#immortality angst

[la-muerta]

this is the nonsense of love || MINDY NETTIFEE

The truth is this: My love for you is the only empire I will ever build. When it falls, as all empires do, my career in empire building will be over. I will retreat to an island. I will dabble in the vacation-hut industry. I will skulk about the private libraries and public parks. I will fold the clean clothes. I will wash the dishes. I will never again dream of having the whole world.

[neg-im]

DTK wearing a pair of weeding rings whose date he can no longer remember.

He remembers one was of his lover but he can't remember which one.

[gaiussleechtank]

I never like thinking about Merlin’s dragonlord heritage for too long because I start to think about the implications of it.

If the lord part of being a Dragonlord meant nobility, then surely Balinor had an estate/ noble house of some kind.

All I can imagine is Merlin finding that grand home one day, and it being nothing but a hollow ruin. Flying in the wind are burnt and tattered banners of a family crest that Merlin doesn’t know is his because that knowledge is forever lost. Rooms upon rooms that once were occupied by his ancestors, ancestors who he will never be able to name. The kitchen frozen in time with dusty and moulded plates sitting on the table, a plate that maybe his aunt or an uncle, maybe a grandparent or a cousin was eating from before Uther’s men came after them. Little trinkets, jewellery, heirlooms, beloved toys, precious keepsakes scattered everywhere, and he wouldn’t know that by default they were his.

He would walk those abandoned halls, seeing how clearly loved that home was, how full of life and people and family it had had before the purge had broken out: only to wish that he could have experienced that in his childhood.

He would just see that grand house as nothing more than another of Uther’s victims, completely unaware of his connection to the place.

EDIT: OH GOD WHAT IF MERLIN HAD A SIGIL???

[sen-ya]

we agreed it was ok to be devastatingly sad on main right

[kitamars]

remains

[knightinink]

“There will come a day where I won’t be here anymore, but for now, I’m right here, Oz. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, I promise.”

Ozzie has a nightmare of Fizz dying (& he's even more afraid of it because he knows it's gonna happen one day).

Based on a little headcanon that Oz can change his forms based on emotion, & when he’s extremely scared or sad, he morphs into this tiny flickering flame.

In this form is Asmodeus at his most vulnerable.

[aha-chuu]

Okay I have a wriolette concept because renheng hurt me and I must pre-emptively avoid that

1) So canonically Wriothesley just loves tea. The Most™. According to Clorinde, his office is full of tea. Wriothesley talks about sending tea to Neuvillette and Furina as gifts. He won't stop asking us to drink tea with him.

2) Now in the world where Neuvillette and Wriothesley are in love etc etc, Wriothesley is still a human person who will not live supremely long. Now, Neuvillette dislikes this. Most of the time he's all about law and order but making Wriothesley a little less susceptible to aging isn't illegal or anything. And he's not doing anything immortal or completely fucking up the laws of human existence.

Points 1 & 2 are relevant to each other, I promise.

My concept is that Neuvillette uses dragon magic (or whatever) to imbue tea with life-extending essence (or whatever) and sends it down to Meropide for Wriothesley. Nobody ever accepts Wriothesley's requests to drink with him, so Neuvillette knows Wriothesley will be the only one guzzling it down. And Wriothesley drinks so much tea that he's got an extra 100 years in like,,, a week.

(it works a little too well)

And ofc Neuvillette does everything by the book and codifies that "oh yes dukes need to live long enough to serve their duties" and "once the role is no longer required by society no more dragon-magic-life-juice will be administered". Ofc this comes with the note that they will need a head warden for as long as criminals exist but whateverrrr.

No Neuvillette doesn't consult Wriothesley on this. Wriothesley is so pleased by the sudden influx of tea from his bf that he isn't even suspicious about it.

[demigods-posts]

i just thinks it's neat that luke's whole shtick is targeting demigods whose faith in the gods and their environment are weakening. and one of the last people he visits before he turns is annabeth.

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

some randomy MIS doodles

[neg-im]

What about Kid forgetting the faces of his friends and loved ones? yes he remembers the names and that but their faces are already blurry after all the centuries he outlived them, even the pictures have got lost or unrecognizable.

Somedays he can't even remember how his own face used to look like.

[blinkpen]

sick in bed n thinking about epilogue-specific AUs, multi-century timeskips and fantasy race lifespan disparity angst

[jazzstarrlight]

My Immortal- Cover/Warning/Pages 1 & 2

Officially releasing "But you're my Universe" as the comics prologue. New pages are on the way. Might be able to get them out next week, but holiday plans may delay their release. Just letting you know.

[sherlockruiningmylife]

What is currently killing me about merthur is the whole Merlin fell first but Arthur fell harder. Because if this is true (which I fully believe it is) and Merlin was so so broken over Arthur's death. And waited dutifully and solemnly for 1500+ years. Then just imagine, imagine (!) what Arthur would have done if Merlin died. Broken wouldn't begin to describe it. He would have raged and torn the world apart to bring him back. If Merlin turned dark in s5 trying to prevent the end, then imagine how dark Arthur would become if he lost Merlin. Nothing, I mean nothing would have stopped him from bringing Merlin back.

[thegnomelord]

Shark

- 🦈

(WOBSVHDVUH. HOLY MOTHER OF SHARKS. HOW DO YOU WRITE SO GOOD. Gosh you, darn you, daum you. Fuel my god daum brainrot.

Now im thinkin of angst. DONT WRITE IT, I CANNOT HANDLE YOUR WRITING IN ANGST. THIS IS JUST A BRAIN BLURB.

Price is close to death whether it be the ultimte battle between the destruction of all that can die or of a horrid enemy, they have yet to defeat.

Price is alive, but too far to be ever saved. The boys want to summon their captain's ole friend, to say a well had goodbye, maybe even save him. But no books, no scrolls, nor anything etched in stone on the surface depicts them. Nothing.

Price dies knowing hes lived a good life, praying to all the gods that his beloved eldritch dosent destroy the surface he called home.

The only way the poor eldritch finds out, are when Prices ashes are swallowed by the waves.

In every storm, waves tower over the heights of skyscraper, to the point not even those that could fly can cross. Death is quick when it comes to the ocean, like it trying to collect all power it can withhold. Creatures are cruel when it comes to what has killed their gods beloved, relentlessly acttacting what they can. Sharks are rare, to the point their sighting have come near myth or legend. Yet, they will always come come towards any that is draconic for they miss them. Ocean creatures, humanoid or not, would cry with no control, close to fire, dragons or smoke. They grieve. They all grieve.

But, Dragons seem to live longer when close to the waves. Saving them in dire situations when the fall from they sky, wounds healed when submerged in the salty sea. Even if you were pure fire, absolute whole magma. You'd be saftely cradled in any and all water. Water is the safest, the safest they have ever felt in all of their exsistence. They know this feeling, it is old, it is familiar, it is embedded in blood.

For the ocean rembers, it always remembers.)

Okay honestly your brain farts are always so good but. . . But . . . I'm so sorry sharky. This came to before you even wrote your ask and now I have to do it, you're just the sacrificial goat. . .

CW: SFW, angst, made myself cry :/ Got some idea inspo from @heliumknife

John Price doesn't die on a notable day. He doesn't die on the day of reckoning, doesn't die on the day fire rains from the sky and blood muddles your oceans, doesn't die alongside human gods, doesn't die on the day he may meet what made him and hear he was a good man.

John Price dies on a regular Tuesday night.

Not even a blip on the radar.

Having saved the oblivious world yet again he retches a bloodied cough as he stumbles on the beach he'd ended up on. His legs give out, the course sand rubbing his skin when he falls, red blood slowly seeping between the grains. Distantly he can hear his boys calling for him, watching the waves wash onto the shore, the tide too low to reach him; too low for you to sense him.

He can feel Gaz scrambling to stem his bleeding, Soap desperately searching through the first aid kit, Ghost barking on the coms that Price is hit. And as the world begins to grow quiet, the low murmur of waves washing upon the sand filling his ears, washed up amber glittering in his blurring eyes, the scent of seaweed and brine filling his rapidly slowing lungs—

Price smiles — he'll slumber with you soon.

Only when the morning tide comes in do you sense his blood, do you rouse from the depths like lightning, waking from a nightmare to find it has followed you to the waking world.

You're too late.

Like always.

He's so still.

Peaceful — worry lines and wrinkles smoothed out and face relaxed you could delude yourself into thinking he's just sleeping. Oh those dragons with their slumber; he'll grumble when you go to wake him, demanding five more bloody minutes of your attention as if he's the god here. Cling to you like a barnacle and growling like a kitten until you give in and lay down next to him. Give a rumbling purr and laugh at how he got a god wrapped around his finger until you shut him up with a kiss.

But you can't.

Your vessel's eyes keep darting to the blood staining his clothes, the crusted red lines trailing from his lip down his chin, the stillness of his chest, the silence.

They tell you John Price died protecting his team from a brutal foe. John Price died protecting the world. John Price died protecting the very people who in your recent shared memory had been happy to sharpen sticks and melt rock into to steel all in an vain attempt at glory. . .

John Price died a hero.

Your John died.

And you weren't there.

"Hey. . ." You look at Gaz when he speaks, standing on the opposite side of the medical table they've laid his body on. ". . .I know you two were, close." He chokes up, voice rough and nasally, fresh tear tracks staining his cheeks.

You envy him for it. For once you wish you were the ant on a circuit board instead of it's maker, just so you could see the world like they do, mourn like they do — open, visible, showing you cared, showing he wasn't just a toy in your sandbox. That Price was the voice you'd hear when loosening the noose of the rope, the beckoning call beyond the reach of your waves, the one that held that wretched excuse you call a heart.

But you can't.

All your treacherous vessel manages to achieve is a small dip in the corner of your lip. "So were you." Your voice is low and garbled like you're drowning, the rumble of icebergs scraping on the ocean floor filling the silence behind each syllable.

Gaz flinches like he'd been slapped, unable to look at the man he loved as much as you did. "Yeah," His gaze flickers everywhere like fleeing fishes in a reef, "I'm sorry." He blurts out.

"Don't be." You don't look at him, your cold hand reaching out to trace Price's jaw, coarse beard scratching your flesh. "You loved him when I couldn't." A part of you wants to be angry at Gaz for harboring John's affection and attention, that it's not fair for him to be able to mourn when you've known your John long before Athenians and Spartans decided to throw hissy fits in your waters. But you can't call yourself a lover he deserved when you met him so rarely, a blink of the eye for you and a century passes.

"Are you going to kill us now?" Kyle asks, not scared, as if he's expecting it.

It shames you, but you thought about it; of sea life growing gigantic and voracious under your influence, of making the sky weep in your stead, of violent waves rising up and devouring the planet for taking away your world. What's the point of it's existence when the one who made it shine has been snuffed out?

"No," You sigh in resignation. You can't, not while there are still people and places John loved, not while vestiges of him remain. You can't kill what's left of him, protect them like you couldn't do with him.

Gaz tells you they plan to cremate him in line with dragon customs, only to take a step back when you pick your John up to cradle in your arms, his loose wing draping over your shoulder, his head resting on your shoulder, nose buried in your neck as if he's scenting you once again.

"I'll come to collect the rest of you when you pass." You say before disappearing with Price, because if you had to answer Gaz's questions — Why are you taking his body when you weren't even there when he died? Why do you act like you care when you saw him so rarely? Why are you taking him away from Gaz when he was the one who loved Price? What gives you the right? — you would have drowned a country.

Water rushes around him the moment you are back in your element, holding him in a cradle made of your waters like the first time he'd fallen into the ocean so many millennia ago. Water bubbles escape his open mouth as your waves caress and kiss each inch of him, crusted blood muddling the brine around him as you pull him as close to your real body as you can.

Searching.

You can feel his soul once your waters have kissed every inch of his skin, faint yet stubbornly clinging on somewhere in the aether, no doubt giving Death a headache.

You were once a soul too were you not? Just a dead thing too dumb to know it died; somewhere deep beneath the individual writhing sharks and decaying corpses and fossilized bone making up your body resides your original one, nothing but a chunk of rock with the imprint of what you had as a skeleton at the time.

For if Death doesn't come to claim it, a soul won't die until the body's gone. You had slipped past the cracks, grew fat and large on the other souls until Death could no longer touch you without fear of being swallowed whole.

You doubt it would let Price slip through like it had with you, fortunately you put claim on his soul long ago. You swim to the deepest part of the earth where burning geothermal vents spew minerals into freezing cold waters, where you slumber and feed on the souls of the dead.

You curl around him, living and dead bodies parting until Price rests wrapped around the oldest part of you.

Embracing you like he always wanted to.

He waited so long for you.

Now it's your turn to wait. This time you will be there.

And if the oceans above rage for months, if the season long rain floods the streets, if the weather makes it so that in the crushing depths no one can pick out your tears from the ocean brine, all the better.

[arctophyllax]

Raphael x Human Tav

Thinking about Raphael not knowing how to love healthily, Raphael who becomes obsessed with Tav. Human Tav. Becomes obsessed with them in the most twisted and corrupted way.

Not quite knowing what it is that he feels,

But absolutely hating whatever it is.

Raphael whose human side is stronger than he would ever dare to admit, especially when it comes to feelings.

For roughly two thousand years he had been lonely—yes, he had a personal incubus, he had servants, souls, and warlocks. But he didn’t have Tav.

Tav who seems to enjoy the conversations they have, Tav who looks at him without fear, and with no intention of asking for his favour like every other mortal did before. They weren’t easy, weren’t stupid, weren’t blindly naive.

Raphael was lonely, deep inside, walls put up high to keep possible vulnerabilities from getting to him, to keep himself safe, to control his environment without any weak spots.

Yet there they were.

A weak spot.

A mortal. A mortal that made him feel less alone, no matter how short lived and rushed their conversations had been so far.

A mortal that he found himself thinking of and protecting from afar, a mortal he was slowly becoming more and more obsessed with.

A mortal.

A mortal that would die one day, no matter how safe he managed to keep them.

A mortal who was so vulnerable to the passing of time.

A human lifetime was but a moment to him.

He would be lonely again, would still think of them.

They would weaken him just to leave him.

And it would drive him insane.

Unless… unless he robbed them of their mortality,

Made them stay

Forever.

»Nothing is immune to Time. Not even eternity.«

[godineedsleep]

Venti x Reader

summary: Venti and his continually reincarnated lover

wordcount: 1.4k+ | tags: mild angst, fluff, reincarnation trope

pairing: venti

Barbatos knew ever since he had taken the form of his friend that life was fickle. He watched people pass on like grains of sand in a time glass, one after the other, soon forgotten about as others followed suit. But the wind does not forget. Not so easily.

He once again felt his bleary eyes open, the calls of his people ringing behind his ears. He felt anemo swirl up around him, eyes flicking around the forest he lay in. It was different than when he closed his eyes, bushes in the wrong place and trees moved, but it was not much of a shock. He felt the prayers of his people chorus behind his ears and heeded their call.

And then he met you. You, who was so fierce and brave and still so kind yet in the face of war. He watched as you fought, talked with you, and sat complacent as you charmed him. You had asked for his name, once. He had told you to call him Venti and to remember him as the eccentric bard home to Mondstadt.

And then he watched as you were slain. You had been strong, vision or not, but you were unlucky just once. And Barbatos watched as your chest concaved to the force of the blade, and as your blood joined the many already fallen, and he felt a strange sense of calm as an arrow flew through the head of the enemy.

Barbatos mourned you, just like he did every mortal. He mourned you by the bottle, by the sweetness of the wine that trickled down his throat. He mourned you as he mourned all the fallen of Mondstadt he couldn’t protect, as he mourned those who died trying to protect the nation he held so dear. 

During a Windbloom Festival, over two hundred years later, Venti saw your eyes again. You had changed- you were a little shorter, hair a little lighter- but those eyes, with a bold determination as you bickered with a shopkeeper about her price of goods, he couldn’t forget. Your mannerisms stayed unchanged, you still had the familiar inflections and your hands still held the hems of your clothing when you were stressed. 

Venti slips behind you, glancing towards the rather annoyed shopkeeper.

“What seems to be the matter here?” He chirps, voice light as he smiles towards the two of you. The shopkeeper barely spares him a glance before dismissing him.

“I’m sorry, I can’t take payment right now.” She turned back to you, eyes sharpening to a glare in an instant.

“And I told you, I won't lower my prices. What you see is what you pay.” Venti winces as you grind your teeth, watching you become more agitated.

“Your prices are extortionate.” As you continue to rant, Venti looks down at the shop's products. You had been pretty accurate- for selling simple wrappers to hold windblooms when gifting them, they were at a high price. When glancing around, he found this was the only stand selling them.

“It takes advantage of people just wanting to enjoy Windbloom- how did you even decide this was fair?” The shopkeeper stares at you flatly.

“Inflation.”

“The economy has been on an incline for a while, you lying-” Venti places a couple of mora on the table, cutting you off. He grins at the cashier, eyes twinkling.

“I believe this should be enough, correct?” The shopkeeper diverts her attention immediately to the coins, swiping them off the counter before any objections. She thumbs over them, waiting a few seconds before pushing the bundle of paper towards you. 

“Take it. Next.”

Venti dragged you to the side, glancing at you. You were a bit dazed by his action, eyes trailing up from the bundle of thin papers in your hands to stare at him- studying him. So, he thought, it was only fair to return the favor. You surely had changed, your clothing less knightley and more of the common folk- and you dressed comfortably, too, which was good- but as your eyes dragged over his own appearance he found himself admiring that familiar fire, kept safe within the borders of your iris.

“You…” he hears your voice, hesitant and unsure, and hates how it reminds him of your demise. Your former demise, he supposes. 

“We haven’t… met before, have we?” 

Barbatos finds himself strangely silent, feeling the warmth as you hold his hand to keep him still. Like he would run. And he finds himself smiling, whether from the absurdity of that notion or the look on your face he didn’t know.

“Maybe when we were younger.”

It's a few years later when Venti finds himself gently strumming his lyre, your head in his lap, during a bright summer day. It was cool, with the wind constant and the shade of the tree at Windrise. You were dozing off, smiling as you listened to his song. And when you looked up at him, eyes tired yet shining and happy, he couldn’t stop himself from pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. He loved the way your eyes crinkled as your smile widened, and he relished the way you pulled him back down for a proper kiss. 

It was these small moments Venti cherished, where the two of you shared these quiet moments together, where he could simply enjoy your company. The moments the both of you could just sit, stop for just a moment, where he could hold you and sing to you and you could just be happy with him. 

And then you died again. 

It was different this time, though. You had lived long this time, the crows feet beneath your eyes that used to only appear as you smiled became more permanent. He wished he could have grown old with you. He wished he had the heart to change his form from how he died, to give you the sembalance of growing old with your partner. He wept in your arms time after time, agonized over that fact. 

But even if he could age, Barbatos thinks, it wouldn’t change anything when you eventually passed. While even when a gust of wind peeters out, it only resumes someplace else. At a different time. 

He held your hand, bony and thin as it was, as you looked at him with the smile he so adored. And you passed.

And so he slept, for years and years and years, until he was needed again. 

He would wake again and again and again, and would meet you again and again and again. Sometimes your hair would be different, other times your frame. But your eyes were always the same. They always looked at him with a distant sort of recognition, and that small flame would always be lit. 

He would never force his way into your life. There were lifetimes that went by where you simply said hello to him on the street, just as many as the two of you would become friends. You would have your own loves too, aside from him. He found that any lover he would try to have would only remind him of you, so he abstained. 

In the times you were gone, sleep and wine became his friends. His children of Mondstadt were easy to converse with, yes, lively and kind as they were. But they never had the comfortable familiarity you brought. Only the remembering of ghosts long past. 

Venti finds you again, years later, humming a gentle song on the base of the tree of Windrise. And you look up as he walks over, smiling. But he stops, shocked, as he sees more than just the usual faint recognition in your eyes. There was something… more there. He can’t help himself from gently murmuring your name, and just the sound sends you smiling and laughing. 

He feels you crash into him, shocked still, arms instinctually wrapping around you. Venti finds himself laughing along with you, the bottle of wine he had brought to drink dropped somewhere to his side. When he finds your eyes, he sees recognition he hadn’t seen in them before- at least, when the two of you met for the first time. And he sees your eyes filling with tears: of relief, happiness, and other emotions he couldn’t place. 

“You haven’t changed a day, my love.” You smile up to Venti, grinning wide as he gently wipes your tears from your face. Your smile wavers for a moment, growing bittersweet. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

And Barbatos smiles, gentle, as he runs his fingers through your hair.

“For as long as the wind blows, I will protect you, just as you have protected I.”

And you smile. And he thinks that his patience has been worth it.