#self blame

[hurtfortea]

A whumpee who won’t stop fighting until they physically can’t anymore. A whumpee who will kick, bite, claw, pinch- anything they can manage in their current state or position. A whumpee who finally loses their will to fight when the hopelessness sets in, and they give up- only to immediately be filled with revulsion and self loathing. A whumpee who doesn’t listen when they’re told that they did everything they could. When they’re told anyone would have done what they did. When they’re told it’s okay.

Because it’s not. They said they would never give up. But they did. And now they’re sure they deserve what ever comes after.

Because you can’t lose as long as you keep fighting.

…And whumpee lost.

[whumpypepsigal]

Halo s02e05: “You’re all I have left.”

[whumpsday]

https://www.tumblr.com/whumpsday/770720940474712064/i-wanna-drill-screws-into-kane-all-over-his-body?source=share

After the other anon screwed Kane to the board, I happen to come across him. This sparks an idea.

I tell him to beg me not to put him in the sun. Regardless of how well he begs, I'm not gonna put him in the sun, that's mean. Instead, I help him get off the board and then hose him down before leaving him in the cell.

-💜 

prev ask

Kane begs his heart out, pleading you with everything he has not to put him into the sun, going so far as to beg you to continue the drilling instead. If he had the freedom of movement, he would collapse with relief when you reveal it's 'worked'.

He slumps onto the floor in a bleeding, exhausted, pain-ridden heap when you remove him from the board, not moving as you hose him down. Later, after he's rested, he pulls all the screws from his body and the bleeding starts all over again.

It strikes him as vaguely reminiscent of how he made his defenseless human bleed from the same wounds night after night. Another thing Kane deserves.

[howifeltabouthim]

'This is my fault. I meddled with things I should have never ever touched.'

Iain Pears, from Arcadia

[dangraccoon]

Be Alright

Week 7 ~ snowman ~ sunset ~ *Captain Rex* ~

Word Count: 688 Content: grief, self-blame, references to Fives’ death, panic attack, gallows humor, brotherly affection (not cloneshipping; let men be openly and platonically affectionate)

@clone-wars-winter-challenge

Mando’a Guide:

Ori’vod - big brother/older brother

Echo knew where he’d find Rex. Whenever the former captain was on Pabu and he wasn’t right next to Echo, he was either in the Archium or sitting out on a rock by the cove, which is where he found him now.

His eyes were locked on the horizon as the sun barely began to touch the edge of the water. Despite the civilian clothes he wore, he still had the air of an officer; back rigid, feet set apart, hands clasped behind his back.

“Rex?” Echo called from a short distance, not wanting to startle the man so lost in his thoughts.

“Hm?” Rex jumped slightly anyway. “Oh, Echo. Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“You’re losing your touch, old man,” Echo chuckled, nudging Rex’s side with his elbow.

“Yeah, alright,” Rex shrugged. “Because you’re so much younger than me?”

“By enough.”

Rex rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “What did you need?”

Echo eyed his brother for a moment. “Who said I need something?”

Rex shrugged again, his attention returning to the sunset. Being closer, Echo could see the somewhat sad look on his brother’s face.

“Is everything okay?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Rex sighed. “Do you know what today is?”

Echo thought for a moment, his mind filing through for any possible connection. Something pinged in the back of his brain. Oh.

“It’s been six years,” Rex continued. “I should have listened to him. I should’ve—”

“Rex,” Echo said in disbelief. “Are you still blaming yourself for Fives’ death?”

Rex turned his face away.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Echo asserted. “You have to know that.”

“I shouldn’t have left my pistols on that crate and you know it,” Rex nearly snapped. “If I would have just kept them in my holsters—”

“Fives wouldn’t have let you—”

“I should’ve been able to save him!” Rex exploded.

The world around them seemed to still as Rex panted, unable to stop the tears starting to streak down his face.

“Rex…”

“Don’t, Echo,” Rex said, wrapping his arms tightly around his middle. For the first time since Echo had met him, Rex almost looked… small. “I-I already know what you’re going to say. I know you’re right, but I failed him, just like I failed you on Lola Sayu. But I know he’s not coming back. And I can’t ever let myself forget that.”

Echo watched him for a moment, then pulled him into a hug. “You don’t have to forget about him, Rex,” he whispered. “But he wouldn’t want you to torture yourself with his memory. Maker, he’d never want that for you.”

Echo could feel Rex’s body shudder in his arms as his ori’vod let the dam break. He let him, whispering soft words, his hand tracing gentle shapes across his shoulder blades.

He pulled gently at the man until they were sitting side by side against the rocks.

“We talked, you know,” Echo said. “Before the mission. We made a deal. I thought it was just his gallows humor.”

Rex didn’t answer, allowing Echo to continue.

“Said he had a bad feeling about the mission and he wanted to make a deal with me. ‘Only one of us is allowed to die on this mission’, he said. We even shook on it.”

The captain stared at Echo, his disbelief written plainly on his face.

Echo chuckled. “We were worried that if both of us got killed, you’d go on a rampage.”

Rex opened his mouth to argue, but quickly shut it again. Echo was right, as usual. “You tried your damnedest,” he smirked.

Echo looked down at his prosthetics. He waved his scomp at Rex. “Guess it didn’t stick,” he shrugged.

He barked out a laugh that took them both by surprise.

“See?” Echo grinned, nudging at his brother’s arm. “You’re gonna be alright.”

“Yeah,” Rex nodded, feeling the truth in the statement for the first time in a long time.

“Now, come on,” Echo said, groaning as he got to his feet. “Someone promised Omega a trip to Pantora to show her what a ‘snowman’ is.”

Rex took Echo’s proffered hand, letting him haul him up to his feet. “In my defense, you’re the one that was showing her pictures from that mission!”

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Thanks for reading! - River

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[the-moon-whisperer]

[hollowmem]

You're not cursed... Just too good to die

GN!Reader x Johnny "Soap" MacTavish and John Price TW: survivor's guilt, death/loss of teammates, emotional isolation, self-blame, and implied PTSD. This is last day of the writing challange. I cannot believe that from 2 weeks, i managed to make it into a whole month! Hope you liked it, because I don't stop writing at all! Day 30: Reader is too scared to get close to anyone, as they deem themselves “dangerous”.

The rain doesn’t stop.

It taps against the broken window like it’s counting down. One second. Two. Three. Tick, tick, tick. You sit in the corner with your back to the wall and your eyes on the floor, listening to nothing but the storm and the low, static cough of the radio.

Extraction’s late. Again. Probably won’t come. You’re used to that.

Soap is pacing. He doesn’t like stillness. Never has. It makes him fidget, makes him talk—usually to fill the silence. But not this time.

Even he can feel it hanging in the air, thick and cold like a coming funeral.

Price is at the table, flipping through maps that don’t matter anymore. He knows it too.

You shouldn’t be here.

“You always do this?” Soap asks suddenly, voice cutting through the quiet like a dull blade.

You don’t look up. “Do what?”

“Disappear like that. Still in the room but a hundred klicks away.”

You don’t respond. There’s nothing to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

Price doesn’t look up when he speaks. “They’ve lost more teams than you want to know.”

Soap slows his pacing. “How many?”

You shrug. “Four. This is five.”

Soap whistles, low. “Fuck.”

You nod. “Exactly.”

He doesn’t say anything after that. Neither does Price. The weight of it settles over all of you, thick as the damp in the air.

“Every time,” you murmur, so quiet it barely counts as speech. “Every time I think it might be different. Every time I let someone in—”

You cut yourself off. Swallow the rest like broken glass.

“They die. Doesn’t matter what I do. Doesn’t matter how hard I fight. I always survive, and they never do.”

Soap crouches nearby. Not close enough to touch. Just close enough to listen.

“You think you’re cursed?” he asks, and it’s not mocking.

You shake your head. “I know I am.”

Price finally looks up. His gaze is tired, heavy. “You think we’re next.”

It’s not a question.

You nod again, throat tight. “You should’ve left me behind.”

Soap’s voice is raw now. “Not a fucking chance.”

You flinch, barely.

“You think you’re some kind of bad omen?” he continues, voice rising. “You think we haven’t seen death? You think we haven’t blamed ourselves for it, over and over?”

“You weren’t there,” you snap, the words sharp and bitter. “You didn’t hold their dog tags. You didn’t dig through rubble looking for bodies that were already gone. You didn’t scream into a comms channel for someone who never answered.”

Silence.

Then Price, quiet but firm: “We’ve all done that.”

You look at him, really look this time. And maybe for a second, you see it in him too—that familiar wreckage behind his eyes. All the names, all the ghosts.

“But we’re still here,” he says. “And you are too. You think surviving makes you dangerous? It doesn’t. It just means you haven’t given up.”

Soap’s voice drops. “And you’re not gonna lose us. Not tonight.”

You want to believe them. God, you want to. But the part of you that’s seen too many graves can’t.

So you say nothing.

But when Soap slides a ration bar toward you, and Price adjusts the comms again with a grunt like he’s not giving up, you don’t move away. You don’t run.

It’s not trust.

Not yet.

But maybe… maybe it’s the beginning of something.

[serenityquest]

[defire]

Miasma masterpost

A Useless Shield

Content: self-blame, angst, sibling whumpees

Kit

Kit couldn’t count the number of times he’d exhaustedly closed his eyes, slept for a second, and then the wave of pain would come back to kill him again. Days, and it still blazed back up every time he moved. 

“Hey. You awake?”

Kit felt his gut twitch at his brother’s voice, and he grimaced before opening his eyes. 

Even the slightest emotion, apparently, made his stomach move reflexively.

“Sorry.” Caboodle whispered, stepping back.

“Are you okay, bro?” Kit croaked. His stomach hurt when he talked too. 

“Um, me?” Caboodle said, venturing in and leaning over the bed where Kit lay, taking that clinical pose he did when he was curious about something. “I’m fine, I didn’t get hurt at all.”

Kit didn’t answer for a minute, but when his brother’s eyes wandered down to his stomach, even covered under the blanket, his expression matched that of the surgeons–except actually with less obvious empathy, which made Kit want to cover up even more. He knew Caboodle cared, but the boy tended to be completely driven by curiosity when he wasn’t thinking about it. The kid was so smart it scared Kit sometimes.

At that moment, Caboodle seemed to notice Kit’s averted eyes and pulled back.

“It’s so dark.” Kit said through his teeth; his eyes were closed. “And cold.” He added when Caboodle glanced toward the closed curtains. “Nothing I can do. It’s like watching everything unfold around me and nothing I can do, even though I’m right there.”

“I can bring in a candelabra,” Caboodle offered thoughtfully.

Of course the poor kid didn’t get what it was like to be responsible for the world crashing around them. Kit was actually glad he didn’t.

“Just… please, talk.” Kit eked out the words, air gasping through his lungs painfully.

Caboodle frowned, pursing his lips as he started rummaging through his pockets. 

“Uh, okay.” He said. “I got something you might think is cool.”

He pulled out the knotted bracelet he’d enchanted to increase his intuition, frowning as he dug his hands in again, a second bracelet to the left hand as he continued to search.

“No, not that,” He was muttering to himself. “Oh! Here!”

He pulled out a piece of quartz, picking a piece of string off the cube-shaped stone, roughly polished. 

“This  stone feels extra… Hn,” He made a sound that was supposed to mean a feeling. Seeing Kit’s confused frown, he started waving the stone around as he got excited. “Like, you know that feeling when you know it’s kind of blessed, it’s kind of raw, you get what I’m saying?”

He only paused for a second before he shrugged lightly. “Anyway, maybe this stone is the answer for your problems. Have you heard of the ancient Druid lightstones?”

Glen had boasted of a temple full of treasure that they’d plundered when he’d helped to conquer this district. The temple had been lined with glowing crystals. The men had eagerly collected them, holding these magic stones that  but within an hour after they’d killed the last Druid, the lightstones had faded and turned into lumps of lifeless quartz.

“This was one of the lightstones.” Caboodle held it between his forefinger and thumb, grinning at it excitedly.

“Wait–” Kit’s gut lurched. “You grabbed Dad’s dead lightstone? Bro, you know you can’t–you’ll–he’ll be pissed!”

Caboodle had just nodded excitedly when Kit said “lightstone”, completely ignoring Kit’s fears.

“Yes, but I’m going to  make it glow again!” Caboodle grinned.

“Ah, fuck,” Kit groaned softly, voice lowering to a nearly inaudible whisper, which Caboodle leaned forward to hear as he spoke. “You’re going to steal from dad, and then you’re going to soak his stuff in Druid magic? How could you get into more trouble?”

“Somebody’s got to.” Caboodle shrugged, raising his eyebrows at Kit. 

Kit realized he was now unable to draw his dad’s anger away and “be a pain in the ass” as his father put it. Which meant that Caboodle, the one who couldn’t do damage control to save his life, was going to be facing down Glen’s anger alone…

“No…” Kit groaned, unable to form more words. It hurt too much.

“So, if I make it glow,” Caboodle ignored Kit’s muttered protest, “you won’t take it? Then you’ll be able to control the light in your room.”

“Caboodle.” Kit raised his eyebrows at the dumb kid. “Put. It. Back.”

Caboodle sighed.

“Fine, if you don’t want it, I’ll just enchant it for myse–”

“No no–no.” Kit grabbed his brother’s hand and shoved it toward his pocket. Before his brother could get scared by the violent gesture, he added quickly, “If you’re going to do it anyway, then, give it to me. Horizons. Can’t have that on you when he finds out.”

“It’s okay, Kit,” Caboodle said. “Lightstones turn off when you close your fist around them.”

Kit just groaned.

Caboodle got up, sighing.

Kit didn’t want him to go and leave him alone in the dark, but he had just completely rejected his attempt to cheer him up. He was already starting to feel horrible.

“Caboodle–” Kit’s voice stopped his brother in the doorway. “Thank you.”

Caboodle awkwardly looked down at the crystal as if he didn’t know what to say.

“And put that away, man, you’re in the hallway.”

“Oh!” Caboodle shoved it into his pocket quickly. “Right.” He turned a sheepish smile back to Kit, waved, and left.

Kit leaned back into the pillows again, staring at the ceiling. 

Fuck.

He grimaced.

How the fuck was he supposed to get between his dad’s fists and his little brother, from here in his damn bed?

Let me know if you want to be tagged in future chapters!

Tag list: @bamber344 @sorcererfen @iamheretohurt

@tildeathiwillwrite @mimostic @fleur-a-whump @a-n-j-a-maria

This is Miasma, Book 2 of the Sinking City series after Dance of Death.

[howifeltabouthim]

With every choice you made, you took responsibility. That it was irreversible, irretrievable, that it would screw tight the lid, prohibit the path to more choices. That out of all those liberating, mesmerizing options you could choose something bony, fetid, barren. And with that decision, you would have inflicted unhappiness (tragedy, even!) with your very own hand.

Irina Reyn, from What Happened to Anna K.

[sarah3210]

My mind just had to think of this painful thought lol but besides Hera blaming herself for Kanan's death, I wonder if Ezra and Sabine do too. Ezra because he was in charge of the mission and Sabine thinking maybe if she got there quicker.

[chestersbraincell]

I ought to grow horns

A permanent mark of shame

For all the pain I’ve caused

To drive anyone with the intention of getting close away

A warning sign

A mark of shame

Horns are cool, maybe

Maybe I could learn to cynically „own” them

Revel in the fear respect they’d instill

Illusion safety in the enclosure I build for myself

While trapping a lonely

scared internalised scapegoat child

[sparklykat-hideoutenthusiast]

Warning for general food related triggers:

Isn't it interesting how your skin crawls at the thought of eating something slimy?

Isn't it annoying how you chew for an excessively long time when you don't want to swallow?

Isn't it wasteful that the food you already bit is spat out soon after?

It's something isn't it?

It's always something with you.

Why do the oils have to stick to your tongue, or the flavor to your throat?

Surely you're not doing this on purpose...

Right?

You like the taste don't you? You like the feeling of nausea afterwards. You must, either that, or you don't like food at all.

Surely it's a facade to make us go out of our way for you. There's no reasonable explanation for why you hold back puke other than being a burden to us.

Don't expect help. You don't deserve it.

After all we've done for you, you should thank us.

[serenityquest]

[epitomeofrain]

Silence creeps in, a heavy veil

Shrouding the truth, the pain I conceal

I shared my heart, my deepest fears

But instead of solace, I faced bitter tears.

Your words cut deep, a blade so fine

"You shouldn't feel that way, it's not divine"

Blame and anger, a toxic brew

I'm left to drown, with no one to renew.

The night descends, tears fall like rain

I'm lost and alone, with no escape from the pain

I'm hurt and unheard, yet I blame myself too

For having a heart that still beats for you.

l hate the soft spot that I hold so dear

The love that lingers, the tears that appear

I hate that I can't hate, that I can't be strong

That I'm always apologizing, all wrong.

I hate the way I'm trapped in this cycle of pain

The self-blame, the guilt, the shame that remains.

I hate that I can't fight for myself, that I am weak.

But most of all, I hate the love that I still seek.

- epitomeofrain (Sat, June 22,2024)