#i put in the work and i've been trying to force myself into the mold of recovery for longer than some of you have been alive

[chronicbackstabbingdisorder]

My patience for people telling me to go back to therapy is zero. My patience for people trying to fix me is zero. My patience for being told how I should be coping or trying to heal is zero.

If who I am right now, as I am right now, isn't good enough for you, then move on because we aren't compatible.

[cat-astro-pick]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟒

𝑀𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝐸𝑧𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑥 𝐹𝑒𝑚! 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟎

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟏

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟐

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟑

"Why are you so dismissive?"

"Of what?"

"...Of me."

"I've been busy working on new stuff. Well, cause it's a new genre I'm trying out and I-."

"You know, you're a big talker when you lie."

I'd never heard his voice so low. In fact, I'd never thought of him as capable of such an intimidating voice in the first place. I'd always assumed Ezreal's vocal cords would only produce beautiful voices, but…apparently not.

I sucked in a breath, not wanting to sound pathetic. I let it out slowly, not wanting it to look like a sigh, and Ezreal's eyebrows twitched. It's always like this. He caught the part I didn't want to be caught, too fast, and then he comforted me. Comfort that I didn't ask for. If it were simply hypocrisy, it wouldn't bother me so much. The reason I'm bothered, yes, is because Ezreal is such an innocent, nice guy ever. I've never seen him this mad before. Not recently, not even before. The anger he was feeling today was purely my fault, and I couldn't be grumpy or irritable with him. Guilt pierced through my heart like a sledgehammer. Even the act of putting my hands in my pockets felt unnatural because I knew better than anyone else that, it was my fault. If it were dramatic, this is where I should have dropped to my knees, but an unknown emotion squeezed the words out of my mouth. It molded the words, forcing them out of my throat.

"...What if I tell you now that I don't remember?"

"What?"

A series of brief memories haunt me. When they started, I don't know. A tone of frustration, denser than embarrassment and irritation, pierces my ears. I hid under the shadows created by cap like a frightened kitten. I was the one who spoke the unforgivable words, and I was the one who ran away in fear. Yeah, I'm that kind of human being, that's what I'm made of. I was unreasonably frightened, but I'm sure Ezreal didn't mean to scare me. If he wanted me to be scared and beg for forgiveness, he wouldn't have made that stupid face. I did something wrong, I deserved to be reprimanded, but it was Ezreal who was acting like a sinner. Simply because I, scared him.

"I don't remember. I don't even know what I said to you."

"..."

"If you want me to be a little more brazen, I don't understand why you've been obsessing over what I said for days, when I was probably drunk and out of it anyway."

"...Enough."

Hell is a fitting place for me to end up. It's better to throw yourself down the stairs to the other side without thinking twice about the ambiguity of heaven or hell, and it's the same with relationships. Even in this one-sided love relationship, I can't be honest anymore. That I crave more than attention from you, that those are the real, deep feelings we've been screaming about since we were kids, and that those simple four-letter words keep hurting me. So, prove it to me. Cause when I realize you don't care about me in the slightest, I'm going to want to die. Prove to me how you feel about me, how far you'll take my immature rants, and if you even care about me. If you don't, then we're done.

My brain felt like it was in two pieces. Egos fighting. I am pushing myself and pushing Ezreal at the same time, to the point where there is no consensus. If someone asks me where and how our relationship went wrong, I don't know what to say. I can't even remember when I started falling for him.

"What the hell did I say to you that made you so mad that Kayn is talking shit to me? Nah, I don't understand why you're mad in the first place!"

No, he's not even angry, he's just hurt. This is not even in my mind.

"What did you come all the way to the studio for? What did you say to them?"

He used to come by often, just like I used to. She probably didn't say anything, because I'd embarrass her.

"'You're-'"

"I said enough!"

The sharp voice cut between us, but nothing else existed but silence. I wish he'd slap me, but when I glance down, all I see is a tightly clenched fist. I know he's not the kind of man to swing a fist. And it's not that I'm a masochist who's desperate to hit him, it's just that his knuckles are so pitifully red and white from clenching so hard.

"..."

He's crying. His eyes, which should be sparkling and shining under the spotlight on the stage, are wet with tears, not starry lights. In the end, it was me who was stupid from start to finish. I prided myself on being able to read other people's moods with ease, but this time, I missed it. I couldn't tell if the heavens were punishing me for my arrogance, or if I was just as dumb as a moth to a flame when it came to Ezreal. In the first place, Ezreal's emotion wasn't anger. It was frustration, fear, and finally impatience. He's not the kind of person to cry tears of anger.

I wonder why I didn't realize that.

“Ez…”

" Do I really make you miserable?"

"...What?"

"You said I'm the reason you're tired to death every day."

"...What are you talking about..."

A cold sweat trickled down my spine. I'd assumed the worst, but there was worse waiting for me than I'd ever imagined. Ezreal couldn't have been thinking this on his own. He's not that pessimistic.

"If you really think I'm to blame for your misfortune."

No. It's not like that. I tried to say something, but the words were stuck in my throat and felt like they were being strangled. I felt like I was slowly suffocating. Like sand being sucked out of the middle of a desert, I was slowly being eaten away.

"Then it would be more helpful if I left you."

His loosely tied hair whipped in the wind. I stare at the distant, distant back of his head, and it feels like the end of the world. It was only after my already weary hand gripped his arm that I realized that tears from the bitter wind were wetting my cheeks. I was a sinner, and I shed many tears for nought. I became impatient. And soon I felt tempted to scream, frustrating. It seemed to me that despair had taken hold of me to the end and would not let go. Many days and nights passed, many of which were ordinary days where I didn't care what happened. And, yes, honestly, I wanted to tell myself that Ezreal was making my life miserable, even though I knew it wasn't him that was making me miserable, it was my feelings for him.

"I'm not miserable because of you."

A sense of unreality envelops my toes. It wasn't the coziness of a lazy daydream. Each delicate feature of his face in my vision crumbled into shards. The shards ran down my cheeks, dangling precariously from the tip of my chin, before falling to the floor and becoming jewelry for ants.

"I mistook you for misfortune, because I... have a crush on you."

Yes, this is penance. And, confession.

.

.

.

[hawkland]

Art Masterpost: Solitudes

Story by: ilovehowyouletmefall (@angelinthefire) Art by: sidewidner (@hawkland)

It's October and that means it's @deancasbigbang season once again! This year makes for my third time around for the event, although this year I only managed to participate as an artist (I'm still in a bit of writer's burnout since the summer). But, that meant I could put all of my focus and time into doing these four pieces for @angelinthefire's wonderful story "Solitudes." I'm gonna talk a little bit about my ideas and process and share some progress pictures behind the cut in a way that might be kind of spoilery, so if you want, just go read the story now! And then you come back here later to find out more if you wish. All works were completed in watercolor with some digital effects and filtering after completion.

I was really drawn to the imagery of the architectural elements of where the story takes place (an abandoned brutalist mansion) vs. nature and decay...plus the way light and shadow seemed to play such important roles in the visual descriptions. Dean and Cas spend so much of the story separated by supernatural forces even when they are in the same room I wanted to focus on that as well: being so near yet so far apart, not quite connecting or even able to look at each other without barriers.

I started on the banner art right away, thinking of Dean in despair (for reasons in the story) and Cas yearning/wishing he could reach him. Behind them both is the concrete wall covered in mold and moss (which was a LOT of fun to paint). The actual final watercolor painting came out as so:

(This is one of my favorite Deans that I've painted. His face can be SO hard to get right!)

Working with angelinthefire's suggestions I ran some different digital filters on the photo to desaturate/emphasize the light and dark for the final banner, and then with that in mind tried to keep the other pieces in a similar color scheme and tonal range.

The atrium painting was the biggest challenge. I knew I wanted to do a piece to capture the feeling of the house, the light coming in from an open skylight falling on brambles growing out of an old fountain spot. I was thinking of the Roman villa ruins I've visited combined with some actual Brutalist/modern homes I looked up. My original drawing plan was a bit more complicated and simplifying/taking out some elements definitely makes it more creepy/mysterious looking and less like a funky modern home.

You can see the vanishing/perspective point is right where Dean is looking at Cas.

The light falling down from above was partially painted with some interference/shimmer watercolors, but I amplified it (along with the shadows) with some digital effects at the end. This was before doing any digital magic:

Dean reaching for Cas: I made myself so sad working on that piece! It was also quite the challenge to get the likeness right at that angle and do the lighting the way I wanted, so again I used some digital effects at the end to really intensify it. Painting before filters:

I think my favorite part of that one is how I dry-brushed the ash wings in one shot and they came out just how I wanted! My main reference was, heh, that old classic shot of unconscious Cas being poked with a stick. I used my own hand for Dean's reaching out to what he sees through the harsh angled light.

The final piece is a direct companion to the one above it, and one I'd been thinking about for weeks, trying to map it out mentally before tackling it. Dean's face can be so much more challenging for me to try to capture well compared to Cas's and I really wanted to get his shock and horror in that moment while also being able to show (the real) Cas in the background/shadows...this was the third drawing pass before I finally started painting it. There's only a light bit of filtering over the final piece to push Cas back in the shadows (I didn't want to do with the paints for fear of muddying the colors...plus I was already painting Cas so small any wrong brush stroke could shift his likeness/expression.)

Overall I really like how unified these pieces all ended up feeling and I hope they manage to complement the story in a way that it deserves!

[aritsukemo]

Paradise | Chapter Four - Final Selection | KNY

Summary: It's finally time for the Final Selection Process!

Warnings: Demons. In-depth descriptions of someone being eaten. Mold is used to describe the Hand demon so all my mycophobic folks beware! Cannabalism mentioned. Mentions of death in multiple instances so, with all that said, read with caution!

A/N: I somehow managed to force myself to finish the final draft of this chapter so I was like, why not post it? May be the last chapter for a while since school's starting back up, but hold that with a grain of salt. I'll try my best to work around my schedule and get another chapter out asap! <3

Taglist: @overluvsick, @nursedflowers, @jspidey5 + anyone who wants to be tagged! <3

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

"Thanks to my training with Makomo, I've learned to detect the opening thread. It's the reason I won my fight with Sabito."

 "When I'm battling someone and I pick up the scent, then I can see the thread. The thread is connected from my blade to my oppenent's opening, growing taut the instant I see it. My blade is drawn towards it with great force and when close enough, I slash at the opening.."

I stand there, awestruck as I stare at the boulder which is now sliced in half before me. I couldn't wrap my head around how this happened, "Where did Sabito and Makomo go? I cut Sabito's mask in half, so how did the boulder get cut?" Many questions swarmed in my head, but as I got a whiff of Mr. Urokodaki's scent, I quickly put them aside and turned around.

As I thought, Mr. Urokodaki was walking up to me. It's been so long since I've had a talk with him since I usually passed out as soon as I got home and woke up really early to come out here. That said, I didn't know what to say and in the end, all I could do was mumble out his name, "Mr. Urokodaki.."

He makes it to me at last, but walks past me, stopping when he's in front of the boulder. He stares at it for a moment before he said in that gruff voice of his, "I never intended on sending any of you to Final Selection," And my heart dropped. So this was all for nothing? That thought crossed my mind, but before it could sink in, Mr. Urokodaki continued and I noticed the scent of sadness mix in with his usual scent as he said, "I didn't want to see children die anymore.."

 "I was sure neither of you would be able to slice your boulders, especially you.." And I suddenly felt his hand in my hair, "..But you did great. Well done, my boy!"

The way he said those words made him sound his age, like an old man praising their grandchild for walking for the first time. But as he stood there with his hand still in my hair and told me, "Tanjiro, you're a remarkable kid," All that he reminded me of was my father. He reminded me of my dad and I didn't realize it until he pulled me into his arms that I had started crying.

 "Make sure you and the girls come back from Final Selection alive," He muttered in my ear as I felt his cheek against my head. Similar to a parent hugging their kid who's about to go on some long trip away from home to sell goods, "Both your sister and I will be waiting for you three here."

As my arms raised and I hugged him back and buried my face into his shoulder, I found myself thanking the gods above for my mentor who's holding me in his arms. I'm glad I made that decision back on then. It was definitely the right choice..

Third Person Pov

The crackling of fire and the low gurgling of vegatables boiling was the sounds that filled the hut that night. All eyes were on the food. Tanjiro gawked noisely, his cherry colored hues blown wide like his mouth. Sumiko sat beside him after previously being dragged out of the room they slept in by the intoxicating smell. She had a dank-colored book cuddled close to her chest and she stared at every bit of food with hungry eyes, drool had even began peaking from the corner of her lips—the sight was like staring at a demon who had just set its sights on a human after not seeing one in years. 

Y/n seemed to be the only one not showing her surprise or hunger on her face. As she sat in the middle of her siblings and Urokodaki, she stared down at the food; her otherwise dim eyes lit under the fire's glow. They were distant, as if what was right before her was miles away and her lips were nailed into a thin straight line that hadn't left her face since she had returned to the hut. Her hand had found place fiddling and she mindlessly had one of her fingers pushing up against the nail of her middle finger—not using nearly enough force to hurt herself or pop it off, of course. Nevertheless, her otherwise lost in thought, slightly troubled-looking expression had lost it's edge a long time ago when the first grumble sounded from her empty stomach.

In short, she looked like an anxious little kid in the eyes of her mentor and he and the other two ultimately didn't pay her much mind.

 "What's the occasion? There's so much," Tanjiro finally asked, his voice matching his expression as he broke his gaze away from the food boiling in the pot to Urokodaki, who had a wooden bowl in hand.

 "You all have completed your training so we're celebrating," His mentor said as he scooped up some of the food with the ladle and dumped it into the bowl. His voice laced with this cheeriness that was unusual to their ears. Now with the bowl in his hand steaming and filled, he lifts it up to Tanjiro and says, "Don't be shy. Eat to your heart's content."

Tanjiro perks up, smiling widely as he takes the bowl from him, "Thank you very much!"

Sumiko's to follow, her eyes gleaming as she watches Urokodaki's every movement. When the next bowl is finally filled, she immediately reaches for it, having long since set her book aside. And, as soon as it's in her hands, she uses her chopsticks and shoves some food in her mouth, mid-chew as she finally mumbles out a muffled, "Thank you."

 "Sumiko, that was rude," Tanjiro scolds, voice light yet tone stern just like his mother would do to his other younger siblings, "You shouldn't talk with your mouth full like that."

Shoving more food into her mouth, she nods. And this time, she quickly chews the food in her mouth, swallows it, and then replies with a small, "Sorry.."

 "It's alright. I don't mind," Urokodaki said, lifting a bowl in Y/n's direction. She blinks as if she was surprised, but soon takes the bowl out of his hands, muttering a low, "Thanks.."

Idle chatter filled the room after that. With Tanjiro being the main speaker as he hopped topics. From talking about how good the food is to praising his sister for being able to slice her boulder in only half a year to which she brushed it off before changing the subject altogether. Sumiko was too busy stuffing her face to add any commentary, but she listened intently to every word that left her older siblings' lips.

Urokodaki watched all three of them in silence, taking in every expression they made no matter how miniscule. He milked in their faces as if it was the last thing he'd be able to do, all while thinking unspoken words he found ill-suited to speak aloud, lest he wanted to ruin what possibly could be their last moment of peace.

 "There's nothing more I can do for you all. From here on out, you three will be put through such hardship and strife that your training will seem like nothing in comparison. So for now, at least, I hope you're able to rest well tonight without a care in the world.."

Snip. Snip. Snip. Burgundy-tipped hair falls gingerly onto futon sheets with every slice that echoes through the room. Tanjiro has his hands in his hair, snipping away at the excessively long strands. He struggles just a tad. Every snip with the scissors don't always slice, but he manages relatively well on his own. Even so, Y/n found herself walking up to him anyways..

 "Give me those," She said, tone dull to avoid sounding unnecessarily pointed. Tanjiro's face morphs into one of surprise before a smile of gratitude crosses his expression. 

 "Thanks," He tells her, and Y/n merely hums at him, moving behind him as soon as he places the bulky pair of scissors in her hand.

Sumiko sits against the wall closest to the door. One glance at her could tell you how focused she was. Her thin brows scrunched a little and creased her skin, her lips were glued in a thin line, and her starlight pupils darted along the page of the book she had propped up against her knees. Her grayish blues would pause occasionally upon spotting a rather difficult word and her expression would harden only to ease up when she finally gets past said word. It was a fairly normal sight to others, but Tanjiro and Y/n found themselves glancing over at her more than once that night.

Even after two years, seeing her so concentrated on something felt like being pulled into a lake by an unsuspecting and strong wave; it was befuddling and bewildering if they were to be so blunt.

 "Hey, Tanjiro, Y/n, Sumiko," A simple call from their mentor had all three of them pausing what they were doing to look over and give their full attention to him.

Tanjiro was the one who spoke up for them, asking, "Yes?" to which Urokodaki asked his own question, "Did you enjoy that hot pot?"

Their expressions softened in their own ways. With a wide smile stretching on Tanjiro's face, Sumiko nodding her head in silence despite facing his back--that thin line her lips made loosening and quirking up a little, and Y/n's face growing lax.

 "Yeah, it was really good!" Tanjiro said, his voice giving away his ear-to-ear expression to the point that Urokodaki could perfectly depict what his face looked like without so much as glancing his way, "We haven't had a feast like that in ages!"

 "Growing boys and girls like yourselves with hearty appetites will surely get stronger and grow bigger the more they eat," Urokodaki said only to then follow up with, "But the same goes for demons," which has all three of their faces dropping and or hardening in unison.

 "Remember this. A demon is as strong as the number of humans they've devoured," He tells them to which Tanjiro immediately asks, "So, the more they eat, the stronger they get?"

 "That's right," And Urokodaki gets up, revealing the clothing folded at his feet—one top in particular bearing the cloudy patterns and light blue color that resembled Urokodaki's.

 "Tanjiro, when your sense of smell grows keener, you especially will be able to tell how many humans a demon's consumed," He walks past the clothes and up to the wooden wardrobe, sliding the top half open to reveal some masks laying flat. He grabs them, stacking two on top of each other before grabbing the last one and staring down at it. He then turns on his heel and walks up to Tanjiro and Y/n.

Starting with Tanjiro and ending with Sumiko, Urokodaki hands off each of their respective masks. All three masks were made from the same material and shaped the same to resemble a fox. Each mask, however, bore distinct features and varied in color to better match and take after their suitor. Tanjiro stared down at his mask, which was patterned in red and had a sun painted in the corner by the ear.

 "What's this?" Tanjiro was, again, the spokesperson for the three of them. Urokodaki didn't mind it, answering him, "These are warding mask. I've charged each of them with a spell to protect you from harm."

 "Warding masks, huh.. Thank you."

The next morning came with the sun just barely peeking over the mountains, causing it's intruding yellow tinge to mix with the retreating grayish blue that the moon had left in it's wake.

Tanjiro stood in the main room of the hut, hair now cut shorter and his torso covered in the familiar blue waves and cloud patterns as his mentor. As he finished tying it, the door to the room next to Nezuko's slid open, revealing his two sisters behind it. Unlike Tanjiro, the two were dressed in their own garbs. Both of which, however, adorned their masks just like him with Sumiko being the odd one out and having hers hanging on her hip instead of her head like her siblings.

They all share knowing glances and Tanjiro nods his head at them. Despite no words being exchanged, they walk up to the door of the room Nezuko resides in and slides it open..

The same sight greets them just as it has been these past two years; Nezuko is laid out, unmoving on that same futon with her eyes closed. Even now, she was still fast asleep with no sign of ever waking up.

Tanjiro is the first to enter the room, his eyes glued to his unconscious sister as he crouched down. He called her name in a low hum with so much love and care that one could possibly mistake him for a heartbroken poet, "Nezuko.."

He laced his rough fingers with her her softer ones before bringing his other hand to cup around the back of her hand. He then lifts it up to level with his forehead and bows his head, all while whispering, "We're coming back for you no matter what, all right?" At this point, Sumiko had long since sat by his side, her hands clasped together and her head bowed as she silently said her own prayers.

Y/n was the only one on her feet, standing by the door as she stared down at Nezuko with a distant look in her eyes. Her pupils swirled with emotion, none of which were caused by or directed at the sleeping demon. Her gaze shifted at some point to Tanjiro and Sumiko's backsides and never left that sight even when they said their goodbyes and stood to their feet. The reason behind her intense gaze was unknown to all but her and she kept that reason locked behind imaginary iron bars, never to escape..

Y/n stepped aside as Sumiko and Tanjiro turned to face her way, her eyes closed. She let Sumiko walk past her, but before Tanjiro could do the same, she grabbed him by the shoulder. He blinked, surprised, and turned his head to look at her for answers for the sudden grab.

Her gaze never met his. They didn't even look up to glance at his face and because of her hair—that stubbornly shielded the sides of her face like a curtain—he couldn't even begin to decipher her facial expression. The heartbreaking aroma of fear that clung to her gave him some idea, although every one that came to mind bothered him greatly.

 "Hey.." He was already frowning. Her voice is soft. Too soft. As if she feared raising her voice for whatever reason. Or, it was if she feared what she'd give away if she did, "Are you..really sure you want to go through with this? Are you sure you want to enter that kind of world and shatter what little happiness you have left?"

Tanjiro decided not to question why she excluded herself. He wants to, he's desperate to, wanting nothing more than to get so much as a glimpse into her world. Wanting nothing more than to see life through her eyes for even just a moment if it meant he'd be even a step closer to being able to truly understanding her. 

..But would asking her be the right move? He never knows the answer to that when it comes to her. Would throwing questions at her and putting a bit of pressure on her make her break and spill everything to him? No, Y/n has never been so fragile. It's more likely of her to simply not answer or throw whatever she can at him to throw him over the wrong edge so that there'd be a mountain of distance between them that would take him years to climb up..

But is even that true? That raises the question; what is true about her?

He'll ask. Not today, but one day, he will. Until then, he has to continue climbing and reaching out to her and grasping at thin ropes while praying they don't snap under his weight. He has to be slow and patient and take his time so that when the day finally comes, she'll reach out to him, grab his hand, and help him up the rest of the way.

 "I do," He finally answers her, "I have to. For Nezuko's sake."

 "Right," She whispers back. Tanjiro watches her let out a heavy sigh, "Forget I said anything then," And then, she gently kicks herself off the wall she was leaning on and Tanjiro moves out of her way so that she could walk through the door.

One day, he'll get her to grab his hand. For now though, he needs to focus on what's right in front of him; the Final Selection process.

 "Don't worry about your sister. I'll take good care of her," Urokodaki said. The three of them were outside with him now, ready to depart from the hut they've called home for the past two years. The hut that they're are all praying to return back to.

 "All right! Thank you so much! We'll be going, then!" With that smily thanks from Tanjiro, they all began running, "Bye, Mr. Urokodaki!" They're figures grow smaller in seconds with how fast they're running. Just as they get to the dip that signals the true starting point of their descent, Tanjiro stops and looks back. He raises his hand, making Urokodaki believe he was about to shout yet another goodbye. But instead, he shouts, "Give my thanks to Sabito and Makomo for me!"

Urokodaki pauses mid-wave, his hand froze in place in the air. Tanjiro's figure is swallowed as he finally runs down the trail to catch up with Y/n and Sumiko. Urokodaki continues staring, hand slowly lowering to chin level and still open as if he was about to raise it again and give another wave. His mask was the same angry expression as always which would make one possibly believe that in this moment, he was enraged. However, that wasn't the case. And, if Tanjiro was still here, he'd be able to tell by a simple whiff that his words had left his mentor in bewildered shock.

 "Tanjiro.. How do you know the names of those deceased children?" 

First Person, Tanjiro's Pov

By the time we reached the mountain and made our way to the top, the cresent moon was out and the sky was painted a dark, grayed blue and was filled with clouds that swirled around in a way that gave an almost ominous vibe. Looking up at it on the way up made me a little nervous, but then once I got to the top, that feeling blew away with the gentle breeze.

As we walked, it felt like we were entering a whole new world. Everywhere you looked, there were trees with twisting roots that led a trail up it's length to the wisteria that hung and showed off it's beauty in varying lengths of its own. There were so many, all so large and full of life that it completely covered the unwelcoming sky above and painted everything around us in this gorgeous light violet tint. As pleasant as it was, it was certainly a surprise. Kinda like walking outside expecting for rain to cool you off in a heatwave but instead getting snow.

 "Look at all of this," I said as I paused and reached my hand out to carress the petals of the tree closest to me, "Even though they're out of season, they all seem to be thriving just fine."

 "Mount Fujikasane grows these wisteria trees year-round. The same can't be said for the entire mountain, though. The higher we go, you'll eventually stop seeing them," I would've maybe expected that response from Y/n, but to hear Sumiko say that was surprising. I wasn't alone. I could tell Y/n was as caught off guard as I am by the way she stops walking and tilts her head to glance back at her. 

 "How do you know that?" She asked, but it sounded oddly aggressive. Or maybe it's just because I haven't heard her really speak in a while—with all three of us having done our own thing for the past year and all. In the end, I brushed it off and turned to look at Sumiko, waiting for her to answer Y/n's question.

She does, her voice gentle and speech as smooth as the petals in my grasp as she simply said, "I read about it."

I perk up at this, "So is that what you were reading about all this time?" I retract my hand, my smile growing even though all she gives me in the end is a silent nod.

In such a short amount of time, she's grown so much that it's hard to believe she couldn't walk or talk at all a few years ago. I'm relieved that she's seemed to have recovered so much.

 "We should just be glad that these flowers are here and that we won't have to worry about anything like a sudden attack just yet," Y/n said. It left me a little puzzled. Were these flowers more special than what I knew? Before I could ask, Y/n had already began walking again and making her way up to the large stone stairs that led up the mountain. Me and Sumiko had no choice but to follow after her.

As we reached the top, I found myself stopping to gawk at the sight before me before I even made it to the top of the steps. There were so many people, all of which had a sword on their hips—most of which baring hardened and dirtied faces caused by grueling training surely.

I began walking again, head turning to get a good look of everyone I walk past. Each had their own scent, all of which were impressive in their own right. Not only that, but their appearances spoke so much, each giving me a small insight of what they went through.

It's nothing like the village I grew up in.

 "Everyone," I pause, turning my head to the direction of the voices to see two little girls. They were identical in appearance aside from their hair which were different colors—the one on the left having black hair darker than the forest at night while the other has hair as white as a snow bunny.

 "We thank you for coming here tonight," They said in unison. Their voices blended together perfectly to the point it sounded like a singular, layered voice, "To the Demon Slayer Corps Final Selection."

The girl with the snow hair spoke alone, her voice sounding thin now without her twin to back her up, "There are demons imprisoned here on Mt. Fujikasane which have been captured alive by the Demon Slayer swordsmen. They are unable to leave."

Then her twin spoke, her voice sounding the same, "That is because wisteria, which demons hate so much, blooms year-round from the bottom to halfway up the mountain."

The white-haired girl spoke again, "However, there is no wisteria from this point on and so demons abound."

The black haired girl spoke, "You'll need to survive here for seven days to pass Final Selection," They then spoke in unison once again, "And now, be on your way," And they bowed their head at us.

It was finally time. The moment of truth. I was ready for anything, but apparently Y/n wasn't because she grabbed me by my shoulder, stopping me from walking.

People walked by us, but I gave her my full attention in that moment. I had to—lest I wanted to miss little details that could help me understand the true intentions behind whatever she says.

 "It's never too late to back down," She said, "And it won't make you a coward for prioritizing your life."

That when I felt it—the slight tremor in her palm. Her hand was trembling. And her scent..she's scared. Y/n, who took on a mother boar by herself once when we were younger after Shigeru accidentally angered it by touching it's baby, was scared. I could feel my heart clenching in my chest. It was odd, it hurt. Seeing her—who I grew up believing was the bravest girl in the world—so frightened felt like a jab in the chest. A jab that turned into a full blow stab when I realized I was the cause of it..

Brows knitted together, I reach up and grab her hand which still rested, shaking on my shoulder. I peel it off and hold it in my hand, turning my body in her direction as my other hand comes up to cup the other side of her hand. With both hands, I gave her hand a firm squeeze and looked her in her eyes.

 "I'm sorry, but I can't give up. Not until Nezuko's turned back into a human," I said to her, probably sounding like a broken record at this point, but it was necessary. She needed to know how important this was and I'm willing to say it as many times as I have to until she does.

She's probably noticed that she's shaking because she took her hand away from mine and balled it into a fist. Her eyes leave mine and I noticed it travel over to Sumiko, who stood beside us. They locked eyes, but it only last a few seconds before Y/n  broke eye contact with her and let out a sigh.

 "Guess I have no choice then as well.. Just..don't die, please," I couldn't help the surprised look that washed over me or the way my eyes widened to further show it. I've..never heard her sound like that. Sounding so..what would I even describe this as? Anxious? Hopeless? Desperate? None of those seem to exactly fit the bill, but it's the closest words I can think of to describe that cracked whisper that slipped from her lips.

 "I won't," I tell her, mustering up every bit of confidence in my body and continued, "I promise," I could see Sumiko nodding along in my peripheral vision, her silent agreement to do the same. It made any nerves that may have been bubbling inside me disappear.

 "..Let's go," I said, walking after the last couple of people who just passed us.

We will pass this Final Selection process no matter what's thrown at us. I'll show Y/n how capable I am and put her mind at ease. I'll become a Demon Slayer and find a cure for Nezuko. No matter what!

Third Person Pov

 "Survive for seven days.. That's all I'm going to think about," Tanjiro thought to himself, left hand firm on his sheath. As the three of them ran through the forest, the only sound filling his ears being the loud crunch of grass as it was trampled under their feet and the sound of his steady breathing.

 "First, we have to survive the night," They pause at a rock—Tanjiro in particular crouching against it—as they took a moment to look around, "Once the sun comes up, the demons won't be able to do anything so we can rest then."

 "Let's head east," He said, thinking, "We'll make our way to where the sunlight will hit first!" With a nod of their heads, Tanjiro stands to his feet and the three of them begin running once again.

A sharp, blood curdling scream echoes across the forest. Sumiko falters, so does Tanjiro which causes Y/n to ultimately come to a stop as well.

 "Don't get shaken up, we can't stay in one place for long," She said to them, "Let's— Hey!" Mid sentence, Sumiko had taken off in the direction of the scream to which her older brother shouted, "Sumiko!"

 "Don't split up, idiot!" Y/n screamed after her as her sister's figure grew smaller with every passing second, "Do you want to die that badly? Get your ass back here!"

As a curse was breathed through Y/n's clenched teeth, a thought crossed Tanjiro's mind, "Someone's in trouble. Even if this is a test, it'd be wrong to do nothing," He turns his head over to Y/n, saying, "We should follow her and help out."

And just as he began running, he forced his body to stop, his feet sliding against the pavement. His other hand immediately latched onto his sword's handle just as Y/n did the same.

 "This smell..a demon's nearby!" Tanjiro thought, his head darting left and right as did Y/n's.

The forest was eerily quiet. Their breaths hitched and stilled in their throat, scared to do as much as even breath in fear of missing any slight change or noise around them. Y/n's steps were careful and faint as she crept backwards, stopping when she felt the heat radiating off of Tanjiro's body. Silence filled the area again. Not so much as a breeze could be heard—or maybe that could be a result of their eardrums going numb from holding their breath for so long..

 "Where is it? Where's it coming from?" Tanjiro thought, a murky scent actively invading his nose from all directions, "I can't pinpoint the direction of the scent!"

 "Sense it! Sense it!" Y/n thoughts screamed at her as her narrowed gaze burned into everything she looked at, "Don't give it a chance to surprise you! Find and dispose of the threat quickly so that you can go and find Sumiko!" 

Then a sharp scent, and an even sharper presence, has them looking up in unison.

 "Above!" Y/n thought at the same time Tanjiro asked, "From above?"

In that instance, a demon emerged from the leaves of a tree, it's figure shrouded in darkness as it lept and came charging down from the sky at a rapid pace. The two went in opposite directions to dodge—Tanjiro barreling out of the way whilst Y/n takes a large jump backwards in the nick of time. A thick cloud of dust kicks up immediately upon the demon's rough landing and as the dust begins to clear, Tanjiro uses the time to regain his footing by rolling to his feet.

The dust clears, revealing the demon in all of it's monstrousness. It's in an awkward position, it's enlongated tongue sticking out and veins covering every inch of it's skin and leading up it's arms, which were disfigured and sharpened like a blade.

Then, a slightly different smell nicks Tanjiro's nose. He turns around just in time to see another demon above him, claws raised and ready to sink into his flesh. Tanjiro whips out his sword as the demon slashes down causing them to meet at a point and clash. There's barely a second of struggle before Tanjiro's forced away in one direction.

 "Damn you!" The longer, blue haired demon cursed before immediately charging at the shorter, brown haired demon that had just attacked Tanjiro—who had long slid to a stop after being flung.

 "Don't even try to grab my prey! I saw 'em first!" It said as it struggled against the brown-haired demon's claws.

 "Get off my turf damnit!" It replied back to which the blue haired one replied immediately, "The hell with you! Just beat it!"

The fact that they were fighting over him like a piece of meat was quickly smushed and pushed to the back of Tanjiro's mind. He needs to focus! Use the opportunity to kill them!

But can he? "Two of them from the get-go? Can I take them?" He found himself wondering as the demons had their back and forth in front of him.

 "That's my prey!" The blue-haired demon yelled.

 "Shut up!" The brown-haired one shouted back before charging forward, screaming, "It's first come, first served!"

He leaps into the air, forcing the other to follow suit. Ravaneous and out for blood, both demons come charging at Tanjiro with the intent on devouring any and every morsel of flesh and blood they can get their hands on.

Tanjiro gasps, moves hesitant as he brings his sword upwards to block. The brown haired demon's claws slide against his blade before colliding with the ground behind Tanjiro. The blue haired demon has the perfect opportunity to claim his prize, but he's immediately swatted back. The chance arose and the brown haired demon used it to kick at Tanjiro as he jumps back. He flies for a moment before his feet plant on the ground and he slides until he kills his momentum entirely, kicking up a bit of dust at his feet in the process.

Sweat beads all over Tanjiro's face and his mouth is open, taking in gulps of air at a time. His heart beats like a playing drum in his chest, causing his chest to feel uncomfortably light after the realization strikes him; he could've died just now.

 "I'm okay, no need to panic!" He tells himself in a quick attempt to calm his nerves. Now's not the time to have a panic attack after all, "Just need to calm down and watch their movements! Remember the training!"

The demon's charge at him once again, the brown-haired one saliviating—which is swept away by the wind produced from how fast he's speeding towards Tanjiro—as he screams, "It's been ages since I've had human flesh!"

It's final words.

 "Total Concentration! Water Breathing!" As Tanjiro sucks in a clear breath and allows it to slowly fill his chest, the scent of the thread hits his noise, calling from the demons' weaknesses. It tightens the instant it's in his line of sight and, in that moment, he jumps foward.

Like flowing water amongst a stream, Tanjiro's blade slices through the brown-haired demon's neck, "Fourth Form!" His blade moving as if encased in the very liquid he mimics as moves down then up in a flowing fashion, catching the blue-haired demon in it's steady rivulet and seperating his head from his body in an instant.

 "Striking Tide!"

As he found his feet planting on the ground once again, Tanjiro whips his head back. The demons, now in pieces, disintigrate. Their bodies just about completely burned to ash by the time they hit the ground.

 "I did it!" Tanjiro realized, his shoulders slumping just a tad from the adrenline being pushed out of his mouth in the form of transparent clouds of air, "I defeated demons! I've grown stronger!"

He looked at his hand, the hand that had a part in dealing the finishing blow that put those demons out of their misery. He balls it into a fist, his eyes closing to conceal the tears that had begun to fill them at the feeling of the warmth that had already begun to swell; that rewarding feeling that accompained his victory—a sense of self-satisfaction.

 "All that training wasn't for nothing! I actually mastered it!"

Tanjiro takes a moment to let the tears fall, feeling as if he deserved to allow himself that much, before their quickly wiped from his face. He approaches the demons' corpses—which seem to finally be on their last cinders—and watches as the rest of their remains finally disappear into ash and float away in the wind until even the ashes withered away.

Tanjiro takes a glance at the sword in his hand afterwords. His awe, for once, not written on his face, "If I slash a demon with this sword Mr. Urokodaki gave me, it seems that not even the bones are left behind.." 

Then, as if he had transversed back in time, a slice is heard by him, marking the beginning of the memory. He sees it clearly—Urokodaki lands a swift, clean diagonal slice to the browned, hay-looking shoot he had propped up moments ago..

 "A demon's weak spot is its neck!" He remembers him telling them one time during training after the demonstration, "But you can't kill it with a normal sword even if you slash its neck."

A question arose in Tanjiro's mind as he said this, so he asked, "Then how can we take it down?"

 "The swords wielded by the Demon Slayer Corps were forged with a special kind of steel," Urokodaki answered as he held up the sword now sheathed in its scabbard, "That's the only way to kill a demon."

 "They're called 'Nichirin Swords.'"

As the memory fades, Tanjiro snaps back to reality. As if he had done it a million times before, Tanjiro goes through the motion of putting his sword away. He flick his wrist, flinging away any blood residue that could rust the blade. With his other hand, he props the scabbard upright. He then slides the blade against the opening of the scabbard, and finally, inserts it inside once the tip of the blue-shining blade lines up with the hole, pushing the blade in until it completely disappears inside the metal scabbard and the guard hits it with a small clink.

He lets go of the handle, clasping his hand together as he bows his head in the direction of where the demons' corpses once laid. A small prayer is recited in his head as he muttered out, "Rest in peace."

As he raises his head, he looks around, "I only got a glimpse for a moment, but a few demons attacked Y/n as well. Did she.." He shakes his head, the grim image that popped in his mind being shook away in the process, "No, don't think like that. Y/n is a very skilled person, she's definitely fine!"

 "I should just focus on finding her. She couldn't have gotten far—" He stops, his face attempting to scrunch in on itself as he brought his hand up to pinch his nose—a desperate attempt to keep the disgusting odor that just hit him out of his nostrils.

 "What's that rotten smell?" He mutters, looking back just in time to catch a boy running away, his face contorted in fear.

 "No one ever told me about this! I didn't sign up for this!" The boy shouted.

Tanjiro leans his hand against a tree near him, the question raising in his head, "What's going on?" as he peers over to look. As soon as he does, his heart stills in his chest.

His teeth clench, his brows knit, and the world around him pauses for only a moment. He couldn't feel anything in that moment aside from the terror he felt at what he saw, and, as soon as he could feel the blood pumping in his limbs again, he immediately moved to hide behind the tree.

As if the fright was so bad that it evaporated all the air stored in his lungs, Tanjiro heaved through his opened mouth in a desperately fast rhythm. He finds the courage to finally peek again, his eyes zeroing in on the gigantic silhouette walking amongst the trees as he wonders..

 "What the hell is that thing?"

 "Hey, Sabito. Do you think Tanjiro can beat that demon?" The question was asked by the soft-tone, gentle-faced Makomo as she stared up at the pink haired male sat atop the boulder before her—the rope that's usually around it cut and on the ground, circled around the rock.

The answer sits in the air for a moment before it's answered, "I don't know," He says, wholly uncertain despite his tone, which could make one believe otherwise by how strong and unwavering it is.

 "No matter how hard you try, its never enough when it comes to that one," He said, "You know that well enough already though, don't you?"

Running as fast as his legs could carry him, the fright-filled boy is too late to notice the branch that bleeds into the ground and ends up tripping and falling. As if all his fear went straight to his legs as soon as he hit the ground, he doesn't move and instead looks back with dread written all over his expression.

 "What's this morphed demon doing here anyway? They should've warned us beforehand!"

The morphed demon in question treads towards him. Every step it takes shaking the ground beneath it's feet and leaving a permanent imprint in it's wake. It's steps boom, sounding more like stomping despite his movements saying otherwise..

It's a grotesque shade of green with large, horribly smelling and meaty arms caged around it's body, leaving it up to the imagination to figure out what could possibly be behind them—or, if there'd be anything behind them at all. From what it seems like, the demon is entirely made up of hands and arms.

As it walks, it holds it's snack in hand; a boy no older than Tanjiro. He was being held up by the neck and the lack of movement and the chillingly zoned out expression on his face made it clear that he had long since left the world in a unnervingly cracking way.

The demon suddenly raises the body higher into the air, causing the boy's legs to sway limply. The boy on the ground has to cup a hand over his mouth to keep from throwing up as he watched as the demon slowly threw his hand back, opening up a large, slimy, saliva-filled black hole between twisted arms that one can only assume was his mouth.

The demon lowers him in. His corpse gets covered in thick, gooey slob, making the blood that dried around the dead's mouth mix with it and run down his limp body as it disappeared into the demon's mouth. Once completely inside, the black hole slowly closed and a symphony of sickening cracks echo throughout the forest as bones are broken down between, what one could only imagine as, bloody teeth behind swamp-colored arms.

If Tanjiro wasn't so in shock by what he was witnessing, he'd be on the verge of, if not already, puking up this morning's breakfast and yesterday's dinner just like the boy on the ground.

What happened next would be hard to explain accurately to someone without growing sick on the stomach. After enjoying it's meal and savoring the thick, copper-tasting liquid by swishing it around in it's mouth—and coating it in deep crimson—the demon trembled as it grew in size. It's already bulky arms grew meatier, thicker—like a moldy meat patty, accentuating the thick veins in every hand all the more.

It's only then that the boy on the ground realizes he has functional legs it seems, because it's only then that he stumbles to his feet and attempts to run away. Behind him, the demon reaches out a hand, and then another, and another, and another. Multiple mold-colored hands reached out and forced themselves together into this gaint, beefy mess. It bubbles and grows until finally, they shoot out and separate, grabbing the boy by the ankle and snatching him into the air in an instant.

Tanjiro jaws falls and then locks in place, leaving him silently gasping. His roughened hands tremble as they hovered over the handle of the sword at his waist. He's scared, terrified, but he screams at himself in his head, "Don't wimp out!" and forces his fingers to squeeze the handle.

His legs shake, threatening to buckle and make him fall to the ground, but he tenses up—forcing them to stiffen as he screams at himself to save the boy. Save him!

 "Save him! Save him! Save him!"

 "You aren't powerless anymore, so move your feet! Move! Save him!"

Tanjiro leaps into the air, sword already whipped out and cocked back as he takes in a sharp breath, "Total Concentration! Water Breathing! Second Form!"

"Water wheel!" Like a hurdling, spinning basin of water, Tanjiro does a singular vertical slash in circulating motion, rotating like a water-made sun and slicing off the hand holding the boy's ankle captive in seconds time.

Tanjiro lands on the ground, watching as the boy follows suit, tumbling face first. While he's recovering, he quickly moves in front of him. Not taking the chance of glancing away from the monster before him in fear of the roles being reversed and him getting snatched up just like the boy did.

It's only now that his limb's been severed that the demon takes note of Tanjiro's presence. He glances down at him, taking in his form and pausing at the sight of the familiar hand-carved fox mask.

 "Another sweet little fox has come to me," He said, his eyes turning up with glee, "And so soon after the last one, today must be my lucky day."

 "Another?" Tanjiro parrots, hung up on every word he says and slowly absorbing it. His question is left unaswered by the demon as he moves on to ask his own question.

 "Tell me, little fox cub," He said, "What Meiji Emperor sits upon the throne?" The sudden ask strikes confusion in Tanjiro. "Meiji?" He repeated in his mind before replying to the demon.

 "The imperial family is Taisho right now!" He clarified only for the demon to mimic him slowly, "Taisho..?"

He mulls over his words as slowly as his uncomfortably large, yellow eyes roll. Taisho? Taisho. He's in the Taisho era? His pupils grow smaller every time he repeats those words to himself.

And like a bomb exploding, he suddenly roars out. His bellow is carried across the forest, surely alerting everyone of his unforseen anger. He stomps the hands he calls feet and kicks up dust in the process. His tomato nails dig into his own moldy, meaty flesh, ripping open gash after gash, and even then, he still scratches at the bloody openings he made.

 "You're saying I've been here so long that dynasties have risen and fallen?" He yells out, voice straining from his fury which only rises with every word he speaks, "Again and again! All while I've been held prisoner inside this flowery hell!"

 "Unforgivable! Unforgivable!" He repeats, his eyes beginning to roll into the back of his skull from how worked up he's getting, "Damn you, Urokodaki! Damn you!"

 "Damn you, Urokodaki!"

 "You know Mr. Urokodaki?" Tanjiro bravely asked him to which the hand demon so graciously answered this time, "I know him, all right! Urokodaki was the one who captured me!"

 "It's been forty-seven tortorous years!" He yelled, "Back then he was still hunting demons! It was the Edo Period during the Keio Era!"

Tanjiro couldn't wrap his head around it. Edo Period? But that was so long ago, how has he..

 "You're lying!" The boy shouted out from where he sat behind Tanjiro. It seemed he was in as much disbelief as him, if not more, "No demon has ever lived that long!"

 "The only demons that should be in here should be the ones who've eaten just two or three humans! They don't get the chance to live that long because they're killed during Final Selection!" He yelled, "Some even resort to cannibalism! Against those odds there's no way you could've stayed alive for that long!"

 "And yet here I am, more live than ever," The demon retorted in a simple tone of voice, "Inside this wisteria prison, I've eaten at least fifty of you brats!"

That's when Tanjiro spoke again, crying out, "That many?" Instead of answering his regurgitated question, the demon holds up four hands as he begins counting out of the blue.

 "Eleven.. Twelve.." He holds up a finger for every number he counts, "Thirteen.." With all four of those same hands, he points them all at Tanjiro as he says so gleefully says, "That makes you number fourteen!"

A chill ran down Tanjiro's spine, "What are you talking about?"

The demon holds his many hands up to the arm that covers the lower half of his face and giggles like schoogirl with a crush. It's unnerving to the ears, giving the same vibe as a little kid laughing at the sight of their family's remains scattered on the ground.

 "The number of Urokodaki's disciples I've eaten, that's what!" He giggles again, "I promised myself when I killed one of his first students that I'd kill every single one I happen across and I've been going strong ever since!"

Tanjiro could do nothing but gasp in horror as the hand demon continued, "You would've been number fifteen if that one hadn't managed to slip my grasp before I could devour her!"

 "Talk about silent fury! I couldn't even get everything I wanted to say out before she started slicing at these arms and hands of mine!" He holds up some of his jelly-like arms, "She was so quick on her feet! Agile to boot! She kept on hopping around every which way and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't nab her!" He said, and from the tone he used, he'd most likely have a pout to go along with his sulking if his lips weren't covered by veiny arms. That sullen tone didn't last long, though, because he immediately goes back to giggling.

 "I was lucky enough that the boy I just ate came along when he did! Trying to play hero, he jumped to assist her and she faltered!" Another giggle sounds from the demon as a murky swamp of dread began to fill Tanjiro's stomach, "I'll admit that I grew a little frustrated with her and her attitude! When I reached out for the boy and she jumped to save him, I accidentally smacked her away with more force than intended and sent her flying across half the forest!"

As the demon sulked, Tanjiro slowly painted a picture in his head. A nimble girl with a bit of an attitude and who was around to fight this demon just before he got involved? That sounds familiar.. It can only be.. No..

 "..Is he talking about Y/n?" The realization sunk in like a boat sinking in the ocean, drowning out his senses—but not fast enough for him to miss the demon's next words.

 "She wasn't the only one who caught my eye. Let's see.. Ah, yes! The ones who really stood out to me were those two.."

 "I'll never forget.. That brat's hair was an unusual shade of pink," Tanjiro involuntarily cringes at the constant high-pitched spiking his voice did whenever he enuciated his p's and k's, "He was most powerful. 'Had a scar around his mouth."

 "The other one was a female brat in a flowery kimono. She was small, and unlike the girl I just fought, she was lacking in power but— Oh, was she awfully agile like her!"

It felt as if Tanjiro's world had turned grayer and slower. There was so much to take in, or maybe that was because he was becoming overwhelmed, "They're already dead? But how? I trained with them! And Y/n..did this demon really manage to kill her so easily?"

The demon goes to pointing again, this time with more hands, "I recognized you how I did all the others—the fox mask."

 "I know the texture of the masks Urokodaki carves because they're the same style of carving he used for his own goblin mask!"

 "He calls them warding masks, right?" The demon crack up all over again, veins bulging as his arms-for-shoulders shake under the velocity of his giggling, "It's funny to me. Everyone got eaten up because they wore those masks!" And his giggling turns into full blown laughter. As if what he said was the funniest thing in the world.

 "They're all in my belly!" Veins crack out of Tanjiro's skin and flex against it. Steadily, that sinking feeling of sadness and dread is wash away by an angry sea as the demon continued talking, "Urokodaki might as well have fed them to me!" The sea was hot, boiling even, and nothing can stop it from pooling over every nook and crany of his body with the more his ears are assualted by the demon's grating voice.

 "Hehe.." He snickered with that uneven, squeaky voice of his, "When I said that to that girl with the flowery kimono, she started crying and flew into a rage! Soon after that, her movements got shaky and she completely lost control of herself!"

 "I grabbed her, ripped her limb to limb and then—" Crack. Like a vase full of hot water breaking, Tanjiro's anger boiled over and he lunged forward, his eyes devoid of everything but the boiling resentment that swallowed every follicle of his brain and body.

Green arms shot out at a rapid speed, all of which were swiftly sliced away by Tanjiro as he passed them by while letting out a yell that bubbled up straight from the depths of his stomach.

Sabito watched from his spot on the boulder in the clearing of the forest where he and Tanjiro sparred on numerous occasions. His facial expression unknown due to his mask.

 "Calm down, Tanjiro. Your breathing's uneven," He said, "It's all right!. Never mind us! Just get a grip on yourself and focus before it's too late!"

A crack bounces up Tanjiro's ribcage as his body curves into the fist the demon had manage to dig painfully into his side. The dug into his side for a moment, departing only when he's successfully flung him into the trunk of a tree. The impact immediately renders Tanjiro unconscious and the momentum has him bouncing off the wood and falling face-first into the ground.

And as he collides with the cold, rocky ground, a huge crack forms in his masks. One, then two, then the third one has the cracks spreading instanteously before it finally breaks and falls apart into little pieces..

The demon takes slow stomps towards Tanjiro's unconscious form and as his back turns, the boy that was bravely saved by Tanjiro saw his opportunity. Not to help him, but to run as far away as possible from this mess.

 "I'm getting out of here while the demon's taking out that guy!" He thought.

As the demon treads closer, trampling dirt into the shape of the hands he uses as feet, he suddenly paused to take in the sight of Tanjiro laid out before him, giggling up a storm in the process.

 "Another one of Urokodaki's brats are dying by my hands!" He thought giddily, "I have to wonder.. How's he gonna feel when more of his kids fail to make it home? What kind of look will he have on his face?" His giggling morphs into cackling once again as one of his hands slowly forms to reach for Tanjiro, ready to devour him like he's done to all the others..

 "Oh man, I wish I could see it. I really do.." As the arms extend towards him, spelling out his doom with in the form of disgusting, green fingers, a faint voice calls out to Tanjiro. One familiar and that of a little boy's..

 "Big bro!" The voice called, "Big bro! Wake up!" And Tanjiro answers to that call, eyes shooting open as his body moves on its own, forcing himself to roll out of the way, much to the hand demon's suprise.

 "He dodged it? He can still move after that?" He thought before his eyes smiled and he shouted, "Great! That means I can have more fun!"

Flexing into an awakard, bird-winged position, the demon flexes and shoots out multiple hands. Tanjiro slashes them away and jumps back, but hand demon merely sucks them back in, heals them, and shoots them right back out to follow after him.

 "Damn! no matter how many arms I cut, they grow back in seconds!" Tanjiro thought as he ran, teeth clenched and bared. The stressed look on his face and fleeting form only proves to fill the hand demon's with even more glee.

 "You can't defeat me just by slashing off my arms," He said cockily, "Then again, even that pink-haired brat couldn't slice off my head!"

Tanjiro comes to a sudden halt, twisting his upper half so he can slice a hand that had managed to get uncomfortably close to him. His grip on his blade tightens and he runs at the hand demon once again.

Hand after hand gets seperate from their arms as Tanjiro makes quick work of slicing them up as he runs. He beguns to breathe in, but a sudden scent has him pausing, "A demon's scent from the ground?" Confused, he jumps into the air, and sure enough, it was an attempted surprise attack; arms sprout from the ground like bamboo shoots and follow after Tanjiro—who continued to soar high into the sky.

 "H- He jumped! Damnit, I missed him!" The demon thought to himself, taken back for a mere moment before his confidence returns, "No matter. Even if he managed to dodge that, there's no way he can dodge an attack mid-air!" With that in mind, green flesh turned gooey as it meshes together once again, forming a big cannon—and this time, shooting out as one hand big enough to completely crush Tanjiro's skull; the same move the hand demon made that brought the once powerful Sabito's life to a bloody end..

 "Do you think Tanjiro's going to lose, too? That demon's neck is really tough after all," Makomo said in that silent clearing. Unable to help the way her mind shrouds with doubt from the uncertainty of the situation.

 "He may lose, he may win," Sabito says vaguely before following up with, "Either way, there's one irrefutable fact.."

 "Tanjiro is the man who sliced the toughest, largest boulder of them all."

As the large hand comes flying at his head, Tanjiro throws his head back before hurling his whole body weight forward, causing him to flip over the hand just as it was beginning to close in on him. The hand demon's eyes widened. He couldn't believe it!

 "He deflected me!"

Running along the huge, disgusting arm, Tanjiro has a clear shot..or did. As soon as he began running towards the demon's neck, smaller arms popped out from the larger one and sped towards Tanjiro..

 "Total Concentration!" He sucks in a large breath as fast as the hands were coming at him, "Water Breathing!" As soon as they were even an inch in Tanjiro's vicinity, the limbs were roughly hacked off one by one at a quick speed. As they began reatreating, Tanjiro used the opportunity to leap forward and curl into himself, preparing his slash as he descended toward's the hand demon's neck..

 "He got too close to me!" The hand demon remarked, a surge of panic shooting through him before dissipating as he told himself, "Not to worry. My neck is tough! He can't slash it!" 

 "First Form!" 

 "As soon as he fails to cut my neck, I'm going to crush his head!"

Now that he's in range, it's now or never! Letting out a battle cry, Tanjiro grips his swords as tightly as he can and performs a singular swing..

..And in that instant it's over. Like a rushing current striking through a boulder, Tanjiro cleaves the hand demon's head off it's hands-for-a-body—finally putting an end to this stream of misfortune dealt by this monster's hands!

 "Water Surface Slash!"

Tanjiro Kamado | *Imitating himself* Water Surface Slash! *Hands on his hips* How was that? How cool am I?

Nezuko Kamado | Mhmp! Mhmp!

Tanjiro Kamado | *Upset & Shocked* What? Sabito was cooler than me? C- C'mon, Nezuko! 

Author Ari | *Smiles* I thought you were pretty amazing, Tanjiro! (*^_^*)

Tanjiro Kamado | *Smiles back, shoulders slouching* "Really? I'm glad at least you think so.. *Straightens up* But anyways, why are you here, Ms. Ari? Aren't you still sick?

Author Ari | *Pats back* Ahhh, don't worry! I took some meds before I wrote and edited this! I'm feeling fine right now! ('▽'ʃ♡ƪ)

Nezuko Kamado | *Tilts head* Hm?

Author Ari | Anywhoo, around this time Paradise should be hitting it's first milestone—one thousand reads! I'd like to thank you all for the support on this book! It really means a lot to me! I'll try my hardest to write and pop out these chapters and keep everyone entertained! q(≧▽≦q)

Tanjiro Kamado | Thank you everyone for a thousand reads! And please, keep supporting this book! I want you guys to be there every step of the way as me and the others continue looking for ways to turn Nezuko back!

Nezuko Kamado | *Claps* Mmmm!

Tanjiro Kamado | Now, onto the Taisho Era Secret! *Leans in and whispers* Apparently there's a blond boy named Zenitsu roaming somewhere around the mountain.. I heard he was brought here after he got slapped by his master for refusing to take the selection exam!

Author Ari | *Giggles* He sounds like a silly little guy. I hope I get the chance to meet him! ..Oh! Before I forget.. *Clears throat before holding up finger* Today, I brought with me the very first Author Note!

Author Ari | The first draft of this chapter was actually written a couple years ago! It was..a hot mess to say the least. Y/n completely took over Tanjiro's role in the Hand Demon's fight originally, but I scrapped it because I wanted to give Tanjiro the proper respect he deserved as well as stay true to the canon!

Tanjiro Kamado | I wish we could've seen Y/n fight a little this chapter. Sumiko too. Kinda feels like they were pushed aside because of me..

Author Ari | Don't think like that, Tanjiro! It's not that they were pushed aside, more like you had the most interesting fight between the three of you..and I didn't feel like hopping from persective to perspective just to show what everyone was doing at the time you were fighting..heh.. Uh-! Besides, they'll have plenty of time to shine in the future, trust! (❁'◡'❁)

Nezuko Kamado | *Nods* Mmmph!

Tanjiro Kamado | *Perks up a little* If you say so..

Author Ari | Well, that's all for today! Thank you again for reading this book! I hope you'll continue to do so! Next, chapter five, "My Own Steel"! See ya there, lovelies! <3

Dividers were made by me, pictures used are from Pinterest, post formatting is inspired by @xxsabitoxx

[shadowqueenjude]

I was tagged in this game a long time ago by @positivelyruined

Things you'd like to know about fellow writers:

Last book I read: last book I FINISHED was House of Flame and Shadow. Currently we're struggling through The Cruel Prince.

Greatest literary inspirations: Suzanne Collins, Rick Riordan, JK Rowling, and Jane Austen (please note this is ONLY for their writing, not their beliefs outside of their works)

Things in my fandom that I want to read but I don't want to write: honestly having trouble writing long fics these days, have been sticking to one-shots, but Nesta having a relationship with Ember and Bryce and Tamlin slowly recovering from his trauma post-ACOSF are top of the list. Why I want to read this? I think Nesta could benefit a lot from having a good mother in her life; her life was molded by her abusive mother, and she has so few people in her life who stand up for her. And Bryce humbling the shit out of everyone IC and being Ember's daughter? Bestie potential fr. Tamlin recovering from his trauma post-ACOSF? Because I think he has been done dirty by SJM and I would like to feel his struggles first-hand. I don't feel like I'm qualified enough to write about this though (not the skill of my writing, but it's a heavy topic). Also, I have too many WIPs.

Things in my current fandom that I want to write about but I don't think anyone will be interested but me: honestly i THOUGHT my Azriel-Beron mating bond idea would be unpopular, but it is getting a SURPRISING amount of traction recently so guess who's writing it for sjmvillainweek???

You can recognize my writing by: I'm a very emotional writer first and foremost; I like writing emotionally charged scenes and allowing you inside the character's head so you can really see how powerful their emotions are.

My most controversial takes:

Some time ago I would've said it's that Feysand-Nessian-Elriel are the absolute worst ships in the fandom, but I don't think that's a controversial take anymore; the people are realizing.

So maybe my most controversial takes are:

Azriel ain't all that, he is infantilized too much by the pro and anti side of this fandom and it's ridiculous that he gets so much love for literally doing nothing. He's like that mediocre guy who nobody expects shit from so the one time he actually DOES do stuff he is treated like a celebrity. He is whiny when most of his problems are self-made, which is highly irritating. He's a total creep and he's got a LONG way to go before he is in any way worthy of Gwyn.

Tamlin should no longer be a High Lord. I was honestly surprised this was such a controversial take, but I think I've surrounded myself with loads of pro-Tamlins. Obviously I want him to ensure the future of Spring before he abdicates, but being a High Lord is something that truly made him miserable, especially as of ACOSF. We might not have been having this conversation had he remained as he was in book 1, but the truth is he is no longer the same guy he once was and I simply don't see how SJM is going to bring him back. I'd rather he live in peace than be SJM's plaything.

Favorite tropes:

Black cat girlfriend-golden retriever/doberman boyfriend

Literally anything regency-related

Forced Proximity, rivals to lovers (enemies to lovers is a bit much for me I think)

Current writing mood: 5 because I can write loads of short snippets but actually putting together a story is rough for me rn

Fandom frustration:

Honestly, fandom hierarchies. Some people are obsessed with follower count and catering their content to appeal to a wider audience and while I think that's fine to an extent, we have people trying to lord themselves over others because they have a couple hundred more followers. Like...at the end of the day, we're all just fucking nerds, tf do you mean you think you're superior?

Also, butting into the opposing side of the fandom. Like, it's different if a post asks for friendly discourse, but when the post is clearly not meant for you, why tf are you trying to make your opinion known? Know when your opinion is wanted.

Also the current threat to fanfiction. Stop trying to buy and sell fanfic tf? We write this shit for free.

Everyone has probably already done this, but...

Tagging: @crazy-ache @sonics-atelier @simmanin anyone who wants to do it!

[sureblade]

Rant about being masc presenting and NB incoming

So here's the deal, most people probably are going to scroll past this because they don't know who the fuck I am, but there's going to be a number of people who scroll past this because, either consciously or subconsciously are going to read masc and NB and categorize that as "male" in their heads, and unless you're effectively in the "female" box in their heads, they don't want anything to do with you. I especially need that group to listen up. I used to hate myself so much. Hell, in some ways I still do, self inflicted trauma over your appearance is hard to shake off, however I've come to realize that my anger and frustration at my appearance needs to be redirected at two sources: 1. the system and society we've been forced into by the wealthy christian elite that enables this environment, and the people who, despite claiming to be allies, will absolutely look at any non-binary person and fit us in to said society's binary boxes. There's not much I can do about the former, but if you're still reading this, then there's some hope that I can try to get to the latter. If you are really an ally, or even someone within the lgbtqia+ community but aren't non-binary, I really need you to seek out and support your masc presenting NB friends, especially those who are AMAB and visibly so, because the majority of the time we're looked down on as lesser by the rest of the community, often excluded from spaces that were supposed to be made for us to be a part of. You (you, reading this right now) need to put the extra effort in if you really want to be as inclusive as you claim to be. I've hated myself for years since coming out because of the lack of support from a community that will give that support to anyone who has a hint of femininity. The real kicker is, I'm not even masc presenting by choice. My body isn't the attractive, thin, can be molded into femininity or androgyny body type. I'm built like a brick house due to genetics, there's no "fixing" this in a way that I can present any other way without continuing to see the lack of effort I'm seeing right now. The average Joe is always going to look at me and think "man". I have no choice in the matter, so you must make the choice to do better, to educate others better, to actively include me and people like me in your community. I am not a man. Don't treat me like one. The above goes for any transfems who may not have a body type that gets classified by the public as feminine, as well as any of my ace/aro siblings, as I know for a fact they're also disregarded and ignored in similar ways. Put in the extra work. Do better. See us for what we actually are, not for what you want us to be.

[deadgodwriting]

I am hurt by you and I want to have my feelings be seen now that it's more clear that I'm in no way taking dad's side by being hurt by you.

Before Colin was born and I was getting sick you cared, and you fought for me. But after Colin was born I felt abandoned and unwanted. I know you were tired with a new baby but I was a child who was in pain, and didn't have anyone in the world. I remember so many moments that hurt me deeply but I doubt you remember. They were comments that molded who I am but just any random outburst to you.

This divorce has been so deeply painful for me because I had to choose which of my abusers to side with. And there were times in my life that I felt you hurt me more than dad. But I had to choke all that down because my siblings mean the world to me and speaking about how much you hurt me would give dad fuel to hurt them.

But now that dad is out of my life and it's clear that I fucking hate him, I want to confront you too.

I feel like life was happy before I turned 11. I thought I had two loving parents, I felt I had your support, I had friends, I was normal, and loved. But after I started getting sick and not going to school dad turned on me. And after Colin was born you turned on me too. The world felt cruel and alone and I was left to raise myself the rest of the way.

I became like a stray cat starving and eating anything I could find. I got attention in any way possible. I learned to starve myself to see if anyone would notice. I started scratching my skin off to see if anyone would care enough to make me stop. I would talk to older men online just so they would compliment me.

Every relationship I've been in has always been a desperate attempt to feel like I'm worthy of love. I put up with being molested, raped, mentally tortured, gaslit, ignored, screamed at, anything. Because at least if I cried and begged at the end of the day they'd say they loved me.

This feels weird to admit to my mother but I became hypersexual at like 14. After being forced into it sex started to feel like love. It made me feel wanted and like I was attractive, and worth something. I had considered becoming a sex worker since the age of 16 because I was desperate for any kind of affection and proof I wasn't as disgusting and worthless as I always felt.

And as for your role in everything: Gavin and Colin are your favorites. And Gavin is dad's favorite. It has never been hard to tell. Gavin is universally adored by you both, and Colin is young so you tend to them. And then I exist.

As the eldest daughter who's too disabled to work my only purpose in the family was to get married off and become someone else's problem. I have always been a burden to you and dad. You both have even expressed that to me.

You ignored me so much as a teenager. There were days that I would come out of my room and try talking to you and you wouldn't even look at me. If I tried repeating myself you wouldn't respond. If I raised my voice because I thought maybe you didn't hear me you'd yell at me for being rude and "yelling" at you.

I quickly learned that I should just go back to my room and not talk. I was going insane from the isolation. I invented delusions in my head of people who loved me.

When Gavin was molested you drove him to the police station, when I was molested you lied to me about talking to the police. And then you and dad gaslit me saying that I lied about Cole's age.

When Gavin tried to kill himself you got him a cat, painted his room to write positive messages, tried everything to help. When I kept trying to kill myself over and over you told me to go away so I didn't wake Colin. Or to stop calling the suicide hotline because the police coming to check that I wasn't dead was getting annoying.

The only reason you became nicer to me as an adult was because I could be your therapist or a friend, but I could never be your child. I couldn't be nurtured. I was there for you to ask me to fight with dad for you, or to tell lies for you, or to pass information for you.

I begged you to leave dad and take me with you for so many years. But as soon as I leave the state in desperation you moved out with Gavin and Colin.

I am so fucking lonely here. I miss Gavin and Colin so fucking much it makes me chest ache. Every damn fucking day I sit alone in an empty apartment.

I am the sacrificial lamb yet again where my only job now is to talk to people for you, to relay messages, to vent to.

Being alone with just Richard is scary. I can't talk to Grammy or Heather they already think I'm a disappointment.

I'm always meant to be discarded and thrown to whoever wants me for a time and only contacted when I can be of use to you.

I feel entirely abandoned like I have almost my entire life and now that I rely entirely on Richard it doesn't matter if he becomes abusive again. It doesn't matter if I try killing myself for the 20+ time. None of my personhood or agency or anything matters.

I am only ever a tool to be used when necessary.

How long would it take for anyone to find out I killed myself if Richard didn't tell anyone? How many months would go by before someone would care enough to check on me?

Richard is the only one in my life that checks on me. Grammy asks about you or dad, you ask about dad, I don't have friends. I am so deathly alone like I always have been and I'm so fucking tired of pretending that it's okay.

I'm so tired of sitting alone in this fucking apartment. Feeling worthless just waiting for Richard to call me on his break and tell me he loves me so I can feel something.

I'm angry, and resentful, and hurt. Just in so much pain. I'm so fucking tired of feeling discardable.

Even dad, as desperate as he is, has gone out of his way not to contact me. Because I'm not in Colorado with you I'm of no use to him either. I get to sit in my place down here and wait patiently for a family member to need something from me before disappearing into the fog again easily forgotten.

Even to this day I have issues with self harm. And crying and begging Richard to tell me what is so unforgivably wrong with me that no one has ever wanted me for me. Why am I so unlovable, why does everyone forget about me, why am I the one that is thrown away every time. I end up with bruises and cuts and ripping my hair out because I feel so disgusting that I need to somehow punish the parts of me that make me get thrown away.

I'm just so tired Summer. I wish I had a mom and dad. I cry sometimes when I see people with loving parents. I wish I had people who loved me for me, who would support me, and keep me safe, and that I didn't have to always be useful. I'm so tired of being useful

[imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl]

The Key to Your Heart (Part 07 of 18)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader | The Winter Soldier X Reader

Word count: 2.6 K

<- Previous part (06)

Next part -> (08)

{Marvel Masterlist}

Summary: Joining the Avengers wasn't on your plans. Not until Steve asked you to help his best friend. Bucky was Bucky, but the Winter Soldier still came from time ti time, bringing with him chaos and destruction. And you was supposed to keep that side of him away... But what happens when both Bucky and the Winter Soldier start to enjoy your company more than anyone else? Should you turn your back on the Soldier, ignore his own fears and traumas? That's exactly what everyone wants. But you were never known for following orders...

A/N: Special thanks to my wonderful friend @multific for all her help through this story. I love you, girl!!

×

More Than Words

It's around 2 am when you follow Bucky, walking fast and trying not to make too much noise. With these many people around, it's not that rare to stumble on someone awake even at this time. But when you reach the gym, you're relieved that you were not forced to come up with some excuse.

“Day five of training,” Bucky says, pushing the door open for you to get inside. “I have something new for today.”

“What is it?” As Wanda keeps working only with that cube, making you lift it and then putting so much weight on it that you just can't move it anymore, Bucky has been helping you explore it more. You were scared at first, you still are, but he makes you comfortable, and the way he trusts you, makes you trust yourself as well.

“I've been thinking and I believe you can do it.” You both move to your usual place in the middle of the gym, away from the equipment. “Today, I want you to create a shield.”

“A shield?” You ask, taking your jacket off and throwing it away. “Like Steve's?”

“Yeah.” He nods, tilting his head to the now-fixed glass wall. “If you can shoot it, you can mold it as a protection.”

“What if I can't?”

“We'll find out today.”

You're not sure what for, but you just smile. You've been spending a lot of time with Bucky and the way he's helping you, losing sleep, being so unbelievably patient... It's just getting to you. “Alright.” Nodding you step closer. “How do we do it?”

“Close your eyes and imagine you're holding Steve's shield.” You immediately do as he says, your left arm half bent in front of your body. “Now visualize it. I know you stole it a couple of times so that won't be hard.”

“You know me so well.” You giggle, but then you focus. You know what to do next, so you move your right hand slightly, guiding your power to where you need it.

“Hey,” Bucky mutters, and you feel him touching your hand and pushing it down. “Remember what I said.”

“It doesn't come from my hands, it comes from me.” Reciting his words, you take a deep breath, molding the erupting energy to the shape you want. Suddenly you feel pressure on it, furrowing your eyebrows, you release more power, and then, you feel a tap.

“It's almost solid.” He speaks and you open your eyes, seeing the messy, flowy pinkish energy on your arm, just like Steve's shield would.

“My God.” You exclaim, a bright smile on your lips. “C'mon, give it a punch.”

“Slow down, I don't wanna hurt you.”

“You won't.” With a quick move of your hand, you make the round form float, making it stand on midair, some feet away from you. “Punch it. Let's see how much power I need to keep myself from getting punched by a supersoldier.”

“Good.” He says, smiling as well. “You can protect yourself and others. That's amazing.” He's barely done speaking when he throws a punch, and it offers little resistance, disappearing suddenly as you get startled. “Steve's shield is made of vibranium, not plastic.”

“Ouch.” You exclaim, putting up the shield again. “That was very mean of you.”

“I'm a mean teacher sometimes.” He snaps back, throwing another punch, weaker this time. The energy moves but resists.

“I'll keep punching it, each one will be harder than the last. So keep in mind you'll need to make it stronger every time, alright?” Silently, you eagerly nod. “Ok, let's start.”

And it goes on for quite a while. You do have to stop a few times in the beginning when the shield doesn't resist, but with time, you get the hang of it. And Bucky is merciless. He avoids using the metal arm, and you're thankful for that because his flesh arm can make a hell of destruction already. A couple of hours after, you're panting, exhausted despite not engaging in physical training this time.

So at some point, you just lie down on the floor, eyes on the ceiling as you catch your breath. “Done for today?”

“You wanna keep going?” You ask, lifting your head to look at him, coming from the fridge with a water bottle for himself and another onde that he gives you before sitting down. “I'm worn out.”

“Your powers make you as weak as you'd be in hand-to-hand combat. It may not look like it, but you're tiring your body just as much.” He takes a few sips from his bottle before lying down next to you. “But you did well. You'll be a good Avenger.”

“When do you think I'll go to missions?”

“I'm not sure, that's with Fury and Tony. But it'll probably be something easy at first. And Steve will go with you, that's obvious.”

“And you?” Turning your head to the side, you find his blue eyes already set on you. “I'll need you there too.”

“Of course, doll. Just... It's most likely for the Winter Soldier to come after a mission. It happens almost every time, so that's why I'm only assigned when I'm necessary.” There's sadness in his eyes, and he looks away, at the ceiling.

“Well, you'd be necessary to me.” You say in a low voice, moving to lay on your side, holding your head up with your hand. “And I'm fine with the Soldier. When he comes, I'll be here waiting for him.”

“(Y/N)...”

“Bucky...” You mimic his tone, rolling your eyes. “The Soldier is away because he's at peace... I think. But when and if he comes out again, I'll be right here to keep helping him as I've been helping you.”

“You still need to be careful, (Y/N). If I ever hurt you, I-”

“Don't think about that.” Sitting up, you grab his arm, shaking it slightly. “You're trusting me not to knock you out with my powers, trust me in this too.”

“Are you sure you and Steve aren't related? Because he was stupidly brave, just like you.” He giggles, sitting up as well. “Back in the day.”

“Skinny Steve was a badass.”

“Oh, he was.” Bucky giggles, bending a leg and resting an arm on his knee. “Getting beat up in alleys, lying over and over again on his army enlistments at the risk of getting arrested.”

That makes you laugh, running a hand through your hair and letting it down from the ponytail. “He told me how he jumped on a grenade, so his body would take some of the hit and give the others a better chance. That... That amazes me. He was brave and noble even before the serum. And that's what makes him a hero. What makes us heroes.” You gesture at you and Bucky, moving closer to him. “Doing the possible and impossible to make what's right, to safe people, protect them.”

“You're in the right place, doll.” He says, a beautiful smile on his face. “You and Steve have a lot in common. I don't get why you and he never tried to get together.”

“Told you, Steve is like a brother to me.” You don't get why he mentions it all of a sudden, looking a little... Sad? “...And he's not even my type.”

“And what's your type?”

Blushing, you look down, biting your lip. You didn't know you have a type, but when you think about the perfect man... Bucky is the one who comes up. “Mmm...” Shaking your head slightly, you clear your throat. “I like dark hair. Beard.”

“Really?”

“Really.” You nod, blushing more at his smile. Did he get it...? “He's... Buffy and I like that but I just can't look at him romantically. I just see the older brother I never asked for.” Rolling your eyes, you both giggle.

“So I'm guessing Thor isn't your type either?”

Again, you shake your head no. “Being honest now, from all the Avengers, you're the only one who's my type. I-I mean...” You look away, standing up. “Mmm, who gets closest to my type, that's what I meant.”

“Oh, I see.” He chuckles, getting up as well. “Well, you're the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen.”

The compliment makes you step back, not only your cheeks but your whole body burns. It tingles. And all that talking about butterflies in the stomach? Completely true. Their little wings are making you feel like you're just about to burst into flames. And you try to tell yourself those are only words... But why does it feel like they're so much more? “Well, thanks...” You mutter, glancing at him. “You're very kind.”

“I'm not trying to be kind, I'm being honest.” He smiles, looking at the window. “We did it again, by the way.”

“What?” Following his gaze, you see that the sky is just starting to light up. “Oh, God.”

“Let's get some sleep then.” As usual, you take his arm, the flesh one.

“Can I ask something, by the way?” You only continue when he nods. “Were you happy back then? I mean, a lot happened after Hydra took you so everything is complicated now... But back then, were you happy?”

You both stop on the stairs, and you look at him. Bucky looks down for a while, the low lights giving you a hard time reading his features. “Yes, I was. And I miss it sometimes. The 21st century has a lot of useful, good things but... I'm still having a hard time adapting, just don't tell anyone.”

“I won't.” You assure him, and an idea comes to your head. There's a restaurant downtown that makes special Saturday nights, with a themed dinner show. And maybe you could make something special for Bucky. “Do you have anything planned for this weekend?” You ask, starting to move again.

“No. Why?”

“I'm going to take you somewhere special.”

“See? Call me old-school, but I'm not used to girls inviting the guys out.”

“Who said I'm asking you out?” Giggling, you turn at him, walking backward. “We'll just hang out, no big deal.” Winking at him, you give a little wave before walking the rest of the way alone to your room.

•••

The next morning, you wake up with Nat knocking on your door, telling you it's almost noon. You dress up and leave, straight to have lunch instead of breakfast.

You get in touch with the restaurant while you eat, but they say Saturday night was already set. And if you want a specific theme, you'd have to get in a huge line. But you have the ultimate card to play, so after you're done, you excuse yourself to Tony's lab, on the other side of the compound. When you get there, he's seated before a 3D armor model, floating above the table, right before his eyes.

“Hey, metalhead.” You call, pushing the glass door open after touching the screen, letting it read your fingerprints. “You busy?”

“I always am.” He answers, tapping the armor and making it spin around. “But how can I help, baby Avenger?”

“Don't call me that.”

“You're youngest Avenger. Makes sense.”

“What about Peter?” You ask, waking over and standing across from him, watching as he adds and removes stuff from the armor.

“He's younger but he's been with us longer.” He taps somewhere and the armor moves aside, so he can look at you. “What do you need?”

“There's a fancy restaurant that makes special nights, and I got in touch with them with a request but they have a huge waiting list.” Drumming your fingers on the screen, you look down at it, pretending you understand what's showing, and trying not to look so... Nervous? “But then I thought: If I get Tony Stark to call them and make the request himself, I bet they wouldn't deny him.”

“So you're using me?” He asks, crossing his arms. “Not very nice of you.”

“Yeah, I'm using my billionaire, super influence, super friend.” Bending over the screens, you push his arm. “C'mon. I wanna do something nice.”

“And what exactly do you want me to request?”

“40's dinner night.”

“Oh.” He raises both hands and stands up with a smile. “Thor was right then.”

“Thor is never right.” You giggle, rolling your eyes.

“Let's see then. Who's this surprise for?” He moves through the lab, and you follow him. Tony stops by a table, with a metal leg on it and a lot of stuff you don't even know what they're supposed to do. He gestures at the empty chair and you sit down. “Captain?”

“No, I–”

“Are you into the Manchurian Candidate?”

“No–. What?” Furrowing your eyebrows, you take a metal square painted red, just to have something to play with. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Richard Condon's 1959?” He asks, and you shake your head no. “It's about the government brainwashing people to become assassins.”

“Tony...” You raise your voice, eyes wide. “Don't you ever call him that again!”

“Oh, you're defending him now.”

“Yes, I'm defending him.” Rolling your eyes, you stand up. “Just call the restaurant, please. I want to make something nice for him.” Taking the phone off your pocket, you pass it to Tony.

He gives you an overdramatic eyeroll before taking the phone from your hand.

And your billionaire friend sets everything up. So, on the next Saturday, the night had only fallen and you're getting ready. You ask both Nat and Wanda to help you buying the dress, and now getting your hair and make-up done, all in the 40 styles.

Your long hair is done in waves, flowing down your shoulders, and the makeup is simple. The dress is perfect. Red in color, matching your lipstick and emphasizing your skin tone. The mid-length touches your knees as it flows around your legs. It's a simple dress at first glance, but with the girl's help, you made everything look perfect.

And you feel beautiful. Who knew a simple red dress would make you feel this way?

When it's time to go, you put the high heels on and leave the room. Bucky is waiting by the small lounge, and when you see him, you can't help but lose your breath. He has his hair slid back and the military uniform on. You did tell him to dress up 40s style, just didn't tell him why. But God... You weren't expecting that.

“Oh my gosh...” You mutter, smiling, and look him up and down. “You look–”

“Nothing compared to you.” He cuts you off, walking over you and reaching out his hand, which you take. He then spins you around, and you're probably red as a tomato when you're facing him again. “You're stunning. Absolutely gorgeous.”

“Thank you.” You whisper, taking a deep breath. “But let's go now. The night has only just started.”

@hi-im-fan-trash @takeabreathdeath @pre-google @thespeeder @heavenly1927 @marvel-fanfic-writer-8675 @insidxangel @winters1917 @plethoravellichor @meggiesposts @hollie911 @saranghaey @lexi-anastasia @lechaircharles @mememe7147

[dorminchu]

ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE

The war against Paradis is over. Eren and Annie are forced to confront their mortality in a world that seems to have no need of them, and their significance to each other. [Post-Canon]

I didn't know there was an ereani week this year until a couple days ago, but I figured: cool, I should probably post something. Title comes from the track of the same name by The Killers.

The prompt is: Day 3 (4/12): "I love you" / "I loved you"

[Ao3 | FFNet]

i.

When the war was over, it was Armin who took the glory. That was a new look for him, Eren thought. Smart but eternally overlooked until he inherited the role of the Colossus Titan. Willing to carry the burden of humanity's savior without much complaint, unlike his teenage self who had always been plagued by doubts and fears. Eren wouldn't have thought Armin would be ready to chew the bullet while he quietly slipped into the background—but he was the leader, and Eren had always been accustomed to his status of figurehead.

Their roles had inverted with age.

As part of an overarching deal with Queen Historia, Eren was granted quarters—a cabin ten miles from the border of what had once been Wall Rose—and a modest pension, as long as he held his tongue and did not make any attempt to intercept the negotiations between Paradis and the surrounding countries. Eren put in an application for professor at the local military academy and spent the days trying to record what he could remember of his experiences in Marley.

The cabin had been around since the start of the war. About ten or so miles from the nearest village. Perhaps even before Eren was born, when Paradis was just a penal colony in name and the boundaries on inhabitable territory were less strict. The pipes still worked and there was evidence of an outhouse as well as quarters for a small animal—he wondered if it had been a hunter’s lodge.

After growing up in the back end of Shiganshina for the first nine years of his life and living in barracks and halfway houses for the next ten, it was a lot quieter. He felt oftentimes as if he were on a permanent state of leave, awaiting orders that would never come. There was so much time to fritter away now, without a war on the backburner.

ii.

In a bid to lessen the severity of his scarring, Eren tried growing a beard. He couldn't sprout a full one like Zeke could, just the chin-hairs, an innate reminder of his days in Marley. Most often he kept his hair pulled back in a short ponytail or else cut it short in the warmer seasons, though never as short as it had been in his days of adolescence.

He'd regenerated his leg and other limbs since the ceasefire, regained his motor functions in a week-long, agonsing process that he was sure Hanji would've loved had she been alive to witness it—but a day or so after settling into the cabin the old pain was flaring up again. He had a vivid memory of asking Commander Hanji once, at seventeen, after exhausting his father’s journal, but the only conclusion either of them could come up was phantom pain. Even if he were whole and unmarred, he did not anticipate sleep as any source of relief. Colours in his right eye gradually turned dull and it was getting harder to read even by candlelight, disorienting to walk out into harsh sunlight. Eventually he just began wearing a patch for the sake of simplicity. His other eye was unaffected.

He could still remember Ramzi's face better than most of his dead Scouts and it kept him up at night for hours. His way of life—the Titans, ODM gear—was quickly being phased out, trading blades and canisters for rifles and ammunition. His place among the armistice seemed moot.

Eren thought more often of his father. He did not wish to, explicitly, but the memories of him that popped into his head were usually indecipherable and triggered by stress.

The doctors in Marley would define this as shellshock. Other times they left impressions like the outline of the sun under closed eyelids; warmth, family, agony, guilt that would eat away at him for the rest of his remaining life.

Eren was, at least, confident in the fact that he was nothing like his father. He didn't pretend he was doing anything morally righteous, nor had he allowed himself to be molded into a pariah like Zeke. He had only accomplished what those same men were afraid or unable to do. It was nothing to crow about. He did not blame Zeke for that upbringing. Eren had taken action, knowing he would be hated and feared by his own comrades. He could only leave behind his memories in print, and if by some Godforsaken chance they somehow managed to fall into the hands of a like-minded company—well, perhaps one day he would be understood or misconstrued further. Rotting in the ground he could not defend his truth or bias.

But while he was alive, he could not rest. He knew better than most that all of this was fleeting.

It wasn’t as though he was out of shape with all the walking. He still stuck to drills in the morning to keep himself busy; awaiting orders that would never come. It sounded like something Armin might say. But Armin was content to busy himself with the sons and brothers of deceased bureaucrats; the succeeding generation to the brilliant men and women who'd led them right into the mouths of hell and out again.

Commander Hanji was dead. Commander Irvin had been dead four years now. Captain Levi was on his way to retirement and attempting to get Mikasa to replace him.

After seven years of military service his soldier’s inclinations remained unshakeable. He'd wake up every morning, going through the motions as though he were still a stowaway in Marley. He'd never allowed himself to consider a life beyond the pretext of enlistment and eventual expiration within the Scouting Regiment, much less the seemingly endless war between Paradis and the rest of the world. In the best case he had assumed he would die eventually, of old age or a more unheroic death out in the field. He'd never allowed himself to be ruled by that fear of mortality because he had to eradicate the Titans first—it was a child’s logic that had gotten him through military academy. Yet here he was, nineteen, with four going-on three years left to kill. Annie had three, going-on two. That was the only certainty she'd admitted to him without need for prying.

So Eren had to be sharp for the rest of their sakes. The war on Paradis had ended and brought with it economic turmoil. A mourning period that seemed to extend indefinitely. The next decade of prosperity would not be won in a year, nor three, and it would come on the backs of the losing side and breed the same old resentment, and then inevitably the same slow descent towards outrage and madness and oppression. Always in the back of his mind like the learnt urge to drink, or his inherited memories—he could almost convince himself of his hard-won stability. It was a good enough reason as any to stop answering Mikasa's letters.

iii.

The door opened to reveal the very last person he had ever expected to see again. She was every bit the woman he had seen in Marley and little of the girl in the crystal remained. What could he say to a four-year old crush-turned-heartbreak whose face he could scarcely recall among the hundreds of thousands of other casualties? "You shouldn't have come back."

When he moved to close the door, she stopped him with her heel. "I'm no longer a Warrior, nor a soldier. I have nowhere else to turn. You and I understand each other, so there's no point in bloodshed."

He gauged this, chewing his tongue. "Did someone send you?"

Her shoulders stiffened. "No one you'd know."

"I suppose you were sent here to finish the job for Marley?"

"No." Bluntly, she forced herself into the doorway. "I came here on my own. I just—"

"—all right, it seems like there's been some kind of miscommunication between you and whoever sent you."

"I was told you'd be able to accommodate me." 

"I don't need anyone else here."

Annie squinted at him. Her hand was clenched tightly on the doorjamb. "You must get bored living up in the mountains. And you could use another pair of hands if you're not regenerating." Eren said nothing. "Did you carve your eye out again?"

"Goddamn you," he growled, and wrenched the door open.

He let her walk past the threshold. Looked at her once, and then away. "I'll set a place aside for you to sleep," indicating a well-worn sofa, "you can stay as long as you need to until you find somewhere you like."

"I don't know why you're so upset. You could have killed me years ago. You've had every opportunity, and yet—"

"—I've moved on." He said it flatly, almost resigned. "You haven't, obviously."

Annie didn't flinch. "So you're just going to stay here and wait to die?"

"I keep myself busy."

"What do you do?"

"I teach the new cadets over at the Academy. It's about two hours from where we are; nothing special, but they seem eager to learn."

"I see."

He turned finally to face her. "What about you?"

Annie hesitated. "Used to work with the other displaced soldiers up until a few days ago."

"How'd that treat you?"

"It was all right. Why, are you too good for it now, now that you're a war hero?"

Eren ignored the barb. "It's been a while since everything settled down, so I wondered how you would fare."

"What, so you just popped up in this house?"

He scoffed. "Of course not. There was a tribunal, and it was decided to let me live on the condition I'd be kept far away where I wouldn't bother with anyone. I can't say the same for the others."

"You sold them out?"

He chuckled. "I didn't have to say much. They did it to themselves. We shared a common goal at one point but never the same ideology. At the very least, I can say I took no pleasure in what I—"

"—Ackermann gave you an out?"

Eren gauged the sharpness in her tone, the stiffness of her posture. "I didn't ask her to." He frowned. "You never told me how you got here. Did Mikasa have something to do with this?"

Annie froze, then averted her eyes. "I didn't have much of a choice. It was either come here or work myself to death doing manual labor. I wouldn't have minded that."

"Why didn't you tell me that she sent you?"

"I don't know. She seemed to pity you."

"Oi, it's not your fault. She can feel however she wants." He sounded bemused, scowling. "What the hell else she she think I'm going to do in four years? I have no plans to start another war."

Annie finally eyed him in her peripherals. "We didn't talk much other than that."

Within the next few hours he'd gotten a few more details out of her. In exchange for agreeing to be quartered here, her record was wiped clean. She had recently reapplied for the MP brigade under a new name and secured a position as secretary in the Karanese district headquarters. She had also admitted to him that she was dying to get back onto the streets again.

As a bedfellow Annie was, in some ways, more than he could've hoped for. Despite the introduction, she talked far less than they had as cadets. She did not seem particularly happy or unhappy, just neutral. She woke up each morning at six hours and left to do her drills. She would come back in an hour and offer to help him with whatever menial tasks needed doing, as if they really were holed up together in the remnants of a cabin lost ten years ago to a threat that would live on in sordid, haunting memory. The kind of life one would find beyond the realm of a weathered photograph. 

Unobtrusive without becoming idyllic. The best outcome he could afford her was three years of uneventful domesticity.

They didn't spar anymore. Not for lack of want, or kicking the habit. Eren just couldn't keep up with her the way he used to. His leg was shaky and she pointed it out first. It would have an impact on the kind of punishment he could take as opposed to when he was fifteen and shrugged off every injury like it was nothing. His eye was not healing. 

Annie was in better condition. Just by studying her gait it was obvious that she'd taken better care of herself. She had not had to bunk up with a gang of stinking, vulnerable soldiers riddled by shellshock. Trying to communicate with them in German worked, but it got him a lot of funny looks and no end of comparisons to fathers and grandfathers enlisted or long since dead.

Annie wasn't interested in his stories from Marley but she didn't brush him off either. She just tolerated it in a much more polite way than Mikasa or Armin would.

At twenty years old she came up to his chest. Either the crystallization had stunted her growth or she was naturally short. She was also scarred enough down her face but it was of the same sheer consistency as her hair. You would only know what she was if you were paying close attention.

She got skittish and temperamental if he tried to push his luck training with her. Initially it had pissed him off:

"What do you think I'm going to do?"

She'd looked at him bluntly. "You're still recovering. Why overexert yourself?"

He'd never told her about his injuries but the idea of her picking up on it this quickly rankled for reasons he did not care to discuss. "I'm not a kid."

Something flashed in her eyes. "I'm not going to push you."

And that was the end of it. He'd decided that this ritual mattered more to her than him, and respected her space. He still did his own drills.

But every time they locked eyes now he'd get that same, absurd itch in the back of his mind from a year ago. Sharpened his tongue and made him want to speak in ways he didn't think he should attempt to justify whilst sober.

iv.

Days passed. He did not always see her until late in the evening.

In the middle of the night he rolled over onto his bad leg and the pain woke him. In silence he got up, not enough to require medication but still pretty uncomfortable.

“Eren?”

He went still. Annie was up herself, over by the window, staring at him as though he were on his deathbed. In the low light her eyes looked strange and luminous. “Does it hurt?”

“Does—what?”

“Your leg.”

Eren sat up slowly as not to aggravate his condition. She didn't say anything else. “It’s not so bad that I can’t sleep.” He studied her face for signs of age, finding naught but scars, a weariness in her eyes he could speak to. She didn't frown. She just watched him coolly. Eren shrugged. “You can’t sleep either?" No answer. "Thinking about to-morrow?”

“I can get you something for it.”

Eren shook his head. “That's not necessary."

"Don't be stupid."

"This isn't something I can just take pills for.”

"It's chronic." Her tone pregnant with incredulity. "Why haven't you seen a doctor for this?"

"Annie, what the hell is a regular doctor gonna do for either of us? We already fix ourselves. There are other veterans that have been stranded here, they aren't growing their limbs back. They need all the help they can get. Anyway, it's only, what, three more years of living? I can take three. Fuck, I've taken ten."

The more he kept talking, the darker her eyes became. Clench in her jaw, tautness of her shoulders, pronounced enough to notice from a distance—an involuntary reflection of his own revulsion.

"I don't know how you managed to win one war, let alone, if you can't even prevent yourself from running into the ground." Her voice was icy and distinctly contemptuous. She stalked over to him. Cold fingers dug into the meat of his naked shoulder, pushed him upright between the wall and headboard; tight, controlled movements. "Four years later and you still want to pretend you're a fucking martyr. It might've worked on Mikasa, but I'm not your sister. I'm not going to help you hurt yourself."

She kneaded at his leg in a much brusquer way than the way the orderlies in Marley. Eren didn't argue. She was not going to take no for an answer. When it was done she coaxed him to lie down again. He stiffened as he felt her weight join his on the mattress, curled almost tentatively against his chest. She didn’t try to hold him, just huddled as though for warmth. She did not explain herself.

Eren had a vague recollection of the last time this had happened. Back then she came up to his chin, rather than the middle of his chest; their disparity was only thrown into relief. He could feel the human warmth of her through the thin undershirt, the softness of her hair on his cheek. He’d dreamt about this a lot when he was sixteen, while the tragedy of her betrayal was no longer fresh but still painful in his mind. He had no energy left to hate her then, for she was not his enemy.

He heard her breathing even out.

She had stayed this long. There was no sense in abandoning her now.

v.

Sometime after that, Eren started noticing her in more tangible ways. Smell of her hair. The subtle glint in her eyes in lieu of a smile. She'd wait up for him in the mornings before he left. He'd tell her good-bye.

When he came home he’d catch her eyes lingering on him in profile.

Just one day too many of the same quiet inactivity. The fact that they had slept in the same bed was just a catalyst of how familiar they were with each other already.

She woke up an hour later than usual and, fuming, went out to train. A light rain had started. Eren made breakfast. Over the next twenty minutes the light sheet became much more torrential. Annie came back in about half-an-hour, dripping water all over the floor. He would've told her off but she grabbed his wrist. He turned as she leant up and took his face in her hands and kissed him like her life depended on it.

Maybe the situation had always been building to this. He had forgotten about its immediacy until the moment presented itself. But now there was nothing left to say. So he gathered her up and placed her on the counter, kissing her breathless, bunching up her threadbare shirt, palming her tits through the military-issue brassiere—he muttered, "see, I thought you were just being nice," and she scoffed, set her heel to the small of his back even as he put his mouth on her. She was chilled from the rain; it was not yet summer. Half-dressed and needy, he took her right there on the countertop. Afterwards, there was no shame or lingering uncertainty that would have been present as cadets. She pressed her cheek to his.

"I'm going to be away for a while. It's higher pay if I stay in Karanese. Maybe two or three weeks." She looked up at him. Her eyes were bright but her tone was stoic. "I just…" She trailed off because he was only looking at her face. Eren smoothed her damp hair away from her cheek.

"I love you." Then he stopped. Like he was finally coming to grips with the idea. Annie blinked rapidly. A crease formed in her brow. Her mouth worked but no sound came out. Eren kissed her chin. "But, if you're gonna be trackin' mud everywhere you'd best clean it up after yourself."

She finally came back to herself. Shoved him lightly in the chest. "Fuck off." Then hoisted herself off the counter, fixed her trousers, and asked in a dry voice where he kept the washbasin.

vi.

On his own the cabin felt distinctly empty. Sometimes he'd wake up hard and just—take care of it. Annie on top of him. On her knees. Pulling him up to her. He missed her a lot more than he'd care to admit to her face and it wasn't just in the sense that she was available. She'd probably just smirk at him anyway.

But when she returned it was nice to have her around, even for a little while. She kept to herself and he gave her space; it was as though she had never left.

It was still morning. He was working when he felt her come up behind him, hands slipping over his wrists. “Oi,” he muttered, “I’m a little busy.”

“You’re just sitting there.”

He scoffed. “Really? How would you know what I’m doin’?” No answer. Eren closed the book. “You really are demanding, ain’t you?” Faux-annoyance. But he turned.

She looked prettier in uniform. Hair pulled back into less of a bun, more of a severe ponytail. She was looking him up and down as though deciding something for herself.

She leant down, kissed him firmly, nipping at his lip until went with it, half-amused. She stepped back, breathing evenly, eyes glinting. She cupped his face, a vestige of tenderness he did not anticipate.

Then her eyes shifted, something empty, strange. A harsh crack against his jaw he could not anticipate and he took it, worked his jaw, blinking rapidly. “What the hell are you—?”

Annie jerked her head back slightly, fixing him with the same expectance he realised he’d completely misinterpreted. “Hit me.”

Eren didn’t move. Her jaw trembled, then set. He caught her wrist. “That’s enough.”

“Why?” She sounded annoyed. “It’s all right. I can take it.”

“What is this?”

“I’ll be dead before you anyway, it would be easier just to take—”

“—I said that’s enough,” he said, terse. “I’m not going to do anything to you."

Her brow furrowed. "I thought you understood.”

Eren just stared, fighting to keep himself calm when he wanted to grab her shoulders and demand her to justify why the hell she wanted to be hit. "What am I supposed to understand?"

Annie’s eyes darted over his face and then to his wrist. “I want you to hit me back.”

“I’m not going to do that.” He cupped her jaw and she almost flinched; his stomach twisted. “Do you understand me?“

Silence built up between them. "I know you’d stop if I asked you to.”

“I’m not going to wait until after I’ve hurt you to stop.”

Annie pressed her face into his chest. He took her by the shoulders, watching her stiffen.

“Do you hear me?”

She nodded.

"Why d'you want me to hit you?"

"Do you want a list?" He gripped her tight enough to make her flinch and immediately regretted the look of fear that came across her face. He let go of her. "I’ve been complicit in the death of your comrades.” Her voice thickened. “And I’ve taught you everything I know. You don't need me here for anything other than your own gratification.” Returning to the facade of impassivity with unnerving ease. “So, there’s no point in comparing our tallies.”

“Annie—"

“Are you stupid?” Annie spat, the most emotion she had exhibited thus far. “You've taken my country and my life and my father and you—now you want me to love you back. You want to marry me as if we're ever going to—I'm the one who killed your friends, why would you ever want to be reminded of—"

"You love me." She looked helpless in her vulnerability. "What? What's the matter?"

"Why would you want me? I—I can't even have children. I'm going to die in four years. I'm going to watch you die unless I kill myself fir—"

"—Annie—"

"—you could fuck anyone you wanted!" she exploded. "Why does it have to be me?"

"Because you don’t have to earn anything from me! I just want to be around you—can’t you accept that?”

Annie kissed him hard. He trembled though he was holding her.

“Take me to bed." Eren opened his mouth and she kissed his chin. “I want you to take me to bed. I—”

Even then, he was hesitant to touch her. She led the way, stripping down to skin and splaying on his bed. He caressed her when she asked him to, a gentleness in his hands that betrayed his own sympathy; for once she didn’t chastise him.

Her scarring was far more pronounced in the light. He'd noticed before, briefly on the counter and more clearly with enough attention, but not like this. It clustered around her sternum and down her spine. He wondered, briefly, if that was why she'd wanted to do it quickly. Now her eyes were bright and shimmering but she took him into her, reached for him.

"Is this OK?" His voice was a croak.

Her eyes flickered to him. Cautious, sure. "Yeah."

He was on his knees, lifting the small of her back, working her towards a much sweeter surrender. He slid one arm around her waist to support her and touched her breasts, the side of her neck, cupping her jaw. His thumb ran over her scarring.

“Annie.” She gasped at the sound of her name. “Ann. Look. Come here.” She was biting her lip. Head fallen back, her hair was almost diaphanous in the light. He murmured her name and she was shivering with emotion. She turned into her elbow and told him in an unsteady voice to go faster, and the bed creaked to match him.

Her body arched, jaw slack. She wouldn't stop shivering. Her voice did not rise in expectation. It just wavered, edgeless.

He took her wrist away from her face and—she flinched. This serrated, ugly, sound that jerked out of her body. He pulled out, holding her. “Look at me,” his voice hoarse and horrified, “please.”

Annie curled up against his chest and shook. Eren just kept apologizing. She didn't push him away.

Eventually she stopped. Raised her head. Their eyes met and she lost composure again. He brushed her hair from her face. “Stay,” she croaked, “please. I need you.”

He kissed her brow. She almost flinched. He tucked his chin into her shoulder, arms around her back, until she’d calmed down.

"You don't have to do anything," he said quietly. "Do you understand that?"

"I know."

Laying prone, she only came up to his sternum. Annie sat up first. She got to her feet and went over to the window. Her shoulder was parallel to the glass. His attention stayed firmly on her profile. “You’re gonna get colder than hell. Come back here.”

She turned and glanced at his forearm curled half-surreptitiously against his stomach. Scar tissue along her breasts was prominent. In the dead light of this cloudy, April afternoon she finally looked her age.

There was a naked uncertainty in her eyes that made him freeze. "You're not my father and you never will be. You've been kinder towards me than I deserve, given the circumstances. I wish I could despise you."

Eren rolled his shoulders. The silence held for a while. "I don't know if what either of us have done can be forgiven. But, as long as you’re here, I want you to know that I don't hate you." All she did was stare, a slight crease in her brow. “I never could.”

“You love me,” she said. Not with scorn. Like she was testing the idea in a way they would have shied away from as kids. She averted her face towards the window.

She watched him get up and tensed. He limped towards her in a couple strides and draped the blanket around her shoulders with the same tentativeness. She did not put her arms around him. She pressed her face into his shoulder. His arm came around her back and she closed her eyes, just existing in the cold slats of wood against her feet and the rise and fall of his breast.

He put the blankets around her and laid beside her.

He’d always supposed he would heal with enough rest. He didn't know how to put what he felt into words, but eloquence had never been his forte. It was not unlike laying on your deathbed, mulling over all the things that hardly seemed to matter until there was no time left to spare.

There was no pain now, just certainty in the presence of another—the old urge to drink was absent.

This is a cleaned-up version of a couple tumblr WIPs + some old/new material blended in for fun. Think of it as a pilot episode for a much larger fic.

For what it's worth I did like the ending of AoT. Elements of that ending will likely factor into the aforementioned larger fic. I am totally disinterested in arguing about ships or wasted potential—at this point, I’d rather write whatever seems interesting, and leave it at that, canon or not.

And hey, if you think acknowledging canon will override my crippling addiction to the "morally challenged antihero/problematic blonde" dynamic… I really don't see that happening. Even after exiting this fandom, it's like, ALL I've been writing for a year (looking at YOU Insult to Injury) and I feel like I'm going insane. Back on topic though: Now that AoT has concluded, I find I am far less stressed at the prospect for writing for this series again. It won’t be my main focus, but I do like this fic’s concept enough to flesh it out.

[defiantsuggestions]

I'm starting to slowly push back against my abusers and taking control of my life. It's hard, and all of them are pissy, and every step forward has to be fought for, but I'm getting there. I've fought through and got myself the right to get the education I want, and then the right to go to the university I want despite of all the protests and the fucked up things I was told in an effort to get me to obey. And it came with the consequences that were a threat to me disobeying from the time I my parents got tired with their last toy and pushed the golden child role onto me.

I'm not loved anymore, because here love can only be earned by agreeing with everything they say. I'm honestly barely even tolerated, and the abuse has been gradually getting worse, because they're angry, all of them - because they can't project onto me or use me as an excuse.

I failed to fit in the mold I was forced into, and I have never been freer.

There's a lot of healing left to be done - for the scars that were left before, are being left now, and will be left in the future. Because I'm the family disappointment now, the one who was destined for greatness (being their puppet) and who fell from it without even reaching the top. I'm the lazy horrible ugly thing, not even a person, who deserves to rot on a bad day and to simply die on a good one.

It's been hard, without any support that might have been there previously, but I'm slowly rebuilding a support system that doesn't involve any of my abusers as well.

But like.. Do you have any words of encouragement for somebody who's straight in the middle - distancing, but not able to filly cut out their abusers yet?

Hey there. Listen; you're doing amazing, you know?

Whatever your abusers say to you, remember that they are wrong, and that their anger and insults are a reflection of who they are as people. They're throwing a temper tantrum because they think they're entitled to lash out whenever they don't get what they want. They're the ones chasing you away, no matter how they try to frame it otherwise, don't forget that.

Realizing you're being abused in the first place, when you've been raised in that environment, is a huge step in of itself. And you're fighting! You're pulling away, you're taking steps to get yourself away from them.

It's not easy, but you're doing what you need to do to get yourself somewhere you can be safe from them. You're getting away so you can heal. That's amazing, anon, and I'm proud of you.

You're not quite there yet, but you're taking all the right steps so that one day you will be. You'll have them out of your life and you won't have to deal with their abuse anymore. You'll be able to work on healing in peace.

The fact that you're working on a support network that doesn't involve them is so important, too. Again, this process isn't easy, but the work you're putting in is worth it.

And you are putting in a lot of work! You're not lazy, what you're doing takes up so much effort and energy and time- and you're not a failure, they're just pissy that you're not doing what they want. You're doing great.

And you'll find other people who'll love you. There are so many people out there with similar interests, who will appreciate you for who you are.

Keep going, anon! You'll get there, you'll get to where you can cut contact, and until then you're doing everything right.

Be safe. I'm rooting for you.

You deserve good things, anon.

[potatopossums]

I miss you in an alterous way.

It sounds foreign to even out it that way, because I've never thought of myself as being different from anyone else. I never thought my feelings needed a different name. I never thought my feelings were like this.

But I miss you, and I'm embarrassed of saying that, because I'm afraid you'll hate me for that.

I miss your ideas, your ferocity. Maybe I imagined parts of you, and I miss those, too.

You tell me stories about your life, the trips you go on, the people you meet. I wish I could go with you, or reunite with you when you return home, as if I've ever done that before.

I try to tell you stories about my life to invite you in. I'm a cosy person, I'd like to imagine. I do a lot of work to make myself feel cosy, and I have ample amounts of it to give most of the time.

I wish I could just come up to you and ask for a hug. A long one. The kind where I could flop down on the couch and put a pillow on your thigh and sleep, maybe cry. I miss the comfort of being able to do that, like I did when I was growing up. I miss getting to cuddle, wrestle. I miss getting to physically feel another person's presence. It hasn't always been a nice feeling, but I have always imagined you'd be a kinder presence than my unpleasant majority of memories. You've always been so trustworthy, so open, inviting, welcoming. And maybe lonely, too. Having been hurt myself, I never fully understood how you could so easily want to be friends with so many others. Friendship to me was sacred and rare, difficult to truly find and devastating to lose. I didn't know how you did it; maybe I didn't believe that you did. But then, there you were, my friend already.

I'm... intimate. I don't know how else to describe it, and I don't want to frame it universally as bad. Maybe this isn't how you'd describe me. You told me I valued friendship. You told me I valued companionship. Those are two different things. To me, companionship is a level deeper. You do things together because it's the togetherness that's part of the activity, it's each other that's half the fun. You are a companion of mine. I care about you. I probably love you in a way u can't articulate aloud without feeling like it's the wrong words. All I know is that I just want to hug you and forget the whirling of my own mind for a minute. Just a minute. I remember the forest behind my elementary playground. I want to go there, to be a child with you in the grass, to play together with the bees and the mud and the sticks and grass. I want to cry when I'm afraid you'd never see me this way, even though I can nearly imagine you might see me this way even now, just with far less angst and ample self-assurance. I'm always afraid you'll disappear. I want to be there with you. I see your loneliness and it reminds me of my own. You're not me, of course. But I'd never want you to feel as alone as I sense you are.

Thank you for being my friend. I may be overwhelmingly emotional, but this is just how I've always been. I've always loved my friends deeply, and struggled to find the border between "friend" and "lover." I looked for the difference in all that I wanted and loved, and I found none. I only want intimacy, appreciation, comfort, and companionship.

I cry almost every day now. Over one thing or another. Sometimes you, sometimes myself, sometimes the forces that molded me into someone so anxious and afraid.

I hope you know I care about you. I overwork myself trying to show you that because words have never been enough in my experience. They're part of it, but they're not all of it. I hope you know. Because I don't want to just tell you with words. I would have done that a long time ago if I knew how. But here I am now. I write open letters to the void. I send you things that make me smile, laugh, cry. I tell you about my feelings. I think about you and your adventures, like a movie in my head. I think about my future and yours, and I wonder how things will change over time. I think of you when I plan my days because I want to spend time with you, I want to have time for you. I try to leave a slot open just in case sometimes. (Is this how my mother feels?)

Anyway. I miss you. Sometimes it's in a way that can feels chaotic, and other times it feels calming.

Oh, and you're pretty. I like looking at pretty people, watching them be pretty. I could do that all day. I don't need anything from them really. Only if they want. And I think I'd love to feel safe touching another person for once. Another person's face. Not being afraid of sickness or germs. Just touching someone else because maybe it feels nice for both of us. And I get to finally be curious.

Maybe one day I'll be able to at least see you. I think I'll be too emotional for jokes for a bit. I'm telling you, I'm a crier. But I know you'll tell me not to cry, so I'll tell you it's my right, and that I have to, and that I do it all the time and I'm not broken, I just can't regulate my emotions and they're always quite intense, so crying is a good outlet and I promise I'm not broken and that good, long, patient hugs that are in no rush at all help a lot. Thanks in advance.

And thank you for always respecting my boundaries. And thanking me for asserting mine. It's a basic thing, but as someone who's gone so long without... I can't tell you how important it is to have support from someone I trust.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

The story of Swamp Rat 17: Don Garlits' most misunderstood Top Fueler (part 1)

Don Garlits’ Swamp Rat 17, the Wynn’s Liner, had a very short life in 1973 and is roundly considered to be among the few disappointments of the more than 40 Swamp Rats he campaigned. Here's the story behind this most misunderstood car.

09 Apr 2021 Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor

Earlier this year, I wrote a column about racecar experiments that didn’t come to fruition and cited, chief among them, Don Garlits’ Swamp Rat 17, the Wynn’s Liner, which had a very short and disappointingly unsuccessful life in 1973.

I think the reason that car always leaps to the top of my “Well, that sure didn’t work” list is because it was a rare dead end for “Big Daddy,” one of the sport’s greatest innovators and chance takers. Although there are only 38 official Swamp Rats, there were some A and B versions, and the actual number well exceeds 40, according to “Big.” So, he had a pretty great batting average, yet strikeouts are going to happen, but better to go down swinging, right? Or, as hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.”

[Coming later in this column: Garlits rates his five favorite Swamp Rats and five least favorite. Stay tuned for that.]

Anyway, after heaping criticism upon the car back in February, I thought it only fair to allow The Man Himself to provide the context that defines this car’s place in the sport’s history. Not sure if he’d want to discuss one of his missteps, I reached out to the sport’s most storied driver and received an enthusiastic “I’D LOVE TO!” response to my query and away we went.

Before we get to that discussion, let me provide a little more context. The other thing that always intrigued me about Garlits’ decision to build Swamp Rat 17 was that he had blown away the sport with Swamp Rat 14 (the first rear-engined winner, 1971 Winternationals) and its evolutionary successor, Swamp Rat 16, which won the 1972 Gatornationals. (Swamp Rat 15 was a front-engined car built just in case SR14 was a flop; it never ran.) After all this success, why take this detour, especially when no one else was experimenting with aerodynamics?

Turns out that while the ‘Liner didn’t make its debut until mid-1973, the idea was conceived in mid-1971, not long after Garlits had proven that the rear-engined design worked. It was at that point that Garlits’ old buddy, Jocko Johnson, whose similarly shaped entry had made huge waves in 1959 with “Jazzy” Jim Nelson at the wheel, suggested that maybe it was time to resurrect his design and have “Big Daddy” put it on one of his chassis.

“I always liked streamlining, and Jocko had never given up on the idea, but he needed a success rear-engined car to try it again,” Garlits explained.

The only rub was that Johnson needed a shorter car, a 180-inch wheelbase chassis, to fit under the body, Swamp Rat 14 and 16 were 215 inches.

I've never seen any detailed shots of the car without the body, but did stumble across this image, a 1/16th scale version that Johnson had built to show Garlits his idea. Very cool!

Johnson, a laid-back Californian, began work on the body mold in 1971 but didn’t finish it until 1972, then came to Garlits' Seffner, Fla., base to build the body, which would not be completed and the car not race-ready until Garlits was already on Swamp Rat 19 in mid-1973.

The slow pace for the Liner’s body construction was frustrating for Garlits, who was well-known for being able to build a complete car in just a few days, and in his great book, Don Garlits and His Cars, “Big” pulled no punches about the reason for the delay.

"Jocko by now was growing his 'weed' next door and stayed 'high' most of the time! On several occasions, I went next door, pulled up the plants, and burned them. Jocko just planted more and stayed high."

In anticipation of the Wynn’s Liner’s someday completion, Garlits built Swamp Rat 18, the car dubbed “Shorty,” with a 180-inch wheelbase so he could get a feel for the three-foot-shorter configuration and ran it at several AHRA events in 1972 but never felt comfortable in the car, but he felt sure that the Liner’s body would give the car stability and faster speed, just as adding the rear wing to Swamp Rat 14 had improved top-end speeds.

“18 just wanted to do funny things going down the course," he remembered. “You had to be really careful with it. I had to really slow down the steering to even make it work at all.”

The ‘Liner was finally ready early in 1973, and Garlits towed it and “Shorty” out to California to run the AHRA Grand American event at Orange County Int’l Raceway. Veteran Funny Car racer Butch Maas, finally recovered from serious burns he had suffered in the Hawaiian Funny Car the year before, was itching to drive the car, so Garlits let him and set about getting “Shorty” also qualified for the race.

There had been so much hype built about the ‘Liner, which had been featured on the cover of Car Craft magazine back in July 1972 with the cover blurb “Garlits Aims for 275 mph.” The feature had been shot and originally the blurb had targeted 250 mph (Garlits has a copy of the original mockup with 250 on it in the museum display, and kindly shot a photo for me), but the editors decided to raise more eyebrows. Although the official national record at the time was 234.37 (set by Gaines Markley in April in Seattle), Garlits had run 243.90 mph in the final round of the Gatornationals but didn't get the chance to back it up, so maybe 250 wasn't far enough "out there" for the publication.

“By the time we got the car read, [the editors] told me that 250 wasn’t enough, that they wanted to put 275 on it,” Garlits recalled. “We thought the car might go 255 or 260, but I agreed with them that 275 sounded better and more exciting.” [For the record, we wouldn’t see 275 for another 15 years, when Darrell Gwynn ran 278 in Dallas in late 1986.]

Just as had been the case when he debuted the famous rear-engined Swamp Rat 14 in 1971, Garlits’ fellow racers scoffed at Garlits’ latest project, mostly, he thinks, because if it had been successful it would have created a major sea change in the class just as Swamp Rat 14 had done. That wasn’t to be.

Maas made several attempts in the car but was spooked by its handling and ran a best speed of 180 mph. You can see by the photo here that the car didn’t yet have the bubble canopy on it, and Garlits is not sure it ever did in the car’s short lifespan (although it's visible in the Car Craft cover, Garlits says they didn't have a working cockpit hinge yet). You can also see "Big" in the background holding the bleach bottle. Although Maas couldn’t qualify the ‘Liner, Garlits was able to put "Shorty” into the show but lost in round one to Herm Petersen. “The whole trip was a disaster,” Garlits summed up in his book.

Still determined to make it work, Garlits put Don Cook in the car for the IHRA event at Lakeland Dragway in Florida. Cook had driven the short-wheelbase, rear-engined Piranha in late 1966, so Garlits figured he could get the job done, but he also was forced to lift a half-track on several passes. "They both said it was doing something funny, so I got in the car myself for a ride,” said Garlits.

“It took off kinda slow because it was so heavy, but then it was cruising along pretty well and making a decent run when all of the sudden the motor revved up. I quickly lifted and then felt a bump, like I had hit a bump in the track or something.

“We brought it back to the pit and tore it apart, but there was nothing broken in the driveline, and that’s when we figured out that the whole car had gone airborne and when lifted it came back down, and that was the bump I felt.

“Jocko thought I had sabotaged him, so he wouldn’t get any credit for the design, which is pretty ridiculous. He went to his grave never believing that the car was doing the things I said it did.”

Garlits also had concerns about the amount of nitro fumes being trapped under the body and the fact that the car was not easy to get out of. “I knew that someday it would catch fire, and that would be a helluva deal for the driver, so I just gave up on the project,” he said.

Garlits sold the car to rocket-car racers Russell Mendez and Ramon Alvarez, who envisioned turning it into a hydrogen peroxide-powered rocket car, but Mendez was killed in an exhibition pass in their Free Spirit rocket dragster at the 1975 Gatornationals, and Alvarez, a plumber by trade (who actually had done the plumbing for Garlits' house) needed cash and sold it back to "Big." Given the 'Liners inherent instability at less than 200 mph, one can only imagine what it would have done at rocket-car speed. (“It would probably have flown right up into the sky,” Garlits marveled.)

So, I asked Garlits the million-dollar question: "Is he glad he built the car, or was it just a waste of time and money?"

“It was definitely a waste of time and money, but I’m glad we did it. I enjoyed all of the projects I did, even the ones that didn’t work out, like the Sidewinder and the turbine [-powered] car. Everyone raved about the turbine engines and how powerful they could be, and that car didn't work out but it was fun to figure it out. I always loved experimenting. That’s what made it so fun. When you’re involved with projects like those, your mind is going 24x7, trying to think of all of the scenarios to make it work.

“Plus if I hadn’t gotten together with Jocko, I wouldn’t have his original streamliner in my museum or the body from the Mooneyham-Ferguson-Jackson-Faust car. That all came together because of my relationship with Jocko."

[hentaimommi]

ʀᴏᴏᴍᴍᴀᴛᴇꜱ | ꜱᴜɴᴀ ʀɪɴᴛᴀʀᴏᴜ [x fem! reader]

Warnings: NSFW, all characters 18+, drug abuse

(A/N) I've never written on tumblr-- I've only ever written on wattpad (@/hentaimommi), let's hope this goes well! sorry for any mistakes/misunderstandings, I'm trying to improve my writing and take it seriously.

[R O O M A T E S]

It all began on a Friday night. Rintarou had gone out with his regular crowd, pot heads and easy chicks, and I was stuck at home. No one here to buy me a drink or hold my hand. I didn't mind though, I wasn't envious. He had his life, I had mine.

That was, until he got home. Usually in the midst of his cross-faded fits, he'd somehow sneak into my room. The first time it happened I was taken off guard, he never had shown an interest in me. No once could I recall any moment where he even asked how my day was. Yet, when he came home on Friday nights, that was all I could hear.

Tonight was no different, of course. I sat on the sofa, up late watching whatever k-drama Netflix had to offer that would stimulate my romantic ability. I'd never been romantically perused; men seemed to tiptoe around me, too intimidated by whatever quality seems to be so offputting to them. Anyone but Rin.

I could hear when he arrived home. The lock was being messily fiddled with, his drunken state rendered his ability to think cognitively or with any real consideration. Soon the door would finally open, swinging all the way to the wall.

A large waft of alcohol and weed forced it's way into my nasal cavity; reminding me of the man himself. Looking over to him, he stood facing backwards to the door, which puzzled me for a moment. Then, as if to answer my question by some hand at fate, another woman walked in behind him.

She was skinny, slender if you will. Tall, too. Her hair was long, skin coated in a thick layer of body glitter for whatever low-life party they were coming from. I wanted to pretend like this wouldn't phase me, but in the depths of my heart, it pulled. It hurt badly, so bad my face noticeably dropped.

""What's 'sur problem?" He asks, sloppily throwing his arm over the womans shoulder. She was so out of it her responses were only incoherent grunts. Classy. I rolled my eyes, standing up and gathering the things I had settled on the sofa.

It didn't hurt so much that, in a drunken state, he picked up some random woman. It hurt because then I realized how much I actually wanted it to happen. I had shaved, done my hair, and even put on a cute set of lingerie that had been collecting dust in my drawer since my first year at University.

The low glow of his bedroom light flickered on, causing both parties to squint. He then shut the door, no- slammed it. I sighed, letting a wonton groan escape before I secluded into my room for the night; sure to wear headphones.

By the time morning light seemed through the edge of my black out curtains, the woman was gone. The only sounds emitting from his room were low-groan like growls in his sleep. I stood, warm feet padding on the cold wooden floors in a hushed tone.

To the kitchen I went, turning on some light lo-fi on the Alexa that sat next to the stove, and beginning to cook a small breakfast. Eggs, bacon, and biscuits. Nothing too crazy, afterall, we're in Uni.

Apparently the smell awoke the sleeping bear, seeing how he groggily stumbled from his room. I didn't know how to feel. Usually he saved sex for me, which always made me feel like we had something exclusive. I was in for one rude awaking, now feeling nearly embarrassed at my ignorance.

"Mornin' beautiful. Whatcha makin'?" He asked, opening the refrigerator and grabbing a water. "Eggs, bacon, and biscuits. The pain medication is in the cabinet to the left, for your hangover." He smiled, nodding and grabbing the bottle from the cabinet.

I reached up into the one above my head, grabbing two plates and organizing a hearty breakfast for the both of us; especially him. He thanked me silently, taking the plate from my hands and making his way to the sofa. He turned the TV on, getting lost in whatever was playing at this hour.

I sighed, opting to eat at the counter instead of with him like we usually do on Saturday mornings. "Oh, I'm goin' out with Kita tonight, would you wanna come? Unless yer' totally wrecked from last night." He broke the silence, making me look up. Last night?

"What do you mean 'wrecked from last night'?" I asked, sipping on the OJ I had in a pink cup set aside from before I started cooking. Rin turned around, almost to question my sanity. "Don't you remember? I totally wrecked you last night, pretty thing." His words were quite literally laced with certainty, nearly making me laugh.

"Uh- no, you didn't. You did however completely destroy some bar hopper, though. At least that's the sound of it." I began to chuckle, opening my phone. Kita's Snapchat was full of videos of last night, so I turned to show him one of him and the woman he had brought home grinding on the dance floor.

"Oh shit. 'm sorry (F/N), I really thought it was you-! I swear I didn't-" He sat the plate down, only to be held up by a wavering sway of my index finger. "We're not exclusive, don't worry Rin."

He, however, didn't seem to 'not worry', as I had asked him not to. "No, no-" He started, walking over to me. He took my plate into his own, sitting them in the sink. Once done, he turned to me. "You don't get it, darlin'. I told that woman somthin' that was meant for you."

I arched a brow to his disposition, leading him to groan and roll his eyes. "I told 'er that I loved 'er!" He spouted, visibly frustrated and embarrassed. My eyes shot open, darting to find his own, but to my disappointment he had been glued to the floor.

"L-Love? Like- love love, or-" He stopped me, putting his large, calloused hand over my mouth. Once clasped, he spoke. "Love love. Don't feel special or nothin'. It's embarrassin'." I smiled, pulling his hand softy away from my face. The silence spoke waves as he stared down at me. Then, as it happens, I kissed him. He kissed back with a passion, or rather fury. His right hand snaked around my back, left finding its way to my neck, comfortably.

"R-Rin," Breathlessly I spoke agaisnt the skin of his cheek, his kisses finding a path to my neck. He chuckled darkly in amusement, gripping his large hands around the base of my thighs, then my ass. Quickly, by some form of magic, he picked me up and held my around his waist; like I was paper.

His kisses desperately continued lower, legs taking us back into his room as if it were some sort of automatic response to my hands running in his hair, tugging on the locks. Groans could be heard wide from both of us.

Sitting me down on the bed, he lowered himself onto his knees, looking up at me devilishly. Almost ominous, you could say. "R-Rin what are you doing?" I asked, panting from the loss of breath. He smiled, pushing the palms of his hands around the balls of my knees, wedging my thighs perfectly apart.

"Givin' you what you deserve." He spoke, hot and sloppy kisses making their way down my thigh and onto the lewdly clothed part of my cunt. Without hesitation, Rin reached under me, pulling at the waistline of my pants. Scooting just enough for them to release and relapse off my legs and into the floor.

"'s good for me. Aren't ya, darlin'?" His words dragged, sleepy, groggy. I nodded, releasing a pent up breath when he gently thumbed my swollen clit. "Yer so fuckin' gorgeous, god, I'm such an idiot." He spoke against my clit, tongue now delved into my slick folds.

My hips arched forward, begging for more. He reluctantly denied, teasing me of my furthered pleasure. He then backed away, pushing his boxers away from his hips and into the floor with my panties.

His cock was pulsing; leaking precum, a perfect pink. It begged to be touched, I could see it's long length twitch. "Take a picture, it'll last longer." I rolled my eyes, looking to the ceiling. "Sorry, you're just so hard." Honestly, he always had been- but this time looked desperate, like he was ready before he even sat me onto the bed.

"'cus you get me so hard, baby. Don't you know? Shoulda figured it wasn't you last night, my cock wasn't nearly as sensitive." His hands ran into my hair, cock lining up with my wet entrance.

I moaned as he put it in, filling me up full of his thick cock. I knew he should have put on a condom, but fuck it, I needed him now. His heavy breathe rolled across my chest like a blunt on a trey, hands cascading my body like a clay mold.

"'s pretty for me.." His praises worked harder on me, cock pushing in and out at a perfect pace. Our moans fell together, his pelvis softly rubbing against my clit with each thrust; stimulating it further. His mouth found way to my own, engulfing me into a shameless-sloppy kiss. "I love you.."

My face began to heat up, lower body matching in a needy state. "I-I love you too, Rin." As the words carelessly fell from my lips, I could feel myself begin to convulse. Shaking, my hips turned up, meeting my peak with Rin right after; cumming deep inside me, filling me full as he always did.

His hand rested on my stomach as he pulled out, leaving me empty. His thin lips met my forehead, giving me a small kiss before lying beside of me. Wordlessly, we cuddled against each other, naked- without care.

His hands were on my body politely, never tracing a single inappropriate spot. "'m sorry, love. I didn't mean to." He spoke into my hair, big spoon feeling much smaller now. I chuckled, holding his hand fondly into mine. "Don't worry 'bout it. Just get ready for Kita and I to rank on you about it."

[artsyxloner]

Not Just a Monster

Warning: blood,Voices, violence

4: Green Roof Apartments

It was dark by the time I had gotten to the green roof apartment building. I was coming up near the font where it looked like they were doing construction work? but Spotted something laying on the ground.

Its limbs were all Sprawled out getting closer making sure it was dead before I went in.  Half of its head was chopped Capitated it had looked-like its face was beaten in my something big?

Its teeth were all yellow and dirty as its skin was a sickly bluish-gray. But one of its ears stood out the most. It was enlarged, I was sure to remember this and put it in my field journal.

I was about to check the front out when I heard the monster utter some words. " I can't see?!" It spoke my eyes went wide as I turned to look at it.

My feet Accidentally hit some gravel making the smallest noise. Its enlarged ear started to twitch. " I can hear you!!" I mumbled its fingers moved when all of a sudden they shot out spikes. Until it hit the concrete building wall making a crashing sound.

I jumped out of the way before it could hit me. I rolled on to the payment as another shot of spikes came. Laying on my stomach it was either fight or flight since I didn't have a weapon I chose to leave knowing I could get killed.

The only reason I didn't before was because of the golden If you didn't know already. Getting up I ran away, not able to fight well I wasn't a good fighter as you have seen before but I was extremely lucky.

Going in behind the building there  I checked for a possible way in. As I moved stuff out of my way I found a door hidden behind a white tarp. Moving it out of the way there was a sound of a huge thud making the group shake.

I wobbled a little bit trying to steady back my balance. Knowing I shouldn't have looked back but my Curiosity got the best of me. I nearly fainted seeing a monster about the size of Wait no it was the size of the hulk.

It kept saying " Protein" that's when I knew that was one of the monsters that ate people. Grabbing ahold of the door handle I twisted it opened running in quickly I shut and locked the door behind me.

I signed out a heavy breath feeling sweat run down my forehead and back. If this place has these kinds of monsters there's no telling what is in this building.

I should have known, there can't be a place without some type of these things living in it some more than others. Inside the back building was dark and it gave me the creeps.

Lights flickered on and off creaking sounds coming from the old busted pipes and the floor was kinda wet with water they made have had a water leakage somewhere.

I made my way down the hallway as my footsteps splashed the little amount of water. It Echoed making the place give me goosebumps my arms my whole body shook.

I needed some sleep because I have been through a lot today my body was sore even though I healed. Checking every door it was locked until I came to the end of the last door.

Opening it Carefully as the Hinges made a squeaking sound I cringed hoping nothing heard that I was surprised to see a closet. It was those that had a little cot where the people slept on if they need to borrow one.

I smiled, it even had a pillow. Slipping off my duffel back after a while of carrying it I felt relieved hearing my bones and muscles stretch and pop. I flopped down my side hitting the comfy cot.

My breathing slowed as my eyes began to feel heavy they flutter for a few seconds before closing that's when I knew I was going to have some fucked dreams tonight from the things I saw.

...

There was nothing but loud screaming everywhere I went. Everybody was running away as they knocked each other over them jumping over seats and them hiding behind stuff.

I was confused at why they were doing this? What was wrong I didn't see anything out of the ordinary?

At the time I wasn't aware they were all running from me. I didn't have any control over my body just only inside my head, I could think.

I mean I could feel my body moving but and something wet was gushing from my nose. I was confused about what was happening? It was just a nosebleed wasn't it? that's normal.

That's when I looked in the window and was horrified at what I saw my reflection was smiling back at me with pitch-black eyes and blood was all over the bottom of my mouth dripping down to my neck.

That's when it began.

I sat up breathing hard, remembering the horrific image of myself. I quickly pick up my duffel bag and unzipped it bringing out my opened water bottle pouring some in my hands I splashed my face with some to cool me down.

I wiped my eyes rubbing them until I couldn't see it anymore until I saw stars. Signing I ran my fingers through my frizzy, red hair, I've had this dream since the night they were killed and it's like the inner monsters inside me want to keep reminding me.

I'm starting to hate it, next time I see it I'm going to tell it to fuck off! Getting up I drank my water and took out some Oreo pocky Munching on them Quietly.

I know all this junk wasn't good for me but it was the only thing I had. As I did I felt my nose dripping wet, making me Drop my pocky stick.

" shit!!" I grabbed the ends of my sleeve trying to soak up the blood that was constantly flowing. " Now! Now! that's what you get when you say you were going to tell me to what's the word... fuck off?"

I almost choked on my food hearing its damn voice. " it's too bad I didn't get to talk to you when you fell." I covered my ears not listening to the inner monster inside me wanting to come out.

I stayed silent not listening. " fine ignore me, but when the time comes you'll need me." I still stayed quiet " It wasn't my fault it was yours why would I need your help!?" I fussed getting down on my knees.

" When the time is right Soo-Nico." This made me scoffed no more like a laugh like a crazy person. If someone saw me from their point of view they would think I am.

Then the voice left like it was never there. My fist clenched as I started to bang on the floor. " I'll never need you!" I whispered as tears beamed my eyes.

I cried quietly for a few minutes leaning my back on the edge of the cot. Then I heard the sound of instrumental music coming from the speakers go off. Seconds later there was a young man's voice.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, " uh, uh," it went Static " Survivors, the first floor is safe now."

" come to the first floor. We'll be safer together." The guy paused then spoke up. " We survivors must stick together. Please come down. Come down here now."

" –I said please come down..." the man's voice went static again followed by a long Frequency that hurt my eardrums. I couldn't think for a moment there were people here? There were survivors.

I wasn't alone, I hurried I get up but stopped a thought coming to mind. What if he was trying to trick someone like me to get me to come and then take my stuff and keep it for himself? He just is saying it's safe and lies.

But for some reason I knew he wasn't lying, it sounded like he was calling for someone to come down that was being stubborn. If they were stuck up there? I only had two choices to go or not.

I decided to go I needed some social interaction if there were people there? but I would be wary and careful of them.

I wasn't going to trust them that was for sure just stick around long enough to see what type of people they are.

Getting up I grabbed my bag slinging over my shoulder carefully opening the door it was still the same as last night the same creepy eerie feeling I didn't notice before but there were cobwebs.

With dead bugs and flies in them ready to be eaten. My face crinkled up, feeling bad for them I knew how they felt now, Well in some way.

I moved down the hallway going to the entrance that's probably where they are at. I stopped every few seconds hearing strange Noise this was the first floor He said it was clear right?

Maybe he was saying one part of it was clear and blocked off. That means there could be monsters Roaming free around this section of the first floor.

I felt fear creep inside my chest and up my throat. Seeing the monsters I saw last night, there could be some-more like that or worse.

My arms got goosebumps, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand. It was like I was trying to freak myself out. I just wanted to turn back and hid in that closet and never come out.

It was promising but I knew being a wimp wouldn't solve anything. So I forced myself to go on my feet talking a right at the end of the blinking light that hung down from the Ceiling.

I passed a bathroom door that said out of order, Ignoring it I passed on seeing the walls that had wallpaper were all ripped up with mold spoiling over them.

Toys and clothes were all sprawled out all over the floor I bent down to pick up a shirt but dropped it when I heard screaming and crying.

My eyes turned to where the sound was coming from them landing on a pair of double doors. I ran towards them stepping on my tip-toes to look through the small glass window to see what was happening?

There was a group of people holding back a woman that was most likely in her late forties. With the front entrance open they all looked terrified.

[thebadmomsclub]

Before the pandemic, my life felt like chaos. Thinking back on it now, I don't even know what all my time was filled with that made it so chaotic. I think it mostly boiled down to me trying to get my kids to fit into the mold of what I thought their early years should be. 

I spent a lot of time with other moms and their kids. I pushed mine to behave like the other kids, to fit in, to reach the milestones that I thought they should be reaching when I thought they should be reaching them. Other moms told me I looked tired, I should take a break, practice some self-care. They pushed me to put the kids in daycare and get a job - for me, for my mental health. 

These get togethers with other families were supposed to be where I reenergized - where the kids could play with other kids and maybe need me a bit less for just 30 minutes or so; a chance for me to engage in adult conversation and receive/give emotional support from/to other parents who were going through the same stage of life as I was. But I always left feeling so emotionally drained and I could never figure out why. 

It took the pandemic, being forced to be at home with my kids and let go of all of those other things that I thought were a necessary part of my life, to realize that what reenergizes me is spending time with my children! Who knew? 

The lie of modern motherhood is that you CAN do it all and that should make you happy. This is what women have been fighting for, for decades, right? The right to have kids AND work; the right to have a night out with friends on your own; the right to be considered equal to your partner and to share all responsibilities equally, regardless of the emotional burden. And it's great that we can do that! Some women truly thrive in that lifestyle and I admire them so much. I wanted to be one of those women for so long. When I was pregnant I would tell anyone that asked that I could never be a stay-at-home mom - it just wasn't for me. 

But things have changed. I've found my truth, my purpose, during the pandemic. I've realized that what truly reenergizes me is witnessing my children grow into who they ARE, not who others think they should be. When I shed the weight of comparison - when I let go of the opinions of those other moms who say "Gee, your kids really take a lot of energy, I don't know how you do it" or "you should go back to work, get a break from the kids" - that's where I find myself. 

I don't want to go back to the way life was. I am, however, going back to work in September. I have a month and a half left of being home with my children and I almost wasted most of those years. I'm going to spend this remaining time treasuring them and I'm not going to let anybody's opinion, whether well-intentioned or not, weigh me down. 

Most importantly, I'm not going to go back to "normal" again - I'm building a new normal, a healthier normal, for my family and no one's going to stop me. 

Laura, the OG Bad Mom

[missbecky]

Okay, time for another long post about a cool weird thing that happened with my cards last night. I still don't know how I feel about deities, I don't know that I'll ever worship one, as that's just not me to worship. But I have felt as though there was an entity, goddess, force, something trying to reach me. Any time I've tried to glean information on who it was, I kept getting a door slammed in my face. I kept getting messages that I wasn't ready. And I was totally fine with that.

I'm unemployed right now, I'm a single mom, and I live with my disabled mother to help take care of her. With COVID-19, we don't take chances as my mom is in the high risk category. What that all means is that I've had way too much time on my hands. So I've been like a sponge, soaking up all the knowledge I can when it comes to witchcraft. Not being ready wasn't that big of a deal, because it just meant I got to do more research and keep putting off stuff I didn't really want to do.

Yesterday, I did my daily card draw, and the message was suddenly way different. Change has always been in the messages, but also the stopping in order to be ready for the changes. Yesterday morning I drew the the star, the chariot, and the hanged man reversed. I took that as a go for it.

Later that day I was prowling all the research servers, and the went to Google something about deities, and found an article/blog post someone had written about wishing people would stop using a very specific tarot spread for deity identification. Naturally, I decide to do that very spread. It was a five card spread, I wrote down what I wanted to know, and started shuffling. I shuffled for what felt like forever, and then when I laid the cards out, without thinking, I laid out 7. At first I was going to put the last two back, but decided to leave them. And the cards were all over the place. But I looked at it, and thought, "whoa, whoever this is, is not messing around.

So this is what I laid out.

Before I get into breaking down what these cards meant and how each one directly correlates to one specific deity, I want to point out where my head was at going into this.

I basically really actually got started with everything like 2 weeks ago. I'm basically still a newborn, right? Anyway, as soon as I start researching, I keep getting drawn to Deities. That's weird because I'm an agnostic and basically have no interest in higher powers. If they're there cool, if not cool. I have always believed that if there is some kind of being that could mold and shape the world, then my puny human brain can't comprehend them anyway, and it's really none of my concern. So, it's been really strange that this repeatedly keeps sticking out for me. I get the distinct impression that whatever energy is reaching out to me is female, a tie to the moon, the feeling of 3 was there, I knew it had to be associated with motherhood, and just a general overall feel of the empowerment of women. Naturally, I just kind of assumed Hecate, but that never actually felt correct to me.

So the 3 of cups being the first card just kind of reinforced the sense of 3 to me, and the whole sisterhood aspects of women empowering women. I wrote down 3, sisterhood, and good times. In the spread that was supposed to be 5 cards (and I did 7), the first card was supposed to sum up who the deity was.

I love my tarot deck for the strength card the most, I think. Strength is a mama bear. Again, this confirms my feeling of being tied to motherhood. The second card was supposed to represent the deities weakness. I wrote mama bear, power, and overly protective.

The third card was the chariot, and according to the spread this was their strength, their power. I wrote down action, strength, determination, will-power.

Then I get to the 4th card, the lovers. This is supposed to be what they rule. This one had me scratching my head. Now the author said this one will be harder to figure out, because the deities could even try to be snarky with this. I didn't even know what to do with this card, but like it made sense later. As I was going through each card individually, however, I came up with nothing, and in turn wrote nothing.

Card 5 was to be their symbol or association, and I had drawn 7 card. Anyway, I began analyzing the reversed hierophant, and the reversed 2 of cups. By that point I'm feeling personally attacked. And then the King of swords felt like a slap in the face. Words like logical, smart, level headed came up, which is honestly the person I've always prided myself on being. What was that person doing trying to contact a deity? I basically had to stop and ask myself wtf I was doing.

Like all shadow work, I decided to go browse the internet to distract myself from having to think about it too much. So I start googling triple Goddess and love, even though the lovers definitely didn't feel right, I'm like what the hell? Why not? Hecate and Diana come up, well that's not right. So I decide to take away the triple deciding I could just be way off base with the whole 3 thing. So I Google goddess of female empowerment and found a list of badass goddesses, and Artemis stuck out to me. But I'm like, no, that can't be right. This peace loving hippie couldn't possibly identify with the goddess of the hunt (which was the extent of my knowledge about Artemis). I then Google goddess of sisterhood, envisioning a woman running with a girl gang fucking shit up. What the fuck do you know, but that is Artemis.

After that Google search, I decide I clearly don't know enough about Artemis, and had recently downloaded some Greek mythology books, have never had the slightest interest in Greek mythology, but I saved them in my Google drive just in case. After finding out a bit about Artemis from Google, I turned to the digital books I had.

It was crazy how each of the cards began actually tying into the mythology of Artemis. She traveled with like a gang of nymphs, which I'm sure there was some sisterhood there. She helped her mother deliver her twin brother, and became like the patron God of childbirth. She defended babies and Young girls. She only ever wanted to belong to herself and so she requested everlasting virginity. From what I read she was very protective, straight up murdered rapists, and she was strong to a fault, which made sense why the strength card was listed as weakness. Apollo challenged her to hit a target way out in the ocean that she couldn't see, telling her she couldn't do it, she did it to prove she could and there was no better sharpshooter than her. The target was Orion, the only person she ever loved. So the reversed two of cards made sense. The reversed hierophant made sense because she was not traditional, she went against the grain. Her story is far from ordinary, even by mythological standards. She was a straight up badass that lived life on her terms and no one else's. There's nothing more rebellious than a woman with such control of her own life and destiny. And of course the chariot would be her strength identification, she was nothing but action oriented. The lovers could be interpreted several ways, but I take it as a woman who loves herself so fiercely she had no need for any other kind. But also when I think of love, I don't think of romantic love, I think of the bond i share with my daughter. She fiercely loved her brother, and maybe because she helped with his birth it connected her to him similar to that of a mother and child? That of course speculation. But the lovers card could also be a jab at her eternal virginity. And the King of swords sounded exactly like Artemis.

So I'm convinced this spread is talking about Artemis, but I can't shake the aspect of 3. Can't let that one go. Don't know why. So I'm looking through the l The Greek Myths by Robert Graves, and in it he speculated that Artemis was in fact a triad/triple Goddess!!!

Needless to say, I lost my fucking shit after reading that one. I was right in what I felt about what traits I felt the energy having, and the fucking spread related with every gd card.

Oh, and apparently Artemis chose to spend most of her time in the mountains. One of my favorite thing in all of the things is the mountains of Colorado, second only to my daughter, and I even identify as connected with earth elements the most because of my love for mountains. Makes me wonder how long Artemis has been trying to get my attention 😉

Anyway, I don't know what this all means to me personally yet. I've been ridiculously drained today, it's already 11 pm, and I only just now felt like I had enough energy and focus to write this out. So haven't had much time to sit with everything I experienced and felt last night.

However, it was very exciting! And I had to share my experience!