#so impactful had it been real

[robinsteve]

“lucas, i’m scared. i’m so scared. i’m so scared. i don't wanna die. i’m not ready. i don't wanna go! i’m not ready.” if the duffers kill max in s5 after that we will be having words.

[m1d-45]

(what about me?)

summary: even gods get lonely, it just takes them a bit longer than most. but when it hits, it hurts, and hard.

word count: 1.1k

-> warnings: major spoilers for mondstat archon quest, mentions of wine, little guy is sad and alone about it :(

-> gn reader (you/yours)

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yuus3n || @esthelily || @turningfrogsgay

< masterlist >

starsnatch cliff is empty more times than it isn’t.

it was a common destination for couples, the silence a welcome break from the bustle of the city of freedom. the stars up above were unblocked, bright, the full rotation of constellations visible by just tilting one’s head to the sky. two majors, twin sets of stars, the three minors orbiting, staring down, watching. the same form, night after night, a bard in green driving away the aspiring couples often enough they learnt to stop trying. a body is there, physically occupying the space, but with how little is being done, the cliff still feels empty. the stars watch, seeing all, as the same body comes and sits, as the same eyes turn to the sky, vacant with memory.

venti didn’t know which constellations were in rotation—he did, that was a lie, he knew every single one and their owners—nor how long they’d be up—liar, liar, liar—but he watched the sky anyway, spinning a cecelia in his hand. the stem was worn, some of the juice clinging to his fingers, but he didn’t set it down. to the left, to the right, the six petals twisting outside of his field of view.

the god of freedom found himself coming back to the same cliff every night, sometimes leaving the angels share earlier to get there quicker. he walked, picking a cecelia as he did, and sat in the same spot at the peak of the cliff.

was he truly free, he wondered, if the stars kept calling him back?

(he knew he was. it was his choice to return, his choice to stay until the sun rose, to take naps in the afternoon to make up for the sleep before coming back, back, back, night after day after night)

the galaxy streaking its way across the sky, blue and purple and greens mixing and blurring, broken only by the bright shine of stars. planets, all locked in their own orbit, worlds he’d never be able to see, all within his sight yet all out of his grasp.

his eyes fell on a star at random.

who lived there, he wondered? what was beyond the atmosphere he knew? how far was the next planet? was there even intelligent life? surely, there must be—you wouldn’t create only one planet with life on it, right? you’d create many races, aliens he couldn’t imagine, all created to thrive on their world and serve under you.

(were they treating you better? had you exited your resting world already, and found another planet to keep you occupied? was teyvat not enough for you? you… you’d tell them if they weren’t doing enough, right? you’d say? you wouldn’t just leave them in the dark, right?)

he wondered how far away you’d gone. he remembered you—of course he did, your visage was engraved in his mind, miles deep and never to erode—and your last moments on teyvat, how you’d promised the archons that you would return soon. that you wouldn’t be far.

of course, ‘far’ was relative. and what was time to a god? how long was ‘soon’ for you? how long would it be until he could be blessed with your presence again? the little of your aura that bled through your vessels wasn’t enough- it wasn’t, and he was horribly selfish for thinking so, but it wasn’t. not when he’d been able to lay his eyes upon your true form, not when he’d felt your skin beneath his as he led you through mondstat for the first time. the small glimpse of you that seeped into the air around your vessels may be enough to rest weary souls, but for a god?

you were the shining light of teyvat, always everywhere. traveling from nation to nation, occasionally visiting off-world but never for long, never, he never had to go without you for more than a year or two at a time, he never had to feel erosion start to sap at his life-

the stars grew blurry, and venti hastily wiped the tears away, continuing to search the sky.

he knew he was eroding. every god was. memories, resilience, patience, all of it fading. mortals (part of his mind flinched, but he was right, he was mortal, he could die) weren’t meant for the power of the divine, the gnoses grating against the walls of their soul. it was never a problem before, not when they had you, you to temper the flame of creation, you to brush your hand over a wayward god and breathe life back into their heart, you with your endless compassion, to accept what felt like overwhelming and discard it as trivial.

barbatos was eroding without you. every god was. the ley lines were acting up, the abyss growing stronger, the eons without your presence turning teyvat into a hollow husk. and yet, the pathetic little he discarded from your vessels had begun to heal it anyway.

why did you use vessels? you had to know it was easier to descend yourself, right? to let flowers bloom in your wake and the breeze brush grass from your clothes, to tuck ei’s hair behind her ear and let empathy back into her mind. your vessels did a lot, but they could not manage all- murata, focalors, the tsaritsa and her wretched fatui- you could fix it all, all with a blink and a smile, a gentle hand across the earth to sew it at the seams.

he was being idealistic. he knew he was. and yet, he could not help but to wish—wish, he wanted to laugh at the irony—that your return ‘soon’ would be within his lifetime.

he wanted to see you again. he wanted the scars across his soul to heal, for his empty, cracked cup to be filled with you. he wanted to go back to how it was, when ei could smile freely and the tsaritsa wasn’t so cold, when the wind blew softly, carrying the sound of laughter. time only turned one way, yet he wanted to reverse it, to force the universe in rewind, to when his greatest worry was which song to play you at lunch. he wanted to bring a bottle of dandelion wine and watch as morax insisted upon osmanthus, as rukkhadevata rolled her eyes with a smile and suggested how about tea instead, it’s barely noon.

he was selfish. every god was, to an extent, but he…

as venti looked up at the stars, he couldn’t help but pray that one of them was you.

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

august 24, 2021 8:15 p.m. rainbow bowling

[hella1975]

'fucking brunch' 'FUCK brunch' i love this show

[siribunbun]

Chlide and Eternity

[not-poignant]

I hope you have a lovely day with lots of snacks

Tl;dr the day was not lovely but there might be snacks

I actually didn't have many snacks today but I'm about to make up with it with a couple of churros and dark chocolate dipped strawberries.

Today I...woke up and showered and replied to comments on AO3 for a while, and then I spent about 4 hours formatting documents into PDFs of varying sizes for Patreon and Ream and uploading chapter commentaries into compilations. And then I did more formatting stuff behind the scenes while I stared at all the other behind the scenes stuff I need to do and thought 'writing is a hard job' quietly and intensely.

I ate lunch while I was working. I also made some memes about how overwhelmed I felt, and then made some for my readers too, lol.

And then I laid down for about 4 hours because I also have chronic illness (whee) and I am constantly in pain and varying degrees of fatigue and I literally must lie down every afternoon so I don't collapse in the evening (literally) - and I did a tiny bit of reading (webtoon: Shutline (which I immediately realised I'd read before and didn't fondly remember), webtoon: December (didn't mind this)) and then dozed restlessly because it was 40C/104F today. I also edited a Tiktok art video in Adobe Premier Rush, but I haven't put it up yet, and I should really do that.

Got up and made ham and cucumber sandwiches for dinner, and watched Girl with the Dogs on YouTube while I ate, and a Smosh video.

Then did some more work and helped a friend with her work stuff, and then I watered the garden for 1.5 hours because *points tiredly to the heatwave* and stared balefully at the dark sky (you can't water during the day - it's literally a heatwave but also it's illegal here to water during the day) with its few stars because they'd set up a severe weather warning due to extreme winds in our specific area and it was dead AF and oppressive out there and it was just hot instead.

I watched a few Tiktoks while I watered.

When I hung the hose up back on the holder thingo, I sang to my plants: 'I hope you make the best out of the water I just gave you, you little fucks' like a sweet lullaby, and a person who I didn't know was outside next door because it was like 9pm and pitch black laughed softly and sweetly, like they didn't expect it, and felt kind of fond. I didn't know I had any nice neighbours on that side of the house, so I mostly just thought 'WHOOPS SHIT' and then felt too embarrassed to say anything.

And then I came back inside and replied to some asks (hi!) and am hopefully going to eat churro's soon and it's 10pm and so I'm probably going to do some more work and then I'm going to go to bed while I feel stressed about the work I haven't done (currently Palmarosa is the heart beating beneath my floorboards). I will probably keep reading December. It's okayish.

I don't know if I'd call today lovely, because I'm burnt out and I want to put up the Christmas decorations but it's 10pm and idk if I should start that because it tends to make me severely ill to do it for a few days.

I'm a little sad, a lot lonely, a little melancholic, a little grumpy, and a little very excited about churros and chocolate dipped strawberries. I resent days that are 'work and sleep' sometimes, especially during November. That's my fault. That's on me. I'm a mean and shitty boss to myself.

Gotta do something about this burnout at some point, because December is the worst month for my PTSD, but I also need to keep getting paid, because medical bills and food and stuff. So like...finding the balance there is a constant work in progress.

There were some lovely moments today:

That little laugh from the neighbour in the dark

The first yellow peach of the season

Doing tricks with my cat (who is trained) for treats

Making silly little memes

Helping a friend with work stuff

Replying to some amazing comments

Watching cute dogs

Feeling pretty accomplished at putting up those compilations on Patreon/Ream even if I'm not done yet.

I hope you're having a lovely day too, anon, with many snacks.

[roses-and-elixir]

.

[mossflower]

how many breakdowns should you have about dropping out before you seriously consider dropping out. asking for a friend teehee

[babytreepiig]

chip thinks he so unworthy of love and that everything is his fault. he doesn't realize how much he helped the other two.

he doesn't know about what gillion went through in the dunjon. he doesn't know about how much gil changed just because he took his hand that one day after being banished. he could've been left to float the see until he died. but chip offered his hand and the amount of good that gillion has seen thanks to chip is immeasurable. i'm pretty sure gillion even mentions it in 79 or whatever episode it was that jayson ferin is not the best of the oversea because gillion has seen it and how would he have seen it had he not joined chip?

jay quite literally would still be stuck living an unhappy life with a family who she felt trapped living with and would never get the answers she needs had she not left with chip. she would be in that navy uniform, stiff and stern like her father, looking upon all that she could've had but couldn't because she was put into this life in the navy. she would have never had the realization she had way back in say episode 53, where she wanted to go with everyone as a riptide pirate. she wouldn't be here. she wouldn't have seen that she can leave and be her own person and make her own choices outside of what her father wanted from her.

chip has left such a mark on the two of them, and yet he doesn't see it because all he can see is the negatives to everything that's happened. he doesn't see it because all he sees is that it's his fault and he doesn't deserve anything better

[disturbedrat]

i wish zelda stayed a dragon in totk. it would have been so beautifully tragic

[boilingrain]

I wish that the game actually let me work with them instead of forcing me to be untrusting & kinda mean

[prolibytherium]

I get sooooooooo fucking bored of flowery prose sometimes, like it has its place but I see so much online writing where it feels like every sentence is a calculated attempt at making it big in a webweaving post.

[bostonbakeddeans]

I work at a hospital as a central monitor technician. I (and the 2-3 other techs) sit in the basement for 12 hours and watch patients who are on cardiac monitoring, and I communicate (generally via a secure chat function) as needed with the nurses assigned to those patients. The communication is often the hard part, especially if I'm working with a nurse who doesn't work on one of our cardiac floors.

Yesterday I had a patient in the birthing center, which is very rare - but the nurse was fantastic. She did a wonderful job communicating with me, up to and including letting me know that the patient was being transferred to a different unit so that I didn't worry when the patient came off monitoring. I was so grateful, and so (even though I had praised her in our shift report, which gets passed on from our manager to the appropriate unit) I reached out to her at the end of shift to really quickly let her know how great of a job she had done, and how sincerely grateful I was to have worked with her during the shift.

She wrote back telling me it was the nicest thing anyone had ever written to her, and that she had especially needed to hear it then, because she felt as though she was doing a terrible job and like she was failing her patient. I reassured her that she had done a wonderful job, and we wished each other a great night.

I don't know if I'll ever need to work with that nurse again; I certainly wouldn't be able to pick her out of a crowd. But I do know that I made a difference for her, and she made one for me, and I think that's really beautiful.

[altschmerzes]

was thinking about the 'sex is rock climbing' post op last night like do they know the effect they have had on my life. do they know what kind of identity crisis they helped me bypass entirely by kick-starting my reconsideration of the way i thought about sex as a concept. butterfly effect etc.

[busysavingtheuniverse]

just got rudely reminded that some people don't like percy because they don't think his entire characterization in hoo was wildly ooc and are thus acknowledging how he treated nico as canon

[stillcarmine]

AU where Thalia and Luke find Leo as well as Annabeth. 

Annabeth and Leo, traumatized besties. They get to be Annoying Children together. 

Hephaestus is still a dead beat, and doesn't claim Leo.

He ends up in the Hermes cabin, even though he's pretty sure where he's meant to go.

But this makes it easier to hide his fire. 

He still sneaks into the forge to tinker and Beckendorf takes him under his wing.

It's not unheard of for the children of other gods to be interested and good with machines, but Charles is pretty sure Leo is his brother.

But the kid isn't saying saying anything for a reason, is staying in a crowded cabin for a reason, and Beckendorf has a guess.

He leaves it alone and just looks out for the kid.

Luke and Annabeth don't know about his fire. At least, he didn't tell them.

The closest he came to was when the cyclops was after them and he asked if fire could hurt them and Grover told him that they were immune.

Leo slumped, because that was his only way to help his friends.

He either never visits Thalia's tree or is there all the time, but only when no one else is around.

He like. Doesn’t get Annabeth’s longing for a quest. He doesn’t want anything to do with the dangers of demigod life.

They’re best friends but this causes the worst arguments between them and after one, Leo runs from camp.

Annabeth thinks that she’ll have to be allowed a quest to look for Leo, but that doesn’t happen.

They originally aren’t going to look for him, figure a satyr will likely find him, but Beckendorf pushes for one.

He eventually finds Leo and Leo doesn’t want to come back. He tries to give the older demigod the slip but Beckendorf just keeps finding him and it stirs up a lot of Emotions(tm) for Leo.

Eventually Leo snaps and breaks down for the first time in years and his brother holds him asks him to come home. Leo relents.

Annabeth doesn’t know how to apologize when Leo comes home, and Leo doesn’t know how to ask for one or give his own. But from what he’s seen of actual siblings around camp, siblings usually don’t make big productions out of saying sorry, and he guesses that can work for him and Annabeth too.

He manages to keep his fire powers a secret for years and then Percy Jackson shows up with his water powers and Leo scratches the back of his neck and thinks “Damn, I can’t afford a narrative foil.”

Leo was never as close to Luke as he was with Thalia so his betrayal doesn’t hit him quite as hard, and he’s better able to see him for who he is.

Cue years of Annabeth and Leo growing apart as she gets wrapped up in all of the quests.

Things between them are tense when Thalia comes back to life. None of their relationships are what they used to be, but Leo is so happy his friend is back, and feels such a pang of grief for his mom that he can’t breathe.

He bites his tongue but wishes he could bring the Fleece to the ashes of her shop and revive her too. When Annabeth goes missing, and the Hunters of Artemis go on a quest to find her, Leo is ready to sneak after them, but runs into Percy, who says he’s planning on doing the same thing.

Then Nico di Angelo finds them both and this just isn’t going to work.

He asks them both to stay, because they don’t have any experience with quests. Percy was just trying to be logical but he accidentally hits on Leo’s feelings of inferiority, because it’s true, there’s nothing Leo can do out there to help Annabeth, except his fire, which only ever hurts people.

Suddenly Percy’s got two people he doesn’t know well asking him to bring back their loved ones.

He pulls Leo aside and asks him to keep an eye on Nico. Leo is not in favor of this idea because 1) should a twelve year old be watching a ten year old (irony oh irony), 2) Nico is annoying and reminds Leo too much of himself, though he doesn’t yet recognize that’s what’s bothering him about the other boy and 3) Leo is. Bad with people. He is bad with emotions. He should not be left with a kid he doesn’t know who is feeling Big Emotions while Leo is also feeling Big Emotions.

But he eventually agrees.

It’s bad for a while. Leo doesn’t know what he’s doing. The older campers are helpful but Leo doesn’t let them do everything because he gave his word and he’s going to keep it. Leo and Percy made a deal, and he isn’t going back on it.

It’s not fun though because Nico is chafing at being given a babysitter. He eventually blows up because he’s been under so much stress and Leo remembers how he did the same thing once and how Beckendorf stayed with him through it.

So that’s what he does.

When Nico’s calmer, they talk about how they’re both worried and tell each other about their sisters, though Nico seems a bit sour about hearing about Annabeth’s adventures with Percy.

And it’s better from there.

Until Percy and Annabeth come back to camp.

Leo isn’t there for what ever happens, knows that Nico’s run off and… Chiron seems fine with that?

Leo isn’t though, and taking another page from his older brother’s book, he goes to find Nico.

Leo’s no good at goodbyes, and after just getting Annabeth back, and learning that Thalia is taking a different path that means they’ll only see her a few times before they die and she goes on living-

Well, he can’t bring himself to say anything in person. He leaves a note for Beckendorf, knowing he’ll understand and tell the others.

Kronos forces somehow learns about his fire and use that to try to convince him to join their side. How the gods cursed him with this awful power and then just left him without any acknowledgment. That they must have something terrible planned for him, that’s the only reason they want heroes in the first place.

How his father, god of fire, stood by while his mother died in a fire and did nothing.

That one gets to Leo.

But he’s got a mission, and doesn’t have time for the problems the titans have with the gods or the gods with the titans or whatever. He can’t change big, lofty stuff like that, is no child of prophecy but he can pay forward the kindness shown to him in the past.

That's what he can do.