#in the end when he is back he is just a hollow mirage of the boy that wished to protect

[ymart26]

I dont talk about grandchase a lot compare to els, and when I do, its mostly me simping for grandiel. But like man, the main story with Cindy and Klye is just so...bittersweet and sad for me.

[yandere-wishes]

｡⸝❀Desert Rose ❀⸜｡

𐙚 Yandere! Paul Muad'Dib Atreides x Reader x Yandere! Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Plot: You miss the desert. Miss the sun and the sand and the place where they buried your heart. So you run and pray that they won't catch you. 

⁀➷Warnings: Yandere behavior, obsessive tendencies blood and gore, bloodplay, knifeplay, injuries, Feyd being Feyd. Paul is high on spice for 60% of the story. Part two will be much more fluffy. 

The thing they don't tell you about the desert is that it's alive. A breathing creature with feelings and a beating heart.~💜

There's blood on the Sietch floor, red and thick and sacrilegious. 

You thought you had run far enough, fast enough. You thought you had escaped. 

How terrifying it is to be betrayed by that which you love most. How terrifying it is when you've forgotten how to harmonize with that which love most. 

That applies to the desert.

That applies to people too. 

There's something about the sun that's never been more poetic. It's harsh in its lashes, a cruel master, reminding you of what you'd been born into. It beats down something terrible and you can't help but suppress the frantic giggle that escapes your dry lips."You're so mean" you mumble, the glimmers muddle your focus. You see silhouettes of blue-eyed warlords and tar-painted gladiators. Feel phantom kisses rummage across the hollow of your bones. 

All of this is too familiar.

It makes you sick. 

Back then your father had reveled in Muad'Dib's coming. Proud to meet a warrior such as he. He'd spent hours refining his war plans, polishing his battle tactics. It's always such a strange site to see excitement in such a strict man. 

He introduced himself as destiny's child when he arrived. Dissolved and dehydrated with curls coated in sand. He was the desert's golden boy sent to fulfill every prophecy you'd ever been told. 

And yet, to you, he'd simply looked like just another heartthrob.

Just another boy's name to whisper to your friends during blasphemous games under the starry night sky. He had been no different than any tribal leader or warrior's son. That was truly such a miraculous time, back when such an atrocious thing had been merely a girlhood toy. 

Your father hadn't proposed marriage or alliances. That's not the Freman way, not during war. That doesn't stop the renegade gaze you've felt since he arrived. There's something stalking the desert, something too powerful to contain. You feel its chill, like the space between breaths before the breaching of the shai hulud. 

"You can call me Paul..." 

Lisan Al Gaib

The desert is a cacophony of dreams and nightmares. Deadly once the blood-deep navigation atrophies from constant complacency. You try to remember the prom of each foot. When to straighten, when to bend. Each step feels like treading through a mirage, murky and viscous. Too thick, too loose, you think you might sink. Fall through a false bottom into something great and endless. 

There is no bottom, no end. 

Only darkness, vast and perpetual. 

You wonder if that's what it feels like to be swallowed by a sandworm. If there is security in its infinite stomach. If it's better than the Arrakeen Palace. Daunting, soulless structure, home to monsters and killers. 

The sand grows thin. 

It's always the thinnest nearest a Sietch.

You made it...

You wonder why it had all felt so gruesome, so unholy. Paul's cacoon of naivety was breached, its remnants nesting underneath his feet, their spines snapping with each ground-quaking step he took. Arrakis had given birth to something monstrous, something ravenous. Yet all you had seen was a youthful face that tells not of horrors or suffering. It only promises freedom. 

Freedom was supposed to taste sweet, satisfying. The first sip from a childhood oasis. And you guess it had, for a little while. Before the realizations set in. Anyone who so openly grants freedom can take it away too. 

Paul inhales the reverence of the crowd. Savors the saccharine taste of victory on his tongue, before he spits out the essence of his hatred. Watching the blood scorch away under the desert sun. 

He swears he sees the sand dunes bow from the corner of his eye, they're towering magnificently bestowing something lethal onto him. Something they've yearned for, something fragile, something ancient. He deems it responsibility, duty, divinity and spins it into an enamelware crown.

Paul had become king. Not emperor, not sovereign, not overlord. Not yet at least. He's not the boy-prince from a distant planet anymore either. There no longer exists a boyhood carved of temperamental weathers and jagged salt-covered rocks. No more fairy tales of great dukes fighting bulls by the seaside and young princes running off on fighter jets to save mystical witches. There is only the sand and the giants underneath it, only a prophecy cracked whose ichor covers him in gold and stardust. 

He is Muad'Dib, savoir of Dune. 

Paul's eyes rummage through the crowd. Hungry, desperate

seeking out something, someone whose devotion does not show. 

He memorizes the scowl on your face, the dip of your lips. How he longs to feel them under his thumb. 

Duels concluded in death. When the ground has been fed its blood depts. When Jannah and Jahannam are granted another soul. That is when the victor arises. Duels end in death, in a chipped knife and a broken body on the floor. 

This one did not...

The memory still haunts you. 

Not in its breach of rite.

Nor its contradictions to morality.

But in what comes after.

The fear of the thing that was allowed to live...

Paul hadn't killed Feyd. Beaten, mauled, tamed. But not killed.

There is a rostrum made of sand and burnt bones. It was meant to serve as a victory throne, a symbol of a war and a revolt. You aren't so sure about that anymore. Not when it's being desecrated, by a survivor of the very thing it vowed to eradicate. Atop the dias, Paul stands, fingers swathed tightly around a pale, maimed wrist. The crowd stares, speechless as the prophetic son appoints a battered and bleeding Harkonnen Na-baron as his aid, his duke.  

Feyd-Rautha is all jet blacks and blood reds. His eyes hold daggers, impaling anyone who dares to look into them. You can not fathom why Paul, the one who promised a paradise and an end to the Harkonnen oppression would do such a thing. You never thought him holy, you didn't consider him cruel either. 

Paul hands over the spice trade to Feyd. He speaks of concentrated zones away from life. Somewhere deep and forgotten. He says "virtuous" as if it's a sermon only he can comprehend. "We need the funds, we need to rebuild, to fight. The spice is valuable and it will not hinder the awakening of Dune. My cousin will oversee its harvest and trade. The finances will be brought back to Arrakis, back to the Freman."

Maybe it's sorrow, a slithering nuance that won't leave. Maybe it's guilt twice folded and misplaced. Desperation for a kinsmanship

with a family, he had thought all lost. The way he looks at Feyd speaks of hope and trust and everything else a little boy feels when he's dragging his friend by the hand through a forest made of splendor and ideation. But Paul isn't a little boy anymore and Feyd has never been naught save a killer. And you, you can't help but notice how the Muad'dib begins to lose his golden hue. 

The Sietch is cavernous, domed ceiling that expands into the rocks and sandy tiles that stretch as far as the eye can see. Unaltered spice particles dance in the gentle filtered rays of the sun. It feels like home. Like freedom and paradise and everything else those two men had stripped you of. Your body slumps by one of the etched walls. Awaiting your fellow Freman to find you. 

There is a stiffness in the Freman, an elegance that must be mastered. You'd once thought it inherited, a mere bone structure passed on from mother to child. You're not so sure anymore. The stiffness reverberates off the Sietch walls, it's obvious now that it's never been about straight spines and high-held heads. It's the ideals, the loyalties that Fremen carve into their souls. Sooner or later someone will inform the king of where his darling hides. 

All of Arrakis knows who you belong to. 

One of the older women tunnels water down your throat, she cradles your head and shushes you when you try to speak. She spills advice, motherly advice, into your veins. Telling you of how blessed you are to be chosen by the Lisan Al Gaib and his blood. Her embrace is a vice, coddling suffocating and not at all unpleasant. There is a sleek comfort between the witherd silk of her chador. It heartens fatigue residing stubbornly between your bones. It causes your eyes to fade and your mind to race. You forgot the terrors that lay outside, the advancing menace carrying crystalknifes and a voice that shakes worlds. Darkness beckons, a welcomed change. For the first time in months, you feel safe...

You are still a Freman, born of sand and spice. There is a future somewhere with palm trees and rosa persica. You intend to find it, to hold it between your hands running tired fingers over soft cloud-light edges. Arrakis has stood for longer than most planets have existed. You refuse to abandon its fate to a spice addict and a manic.

It's obvious, isn't it?

Maybe it always was...

Arrakeen palace is shaped like a heart, something eternal ungraved. It was young when you first marched through its grand gates. It had felt no less threatening than the sandworms beneath your feet. The spice that flew through the halls was suffocating, a distant, permutated relative of the elixir that had raised you. 

Paul's chancery is something empty, a cut out of Kaahgel masquerading as a citadel of dominance and perspicuity. It, much like the rest of the palace is novice and new. Paul sits in an awkwardly placed plush parlor chair, one retrieved from Caladan no doubt. He squirms in his seat as if his body has too many angles to fit properly in the rounded chair. He's far too accustomed to soft sands and jagged boulders. To sitting cross-legged on something loose and malleable. This luxury is unwelcomed, uncomfortable. You only notice Feyd when his demonic eyes suddenly land on you. He's languidly draped on the carpeted floor. His back half propped up by a quarter-painted wall. He's feeding slices of fruit into his mouth, savering the nick of the knife along his tongue. 

They look so innocent. Sinless, carless little boys playing in a sanctuary fort. Hiding from life and its crushing expectations.

Paul follows his cousin's gaze, he's out of his seat and across the room before you have time to knock. You note the blackness under Paul's eyes, how the synthetic blue feels distant and sunken. Almost as if they're looking at you from meters inside a cave. He's wandering through the twilight of exhaustion. Paradying awakeness like a lost bat caught in the afternoon sun. He's only surviving on artificial energy from the spice he so readily consumes. 

There is an exhilarating lilt in the timber of his voice. A galvanization in the way your name spills from between his lips. "What brings you here?" Paul's fingers dance across your shoulders, gripping them as one does their favorite toy. His eyes hold a fragile reverence, something unstable, denating with the slightest breath. "Lord Usul..." you begin, eyes bouncing between the sandy beiges of the walls. "You don't need to be so formal. Just say my name, like the first time we met." His nails start to dig into your arms, a jovian strength only a divine may possess. You don't remember leaving a deep impression. 

"Paul, I-I need to talk to you about..." Your vision cuts to Feyd, a hidden flare penetrates his legs, you don't dare look the Harkonnen in the eyes. He's far too feral for such raw exhibitions of hate. Yet you want him to feel your abhorrence, your detest. Paul understands, he knows what you're going to say before you've even finished rehearsing in your head. "Feyd doesn't mind, you can talk freely in his presence, I promise you, he won't bite." You swallow the need to argue, to protest, he bites, he definitely bites, and lacerates and kills...

It's easy to fall between the crevices of his voice, to allow the gentle nudges to sway your decisions for you. You wonder if the words coming from your mouth are even truly your own. They had sounded so absolute in your head. So firm. Now they sound dented, feeble, like a child begging to remain awake. You tell the king of how you disapprove of the spice trade, that it should be ceased. Its termination can only benefit the war, hindering the galactical navigation of your enemies. Paul listens with a distracted sort of attendance. His eyes melt into you, tracing your features with a delicate precision. You feel like a map, laid bare, feeding him information. Information he ignores, opting to busy himself with tracing continents and oceans. "Paul please listen" you beg. "Please". You notice an ignited flicker in his eyes, snapping him out of his lucid trance. "You know, since you feel so strongly about...everything. Maybe, maybe you should stay here. With us. Be the queen or duchess or whatever. You can help us rebuild. You can-" 

"What?" Your body jerks back, his fingers don't leave your forearms, pulling you back, closer. "Lord Usual...Paul...what are-" Something slithers between your bones, your skin, your muscles. Pushing past the cracks and sliding inside you. His mind grasps yours, echoing his desire, mapping out its constellation between your crux. 

Paul feels in blues, blues that make up the nuance between worlds. 

The ocean behind the largest dune

The lake beneath the greatest mountain.

The lamination of spice over one's eyes. 

It somehow ends with you. Covered in a color that mimics ambitions and dreams and something practically attainable. 

You feel him reach out, pushing you back into the physical world. Away from the luminous tints and flickering landscapes. 

"I'm saying that everything I do reminds me of you. It's hard not to dedicate every single breath to your memory." Paul's eyes are blown wide, there's a lament carved into his voice. He's pleading, desperate, like trying to chisel rock with a pebble. You don't like where this is going, don't like the mania, the love that's painted so vividly on his face. Your stomach churns, false ecstasy pumping in agonizing doses. This is wrong, you shouldn't feel flattered, gleeful. This isn't a miracle or a blessing. It's a curse, you know this, you have to run to escape. But something in you freezes, a sickly silver of devotion, of habit, a tradition force-fed into your soul keeps your legs stiff and still. 

Devotion is such a slippery thing. Always so close to suffocating. Sometimes all it's good for is a knife that kills. Just a grain of salt in a pulsing wound. 

Your eyes flicker across the room, trying to look at something, anything but him, anything but the Muad'dib who could make you grovel at his feet like a doll without even opening his mouth. It's only in your frantic search for an affix point, that you notice the beast is missing. His dominion left empty. You feel a chill in the room. Something stalking closer, something lethal and rogue. You scream shriveling into Paul's arms as someone grips your waist from behind, encaging you. "You were right cousin, she's as beautiful as you described...and as brave." Your breath hitches, he's touching you. Your body twitches as a cold sweat breaks. "Paul" you plead looking up into his electric blue eyes. He only smiles, contorting his features into something they're not, something soft and arrogant. You see triumph shimmer through his mind. He's won a game you didn't know you were playing. Crowned victor by fate and circumstance and...

and prophecy.

Paul cradles your cheek in his hand, tilting your head up to look at you. 

 "The first time I set eyes upon you, I knew you were the girl in my dreams. The desert rose beckoning me to Arrakis, to Dune. Don't you see, we've been bound by fate?" 

No. 

Feyd slowly licks the shell of your ear, he hums in satisfaction, an action you didn't know could be laced with so much malice. He murmurs something into your jugular, something too violent to decode. 

No.

Please no. 

It's easier to love than to be loved. 

There's a jolt that rings you awake, something violent crawling under your skin. You feel it before you witness it, witness the cold and loneliness not viable in the desert temples. 

The halls scream in silence, 

Hollow, employed out. 

"Hello?" The eerie reverberation of your words leaves you shivering. Scraping along the walls, tumbling into doorless rooms trying to find someone, anyone. You can't remember the last time you'd been alone. 

Utterly alone.

You didn't notice it at first. Didn't notice the unnatural stillness and the deafening silence. there is no life here, but it takes a practically mangled corpse for you to look down at the floor. 

There's blood on the Sietch floor, red and thick and sacrilegious. 

You thought you had run far enough, fast enough. You thought you had escaped. You turn and you run, back from that which you came, feet thundering across the sand-dusted floor. You don't know where you're going, why even run? Helplessness swells inside you, coiling in intricate knots. Only to snap violently when you cross the third threshold. 

The corpses lie at his feet. your frenzied brain tries to count them, only going up to eight before it forgets what comes after. There is more, more bodies, more blood...more bones? But you can't focus on anything else except the glabrous man standing over them, knife pointed downwards, dripping into an endless sea of red. 

Your father used to tell you tales of rivers made of blood. Of mad men claiming divine crusades as they fed bodies into the endless stream. 

You never thought you'd witness it.

It shouldn't feel as conflicting as it does. 

"Darling..." Feyd's voice is gravel on gravel. Rough and coursed. It grinds against your skin reawakening every half-healed scar. 

"no, dear maker, please no" Feyd's gaze rakes over you, lingering on every detail. Toying and probing, much like a predator sizing up its frightened prey. "I missed you" his voice is purely threatening, mocking, he wants you back, needs you back. You can't be forgiven for this deliberate offense.

You try to bolt passed him, it's like a gallon of adrenaline has been shot straight into your chest. There's a scream in the air, you're not sure who it belongs to. you make it to the hallway leading to the contraction arena. Where the bearers of the water of life are nursed. You can see the stone-carved stairs and someone sitting there...

The ground slips beneath your feet, the red liquid having leaked under your soles. In the next breath, you're plunging into redness, shrouded and engulfed and bathed in the blood of your own kind. It feels warm and safe and disgusting. Like watching the stars of your favorite constellation collapse within themselves. It's a destructive kind of comfort, one that only ends in pain and bruises and fractured bones in places you can never wholly identify.

You're drowning, 

the more you thrash the harder it gets to stand. 

You feel the blood entangling you, weaving around your body like a net. 

and then like a shadow, he's over you. 

Looming with the promise of pain, of the misery of the savagery only he can offer.

"Feyd..." his name is razorblades upon your tongue. Your eyes catch his, distant voids colliding. Since when did you start looking into his eyes? When did the torture become worth it? His fingers ensnare your jaw, pushing cheeks and bones together. Feyd straddles your body, knees splashing into the blood. He tugs your head forward violently, before pounding it onto the floor. You moan out in pain a mangled, distorted noise. He only chuckles. Before repeating the motion. "You ran from us, you left us. I should kill you here and now. Bleed you out with the rest of these traitors!" it's hard not to notice the pain his voice harbors, odd how even a monster like Feyd can have his feelings hurt. He lifts his knife, wrapping both hands around the handle before plunging it into your abdomen. You choke, on a shriveled scream or a throat filled with blood you do not know. The colors are dulling and pulsating, somehow too dark and too bright at the same time. Everything feels like it's made of flowing water. Precious streaming water. You can feel the throbbing at the back of your skull, you feel the giddy patter of your heart, and the nervous ticks of your hips under Feyd. 

Feyd...

Has he always been so beautiful?

Your body feels so hot and your mind feels so distant. 

Everything feeds into his endless beauty. 

Why are your lips pulsing? 

your teeth sink in, trying to still the need to kiss. 

"What's wrong princess, trying to play innocent? I know your tricks."

Feyd traces your lips with his. Fingers snake into your hair, pulling at odd intervals. "my sweet stupid little girl" he whispers, a curse and a blessing. He sucks on your bottom lip biting it harshly. Slipping his tongue between your teeth. His kiss is possessive, and swallowing. You feel yourself sinking deeper, wanting him to consume you whole. When he pulls back you feel like you can't breathe, you only existed within his kiss. It's the last thing binding you to this world. 

But then his head dips down. Leaving open-mouthed kisses upon the gushing injury. Feyd drinks deeply from your open wound, ravaging the blood and pushing in silver of a forgotten moonlight. The way his tongue laps at the gaping hole and torn ligament sends a shutter up your spin. When he lifts his head again you watch mesmerized by the way your essence drips from his lips. He kisses you again ferocious and deep and all conusiming. 

You feel so lost and so found.

Grounded and afloat. 

It's only when a scream, a familiar one, in a distance distorted sort of way, rings across the hall that you start to pull away. You push yourself up, palms slipping on the liquid life. From behind Feyd, you notice a man and a women. Young, scared. There is revulse in their blue eyes, yet you can't navigate its direction. You're sure if you weren't bleeding out you could identify them, you're sure you knew them in this lifetime. You hear the blood gushing, hear the crisp whistle of the blade as it slices through flesh. 

Once

Twice. 

Only then does the alluring migraine sober. The metallic tang of blood wafting through the air makes you sick. It's odd how the repugnant scent had alluded you until now.  Even if you'd been lying right in it. You wonder if such a scent would bother them. You doubt it, they tend to revel in the red glory and its hypnotizing associations. 

"Took you long enough, cousin" Feyd's head is turned watching as Paul steps past the corpses. His eyes are vibrant, a sapphire blue that cuts through time and space. He kneels next to you, gaze devouring you in your pitiful state. "why did you run?" he is cold, hurt. His blue eyes betray a degree of relief hidden by a defrauding glower. "I-we love you, you mean everything to us." You look away too exhausted to put up an argument. "I missed being home." You mumble. You swore for a minute something akin to comprehension ripples through the air. You're too delusional to believe in anything solid anymore. But maybe Paul understands, maybe he yearns for the desert too. Maybe he'll go easy on you...

Paul's fingers glide across your stomach, scattering the dust particles that have landed on your still form. The light from the high windows glimmers off the three of you painting something holy, something right, in another world, in another lifetime. When he sees the wound Feyd created he chuckles. " Stars Feyd, at least try to keep her alive." Paul's nails gently rack across the torn ligament, idly playing with the loose skin. Feyd laughs deep and psychotic -is it wrong to say you missed it?- "I couldn't help myself, you should have seen her. Eyes blown wide covered in blood. Stars I just want-" you interrupt him with a low moan. Paul rubs his calloused thumb over your wound, soothing the cut before he presses down. Hard.  

 when he hears the moan he presses harder. Making you wither and hiss. "This is a punishment, (y/n), you're not supposed to be enjoying it." His fingers slither into the open wound, stretching out the ligament " You jolt and holler and cry, begging him to stop. "You're my oasis, the only thing I love in this world. But you ran. YOU LEFT US." His words glitch and crack, the voice shining through penetrating you with a knife seeped in guilt. "I'm sorry." you choke out, only to be rewarded by another harsh cut from Feyd's knife. "I'm the daughter of the desert..." you protest, tears slipping past your hooded eyes. "You're our lover" Feyd barks defensively, aggravated. When the tears begin to leak the pain stops. "Don't waste your water" Paul mutters, wiping away a tear and sucking it between his lips savoring your delicate taste. 

Paul cradles your bleeding head in his lap, lowering his to kiss your crimson-soaked lips, "I love you" he mumbles against you, trying to press the core of his words into you. Making you feel him, making you believe. Feyd tucks your hair out of your face. Slowly pulling you up by your shoulders. The thin smile he offers is such a rare sight it makes your heart explode.

Why did you run away?

Why did you leave the ones you love most?

Your heart is laying on a bed of nails.

Somehow that feels fitting. 

Feyd pulls off the top of his stillsuit, discarding the armor-like pieces. Slowly he lays in the gore, he pulls you over him. His motions slow, mesmeric. You follow just another wave trapped in the current. You're so torn and hurt, broken in ways that can never properly heal. You let it happen, it's easier this way. Slowly he licks his blade clean of your blood, he grabs your wrist places the hilt in your hands, and tucks your fingers over it. "Hold on tight," he advises as he draws your hand back and brings the knife down between his defined muscles. The moan he lets out is profane, it makes you feel euphoric, filled to the brim with the merriment of guilt. Feyd kisses you again, his tongue pushes past your teeth, his conquest of you feels Harkonnen in every way. His tongue down your throat feels like a heavenly bliss. From behind Paul breaks the back of your stillsuit, he licks a strip up and down your spine. You moan into the kiss with Feyd. Slowly Paul starts to whisper firefly kisses into each vertebrae. Sucking melodies into the frail bones. His teeth snick between the cartilage, all scorpion stings, and cobra bites. It feels so right.

Feyd is a cannibalistic star, relishing in the way your wounds bleed into his. He feeds off your pain, feeds off the pain you grant. He's delusional with a cosmic kind of lust. Pulling celestials from their homes to burn into his own body. He loves you, loves how you penetrate him with a knife clad in anathema and adherence too turbulent to understand. 

Paul is, in many ways Feyd's opposite and in many others his equal. The quintessence of the path to hell being paved with good intentions. His kisses are the desert's curse and it's love. He's an entire solar system revolving around the only two people he has left to love. 

Slowly the world grows dark. You feel it hard to remain awake. "Sweet dreams princess" you hear Paul whisper as Feyd shuffles under you. You fall into his expecting arms. Safe and strong. The day has been so long and bootless. so tiring. so vexing. 

Yet somehow, in the endlessness of the moment, it matters all so little. Paul is here and he can hang the stars upon the night sky. Feyd is here and he can slaughter the universe and call it entertainment. You are safe with them, safe and happy and satisfied. 

ngl this is the longest tag list I've ever gotten. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!💜💜 Let me know if you want to be added to future taglists

@deertaur , @fragileheartbeats , @yandere-romanticaa , @galaxyquirks , @feedmestraycats , @peachysunrize , @slytherinholland , @missbeeentertainment , @moonchild-artemisdaughter , @shiranai-atsune , @therealoutereffect , @frenchgirlinlondon , @purplefrogella , @yzuposts , @whiteoakoak , @abundance-of-fic-reblogs , @pomtherine , @goldenatreides , @sorianis , @howibecameabadassbitch , @sansaorgana

[rin-bellatrix]

Oasis

"When everything's meant to be broken, I just want you to know who I am." - Goo Goo Dolls

August finds himself in the middle of the Pandoran desert, left to clean up his business' loose ends. Though, he's not as alone as he once thought, coming face to (pretty) face with the grifter who stole his heart. It seems that Sasha has some of her own loose ends to clean up as well.

I love Sasha and August ok

I'm firmly in the belief that August needs to reclaim his full redemption arc (he started towards the end of Tales and well, we just never got to see the end result 🤷🏽‍♀️)

So here's my first "saugust" piece! (Pls tell me if there's a better ship name for them out there 💀) I've written them as bg characters in my rhyiona fics, bc we love a big ol' happy family affair, but this is their first solo spotlight on my blog 😌💕

they need more recognition, they're kinda like Bonnie and Clyde, love my lil outlaw couple 💖 so stinkin' cute 🥰 (not to be confused with everyone's favorite villain couple, jackisha, who I've also written for 🤭)

Ahem, anyway~ this is part one, so this is unfinished. More to come from this particular story ✨️

Also. Am I posting this in the last hour of the month of August, instead of getting my shit together and posting it sooner...? Don't worry about it~ ☺️

Enjoy~ 🧡💜

It was always sunny on Pandora. Or at least, it seemed to be whenever August had to venture out of the dark shithole that was Hollow Point. The white sub-giant star that was Pandora's sun seemed to be on full blast today, the curve of the horizon a warbled, dancing edge in this heat. Sweat rolled down the side of his face and gathered at his jawline before spilling off in incessant drops. He shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes before leaning into his truck bed and grabbing two fistfuls of rough canvas.

He tossed another burlap covered carcass onto the small pile of bodies, grunting with its weight. His Ma might be gone, but that just left the family business up to him. Which meant cleaning up the mess when a rival gang thought that they could prove themselves bigger and badder. Not a chance. But it was best to dump the bodies farther away from the entrance to Hollow Point to avoid scavengers somehow finding a way to spill into his town. That was the last thing he needed.

Dusting his hands off, he slammed the trunk door closed and ripped an old rag out of his back pocket. Mopping the perspiration from his neck and face (minding his piercings), he squinted up at the ball of fire in the sky and cursed its heat. What he wouldn't give for an ice cold drink right about now, he was fucking parched.

Stuffing the damp rag back into his pocket, he rounded his truck to head to the driver's side. His boots kicking up sand, his mind already focused on securing a cold shower as soon as he got back home. Gripping the handle, he pulled and yanked the door open, one foot on the step bar ready to hop in, before he looked up and froze.

"Thirsty?" Sasha chimed, sitting relaxed behind the wheel, dangling a cold bottle that was dripping with condensation.

The sight alone had him wondering if this was a mirage, if the heat had really gotten to him and made him hallucinate this as his own personal oasis. But then her scent of orange blossoms hit him, and he took a step back in shock. The sweet scent that sometimes haunted his dreams was a startling contrast to the freshly decomposing bodies that he just unloaded from the back of his truck.

How did she even get here without him knowing...?

She was as beautiful as ever, maybe even more so if that was possible. Her locks were pulled back in a sleek style, much like the last time he saw her during that whole vault debacle. Her outfit looked clean and classy, a stark contrast to his current state of sweaty and sandy. She wore reflective sunglasses that kept him from seeing her eyes, only his own warped image staring back at him.

When she arched a pretty brow, waiting for a response, August had to reel himself in. "What the fuck are you doin' in my truck?" No one could ever say that he didn't have a way with words.

"Is that the greeting I get? After I came all this way to bring you a nice refreshing drink, because I know you always leave to come here without one."

It shouldn't move him that she remembered his dump sight. It should mean nothing that she remembered he always forgot to pack a drink. It wasn't a big deal that she came to drop off a cold drink. She was a con artist, this is what she did. It's how she wormed her way into his heart the first time. He told himself this, and tried to ignore the way his heart beat a little faster at the implication that she still cared about him.

Did she ever really care about him...?

"What's it to you? If I forget to hydrate, how's it any of your business?" He glowered at her, old hurt resurfacing as if it were just yesterday.

She watched him from behind her sunglasses, quiet as she struggled to find a new lie to fixate on.

"Listen, I don't care, get the fuck out of my seat and go back to wherever you came from. You've got nothin' here, unless ya want me to put a bullet in your brain."

Sasha pursed her lips, her free hand settling firmly on the steering wheel. "I'm gonna drive you back." When he opened his mouth to argue, she continued. "I just want to talk." When he remained suspicious, she reached up to remove her sunglasses, meeting his eyes clearly. "Please?"

Her eyes were so clear, the light jade so beautiful with her complexion. His mind told him to watch his heart, not to fall for her tricks. But his heart told him to go along with what she wanted, simply because it was her who asked. August considered himself a strong man - an intelligent man - but in the face of the woman he loved, he crumbled far too easily.

He grunted as he slammed the door closed, rounding to the passenger side of his own damn truck. He hopped in, the cab rocking with his momentum, the door shutting behind him as he huffed.

Sasha held out the bottle again, and he watched as a drop of water raced down the side and gathered at the bottom before splattering across his leather seat. He looked up at her and met her eyes again, ignoring the excitement that wanted to bubble to the surface.

"Is it poisoned?"

The pretty grifter frowned, before twisting the cap off and taking a swig, once again holding it out to him. "That answer your question, smart ass?"

He hesitated before taking the bottle from her. Glancing down as she shifted the car into drive and pulled off, he noticed the faintest glossy shine of her lip gloss on the lip of the bottle. As the truck rumbled through the Pandoran desert, he recalled how slick her lips were when she would kiss him after applying it. They way she giggled when he pulled back and groused about the texture. How she would joke with him, arms looped around his neck, if she should withhold her kisses then. And he would snag her closer by her waist, pulling her into him and grumbling a complaint against her wet lips as he kissed her through her laughter.

He eyed the residue of it on his bottle now. Then, he lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, imagining that he could feel a phantom press of her lips against his own. It quenched him like nothing else.

☆

TBC

☆

☆ borderlands masterlist ⋆ main masterlist ☆

©rin-bellatrix 2024

[lumpyorganelle]

Heartbreak & losses quotes pt.2

Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?” ― Virgil, The Aeneid

“How starved you must have been that my heart became a meal for your ego.” ― Amanda Torroni

“every loss, every mistake, was seared into her soul, creating a different kind of tattoo, one made from rage and abandonment, heart break and tears” ― Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

“He started to estrange her… And they became strangers Who knew each other's heart, So broken as they drifted apart.” ― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“Did the destruction of one dream leave a vacuum that required filling with another? Is a broken heart more vulnerable?” ― Cinda Williams Chima, The Exiled Queen

“Thoughts are as simple as the process…a message from the soul; conveyed through the heart; received in the mind” ― Jeremy Aldana

“She ached so badly to be held it felt like a sickness had invaded her muscles and bones. As usual, her own arms provided little comfort.” ― Helen Hoang, The Kiss Quotient

“When the heart is down and the soul is heavy, the eyes can only speak the language of tears” ― Ikechukwu Izuakor

“Then I feel I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A faint cry; I can't figure out if it's mine or if it's echoing the other half of my broken heart—the one beating in his chest.” ― Aura Biru, We Are Everyone

“There has to be a whole other level of pain when your soul gets ripped in half.” ― Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Back

“Those words created in my heart and stomach a physical effect so sickening, so painful, that I have never since doubted that these vibrational frequencies traveling upon air can land a knock-out punch more excruciating than any fist or weapon.” ― Erin Zelinka, On Love and Travel: A Memoir

“My wounded heart, too burdened by scars, struggles even to fathom the concept of love, let alone embrace its gentle touch.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“An Ocean full of thoughts, a broken heart, and a tragic shore of insane storms. I am trapped in a body that is not my own, a world that's too alien for my soul and an evil wounding my heart.” ― Sapppho Khizar

“When stranded in a desert, and you’re dying of thirst, a mirage is the cruelest trick the mind can play. And when you are a stranger among regular folks, and you’re in search of love, a disillusioned or misguided heart is the cruelest thing.” ― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“That was the end of the integrity of their love. The succeeding days were a shambles of falseness and hypocrisy, mingled with her tears and moments of animal passion to which she abandoned herself with a greed made indecent by the hollowness of their days.” ― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“…my father explained to me in a hushed tone that in times of extreme stress or trauma, humans of all ages will resort back to the fetal position, because it is an instinctual way to protect all our vital organs and because it reminds us of the safest place we all began, thee womb.” ― Lucy Keating, Dreamology

“This was just the world. You trusted people, you loved them, you offered them the dignity of your time and the intimacy of your thoughts and the fraility of your hope and they either accepted it and cared for it or they rejected it and destroyed it and in the end, none of it was up to you. This was just what you got. Heartbreak was inevitable. Disappointment assured.” ― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Paradox

“Being of heart resists no hurt, they savor poison like fine wine. The benevolent takes no notice of betrayal, while the somnolent just moan and whine.” ― Abhijit Naskar, Yarasistan: My Wounds, My Crown

“How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.” ― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

[evita-shelby]

Only in dreams

Super angsty, no happy ending

I have done the impossible, i have killed Eva!!!

Robert Fischer x Eva Smith , au ending for Love's a state of mind

Cw: death, dreaming, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, grief

"I don't know who I am anymore." His voice was barely audible.

Robert’s long forgotten the difference between reality and this dream he cannot wake from.

He threw his wallet somewhere in the dream before this one and never found it again. He hadn’t wished to; everything here was perfect. Or at least it had been before that hollowness began to consume him.

“That’s okay. Let’s find you together.” Eva ---who morphs between the woman who grew old and lived to raise their kids with him and the femme fatale who seduced him that night--- takes his hand and leads him out the safe he once encountered in a dream.

Robert Fischer moves in reverse, his fantasies in this plane of consciousness he built himself playing before his eyes.

His advanced age melts into middle age as he leaves the idyllic home in which he lived his twilight years and goes into the house he saw himself raising his children into adulthood and before he knows it, Robert is as young as he had been when he became addicted to this dream.

None of it is real, not the little boy playing in the garden, nor the proud grandmother holding her namesake nor the woman pulling him away from the illusion he so badly wanted in his reality.

In truth, Eva had died one rainy morning when a drunk driver hit the cab she and Uncle Peter were on. When Cobal realized their money on Don Cobb had been wasted because Maurice Fischer always has an ace up his leave, they knew the only way to truly dissolve his corporation was by killing Eva and Uncle Peter.

The same year he lost his father and was subjected to an inception against his will, he had lost his wife and child.

“You’re not her.” the CEO of Fischer Morrow looks at the woman who is now wearing clothes Eva would never be caught wearing as they stop on the sidewalk of heavy traffic meant to kill them and send them back into the other two dreams.

“I know, I’m sorry. Eva never deserved to die like that.” The mirage says now with a voice he’s only heard once as it pushes him onto the street.

Eames, the Chameleon who impersonated Uncle Peter to force him into undoing his father’s empire for personal gain. Yes, it was him, it had to be him. Eames was the only person alive who could ever replicate Eva.

He had remained an odd fixture in their life after Eva cornered him at the airport that day. A friend of hers from her time abroad who she’d kill for Robert if need be.

Figures he’d be the one who’d be called to wake him up from Rob’s attempted suicide.

“Why don’t you just let me stay here?” Robert asks conjuring the woman who now only lives in his dreams.

“Eva wouldn’t want me to, Fischer.” Eames regains his true form forcing Robert’s trained subconscious to kill them both even in this fourth layer of his mind.

From then on its easier to wake up, his trained subconscious acts on instinct and wastes no time in killing them a thousand times over. Once again, Robert wakes up in a reality he doesn’t want to live.

Rob isn’t in his bed in his apartment that still looks as if his dead wife will return home any minute. Perhaps it was better he wasn’t, too many memories to the point Robert decided the best way to go was dreaming of the life they wanted together.

“How did you know it was me?” Eames asks knowing Robert’s never caught on to his tricks during their first dream share.

“Eva never wore pink.”

[oldestenemy]

“No.”

And the wizard steps back.

Away from Spider.

Back into the swirling sands.

There has been enough destruction today.

They have had enough destruction for a lifetime.

They cannot do this anymore. They cannot end everything with a blade and a spell and the itching of power through their veins. They won’t. They refuse. Damn Spider. Damn Raven. They just want to put the worlds right, hold what little they have together.

Someone else can take it.

They cannot carry this anymore.

It’s too heavy.

“You’re going to back down now! When we have him weakened!” Mellori shouts, marching past them towards Spider. “Mother was right about you, I should have listened sooner.”

Mother.

Mother?

“Oh come on, like you actually believed Baba Yaga was my real mother—or that Spider was the only one who could have children?”

And suddenly.

Horribly.

It all.

Makes.

Sense.

The feathers. The Auroracle. Baba Yaga trying to keep her away from the fight. The constant push towards Spider. The wizard feels as though the world has dropped out from beneath their feet. The sand must be pooling away from them. Opening up to swallow them whole. How had they missed it? How could they have been so stupid?

“I’m here because mother knew you would fail. She told me all about you, she made sure I was with you, in case you couldn’t finish the job!” Mellori sounds ragged and, more hurt than angry. “But I will—whatever the cost!” And of course, Spider had been counting on that. Had been counting on the daughter of Raven to do what she must, to act as she would.

Fight snaps back into their system a moment too late.

It is Khrysalis again. It is watching Dyvim fall and being able to do nothing.

It is standing in the Zocalo and making eye contact with Pacal and knowing they cannot save him.

When it’s done.

When Mellori and Spider are gone and the sands of time are restored.

The wizard does not return to the Arcanum.

They go to Grizzleheim.

They ask Baldur to take them across to the Fjord, and he does so without question. They run—frigid cold biting them after the heat of Mirage—to the tree where they had first seen Raven in her true form. And the tree is vacant. Branches empty. They take the steps down to the trunk two at a time, to find the sisters who had first helped them free Raven of her cage in the first place.

“Where is she.” The sisters cackle at them in response. A croaking cacophonous echo that does nothing to quell the rising tide of rage.

“Where is who, savior cub?” Urd asks, eyes full of malicious glee.

“Where is Raven, don’t make the mistake of talking me in circles—I have lost too much today to worry about where my limits lie.” It is half falsehood. Mostly bluff. They are dead walking at best right now. They have not slept in days. They are ragged and empty but raw anger has carried them this far, who could say how much farther it would go.

“The Lady Nightstar seeks her counterpart and her enemy.” Verdandi says, head cocking just slightly to one side. “Keep yourself to yourself, you are woven in now, there will be no saving you.”

And Skuld finishes, “You would do well to take your failures and move on. Enjoy what moments remain. The spiral wanes to minutes in the eyes of the Raven and the Spider. The storm they brew is stronger than the song, the winds will shake everything to an end.”

The wizard is shaking.

They want to scream.

They want, for a moment, to take their hurt out on this trio, these old hags who do nothing but watch and wait and ponder what has been, what is, what will be.

What won’t be.

“You’re wrong.” They have no energy to call to the words, so they fall hollow and shapeless and bitter. It doesn’t matter, none of this matters, “Tell me where she’s gone—where they’ve both gone—I need—”

“—what you need is to accept the Spiral’s course towards destruction.” Skuld tells them, eyes casting skyward.

“It has been this way since it was spun. From song and fragment and starlight.” Urd confirms, “This has always been the path. This will always be the path.”

Verdandi is the one watching them closest, “Disregard them,” she says “walk where you were always going to walk, where you are heading even without decision, what is left of the elements in your wake? What are you going to do now?”

Neither of the other two respond to those words, and the wizard questions if they even heard their sister speak. Or if for the moment each is too bound in their own time. Past, present, future. They stare back at Verdandi, the brown feathered raven, the present, the eyes on now. “Please.” The word is small, ripped raw from them without their input.

“Your allies know where she will go. We will not say, we cannot say, you know better than to ask.” They want to tell Verdandi that very clearly they do not, but it won’t help anything. “You are not to be here, not now. Go where you are meant, Wizard.”

Almost without needing to, they obey.

What else can they do?

What else have they ever done?

Read the whole series here <3

[toxicanonymity]

Rock Bottom Ch 1 - In the Womb of God

Words: 2.2k chapter, 22k+ overall.

Chapter Pairing: Corey Cunningham x Corey Cunningham; Corey Cunningham x Michael Myers (unconsummated)

Summary: Corey wakes up in the sewer and gets choked by Michael, which arouses something in him, in more than one way. He jerks off. This fic is from Corey's POV and he's obsessed with Michael, including sexually, but he is very into women as well (so is Michael).

Yeah, the chapter is named after a bible study book that came up in a reverse-image search looking for that gif of Corey's silhouette leaving the sewer

18+ Choking, jacking off, fantasizing TW: Brief reference to suicide-adjacent thinking

After leaving the Halloween Party and storming off from Allyson, Corey Cunningham was in a very bad place.  The party was the first time Corey got up the courage to go out in public and really let loose since before Jeremy Allen's accident.  For a moment on the dance floor, he wondered why he had waited so long to try living again.  Seconds later, he came face to face with Jeremy's mom, who cruelly reminded him he had no future worth living for, especially not in Haddonfield.  The light at the end of the tunnel had been a mirage.  Corey wouldn't be one to kill himself, but he was at the lowest of lows and didn't care if he lived or died.   

When Terry and his crew pulled over, Corey had nothing to lose and only knew he couldn't keep being the Haddonfield punching bag. When he plummeted off the bridge, he was already a shell of a man, worn down and hollowed out.  If evil was infectious, Corey's immune system was severely compromised as he lay unconscious and empty on the ground.

-

Corey had the kind of night where you wake up the next morning and just want to crawl in a hole, but when he woke up, he was already in one.   As he stirred and opened his eyes, he felt grime on his clothes and air on his skin where his jeans had torn.  He was damp from head to toe. Even his cotton underwear was slimy.  Corey reached in his pants and adjusted himself. 

Judging by the size of his member, he must have been freezing, yet he didn't feel cold.   He didn't feel anything.  Corey blinked for at least a minute, but nothing came into focus.  His mind flashed to his glasses, crushed by Terry on the side of the road.   Visually, Corey could only make out that he was surrounded by rock or concrete.  There were other clues though, like rats, and the plink of dripping water. He was underground. 

Despite the nasty circumstances, Corey felt sheltered and unseen, which was a best case scenario.  For Corey, to be seen was to be shamed or pitied.   Wherever he found himself now, there was a comfort to this void.  He felt unborn. Corey lay there on the ground until a dusty beam of light assaulted his eyes and stirred him back to reality. 

On one hand, the obvious thing to do would be to follow the light and climb out of the hole, but that would mean facing Haddonfield, which had already chewed him up and spit him out.  Instead, he felt drawn in the opposite direction, deeper into the dark.  It might hold rabid animals, jagged debris, or even a crackhead, but nothing that compared to the emotional hazards on the other side of the drain.  Corey would welcome whatever hazard lurked in the shadows.  If evil was infectious, his immune system was severely compromised. 

Corey struggled to his feet and surveyed the space.  Behind him, there was a perfect circle of light.  The plinking of water drops told him it was a metal drainage pipe.  The circle had opened into a rougher space where Corey woke up.  It felt like a cave.  Corey started hobbling toward the darker end of the space, holding his injured palm in his good hand and squinting in a fruitless effort to adjust his eyes. 

Still nothing came into focus, but there appeared to be crevasses in the walls, with an even darker void beyond them. There seemed to be no end in sight.  Corey tripped over something that made a hollow-sounding clatter.  He looked down, and his eyes betrayed him - it appeared to be a human jaw.   There was a similar clatter as he stepped forward.  Corey shuffled closer to the wall to help keep his bearings. 

As Corey inched close enough to hug the cool stone wall, out of nowhere, part of the wall seemed to lunge out, and a leathery human hand was firm around his throat.  Corey gagged as his whole body was yanked upward and toward the wall.    Corey’s lungs gasped for air and the soles of his shoes scraped the ground in search of footing. 

He reflexively wrapped his hand around the arm that held him, trying to tug it looser in search of room to breathe, but the grip only tightened.  With impossible strength, the leathered hand forced Corey close enough to the crevasse to see he was face to face with Michael Myers.  Corey continued to struggle for air, and now he couldn’t blink.  He felt penetrated by the eyes he could not see behind the mask. He stared into the mask and saw warm black holes with flickers of his own reflection.  He stopped struggling.   

Corey was dwarfed and consumed by Michael's presence.  It was a rush to yield control to something so powerful.  With Michael’s hand around Corey’s neck, and Corey’s face inches from Michael’s mask, his body was flooded with adrenaline and something he didn't yet understand.  Corey let himself change shape in Michael's hand, and his blood began to rush with new warmth and pleasure.  He was electrified.  His nipples and balls began to tingle, and his cock twitched.

The blurred mask sharpened into scratched, chiseled features.  Almost as soon as Corey had given in, Michael released him with a gentle shove.  Corey gasped, refilling his lungs with oxygen as Michael faded into the wall.  Regaining his balance and his breath, Corey expected to collapse from the exertion of his initial struggle, but instead his muscles surged with new life and his loins swelled with heat.   He braced himself there for a moment, hands on his knees, chest heaving, soaking up the energy that continued to vibrate through him.  

Part of Corey longed to stay underground, even back in Michael's grip, but a stronger part of him compelled him back toward the outside world.   Corey crawled through the round pipe and it expelled him into the homeless encampment yard where he was swiftly attacked by a hobo and fatally stabbed him in self defense.  

As Corey watched the life drain from the man, he felt the exact opposite of how he felt watching Jeremy’s blood leave his body a few years earlier.   He felt invigorated and empowered.  His transformation wasn’t just psychological - Miraculously, Corey could now see without his glasses, but even more surprising, he wasn’t afraid of being seen.  He didn't think about the past. He didn't want to disappear.  He wanted to take control.  

As he left the scene, Corey felt the ghost of that leathered hand on his throat and felt pangs of desire in his gut, chest, and taint.   His cock twitched again.  He remembered the way Allyson had looked at him hungrily the night before.  Corey had to have her, and his damp briefs began to strain, begging him to get on with it.  His hormones told him to go straight to Allyson but he was still coherent enough to know he'd have to shower first if he had any hope of bedding her.   Corey reluctantly started the walk home to Joan and Ronald's house instead.  

On the walk home, he tried to distract himself with efforts to piece together what happened the night before after Terry ran him off the road.   The back of his jeans and sweater were caked in mud, so he must have landed on his back, but he wasn't sore. The gash on his hand was ripped open too, and seeping something black - it didn’t hurt either. 

From the height of the bridge, he was lucky he was alive. Corey found himself hoping that Michael had brought him into his lair deliberately.  Michael Myers was a predator.  That would make Corey prey – a curious thing to want for oneself.  It was a foregone conclusion that Corey would return to the sewer, it was just a matter of when.  First, he wanted to make up with Allyson and fuck her brains out.  Another reason for going to Allyson? Conveniently, no one knew Michael better than her family.  

***

Joan was hysterical that Corey hadn't come home the night before, but Corey pushed past her on the stairs and ignored her completely for once, locking himself in the restroom.   For a moment, he could hear the muffled drone of Joan's crying outside the door, but it faded as he looked in the mirror. 

The man staring back at him was not the boy who got bullied by band kids.  Wilder curls framed darker eyes.   A gash adorned his hardened jaw.  His nostrils flared.  For all his efforts to calm himself on the walk home, his hard-on had returned and his need was surging.  

Corey resolved to take a cold shower and get to Allyson.  He would give her the best fuck of her life.  He hurriedly pulled his dark cranberry sweater up and over his curly hair, and in the mirror he was surprised to see the muscles of his broad chest and shoulders straining his filthy white undershirt as his chest heaved. 

Either he was physically pumped up from the action or he was finally seeing himself with clear eyes.  He was filthy and banged up, but the only thing that hurt was his throbbing erection.   Corey palmed his arousal through his jeans and peeled off the soiled undershirt.  His hard pecs were relatively unscathed aside from his excited nipples being slightly raw from the chafing of his wet shirt.  

Corey kicked off his shoes as he frantically unbuckled his jeans and slid them down over the bulge in his briefs and his muscular thighs.  He wanted to save his arousal for Allyson, but the friction was too much. He left his jeans half on and yanked down his briefs to free his cock. 

A swollen pink head slapped against his stomach, catapulted by a girthy shaft. He doubled over, bracing himself with one hand on the wall, and winced as he gripped his shaft with his cold and filthy hand. His balls shrank into him slightly but the erection swelled on.  He admired it in his hand. 

He was the same familiar length, but the girth took his breath away.  Normally, he could close his fingers around his shaft with ease, considering his large hands. Today, it was more of a reach.   Corey desperately kicked off his jeans and briefs and turned on the hot water instead of the cold.  

Corey tried to slow his breathing as he waited for the water to warm up.  He used a thumb to caress the head of his manhood, which was already weeping.  Pleasure shot through his lower back.  As he wrapped his fingers around the shaft, he felt it pulse against his fingers like it had its own heartbeat.   His mind flashed back to the sewer with Michael's hand around his throat, his jugular vein pulsing rapidly against Michael's callous fingers. 

Corey began stroking himself.  He thought about kissing Allyson in the photo booth the night before, dancing with her, feeling her lace sleeves on his skin and admiring her fishnet tights.   He ran his hand up and down his length in rhythm as hot water wet his curly hair and the filth began to roll off him, gray water trickling toward the drain.  

Corey tried to imagine what it would feel like fucking Allyson, but in between images of her milky breasts and spread legs, Corey's mind kept drifting back to the mask.  Corey resisted this at first.  He replaced the image of the mask with a vision of Allyson touching herself.  He saw the mask again and tried to conjure the sensation of Allyson's lips around his cock.   When that failed, he tried to access what little spank bank he had - losing his virginity in a green station wagon, hard nipples grazing his chest as the windows fogged, a soft ass bouncing on his upper thighs as she slid up and down his cock.  

Despite his efforts, the only tactile fantasy Corey could conjure as he stroked himself was the large hand around his throat, a thought that made his member spasm, followed by intrusive thoughts of the hand gripping him elsewhere.  Corey groaned.  Desperate for relief, he succumbed to his vision of the mask, letting it once again stare into his soul as he jerked faster.   The water got hotter, nearly scalding his skin.  Corey tightened his grip, hastened his stroke, and closed his eyes. 

He could feel the hand tightening around him.  He could hear Michael’s breath loud in the mask.  Corey's breath quickened and his knees felt weak.  His body remembered the electricity it felt in Michael's grip.  His ass clenched and his cock erupted.  He unleashed one rope after another of hot, thick come.  Three…….four….… five…….. He had to steady himself on the shower bar.  

Corey let a breathy groan escape the back of his throat as the last of his cum was spent.  He had never come that hard in his life.   He watched his spend circle the drain, then closed his eyes.   He stood there breathing for a moment, cradling his deflating member, grateful for the relief that washed over him. 

When he was finished showering, he turned off the water and stepped out of the tub and into the steam that had filled the bathroom.  He wrapped himself in a towel and wiped the fog off the mirror.  He leaned his head back and inspected his thick neck, caressing the red marks gently, which sent a pang of pleasure to his ass.  His brow furrowed and his eyes began to well up.  

--------

Notes: did anyone else notice the giant penis graffiti when Corey comes out of the sewer IN CANON?

Rock Bottom Chapters

[hymns-across-the-stars]

Artificer (or Mirage instead, if you'd prefer!) for a Hollow Knight AU?

(Though if you don't have anything already thought out, then I'd totally be down to try and offer whatever thoughts I can!!)

Send an AU and I will try writing my muse on that universe or/and give you 5 headcanons

---

Another one of those accursed magic users falls wordlessly off her stinger and onto the cold floor. The clack—barely muffled by their cloak—echoes through the sanctum halls, rousing puddles into some semblance of structure and form. Countless eyes turn toward her. Mouths gape. Little limbs flail.

With a flash of her claws, the abominations practically pop. She shakes off some of the residue and returns to slinking onward. The one they spoke of back then, their little head-of-operations... he has got to be close. And if not...

Her claws click together in agitation. The last remaining object of interest—the one that got away—crawling into his little realm had to no doubt be enticing enough.

But what threat was a scholar in comparison to one of the kingdom's Great Knights? She's already dealt with the latter, for failing the citizens he was supposed to protect. This Soul Master will not stand a chance.

---

// SO. Obviously we were talking a lot about this in DMs, but here's a few more ideas I had

Arti wears a mask, as many denizens of Hallownest do, but hers had been cracked during a fight she got into not long after her children disappeared. She does not get it fixed, as it's a reminder of what she fights for. However, she does not like to see her reflection; looking at the broken mask reminds her more of what she lost.

Infection never took hold of her because she is both strong-willed and incredibly deadset on avenging her children. It may somewhat align with the Radiance's goals, but Arti would not give up any bit of control. Everything else was taken form here, after all; how could she let go of the one thing she has left?

When she and her kids first settled into the City of Tears, Arti had largely curled her tail close to avoid accidents. Since losing her kids, she's been far less careful, letting it even drag behind her (partial reason why she looks so bedraggled) unless she's expecting a fight.

Arti is a still very much a nimble fighter, though much more close range. Her pincers and stinger have served her plenty well before, though, and they continue to be fine weapons now. Hallownest has few weapons she can use due to the wrong "hand" shape, anyway.

Kinda lame one to end on, but I think Arti is just HK!Artificer's name. She is but a common bug, at the end of the day, someone who came here in hopes of a better life; what title is she to have?

[friendofcars]

I know a lot of people have pointed out that Maura, Calla, and Persephone serve as mirrors for/are counterparts of Gansey, Ronan, and Adam, but before she is Adam's mirror, if she is at all, Persephone is Noah's. As time loops, Noah has died, is dying, will die, and so will persephone- something of which I think they're both aware. they reflect each other's ghostly qualities. more on Adam later, though!

(in hindsight, part of this list reads like diagnostic criteria. unintentional on my part. take from that what you will. this is also really long. it gets more analytical towards the end.)

From a more meta (?) perspective, I think the purpose of Noah and Persephone being parallels to one another is to foreshadow Persephone’s death (in concert with her name) via parallel descriptions and narrative roles to noah: a lot of her descriptions and actions are ghost-like, not just generally, but Noah-like too!

1. appearance and impressions: light, vague, approximate, ephemeral - except for their dark eyes

“There was something out of place about his clothing, his mostly combed-back fair hair.”

“Persephone knelt on the edge of her bed, draping a crimped pale cloud of hair around Blue’s face.” (I think it's also worth mentioning here that the woman who dies in Opal is described as cloud-like).

“[O]ne was smudgy, just as he said, with a rumpled, faded look about his person, like his body had been laundered too many times.”

“He looked pale and insubstantial in the yellow, late-night light of the room behind him; the skin beneath his eyes was darker than anything. He looked less like Noah than the suggestion of Noah.”

“For a second, all that seemed to be visible was his pale face; his dark clothing invisible and his eyes chasms into someplace unknowable.”

“Noah’s chin ducked farther, his expression somehow black, his eye sockets hollowed and skull-like. Were they looking at a boy? Or something that looked like a boy?”

“He thought of what a cruel mockery that mirror-version of her had been, the terrible child-creature from his ritual before. Nothing like this airy whisper of a person in front of him now. ”

“When pressed, people often remembered Persephone’s hair: a long, wavy white-blond mane that fell to the back of her thighs. If they got past her hair, they sometimes recalled her dresses — elaborate, frothy creations or quizzical smocks. And if they made it past that, they were unsettled by her eyes, true mirror black, the pupils hidden in the darkness.”

“Persephone blinked up, her black eyes a little far away.”

“A mirage had appeared at the end of the exit ramp, only now that they looked a bit harder, it was a real person, behaving like an unreal person... Her hair was a blond frothy cloud and her skin was chalky. Except for her black eyes, everything about her was as pale as the psychic beside Maura was dark.”

“He was, Adam noted, nearly disappeared already. He was more the feeling of Noah than actually Noah.”

“He thought of what a cruel mockery that mirror-version of her had been, the terrible child-creature from his ritual before. Nothing like this airy whisper of a person in front of him now. ”

Even her tarot cards resemble Noah: "Spidery lines and smudgy backgrounds suggested the figures on each card..."

2. movement and body language

“Czerny was on the ground. Not dead, but dying. His legs still pedaled on the uneven surface beside his red car, making drifts of fallen leaves behind him.” Re: drifts- I associate both Noah and Persephone with air (especially as a symbol of dwindling life).

“Persephone was a poor but energetic sleeper; her midnight shouting and nocturnal leg paddling ensured that she never had to share a room.”

Like the tarot cards, Persephone's belongings look and act like Noah's dying body: “Most of the bed was covered by strange, embroidered leggings and plaid tights running in place...”

“Noah seemed about to put his hands in his pockets and then didn’t. Noah’s hands seemed to belong fewer places than other people’s.”

“She twirled a hand around in a vague sort of way. Blue took this as a sign to find a place to sit.”

“Behind her, Persephone stood in the doorway, her hands clasping and unclasping each other.”

“Noah made a series of incomprehensible gestures, more agitated than she’d seen him.”

“ Noah immediately spotted Gansey and made a generalized flapping gesture.”

“Persephone flapped a hand as if it was too difficult for her to explain.”

“When he straightened, he realized Noah had drifted from his room to stand near Gansey.”

“Persephone tended to get caught in odd drafts and blow around.”

“Behind them, the stairs creaked, and both Calla and Blue leapt...She’d gotten over her shock and was now merely angry at being shocked. “You should make some noise when you enter rooms.”

“Noah. You’re creepy as hell back there.” In the deep, shadowed entrance of the church, Noah stood silently.”

“Because it was rare that Blue noticed the moment Noah actually appeared.”

“Persephone, and the furniture lurked against the walls.”

Both Noah and Persephone often seem childlike in comparison to their friends, too, emphasized by their preternatural knowledge of the story (Noah's through nonlinear time experience, Persephone's through psychic ability).

3. quiet and distant voices

“Persephone’s tiny, breathy voice said, “It’s available. I mean, open.”

“Her dainty, child’s voice was soft enough that Blue had to hold her breath to hear it. ”

“Oh dear,” Persephone said in a small voice — and Persephone’s voice was already quite small, so her small voice was indeed tiny — but she turned and went up the stairs. Her bare feet were soundless as she did.”

“One at a time?” Persephone suggested, her voice nearly inaudible.”

“Noah’s voice, cool and barely there, whispered in her ear. “Please say something to them.” ...Noah’s voice was faint but desperate. His distress hummed through her. “Please.”

“He thought he heard Noah’s voice, distantly... “I’m sorry. Can you say it louder, Noah?”

“Noah, who could go unnoticed for hours, whose room was pristine, whose voice was never raised.”

“Persephone’s quiet voice cut through Maura’s and Calla’s increasingly loud competition.”

“Noah, who could go unnoticed for hours, whose room was pristine, whose voice was never raised.”

“Persephone finally spoke up in her tiny voice.”

“Now,” Persephone said, and her voice was very small and soft. “Are you the Magician? Or aren’t you?”

“She sighed deeply. She sighed a lot.”

“Even though Ronan was snarling and Noah was sighing and Adam was hesitating, he didn’t turn to verify that they were coming.”

4. obscurity/evasion of others' memories

“-it was always difficult to know details when it came to Persephone-”

“Adam,” he demanded, “what is Noah’s last name?” Before Gansey had asked, Adam felt as if he must have known. But now the answer slid away from his mouth and then from his thoughts entirely, leaving his lips parted. It was like losing his way to class, losing his way home, forgetting the phone number for Monmouth Manufacturing. “I don’t know,” Adam admitted.”

“Everyone had been surprised to discover Persephone had a last name.”

“Maura offered, “It’s the Russian in you.” “Estonian,” Persephone replied.”

and soon after,

“Maura gestured toward the third member of their group. “And Persephone is Russian.” “Estonian,” Persephone corrected softly.”

The fact that only a handful of characters can see Noah also applies here. A lot of the examples in the appearance section also fall under this category!

5. recycled language: from other people and other points in time

“Good morning,” Persephone echoed. “It’s too early. My words aren’t working, so I’ll just use as many of the ones that work for you as possible.”

“No,” Adam said softly. Persephone echoed, “No?”

“He’ll be a champ,” Blue said, punching Noah’s arm lightly. “I’ll be a champ,” repeated Noah.”

“Is that all?” she whispered. Gansey closed his eyes. “That’s all there is.”

and then,

“Noah, standing next to a pile of plywood and four-by-fours, asked, “Is that all? That doesn’t seem like very much.”

and a three part example:

“Ronan was right. Things felt bigger. He may not have found the line, or the heart of the line, but something was happening, something was starting. Noah said, “Don’t throw it away.” This is right after Ronan kills the wasp in Monmouth and deposits it in the waste basket, but Noah is, of course, referring to Gansey's second chance at life, for which Noah has sacrificed himself.

and

“Don’t throw it away,” Noah whispered. “I’m trying not to,” Adam replied.” This is right before Adam takes the Camaro to Cabeswater to stop Whelk. Noah is now referring to Adam's chance to make a sacrifice to Cabeswater and wake the line, to supplant himself in the story where Noah left off. This is perhaps the point at which Adam definitively sets along the path that leads him to Persephone, but first, before he goes, he mirrors Noah one last time: “Noah stood directly in front of him, hollow eyes on level with Adam’s eyes, smashed cheek on level with Adam’s ruined ear, breathless mouth inches from Adam’s sucked-in breath.” The parallel injuries, the opposing presence/absence of air (read: life)- it's a turning point! It's almost as if Noah starts to cede his mirroring of Persephone to Adam in this moment- he doesn't lose the qualities he and Persephone have in common, but they become secondary as Persephone's primary role in the story crystalizes as a mentor to Adam. I think you could also consider Persephone not as a mirror to Adam but a lens- microscopic, telescopic, or both. She's instrumental in his psychic awakening and self healing and does so by teaching him to shift his perspective, to look both within himself and far beyond himself, finding the connections in between. I still think Adam and Persephone mirror one another, especially with regard to their generally quiet and distant demeanors and psychic abilities that distinguish them from their friends, but it's a parallel that gets crafted mid-story, not a parallel that frames the story from the start- even if Adam is inherently psychic independent of his sacrifice, which I think he is!

and finally,

“Goodbye,” Noah said. “Don’t throw it away.” I don't think this needs any further commentary:(

6. relationships with friends: noah + gansey and persephone + maura

Gansey and Maura can also be considered mirrors of one another; given Gansey's experiences with falling into cavern pits, the Henry hole in the ground situation, etc., we can tenuously equate Gansey's (second) death with Maura's disappearance into the caves. Noah knows that Gansey is fated to die through his nonlinear experience of time (time along the ley line in particular, I believe). Persephone is implied to have known Maura was going to disappear too: when the characters return to Fox Way in the epilogue of The Dream Thieves and find Maura's note, we read: “As Persephone climbed the stairs, Calla said accusingly, “This is your fault. Did you know this was going to happen?” Noah is also aware that he cannot stay in the story forever ("I'm almost gone anyway"), and it seems to me that Persephone knows she will die too (mainly because her giving her tarot cards to Adam seems like a precautionary measure/a parting gift). I'd even go as far as saying that Noah dies for Gansey and Persephone dies for Maura, although they "die for" their respective friends in different ways (Noah designates his death as a sacrifice for Gansey's life; Persephone dies in the process of trying to save Maura's- but unlike Noah's death, her death is not integral to Maura's survival. Two distinct actions and outcomes, but not entirely unrelated ones. I'd argue they both make the biggest sacrifices for Gansey/Maura in their respective groups of friends.).

And because I can't not make this about Adam again, Persephone herself doesn't see Adam as like her: in the prologue of Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Persephone comments on how new to life he seems (in contrast with her agelessness), how she isn't suited to bargains like he is, and especially this:

“She was a far better psychic when she had her two friends Calla and Maura with her: Calla to sort through her impressions and Maura to put them in context. Adam seemed to have potential in this department, though he was too new to replace Maura— no, that was a ridiculous way to put it, Persephone told herself, you don’t replace friends. She struggled to think of the proper word. Not replace.”

Like the Gray Man (see "Adam Parrish and his band of merry men" which sort of happens in a contrived way in TD3 w/ the Crying Club being rather unmerry men), Persephone recognizes Adam as a leader of the kids' quest, much like Maura's leadership amongst the psychics of Fox Way.

7. other notes

I think it's worth mentioning that Noah doesn't enter 300 Fox Way until after Persephone's death. I haven't reasoned out why exactly, but I think it's intentional.

They're both harmed by literal mirrors (not narrative foils nor the Blue/Gwenllian type of mirror)- when Gwenllian possesses Noah, Jesse Dittley halts the possession by putting a mirror in front of Noah, which makes him incredibly distressed. Persephone, of course, dies between the mirrors in perpetuum in the Fox Way attic.

In the epilogue of The Dream Thieves, Persephone and Adam flank Noah as Ronan brings Aurora into Cabeswater: “And there was Noah, shoulders slumped, hand lifted in an apologetic wave. On one side of him, Adam stood, hands in pockets, and on the other side was Persephone, her fingers twisted together.” In the same section, Ronan realizes Aurora looks like Matthew, which to me serves as an implicit reminder to consider how Noah and Adam are similar to Persephone as well.

I don't really have any summative thoughts on this, but I think it would have been incredibly cool if Persephone turned out to be a ghost as well... but alas...

[karla-the-elemental-dreamer]

I managed to get a third piece done for 'Terra Week 2024', but at what cost? 😅 I had this grandiose idea of drawing Terra facing Dragon Maleficent in Hollow Bastion, the likely scene before my entry-point in that dream (from my last post). It was all going well, I was doing Terra, and then I find out I won't be home for the ENTIRETY of tomorrow, so I've had to go all 'Quick Sketch Mode' for the rest of this and post it as close to sleep as possible.

So for 'Quick Mode', I've decided to do like a Station of Sorrow/Mirage Arena setting; but it's got my initials engraved in there to suggest which astral cord the battle stems from.

In relation to the idea itself and Terra: I thought it couldn't be a more suitable encounter as even though Terra sort of witnessed Xehanort's 'end' (psssing) in KH3. There was really no closure with Maleficent, and she was a major manipulation factor in Enchanted Dominion. So it feels like through the experiences that Terra has had, he now has the strength (and wisdom) to get back at Maleficent, who doesn't hesitate to give Terra a worthy ultimate form. Also serves as some good 'revenge' for how Maleficent used Terra's successor [Riku].

--- Perhaps I can post a close up of just Terra when I'm next on the PC; so we can at least see him good quality ---

In no relation to the drawing, I would also like to personally/etherically thank Terra. That guy has been bringing some miraculous experiences to my 2024.

Disclaimer: We know the gremlins got to the cables of the "official Terra Week" this year.

[princesspuresarahk]

Egyptian Guardians fanfic

Chapter: 1 Shelter and Care part 1

For three days Nut continued nonstop holding Seth tightly in her arms as she made her way to their destination only stopping once to catch her breath “don’t my son were almost there..” she whispered to Seth who was still fast asleep, Nut could feel they were drawing near and indeed they were for nearby Nut recognized a certain rock patterns surrounded by large dunes and trees may look like a regular place where an oasis might be but in fact was a secret place hidden by Nut’s magic by a special mirage like wall no can see nor detect not even the other guardians themselves and can be only entered by special words as she whispered in their ancient language within a couple of steps she stepped through the magic within feeling like mist against her skin as she walked towards the end revealing a clear sparkling spring filled with water surrounded the sand and foliage of its area, it was their secret oasis that her and her son would go to when he was a child whenever they wanted to get away from the royal and busy life of the kingdom where they could seek peace and quiet solitude. Yes this place is what he needs after what he’s been through.

Tearing a piece of her dress Nut whispered a few words tossing the piece of fabric into the ground converted into a small tent for two people, walking inside she smiled in joy seeing the supplies she requires two beds mats with plenty of pillows and blankets, some utensils for eating and cooking, some fresh cloths and bathing utensils. She may not be great of magic like Isis, but she can get what she needs to accomplish. Now was the time to get to work Seth still in her arms walking over to the mats she kneeled down to roll out the mat she carefully laid her son out gently removing the old rags to have a better inspection on his condition and she tried not tear up for Seth was very thin having lost quiet a lot of weight she could barely see his ribs his cheeks hollow from lack of eating for a long time. He still had a fever that she needs take care now! Getting a bucket she proceeded to rush out to the spring to fetch some water once back inside she proceed to set a small fire and pot pouring the water inside to warm it up until it was lukewarm getting a bowl and rag gathering the water up she soaked the rag, once it was completely damp she laid it across Seth’s forehead to reduce his fever then grabbed another to gently was wash away the dust and grim from his body as best she could until she can get him into a proper bath. Once Seth was removed of dust and grim laid out more rags across his body to hold down his fever going back and forth ever hour until the flush redness from his face and body faded feeling his head she smiled in relief as the fever had faded. Now that was set aside she had to get some liquids into his system starting with some fresh water to drink. Fetching a small bucket rushing to the spring, once she replace the water from the pot then processed to distillate the water until it was safe to drink repeating till the canteen was filled with enough water to drink. Pouring the last of the water into a small cup she sat by her son gently lifting his head up onto her lap sitting him up a bit as she brought the cup to his lips “come on my son you need to drink..please Seth I know you can do it..come on.. please.. just try..”she whispered words of encouragement gently pressing his lips to get him to open his mouth. Nut’s eyes brightened as Seth opened his lips letting him drink the cool liquid taking slow sips coughing a bit due to lack of hydration but managed to finish the cup she then gave him a second, then third cup until she believe he had enough, not give him too much and make his tummy sick. Now it was time to get some food in him by starting with some light soup Nut went back out to find some fresh vegetables (except lettuce knowing ever since the incident her son has since despised the plant) so gathering some leeks, turnips, some herbs, and some rare foreign fruit called tomatoes that some travelers brought from other lands that were able to grow in some of the oasis’s out here over the years. Once she had enough she retreated back inside and another pot to boil after double checking on Seth, Nut began cutting and slicing her herbs and vegetables putting into the pot to cook and boil into a broth like soup with small healing spells to help heal her son as he sleeps. After a while she tasted the soup to if it was ready? Aw it was good! Very good, getting another bowl she scooped some up gently blowing on it until it was cool but still warm to eat proceeded to do the same did with getting her to son the drink the water which also a success as Seth instantly ate the soup managing to drink it all and get another bowl into his system when he turned his face away a sign he was down which Nut didn’t mind happy he had something in his belly with that she left him to sleep to clean up a bit. Today was a success but there was still much work to do. Over the next three days she set a routine check on Seth every two hours, gather food to make the day’s meals, get fresh water, change his rags and check his temperature, drink plenty of liquids and meal, keep the fire going and so on. She even set to sewing and making her son some new cloths patiently waiting for Seth to awaken from his deep sleep preparing for the questions and confusions that he’ll have later on. It was later on the evening on the 3rd day that Seth finally awoken.

[thetireddiaries]

Diary entry #1

I just sit in the dark, and wonder if it's time.

I'm not sure how much more cold I can take before I grow sick.

I try to chase the demons and insecurities out of my head, from under my bed, but they end up in the palm of my hands, tightening their grip, widening their grin, mocking the very person I have become, I swore I never would be. My worst fears and enemies are in flesh, are in reflection.

Is this truly the extent of love I deserve? barely a drop in an ocean, barely a ripple in a sea, barely enough water to dip my toes and run back scared from the shark-carrying waves, only to see it was a mirage. There is barely any water left in this drought of a desert.

I see my mother's woes growing to become my own,

I do not feel loved, I feel empty. What an odd contradiction. Love should be opposed by hate, but not mine. On the other side of my love sits hollow, emptiness, a void shell of dimmed light, of a crushed spirit, torn part, of never being right.

I, am sick and tired of hearing "everything is going to be alright" when nothing ever was, ever is, ever will be. When I, have to lie to myself every night to get through it, to pain fake portraits of a love I think I deserve, of a love, I dream of receiving, of a love I once had,

or thought I did

And maybe he's on the other side, fighting his demons, chasing his insecurities away, but they end up in the palm of his hands, tightening their grip, widening their grin, mocking the very person he has become, the one he swore he would never be. His worst fears and enemies, in flesh, in reflection.

Maybe, he just doesn't have enough love in his body, to love mine.

[novaharpersworld]

It was dark and the sun had fully set behind the high storied buildings of Aldersvale when Cresh Eson, Premier of all Soljoro, slipped past his guard, using a little confounding spell and taking the servant's stairs down to the old part of the Premier's residence that used to be the palace of the Tols, and pulled the hood of his cloak down further to conceal his eyes. He'd used a mirage casting to disguise his features so he could pass undetected among the people, appearing to any servant that happened upon him in those antiquated halls as just one more rich Publican off to a clandestine rendezvous with a lover--not exactly unknown and about which they had been trained to studiously see nothing.

He encountered no one, thankfully, the narrow halls so silent and still that every sound became magnified, a footstep or cough echoing, so Eson thought, like a majlock gun discharged at close range. He left the residence and stepped into the early spring air, cool with a gentle breeze. He was still in the Premier compound, an estate of respectable proportion surrounded by a high wall.

Moonrise was underway, the last light of the sun having vanished a little while before, the silver orb in the dark sky ascending over the Aldersvale skyline, ringed with haze from the ether discharge of the city's many steam clockworks, which never failed to make the air just a bit more humid than it should otherwise be. The Residence was at the top of Aldersvale, the capitol of Soljoro perched atop the Numarian plateau--a thousand feet high and nearly a thousand leagues across, it split the continent down the middle from the Northfelds to the Nebelheim steppes far to the south.

Right now, though, Eson was not interested in the spectacular views afforded him by his Residence, and he would have to climb to the compound wall's rampart to take in the view in any case.

He headed for the main gate and passed the guards, who cast him nary a glance. They only stopped traffic into the Residence and not out of it.

The streets were empty. He took in the cul-de-sac, on which several other buildings had been built. The Assembly building was only a ninety-two second jog away (so his aides told him) to the right, and next to it the Continental Parliment, where delegates from each of the nations of Numaria met to settle disputes and conflicts between Soljoro, Insturi, Noth, Vash, Zhaing-Shen, Gaelris, and the indigenous peoples of the Northfelds. And next to it, the imposing edifice of the High Bank of Rel with its tower spire and inset, opaque windows.

Eson kept walking down the cul-de-sac, his boots clopping off the cobbles. A thin steam haze had settled over the city now everyone was home with their hearths going, fuzzing out the street gaslamps dotting the sidewalks. He took a left and headed down a side lane. It was't exactly far to his destination, a little beerhall just outside the cul-de-sac called the Reveler's Hollow.

At the end of the lane, the insulated heart of power in Adersvale came to an abrupt end and the real world butted up against it. Eson paused as a horseless tram rattled past, and several pedestrians moved along the sidewalks, about business of their own. He ignored them and crossed the street, heading for the modest, squat building that housed the Hollow. Two dogs were barking back and forth across the city at each other distantly.

The bell jingled overhead as he entered, and immediately he cringed inside before remembering the mirage cast that disguised him. No one could tell the Premier of Soljoro had just walked in, and not more than a couple heads had turned in his direction anyway. The first step was to get himself something to drink.

Crossing to the bar, he was immediately hit with the sour smell of beer and the thick scent of cigarillo smoke. Two dozen customers sat at tables, or had withdrawn into corners where there were armchairs and copies of the Aldersvale News Journal for more intimate, detailed, political discussions. The yellow gaslight cast by the lamps sconced on the walls gave the place a warm, rich feeling, compounded by the velvet red curtains draped over the windows.

"I'll have a Vashian ice-wine," he told the barkeep, a woman of about forty. It was Eltha, Eson recognized her at once, but he was still keeping his cover.

"Right you are, sir," she said, turning to the ice box behind her and rummaging around for a bottle, grabbing one and a stein, and dropping them on the bar between them. "One ice-wine. That's twelve bronze marks."

"Open a tab, if you would."

"Sure." She shrugged and pulled a chalkboard with the names of the patrons with open tabs scrawled on it, and glanced at Eson with a crooked eyebrow. "Should I put down Cresh Eson, or something else this time?"

Eson started. "How did--"

"I'm your fourth cousin, I know your walk."

"Well keep it quiet, I'm here on business."

"Sounds serious," she said. "Name?"

"Bartanion Lestoria," he said and she snorted, scratching it down with a nub of chalk.

"Fucking terrible name."

"I'm only using it the once, it didn't have to be great." He leaned in over his ice-wine and lowered his voice. "Is he here?"

"Who's that?"

"Epiphani Ofaris."

It was her turn to look stunned. "The head of the--??"

Eson motioned for her to lower her voice.

"The head of the Artificer Collective, here? In my pub?"

"I wouldn't be asking otherwise."

"Haven't seen anyone who looked like a spell weaver so far tonight, but I don't even know what they'd look like. I've never even seen one."

Eson swiveled in his bar stool and skimmed across the crowd. Mostly young men, aides or interns at the Residence or the Assembly, relaxing or debating policy mostly. A few sons of the Seven Houses gambling and playong cards together riotously in the back. You never got lower class sorts in the Hollow, it was too close to the heart of power for that, and much too frequented by the elites to tolerate it.

Nothing. He didn't see Ofaris anywhere. Perhaps he hadn't arrived yet. He turned back to his ice-wine and found Eltha now at the far end of the bar getting refills for a highly intoxicated group of men. Alone, he popped the top of his ice-wine and poured it into his stein. Vashian ice-wine was a particularly rare speciality. Brewed by the Vash in the snow-steppes of Nebelheim, the ice-wine had to be brewed, bottled, and shipped at near freezing temperatures. A sustained temperature rise of even two degrees over ten minutes would spoil the batch and it would be ruined. Thus, it was expensive to ship and more expensive to buy. And all the more worth it.

The ice-wine frothed into the stein and the surface iced over. The metal of the stein frosted in moments. Eson listened to the icing crackle, one of his favorite parts of the process. Grabbing a spoon, he cracked the ice on the surface and sipped. It chilled him to the bone instantly, but the moment it reached his stomach, it warmed him to his core.

"Premier, I believe we have an appointment," said a voice next to him.

Eson started and turned to find a tall, thin man in a nice suit and cloak standing next to him. He carried a sleek walking stick and wore a top hat on his head, a well-trimmed salt and pepper beard covering his cheeks and chin.

Eson didn't recognize him.

"I'm sorry, I think you have me mistaken for someone else."

The man smiled, removed his top hat, and sat in the stool next to Eson, leaning his cane against the bar between them. Eson glanced at it and saw on the grip a sigil of an Amaranth tree whose roots went to the heart of the earth and whose canopy reached into the sky. The sigil of the Artificer Collective.

"Ofaris?" Eson asked. "How did you know it was me?" He's have to invest in a better mirage cast next time.

"You're not the only one who can use disguises, Premier," Ofaris said. "Was it a mirage cast? They work on most people, but not spell-weavers."

"Noted." Eson sipped his ice-wine.

"You arranged for this meeting through our usual back channels three months before our annual consultation," Ofaris said. "I can only assume this is a matter of personal importance."

"Yes, I had a question."

"Questions are good, but answers are better."

"Hopefully you'll answer, then. I know full well how reticent your lot are with answers."

"An accurate answer delayed is better than an inaccurate answer immediately given."

"Yes, that's the kind of shite I mean," Eson said. "Look, I just needed to ask--about the future."

Ofaris' entire demeanor changed. Once relaxed and easy going, now tense.

"We are strictly forbidden from revealing any knowledge we may have--in theory--of the future. You know this."

"Yes, yes, but your people have always pointed the right way for Soljoro in times of crisis before."

"Are we in a crisis now?"

"I don't know, you tell me."

"Clever, but it's not for me to say."

"Look, I don't want to know about the far future, I just want to know--my term as Premier is up in six months. I've got an election to run and I just wanted some advice."

Ofaris sighed. "What do you want to know?"

"Whether I'll win!" Eson laughed.

"Ahh," said Ofaris. "I should have guessed."

"Just tell me if I'll lose so I can choose not to seek a fourth term. Save myself some embarrassment that way. I'm not as young as I used to be, I've got a term or maybe two left in me, I have a few younger contenders eying the Premiership, and if I can just bow out gracefully, it would save me some personal stress."

"I'm not permitted to speak of such things," Ofaris said, shaking his head. "Only in the gravest of circumstances are we even allowed to consult the Weave, not for the personal egoism of career publicans desperate to save face."

"All right, I'm sorry" Eson said. He looked away and sipped his ice wine, watching the aggressive young men on the bar's far side whoop and jostle each other with the roll of the dice, cigarillo smoke curling around their heads.

Ofaris jerked next to him and as he glanced back at the Artificer, he saw the man's eyes gleam suddenly blue and shimmer in their sockets--and then it was gone.

"I've been Linked by the Collective," Ofaris said, as if nothing happened. "They seem to believe I should answer your question, but not here."

Eson sat up. "Lead on."

He picked up his stein to go, but Ofaris put a hand on his arm and sat him back down on his stool.

"You may want to brace yourself," he warned, his hand still on Eson's forearm.

"Brace for wha--"

The world dropped away with a gut-wrenching feeling of freefall. For a split second Eson lost all sense of direction, and then he blinked and found himself on all fours, gasping for breath, his face inches away from varnished mahogany floorboards.

He sat up on his heels with a groan and looked around. Ofaris was standing by an ornate desk across the room, behind which were floor to ceiling bookshelves crammed with texts and books and scrolls. The spell weaver no longer wore a fine suit but full length gray robes, and where he had had a walking stick he now held a staff.

Eson glanced to the side and realized he was in a research study of some kind. Contraptions and clockwork designs of all sorts were scattered about, and behind the desk was a huge gear tri-clock, three faces overlapping, measuring something that wasn't time as Eson understood it. The hands weren't pointing at the right numbers to be early evening.

"I apologize for the haste by which we arrived," Ofaris said. "Are you all right?"

"You could have waited just a moment for me to actually brace myself next time," Eson muttered, getting to his feet with a groan. "You didn't happen to transport my ice wine with us, did you?"

"Transported? We haven't transported anywhere. We're still at Reveler's Hollow."

"You're shitting me," Eson said. He pointed at the high narrow window behind Ofaris. "We're clearly not in the same place, just look outside."

He went to the window, but as he approached his pointing finger faltered. Outside was only a dimensionless pale void. There was no up or down, near or far, just an expanse of brightness.

"What the hell is this?" He turned to Ofaris. "I have half a mind to report you for kidnapping. Where the hell are we?"

"Technically we're in my mind," Ofaris said. "More technically we're in what might be called a circuitous quantum semi-dimension within the meta-mind of the Collective. Sort of a pocket where I store everything personal to my mind. Memories, experiences, personal histories, all the information I've read, every idea I've ever had. That's every book I've ever read on those shelves. We all have one."

Eson rubbed his eyes. None of that had made the slightest bit of sense. "I think," he said slowly, "I'm going to just say that we're in your mind."

"Fair enough. It's not entirely inaccurate."

Eson glanced around, still at a loss.

"You wanted to know of the future," Ofaris said. "The Collective has reached consensus on this. You are to be told."

"All right," Eson said, leaning on the edge of the desk. "That bad?"

"You will serve one term more as the Soljoran Premier, but you will not reach its fifth year."

"Dead? Or do I resign in disgrace? Not sure how that could happen, I keep my nose clean."

"Premier, I need to you take this seriously," Ofaris said, stepping closer. "The Collective is taking a risk in telling you any of this, and you can never tell another soul. The history of our world is approaching a great crisis, something that will surpass any other."

Eson frowned. "By Anistaru, you're serious. What crisis?"

Ofaris stared at him, and something in his eyes made Eson's blood run cold.

"Shatterpoint." Ofaris sighed. "We have no other name for it. We can see into the future, Premier, but we cannot see everything. At a certain point in the timeline, everything goes dark. An event horizon beyond which we cannot see."

"And you're saying this Shatterpoint is going to happen in my next term, is that it?"

"Precisely so. For years we have seen this drawing nearer and nearer, but we still don't know what it is. All we know is that every year our visions of the future cannot extend as far as they could before, and we estimate only a few years left before it overtakes us all."

"But there is a solution, surely. We can avoid it."

"The path is already in motion. The only thing we know is that the Weave becomes tangled, strands become severed, and the network collapses, in the future. Not here. There is nothing we can do. It is a future cataclysm echoing back to our own time."

Eson closed his eyes.

"Is it the end of everything?"

"We don't know. The Weave is damaged, huge parts of it erased or disintegrated in two years. We don't know what the fall out will be. It could theoretically erase our universe from existence, or it could cause chaos and destablization but leave our reality fairly intact. After all, our timeline has to reach that future in order to reach Shatterpoint. The question of time paradoxes has fractured the Consensus. I'm think we will be in for chaotic times, possibly even effecting the physical and magical laws of our world. Others think in more apocalyptic terms."

Eson sank down the desk and sat on the floor, rubbing his eyes as he processed this.

"And I don't see it through to the end."

"Correct."

"I see." Eson shook his head. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Everything you can. Stockpile supplies, run programs on basic aid and survival techniques for every single person in Soljoro. We must keep the population from reaching an exponential decline curve that could endanger our species with extinction."

"And I can't tell anyone about this?"

"Not unless you want mass panic and chaos."

"Fuck me. What am I supposed to tell my advisors and generals to justify these policies?"

"I never was any good with politics, that's your domain. I'm just the messenger bearing a warning. There is a storm coming unlike anything we've ever seen. If we wish our people to survive, we must band together, and we must cooperate with the Fae. It's only together that we survive this."

"That'll never sell, Soljorans hate the Fae! And they have a mutual distaste for us, so I see a hell of a lot of hurdles to your proposal."

"You must find a way, Premier. Or we are all dead." Ofaris raised a hand. "Brace yourself."

He snapped his fingers. The world jerked out from under Eson again and when he had exited the whirlwind he found himself on the floor of the Reveler's Hollow, having fallen off his stool. Eltha was overhead, but all Eson could see were her legs. He stared up at her as her mouth moved but he couldnt process the words.

"Cousin, are you all right?"

Eson reached up a hand and she helped drag him to his feet. He felt shakey. Glancing back at the bar, he realized that Ofaris was nowhere to be found.

"Cousin? Are you all right? Should I summon a tram for you?"

"No, no, I'm all right," he said, shaking his head. "I think I could use a walk to clear my head."

He patted her on the shoulder, then stepped toward the door.

"Don't forget your ice wine!" She said, handing him his stein. Eson glanced in it. All the ice had melted and it was ruined. He smiled and handed it back without a word, then went to the door and pushed it open.

"I'll send the bill for your tab to your residence, shall I?" She called out after him.

He paused on the threshold, propping the door open with his back, and looked at her.

"Yes, that will be fine," he said, feeling in a daze.

Then he turned and walked out into the dark, letting the door snap shut behind him.

[dearunknown]

05/27-28/23 (late night saturday, actually early sunday)

Dear Unknown,

Just got back from the DJ set. I did horribly. I feel so embarrassed I could die. I wish I’d gone to the hospital instead of honoring a commitment. Oh, well. Ezra and I left very quickly. I made us leave very quickly. I want to cry but am too ashamed to cry over something so miserable and stupid. Plus I don’t want anyone’s comfort. I don’t want a kind word or a kind touch from Ezra. Even Caro… well, I’d let Caro do anything to me.

As soon as I got home, I tore off my wristband (yellow) and wrote on it in black sharpie MY LAST DJ SET - 12 AM-1 AM 5/27-28, 2023 WORK.SHOP and put it at a perfect spot so that every morning almost inevitably upon waking up I will be reminded of my laziness, inadequacy, stupidity, vanity, — my weaknesses— and be reminded that I should never try for anything ever, ever again. I should take all my ambitions, all my desires, and shove them away. Nothing is ever going to happen for me. Nothing. The fact that I have a poor-paying but basically respectable job only serves to highlight the absurdity of my life. I want to let myself lose. I want to let myself lose control. I’m over it. I’m over my life. The wanton optimism of my 29 is putrid. It was rotten on the vine. I am a bad, weak, stupid person. I will not make it. I will not break out of my life. Continue living as a hollow vessel, or hang myself. The distinction is completely irrelevant. If I’m alive, that’s just a biological fact. I am the ancient mariner, my albatross is this horrible life I’ve made for myself. My soul is in complete squalor. I am less than anything. I am sorry to darken anyone’s doorstep. When Caro moves to New York, I will throw myself completely to drunkenness and desolate emptiness. I will probably stop taking any ADHD meds this summer, and my antidepressants after Caro leaves. I will be so contemptible and broken. Every day of drinking I will finish with my usual melange of klonopin and trazodone. One day might heart might feel slow enough I can feel it’s loss of feeling. 

Today I talked to Nikolai on the phone. He made me promise to give Ezra my credit cards. He also told me to do the same with my alcohol, but I’m not doing that. 

I hope tomorrow I feel horrible. I hope the next day, I feel worse. I hope every day becomes more of a curse than the last. In the end, my one heroism will be that I endured for so long. 

I will accomplish nothing. I cannot be loved except for the mirages I put up of myself. I should withdraw from anyone who I am not forced to associate with. I will lavish all of my energy upon Caro before they leave. And as they drive away, I will see my future approach the horizon line. And I will collapse into my curse. I only have to be alive for 2 more months, maybe 3 or 4 at most. 

Nikolai thinks I’m borderline. He also said that people who are in happy relationships don’t think (as I do of Ezra) about how they wish their partner hated them so much they would break up with them. I hope… I hope it isn’t alcoholism that does it. Although I am completely intent on being an alcoholic now, I hope that’s not what destroys this relationship. How banal. I hope he just grows to see me as I am, as the most contemptible woman. I have done so much evil to Ezra, but the worst thing I have done is certainly make him think he needs me, or wants me, or loves me. I am a ball of maggots projecting the image of a woman.

I hope my mother knows she did this to me. My grandmother did this to me. My aunt did this to me. The world did this to me. But really, I DID THIS TO ME. 

I’m never listening to my therapist again when she encourages me to do something challenging. What a waste of everyone else’s time. I’m always going to be a waste of everyone’s time.

Thank you for listening. I hope you’re doing well. I’m sorry to be so self-centered. If you could write me back, I would attentively pour over your letters. I wish you weren’t so unknown to me. 

Love, 

Elizabeth

[wkemeup]

I’m just having one of those days where I could really use some soft snuggles and love after a bad day...but alas

Do you have anything/ would be willing to write a small blurb about Bucky boy being his little awkward shy self wanting to comfort you but is still super shy around you but the ends up being soft baby Bucky

Okay I know that didn’t make much sense but yeah 🥺

I’m sorry you were having a bad day hun. Hope this helps ❤️

You were curled up in the corner of the living room couch, arms folded tight over your chest, knees tucked high to your body, as if you were trying to make yourself as small as possible. An infomercial was playing on the television for the last half hour but you hadn't been able to find the energy to change it. Instead, you favored staring off into the static until the picture blurred into a seamless, colorful mirage.

You supposed it didn't quite matter what set it off this time, but the feeling crept in anyway -- that dark, hollow sensation that seeped into your stomach and spread through your body until it dragged you below the surface. There was no relief in the compression of your own arms or the cushion of the couch, but you remained anyway. It was all you could do.

Until you heard Bucky call your name.

He stood at the edge of the living room, dressed in light blue pajama bottoms and a crewneck baring a cartoon drawing of Steve's shield. In his hand, was an empty glass of water he was likely on his way to the kitchen to refill, but he set it down on the end table.

"Are you alright?" His voice was quiet, the darkness of the room covering the flush in his cheeks as he watched you. The glow from the television gently illuminated his outline, flickering brighter every so often to give you a better look at the way he wrung at his hands.

"Bad day," you murmured, half into the arm of the couch.

You expected him to leave after that, but you glanced up to find him unmoved.

"I could, uh, I could stay. If you want?"

You blinked, surprised. "Yeah that... that would be nice."

Bucky swallowed, checking over his shoulder before he slowly made his way towards the couch. He propped himself on the edge of the seat cushion beside you, sitting just close enough to feel his presence but far enough away that he hadn't intruded on your space.

The two of you sat in silence for a while until Bucky eventually grabbed the remote from the table and switched the channel to an old rerun of a sitcom from the late nineties with characters he certainly didn't recognize, though he cracked a smile every so often.

You yawned, after the credits began to roll on the second episode.

"Do you want to lay down?" Bucky offered, already standing to move out of your way so you could stretch your legs.

You nodded, extending your legs with a tired sigh. They'd been curled up against you for so long, you'd almost lost feeling entirely. A soft smile grazed Bucky's lips as he watched you settle into the couch. He gave you a short nod and slowly, he turned to leave.

"Wait," you called. Bucky paused at the threshold of the room. "Don't go. Please."

A relief seemed to wash through his features then as he half jogged back to the couch. His eyes scanned over the little space remaining, his ears burning red.

"I'll make room for you," you told him, scooting as far to the edge as you could manage.

"Are you, uh... are you sure?" Bucky hesitated as he stared at the space between the back of the couch and your body. He'd be pressed to a tight space, his arm certainly hanging over your waist. Close quarters. He wasn't sure you knew what you were really asking for -- to be that close to a man like him. But he would do anything if it helped ease your burden. So when you nodded, Bucky took in a deep breath and crawled in behind you.

When he settled, he could practically feel every ounce of strain in your muscle slipping away. It fell away from his own body, too. He set his hand on your hip, unsure of what to do with it.

"Is this okay?" he asked timidly, his fingers gently tapping along the soft curve of your hip.

You chuckled then, grabbing his hand and tugging it to it laid comfortably over your waist. You adjusted your position, sinking into the feeling of his chest pressed to your back, the warmth of his body curled against you. He relaxed, a sigh slipping past his lips as he tugged you against him, his face resting at the crook of your neck. You could feel his breath on your skin.

“Thank you, Bucky," you whispered, letting your eyes drift shut.

"Anytime, doll."

[prime-wars]

going thru a phase rn where i become mildly obsessed with a random nobody character and create an entire au in my head centered around them... learned thru a tf iceberg video i watched with my friends that theres a tf named crosscut who can store all of his "data and memories" (not sure what data is if not memories - maybe baseline personality components?) inside of a actual literal scooter. like its a drone that is just also a scooter.

anyways as we were watching i was like whyyy does that name sound SO familiar to me so i looked him up and turns out he was in mtmte! he's the playwright whose opening night gets interrupted by djd murderfest on the duplicate lost light. this guy vv

[image id: a screenshot from dark cybertron, showing blurr and crosscut in conversation. /end id]

(putting the rest of this under a readmore cuz its probably gonna be long as hell)

so THEN i got to thinking and like. i know that they probably were just like ok yea the scooter's fucking stupid and so they just put him in mtmte without his little scooter buddy but what if. What If They Hadnt.

what if there was One Guy on the lost light who, over the course of the war, had gotten into the habit of backing up every single one of his memories into a drone that he carried with him everywhere he went. maybe it's a bad habit, depending on who you ask, but it's a habit that's hard to break, and one that he decides to keep up with after the end of the war. just in case. people might look at him weird for it, since he performs mnemosurgery on himself regulary (and i do think it's some form of mnemosurgery; he's dumping huge amounts of his own memories straight from his processor into a drone, that's gotta be some kind of mnemosurgery technique (and who knows, maybe the "data" that he's storing on clutch (the scooter, the scooter has a name its named clutch) is emotional data, tied together with his memories, so when he goes back and looks thru clutch's archives he can feel exactly what he was feeling in each memory, or maybe it's just notes he keeps for himself to add additional context to individual memories - but im getting sidetracked)) but he's done it for so long he's not stopping now. after all, you never know when you might need it.

and then you get to getaway.

[image id: a screenshot from more than meets the eye issue #50, depicting getaway's mutineers. crosscut stands in the background. /end id]

maybe crosscut only checks clutch's archives once every couple years, or maybe he likes sifting through his old memories and indulges himself often. who knows, we know next to nothing about him. but what if, a couple months into getaway's mutiny, after sunder's already altered all of the crew's memories, he decides to take a peek. maybe it's on a whim, just a gut instinct that he's learned better than to ignore. maybe he decided to entertain himself with happier memories for a night. either way, he opens up clutch's databanks and discovers Everything.

he'd still been dumping his memories into clutch after sunder's manipulation; he has memories of remembering rodimus and megatron and everyone else leaving the lost light voluntarily, but that memory itself is nowhere to be found. instead, there's getaway, and his plan to turn megatron over to the galactic council, and his stranding of rodimus and the rest of the "rodsquad" on necroworld, and his promises that they would remain safe and unharmed. promises that are sounding much emptier, with the hollowed out memory of rodimus and the crew's departure months earlier rattling around in his head.

idk where it would go from there. maybe when first aid and mirage and everyone return to the lost light crosscut is there to warn them of getaway's treachery ahead of time, and they manage to escape the lost light before getaway can get to them. idk. im just losing my mind a little bit thinking about this.