She had no idea where that ridiculous notion came from, but it did mean that she could live in Lotus Pier again, with Jin Ling by her side – she’d told Jin Guangshan to name someone else as his heir, or at minimum as regent; the Jiang sect needed her and her son more. It wouldn’t have worked if Jin Zixuan hadn’t snuck into his mother’s room to convince Madam Jin to throw her support behind it; officially he was still in his tomb, since Lan Wangji had been very subtle, but in fact he lived within shouting distance of the Lotus Pier, spending his days playing with his son.

They all did, actually, the whole lot of them resettled into a tiny adjacent water town populated largely by civilians that relied on the Jiang sect for their prosperity. As long as Wei Wuxian never did anything, which he didn’t, the illusion that he was gone for good in a cloud of self-destruction after his terrible massacre could be maintained; no one expected they could possibly be so daring as to simply go home after all of it.

Lan Wangji was in seclusion, they were eventually told; Wei Wuxian hadn’t believed it for one second, smuggling himself into Gusu to check – he’d come back unconscious, slung over Jin Zixuan’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Struck by the discipline whip,” her husband, the fierce corpse that wasn’t fierce at all, said, and didn’t comment when she instinctively reached out to touch Jiang Cheng’s body, to trace the scar he had; she often spent her days next to the bed that preserved his corpse. “Many times; his body is ruined. It will take years for him to heal – the Lan sect saying he was in seclusion was their way of saving face. Wei Wuxian wants to bring him back to the Lotus Pier to hide him.”

Jiang Yanli rubbed her face, thinking not for the first time that the world would be an easier place if only her two brothers weren’t so stubborn. One who wouldn’t wake up, his spiritual consciousness all in pieces; the other who wouldn’t give up – “The Lan sect wouldn’t accept that.”

“He wasn’t planning on asking. That’s why I knocked him out. Anyway, they’re distracted with the Xue Yang matter now – my father’s still insisting on protecting him, and the Nie sect gets angrier about it by the day; without the Jiang sect, there’s only the Lan to play peacemaker, stop there from being another war.”

Jiang Yanli, who was very nice but also very much not the goddess of mercy, tilted her head to the side; something of her mother was in her eyes. “A war would be a good cover, though, or at least the rumblings of one. If we were going to steal Lan Wangji away from his sect, that is.”

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll sneak into Lanling to talk to my mother, maybe see if I can follow Xue Yang and see what he’s up to. You go talk to the Nie.”

Jiang Yanli’s visit to the Unclean Realm turned out to be more fruitful than anyone had expected. The moment she walked into Nie Mingjue’s receiving room, her Jiang sect bell rang so hard that it shattered, which it definitely hadn’t done during the war – they both stared at it wordlessly for a while.

Eventually, he cleared his throat, averting his eyes. “You know my family history,” he offered as an explanation, embarrassment at the public revelation of his problem already turning to anger but suppressed by his strict adherence to etiquette.

“That’s no family history,” she said, bemused, as she crouched down to poke at the pieces. “The silver bell of the Jiang sect can steady focus and calm the mind, and the ones made for the family are the strongest by far; it would only shatter like this in the effort to resist a spiritual poison…how are you feeling now, Sect Leader Nie?”

He considered for a long moment, and his face grew black with rage. “Better. I feel – like my mind has been filled with fog, and a clear breeze has blown it clear.”

She smiled up at him. “Perhaps you should visit Yunmeng.”

He scowled, and she realized he must know about Wei Wuxian’s presence, though she wasn’t sure how; despite that, in the end, after a roaring argument with Nie Huaisang in another room, he agreed to go, even if the idea of staying willfully blind clearly pained him to the core.

Jiang Yanli quietly approved of his decision to put family over principle.

When they put their mind to it, the Nie sect had an underrated talent for saying ‘I don’t know’ to just about everything. Neither brother blinked an eye at the Wen sect remnants that still teetered every time they went on a boat, very clearly not Yunmeng locals; they politely greeted Jin Zixuan as if he’d only been gone a while and not murdered; much to his older brother’s very evident irritation, Nie Huaisang even leapt over to give Wei Wuxian an enthusiastic hug while Nie Mingjue was still talking with Jin Zixuan about what it meant that Jin Guangshan had hidden away the still intact Wen Ning, who Jin Zixuan had found in a hidden part of Koi Tower during his most recent visit and immediately liberated.

“Definitely a case of spiritual poisoning,” Wei Wuxian said after a short examination, and the most reliable doctor they had left in the Jiang sect concurred. “The silver bell can help a little –”

They’d already shattered seven of them, but Nie Mingjue had actually cracked a smile for the first time in months, to hear a sobbingly relieved Nie Huaisang tell it.

“–but it can only help so much; that technique is really only meant for acute cases. And you really need to figure out what was doing the poisoning; there’s no point in curing you if you’re only going to get poisoned again.”

“A matter for a later time,” Nie Mingjue, who clearly had some suspicions that made him look as though he’d been stabbed in the back, said. “Now that we know it’s a poisoning, and my mind is clearer, I can take some action myself – the Nie have plenty of techniques to stabilize the spirit.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile was full of self-hatred, as it always was these days. “I don’t suppose any of those are designed to work on the dead.”

“Actually,” Nie Huaisang said. “Several are. Why do you ask?”

Jiang Cheng opened his eyes.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #lan wangji #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #jin zixuan #my fic #my fics #congrats!#you get a full ficlet #this one just wouldn't stop writing

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megan-is-mia · 5 years ago

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Hi! Can we get a monster prompt 2. “If you love me you’ll let me make your beauty eternal” with Malleus please? (Malleus is a real easy fit for most of the monster prompt list, huh?) Hope this in before requests close.

(JOKES ON YOU i dont know how to close this thing) 2. “If you love me you’ll let me make your beauty eternal” (Yandere! Malleus Draconia x Fem! Reader)

Malleus had been in love since the first time he’d seen the human girl. She’s barely reached his hip in height as she’d stared up at him and put her arms up in an indication of wanting to be picked up. Bemused by the child’s boldness the fae had done just that and soon had a small face nuzzled against his cheek with little arms wrapped loosely around his neck. “Pretty” young (Y/n) had lisped, her eyes gazing innocently into the male’s as her hands reached up to pat at his horns admiringly. Malleus could have contently held the little girl forever if not for the child’s parents calling into the woods for her to return. Regretfully he’d lowered her back to the ground and watched her scamper away like an excited squirrel. That should have been the end of it, just a single encounter with a child of man who’d been unafraid of him. Instead, this one interaction only whet Malleus’s desire for companionship and he visited that patch of forest again in the hopes of seeing the girl again. With each subsequent visit the fae finding himself growing more and more attached to the mortal. He’d thought he only felt a familial fondness towards (Y/n), like the one between a parent and a child. However, this notion of only holding parental feelings for her was shattered on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. No longer was she the chubby-cheeked toddler he’d met so long ago, now she was a young woman and a beautiful one at that. Malleus, the King of Thorns, one of the greatest sorcerers alive, and the grandson of the Thorn Witch… had fallen horn over heels for a human girl. Unfortunately his beloved (Y/n) did not view him in the same way. She’d fallen for another mortal and had planned to marry him once they’d both reached adulthood. There was no way that Malleus would let some upstart boy steal away his darling girl. So as the sunset on (Y/n)’s birthday he cast a curse upon her household. Everyone fell into a deep sleep and it was easy for the fae to take what was his from that place. His sweet human fit into his arms so perfectly, like she was the puzzle piece long hidden from his life. Bringing her back to his castle and up to his chambers he dispelled the enchantment he’d placed impatient to see her beautiful eyes that still retained a sliver of her childhood innocence. He’d been forced to cover her mouth as she’d attempted to scream once she was fully conscious. “Calm down, you’re perfectly safe my love” Malleus had said while stroking (Y/n)’s cheek as he cautiously removed his hand. The girl did not try to scream again and merely looked up at him with a confused expression, her lips silently forming the questions she wished to ask but dared not vocalize to the fae.

“Tsunotaro… why am I here?” (Y/n) spoke quietly. She did not understand why her oldest friend had suddenly decided to curse her family and steal her away from her home. She trusted the fae more than anything, even willingly giving him her name when he’d asked for it years prior. (Y/n) truly could not fathom why this situation had come to pass. “I love you. Once the love I held for you was innocent as a newborn fawn, but now it has become something stronger. I long for you (Y/n), I desire you by my side at all times. I need you like I need air” Malleus said in a low voice cupping the girl’s face as he leaned in close to gaze into her eyes. “And yet I know you are destined to eventually fade away with time and I cannot bear to let that come to pass” the fae went on his mouth mere inches away from the human’s as he spoke as passionately as ever. “You love me too don't you? I know you do, I can see it in your eyes” Malleus declared pressing his lips against (Y/n)’s in a fierce kiss. “I do love you, but not as you want me to love you” (Y/n) confessed, confirming the fae’s suspicions about her affection for him. “We’re too different to be happy together Tsunotaro, even if we did love each other as you envisioned” the girl continued trying to turn her head away from the fae.

“Your mortality is not the obstacle you think it is dear (Y/n), I can make you as ageless as I with only a sliver of my magical prowess” Malleus replied forcing the girl to look him in the eye and see the determination he held for accomplishing his dreams of a life with her. “If you love me you’ll let me make your beauty eternal. You’d let me make you my queen” the fae insisted. “I can't say yes to you, not only would it be a false promise to you. But I’d be betraying my betrothed as well and disgrace my family” (Y/n) pressed firmly but still in her soft tone. “Please you have to see reason, take me home and we can forget this ever happened. I swear nothing has to change between us” the girl said hoping to soothe the male’s bruised pride. “So it's that mortal boy that’s getting between us then? Fine, I understand what I must do” Malleus said in a stiff voice. “I was content to just let that whelp keep his life if I could have you, but I see now that I must eradicate him before I can have you as a wife” the fae continued pulling away from (Y/n) and getting to his feet. “I'll exterminate all the loose threads holding you bound to your mortality. Then perhaps you’ll be more willing to accept my proposal of being my immortal bride and queen. Until my task is complete it is better than you sleep instead of burdening yourself with worries about the life you are leaving behind” Malleus said, casting the sleeping curse once more on (Y/n) before leaving to clear the board… THE END

#Yandere Twisted Wonderland #Twisted Wonderland #Yandere Malleus Draconia #Malleus Draconia

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lune-hime · 4 years ago

Text

Garden of Tulips (Levi/Reader) Chapter 7

~Click me for more chapters~

“What did it look like?”

“Hmm?” Levi looked up from his place next to your sleeping form. “The titan that tried to snack on my darling granddaughter.” “Ugly as fuck.” “Aren’t they all?”

Levi recounts memories of the reader and their shared life together while she recovers from a serious injury.

!!WARNINGS!! - Violence, gore, smut, wholesome content ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tulipa esperanto ~ A tulip whose flaming petals sprout from a lush green base, signaling growth and the washing away of lingering burdens.

↞↠↞↠↞↠

“Thank you both for waiting! I’m just about done.” Felicia chimed from the stove as Levi entered the house. The pleasant smell of fried bread and pork mingled with the freshness of the tulips to create a scent he could only describe as being homey.

“We had no choice but to be occupied.” Oma grumbled from the dining room, one of the spaces Levi had yet to explore. He wandered into the kitchen after removing his shoes and observed Felicia’s bustling and extremely organized methodology. The pan bopped to the rhythm of her wrist while the kettle whistled in melodic time.

“It’s a shame we didn’t have time for tea. We’ll do it after we eat, then.” Oma called, leaning on the doorway that connected the kitchen to the dining room. Levi nodded and clasped his hands behind his back as he awkwardly lingered on the sidelines of the culinary bustle. His languid gaze drifted to the many framed photos that hung on the only wall not covered with ornate gold trinkets or the weaving vines of plants. His eyebrows furrowed as he observed a common theme.

So many of these photos of you were with that hard headed, horse-faced pain in the ass. From what you had told Levi, you had no memory of life without Jean. That he, Oma, and Felicia had been the only constant presences in your life since you were a child. Why did he feel a pang of jealousy? That was a petty emotion.

Oma had placed delicate plaques at the bottom of each frame that accompanied the memory. Levi wouldn’t have pegged her as someone so sentimental.

First Day of Kindergarten

“We’re going to be late, mommy!!” You wailed as your legs jittered like an excited shore bird. Jean stood beside you and rolled his eyes as your anticipation made your connected arms wiggle like a cooked noodle.

“Yes, yes I know. If I could just get this thing-okay, all set, smile big cuties!” Your mother’s gentle voice sang as she clicked the shutter. Jean immediately got over his minor annoyance and the two of you beamed at the camera.

“Lumine, the school bell’s ringing.” Oma chided lightly at her daughter in law.

Levi adored how your wide grin looked too big to be contained by your tiny cheeks.

Noel

“Jean are you even eating in the corps? You look like a twig when you need to be looking like a sturdy branch.” Oma chided as she shuttled more spaetzle onto Jean’s plate. Jean breathed a nervous laugh at her blunt comment.

“Well their food isn’t as good as yours is, Oma.” Jean replied as he gratefully took the plate. You shuffled past the two of them in the busy kitchen to pour yourself a glass of spiced wine.

“Get on my level, noodle-boy.” You teased, bringing your free arm up and flexing your defined muscles as the other held the ladle of wine. Jean threw an arm around your shoulder and squeezed, demonstrating that his noodle arms held more power than they let on.

Felicia had clicked the shutter just as laughter bloomed on your faces and your glass looked dangerously close to spilling over in festive happiness.

Apple Picking

“Freyr, move a little over to the left.” Oma instructed her son. Freyr took a step sideways and bounced, causing you to fly upwards in glee from your resting place on his shoulders. You grasped the sides of his chin as you both grinned at the camera. Crows flew from the canopy of the lush apple orchard behind you.

Levi drank in the features of your father as if he was studying a work of art. He was very tall, strongly built, and had a charisma about him that Levi wagered is why he was so popular in the capital. He resembled more of a lumberjack than a government official. His jawline was hard, like it was curvetted by a steel knife. But his eyes held a softness just like your own.

When Levi’s eyes drifted to the last photo in the row, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He gulped as he let the contents of the picturesque scene sink in. The four individuals looked lively and ecstatic as they proudly showed off their record breaking salmon catch. Your father, Freyr, stood on the far right holding the fish’s head with a confident smirk. You, having to be around 12, stood next to him inwards. Your weak grip was feigning your support of the giant creature’s weight. To the far left your uncle Rall stood perched with the tail held to his chest as he wore a more modest smile than his brother-in-law. Levi felt his arteries clench around his throbbing heart when he gazed upon the girl only a few years older than you at your side. The sweetness of her expression poured icy flames onto Levi’s conscience.

Petra and Y/N’s Catch

Levi felt as if he were the fish in your hands; milky eyed and cold scaled. He was momentarily sent spiraling into his guilt.

“Jean has grown quite handsome now hasn’t he...” Felicia chirped. Levi blinked at the proximity of her bubbly comment as it punched him from his daze. She appeared at his side with their shoulders centimeters from touching.

“You’ve always liked younger men, haven't you?” Oma snickered as she rummaged through the cupboard.

“Hey! I’m not that old Frau Vogel.” Felicia justified with a playful pout. She turned on her heels to grab the dishes from Oma’s hold but was gently slapped away by the determined old woman.

“Yes but you’ve known the boy since he was fresh out of diapers.” Oma quipped back. “Now if you’re done viewing the art gallery of my life, we have dinner to eat.”

The dining room seemed to glow amber. The walls were dressed with a deep cherry wood, carved with grand scenes of folklore that Levi wasn’t familiar with. The table and chairs were no less intricately carved and were birthed of that same rich wood. The table was fit for a family of high standing, its length providing the space to entertain many guests.

Felicia had set the table so that the three of you were sitting close together, leaving a vast empty space for ghosts to join. Levi wondered what kinds of people used to sit there. He let his mind be tempted with that notion as he gradually checked out of the conversation.

If she used to sit there.

After their meal, Levi was left with that satisfactory warmth he felt the day before. He gave his shoulder a good stretch when Oma returned from clearing the dishes.

“How about sitting down with an old woman for tea now?” She said with a small smile.

“Sure.” Levi responded softly. Oma hummed and faded back into the kitchen.

“Felicia went to go check on Y/N and insisted on doing housework.” Oma explained as she gathered the tea time materials.

“So we have a bit of peace-and-quiet time.” She added as she placed two cups of beautiful ivory china on the tea tray next to the tin of Queen Mary leaves.

Oma led the way to the living room which, to his fading surprise, was just as intricately decorated as the rest of the house. Arched windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling displayed the forest to the back of the estate while a grand fireplace framed with pale brick lay in front of the opposite wall. Artwork, photos, and momentos painted all the walls to give it a cozy atmosphere that Levi was still getting used to. Oma placed the tea tray on the coffee table and sat down on one of the long, plush settees. She patted the cushion and Levi joined her, taking a seat on the other end of the couch.

An arid silence passed by them as Oma delicately poured the tea into each cup. He was hyper aware now of his past choice during that expedition. Whether it was a mistake or not. He was painfully cognizant of his absence. Sure Levi was curt, at times off putting, and cautiously intense with people. But his immense guilt for what happened to his squad was an underlying and consistent fuel for his awkwardness around your grandmother. It remained attached to him like a fifth limb, a presence that was always lurking even at the smallest intensities. Your love helped, eventually filling the gaping hole that had been carved there. But a hole is still a hole, forever a crevasse that would be a permanent addition to his soul.

He was deeply afraid to bring it up. Afraid of digging into old wounds, afraid of facing more of her family, afraid that your grandmother would deem him unfit to protect you. To call it an elephant in the room was a severe understatement. The unspoken truth was more the size of a beached whale. He had stopped seeing their ghosts in his own shadow. But even now seeing the familial resemblance of her in Oma he suddenly couldn’t bear to meet her eyes.

“I don’t blame you, Levi.” She said as softly as the clank of the teapot returning to the tray. Levi’s insides seized but he maintained his composure. She leaned back into the cushions with a sigh. When she craned her head to meet his eyes, his gaze remained fixed on the lone tea cup on the tray.

“For Petra.” Her name fell off Oma’s lips with a delicateness that made Levi’s throat itch with impending shame. “I saw you looking at her photo.”

The itch expanded to an inflation that embedded his incoming breath into the folds of his esophagus.

↞♞♘↠

Your body shivered in the remnants of your hysterical cries. You wished the sadness could have been swept up in the powerful current of your tears but it clung to you like a jagged rock resting just under the rippling water’s surface. Her absence felt like a vital organ had been forcibly taken from your body and the thief hadn’t bothered to stitch you up properly.

“Levi-” You breathed, voice heavy with the aftermath of your latest breakdown. It felt like a tiring journey from the empty bedroom to his office.

Earlier you had held each other, wept with one another, and began grieving together. But as the hours grew on Levi had drawn more reclusive. He had evicted himself from the bed in your fatigue and had resigned to his office chair. The form that occupied the space you almost didn't recognize. He sat deeply reclined in the chair and allowed the material to swallow him. His head dangled limply off his right shoulder, clouded eyes looking at nothing and everything at once. The only sign of vitality in this lifeless shell was the small puffs of air that left his nose.

It was fresh. Painfully fresh. Like a band aid that had ripped off multiple layers of skin. But you needed him right now and you knew he needed you too. The sudden loss of Petra was boring into you. You couldn’t imagine that loss times three that he was experiencing.

“Please we need to talk.” You whimpered as you slowly padded towards his crumpled stature. His swollen eyes and bloodshot whites betrayed his marbled features. He was hesitant to reach for you, to hold you, to touch you. He was sure a part of you must have despised him. Through his own pulsations of pain he could see your own distress. He desperately wanted to be there for you, to wipe away all that ailed you. But how could he do that when he couldn’t even wipe the pain from himself? Especially when he had a hand in inflicting such devastation onto you.

He could never forgive himself for that. For what he did to any of you.

Yet when you unfurled his limbs, climbed into his lap, and encircled yourself into his embrace he exhaled and held you right back.

“Don’t hide from me.” You said with an insatiable quiver. You felt Levi’s arms loosen and begin to pull away as you rested your head in the crook of his neck.

“Please...don’t.” You pleaded, desperate for his comfort. You quickly grabbed his wrists and placed them back along your spine. Levi breathed in frustration but didn’t move to withdraw himself again.

“There’s nothing I can do to bring them back.” He stated with a hopeless gravel.

“I know.” You replied weakly. Levi’s shoulder tingled with fresh tears. He squeezed his eyes shut in self disdain when he began to feel your shaking.

“You must deteste me.” He hummed dryly as the obsessive images of his fallen squad drew more tears from him once more. Each time he thought he was done crying their lifeless bodies bombarded him with more waterworks.

“Levi-” You cried as a sob raked your body.

“How could you even stand to be around me after what I did?” Levi bitterly pushed out as he tasted the salty flow of droplets.

“Shut up!” You coughed, sitting straight up in his lap to look him in the eyes. Your emotions were short circuiting and your patience was running thin for his blame but you hadn’t intended for your reply to come out so aggressive.

Your hands pushed down on his chest as your eyes fluttered shut. You took a moment to take in a deep, albeit ragged, breath. When your eyes opened Levi was fixated on the floor. You grasped his head between your hands and rectified his deflated body.

Your movement forced him to look at you, the two of you exchanging expressions beaten-down by sadness and frustration.

Thinking of the words you were about to formulate spurred more pressure behind your eyes before you articulated them. What was left of Levi's composure fractured as he began to drown in your sorrowful orbs.

You brushed his cheek to keep the both of you from floating away like paper lanterns. You could have lost each other out there today as well as your many comrades and the smoothness of his skin against your thumb kept you in this reality.

This was not the time for conversation, you had already had that. Already had assured him that their passing wasn’t his fault. That, sure if he was there maybe things would have been different but that his actions didn’t dictate their deaths. Telling him again would only be beating a dead horse and cause you both more anguish. The two of you were too weak for that right now.

“You trust me.” You uttered those words as a statement without a hint of question.

Levi nodded instantly. The motion was anamatronic-esque as he struggled to stay afloat.

“I’m here.” You stated softly, taking his hand and placing it directly over your overworked heart. A wave of calm washed over him as he watched his palm move with the deep rhythm of your breathing.

“You’re here.” You continued with a sniffle. You placed your hand on his chest, sighing in comfort as he breathed life into your palm.

“And if we focus on the what if’s we’re going to be hopeless forever.” You spoke the words with vulnerability that betrayed their prowess.

That shattered him.

You watched as his face scrunched with all the emotion he had hid this morning. His brow sloped into his quivering lip and he let out a helpless yelp. He was always trying to not feel. But he could only feign numbness until it embedded itself into everything he did. The void he was carrying now overflowed with singeing emotion that he needed to feel.

For them.

For you.

For himself.

Seeing him so broken caused you to crack too. But for Levi, the gruesome scenes that were replaying on a brutal loop were dulled by the warmth of your hand on his chest, the welcome pressure of your thighs against his, and perhaps the most by your beautiful eyes that despite being ravaged by tears were like a shining beacon in the turbulent storm.

He removed your hand from his chest and took them into his own. He raised your hands to his lips and pressed salted kisses to them.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He croaked and intertwined his fingers with yours with such a force that his knuckles grew white. He begged for your forgiveness, bathed in your light to douse his sinful acts. For you must have been a saint to not have casted him out by now.

He kept apologizing because there was nothing else he could do. He lamented that he wasn’t quick enough. That their last moments were spent in agony and terror. That their deaths not only affected him but you as well.

Your limbs were entangled and foreheads were buried in shoulders for an uncountable amount of time. The two of you slowly dragged one another out of the suffocating mud of the expedition and into the present moment. When tears had dried and embraces grown less feverous, you spoke up.

“Erwin is allowing me to go home for a few days.” You announced with a sad smile.

Levi hummed weakly as he ghosted his fingers along your scalp.

“Do you want to come with me?” Your invite hung on the air as Levi contemplated. He felt bad denying you but there was no way he would be able to face your family right now. That may have been selfish of him, but he just couldn’t.

He bit the inside of his cheek as you craned your neck to regard him. You understood his silence and nuzzled into his shoulder.

“Okay.” You kissed at the spot where his neck met his collarbone.

↞♞♘↠

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Was all that Levi could manage to say. He didn’t know how to make any apology enough for her grandchild’s absence. He felt disgust rise like bile in this throat all over again.

Oma nodded at his condolences and hid her lingering sadness behind seasoned professionalism.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to you too. You lost her just like the rest of us.” She responded with a mature kindness that made Levi want to poke his eyes out with self-loathing. If the loss hurt him beyond belief, he would never be able to know the extent of Oma’s pain, your pain, and Petra’s parents’ pain.

“I can see that you blame yourself.” Oma inferred with a caring tone. Levi’s hardened gaze remained on the table.

“I know what it’s like to lead a squadron. I know the helpless feeling of someone slipping through your fingers too quickly to catch them.” Oma consoled with a genuine seriousness that made Levi’s eyes flick up to hers. She sighed and placed her tea cup down.

Levi didn’t move as she scooched closer to place a hand over his. His fingers twitched at the calloused pads of her withered hand encircled his.

“It was one year into my promotion to a unit captain. I remember that day so vividly; the bitter smell of the canon smoke mixing with Hannes’ ripe gin, the way the wind gently rocked the trees just over wall Maria, the remnants of my throbbing hangover from the previous night’s excursions."

“I had ordered my unit to scale along the wall and raise the new cannons that had been provided the day prior while I joined Pixis at the guard post. We were having our daily banter when a thunderous quaking assaulted our ears and gave us whiplash with how fast we turned towards the wall. A hoard of titans, many of them abnormals, were rushing towards Wall Maria.”

“We had never experienced an attack so fierce, so alarmingly abrupt. My legs couldn’t carry me quickly enough to my unit before the fuckers started hurling themselves at the wall. The clash of skulls against the structure was deafening. Some of my soldiers decided to ascend, to fight them atop the wall and blast their brains out with the cannons. Others decided to take their chances at slashing their necks. However, the ladder couldn’t compete with the assault and soon their screams morphed into stains on stone.”

“After the attack, I too bashed my skull with guilt and regret. If only I had just waited to assign them to that job. What if instead, I told them to take care of the already positioned cannons. But would it have really made any difference? I’ve come to realize I couldn’t have ever anticipated a horror like that.” Oma’s eyes glazed over in sour memory.

“My point is, you can’t dwell on the what-ifs because that’s not how life went or ever will. You have to live with what life gives-and takes-from you.” Oma continued, holding Levi’s stare with one elderly compassion.

“You led them and inspired them to take action. Their sacrifices were just that; sacrifices they were willing to take for something they believed in.”

As she spoke, acute darts dripped in his squad’s long dried blood threatened to pierce the shield he had built up to their intrusions. But her kind words warded them off almost immediately and Levi felt more relieved than he could ever express to hear her sympathy.

“I’m sure you know it never truly goes away. But forgiving yourself for something that was out of your control dulls the sharpness of that blade.” She smiled flatly with soft eyes.

Listening to her story and feeling her presence sparked an understanding in Levi so deep that it felt foreign to him. It wasn’t the surface level sympathy usually set unto him by his comrades. Nor the solace and empathy you provided him. With Oma it was raw, unaltered. She had seemed to mine his soul and recover a luminous diamond out of the charcoal.

She brewed this sensation within him that peeled away the murky veil of his role of a steely captain. Underneath resided a more youthful soldier who still had much to conquer and learn. He realized he wasn’t actually as aged as he was required to act.

The hectic scenarios that had wracked his mind since he arrived at her doorstep were blown away with the gentle breath of her rapport. He squeezed her hand, instantly feeling her squeeze back.

“Thank you. That...means a lot.” He said as the ice on his brow melted. Oma grinned at his instant brightness, clearly pleased that she had managed to crack through his shell.

“What is it?” She asked with a wispy chuckle as she observed Levi’s minute crescent smile.

“Y/N gave me similar advice after it happened.” He confessed, feeling lighter than he had in years.

“Well, good. Means I raised her well.” Oma smirked fondly. She let go of his hand to uptake her tea cup once again.

“I would never let anything happen to Y/N.” Levi professed as he finally grabbed his tea as well. His grip tightened on his cup as if holding it sturdily cemented his promise. Oma’s grin widened at his dedication as they locked eyes once more.

“We are all responsible for ourselves, and all we can do for others is try our best to protect them. You have done just that, son.” She said after a hearty swig of her drink.

“You’ve been so good to both my girls, whether you see it or not. That’s all I could ever dream of in a superior officer, a friend, and a partner.”

Her heartwarming comment did exactly that to Levi. Except instead of blanketing him with a gentle heat it burned his chest all at once. The fire was so powerful that Levi couldn’t subdue the genuine smile that infiltrated his features. It widened his cheeks and parted his chapped lips in a beautiful display of appreciation.

Oma’s eyes widened and she coughed as her sip of tea almost slid down the wrong pipe.

“It’s a shame Y/N only gets to see those smiles.” Her wheeze was followed by a cackle. Her teasing made him roll his eyes but his smile didn’t diminish.

“Don’t tell her or she’ll think I’ve gone soft.” He chuckled himself as rich as the umber liquid in his cup. Oma winked as she took another sip.

“You know, I would have liked to have met you at Petra’s funeral but there wasn’t one. Her mother insisted on keeping things private.” Oma explained with a long exhale. Levi did recall you talking to him about that. Petra’s parents lived quite a distance away from you and Oma and became more private as the two of you grew up.

Levi nodded and pursed his lips. He definitely wouldn’t have been in the right mental space for that. Oma noted his silence and as if afraid he was going to creep back into his iron guard, sighed in contentment.

“I was so proud that she joined your squad.” She was basked in a lovely nostalgic glow as she mused.

“She looked delicate and slight but Petra had a fire in her like I’ve never seen in anyone else.”

“She did.” Levi agreed. His eyes fell to the fireplace as he traced his finger along the ivory rim of his cup. “She was one of the most skilled soldiers I’ve known.”

Oma hummed in agreement.

“Petra spoke so highly of you, you were truly her role model. She was ecstatic when you and Y/N got together. Couldn’t think of a better person for her little cousin.” Oma praised with the enthusiasm of a proud relative.

Levi let out an awkward huff and shook his head lightly as he brought his cup to his lips.

“You know she’s the reason Y/N wanted to join the corps?”

↞♞♘↠

The sun hung low in the sky when Levi’s squad found themselves lazily lounging at one of the picnic tables that framed the sparring area.

“The cadets are going to arrive next week.” Gunther commented idly.

“Yes! My younger cousin is going to be joining the 104th class.” Petra beamed, clearly proud of her relative.

“Another cadet with your same beautiful genes? I can’t wait.” Oluo winked and Petra pursed her lips in unamusement.

“Keep it in your pants, Oluo. Or are you hitting on girls you haven’t even met yet?” Eld chided with a smirk.

“How do you feel about her joining, Petra?” Eld asked more seriously.

“While I’m a bit bittersweet about it, I couldn’t think of another person more capable to be a new recruit.” Petra smiled sadly yet her eyes held excitement at being reunited with her kin.

“Hm, seems like the military runs in your family.” Levi commented, rolling his head against his shoulders to offer a loud crack.

“Yeah, Oma hated it when I joined so I bet she despised it when Y/N decided to fly the nest too.” Petra giggled with the lightness of a sparrow taking flight. A boisterous boom followed by an aggressive order caused the party to direct their attention to the arena.

“And so the hellscape is raised once again.” Gunther nodded to where Shadis was noisily instructing soldiers on where to place the cadet training equipment.

“The stick that’s within his ass imbeds itself deeper each year.” Eld yawned and stretched.

“I’ll be there to fight for her if he takes it too far.” Petra boasted in determination. Her declaration was fiery but her delicate features softened the promise. The special operations squad knew all too well, though, not to underestimate the strength that resided under that cute exterior.

“Hazing is part of the cadet experience.” Gunther shrugged.

“Need to get the nerves burning hot somehow.” Eld added.

“Oh come on, you guys are horrible!” Petra huffed.

“I’ll make sure she’s well taken care of-” Oluo passionately interjected.

“That’s not necessary.” Petra cut him off with a jab to the ribs.

“You’ll back me up, right Levi?” She looked to their captain expectantly while Oluo's groans grew in pitch.

Levi shrugged in indifference. However the way Petra’s eyes glinted with eagerness made him more inclined to agree.

“If she’s not a brat.”

Petra threw him a pout as the crew’s light-hearted jokes floated up to meet the chromatic tendrils of the evening sky.

#levi #levi x reader #LEVI ACKERMAN #AoT #aot x reader #attack on titan #attack on titan fanfiction #snk x reader #snk #shingeki no kyojin #levi/reader #hange zoe #jean kirschstein #bisexual jean

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snkpolls · 4 years ago

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SnK Episode 64 Poll Results (for Manga Readers)

The poll closed with 227 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results for the Manga Readers’ poll. If you wish to see the results for the Anime Only Watchers’ poll, click here.

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RATE THE EPISODE 218 Responses

As has been the trend, the episode received mostly positive reviews, with over 90% of respondents giving the episode a score of 4 or 5. Not too shabby for one of the most anticipated episodes of the season!

Absolutely loved it!

MAPPA's winning streak continues with a near perfect adaptation.

Epic as hell wonderful adaptation.

I was on the edge of my Seat the whole time, even tho I read the Manga. It was amazing.

Best cliffhanger yet

PHENOMENAL!! THE TENSION DIDN'T LET UP FOR A SECOND

I really liked the episode. People can criticize, but Mappa couldn't have done the episode in another way. They're doing an amazing job, the animation is beautiful, the musics are amazing

Fairly good 8/10

It was ok, would've preferred a better climax.

Almost perfect episode

I thought this episode was adapted incredibly well; I enjoyed it more than I did previous episodes. The opening theme still isn't working entirely for me, though.

Best episode of season 4 so far. Also, Rage Mode is back…

Most anticipated episode and Mappa 100% delivered. MAPPA GOAT

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MOMENTS WAS YOUR FAVORITE? 220 Responses

As expected, the cliffhanger of the episode was the most favored moment (with 40.5% of the vote) with Eren transforming during the declaration of war was finally brought to life. The subsequent favored moments all contained various partts of Eren and Reiner’s basement reunion.

Reiner ready to protect Falco over himself made me love him even more, this moment needs more spotlight

Eren and Reiner's voice actors really went out of their way this episode. Their performance was ✨phenomenal✨

Reiner is really well-done in this episode. They were really able to capture his inner torment, not to mention the voice acting is amazing.

WHICH INTERPRETATION (BY RBA) OF THE OLD MAN’S STORY DO YOU THINK IS CLOSEST TO WHAT THE MAN ACTUALLY THOUGHT? 217 Responses

At 56.7%, the majority believe Bertolt was correct in that the old man RBA spoke with wanted to be judged before his death. 23.5% agree with Reiner that there’s no way they’ll ever know, and only 19.8% agreed with Annie in that he wanted to be forgiven.

IN THE SAME VEIN, WHICH OF THE AFOREMENTIONED INTERPRETATION FITS REINER’S STATE OF MIND IN THE BASEMENT SCENE? 217 Responses

In that same vein, the majority (52.1%) also believes that Reiner wanted to receive judgement, perhaps from Eren. Just a little under 31% believe that in addition to receiving judgement, Reiner also wants to receive forgiveness. Few believe Reiner solely wants forgiveness. Finally, a little under 9% simply aren’t sure what Reiner wants.

He knows what he's done and he knows it's unforgivable so I think he just wants a release from it all

He is depressed, has PTSD, and feels tremendously guilty.

He wants to die for his sins, I don't think it's either for for forgiveness or judgement, but his own internal quilt..

He wants to be free (of this world) da guilt too much

He wants to be judged and killed

He wants to die

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET A HUG FROM PIECK? 219 Responses

An incredibly serious question with a lopsided result. Just under 84% would like to receive a hug from Pieck, in contrast to a miniscule percentage who’d rather not. 12.3% don’t really care about stuff like this.

DO YOU THINK HELOS ACTUALLY EXISTED? 217 Responses

The plurality (little under 42%) believe Helos was a complete fabrication, down to his very existence. Some others (26.7%) think he existed, but wasn’t anybody special or (17.5%) think he existed and was actually involved with ending the Great Titan War. A bit under 14% just don’t care.

“I’M THE SAME AS YOU.” EREN SAID THIS TO REINER A FEW TIMES IN THE EPISODE. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? DO YOU THINK EITHER OF THEM HARBOR A GRUDGE AGAINST THE OTHER? 108 Responses

One of the episode’s (and the adapted chapters’) focuses is the meeting between Eren and Reiner, in addition to their general relationship. Many people seemed to give their thoughts on the central motif of the meeting, and whether either of them bear a grudge against the other:

yes and no- they’re both broken by what they’ve done (and will continue to do) to each other, and those feelings are as mixed as can be.

No, they understand each other, and the horrible acts they do is the result of seeking the best for the ones they love, in an unbearably cruel world they were born into

Probably not, from Reiner i think it's just a lot of remorse for what he did, as for Eren, he's probably beyond all of that.

They were forced to do what they had to do and both were ignorant as kids.

No grudges. And I think Eren believes he and Reiner are the same, and therefore that Reiner can understand what he is about to do and why. Eren didn't need to have this conversation with Reiner, and yet, he risked Reiner possibly interfering in his plan to talk to the one person he believes understands what he is about to do. Eren no longer believes his friends will understand his actions, which is why he did not confide in them, but he clings to the idea that Reiner will. However, I personally do not believe they are the same. Reiner's actions, while horrible, were those of a brainwashed child. Eren is an adult, about to set in motion genocide on a much larger scale. There is just no comparing it.

There's definitely animosity between them/they genuinely dislike each other from this point on. Last battle of Shiganshina Made it clear imo.

No, if circumstances were different, they would be best friends.

They share a lot of similarities, but it all comes down to the path they take by the end of the story. While Eren decided to commit mass genocide, Reiner is regreting his past actions and trying to save the world. I don't think they absolutely despise each other, they understand their struggles but both are ready to stop one another even if it means killing them in the process

Not sure. Reiner took Eren's family so not completely same-same trauma

Yes and no, feelings aren't particularly concrete between any two people ever. There are parts of Eren that still hate Reiner, and parts of Reiner that still hate Eren, but the same can be said of their comradery. Their relationship is pretty complex

No. Reiner doesn't hold a grudge for Eren because he is guilty. Eren doesn't hold a grudge towards Reiner because he also sees himself as a mass murderer.

Yes, Eren still wants to inflict pain on Reiner. He just claims that Reiner didn't care about his/his family's suffering either.

No, there are no hard feelings between them. Eren has forgiven Reiner since he has understood the current state of the Eldians and how Marleyans are ( they are humans just like him). But still, Eren will keep 'moving forward' and suffer from his actions like Reiner did (him talking Bertolt and Annie into breaking the outer wall and carrying the burden).

They both know it's inevitable. There is no other option.

Not consciously, at least: both of them came to understand the larger systems and powers at play, and both of them were manipulated as children by them

DO YOU THINK THAT EREN AND REINER ARE EFFECTIVE FOILS TO EACH OTHER? 215 Responses

The vast majority (88.4%) seem to agree with the notion of Reiner being a foil to Eren, be it a complete or partial foil. Some others dissent and argue that there’s no comparison.

They mirror each other, they have different reasons but they did the same things and had I believe very similar baseline motivations

I had learned that a foil is defined as a character who brings light to another character's traits or motivations through the contrast between the two. So if Eren and Reiner were foils to each other, then they would have had opposite personalities, as how foils are used. But Eren said 'I'm the same as you' and they do indeed share a lot of similarities. The only significant difference is that Reiner is at the point of giving up whereas Eren still keeps moving forward. So, no, they are not foils I believe.

I think they're more like tragic, star crossed lovers (minus any romance)

aren’t they parallels of each other? can they be foils and parallels of each other simultaneously? or i guess just don’t be know what either term means

SO, WAS THE DECLARATION OF WAR EVERYTHING YOU HOPED FOR? 219 Responses

Overall reception of the execution of the Declaration of War was positive, with 47% stating they were “quite pleased” with it, and another 33.8% barely being able to contain their hype at all. There are some who felt a little overwhelmed by it for one reason or another, stating it could have been better but also wasn’t bad. Others think MAPPA did the animation well but didn’t pair it with the right kind of music. A small percentage were just disappointed in it, period.

It was pretty much a 1:1 from the manga, so it was great.

Absolutely incredible, while the last music choice wasn't the best (it isn't a huge deal tho, it still fits), the rest of the episode was marvelous (direction, lighting, voice acting, music for most of it, animation) and managed to make justice to the manga chapters

i really don't care about the declaration so i wasn't hyped for it either way

It was great though music was a bit too triumphant for me (though ruined is way too strong)

I feel like such high expectations were held upon this chapter, so we're really critic about it. I would've liked a more intense music build up and manga-like animation of crushing the stage.

I loved the music choice throughout the episode, but for the declaration itself it could have been a bit more horrorish. Still loving it. No hate for the studio, they are doing great!

I wasn’t too happy about it at first but it’s grown on me so quickly that I think it’s well on its way to being my favorite episode out of the entire series.

The build up was amazing. Sure we hoped for more actions, but Mappa couldn't have organized the episode in another way. It was really well executed and the final scene simply left me breathless

It was perfect, but I'd have preferred having either the coordinate/attack on titan/S4 trailer theme playing but music choice didn't ruin at all the experience

BACK WHEN WILLY ACCUSED EREN OF WANTING TO INITIATE THE RUMBLING, DID YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT WAS EREN’S GOAL WHEN YOU READ THIS CHAPTER FOR THE FIRST TIME? 212 Responses

Are we still allowed to say “hindsight is 20/20?” The majority of the fandom had more faith in Eren back when these chapters were first published, with 25.5% saying they had a suspicion that he might, but didn’t want to accept that possibility and believed in the better of him. 19.3% felt that Willy was genuinely full of crap just for the sake of demonizing Paradis, and 14.6% felt that though the Rumbling would happen, Eren wouldn’t be the one at fault. On the flipside, a smaller amount of voters fully saw this coming, with 14.6% believing this to have been Eren’s goal, but with the hope that he wouldn’t make it a reality, and 11.8% now having the pleasure of saying, “I told you so.”

At the time i just thought it was willy's assumption he used to get the other nations to side with his agenda

I cannot even remember what I thought... too long ago

I didn’t think the rumbling was gonna happen at all, actually.

When I read the chapter the rumbling had happened

I already knew the Rumbling would happen before I read the chapter, so I don't have an opinion on this other than Willy ended up being right, even if it's only because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I sadly had that plot point spoiled :(

At this point, I genuinely did not think the Rumbling would happen at all.

I thought that Willy and Eren were playing along for the sake of "common enemy - unites the world". With sacrifice on both ends.

WE’VE GOTTEN A SNEAK PEAK OF YELENA IN THIS EPISODE. NOT SO MUCH THE DESIGN, BUT MORE SO THE VOICE. IT’S QUITE LOW. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT IT? 217 Responses

When it comes to Yelena’a introduction, it’s about as mysterious as it was in the manga. The difference however is the inclusion of a voice. The reception came out to be overwhelmingly positive, with people deeming it fitting, sexy and cool (in that order). Some others (24%) thought that it was as low as it was now only because she was imitating a soldier. Just a little over 10% simply didn’t care.

I assume it's low right now because she knows Pieck will recognize her, but also Yelena could sound like a literal elephant and I'd still want her crazy beautiful ass to step on me

I didn't hear it well.

Reminds me of the voice actors in Claymore. It was perfect.

ANNIE STILL HASN’T REUNITED WITH HER FATHER, DO YOU THINK SHE EVER WILL? 217 Responses

In spite of both Annie and her father coming back to the forefront in recent manga chapters, they still haven’t been reunited. A plurality believes that they will. Just under a third thinks that it’s a possibility. Finally, a little over 20% don’t think that the meeting will happen.

THE NOTABLY IMPORTANT SCENE BETWEEN WILLY AND MAGATH RIDING IN THE CARRIAGE AT THE BEGINNING OF CHAPTER 100 IS MISSING IN THIS EPISODE. WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED TO IT? 214 Responses

When it comes to the rather important scene between Willy and Magath and its lack of inclusion in this episode, most people (57.9%) came out thinking that the next episode will open up on that exact scene before transitioning into Willy’s death. Some others believe that it’ll instead be shown either sometime in the next episode or just before the arc ends. On the flip side, 20.6% believe that the scene was simply cut and that’s that.

Either it's completely cut or will appear in a flashback again

Has to be shown at the start of episode 6 otherwise that's a colossal fuck up on Mappa's part and will affect how I view this episode

Much of it was implied through the fear on Willy’s face the whole episode.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - THE MUSIC. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CHOICE AT THE END OF THE EPISODE? 218 Responses

The music choice for the climax of the episode wound up being very controversial, as many had different expectations than what MAPPA’s final product delivered to us. Though, it seems that overall the majority weren’t bothered at all by the music direction. 28% felt that it worked well with the scene, 22.9% very much enjoyed the music direction. 17% didn’t even notice the music much, being more immersed in the animation and overall development. Some felt let down, but realized in hindsight that maybe they expected too much for certain tracks (new and old) to be utilized. The rest either don’t care about the music or were massively let down by the execution overall.

It felt like Tyburs orchestra was playing them throughout the episode. It felt immersive.

Dude it was bloody brilliant, what's everyone on about?

Not a let down, but I found it kinda funny that they chose that one. It seemed too... intense, upbeat, I'd say. Though if I was an anime-only I probably wouldn't care, because I wouldn't know what Eren was really gonna do.

I imagined *that track* behind this scene since reading ch 100 years ago so it was weird to hear different music, but as I rewatched the ep a couple of times I changed my opinion: the music they used fits just as well.

What I cared about most was proper execution of the scene, not the music. They could have used no music at all for all I care. I seriously can't believe some "fans" were so bitter about them not using YouSeeBigGirl for the declaration of war that they personally attacked the director and made him feel bad. Have we already forgotten that if it wasn't for MAPPA, we wouldn't be getting a season 4 at all?! The ungratefulness and toxic criticism is something else, man.

I was waiting for intense music, I didn't care which, but I was let down by the lack of intensivity build-up for me.

My month is ruined

It could've been better, but fuck the assholes who harassed the director over it.

During the whole speech it was just perfect, you can really feel that growing tension. End music could be better though

If they had just synced up 2volts explosive chorus right as Eren busts through the building in his titan form, then I think it would've worked out so much better. But yeah, I think I just over anticipated a different OST for the scene. Overall, it's okay.

It was ok, an 8/10 choice of music

While watching I was so focused on what was happening that I didn't even notice the music so when I saw the complaints I was shocked. Keeping that moment low key until the very end with no musical signals of what was to come was perfect! Anime audiences (you know, the people this is actually for) were completely caught off guard by Eren's transformation. They legit thought Eren was befriending Reiner in that moment by lending him a hand. Having musical cues would've ruined it.

WHEN WILLY TYBUR NOTED THAT HE WISHED FOR THE EXTINCTION OF ALL ELDIANS, THE MANGA SHOWCASED A PANEL OF ZEKE, FORESHADOWING HIS ULTIMATE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE. IN THE ANIME, THIS IS JUXTAPOSED WITH REINER’S SUICIDAL PLEAS. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CHANGE? 213 Responses

MAPPA seems to be keeping the audience even more in the dark about Zeke’s motivations than Isayama himself did in the manga… by excluding just about everything hinting at him having any motivations other than pure loyalty to Marley. In episode 64, the opted to juxtapose Willy’s speech with Reiner and Eren, leaving Zeke out of the equation. 43.2% overall were disappointed in this decision, with 24.9% feeling let down by the lack of foreshadowing of Zeke’s plan, and the other 18.3% feeling saddened by the lack of narrative contrast between the Yeager Brothers. 17.4% are hopeful for some anime-only foreshadowing.

i don’t really care about the juxtapositioning because i think the average anime only would not pick it up. but i am disappointed that the scenes that made zeke more enigmatic and suspicious were cut

Didn't even notice

I never noticed this detail in the manga, but i feel like it was better being left out to keep it as a secret.

I found it to be an effective way to make Zeke's motives even more mysterious. I also didn't mind the scene being juxtaposed with Reiner's scene because it serves as a reminder of Reiner's guilt and brainwashing from the past. Both of these things have torn him apart mentally.

It works either way for different reasons

WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 218 Responses

The majority (52.3%) were most looking forward to Eren’s fight with the War Hammer Titan. 19.3% were hyped for Eren’s initial emergence from his titan form during the fight. 9.6% were looking forward to the Survey Corps throwing Pieck and Porco off guard, 8.3% were looking forward to Eren’s assault on the military and the remainder were looking forward to seeing Udo and Zofia die. Magath got a very tiny sliver of the pie.

Can't wait to watch Eren giving them the deaths they deserve again

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

I felt tense most of the time, just like when I was watching most episodes of s3 pt. 2 :')

The suspense truly killed me!!! Even tho I knew what was to come!

....I just want to know if miss tybur gets a goddamn given name already... but considering how long it took for us to get “Pieck Finger”? Dx

I likes the addition of the marley soilders approaching where eren and reiner were talking, it gave it an extra bit of intensity.

Was on the edge of my seat for the entire episode despite knowing what would happen. The VA's also delivered some of the best performances of the entire series so far.

I absolutely loved the whole episode, the overall atmosphere, the tension building during the speech, and of course the soundtrack was excellent imo, I was not even expecting YSBG myself as I don't watch SoulMadness' videos, so in my mind that scene played out to some botched mental version of Counter Attack Mankind instead... :P

I may have known what was happening... But the music made it so much better and intense.

Also I wholeheartedly believe those professional and experienced directors know better than randoms on the internet who never directed anything. I never thought such a thing could be so controversial. :) - Ryuuhime (I lurk on reddit but almost never post)

Amazing aside from the ost at the end and the lack of direction for the transformation

We should thank Mappa for the amazing job thus far!

Intense. Somehow even more intense than the manga at times.

People really need to shut the fuck up and just be grateful that such an amazing studio is giving us what we never thought we’d see in a thousand years. Mappa has been going above and beyond to give us a great season and so far it’s taken the top spot of my favorite season, knocking Season 2 down to my second favorite. The voice acting, the added scenes, the directing, the animation, the character designs, I’m just grateful we’re finally seeing all of these things in the quality we haven’t gotten since Season 2. Bless Mappa 💖💖💖

Okay I'm kind of hoping we'll get the big panel of Eren emerging in the next episode cause that was pretty sick, but s4 is looking awesome so far and I think MAPPA is doing as well as they can- and exceeding expectations IMO considering WIT did so well and we all thought whoever took up SnK was gonna flop.

Fantastic adaptation. There was a lot to love. People need to calm down about the ost.

It was rushed and lost some of its impact from the manga, but it was an otherwise excellent piece of anime storytelling when detached from the manga experience.

Isayama probably got a say in the play's direction. It was amazing.

I genuinely enjoyed watching this episode! I don't really understand all the hate towards it.

Overall, phenomenal and everything I had wanted it to be.

AMAZING Episode. Wished for a better ost at the end but the current anime version is growing on me

Very well done, the next one's gonna be fire! 🔥😎

talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.

Not as strong of an adaption as other episodes, but great because the source is great.

I was so hyped for the declaration of war that I forgot that most of the episode would be dialogue. A LOT of it. Uyy. Next episode will be better.

The songs are very important on a scene, but i don't think that justifies hating on the anime just for that, the episode was great, and Mappa is doing just fine.

It pisses me off how ungrateful this fandom can be. I'm not saying we cant criticise, because that's important and valid. But seeing a vocal minority, harass the director over a song choice (which had been well made, 2Volt was great for the moment as well as the OST throughout the episode) to the point where he locked his twitter account just takes it too far. People should remember that the Anime is made for anime onlies in the first place, and I have seen VERY few anime watchers complain about the episode, next to none, actually. It's always some of the Manga readers. We literally got a perfect episode, what else do you demand? Without Mappa we wouldn't have AOT. I'm just happy we finally get the story animated.

Pretty good overall. It felt really well paced compared to the previous episodes that seemed hella rushed to me. I understand the music complaints, but otherwise a good episode :)

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 199 Responses

Thanks again to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again next episode!

#snk poll #snk polls #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #snk #aot #snk spoilers #snk s4

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mythriteshah · 4 years ago

Text

The Valide’s Pride

WARNING: Upon clicking the read-more link below, several cutscenes will play in sequence. It is recommended that you set aside sufficient time to read these scenes in their entirety.

Furthermore, while this will reveal some major details regarding Thiji and the Regalia, some of the content disclosed within may be offensive for some audiences. As such, should you find yourself discouraged to continue, you may close this page/tab at any time and no dishonor shall be brought upon you.

Another moonlit night graces the Near East, though Menphina's light shone with a golden intensity as opposed to its usual silver luminescence. Save for the towers strewn about the land, all was relatively peaceful as the Telophoroi had been driven back yet again. Everyone is fighting tooth and nail for the salvation of the star - as they should. Should these ruinous portents continue, there would certainly be untold chaos engulfing the realm. With a reprieve finally in sight, the time had come to reflect and contemplate.

Upon the balcony within her azure and ivory chambers, Mimizo Higuri, Valide Sultan of the Higuri Regalia, stood in silence, a bladed fan obscuring the lower half of her face as she gazed upon the vast jungles of Thavnair which surrounded the city-state of Radz-at-Han. Her husband Fafastima slept soundly in his chambers, blissfully unaware that she was still up and about during so late a bell. One would suspect that something was weighing heavily upon her mind so that it was difficult for her to even rest. And sure enough, the Valide Sultan did indeed have some introspection of which to take care. Mimizo directed her gaze upward, towards the gilded moon which shone proudly against the night sky, drinking in the scenery of the sunless sea until she slowly closed her eyes. Her mind then whisked her away to a similar moment: she stood on that same balcony, gazing at the moon, though silvery, with her favored son, Thiji. They had been talking for a good half-bell, it seemed, discussing matters which pertained to the developments of the other lands. Nyra was perched upon a post, resting peacefully. Fafastima was absent in this scene, apparently returning from an excursion with the Wavetraders. It was then that they would hear a knock upon the door to Mimizo's chambers. "Enter," she promptly ordered. The double doors would open, revealing the beautiful platinum-blonde Dunesfolk of aqua eyes: Veeveena Veena, Higuri Regalia Main Branch Advisor. Her unannounced arrival surprised Mimizo and Thiji both, expecting Thiji's dear Angel to have been within the sweet surrender of sleep for at least two bells now. Wearing her evening gown along with the Periapt of Patience, she gave a curt bow before she crossed the threshold, hands folded at the front. An expression of sorrow was evident on her face, for her eyes seemed to have begun welling up... "Miss Veeveena..." Thiji greeted. "'Tis something the matter?" "Yes, My Sultan," the Advisor replied immediately as she came closer, stopping at the center of the chambers. "Something most certainly is." "Speak freely, dear," Mimizo followed. Though Mimizo was good at reading the hearts of particular individuals, she already knew what Veeveena was doing here. Nevertheless, she decided to play along. "No more, Valide..." Veeveena said, her head bowed low, hiding her tears, which had begun to shed as she spoke. "I cannot bear this anymore. The truth must be revealed!" "Miss Veeveena -" was all Thiji could get out before he would be interrupted by his Advisor. "Forgive me, My Sultan, but pray hear me and do not speak," Veeveena interjected. The Mythrite Sultan trusted his Angels - his Advisors especially - and complied, putting his arms behind his back, watching and listening intently to Veeveena. He - and his mothers - would expect a lengthy statement to be made. "I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive us, my lord, but your mother and I have been keeping a secret for some time now. We decided on a private ultimatum that you and I would be wed should you fail to find your Sultana by your thirtieth Nameday." Thiji's eyes went somewhat wide by this. Mimizo was taken aback that she had revealed their plan so far ahead of schedule. Veeveena's tears glinted like silver stars from her face before they stained the rug, desperately fighting back the urge to bawl. "I am... truly flattered, Miss Veeveena," Thiji began, "but you know of the policy put in place." "I do, My Sultan..." she replied. "However, I cannot suffer this any longer - and nor should you. This is not what Lady Mamai would want - may she rest peacefully in the Lifestream. She would want to see you happy, as would any of us who have been with you for many summers. And though I am your Apsara of Patience... even mine can run thin, and I will not deny my heart any longer." She revealed her tear-stained face, bright pink from her sobbing, before she stood ilms before her lord. Mimizo was shocked, to say the least, but beamed in eagerness to see this event play out in its entirety. She took a step back and spectated, placing her fan within her palm as she did. "I have had the pleasure of witnessing all the amazing feats and events you have done, my lord. You are truly a blessing to this realm, and anyone who thinks or says otherwise will meet the swift and brutal sentence of death by my hand, personally. Your dream - your ambition that is sweeter than any lassi or berry - of becoming a Sorceress' Knight - is so precious and touching that hearing of you ending it shattered many of us. You have been through loss after loss; trial after trial, and though you came out stronger as a result, you were never truly given the comfort you so rightfully deserve. It crushed me, watching you from afar, alone at night with naught an audience but the stars above as you cursed Menphina and Nymeia for conspiring against you since when first you arrived in Eorzea. I hated seeing you so distraught, and yet I sat and stood idly by: my beloved Mythrite Sultan, whom I have served with unwavering loyalty for many summers, suffering in silence. And yet all this time, you soldiered on, using your wealth and resources to bring smiles to the less privileged and destitute; uplifting the spirits of others with your presence, and establishing alliances which I know will transcend the test of time. You've hid this away for so long, and that smile on your face - the one you make when a project has come to fruition - is the one thing I loved seeing with each turn of the sun. But my heart cannot bear this burden any longer... I wish to see that smile more; I wish to see your dream come to fruition; I wish to see my Mythrite Sultan truly happy... " Veeveena then took Thiji's hands, placing hers on his as she stared at the Mythrite Sultan with a gaze and a countenance that could only be emulated by that of a lover's. Mimizo and Nyra - who had flew over to the former's side during Veeveena's speech - were moved by her words, though she still had more to say... "Which is why... if you'll have me, My Sultan, I will abdicate the position of Advisor, as well as my status as an Angel... to become your Mythrite Sultana." Nyra's eyes went wide - wider than normal for an owl - upon hearing her declaration. A quiet gasp was the only thing which escaped Mimizo's lips. As for Thiji, his gaze softened as a result - he knew Veeveena harbored feelings for him, but he was not aware of how passionate she was about his situation. The policy established by an agreement between himself and his Angels stated that he, under no circumstances whatsoever, was allowed to court his Angels in a romantic setting, or vice versa. Thiji means to deviate from the corrupted form of a harem, which alone earned him the respect of his peers and even his maidservants. With Veeveena's intent made clear, her abdication from being an Angel meant that she was no longer fettered by the stipulations heretofore placed. Thiji's eyes slowly moved to the left, thinking back to the countless suns where he had a vacant space beside him - a lone merchant-lord who disregarded his own shortcomings (Lalafell pun not intended) in order to bring joy and the enlightenment of high fashion to the realm. Though it was no small secret that the Higuri Clan was secure thanks to his brother and Umimi - along with having seven other siblings - he still bore the burden as the head of the Regalia. Everyone knew that Thiji was Mimizo's favored son - her greatest pride and joy - and it was a notion well-deserved. As a man of twenty-eight summers, he was definitely growing sick, tired, and even jaded by lonely days and lonelier nights. His only true companions were Glacius and Nyra - both of whom have already spawned progeny of their own. Everyone seemed to have been winning in this race, and Thiji has been left in the dust for quite a while. There may have been times where he did not care, but having someone near and dear beside oneself was truly an incredible feeling that could never be replaced. He turned his gaze back to Veeveena, tears still falling from her limpid aqua orbs, staring intently into Thiji's ice-blue-and-silver-white eyes. He sighed and shook his head, but not because he had intended to deny Veeveena, but as a sign of the lifting of his burden, like a ten-tonze weight finally being removed from his shoulders. Thiji would then direct his gaze towards Mimizo... "Mother," he spoke, "Inform the other Angels. They must know; they must come... And they must see their Sultana." "No need, Lord Thiji!" A voice was heard from within their ears. Apparently a linkpearl was active sometime before Veeveena's arrival. It sounded like Sesena's! "We're already en route to Radz-at-Han via airship to see our beautiful Veeveena become your betrothed! We're so happy for you both! Within the sennight, Veeveena Veena shall become the Mythrite Sultana! And don't worry - no one else but the Regalia will know of this. I like the gossip coming from people calling Lord Thiji the 'Mythrite Bachelor', so this marriage will be secret!" "Thank you, Miss Sesena," Thiji acknowledged before cutting the transmission. Mimizo was absolutely elated by this, her grin wide as she walked over to give them both a pat on the shoulder, leaving them both alone for now to make preparations for the coming wedding. Veeveena then fell into Thiji's arms, catching her in a loving embrace. She then whispered to him: "My Sultan... never again at night... shall you be welcomed by a cold and empty bed." Snapping back to the present, Mimizo gave a quiet sigh, the recollection causing some beads of sweat to fall from her brow. She fanned herself for a brief moment and made her way to the dresser, whereupon she gazed at a mythril-framed portrait of Thiji and Veeveena, happily married and brought into the family as her Daughter-in-Law. She smiled at this sight, proud of Veeveena's bold yet caring heart. Her efforts had finally bore fruit as her dearest firstborn would have a Sultana both strong and beautiful. A second time she would close her eyes and delve into the confines of her memory. This time, her mind's eye would show Veeveena in luxurious garbs befitting of a Sultana, resting upon the sofa where she spent many a bell beside Thiji during his moments of reflection. Another moonlit night upon Radz-at-Han, and Thiji was away tending to other matters in Eorzea. A blissful smile was bare on Lady Veeveena's face as she reclined in light slumber, before a voice was heard from amidst the shadows... "Sister. You're looking well already." Veeveena stirred from the voice, sitting upright to properly address this woman, whom was apparently her sister. Out from the shrouded chambers and into the silvery spotlight stood a Dunesfolk lady with hair and complexion to similar to Veeveena's, but with one distinction: her eyes were an emerald green. From afar, these two would seem identical, though this woman had a more stern look upon her face as opposed to Veeveena's smile-prone antics. She secured her platinum-blonde tresses with a bow and the excess dangled over her left shoulder. She was adorned in the ice blue dancer garbs of her people, but sported serrated daggers of purest mythrite holstered at her hips. "Veeveera," the Mythrite Sultana spoke, though softly. "Full glad am I to see you. I am sorry recent events had forced you out of hiding." "Think naught of it, Veena," she replied with a wave of her hand. "Someone had to fill the role of Advisor, and it only made sense that I'd return from my work in Uznair to take care of my elder sister." Veeveena giggled, rising from her seat to turn to Veeveera. The latter came to the former's side, bowing to her as she faced Veeveena. "House Higuri is secured - as is our house - thanks to you, Your Grace. You took well of our lord's seed, and have given birth to two strong and beautiful heirs - a son and a daughter both - for our Mythrite Sultan. Two pure Dunesfolk, as the Valide desired."

"I am merely happy to finally bring joy to my lord and love," Veeveena said back with a smile. "Though I am his wife, my duty to him still remains. Ours are souls yearning for battle, and now that I've experienced motherhood just as Lady Umimi, our savagery can only be amplified tenfold!" "Spoken like a true warrior, Veena," Veeveera acknowledged as she began pacing the floor. Still, I would not have it any other way - nor would Lady Mimizo. She would have been incensed beyond belief if our lord sullied his family's genes with any other race. And don't even get me started on those feral kittens and fragile lizards whose body structures are akin to that of twigs. Honestly, I do not see the appeal behind these tailed waifs. Being the traditionalists that we Dunesfolk are, the mere notion of hybrids is right out. Thavnair's nobles should not be tainted by such wanton, disgusting acts of interracial breeding..." "If it is any consolation, Veera," the Mythrite Sultana interjected, "Our lord has caught the eyes of many a courtesan, with the intent on bedding him! His charisma alone is a testament to the attention he is receiving as of late. Also, some of the other races are from Thavnair as well; are they not kin?" "Of that I am well aware..." Veera retorted with a sigh, arms crossed. "Whether they choose to have the honor and privilege of taking deep of our lord's seed and bearing his children is entirely up to them. The truth hurts, and if they wish to protest, they are more than welcome to see me personally. Though I cannot guarantee they will leave without a dagger or three in their throats. As for your latter question, Your Grace, I said nary a word regarding the origin of individuals. I was merely commenting on the principle of the overlying matter: copulation with other non-Lalafell, be they from Thavnair or otherwise, is frowned upon, regardless of it being... openly practiced in other areas of the realm. There is a reason we have none with tails within the Regalia’s employ. And to be quite honest, I pray it stays that way. Were it not for these recent events, the noble houses would not even be getting together to discuss the welcoming of adventurers." "Such venom, Veera... but I would be inclined to agree!" Veera exclaimed. "The Angels are so relieved to know that my Lord Thiji finally has progeny to carry on that beautiful man's legacy... He has suffered overlong - far, far overlong. Valide Sultan knew it, and still we hoped; still, we dared. But that is in the past, and we must move on from it, lest we be consumed and held back by it. Now all that matters is to ensure our children remain safe and secure Thavnair from the Telophoroi. I refuse to let my Sultan's beloved heirs meet a terrible fate. A repeat of the Nanago tragedy will not reoccur." "Hmph... that bitch," Veera seethed. "This is all her fault; good riddance to her. First she secretly indulges in contraceptives to deny our Sultan his rightful heirs, and on the eve she forgets them, she is at last with child, only for moons later to supplement her aether reserves and perishes out of existence, leaving behind only her Sorceress powers. An infanticide-suicide in one fell swoop... As if a good night's sleep and healthy meals would not have done the job just the same - if not better - than gorging oneself on the stored aether of Anima weapons." It was certainly clear as day that Veeveera was livid by all the misfortunes that befell Thiji to so passionately address them before her elder sister. She balled a fist in anger and turned sharply around towards the shadows, grumbling to herself. Veeveena simply laid a hand upon her sister's shoulder, giving her that Near Eastern sun smile. "I know, Veera... I know," she assured. "She wasn't worthy. Very few are. But this is the path he chose, and I feel he would gladly make his decisions again. His power has grown by leaps and bounds since he was but a lordling learning the ways of weaving and gemcraft. And now, here we are, at the crux of the Regalia's prosperity, whose golden age will now be extended with the introduction of Thiji II and Sesera. I am grateful to you for keeping me safe during my time in labor, and though I am still resting, I will be looking forward to the day I once again fight alongside Veeveera the Sanguine." "Good," Veeveera concurred. "I'd love to see just how much deadlier Veeveena the Visceral becomes now that she is a mother. But I've lingered overlong. I believe your husband is returning soon, and you've a bed to warm, sister. I'll return to the jungles in the meantime." Veeveera left with a before disappearing into the shadows, once more leaving Veeveena alone with her thoughts. She disrobed herself down to her smallclothes as she approached the bed, neatly placing her lehenga on a chair by the dresser. "Every eve, My Sultan, so long as I am your wife, you will know naught but bliss." Snapping back once more, Mimizo placed the portrait down upon the dresser, and directed her eyes to the mirror, finding Fafastima standing beside her with a smile. She turned around and greeted her husband with a soft hug and a gentle kiss upon the lips. "Dearest wife of mine!" he greeted, "You're still up?! What troubles you so? It is not like a Thavnairian jewel such as yourself to look so down!" "My beloved Fafa," sighed Mimizo, "I am simply... reflecting on all that has happened. I cannot help but feel guilty making our beloved boy wait so many summers when we could have simply arranged a joining with him and Veeveena. She and I wanted to cling to hope - hope that someone out there in Eorzea would fall in love with our son. But we should have known better." "Sweetheart! Don't be that way!" Fafastima interjected, lightly shaking her by the shoulders. "Mimi, I've never doubted your judgment! You've got a gift when it comes to matchmaking. I'm sure you just wanted to see if there were any worthier suitresses for our Thiji! Don't be so hard on yourself; he's powerful as all hells, a master of his craft, showing the realm at large the power of high fashion, and his charisma and philanthropy has given the Regalia so much exposure and adoration than I would ever dare to imagine! All the meanwhile you’ve groomed Veeveena to be the ideal woman and warrior our son deserves as a contingency! I've always been proud of our son, Mimi, and though I, too, wanted to see him with a pretty little something around his arm, he had other matters to attend, especially now that I passed on the reins to him!" These words gave Mimizo some comfort; she beamed at her husband before kissing his cheek. She definitely had no means of being so tough. "Be prideful, Mimi!" Fafastima urged triumphantly. "Our firstborn son made it! And we're officially grandsires! HAHA!" "Fafa... we've been grandparents thanks to Horu and Umimi," Mimizo retorted. "You know what I mean, love!" Fafastima returned. "But our Mythrite Sultan is coming home! Let's go for a stroll and meet him as we enjoy this well-earned victory while we can, yes? After all, there are still matters to attend regarding the other noble houses!" Mimizo responded with a nod as Fafastima stretched and got his sherwani ready. Mimizo slowly approached the balcony as she saw the sails of the Mythril Wavetraders on the horizon - Thiji was finally home. She unfolded her fan, returning to her original spot and kept her gaze fixed on the approaching vessels, still lost in thought...

"Everyone is going to miss you dearly, my son... When next they see you, it will be here, in Thavnair. I know our talks will succeed, and we will ensure that your secrets are well-hidden. You've endured far too much in this life, and at long last, you have what you so rightfully deserve. I cannot shake the guilt so easily, but it is but a flicker compared to the pride swelling within my breast. This realm may not be ready for you as you say... but it is definitely time for them to get ready. The Near East awaits our foreign allies... perhaps the peerless beauty of our land will serve as the perfect diversion for the Regalia. For after all, there is always Power... in Beauty."

#thiji higuri #Higuri Regalia #Lalafell #lalafell master race #short story #valide sultan #mythrite sultan #thavnair #hannish #radz at han #thavnairian

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