#something something the idea of a time loop in the abyss

[freuleinanna]

three-sentence fics: yes i'm still on my bs

i'm trying to sort dozens of prompts i didn't get to write, so maybe a three sentence fic is a good form for this one. the official prompt is time passage, i guess

Light brightens the room;

Marisa walks in furious, ready to verbally annihilate the smuggest, sorriest, untouchable scientist lord, whose eyes flicker devils in the sun, for shamelessly using her for access to the Magisterium library, but she suddenly hesitates and muses quietly, 'Didn't there use to be a vase here?';

Lyra is all grown-up and, discovering a new passion and a new love, she sometimes thinks about her parents and wonders if she understands them now.

Light brightens the room;

little things tend to get eaten by it, softened into nothingness with golden shining: a book they quarreled over, a painting she can't quite remember, rooms, colors, somebody's face, the roof where Asriel showed her the stars - what building was it? - but his face remains, and their twined hands too;

Mary Malone opens the door to see a handsome young man, whose mother just died recently, and brings him into a long, affectionate hug while a gorgeous-looking cat brushes against his jeans.

Light brightens the room;

they don't recall much of anything anymore; they can't produce new words – just relieve the ones they've already said, and they've said a lot of harsh ones; they repeat them now softly as love confessions because words don't matter in oblivion, feelings do; walls of their first meeting have long crumbled to reveal endless fall;

Will and Lyra have both been dead for years and told their stories to Gracious Wings together before making good on their promise to never part, even in atoms;

somewhere, Lyra's parents are making good on all their young, naive promises too, and as golden flecks of Dust swirl and dance in the darkness, resembling sometimes the silhouettes of a long-perished monkey and a snow leopard chasing each other playfully,

light brightens the room,

and they find each other living, loving, all over again.

[weirdsht]

Heya!! Can I request a tcf x reader fic from where the reader is teenager and got teleported there? Somehow they can see the dreams of the future and knew about tcf novel while also being a full on simp for the main characters?(But also the thing that the young reader was someone who has been to various worlds and was in a loop, repeating things but without the memory of them doing so each time. They get glimpses ofcourse but it was just their past self trying to give out signals to not repeat any mistakes)

Definitions - Cale & Teen! Reader

notes: sorry anon i couldn't reflect all of your ideas because i found some of them hard to combine when i started writing. also this plot is better suited for a long fic/series but i don't have that time and energy huhu

tags: gender-neutral reader, mentions of death and dying (can be a little graphic but nothing too bad), teenager reader, nightmares

English isn’t my first language so there will be grammatical errors

Pls don't repost my work anywhere without my permission

Constructive criticisms and any kind of interaction are more than welcome

Requests are open and welcome (for a limited time)

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“You should be more careful, this is uncharted territory.”

The look-a-like caressed your face softly as they spoke. Eyes filled with concern and uncertainty bore into you.

You may look alike but there’s something different about them.

Maybe it’s their mature aura. Perhaps it could be the tired look in their eyes. As though they have been suffering for eternity and want everything to end.

Whether they long for peace or eternal rest even you do not know.

“Still… this is a good opportunity and something we haven’t tried yet. Maybe you’ll be safer under his watch.”

“What do you mean by that? Who are you?”

You spoke for the first time since being transported in this weird abyss.

Being transmigrated into a novel like a lousy isekai protagonist was already confusing, but now you have to add weird dreams on top of that.

However, it beats trying to survive in that place you used to call home.

Between being endlessly confused and going back there… you’d choose the former any time of the day.

“I am you, well a part of you at least. As for what I mean… let’s just say this is for your own good.”

The supposed “you” paused briefly as they rested their hand on their chin. Probably thinking about how much they can disclose. Once they made up their mind their fingers caressed your head.

You may not know what’s happening, but you can tell they’re trying to provide comfort.

And it’s probably for the arduous path waiting beyond this dream.

“We’ve been through this many times, and each time you forget… I do not know if god has forsaken us or is playing a cruel joke…”

The look-a-like sighed before hugging you tightly. You meant to reciprocate, however, before you could raise your arms a sharp pain went through your neck.

“AGH! IT HURTS!”

It really does. It feels as though someone’s digging a knife through your neck, Trying to separate your head from your body.

When you manage to come back to your senses the other you are gone. The only thing left in the abyss is your and your throbbing neck.

…And wouldn’t you know, the moment you looked at your hands that were previously clutching your neck… all you could see was blood.

“-[me]”

“-[me]!”

“[Name]!”

“[Name] wake up!”

You jolt up as the familiar voice wakes you up from your dream. That’s right, you are currently under Cale Henituse’s wing after being transmigrated inside the novel you were reading. You have momentarily forgotten such a fact.

Clutching your throbbing neck, you tried to look at the redhead through your tears. Not that you are succeeding at the moment. However, you think you could see a slightly startled look on the young master’s usually calm face.

“Young master..?”

You asked, unsure of everything as your mind is still hazy. Still trying to get out of dreamland.

“You were screaming and crying in your sleep.”

Cale stated calmly as if he wasn’t panicking a minute ago. Still, his eyes roamed around you several times to double-check if there was anything wrong.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The redhead asks as he gently wipes your tears and pry your hands away from your neck.

“I’m sorry young master. I don’t think I can for I don’t remember the contents of my dream… All I could remember was that there was a searing pain in my neck. It-it felt so real. As though I was in the middle of the battlefield and someone was sawing their sword back-and-forth on my neck…”

You tried to explain to the best of your abilities. You didn’t want to lie to the man that you considered your saviour.

Both when you were reading the novel and when you transmigrated.

In every form, fictional character or not, Cale Henituse has always been your saviour in one way or another. And thus you hold deep respect for the man.

“Don’t push yourself. Sometimes forgetting and never remembering is better than being reminded constantly.”

Ah, he must be referring to his record ability. A blessing and a curse indeed…

“Still, if you feel unwell or anything come to me. I took a kid like you in so I must take responsibility for you till the very end.”

Cale Henituse probably doesn’t know the impact of his words. Just how much you have longed to hear such things.

No, perhaps he does. Perhaps more than anyone, Kim Rok Soo has been the one longing to hear those words since he was a child.

“I’ll keep that in mind…”

With that, Cale stepped out for a moment to ask a servant to fetch a glass of warm milk. After doing so he returned to your side, sitting on the side of your bed. He looks unwilling to leave you, despite having three younger children waiting for him in his bedroom.

“Don’t hold back, have you seen me holding back from doing and saying whatever I want? You don’t have to push yourself to act like a grownup around me. I’m the adult, those things are for me to bear.”

Cale’s words suddenly found their way to your memory when you were about to urge him to go back to On, Hong, and Raon. That combined with the redhead’s determined gaze to not leave your side has you clamping your mouth shut.

Soon enough a maid delivered the glass of milk to your room and you drank it to your heart’s content. Then the morning after that you could feel the children averaging 7 years old sleeping beside you.

The weeks following that are peaceful. Well as peaceful as Cale’s life could get at least. Not that it says much since he has the tendency to meddle in things that will only jeopardize his slacker life.

Despite that, your days are looking better. After that night you didn’t seem to experience excruciating nightmares anymore. You also seemed to have opened up to the rest of the crew.

Perhaps that’s why Cale became complacent, causing him to lower his guard.

And perhaps that’s also why his face hardens 10x more than it would have weeks ago. His anger soars through the sky, reaching the gods even, as he hears the heartbroken sobs you utter on your lips after waking up from a nightmare.

“Am I such a bad child for the gods to do this to me? Have they forsaken me? What did I do that was so wrong that warrants this kind of suffering?”

You sobbed on the young’s master chest. You look so out of it. Eyes glazed over as if you’re not with Cale despite being in his embrace. You continued to wail, continued to curse the world for putting you in a type of pain that not even Cale can comprehend.

“I’m tired, I’m so tired. How many times has it been? I’ve tried my best… I always did, but I don’t know what the gods want.”

As you looked up at the ceiling, perhaps trying to directly ask the gods, Cale could finally clearly see your eyes.

They were filled with pain and suffering. Such young eyes carry the weight of the world.

It did not belong to the teen who was laughing and playing around with the kids and Choi Han.

It was still you, but it wasn’t the you that Cale is currently raising.

The meddlesome transmigrator couldn’t understand it himself, but he was sure of this feeling that he had about you.

Hence why when you finally passed out he immediately ordered someone to summon Cage and Saint Jack.

Cale Henituse might be a piece of trash but he always sees through his promises.

Even if he has to fight every god out there to fulfil it.

Because for Cale Henituse, that’s what it means to be a guardian.

[fancyfeathers]

Saw that genshin requests are open now so I would like to request tartaglia with a childhood friend darling who is completely out of the loop when it comes to him going to abyss and becoming a harbinger. (Probably in a way that she left snezhnaya before him going missing lol). Like in a way they finally reunite and hang out, but she is completely oblivious that the sudden meetings that he has are dealings with people that have debt with fatuo or other fatui agents.

I think I would picture this around the time after Signora’s death and her funeral and his darling was probably oblivious to his dealings as a harbinger maybe because she was sent off to attend a boarding school in another nation, maybe Fontaine or Mondstadt, so by the time she returns home Ajax is long gone due to his line of work. During all that time I picture them writing to one another, but not once did he mention what he does probably because he does not want her to have the wrong image of him, I probably imagine that he also wrote to her family to not tell her.

So one day when she is helping around her family’s home there is a knock at the door and she goes to get it and the last person she would expect to be there is Ajax. Seeing him standing there is strange, the last time she saw him in person was when they were children, but it was like nothing changed between them since, but something clearly has. When he picks her up in a hug, spinning her around, he is stronger than when he was a boy, much stronger. When he sits down in the kitchen with her to have a cup of tea with her and catch up in person and he takes of his jacket and sees the battle scars on his arms, those certainly there before. Then there is that look in his eyes, he feel so dead to the world.

Then in the following days after she sees him again, gifts begin to arrive for her and her family from Ajax and from her time with him as a child she knows that he was from no wealthy family so it makes her wonder how he affords such things. She tries asking her mother and father about what he does these days but she gets no answer, and then when asking her older brothers and sisters she just gets turned away, the of course when she asks Ajax she gets no clear answer. Soon she begins to grow annoyed so one day she acts upon the impulsive idea of following him when little Tonia comes by to get him, saying someone from work wants to see him. She does not dare go up to the door of his family’s house when she sees Fatui agents by the door, the realization of what her old friend does dawning on her. She is no fool, she has seen the world and now she certainly does not see the Fatui as so many people in her home nation sees them thanks to her travels for school.

When Ajax comes to see her the next day, acting like nothing is wrong, she just dismisses him, telling him to leave. He realizes quickly that she now knows and tries to explain himself to her but…

“You lied to me, Ajax, lies hurt people.”

“I didn’t lie, I just… I didn’t tell you.”

“Ya, what else didn’t you tell me?”

“That I love you.”

She falls to silence when he says that, and when he tries to speak, she just raising her hand up silently telling him not to speak…

“You can’t love someone when to lie to them, Ajax… just leave.”

[lambiesvault]

The endless abyss x backrooms minus the entities

Abyss is described as literal hell, so it got me thinking about how hell can be a person's concept of hell instead of end all be all place of fire and monsters. Tho hell in our world is not a physical place as the one in PIDW. Its only a concept so it can be whatever you think it is. YK. Endless loop of damnation and fire for one, a pitch black void for another, straight to reincarnation for others still.

Now ofcourse, in PIDW, It is very much concrete and a place, influenced by external sources which describe it. That's superficial because a lot of people see what they've been told they would see. Underneath the collective experience of the abyss, there's a personal one. Most people don't survive that ecosystem to experience the other.

Now. Binghe knows that the abyss is supposed to be scary and that it has demons/monsters, even the wildlife is not safe. Shizun made sure to instruct them on all that.

What Shizun did not take into account was that It also adapts to people specifically. No one person's experience would be entirely similar once you looked past the collective idea of It.

As Binghe ventures further into the abyss.. the landscape changes. He's encountered all the things things he was warned and trained against (he is eternally grateful for Shizun's enthusiasm for 'optional' lessons).

He survived It.

Yet it goes on, and the things beyond are.. surreal for lack for a better word. He could mistake it for a dream realm if he didn't circulate his qi to make sure he wasn't asleep in some corner getting his boot chewed on by a fire eel.

At first the vegetation was sparse. Then came the moss his Shizun and Mu Qingfang Shibo so enjoyed fanning over. And then-

There's bamboo here. Initially it was not quite bamboo. A poor painting created from memories. Then it took on the green of his home. And slowly it devolved. Sometimes charred, sometimes cut clean off as if by a sword. He travelled without incident. Deserted groves of imitation bamboo and plants from his home. A small building here and there, too familiar, he didn't dare look too close let alone go raid any. Time passed.

He sometimes sees himself reflected in clear water (it's a trick. Poison. He will not fall for it again). The reflection is twisted. Angry. Smug. Not himself. He's stopped looking when he goes to drink, he's adapted to it now. The burn of the poison is barely there now.

He almost got comfortable. A monster here and there, a succubus he roasted over open fire, sometimes small kill he could eat raw. He could tell.. he needed to go deeper, something called to him. He needed to traverse this.. whatever this was before he could free himself.

Till.

The time he saw something look like his shizun in his peripheral. It lingers. He's been circulating his qi to ward off illusions. Tho it could be real. Either way, it stays out of reach and out of sight. He's shamefully relieved because one of these times, it stayed for a full 3 minutes, trailing him but it was mangled. Missing an eye. And an arm. It limped. Terrified, first he ignored it. That usually worked. Till it groaned at him, "beast". That terrified him into sprinting through the entirety of a bamboo maze, sobbing, trying to stay quiet as breath came quicker and quicker (It sounded like his Shizun-). He thought he lost the specter but once he calmed down, there it was again. Limping just out of sight. Binghe's tried to catch it but as soon as he turns to look at it properly it vanishes. It scares him.

With half a mind to turn back and start in another direction, his gut tells him, he'll encounter this.. place anyway.

So he let's the hum of concentrated demonic qi comfort him as he draws closer to it. It tells him that if he can reach it, they can make it out of the abyss. No more of the tortured Shizun or his own reflection sneering at him.

He's never been more determined to reach the source. In theory it could be manipulating him but after that thing spoke to him, he's willing to take his chances.

[millenianthemums]

i watched jacob geller’s video “Time Loop Nihilism” for the first time today. i love jacob geller but for some reason i skipped this video til now, and i’m so glad i finally found it, because weirdly it gave me some big inspiration for Bill Cipher characterization.

rambling under the cut

so, like, when a character’s trapped in a time loop for long enough, they stop seeing their actions as having any consequences, because they don’t have any lasting impact on the world. they start seeing the world they live in like a speedrunner sees the video game they’ve been running. they start seeing the people around them like neutral objects that make noises and do things but don’t really matter. they’re toys to play with. and you can break them as many times as you want, in as many ways as you want, and then they fix themselves and it’s like nothing happened.

but still, most time loop stories end with the loop breaking and the character just… moving on. returning to normal life. but how could someone ever do that, really? after all that time, all those things you did? even if no one else will ever know about it, YOU will. you will know that you are a person who did those things. that will never not be true again.

Bill wasn’t in a time loop, but he has been alive for one trillion years. one trillion years is a REALLY LONG TIME. like, our universe has existed for 13.8 billion years. a trillion is 1,000 billions. in a trillion years, Bill could have lived from the beginning of our universe to right now about 72 times. who knows how many universes he’s lived from the beginning to the end of? not even to start on the galaxies, the planets, the PEOPLE in his life. i’m genuinely not doing the math on how many people Bill might have known in his life because i will get nauseous.

Bill is like Ama from the Through The Flash short story, but on a totally different level. how could you possibly internalize the idea that hurting people matters at ALL when you’ve lived through eternity a million times and watched everything you’ve ever done disappear into the abyss of time over and over? a trillion years. he likes killing people and he hates getting bored. how many new, creative ways of torturing and murdering people do you think somebody like Bill could dream up in a TRILLION YEARS?

and then this AU is like, welcome back to survival mode buddy! things matter again now! none of that crazy stuff you got used to doing is gonna fly anymore! also this is your last chance. fuck this up, and you’re dead forever. have fun!

i imagine for a while he’s just dead set on finding some kind of loophole. he can’t accept the idea of going back to caring about things again. he wants creative mode back and he’d gonna find the cheat code, dammit.

but then he makes friends with Mabel. and now suddenly, whether he wants it to or not, something in his life really, REALLY matters. he cares about this kid. this human kid who’s gonna live like 65 more years tops. and now he has, by his standards, an infinitesimally short time period to get his shit together and become somebody who can actually be a genuine friend to another person, despite all the terrible stuff he did, in the show and in the incomprehensible eternity that came before it. how is he gonna do that?? i don’t know. i’m still figuring it out. it’ll be fun!!!

but yeah, i was struck, hearing the summary of Ama’s conversation with her neighbor. it just fit, in my mind, with everything i’ve been thinking about. no matter how much he changes, Bill will never again be somebody who didn’t do terrible things. whether or not the effects of those things exist outside him anymore, they weren’t free of consequence. he is still the person who killed and tortured and exterminated billions of sentient people, even when he’s laughing at Mabel’s silly jokes or being terrible at video games. all he can do is keep moving forward.

thanks so much if you read all of this. <3

[separatist-apologist]

The Wrong Place At The Right Time

Summary: And if I'm all dressed up, they might as well be looking at us

Read on AO3

--

Four words were enough to wreck her entire week. Strung together, they ruined her. Separated? Fine. 

Lucien will be there.

Feyre had the good sense to warn Elain at the beginning of the week, at least. Give her time to get used to the idea, to decide if she still wanted to go. Elain suspected Feyre had invited Lucien specifically to give Elain an out. Afterall: she hated Hewn City. She hated the way they looked at her, how they leered, their whispered slut and whore comments as she passed, tarring her with the same hateful brush they’d once painted her sisters. Guilty by association, for having the same last name, the same smile. 

If Elain hadn’t been such a coward, she might have asked why Lucien needed to be there. What could be happening that required his presence, that somber expression, those clenched hands? Elain had slunk up to her room, unmissed by the general revelry of the night, to pick through familiar letters. 

Lucien wrote. Elain read. She didn’t respond—that wasn’t what he wanted, wasn’t what he expected. They had their roles, and Elain was meant to witness him. Perhaps he thought she threw them all straight into the fire and that was what made him pour such vulnerability into the ink and parchment. Or perhaps he simply didn’t care if she saw this part of him. 

Elain read them like he was her religion. She’d found him in the spaces of his letters, in the way he looped his words. 

Lucien asked her for nothing and so Elain offered him just as much, unwilling to admit she would have given him anything he wanted if he put it to paper. If he spoke the words. And now he’d be in Hewn City, the first time she’d seen him since that first letter had been handed to her by a sheepish Rhysand, clearly embarrassed he had to be the messenger. Now the letters were just there, sitting on her bed untouched and unopened, unexposed to the suspicious eyes and unforgiving minds of the Night Court.

They’d never trust him if they saw the things he said. If they knew the things he wanted, the fears he harbored, the dreams he wouldn’t say to anyone else. And Elain knew it would all be used against him, so she never spoke of them either. This was her secret—something just for her. 

Knowing she’d see him soon, Elain did the only reasonable thing. She had a glass of whiskey for breakfast before making her way into the Palace of Threads and Jewels. 

She wouldn’t wear black. What a mockery it made of her, how everyone knew by sight that she was an interloper, outsider. No amount of spine would ever make that untrue, and if Lucien was coming, she wanted him fixated on her. She wanted to read about it in his next letter—how wrecked he’d been, how badly he wanted to touch her, where he’d put his fingers, his mouth, his teeth. 

If she was all dressed up, after all, he might as well look at her. Rubbing the glittering fabric between her fingers, Elain nodded before handing over more gold than she had the right to carry. “I need it quickly,” she’d said. No problem for the High Lady’s sister, which was perhaps unfair. Elain couldn’t find it in her to care. Not when the gown appeared the morning of their trip, nor when she pulled it out of the pale pink tissue paper to admire the way the beads glittered like starlight beneath the faelights.

She was never going to be the cold abyss of night but maybe, at least in Hewn City, she could be the burning heat of moonlight. Warmed by the sun, an echoing promise of what morning might bring if she only just held on. 

Elain didn’t dare go downstairs, even when she heard the commotion of Lucien’s arrival and Feyre’s high pitched delight at seeing her friend. She wanted to. Oh, how her limbs ached and buzzed, aware of him even when she wished she wouldn’t be. No—she needed this moment to be perfect, if only to read it through his eyes. So he couldn’t see her at all, if only to prolong the suspense.

To force him to see her exactly as she wanted to be seen. 

The dress was silver, soft against her skin and sharp to anyone who might reach out a hand to touch her unwanted. The gems that glittered doubled as knives, drawing blood if they were too forceful, too cruel. Only the gentlest hands could slide over her waist to pull her in for a dance. She’d picked a ballgown rather than something revealing, something that hid anything a lesser male might find fascinating and forced, instead, the gaze to remain on her face. Her eyes. Her mouth. 

The soft neckline exposed her collarbones and her neck, the long sleeves giving a glimpse only of her hands. She left her hair to tumble down her back to hide the exposed skin, leaving her a mystery, a fantasy. Elain could be anyone to whoever looked at her, which was nothing new. Men gazed at her, projecting what they wanted without considering who she might actually be.

Lucien could do the same, if he wanted. 

Though she hoped he wouldn’t. 

Elain descended the stairs in a fog, the last to arrive just as she’d planned. It looked like petulance—a woman so determined not to see a man that she’d made everyone wait on her. Elain kept her eyes on the wood beneath her feet, fingers skimming the rail as she all but floated down. There was a beat of silence before a murmuring of finally, though she didn’t notice who spoke the words. 

When Elain looked up at the gathered group, her eyes fell on Azriel first by virtue of him being largest and closest. She saw that familiar gaze—the projection, the fantasy, the hunger. How she could so easily lose every aspect of herself within it, reshaping every inch of her to be what he saw. It wouldn’t have been the first time—Elain was moldable. There was safety there—Graysen had destroyed her, but Azriel never could. He didn’t know her well enough, didn’t care to. He saw a fantasy and Elain could hide within it.

Even when he’d rejected her, there had been no pain. It wasn’t anything special, after all. He clearly hadn’t thought so, and neither did she. Looking at him evoked nothing but appreciation. He was beautiful—perhaps he employed similar methods. Why bother knowing him when he could be anything and anyone? It wasn’t as if Elain had paid any particular time to finding out what lurked beneath the pretty veneer. 

That made her uncomfortable, a mirror held to her face, reflecting herself wholly back. She turned her head, meaning to find a wall to stare at.

She found Lucien instead. His expression was unreadable, his one good russet eye gleaming with indifference. Both gold and brown flicked over her for a moment before he turned his own head, a muscle feathering in the cut of his jaw. Bound, auburn hair trailed behind the silver of his jacket and Elain wondered how he’d known.

If he’d known.

Of course he must have. Right? No one commented on it—why would they—and Elain blinked and they were gone, leaving behind the warmth and safety of Velaris for the horror that was Hewn City. Lucien blinked from the edge of the group, both eyes so round they looked drawn against his otherwise beautiful face. Had he been prepared for this? 

No one else seemed affected at all. They were used to the cruelty, to the casual nightmares that infected this place. Elain had long thought it didn’t need to exist the way it did, and it was allowed in some manner of tradition rather than practicality. Surely they weren’t all bad? Surely they put on the same masks Feyre and Rhysand wore? Or was it that even the Court of Dreamers like to indulge in a little cruelty at times, if only to purge it from their systems?

Seeing Lucien react made Elain feel settled—like she wasn’t making it all up in her head. She wondered what his letter would make of all this—the smooth, carved out stone and the vaulted ceilings. The walls adorned with swirling silver and that obsidian pair of thrones that served more as decoration than actual chairs. Rhys and Feyre, dressed in black so crushing it stole the light from around them, casting them as blackholes.

Behind them was Mor, unforgiving as she surveyed the room and flanked by the cold, unyielding brutality of Cassian and Azriel. Even Nesta managed to make the ice in her eyes an art, causing those who dared to look upon her to flinch back as though she’d physically struck them.

Lucien fell back a step, shoulder to shoulder with her despite the difference in their heights. Fingers brushed for only a moment, the warmth fleeting against the cold of the mountain. Elain wanted to grab his hands, to demand he tell her something true. This place is terrible, right? I’m not imagining it—I can’t fake it, can you?

Maybe he heard her thoughts, because those eyes of his slid toward her, eyebrows raised as if to say, what the fuck is this? 

Elain couldn’t help offering a silent response in return. Home, I guess. 

His eyes widened, not with surprise, but recognition. As if he was saying, Hell is where you make it.

She had to suppress her smile, ducking her head to hide behind thick, long curls. Somehow, though, she thought he caught it anyway. He’d tell her about it in his pretty prose, just as he’d done for the last six months. Every memory he had of her, put to paper for her to read as though he wanted her to know what he saw, what he knew. 

Proof, she thought, that he caught the little slip ups—saw the light beneath the cracks, diluting the shadow she felt lost in. He wasted no time describing her physical beauty in conventional terms. Lucien focused on the parts—bright eyes, tapping fingers, swinging feet. A curl caught in the breeze, a beam of light illuminating hues of gold and green. He wrote about her like she was something so far elevated that only the poetry of his words could ever do it justice. And he wrote about himself the way a tree might describe the squirrels beneath. Appreciative for the branches, the shade, worthy to look, to appreciate, but to perhaps not to speak. 

Rhysand gave some brutal speech that Elain didn’t absorb, didn’t care to hear. Those words made it hard to look at him in the aftermath, made it difficult to like him at all. Better to pretend he didn’t like any part of this and someone else was continuing this spectacle. Elain, instead, took her seat, the furthest from the High Lord and Lady.  Lucien whispered something to Nesta, who, with raised eyebrows, nodded her head and stood so they could swap.

And just like that, he was seated beside her rather than at Feyre’s elbow. Wasn’t he the emissary to this court for the evening? Surely he wanted to converse with the ruling monarchs rather than the woman who never spoke to him at all. But Lucien’s broad shoulders relaxed, his hand resting against the thigh of his white pants. Feyre crawled into Rhys’s lap, touching his neck, his face, his chest, while Nesta immediately jumped to her feet to join Cassian on the floor. 

So maybe it didn’t matter where they sat, Elain rationalized. Nesta’s chair would have remained empty regardless, and Feyre could simply slide into it if she wanted. Elain dared a look at Lucien and his glazed expression before balling her hands in her lap to suppress the overwhelming urge to touch him. One of them would have to end the stalemate between them, would have to break. She’d known it ever since she’d imposed the silence in the first place.

And Lucien did what he’d always done—he spoke first. 

“I’ve been here before,” he said, his voice deeper than she remembered. Hoarser, too. She couldn’t help the incline of her neck, the way her body shifted in her chair to look at him. “In a manner of speaking.”

“When?” she heard herself reply, so quiet she might have whispered it in his ear.

Lucien didn’t look at her at all, expression set with a grimness that betrayed his own nightmares. “Under the Mountain,” he said. “I didn’t think…I suppose I see where Amarantha took her inspiration.”

There it was again—that urge to touch him. Elain suppressed it, though she didn’t quite know why. She didn’t need to be his mate to know he would have welcomed it. Allowed it, without the expectation of anything else. 

Elain lapsed back into silence, not because it was demanded but because she had no idea what to say to him. This wasn’t polite conversation. He hadn’t told her he liked her dress, that she was beautiful—she’d told him something personal. Something vulnerable. And when Lucien spoke like that, Elain merely listened, read, remembered. He didn’t seem upset, though in truth how would she know?

And when he stood to be closer to Feyre, their foreheads nearly touching as they conspired, Elain felt a little jealous, unfairly. She could have him like that, if she wanted. Could have been the Archeron he whispered his secrets to with his mouth rather than his fingers. She knew before he ever stood to look at her, that Lucien was going to leave with only a faint goodbye. That he’d seen whatever it was he needed to say, had the information he needed and that was all the time Elain would be allotted.

He’d be relegated back to fantasy until Feyre summoned him again, and Elain would try and be what he wanted without letting him have any of it at all. Every part of her was screaming when he turned his attention to her, that mask slipping for only a moment so she could see the truth of them both laid bare in this terrible place. His yearning, a match for her own, stared back at her. His eyes, screaming too—ask me to stay.

The resignation as he bricked that wall back up to offer her a polite half bow. “I’ll take my leave of you—” “Dance with me.” Elain hadn’t meant to say it. The words had forced themselves out of her with such a rush the consonants tripped over one another, slurring together until they were practically unintelligible. Lucien’s spine straightened, betraying no evidence of the shock Elain was certain graced her own features. 

“It would be my pleasure,” he assured her as flame ignited in his one good eye. Sunlight seemed to burn against the other, and when he extended his hand, Elain found familiar golden warmth ribboning along her bones. They so rarely touched that it felt indecent right then with so many eyes on them. 

It felt like they were doing something they shouldn’t, that was better reserved for a bedroom than a dance floor, and all they were doing was holding hands. Elain let him guide her out of her chair, wondering if her dress would slice apart his skin or if Lucien knew the right way to avoid injury. If he knew exactly how to touch her, missing the thorns for the blooming petals instead. 

Elain hated the music of Hewn City—it was too strange, impossible to dance well to. Perhaps the fae preferred the grinding displays, the sweating bodies, the declaration of obvious intentions. But Elain missed the subtlety of human dances—the careful, precise touches, glances that lingered, bodies that never quite touched. Foolish, she thought, to think Lucien would know the steps or would even want it.

And yet…and yet he didn’t take her to the dance floor where Nesta was holding court. Lucien, with his fingers warm and reassuring, walked her through the archway and back into the night. Only then, with the thudding music a half-distant memory, did he exhale a shaking breath. “I assumed you meant somewhere…else.” “Where—” she bit her bottom lip, because maybe she’d misread this situation. Or maybe he had, too. The dance had to happen before anything else could, and if he skipped it, his letters would have to keep vigil in her fireplace. 

“Trust me,” was his only reply, with an earnestness she’d read before. Many times, even. Elain decided she would, that she would give him this one opportunity to prove the man in the letters was the same standing in the entryway to the mountain, rejecting cruelty for something sweeter, something unmasked and real. 

He tugged gently, and before she took a step, Elain said, “I hate it in there, too.” Lucien regarded her, a tendril of hair sweeping over her cheek. Those eyes of his softened at the edges, just enough to silently proclaim, I know you do. 

They walked out of the ward, the cold air a rebuke of Lucien’s inherent warmth. Was that Autumn, then? Or something else, some innate magic he seemed to carry with him. Gold shimmered from the bronze of his skin and too late, Elain realized Lucien, too, was offering the same amount of skin she was. His hands, his throat, his face—look at my eyes, my lips, my hair. No half unbuttoned shirts revealing swirling tattoos, no armor showing off bulging muscles, or weapons strapped menacingly against his legs. Had he planned it?

Or did he know?

Warmth blazed around them in a bubble as the smell of salt and coconut swept over them. Lucien’s winnow was less snow and cold, and more sand and sea water, and when it faded, Elain didn’t feel so off balance. Looking around, she found herself on a terrace overlooking a violet hued ocean comprised of glittering diamonds and white shores. White marble curved along the balcony, while a little table held a carafe of wine or water—she wasn’t sure, didn’t care—for some unknown guest.

“Where…are we?” she managed, so taken in by this small scene she could hardly breathe. It was warm. Hot, even, despite the night sky. She regretted her sleeves, the heaviness of her skirts, the length of her hair curling gently against the back of her neck.

“Day,” Lucien replied, coming to stand just behind her without touching. Close enough she could feel his heat, too. Elain was tempted to lean back against him, to let him strengthen her with his solid build. 

“Why Day?” she asked him.

“It’s my home,” was his simple reply. 

Unthinkingly, Elain said, “You didn’t tell me that.”

There was a pause, a sweeping realization that oh. She read my letters. Elain didn’t dare look back, didn’t want to see whatever it was he was thinking so loudly. Lucien cleared his throat.

“I ah…wasn’t sure…how I felt about it. If I wanted to say anything…even to you.”

“What are you leaving out?” Elain dared to ask, thinking she was the only person in the world who could demand honesty from the famed liar. 

Lucien chuckled. “Too much, I think. But I brought you here for a dance, not to overburden you with my problems. Come. I want to show you something else.”

Tearing her gaze from this new, warm world, Elain followed Lucien into blazing light. Of course Day would glow golden, some magic causing sunbeams to filter through the faelights hanging overhead. He looked alive here, a rainbow of colors draped across his skin. The silver seemed brighter, and she wondered if hers was just as iridescent as his own. If she looked happy, alive, warm, in the same way. 

Shaking off the cold, the cruelty, Elain tried to map and memorize their route through winding halls of high, open windows, draping ivy flowers, and pretty artwork. Down sweeping steps she could have floated toward him like a cloud rather than plodding as she’d done just an hour or so before, until they were alone in the grandest ballroom she’d ever seen in her life. Big enough to fit a thousand people, with a dais that obviously belonged to the High Lord. Lucien wasn’t touching her, though she wished he would. Instead, he left her to make her way inside while he strode toward that throne, jogging the three steps to the top to fiddle with something she couldn’t see.

Another balcony, wide enough to fit her entire bedroom back home, curved on both ends of the room, separated only by sheer curtains caught in a friendly breeze. Elain might have gone to see what kind of view they both offered had music not filled the space so completely, conforming to the grooves of the smooth walls, the domed ceiling overhead. It blanketed her like a breath of air, causing her to turn for its source.

Lucien drank in her delight. “Allow me some secrets, hm?”

“You don’t know what I was going to say,” Elain protested, standing in place as she waited for him to come closer.

“You were going to ask me how I managed this, right? Magic,” he added before bowing with a flourish. “I have to make the most of this dance.”

Because there might not be another. Still, she was grinning and thought that she wouldn’t mind a second, or even a third, depending on how the first one went. Lucien offered her his hand the way a human man might, offering her the chance to reject him if she wished. Elain took it, inkling her head, and then her other hand was on his shoulder, his sliding along her waist so smoothly, so fluidly it was like the beads were made of the smoothest pearl. 

“I’ll do my best not to step on your feet,” Lucien said, holding her gaze. His body was inches from her own, intimate and still polite, his steps in time with the music that wasn’t familiar, and yet not at odds with what she’d had growing up.

“Have you been practicing?” Elain dared to ask. Another thing he’d kept from his letters. Color bloomed over his cheeks and how did anyone call him a fox? His every emotion, every secret, was laid bare before her.

“I thought, since you were human…well. I figured I might need to adapt.”

The thought that Lucien might have done something she’d never had another man do—try and change pieces of himself for her, rather than demand she change shape to fit in his puzzle-piece world—astounded Elain. Something so small, that might never matter to anyone other than her. Elain loved to dance, loved the social gatherings that facilitated it, loved the push and pull, the will-they-wont-they, the eroticism of a fleeting touch, the promise in a glance.

“What else did you adapt?” Elain dared to ask him. Because it was allowed, here. She could drop her guard a little, make her intentions more plain. 

“The letters,” he admitted, spinning away from him. Had there been other dancers, Elain would have been swept away by another man, forced to watch Lucien while held by a stranger, hoping he, too, would be searching for her across the crowded room. “I ah…well. It occurred to me that I could court you like a human man and maybe you’d like that. But I’m not a human…or a man, really. And after some reading, I found a familiar set of scripts that seemed to begin with letters, and then house calls, a conversation with your father and…anyway, you never responded, but I kept writing. And you were reading them.”

It was a question masquerading as a statement. “Yes,” she agreed, not looking away from him. There was no space to lie within their dance. “Many times.” Lucien took a breath, pulling his hand from hers so he could lift her in the air while Elain gripped his shoulders. Oh, but she wanted him—she wanted him so much it made her knees buckle when she was back on the ground. Of course he’d been courting her. She hadn’t realized, thinking he was merely using her as an outlet to say all the things he couldn’t normally.

He was telling her who he really was. Beyond the facade, beyond the masks. Lucien the fox, the High Lords son, emissary to Spring or Night or Day—all titles, all meaningless. The letters were the man beneath—the male, she supposed—and Elain, too used to playing a fantasy, too, didn’t realize what he was doing until he told her plainly.

“Is it working?” Lucien asked, pulling her back just a little closer than before. His steps were flawless. Or maybe they only seemed that way because she liked him, and could see nothing else but pretty perfection.

“What if it was?” she asked coyly, just to see how he’d respond.

“I’d ask you to dance again. And another after that. And I might pretend there was a queue of other men anxiously waiting for us to part ways so they might have a chance with you, thwarted by my charming manners and my fluid dancing.”

“And what then?” Elain pressed, if only because she was having fun. 

Lucien arched a brow, and she wondered how difficult this all was for him. To pretend to be something he wasn’t, to play her games rather than waiting for her to just give in. 

“Well…I think I’d take you to the balcony and I’d thank you for humoring me. And I might kiss you, if you seemed like you’d allow it. And you’d remind me I’m impolite and I’d smile—but it would be charming, so you’d forgive me. And then I’d take you home and hope that the next time I wrote you a letter, you invite me to call on you.”

“Is that how a fae male would court a female?” she dared to ask him.

Heat flared in eyes of both flesh and metal. No. It was a dangerous question…but one she wanted to know, anyway. Maybe, she rationalized, there was some middle ground between them. Or maybe she didn’t want him to take her home just yet. Maybe she wanted to stay, to wake up beside him, and pretend she was wholly fae and see what happened when the sun replaced the moon. 

“No,” he admitted, their steps slowing to fit the shifting music. Lucien’s grip on her waist tightened, bringing with it the smell of warm salt. He wanted her—she’d known it, of course. But to see it, while he held her, while he admitted he’d been trying to court her, was a different thing entirely. 

“How would you?”

“I’d take you upstairs to my bedroom and I’d peel your dress off your body with your teeth. I’d make you see my devotion with my tongue rather than my fingers, and hope you understood what I was trying to say.”

“I’m just a stranger to you,” she managed, the words tumbling out of her gracelessly. Aren’t I?

Lucien pressed his lips together, leashing whatever it was he felt. “Then why do I feel like I’ve known you my entire life?”

The song ended so abruptly Elain nearly pitched forward. Lucien, too, stumbled back, caught off guard by the silence. Neither moved, her hand still clasped in his, him holding her waist, their breath mingling in the space between their bodies. It wasn’t the balcony, like he’d said, but it was still a moment, wasn’t it? A human one, even. Elain inclined her head, drinking in the sight of his delirious relief. 

Kiss me.

Lucien lowered his head, his mouth touching hers for the briefest of moments. If they’d both been human, that was all that would have been allowed. Elain felt the familiar flare of heat in her stomach before it spiraled into an inferno, reminding her that she might have been human once.

But now she was fae, with all the instincts that came with it. Separated, Elain could pretend otherwise, but together, tied on two ends by that unbreakable golden cord, all the need she’d been denying suddenly broke through ivy coated lattices. 

Were those here hands on his neck, pulling his closer? Her feet surging onto tiptoes, trying to close the distance between them? Her teeth sinking into his bottom lip, earning that echoing groan from Lucien? 

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. 

He tasted sweet, heady and warm, like he’d been napping in the summer sun and when her lips parted so he could taste her, Elain thought it might ruin her entirely. Every possible thought that would have stopped her flew out the window and instead, Elain wound her arms tighter, pressing herself against him. 

It was Lucien who pulled back, chest heaving, tendrils of hair loose from the leather band. He looked wild. Like an animal. 

“I—” he took a breath, like it pained him to speak at all. “I should take you home before…”

Before he tried to take her to bed. Elain didn’t want to go home. It wasn’t home, besides, some small voice in her head screamed furiously, reminding her that it belonged to Feyre, and Elain was, functionally, just a guest. Out of place. Alone. 

“I don’t want to go home,” Elain told him, sliding her hands down his chest to fist them against the fabric of his jacket. “Don’t take me home.”

Lucien was shaking, holding himself still. Roughly, he asked, “Where would you like me to take you, then?”

She didn’t know if she could say the words. She shouldn’t, right? It was impolite. Unbecoming. Lucien was the embodiment of a courtly knight so many human women dreamt of. She could have told him to take her to another room, after all. 

And maybe…maybe it was okay, just this once, to be fae. To meet him in the middle, like she’d thought she wanted. Swallowing, Elain squared her shoulders and reminded herself she could do hard things. She would do hard things. 

“To your bed.”

Relief washed over his features and still, he asked, “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

Her feet were off the ground, body swept against his chest before she’d finished the consonants. “Faster, if I walk,” Lucien ground out, and she wondered how he figured. Unless he didn’t think he could walk beside her, which was valid—Elain’s hands seemed to have a mind of their own, interested in careful exploration of the man—male—before her. What would it be like? Would he be quick about it, venting his pent-up need like Graysen had? Or would it be like their dance? Fluid and careful, betraying the immortality stretching between them. He had lifetimes to learn every inch of her—it didn’t have to happen in a night.

Elain blinked when Lucien got the double doors to his bedchamber open, kicking them closed again with his foot.

“You left out some information about your new home, I think,” she murmured, grazing her mouth against his exposed neck. Why was it so erotic to touch him here? The only think she could see, the few bits of flesh she was allowed.

Lucien had her through the adjoining chambers for sitting and hosting, all but slamming his bedroom door closed with a finality that thrilled her. It, too, was absurdly massive. Too big for an emissary—and built, she thought as she took walls edged in gold and a ceiling made nothing of windows—of a bed large enough for six and a canopy of gauzy white.

“Helion is my father,” was all Lucien said before he was over her, back pressed against soft, satin sheets. It was a revelation on top of revelations—Lucien, a different High Lord's son, a prince of this realm, just as his mouth drew forth the realization that she’d never really been kissed before. Not truly. Not like this. It was both secrets told and secrets broken, a promise unspoken. 

She’d make him tell her everything in the morning. So what, she decided? It changed nothing, other than Elain could stay here if she wanted and Lucien’s permission would be explicit. Even Feyre couldn’t argue, though Elain doubted her sister would. Besides, asking him the details risked the removal of his solid musculature and Elain didn’t think she’d ever felt safer than she did blanketed beneath his body. 

Lucien kissed her like a dying man, like he had only a few seconds left and this was all he wished to do. Desperation clung to madness, drawing them together like crashing waves against unyielding rocks. His hands stayed at her shoulders, tangling through her hair, touching her face, her neck, her collarbone. And Elain did the same, pulling that long, thick curtain of auburn hair free, letting Lucien be wild. 

In the middle between the human woman and the fae male was this. The taste of him, his tongue against her own, the rise and fall of his chest. It was all too much, building and building with nowhere to go until release was all Elain could think of. Words bubbled in her throat, the same she knew were echoing in his skull because when Lucien pulled back, one hand holding the entire side of her face, he spoke them first like he always did.

“I’m yours,” he swore, the oath ribboning between them. “And you are mine.”

Elain undid the top button of his jacket in response. It wasn’t the time to repeat them, to make that same vow. She’d know it when it was, wouldn’t sully his promise by rushing what was promising to be a perfect night. Forehead pressed against her own, Lucien closed his eyes and just breathed while Elain made her way down each glossy button, pushing them through the fabric until it was tossed gracelessly to the floor. There was, of course, another shirt beneath which irked her.

He smiled when she yanked a little too hard, pulling it from his breeches. When it was gone, too, she was left to admire a broad expanse of flawless skin, glimmering with that inner, golden light she’d never noticed before.

Elain kissed his bare shoulder. Lucien shuddered. “Do that again,” he whispered, bracing this body weight on his elbows. With a gentle push, she had him on his back, herself on her side so she could look at him. 

“Where else do you like to be kissed?” she wondered, doing exactly as she asked.

“I like everything you do,” he said, eyes fluttering shut. That made her smile. Lucien seemed so new here, so inexperienced that any insecurities Elain might have had were washed away beneath his labored breathing and his hands skimming down her lace covered spine. If he liked everything she did, she could do no wrong, she reasoned. And so she took her time with him, mapping out the grooves and contours of his chest with her mouth, kissing to see which little patch of skin drew a shaky sigh or caused his fingers to fist in the sheets. 

The further she got to his belt, the more Lucien’s hips arched into the air. This was more restraint, she decided with some glee. She doubted a fae female would make him wait so long, would spend time touching him when there were surely more pleasurable things they would be doing.

She asked, “Do you like this?”

“Yes,” he gasped, eyes opening to look at her. “Yes.”

The problem, of course, was once Elain reached his mouth again, she wasn’t quite sure what came next. Her only experience was with Graysen, who had been perfectly polite, if not a little underwhelming. She’d assumed with time, and experience, they’d get better. Now, though, Elain’s memories of kissing in the dark before Graysen was pushing inside her seemed to do her a disservice. Should she remove his pants? Demure politely? Caught between fae and human, Elain didn’t notice Lucien rolling them over, laying her out even as clever, experienced fingers made quick work of her own buttons.

She was thinking too loudly, she supposed. Lucien looked down at her with such heart aching softness that Elain was the one to push the dress off her shoulders, pulling her hands through the sleeves before shimming out entirely. No corset—those weren’t a thing in Prythian—which left the thin, white slip and her undergarments.

“Would you like me to go first?” Lucien offered, misreading her excitement for nerves. She wasn’t going to tell him no. Elain nodded, rising up on her elbows as Lucien half tripped out of the bed in his urgency. He watched her while she watched his hands, practically holding her breath. 

Show me, show me, show me.

It wasn’t voyeurism, so why did it feel like it? Like she was seeing something forbidden to her, that she had no right to look upon? She did try, in her defense, to look at his legs first—but truly, all Elain was interested in was what lay between. The thick, long length of him, jutting outward, betraying just how badly he wanted her in a visceral, undeniable way. 

Vulnerable, she thought with no small amount of affection. It was what convinced her to sit up, swinging her legs over the bed so he could be the one to watch. Swallowing hard, certain he’d like whatever he found, she pulled the nightdress over her head. Lucien’s little groan, stifled as he clenched his fingers to keep from reaching for her, was all the encouragement Elain needed.

She took the rest off quickly before meeting his gaze. There was no turning back, now. Even if she told him to stop, they’d always have this memory.

She’d always know what came next. Lucien took two shaky steps before he fell to the ground, knees crashing against marble so roughly the unlit chandelier overhead clinked with displeasure. Elain squealed when he caught her ankles, fingers wrapping around the bone, and hauled her forward. 

“Tell me to stop,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her inner thigh. 

“Why would I do that?” Was her whispered reply. “I like everything you do.”

She was also far too curious as to what he was going to do to tell him to stop. Her usual embarrassment didn’t exist here, nor did her sense of propriety. Do whatever you like, she wanted to scream at him as he inched closer and closer to the space between her legs. 

Pressing an open mouth kiss to her cunt, Lucien’s eyes found hers in the fading dark. Waiting, she realized, for her to tell him to stop. Elain wasn’t going to—she wanted him to keep going. To end the teasing, the finish what they’d begun and give her a reason to see him again. 

She felt his relief swirling around the bond between them, his shoulders relaxing as he drew her closer. Was this what he liked? Elain certainly enjoyed seeing him kneel before her, his face half obscured by red hair, the other half obscured by her leg. And oh, Elain liked the sight almost as much as she liked his tongue, teasing at first, unaware of how desperately aroused she was.

He figured it out, perhaps tasting the wetness, or realizing Elain was in danger of falling off the bed in a bid to draw him closer. Lucien buried his face between her legs, lapping like an unrestrained, wild animal. He was starving and she was a meal, his tongue gliding tirelessly over her clit until Elain was panting through parted lips, nonsensically begging.

That wildfire raged, was an inferno nothing would ever be able to quell. The best she could hope for was his fingers digging into her thighs, holding her against him so she knew she wasn’t alone in this. The flames would consume them—together. 

Elain came with a scream so undignified it was unbefitting anything she was trying to pretend to be. It was honest, though—the pleasure coiling through her stripping her of all other pretense before laying her utterly bare. This is what I am, Elain might have said had she any capacity for speech at all. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t like it.

They fell to the floor in a graceless heap, dragging the duvet with them not out of necessity but by accident. It was merely collateral damage in her desperation to kiss him, to be fully beneath him again. Lucien didn’t bother trying to lay it out or make things comfortable on his knees. The cold marble was a shock against her overheated skin, the blanket drowning out the world as it thudded over their heads.

Elain kissed him, eyes open so she could look, could see him staring back with delirious wonder. The head of his cocked nudged between her legs, one last question with one last obvious answer. She didn’t have to say a word, her tongue in his mouth when he pushed himself inside. Lucien likely didn’t mean to bite down on her lip so hard it flooded their mouths with blood. Nor did Elain mean to scratch her nails so violently down his back he arched against the pain. The response to sharing a body was visceral, overwhelming, incandescent. 

Something in the world seemed to sing with approval, watching for just a fleeting second before vanishing, leaving them to their own devices. Lucien held himself still for a moment, adjusting to the feel of her body and letting her decide if she’d rather call it all a night.

Everything was perfect.

This was right.

Holding his gaze, her fingers brushing the scars that decorated one side of his face, Elain made her vow. “I’m yours. And you are mine.”

Lucien shifted his hips, pulling himself out as far as he could bare before thrusting back in. He shuddered at her words, forehead pressed against her own with all the unspoken things hanging between them. There was time, she thought, pulling him by the shoulders so no light or air could penetrate between their bodies. She was still coming down from the high of her first orgasm and learned quickly there would be no reprieve. Not for the male writhing above her, a feral gleam in his eye.

He was going to wring every inch of pleasure he could get from her, and then a little more if he thought he could get away with it. Elain sank her teeth into the flesh of his shoulder, biting hard. Maybe she didn’t want to be so nice—not right now, anyway. And maybe there was room for every created version of her. The lady who smiled and the woman beneath who wanted to scream, and maybe even the female that liked her first time with her mate happening on the floor. All these versions, coalescing into one person that Lucien wanted. 

Ruinous wreck and all.

They were, at least, matched on that front. There was no pretending Lucien wasn’t a wreck, that he hadn’t told her as much in every letter he’d sent her. And here they were.

Together.

There was no sound but their combined breaths or the occasional whimpering groan from Lucien, his forehead buried in her neck, fingers bruising her hips as he drove them higher and higher toward a mutual climax. Elain came mere seconds before, shattering with a cry he swallowed before offering one of his own. It wasn’t enough, even as she was devoured by the rising flames, swallowed whole by heat and light. She wanted more—wanted all of it, all over again.

Lucien, too, if his frantic kissing was any indication. Long after he was spent, he kept kissing her, catching his breath and settling his hips. He never pulled himself out, though. And Elain didn’t ask him to, long after they both just laid there, his head on her chest, eyes half closed. 

“Can I stay until morning?” she asked him.

“It is morning,” Lucien replied, pulling at the corner of the blanket shrouding them so she could see the blinding pinks and oranges of a newborn sunrise. “And you can stay forever, if you like.”

Elain pressed a kiss beneath his jaw.

Maybe she would.

[targaryenrealnessdarling]

Innata Malevolentia - Part One

Summary: there is something unsettling about Ettore that she can't quite put her finger on, and perhaps something deeper and more sinister about her check-ups with Dibs | Word Count: 3.2k ~ | warnings below the cut!

Series Masterlist | Links to my Taglists: General Taglist | Ettore Taglist

warnings: mentions of past non-con crimes (but vague), masturbation (f), intimate examinations, Ettore being creepy

Why do they put windows in here?

That's the constant thought that rattles around her brain, demanding an answer, but unable to find one.

She stands, by herself, arms crossed and neck craned to look up at the skylight. A box of light and cosmic colour, carved into the pitch black darkness, bathing her face in a cool, extraterrestrial glow.

It doesn't feel warm, like the sun would.

In fact it's freezing, like being dunked under a cold shower. Like that feeling when you're just about to fall from an extreme height, but your feet stay planted, arms stretched out for balance, but your weight wants to pull you down without the real force to do it.

Heart going fast, breath burning in your lungs and blood pumping around your body at such speed, it makes you feel weightless.

That's how looking at the stars and the endless abyss of the universe makes her feel.

Uneasy.

Getting closer but also further away at the same time.

If she looks at it too long she feels a bit sick, like the loops on a rollercoaster, her stomach feeling airborne for a moment.

The air conditioning nips at her arms, every little hair standing right on end. They don't even have the decency in this hellish place to pretend it's a warm, safe place to be.

How safe is she, surrounded by the most dangerous criminals, all free to roam the ship at their leisure?

Criminals including her.

There are a few people she knows she should be afraid of, and a few who are largely harmless until pushed that little bit too far, but they all have their tells.

Only Dibs has access to their records.

Only she knows what they've all done to deserve being here.

That smug-faced, cocky witch, knows everything, and says nothing about it, but carries herself as if she is any better herself. Her chin tilted up, putting on her professional facade that everyone seems to have seen through already.

The look, as if she was judging them.

But she was sick of being judged. Many had already judged her before, and doomed her to a lifetime of imprisonment because of it.

They're all monsters here.

Convicted to die on this ship, years away from Earth, from all she knows.

Not like it assisted her in any way, being on Earth. Her life had been riddled with constant failures at different points in her life, some her fault, some not.

But that's life, she muses constantly, to try and apply some reason to her existence.

Here, there's a level of freedom. No chains or bars on her cells at least. No guards to shout in her face or threaten with batons.

And yet, that feeling of being confined to a room is eclipsed by the feeling of being confined by nothingness.

She often wondered, what were her family doing right now? The little family she had left.

What was anyone back on Earth doing right now?

Had much changed?

She knew she only thought of these things because of how uneventful the ship always was. A routine set in stone, like commandments.

Wake up. Eat. Exercise. Eat. Whatever duty they were assigned. Eat. Shower. Sleep.

A monotonous, tiresome regime.

Designed to make life here as dull and boring as possible.

She's not stupid. She knows some of the crimes worthy of a death sentence.

Murder. Rape. In some cases, fraud. Which, in the same breath, seemed so tame, it could hardly be compared.

But she guessed most of them were here for murder.

It was too dangerous to think they were here for anything else. She didn't want the idea anywhere near her.

People like Monte, Tchemy, Mink. She could see those kind of people just snapping. Doing something they would later regret for the rest of their lives, and are currently paying the punishment for.

Boyse, Dibs and Nansen seemed different.

If they did murder, it would have been planned in a moment of madness.

But these were all just guesses.

One she couldn't guess for the life of her, was him.

Ettore.

An all-round weird guy. There was no other word she could think of to describe him.

Perhaps, unsettling?

In such small proximity, she sees him mostly everyday. And everytime she does, a chill prickles at her skin as she feels his eyes on her.. When she dares to look back at him, to see if he will look away, embarrassed at being caught, the pit in her stomach gets heavier when she sees he doesn't.

His blue eyes unapologetically stuck on hers, before wanding in a waving pattern all over her body, pausing at the places she might expect a man to.

His gaze would linger, but he never would.

He was like a whisper. Gone before you could even hear him approach.

In a way, that's what scared her the most. That she might be walking anywhere, in the supposed 'safety' of the artificial day or the darkness of the evening, and he might be following.

Silently.

And watching alongside it.

For what? She wasn't sure.

Was he trying to map out her movements, trying to find a set routine in her everyday life? To find ways of getting her alone to do god knows what?

Based on what she assumed about him, she made sure she was never truly by herself. Never vulnerable.

He looked like the kind to prey on vulnerability.

And therefore, women.

As he perceived them weaker, smaller, less able than him.

Not able to fight him off. Even if they tried.

Out of all the women, Mink was the easiest to talk to. To cling to.

She wasn’t even really sure how they filled their time. For what could they even talk about? Nobody wanted to talk about their crimes, or their life back on Earth. A life where everything seemed easier. Where one day they’d be told that today was their last day, and justice would be coming for them the next.

Death seemed a mercy compared to this.

Mid-spoonful of an undoubtedly terrible meal in the mess hall, Mink winces, one hand at her lower stomach.

“Period?” she asks.

Mink scoffs, shoving whatever beige looking meaty substance into her mouth, trying to act as if the pain didn’t bother her. But she just shakes her head, “I wish. Dibs’ latest checkup wasn’t the nicest”

Everything seemed to circle back to that old hag, who had shouldered control over the ship like some kind of cosmic dictator after the official captain, Chandra, died. Though she is no better than any of them, she certainly pretends to be, assuming herself to be the next kind of authority, when really, if everyone was smart enough to band together, each of them could easily do away with her.

But she was the only doctor.

And that was precious.

But why Dibs feels the need to inspect each of the women so intimately, on such a regular basis, makes a chill rattle through her body. The idea that Dibs has some kind of idea, some agenda, but isn’t telling them, is as terrifying as the endless darkness to some degree.

“What did she want this time?” she asks, pushing the inedible sludge around her plate. Though hungry, she feels little desire to actually eat anything.

Mink shrugs, “The usual I suspect. Just ‘checking on our normal bodily functions’” she replies as if quoting from the woman herself, scoffing like she doesn’t believe a word of that nonsense.

“I think she’s doing something fucking weird to us” Mink muses.

Curiosity nips at her ears as she raises her head to her fellow inmate, “Like what?”

Mink scans her periphery, checking if any of the other inmates are listening, too preoccupied with their own meals to care.

“I felt her put something inside me”

A chill settles at the back of her neck, where all her baby hairs stand on end.

Mink continues, “Boyse got a good look at what was going on. Says she thinks Dibs is trying to get us pregnant, for her psycho experiments”

Her eyes scan the table, as if trying to find answers where there are none, “She can’t do that, surely-”

“Oh yeah and who’s gonna stick up for us?” Mink interrupts, her face flat, expression cold. What she says is so unapologetically laced with the truth, but does little to take the prodding sting of panic from her.

“The people on Earth?” Mink scoffs, shoving yet another mouthful of food past her lips, “we are literally the worst of the worst. We waived the right to defense a long time ago”

Again. It’s true.

But it still does nothing to quell her nerves.

“All we have is ourselves” she adds, “and sometimes I don’t know if we can even trust that”

Having had enough, Mink leaves, carrying her tray back.

A kind of aching dread settles in the back of her mind.

For what reason would Dibs want any of them to get pregnant?

This was no place for a child, and certainly not equipped to deal with childbirth. And on top of that, who the fuck does Dibs think she is?

If she’s trying to get the women pregnant, surely, she must be getting the sperm from somewhere.

Monte was very vocal and proud of the fact he would never even touch another woman. For some inexplicable reason.

Maybe Dibs was forcing the men to do it. As she was the women and the examinations.

When her eyes scan the room, she sees him in her periphery first, his eyes like when you shine a torch in the darkness and see those two blinking amber orbs, staring right back at you. Unmoving. Like they are watching you in still and silence, as you are doing the same to them.

Even though she looks away as soon as they lock eyes, taken completely off guard that he had been staring in her direction to begin with, she still feels the way her skin prickles, feeling as if lots of gentle needles are prodding at the surface of her flesh, but not pressing hard enough to puncture.

It is like trying to hide, knowing there is nowhere to hide. Like wanting to disappear, in a place where there is only this harsh, blue light.

As she stares at her plate, the handle of her fork slovenly sliding into the beige mush, making her want to gag, she still feels it. The intensity of his gaze.

Nothing about it is warm.

He doesn’t even break as he spoons more food into his mouth, as if on auto-pilot, and completely infatuated. Like when you watch a movie and feel like you can’t blink, otherwise you’ll miss something.

It’s as if darkness seeps out of him, like a disease or a virus, flooding every inch of clear air he invades, swallowing the oxygen in the room. She often wonders about him, curiously.

How such a person, a mere man, can have that kind of effect.

Her watch beeps. Dibs wants her again.

But at least it's an excuse to leave.

And yet, she feels the intensity of his stare burning the back of her head as she does.

"Deep breath for me"

As if taking a deep breath will take away the sting of shoving that metal speculum inside her, lube or not.

She winces slightly at the discomfort, her hands forming fists where they're laying on her stomach. Staring up at the ceiling, she tries to loosen the muscles that are so tense and tight, she imagines it's not doing her any favours.

"Oh stop. It isn't that bad" Dibs says. She talks to her as if she's speaking to a child, presenting with a scraped knee, complaining that they're afraid the leg might fall off.

It only makes her want to punch her square in the face.

"What's the point of this again?" She asks, annoyance colouring her tone.

Dibs sighs, clamping the instrument open inside her, stretching her in a new place that feels like a dull ache.

"I am checking your reproductive health"

She could almost laugh at the vague response.

"So what? We can be your guinea pigs for your fertility experiments?" She adds, scoffing as she feels a swab poke at her cervix.

Dibs doesn't even have the decency to really deny it.

"I am devoted to reproduction" she explains, "the human body is an extraordinary thing. It can withstand an incredible amount of stress"

Ah, so that's why.

She wants to see if a baby can survive in these conditions.

She can't help but think that's just a bit sick.

"You are scum. All of you. This may give you some purpose in life, if you let it"

She laughs through her nose at that.

"And what does that make you?" She says, "playing god with dangerous criminals, being no better yourself"

"I did not say I was better" Dibs argues, still between her legs, with a light illuminating her work.

"And yet you feel like it's completely justified to try and get us pregnant against our will" she replies, shaking her head slightly, "you're no better than us. You're worse"

"Keep saying it and it does not change anything" Dibs sits up, reaching over to grab a clear tub. She doesn't see exactly what it is, but has an idea when she feels another instrument at her most intimate areas, pushing something inside.

Mink wasn't lying.

She was trying to artificially inseminate them. With the other prisoner's sperm.

It almost made her gag a little.

"You are a fine specimen" Dibs says, pulling the instruments she'd used out to sterilise later, "there is no reason why you cannot become pregnant in my view"

She can't help but laugh, "my body obeys me. Won't happen"

But Dibs just laughs back.

"We will see about that" she muses, "get dressed"

There's only one saving grace from being here. Away from him.

The Box.

As terrible as it sounded, it was her haven in this horrendous place.

Nobody was more shocked when Dibs announced it.

"You are not permitted to fraternise with the other prisoners. You may use the on-site masturbatory aid, The Box, should you feel the desire"

It seemed a strange thing to her, to include such a thing on a ship. For people who barely deserved to live, they deserved to at least have the privacy to get themselves off?

It was very weird.

But she didn't complain. Beats touching yourself in a cell you share with two other people.

She was only grateful she didn't have the bunk bed.

The Box could generally have a few people waiting to use it. And whenever she saw a queue for it, she grimaced and turned away, like she never intended to use it in the first place.

She knew other people had their way in it, but for some reason seeing them lined up outside waiting to have a fiddle, made her recoil back into herself.

It was almost sad that people had to wait for the supposed enjoyable experience. And having to watch them wait their turn.

Tonight though, she simply entered The Box as Boyse came out, not sparing a glance at each other when they crossed.

Not because they didn't get on. But because it offered some sense of privacy, to not acknowledge what they were here for.

Without embarrassment.

Everyone had urges after all.

It had been so long since she'd been with anyone. A long time before they even left Earth, as they certainly didn't let them fraternise with anyone within their earthly prison. Male or female alike.

At the beginning, it took her a while to get into the groove of using the Box. But now it had become second nature.

Once the door was shut, she did her business, bringing herself to peak on her fingers. Not being able to find it within herself to use the phallus on the table. It was just too weird.

Luckily for her, time passed slowly at least when she pleasured herself. Pressing her lips together to prevent any sounds from coming out. Apart from the whiny, hurried breaths that spilled from her with her orgasm, rolling in waves numbly through her limbs.

Feeling her heartbeat through her bud and a pulsing in her blood, she pulls her sweatpants back over her hips, sighing and smoothing her hair down. Pressing the button to exit, there's a lull in her horrendous situation. A brief, fleeting moment where it's just her, her feet shuffling in front of one another, her body heavy with pleasure, but light at the same time.

That is until the creaking of metal, of footsteps making their way down the ladder, bounces off the walls.

The hallway suddenly seems so much narrower, darker, with his presence.

She doesn't quite realise when he's sat down or stood far away, but now, almost right before her, she's struck by his sheer size. How tall and broad he seems in comparison. It sends a nervous chill over her bare arms, the skin beneath the short sleeves rippling up with goosebumps.

She swallows as they briefly make eye contact.

In the time she's known of him, he emotes very little. But here, seeing the faint flush on her face from the efforts of her time in the Box, one side of his lips curl up almost unnoticeably. His arms swing barely as he walks past her, his arm brushing against her shoulder, like he intended to do it.

Just the faintest touch, seems to give him something.

But it only makes her feel ill.

She dare not imagine what he could be thinking. Plotting.

She hears him murmur something deeply, a breathy laugh accompanying it.

Pivoting on her foot, her eyes find him down the hallway, where she just was, at the entrance to the Box.

"What?"

Half in, half out, his face turns over his shoulder, a faint smirk on his features as he steps backwards into the chamber.

With his messy blonde hair, once overgrown and cut himself, striking blue eyes, he would be attractive. If she didn't know him.

"Fucking cocktease" he muses, "playing hard to get, are we?"

The blood that rushed to her face before, suddenly drains.

His voice is like the purr of a cat. Calculated. A whisper, but not at the same time.

It frightens her. In a way only a man can frighten a woman with his words.

She's about to open her mouth to retort when he says.

"It's alright, I like a little struggle"

When he disappears behind the door, her blood has a chill to it.

She thinks of returning to her cell. Thinks about the fact that, since Boyse lashed out on Dibs and tried to conjure up a makeshift douche one evening, the women had been reduced to being tied down by their wrists as they slept.

The men don't.

She knows sleep won't come to her that night.

That she'll be sat awake, her wrists tied at her sides, hoping and praying that Ettore isn't fucked up enough to pay her a visit in this vulnerable state.

Perhaps, by staying awake, he won't.

She watches the doorway, hearing the faint click of skin walking on the linoleum floor in slow, careful movements. Her heart goes fast, blood pumped with pure adrenaline.

She sees his form, lit by blue, lithe, broad and littered with wiry muscle. His eyes, glimmering at her, seeing she's awake. His lips as they quirk up at the sides, like he's amused by what he sees.

Even as he carries on, walking out of view, she knows…

…that it's only a matter of time, until he has the courage to not just watch her.

And that here, she cannot escape him.

General Taglist: @aemondsfavouritebastard | @bellstwd | @blairfox04 | @hb8301  | @jamespotterismydaddy | @mochi-rose | @nenelysian | @natty2017 | @randomdragonfires  | @risefallrise  | @theoneeyedprince  | @thelittleswanao3 | @tsujifreya  | @urmomsgirlfriend1  | @valeskafics  | @watercolorskyy

Ettore Taglist: @bellaisasleep | @iamavailablesstuff | @the-common-cowgirl  | @theroyaldixon | @ultraintrovertedgryffindor

[eee-isat-au-blog]

Encore Et Encore: Act 1, Chapter 1: Terminal Velocity

Full Game Spoilers for In Stars And Time, including Twohats!

CW: Mentions of death, Vauge references to suicide, Vauge references to allergy related death, Mental spiralling, Brief panic attacks

Siffrin walked. In what direction, he couldn't tell. All around him was lightless, he could've been walking inside out for all he knew. 

Oddly, the lightlessness of the void around him didn't seem to translate to himself. He looked down and was able to see himself as if he were in…

He struggled to find the right mental analogy. A sunny field? That worked well enough. Regardless, the point was he was brightly lit in shades of darkless.

Wait, why was he thinking about the color of his robe or whatever?? Where was he right now? He racked his brain, trying to think of the last thing he remembered.

Right. He died. Come to think of it, he knew this place was familiar. Back when he was in the loops, he always hovered here for a moment before looping back. But this.. this death was different. What was it? He was with his family, he remembered that much.

...Oh.

Old age, huh...? He was surprised he'd died before Odile… looking back on it, the loops definitely played a part in that… Welp. Not a bad way to go out, surrounded by your family, after living a long happy life.

What to do now, though? Was he just meant to wander this void forever? Stars, this wasn't going to be fun.

✦: "You could say that again, stardust~"

...Huh?

Was that..??

✦: "The one and only~"

The voice snickered, as if what they said was a joke.

Siffrin whipped their head around, and who else do they see standing in the void but Loop, holding open their arms in a welcoming gesture. Loop was here?? He guessed that made sense, they were both Siffrin after all. Seems eternity in the void wouldn't be so ba-

He cut himself off. To his surprise, he had jumped into Loop's arms to give a hug, that they returned. Something was wet on his cheek, that checks out, he was crying, after all.

✧: "Oh, Loop, you don't even know how much I've missed you!"

✦: "Heh, you're giving me a pretty good idea of it at least, stardust~!"

He pulled back and wiped his eye, still sniffling.

✧: "Where are we...? Is this where you went after you disappeared?? Oh stars, I'm so sorry-"

✦: "Ah-ah-ah, none of that now~! I believe there's someone else who wants to talk with you."

☄: "SO GLAD YOU COULD JOIN US, SIFFRIN."

A voice spoke loudly in Siffrin's head, as if his own brain was a speaker. From the look on Loop's face, seems they heard It too.

They both turned to where Loop was standing in front of. There was a figure Siffrin hadn’t noticed before. …or maybe It didn’t want to be noticed before. 

The figure was… large. Or maybe they were very close up? Siffrin couldn't tell. They wore a long cloak, not unlike his own, but instead of the simple darkless of his, the figure’s cloak was like that of a galaxy, constantly swirling and moving around their lower body, with stars and lights occasionally twinkling among the…. colors. 

The colors? Right, he remembered seeing one of those “colors” when he turned on his friends all those years ago. But these… these were different. Unlike the near death experience met with confusion like last time, this time he immediately understood them. The blues, the greens, the yellows, all of it woven within the tapestry. Woven within the figure Itself. 

Looking up to where the figure’s head would be, what sat atop the shoulders was… an abyss. An abyss with a singular eye dead set in the center. A lightless orb with pure light swirling around to resemble a long hat, and shaggy hair. It looked familiar.

It looked like him.

Something about that made Siffrin finally realize that he looked the exact same as he did back during the loops. Not old anymore, looking as young and dumb as he did when that rock first crushed him. 

He started to panic. Was he gonna go back again?? He couldn’t, HE COULDN’T!!

He felt two hands on his shoulders. Looking up, he saw that one belonged to Loop.

✦: “Stardust, look at me, it's ok..! You aren't going back…” The look in their eyes seemed to tell otherwise.

The other hand belonged to the figure. One of Its hands held his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. It helped a bit.

☄: “MY APOLOGIES FOR THE CONFUSION.”

It spoke in Its booming voice, unaffected by any laws of physics. Siffrin had a feeling It’d sound the same no matter where he was in this void. The figure put all 3 of Its hands to Its chest, they floated aloft, not attached to any limbs, and none of them seemed to be right-handed or left-handed, somewhere in between.

☄: “ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF. IN A WAY YOU CAN UNDERSTAND.”

One hand gestured to Siffrin.

☄: “YOU ARE THE TRAVELER.”

One hand gestured to Loop.

☄: “THEY ARE THE STAR.”

The final gestured to Itself.

☄: “I AM THE UNIVERSE.”

Siffrin stepped back hearing that, and Loop did the same to match. This being... that looked like him... was the universe?? Loop didn't seem nearly as surprised.

☄: “PLEASE, STEP FORWARD. I WISH TO DISCUSS WITH YOU.”

Both Loop and Siffrin stepped forward again. Loop didn’t look happy.

The Universe 

spoke.

☄: “THE LOOPS. A TRAGIC CONSISTENCY, NO? OUR OWN INSECURITIES HAVE DAMNED US TO ADVENTURE.”

Siffrin looked up at the figure, confused. It paused, then held Its hands up.

☄: “I SEE. LET ME SHOW YOU.”

All three hands snapped their fingers, and Siffrin saw as the void around them showed… versions of himself. Some with slightly different clothes, some with slightly different party members, some with their own versions of Loop, some without, all trapped within their own loops.

Crushing. Crying. Slipping. Slicing. Choking. Freezing. Losing.

Dying.

Siffrin’s face turned to one of horror. A face The Universe seemed to have memorized all too well. 

☄: “I WAS THE FIRST, YOU KNOW. THE FIRST TO GO THROUGH ALL OF THIS. MY MISTAKES CAUSED A RIPPLE EFFECT UPON THOUSANDS, MILLIONS, BILLIONS OF SIFFRINS. IT IS A CURSE TO BEAR. BUT IT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO ASSIST EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.”

What...? The Universe Itself was one of you too...? Then why...

✧: "Why even put us through the loops?? Why torment us like this???"

☄: “...THINK OF IT LIKE SO.”

☄: “IT IS THE NATURE OF THE GAME.”

☄: “WIN ONCE, AND TIME SHALL FLOW AGAIN.”

☄: “YOU WILL NOT START YOUR QUEST ANEW.”

☄: “YOUR BODY FREE FROM SCARS.”

☄: “YOUR MIND HEAVY WITH THEM.”

☄: “THE ONLY WISE ONE IN A WORLD FULL OF FOOLS.”

☄: “MANY HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD THIS MESSAGE. TO MEAN THEY MUST BEAT THE KING. I CANNOT BLAME THEM FOR THE CONFUSION. BUT AS YOU KNOW, THE KING WAS NEVER A FACTOR.”

☄: “WHEN PLAYING A GAME, THE GOAL IS TO WIN. BUT IT IS THE GOAL THAT IS IMPORTANT, NOT THE WINNING. TO WIN IS TO OPEN ONESELF TO YOUR FAMILY.”

☄: “THE UNFORTUNATE PART IS OUR EQUAL STUBBORNNESS.”

Siffrin looked around, wide-eyed at all the other versions of themself, eventually meeting eyes with Loop, who looked away uncomfortably.

✧: “...Aren’t there any that have escaped besides me and Loop?”

The Universe snapped their fingers again, cutting the ethereal ‘footage’ to be replaced with an equal amount of different siffrins, living different lives, but all are happy with their family. The ones that got away.

☄: “THERE AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF SIFFRINS THAT HAVE ESCAPED THEMSELVES AS THERE ARE ONES CHASING THEMSELVES. THOSE ESCAPED, THOSE TRAPPED, ALL TRAILING OFF TO INFINITY. SOME OF THE FREE ONES ARE WITH THEIR LOVED ONES, SOME ARE DEAD, AND HAVE HAD THIS CONVERSATION WITH ME BEFORE.”

Loop felt Siffrin’s heart sink in their collective chest as he spoke.

✧: “B-but why tell us all of this?? Why make it feel like we can’t escape??”

The Universe

was silent

for a moment.

☄: “YOU MISUNDERSTAND. THIS IS NOT MEANT TO DISCOURAGE YOU. THIS IS MEANT TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW. BEFORE YOU MAKE YOUR CHOICE.”

✧: “My choice…?” Siffrin spoke in confusion.

✦: “His choice…??” Loop parroted the statement.

☄: “NO, THIS IS A CHOICE FOR THE BOTH OF YOU TO MAKE, INDIVIDUALLY. YOU CAN PART WAYS HERE, OR YOU CAN CHOSE TOGETHER.”

The Universe held out two objects in two hands, with Its third at Its chest.

One object was an orb shaped star, sparkling in Its grip.

The other was a crystal ball, displaying…

The Island. It was populated by various different Siffrins and Loops all wandering and waving at each other like a community. The land was rich and colorful, oh Stars above, it was all coming back to him now. 

☄: “I SHALL STATE THIS PLAINLY.”

☄: “YOU CAN CHOOSE TO START AGAIN, ASSISTING ANOTHER SIFFRIN IN THEIR JOURNEY BEFORE MEETING ME HERE AGAIN TO CHOOSE ONCE MORE.”

☄: “OR YOU CAN CHOOSE TO QUIT THE CYCLE, LEAVING YOUR LIFE BEHIND AND JOINING THE FREED IN THEIR PARADISE.”

Siffrin felt a tug on his throat, he resisted the urge to start bawling. 

Loop took a moment before kneeling down to get on eye level.

✦: "Stardust. It's gonna be ok. Breathe with me." They both breathed in, and out.

✦: "I'll be with you no matter what, ok?" Despite the lack of a mouth, Siffrin could tell Loop was smiling reassuringly.

After a moment, Siffrin pulled back, looking up at The Universe.

And reached out his hand.

[fantasticsandwich]

yandere influencer x fem! reader (pt 6)

You sat alone in the spacious lecture hall, a sea of empty seats around you echoing the void left by Cillian's absence. Your fingers drummed on the wooden desktop, an aimless rhythm. The hum of the air conditioning filled the silent gaps between the professor's words, words that seemed to float just out of reach.

You glanced at the door again, the muscles in your neck tightening each time you craned your head, seeking the familiar silhouette that did not appear even as the clock continued to tick. Why did the campus feel so barren without him? It was as if his presence had become the sun in your collegiate solar system, and now, without his light, you were condemned to orbit in abyss.

"Can anyone explain the significance of this theory?" the professor's voice punctured your bubble of concern.

Your hand twitched, a conditioned reaction to participate, to help, to please. But your mouth remained closed, your vocal cords paralyzed by the gnawing thoughts of Cillian. Where was he? Was he all right? Did he need you?

On your laptop screen, the slides advanced, but the words might as well have been written in hieroglyphs for all the sense they made. You typed a note, then deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too. Your document remained as blank as your mind felt.

You should be focusing. This was important; this was your future. But the image of Cillian’s high cheekbones and sharp jawline dotted by crystalline tears invaded your thoughts relentlessly. How could someone so impeccably put together, who spoke in riddles and charm, make you feel so fragmented?

And man, why did the world seem less saturated?

A sigh escaped your lips, drawing a few curious glances from students nearby.  Frightful of the attention, you shrunk into your seat. Your leg bounced under the desk.

“Miss L/N, do you have something to add?” the professor asked, peering over the rims of his glasses with a mix of curiosity and impatience.

“Ah, no, sorry,” you stammered. “Just thinking.”

"Then I suggest you think about the material," the professor chided gently, turning back to his lecture.

Your cheeks flushed a deeper shade than your cherry red top. You nodded, pretending to scribble down notes while your thoughts continued to dance around Cillian. He was like an earworm, an annoying melody you couldn't get out of your head, one that played on loop and disrupted the harmony of your life.

As you struggled to anchor your attention to the present,  you couldn't shake the feeling that something was utterly amiss with him. You weren't entirely dense; you noticed his behaviour had become... more needy. That he had been acting odd reccently, sticking to your side, demanding the same attention in return. Sometimes, you wishes all those photoshoots counted as something.

The allure of such a man was undeniable, but beneath the gloss and filtered perfection, there was a shadow—a possessiveness that clung just as tightly to you as you did to the idea of their friendship.

"Concentrate, Y/N," you whispered to yourself, a mantra to ward off the distracting thoughts. Yet, even as you tried to latch onto the professor's words, Cillian's voice echoed in your mind. You wondered how he would chide your lack of attention.

The clock's hands seemed to mock you with their sluggish crawl around its face. Your pen tapped an impatient rhythm against the edge of the desk. The professor droned on about sociological theories, but the words floated through  your consciousness like leaves on a breeze, uncaught and unexamined.

"Cillian would find this fascinating," you thought, gaze drifting to the empty seat beside you. The void it represented filled you with an inexplicable sense of loss. You bit your lip.

“Enough,” you muttered under your breath, the word barely audible amid the hum of academic discourse. With a sudden burst of defiance, you snapped your notebook shut. The sound cut through the lecture hall like a starting pistol, and you winced at the volume of your own rebellion.

“Are you okay?” whispered a concerned voice.

Much to your surprise, it was a girl who sat in the row behind you. You’d worked together on a group project, but Cillian had done most of the talking. You turned slightly to offer a quick, reassuring smile to the inquirer before you gathered your belongings into your bag.

In your mind, a scale tipped precariously, teetering between the weight of your academic responsibilities and the need for a distraction. The decision made itself; you craved human connection more than the dry absorption of knowledge.

You slipped out of the room, your steps carrying you toward a classroom located further into the hall’s depths. Reaching several doors down, you peered inside. You saw him sitting in the back row, his eyes fixed on the projector screen.

You entered the room quietly, not wanting to disturb the class, and took the seat beside him. He glanced at you, surprise softening into a warm smile.

‘Wut ru doing here???’ he typed on his phone, passing it to you discreetly under the table.

‘Needed a distraction,’ you replied in kind, thumbs dancing over the screen before handing the phone back.

Rian read the message and nodded. He opened a new tab on his laptop, the glow of online shopping sites illuminating their faces. You delved into a silent conversation of shared screens and hushed giggles, browsing through pages of items neither of you needed nor could afford.

He sent you a link to a quirky, cat-shaped lamp. You snorted softly, imagining it perched on your desk, casting a cozy glow over late-night study sessions.

‘Too cute,’ you typed back. ‘So glad ur professor is sick today.’

‘I know right?! Love love love group studies like these.’

You continued their quiet exchange, swapping and commenting about useless articles.

The classroom door swung open with a decisive creak, and the hushed buzz of student murmurings fell to an uneasy silence.  your spine stiffened as you sensed the shift in atmosphere before you even looked up. Cillian strode into the room, his presence slicing through the air like a cold draft. His sharp jaw was set, brows drawn together above eyes that scanned the room until they landed on her. He wore his usual impeccable attire; bangs swept back with a clip he’d stole from you long ago, a new white blouse, so glossy and transparent that it looked like polished silver. Today it seemed more like armor than a fashion statement.

Rian, sensing the change, followed your gaze. His warm smile faltered as he caught sight of Cillian, who approached with measured steps, the tap of his designer shoes echoing ominously in the quiet space.

“Y/N,” Cillian said, his voice smooth yet carrying an edge that could slice through the thick tension it created. “I see you’ve found a new best friend.”

You felt the phone slip slightly from your grasp, your fingers tensing around it. You glanced at Rian, whose confusion was plain upon his delicate features. A soft crease formed between his brows, the corners of his mouth pulling down ever so slightly.

“Hey, man,” Rian began, his voice a gentle attempt at peace. “Wanna join? We were just—”

“Stealing her attention, as usual,” Cillian cut in, his words sharp as he loomed over you. He leaned back against a nearby desk, arms folded across his chest in a show of casual dominance. The light from the projector cast shadows across his face, deepening the hollows of his high cheekbones, lending him an almost sinister look.

“Cillian, it’s not like that,” you said, your earnest voice tinged with a tremble.

“Isn’t it?” Cillian challenged, tilting his head with a calculated smirk. “You ignore me to meet him. You skipped class to be here with him. You’re neglecting your studies for someone who clearly doesn’t respect our relationship.”

Rian’s hurt was palpable. “Your relationship? But we’re all friends here, aren’t we?” His voice was soft, the hurt seeping through the kindness he tried to maintain. The confusion in his eyes gave way to a dawning realization that the bond he thought they shared might have been a facade.

“Friends don’t undermine each other,” Cillian replied coldly, a dark glint in his eye as he focused on you. “And they certainly don’t lead each other astray. I thought you had more ambition than this, Y/N.”

“Lee, stop,”  you pleaded, your hands gripping the edges of your desk. “It isn’t what you think. You’re reading too much into a meaningless moment.”

“Am I?” Cillian's tone was sardonic, laced with mockery. “Or perhaps you’re just not seeing things clearly. You’re not looking at me.”

Rian shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking down at his hands, the air thick with his unspoken emotions. His previous warmth seemed to fade, retreating behind a wall of defense against barbed words.

Your voice broke through, a mixture of defiance and desperation. “Stop accusing him. This isn’t fair to any of us.”

But Cillian only raised an eyebrow, staring down at  you with a chilling calmness that belied the storm of jealousy raging within him.

Your gaze flickered between the two young men, your mouth dry and hands clammy as you tried to bridge the growing chasm with words that refused to come.

The lecture hall seemed to contract, the walls inching closer with every sharp word that sliced through the air. Students shifted in their seats, textbooks forgotten on laps, as they stole glances at the trio. Their whispered murmurs were a low hum, like static from an untuned radio, adding to the cacophony of your distress.

Cillian’s lips curved into a tight smile. His eyes, which held no mirth, remained fixed on you with an intensity that sent shivers down your spine. Rian, meanwhile, resembled a cornered animal, his eyes wide and searching for an escape.

“Look, if it’s really that important,” you reluctantly began, “we can talk about… Whatever you’re feeling later, okay? I don’t want to invalidate it, but now isn’t the best time.”

“Later, you say?” Cillian echoed, his tone laced with sarcasm. “Why? So you can decide whose side you’re on? So you can forsake me and go with the guy who’s fucked you over countless times?"

Your heart sank. You could feel the weight of every stare, the collective breath of your classmates held captive by the drama before them. You tasted the metallic tang of anxiety on your tongue, and your fingertips tingled with the need to do something—anything—to mend the fractures forming in your friendships.

Rian’s chair scraped against the floor, a jarring sound as he jumped to his feet. Facing Cillian, his demure frame looked like David before Goliath.

“I don’t understand why it’s always about sides with you,” he said, his voice steadier than his trembling hands suggested.

“Because that’s how it works, Rian.” Cillian replied coldly. “You make mistakes, and you decide whether you amend or fall further into it.”

“Cillian,” you tried again. “Let’s not do this here.”

“Why not? Scared of letting everyone know where your loyalties lie?”

You looked at Cillian, then at Rian, feeling herself being torn in two. The confrontation unfolded like a slow-motion nightmare, every second drawn out, every blink an eternity. The digital clock on the wall ticked away moments of friendship that might never be reclaimed.

Cillian’s expression hardened further, a fortress of anger and paranoia. And your resolve began to crumble under the pressure, your determination to hold onto both friends cracking like thin ice beneath your feet. You reached out, hand hovering near his arm, yet not daring to touch.

“Look, we’ve always been there for each other, haven’t we? And you know I value our friendship more than anything.”

Cillian's eyes narrowed, and with a dramatic flair of his hand, he swiped your concern away as if it were a bothersome fly. His lips curled into a cold, unforgiving smile.

“Is that what you call leaving me alone while you play house with him? Value?” He tipped his head towards Rian, who sat frozen.

“Cillian, please.”

“Please?” Cillian echoed mockingly, his voice dripping with venom. “You’ve never had to beg before. Never with me. What's changed, Y/N? Or should I say, who changed the girl I love?”

“No one. You’re both important to me, and I don’t want us to be fighting.”

“Important?” The word exploded from Cillian, his body language shifting like a predator cornering its prey. “You have an odd way of showing it. Choosing that… That fuck up over your loyal friend who’s been by your side through everything!”

“It's not like that,"  you protested.

“Stop taking his side. You’ll make me angry. Just face it, Y/N. You don’t care about me. Your actions speak louder than your empty words.”

Rian's chair scraped against the floor as he stood, his movements hesitant but determined. “She’s only trying to—”

“Stay out of this!” Cillian snapped, silencing Rian with a look that could shatter glass.

You watched the exchange, mind racing. Were you wrong to seek Rian’s company? Had you unwittingly betrayed Cillian?

“Y/N,” Cillian’s voice softened as he turned back to her. “You know I only want what’s best for you. Haven’t I shown you that? I always pay for our outings. I give you everything you want. He can’t give you anything. He can’t compare to me.”

Your mouth opened, then closed, no words forthcoming. The room felt impossibly small, the walls closing in as dozens of eyes darted between them, the weight of collective stares pressing down on you. You wanted to scream, to run, to do anything but stand there, dissected by Cillian’s words and condemned by your own silence.

Your breath hitched, a sudden coldness washing over you as you regarded Cillian with clarity. Your fingers dug into the stiff fabric of your jeans, nails pressing crescent moons into your skin. The air in the classroom felt thick, charged with an electricity that made your skin prickle and your heart race.

“I think…” you began, voice wavering but growing in conviction, “I think I’ve been blind.”

His eyebrows knit together, confusion etching across his princely features for a fleeting moment before his mask of control slid back into place. “To what, Y/N? Do you need an updated prescription for your glasses?”

“No, Lee. I’ve already made my opinion about handouts clear. I’ve been blind to how much I’ve let your needs dictate my life, to the point where I can't even recognize myself.”

There was a rustling of jackets and backpacks as other students shifted uncomfortably in their seats, their gaze flitting between the unfolding drama and the screens of their phones, eager for distraction. But your focus was razor-sharp, honed in on the man who had once seemed like you anchor but now felt like a shackle.

“You don’t mean that,” Cillian countered, his voice smooth as silk yet with an undercurrent of urgency. He stepped closer, trying to reclaim the space you had just put between you. “Rian’s been talking bad about me.”

“He hasn’t and I do, Cillian. I really do,” you insisted, standing your ground. “Our friendship... it’s become something I don’t find comfort in. Something that hurts rather than heals, and I just can’t keep this up. You’re eating me up from the inside out. It feels like I’m a moth-eaten doll rotting at your side.”

With the final word, you felt the exhaustion creep into your bones, your mind numb from the emotional onslaught. You were a ship caught in a storm, sails torn and compass spinning wildly. Wordless, Cillian’s mouth was agape, perfect pink lips puckered in despair. His face twisted in a mixture of anger and disbelief, haunted you as you pondered the future of your friendship.

With your hands trembling slightly, you gathered your belongings, your movements slow and deliberate, taunting. You glanced around the room, the faces of your classmates blurred behind the sheen of unshed tears.

“Y/N, wait—” Cillian's voice trailed after you, but you didn't turn back. Not this time.

[dreamingkatfish]

Am drunk enough to ramble about idea. So, I love timeloops and more specifically I love NG+ timeloops. Persona 3, NG+ timeloop. It's occurring b/c the Abyss of Time and just running on idea that Yukari and Mitsuru keep winning the fight to go back in time.

Except, no one but Minato remembers, mostly b/c he'd be fucked over by the whole not knowing why time is looping thing.

And I want a fix-it (it's just what I do) and more specifically I want more unethical science experiments to be the solution. (It's just not something that's done often from what I could glean and I think it'd be an interesting way of going about trying to do a Everyone Lives scenario for P3.) That's the jist of it, under read-more will be current thoughts.

It begins with Minato being, rightfully, confused. With it having him slowly try to work through figuring out why the loop is occurring. Eventually remembering how the whole goal of the initial experiments by the Kirjio Group was time manipulation, he goes to find the old research.

With a lot of looking he learns about the abyss, but still doesn't know how to stop it. Only thing he manages on his own is figuring out how to get other people to remember. I'm thinking there should be limits like has to be able to be aware during the Dark Hour ofc, but also a very mean one of: cannot have been present when time goes back. Meaning only two people he can get to help is Ryoji and Shinjiro. Also means, still no one knows why exactly time is looping. However, with Ryoji present, Minato can get the confirmation that it isn't b/c he fucked making The Seal somehow.

So, progress.

I think it'd be Shinjiro who'd suggest trying something else to stop Nyx. Like yeah, okay, The Seal isn't fucked up. But clearly it's caused some other problem, so maybe try something else. Except what to do instead? Because all they really have is information about experiments with shadows to work with. So unless they want to try fighting fire with fire, it's not very helpful.

They try fighting fire with fire. OR well, actually consider it. Problem is none of them are scientists who spent a large amount of time researching shadows, so now they got learn the science behind that. (This au is all in the name of seeing these three interacting. I hadn't originally intended it to be a ship-focused au, but here we are. (What would be the ship name for these three anyway? Guess I'm gonna invent one for the tags later, lmao.)) (Their time together in the timeloop creates an unshakable trust that the others are their ride or dies. It's the mad science which is where the inherent homoeroticism comes from.)

They ofc know there's no killing Nyx permanently, so what are the options? Idea, balancing it out with life. Life and death are meant to exist in cycles, but by having only Nyx and Erebus for death and no one for life, the balance is thrown off and the cycle grinds to a halt. Mind you, Nyx and Erebus are the personifications of night and darkness respectively in Greek mythology. In it they have counterparts for the day and (well kind of but not fully) light in Hemera and Aether. So, why not simply counteract them.

It's not the most reasonable solution ever. However, I think it's an interesting one to consider. Made more tense by the time crunch they'd be under to get that done before needing to just do The Seal anyway in order to ensure the loop continues so that they would have another chance at it.

I have some dubious considerations for how involved with the unethical science the rest of SEES will be. B/c on one hand, Dead Boys Club. On the other, that's gonna be a fuck ton of work for them to do. There's zero shot no one notices that they're doing things. So very much, hmmmmmmm for the role the rest of SEES will play. (Tbh rest of the entire game's cast really.)

But yes, NG+ timeloop au, now with 86% unethical science.

Sober edits to expand upon details added. Primarily after this point (Though one joke addition in brackets above.)

Re:Shinjiro never sticking around long enough to learn about the rest of SEES getting stuck in the Abyss of Time. There's just no world where he doesn't agree to Ken's request and tries to save him. Sure he could try to talk to Ken before that, but this is Shinjiro and man has guilt carved into his bones that the timeloop starting from after Ken's mother's death isn't helping.

But also that requires him knowing what the fuck to say in that situation while he's not dying. And I don't think he'd know. I think part of what gave his words so much meaning before was that he had the action of him protecting Ken to back it up. But without that, he would look like he's all talk. Which wouldn't help either one of them in trying to move on from what happened.

Additionally, even if it did work out he'd just forget that loop entirely bc the cant remember if present when the decision to go back was made. So, him living would not help matters and he'd only become more inclined to let himself die so that he would be able to remember all of the loops and not start forgetting the progress they made. (The alternative I just briefly considered is him forgetting everything but it made me sad, so it's only him forgetting the loop if he makes it to the abyss of time in the end.)

Also the more I think about a ship with the 3 of them, the more insane I get. The 3 people who (want to) die for the sake of others. The way it would bring only them any degree of peace but emotionally devastates everyone else who cares for them. But also then, 3 boys who were happy to give their lives for others now having to learn how to live and look towards a future they never thought they'd get to see, let alone have.

But also how in all versions of the game, in the male route these 3 are the ones who no matter what choices you make, you can never save. (I know there's also Akinari but his situation is one where there is no universe where any choice could be made to save him. Only advancements in medical science would. Meanwhile, the other 3 could technically be saved, but only really by basically abandoning the story playing out and acting as an outside party to it. Or by being someone other than themselves. And i mean you can see it happen in canon even with the femc route. So, while I love him, his death is an outlier among these 3 even if he also is someone who can't be saved in canon.)

And all I can think about is the post about love in tragedies and how it doesn't save anyone, but it was still there and that matters. It was still important even if it never helped. Which I think does a good job at like emphasizing the messages of the game. And I really love relationships that end up embodying the work they're from. (Also means interestingly I don't care as much for Shinjiro and the femc's relationship bc in that case love does succeed. Which while nice isn't quite as thematically satisfying even though it is narratively satisfying.)

[clonefandomevents]

Haunted Clone Week Prompts!

Here are the prompts for the Haunted Clone Week! There were so many good options and ideas, that we decided to give a total of nine prompts a day! As well as two Free Days, and a little surprise Bonus as well! Can't wait to see what they inspire!

Day 1- October 23rd

-Folklore, Mysteries and Regional Gothic of South America; Haunted Kamino

-Ghost Ships

-Time Loops

-Space Bermuda Triangle

-Dark Between the Stars

NSFW Prompt- Battlefield Sex

-"You said I killed you- haunt me then!" from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Day 2-October 24th

-Folklore, Mysteries and Regional Gothic of Africa; Haunted Christophsis

-Force Ghosts

-Left Behind

-Not Quite Human

-Bloody Hands

-NSFW Prompt- Blood Kink

-"Ghosts are guilt, ghosts are secrets, ghosts are regrets and failings. But most times, most times a ghost is a wish." (The Haunting of Hill House)

Day 3- October 25th

-Folklore, Mysteries and Regional Gothic of Europe; Haunted Umbara

-They Don't Know They're Dead

-Marching Far Away (But Still Beside Me)

-Body Horror -Please Not Again

-NSFW Prompt-Ghost Sex

-“I’m scared to close my eyes, I’m scared to open them. We’re gonna die out here.” — Heather Donahue, “The Blair Witch Project”

Day 4- October 26th

-Folklore, Mysteries and Regional Gothic of Australia; Haunted Felucia

-Ghost Stories

-Trapped and Not Alone

-Eldritch Horror

-Moonlight

-NSFW Prompt-Knife Play

-"Dozens of eyes looked out from the trees"

Day 5- October 27th

-Folklore, Mysteries and Regional Gothic of North America; Haunted Dothomir

-Mistaking a Ghost for a Living Person

-Marching Back (Dead Clones Coming Back)

-The Witching Hour

-Accidentally Cursed

-NSFW Prompt-Ritual Sex

-"Soldier keep on marching on/Head down till the work is done" - "Soldier" by Fleurie

Day 6- October 28th

-Folklore, Mysteries and Regional Gothic of Asia; Haunted Coruscant

-Haunted Space Ships

-Their Armor Holds Thier Souls

-Glowing Eyes in the Dark

-Fog

-NSFW Prompt-Possession

-"It seems to me that the dead only return for love or for revenge. Who did you come back for?" from White is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Days 7 &8- October 29th-30th

Free Days! Have a prompt you liked, but wasn't included? Have a spooky idea that doesn't quite fit one of the other days? These are the days designed specifically for you!

BONUS!- October 31st

So, I apparently am not good at counting. Which gave us an extra day to the week on accident! So, we decided to do something a little different for the accidental bonus day.

Twist An Episode Day!

-Basically, it's take any episode of Clone Wars, Bad Batch, anything the clones are in and twist it so the CLONES are the ones coming out on top. Do something to an episode so that it's the soldiers fighting, not the corrupt leadership, who benefit. Preferably something a little out there, a lil spooky, but it can be whatever you want. Use the extra day so that for once, it's the clones winning.

-Links to Photo Prompts origins below

[amazingmsme]

okay this may sound a little silly goofy but..

ler!tinky with lee!richie? 👀

like maybe after richie dies he goes to the black and white

ted sees him there and tells tinky like “why is my little brothers best friend here!?!?”

and tinky just has to see whats going on with the bsf of a spankoffski!

It’s only silly because Tinky is literally the king of silly! He can make the most normal things sound batshit insane. “I went to the store” = 🫤 “I went to the store & Tinky was in the bread isle” = 😱

But I love the idea of the kids just going to the black & white after they die because this is Hatchetfield, your soul can’t leave even when you’re dead so they can actually meet the lib because I fucking know Ruth & Richie would have loved their energy!

Richie would definitely vibe with Tinky (he’s the fun dorky brother of course he would) & Tinky’s just happy to get another new shiny toy to play with!

I’m dying at the idea of Ted recognizing him in the empty abyss & is like “whoa whoa WHOA what the hell is he doing here?” & Richie’s like ok ouch but Ted didn’t mean it like that! It’s more like “wtf bro, you torture KIDS TOO?”

But Tinky tries to get to know him totally not so he can stick him in a perfectly tailored time loop, no siree & Richie’s always happy to ramble on to someone willing to listen! They’re both really hyper & they talk really fast, it’s hard to keep up with both of them lol

But Tinky is such a mischievous lil shit & he’s dying to know if he’s ticklish! So while they’re having one of their conversations, Tinky just straight up asks! Of course he denies it, but he’s blushing & stuttering the whole time so he knows it’s a damn lie. But Tinky pretends like he believes him for a few seconds to try & get his guard down before he pounces!

He’s such a playful, goofy ass ler, & he loooves to tease so Richie is literally a goner. He will jump from spot to spot to keep him guessing & switches up the technique to see what works best. He really likes the generic “coochie coochie coo” kind of teases, & they just so happen to be very effective on Richie lol

After a while, Richie realizes something’s wrong because he hasn’t had an asthma attack yet, & he definitely should’ve had one by now. He even voices his concerns & Tinky’s like “you don’t have to worry about that ever again! Ain’t it great! You can have a real tickle fight now with no worries!” Like thanks dude but that’s really not as comforting as you think it is

[doctorcorby]

In Justice We Trust (72401 words) by thesavagesabretooth

catch up here

With Simon Blackquill and Athena Cykes assigned as their psychologists, the Phantom and Fulbright must grapple with their identity, their deeds, their future, and their love for the twisted samurai whom they betrayed.

All the while, Edgeworth and Wright find their relationship tested as they walk the narrow path between pursuing real justice, and the dark age of the law.

-

December 24th, 8:00 pm

14 hours of travel time, and jet lag, and a day that was swiftly moving toward its 24th hour of wakefulness clouded Simon's mind and made the whole proceedings feel like some kind of waking dream.

He was glad that Athena was going to stay the night– he couldn't bear to have been in the room alone with Halblicht– with Bobby. Not now. Not with all of the confused things going through his mind. He was deeply torn, part of him wanting to embrace and accept the return of the man he'd spent his year with– the other part now even more deeply wounded and skeptical that things could ever be alright again.

Just because Bobby was real– in some strange and twisted way, as a part of the Phantom's mind– didn't mean that Simon had it in him to forgive him. Did it?

He took deep breaths, in and out, trying both to calm himself and to focus on what was important as he listened to Athena get into the weeds with Halblicht.

Athena was looking bad, despite her ever present smile. The dark circles under her eyes spoke to her exhaustion as she tapped away at the screen.

“I’d like to loop back to your…training, if that’s okay.”

Bobby ran his fingers through his hair, and nodded. "I'm not surprised. I'll try to help Robert answer where I can."

“Thanks Bobby. I know it can’t be easy…unpacking trauma never is…you saw how messy it was for me during the trial, yeah? I understand.” She was quiet for a moment before she snapped out enough to ask her first question. “He wasn’t given a name, and in court he spoke about how he’d ‘discarded’ his identity…that he was an abyss. I want you to elaborate on that…”

"Left them behind," Bobby murmured, rubbing his arm thoughtfully. "He said that he left them behind. It wasn't really something he had a choice in, whether he wants me to tell you that or not. He's not even sure if he ever had an identity to begin with."

“The people who ran the organization…correct me if I’m wrong, but…given they didn’t give him a name it’s safe to assume they were trying to tell him since as long as he could remember that he didn’t have a personality? Emotions…any of that?” 

"Yes," Bobby nodded, twisting his hands in his lap. "They punished him for expressing any kind of emotion aside from blind obedience. They… miss Athena… they beat those children for giving one another nicknames."

Athena’s mouth drew a hard line, and Simon could see a flicker of something behind her tired eyes.

Maybe it was rage. Or maybe he was projecting his own feelings on her. The idea that anyone could be so monstrous made him sick.

“I see,” she said softly, “they did the same for any other attempt at individuality, however minor?” 

"Yes, ma'm," he nodded again, his hands tight together. It was clear he was having trouble speaking about it, even with 'Bobby' as whatever buffer he existed for. "No possessions. No voluntary alterations of appearance. No expressing preferences, even for simple things. Food, or clothes. The punishments were… severe."

Athena’s fingers tightened on the sheets, palpable only by the way they shifted against his leg as she drew more of them into her palm.

“Horrible,” she said a moment later. “absolutely sickening…ritual abuse to turn children into tools of war and espionage. By…stamping down individuality, they wanted to create someone who could become anyone, c-correct?” 

Simon watched with disgust and curiosity as Halblicht's posture changed and his expression smoothed. He looked off into the middle distance. "That was the goal. To create weapons, and tools. That's what we were told. That we were not people, we were tools. 'You're no one'."

“You’re no one.” Athena echoed hollowly as her fist closed tight around the handful of sheets. “Do you remember anything before them? Before they tried…tried to turn you into a tool?” 

"I do not," he said, impassively, shaking his head. "The earliest memory I can recall is being in the back of a truck with several other children, and then marched into a building through a concrete hallway."

"How old?" Simon asked, eyes narrowing on him. It was evil. It was impossibly evil. No wonder it resulted in creating evil… Treating children like they were tools as if they were nothing more than a robot who could hold a gun.

Robert shook his head again. "I have no idea how to judge that. We were small. Maybe four? Maybe six? I suppose I could have been as old as eight at that point."

Athena made an involuntary noise…horror, a quiet intake of breath before she managed to ask another question.

“It’s no wonder. It’s no wonder you called yourself the abyss. Taking children and beating the very identity out of them, in the formative years of your lives.They saw you as nothing but a tool, something to point and shoot, or sent to retrieve. It’s no wonder you felt you were no one.”

Her breath hissed audibly between her teeth “put through so much, so young, by the real evil. True, genuine evil.” 

Robert shrugged. "People do whatever they think will facilitate their goals. Evil or good are abstract. These people wanted weapons, so they created them. Children were only the raw materials. Some children are raised to be people. I was raised to be a tool, that's all."

Athena’s eyes flicked down to the screen.

“Do you really believe that, Robert?” she asked in an even tone, “or is that what they told you?” WIth a soft sigh, she continued “I’ll dispense with good or evil. I’ll say what I really mean. These people are cruel. The psychological damage they inflict by their actions is immense.” 

"It's only damage if you're trying to create a person, isn't it?" he murmured. "If it's a weapon you're trying to create, it's structure. It's like saying you damaged a stone by chipping it to make a statue."

Simon felt himself bristle. and he moved involuntarily forward on the bed, closer toward Halbricht.

"That's rubbish! Complete rot! A child isn't a stone to be shaped as seen fit!"

Halblicht winced, and looked up with a watery, apologetic expression. "I think it's how he copes with what happened… by telling himself that it doesn't matter. That he doesn't matter. I think it's easy since it's always what he's been told…"

“It’s a coping mechanism,” Athena suddenly said. Despite the watery look in her eyes, her outward expression was soft and quiet as her voice “but it’s not a good one. Not in the long term. It’ll only reinforce what they’ve done to him.”

She raised her hand to her chest. 

“Robert…we all come into this world as people. Some of us are stranger than others, some of us are ‘chipped’ or molded by others or circumstance…or in the case of your handlers…abject cruelty. But they cannot turn a person into a tool, not completely.”

Slowly she reached her hand through the screen, disrupting the mood matrix as she gestured towards him. “There’s always going to be something lingering, trying to break back through. Think logically…don’t respond with their words…have you felt something like that since you’ve gained a little autonomy from them and theirs? Anything? Emotions, desires, tastes…anything?” 

Halblicht's face returned to the impassive, distant expression. But Simon watched him put his fingers gently on the buttons of his shirt and toy with them.

"Four nights ago you exposed my fear for everyone to see, Ms. Cykes. Why do you think someone like me would even be afraid to die?"

Simon felt like he had been stabbed in the chest by the sheer weight of hearing the Phantom's admission. 

Was this why he held on so hard to being Bobby Fulbright? Because he'd actually been able to enjoy himself?

“Because you have,” Athena’s hand lowered to her knee. “The only reason to fear death is when you have something to hold on to…and it’s clear you’re more than what they created. People aren’t tools, no matter how hard they try to make it so.”

Her brow furrowed as she continued. “You’ll need to face that if you want to heal. You can’t heal from damage you pretend isn’t there. You matter. You’re a person, with feelings that we could register even during the trial, feelings that make you fear death and lead you to your own choices no matter how much they tried to stop you.” 

Simon couldn't breathe. Suddenly the murder of Metis Cykes was no longer the deliberate and wicked choice of an evil man. At least– not the one sitting in front of him. Suddenly it was the action of a man who had no choice at all. Who had never had a choice.

If someone had used Ponco to commit a murder– would that murder be Ponco's fault? Where does blame lie when you've raised a child as an obedient killer? 

Had this man truly never experienced a moment of affection in his life before– before Simon himself? Was it not, as he'd believed when they started their relationship, one love-starved prisoner seeking out someone he could touch, but two prisoners instead?

If it was a lie, it was a good one. It was the only one that could possibly have tugged at Simon's heart.

Then Phantom was hanging his head down, staring at the floor.

"I don't understand, Ms. Cykes. Why would you want to help me? Why would you want me to be a person?"

The mood matrix flickered off before her with a wave of her hand, removing the obscuring wall of holographic imagery and leaving just Athena Cykes and himself sitting there on the bed opposite ‘the Phantom’.

“Robert.” Her voice rose above its soft spoken tone to emphasize the name…pointedly. Simon saw her hands shaking. “Why wouldn’t I want you to be a person? Nobody deserves to be a tool. I don’t want that…my mother wouldn’t have wanted it either. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re not a person…to think of yourself as a machine. Maybe it’s that. Maybe I want to prove your creators wrong. Or maybe it’s just…the kind thing to do for someone starved for kindness…no matter what they’ve done to me personally. I don’t know, exactly…but I know I’ll keep helping.” 

Athena's words hung in the air in silence for a moment.

"You'll help me," he said again, incredulously. His chest spasmed in what might have been a silent laugh, or a shudder of disbelief. "I killed your mother, and you want to help me. That's insane. And I guess Bobby's right– I guess I'm insane too. Because I actually believe you."

Insane. The phantom was right. It was completely insane that either one of them could move past the evil he had done them– the life he had so carelessly snuffed out and thrown their lives into chao– it was unthinkable that they could want to help him.

So damn it, why did Simon want to help him, too? Why did he want to pull the man who had ended Metis Cykes life– who had snuffed out another young life less than a week ago– into a hug and never let him go?

Simon started to laugh too, and he slapped the bed unable to catch his breath. "What a joke on all of us. What a wretched jest we're party to. You'd better understand this, Half Bright— Athena isn't the only one who wants to help you. Justitia help me."

Maybe it was infectious, because Athena’s shoulder shook in a quiet and desperate laugh of her own. 

“A joke…maybe.” She pressed her hand to her face, before she pushed her hair away and smiled in Simon’s direction. He could see there was pride there, and some kind of hope in her expression.

The phantom's shoulders shook, his hand still clutching the buttons of his shirt like he was clutching at his heart. Was he laughing, or crying? Simon heard nothing but a wheezing breath from him, and he saw no tears. But it could have been either, or both. 

Halblicht steadied after a moment too, and looked up at Simon. "You really want to help me as well, Simon?"

"So it would seem. No one is more surprised than me." Simon caught his own breath, and he smiled helplessly over at Athena. "I guess we had that breakthrough that I called you in for, Ms. Cykes."

Athena seemed to sigh with relief, before wiping at her eyes with a laugh. “All the best breakthroughs happen when everyone’s overly exhausted, Simon. That’s just a fact.”

It was also, probably, a lie. 

"Oh yes, that's just obvious," Simon nodded along, sarcastically. "Insanity and nonsense suddenly make the most sense when you're completely wiped out."

Now Simon heard the familiar sound of the absurd sniffling that always came before Bobby started to sob. Halblicht pushed up his glasses, and tears ran down his face.

"Ms. Cykes, Prosecutor Blackquill– I– I don't know what to say," Bobby– it was obviously Bobby again now– whimpered. "We don't deserve such overwhelming kindness from you. It would be justice just to throw us away but… but thank you so much just for listening."

Athena turned her attention back to him with a little sniff. “C-come on. I’ll start crying too!” She sniffed again “thank you both for being open with us…for being willing to accept help, y-yeah?” 

Bobby nodded, still crying against his arm. 

"S-sorry! I don't want to make you cry but… but it's just so much. I-I can hardly believe it, you know? And y-you even made Robert believe it too, and he doesn't t-trust anybody…"

"I can't imagine why he wouldn't," Simon drawled, blinking back his own tears. "but you'd both better believe it. Mad as it is, this is apparently the reality that we have to deal with."

He stood up suddenly, and marched over to the desk where he grabbed the box of tissues. He pulled several out of the box, and handed them to Athena, then he shoved the whole box in Halblicht's face.

"Here, Half Bright. Clean yourself up. You're a mess."

Bobby looked up at him with big, wet eyes, and it was all that Simon could do to stop himself from pulling the man into a hug.

He'd killed Metis Cykes. But now it wasn't some cold, emotionless killer who'd held the knife. It was poor, stupid Bobby Fulbright, waiting somewhere to be woken up from the nightmare he'd been born into.

Who would hurt a child like that? Who could turn someone who had a man like this in his heart into a killer? Simon found himself shaking with rage.

Athena wiped her eyes beside them, hiccuping softly as she attended to the spilling tears. He didn’t need her hearing to hear the sorrow in her voice. 

“The world can be mad, you know? Cruel, too. But…but. It doesn’t have to be. I want you both to believe that we’re going to help Mr. Edgeworth put a stop to this too. I’ll defend whoever I gotta defend to make sure the truth…that justice is reached.” 

"Indeed," Simon said firmly. "If you have been used as a weapon, then justice will be only be done when we apprehend the monster who dared to use you in such a way."

Bobby sniffled and pulled handfuls of tissues out of the box, wiping at his teary eyes. 

"Thank you… thank you both. I'm glad… I'm glad to have your help. I've been saying this whole time to Robert that it wasn't fair what they did to him… that it wasn't just…it's awful to see what happened. I want to bring those people to justice with you. We want to."

Athena reached out a hand towards them, her smile tentative and kind. “And we will. You will. That’s a promise, alright?”

"Thank you…" He wiped his eyes with one arm, and shaking, reached out and put his hand on hers. "It's a promise."

"A promise." Simon put his hand on top of both of theirs, and squeezed. "Some sort of dark pact, even."

He huffed a laugh, but, mad as it was, it seemed like some kind of new beginning. Of what, he didn't know.

December 24th, 9:40 pm

They talked for a while longer, in murmured, exhausted voices, going over the things they'd already said, without breaking much new ground. Robert was quiet, while Bobby continually thanked them, and apologized. Simon's emotions were so omnipresent and confused that Athena could barely hear herself think.

Finally, Simon had insisted that they had to at least try to get some sleep for the investigation in the morning, and that had caused another discussion. Not quite an argument. Each of them volunteered to sleep on the floor. And none of them would allow the others to do so.

Finally, exhausted and clearly manic, Simon had laughed, and suggested they just all sleep on the bed in their clothes 'like an anime convention.' He had promised to get Bobby an iron for his 'poor, wrinkled shirt' in the morning.

Which was exactly how Athena found herself laying there on the right side of Simon Blackquill, staring at the darkened ceiling with her thoughts ticking away like the seconds and the sound of the two men’s breathing played at the edge of her hearing as all else tuned out.

Thoughts of the therapy session played in her mind…the stories of the facility he grew up in, the other children…the deliberate suppression of individualization and emotion. A person they tried to turn into a machine. The very thought made her sick, the horror twisting inside her before spilling into the darkness of her internal matrix.

She remembered the little conversation outside the restaurant after dinner. The moment they met eyes and he whispered understanding to her. What was it like for him? What did it say about her that he could recognize her like that.

Their circumstances were so different…he was forged, raised by that horrible and abusive ‘organization’. Trained to suppress emotion until he became the man who killed her mother over a rock…the man who felt, but knew he wasn’t allowed to so he forced them down as his handlers demanded…to the point where he had no idea how to process them.

If not for Bobby Fulbright. The smiling, emotional, kind hearted goofball who’d endeared himself to everyone around him. A man who was still, somehow, around despite everything. A part of Robert through psychology or fate, she supposed.

But it wasn’t Bobby who recognized something behind her eyes…it was Robert, the phantom. He was the one who quietly understood her in the cold street outside the restaurant, who shared that moment of comforting silence despite the din of words.

Where he was created by cruel and horrible hands, she was born…different. Her emotions had always felt hard to reach, quiet and subtle to the point of becoming drowned out by any outside stimulus. Her miraculous hearing backfired into a curse, distancing her from the ability to feel her own emotions while othering herself from anyone outside Cosmos save for Junie.

At times, she’d thought of herself as another robot like her ‘brother and sister’ Ponco and Clonco…at times she wondered if any of her feelings were real at all.

Maybe that’s what Robert had recognized in her. The use of masks, and the use of exaggeration to show the world the same quiet, muted pulse in your own heart in a way that they could understand. Even if it wore you down. Even if it sometimes felt like too much, at least they’d understand.

Maybe she did relate to her mother’s killer…and maybe that’s why Aura had hated her for so long.

As she shifted to look over at the two men while they slept, she smiled faintly in the dark. Maybe that was why she wanted to help him so badly…outside the sympathy and the fury at those who’d made him and who’d truly taken her mother’s life. Maybe he was a kindred spirit.

December 24, 9:40 pm

Simon lay awake, still and quiet with his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. He felt the warmth radiating from each of the bodies beside him– the lithe form of Athena on his one side, and the solidly built body belonging to Bobby Fulbright– and whoever else– on his other. He lay stiffly, unable to fully avoid touching the other man, but unwilling to give in to his impulse to wrap his arms around him from behind.

So, Simon had never known the real man Bobby Fulbright. He had thought, when that revelation came to light, that it meant that everything he had known for a year had been an elaborate lie, a falsehood, an act and a put-on without any true feeling or meaning behind it. Simply a manipulation of his own feelings.

But now it seemed that wasn't exactly the case. He had no reason to doubt Athena's skill and her judgment. If she believed what they were hearing from Halblicht, then it must be true.

The man he had known as 'Bobby Fulbright' existed– as a mental construct separated from the broken mind of a tormented victim of horrific abuse. The same victim of horrific abuse who had killed his mentor. Who had murdered Athena's mother Metis in the coldest of blood.

So where did that leave Simon? What did that mean for him? If there was even a part of this man who had felt something for him, who had held him in the darkness when Simon was at his lowest point, how could he reject that? He kept imagining Bobby as a child, huddled and afraid in a cement room, beaten and starved for daring to show a smile out of turn.

Treatment like that would break the spirit– destroy the very soul– of a grown and strong man. What would it do to a small child?

Turn them into something like the Phantom, who could barely register an emotion. Who could only safely show emotion by projecting it on someone else, on 'Bobby'.

Even if it wasn't exactly Bobby huddled in that horrible room, suffering that terrible torment as a child– even if Bobby was new, and the one who had suffered was 'Robert', was the Phantom, was Metis Cykes killer– the rage and pity and compassion for that child that stirred in his heart was the same.

If that experience was true– and Athena believed it, which meant Simon believed it– how could he carry on the hate in his heart for Metis' killer? How could it be anything more than a tragic and disgusting accident perpetrated by a man who had no choice? Could Simon actually move past the fact that this man had killed Metis, had traumatized Athena and forced her to grow up an orphan, had sent Simon himself to death row for so many long years, had driven his sister to the brink?

Could he forgive him?

Would Metis want him to forgive him?

If Ponco had killed her, would Metis want Ponco held responsible? Would Simon have hated the robot just doing what it was told?

The conflict roiled and rolled in Simon's heart. His fury and disgust raged within him, but rather than being pointed at the Phantom, now they were aimed squarely at the ones who had done such a thing to a child. Had stripped him bare and broken him of his humanity. It made Simon want to cry. It made him want to pull Bobby into his arms and hold him– hold him until maybe even Robert– the man who had killed Metis Cykes and felt nothing– could cry. If such a thing were even possible.

If Bobby cared about him, it must mean that somewhere at his core Robert– the Phantom– cared too didn't he? Or were they completely separate? Had Robert watched passionlessly as Simon and Bobby had spent time together?

Simon wondered. Simon wondered about it all, as he lay in the dark, and he started to tug at the frayed edges of what might be clues, or what might be shadows.

Bobby Fulbright had been the one who presented the lighter as evidence. The lighter that– while it implicated Athena– would have freed Simon. Would have saved him from death row. And it put the Phantom himself in danger.

Bobby had kept promising to reform Simon. To rehabilitate him and return him to society. To save him. Had the implication of Athena, twisted and vile as it had been, been to that end? Had the Phantom decided that Simon's life was worth the risk?

Had something in Simon awakened the feelings of a man deadened inside by years of torment? Had he awakened some true feelings of care from the very man who had ripped his life to pieces?

The idea was as sickening as it was romantic.

Halblicht's chest rose and fell in the dark, and he heard him make a noise that might have been a murmur. 

Simon broke, and he put his arm around him.

His thoughts chased each other like dogs through the street for a long time after, before he finally fell asleep.

[lawrence-songs]

rant

I love you, anon. 🖤

Crazy man ramblings under the cut. You've been warned.

Strap in, folks.

I said I'd post about this, and I'm feeling very.. worship-esque tonight.

The ink demon.

Why did I worship him?

My first response is, "a man made machine built a god", but I know that's not technically true, nor is it apparent in meaning to anyone but me. So, we'll start at the beginning.

The ink demon was the first thing created from the Ink Machine.

If memory serves me correctly, it is also the only thing that came out of the machine that has managed to allegedly survive without a soul.

The rest of the ink creations, all of us, we are, on some level, humans reborn. Remade in the image of the machine.

But what came before us?

What managed to be of the machine, and only of the machine, the same way Jesus was only of Mary, and not Joseph?

Perhaps coming out with nothing human separates his existence from us-

But it also makes him wholly, and entirely, of the thing that created him.

Pure and untouched by any other source.

The closest thing we have to a personification of what had literally forced us to become something new.

Now, to be fair, that's an absolutely whack reason to start worshiping something.

But consider:

The ink demon was seen as a giver of life due to the machine, but also due to the nature of Henry's loop in the studio.

The Ending reel is half of what restarts the loop.

The demon, at the heart of the machine, every single time, is the other half of that process.

What brings all of us back into existence at the end of the day- no matter pushed, pulled, shoved, squashed, or torn up-

The machine, the demon, the loop, and Henry, all ensured that we returned to our rightful places in the cycle.

Dark ends, and new beginnings.

This is why I believed he would ultimately be able to set us free. Perhaps not on his own, but if anything was the key to the machine, it was him.

He had to be.

With the way he had control over it, over the dark puddles, the way he was able to hear things so far and make the building bend to his whim, and the ability to jump from one place to the next without succumbing to the ink,

Because there was nothing to lose amongst all the others scrambled by it.

Like a snake resilient to it's own venom.

If anything could free me from that existence, it had to have been him.

The one thing that controlled the world just as much as the world controlled it, until Henry came along.

Do I remember any of this? Unsure.

But do I know enough from research why I'd think it was a decent idea? Yes.

Frankly, to be fair, if I was trapped in an endless time loop of misery after being abandoned by the beings who brought me into existence, I'd be crabby too.

Now that I'm done preaching to a choir who likely has no interest, I may take a moment to speak personally-

But he doesn't deserve to be treated like a monster.

Not all that's.. freakish, or scary, is evil incarnate. Possessive, sure, and territorial. But the ink demon often appeared to me as more of a cornered animal than anything genuinely malicious.

Also, I want to kill the keepers. Like, genuinely, and truly, I would like to absolutely murder those guys. What in the fuck gives you the right to literally trap and experiment on not only something alive, but something so crucial to keeping your life as well.

I am so. Deeply passionate.

I miss it every day, if for nothing but the fact that I knew he was around, and that there were things we could do to combat.. all of that.

Here, things are just lonely. There are no pats on the back when I write a new song. There is no chance for me to sing a lullaby into the abyss, because I know no one is listening.

There is no point in saying a prayer for a God that cannot hear me.

But I hope he knows I am here.

And what I would give for his approval at times is something I don't think I should particularly speak on for my dignity. I sound nuts enough already, haha.

But there's my rant for tonight.

If you've actually read this, thank you. I appreciate your interest in my thoughts. Feel free to give me feedback if there is ever something on your mind. 🖤✒

[itsbenedict]

From the beginning | Previously | Coin standings | 5/23 | 0/10

Every part of your mind is unanimous. You can't FIGHT BARE-HANDED, or JUKE PAST IT in this cramped hallway, and if you were to HIDE IN AN OFFICE you'd just be cornered.

You RUN FOR THE ELEVATOR down the hall, following this thing's tail into the doo-

-into an empty elevator shaft, fuck! But you've got wings, you realize, and you're able to control your fall. You hit the roof of the elevator at the bottom and kick through the access panel, forcing the doors open once inside. You run through the SUCCINCT HOKEY TRIPE hallway, past a "LEARN UN-HYPNOTIZE, DOLORES" sign, and through a door marked CONTAMINATED.

You find yourself in a sparkling abyss, a place with no floor and no light. Even the act of running feels stripped-down somehow, like it's just the idea of it. But... you spot something bright white in the distance, and you're determined to close that distance.

It's- oh, god.

It's your partner. They're some kind of bird-person, like you- a dove? It's hard to tell, because there's a gaping wound in their chest. There's some sort of agglomeration of loose clockwork grinding away in the middle of their torso, and their body is jittering and distorting on the nonexistent floor. It seems like they succumbed to their injuries- or maybe hunger. There's no way they'd just lie down and STARVE TO DEATH, would they?

They've got a gun sitting on the floor next to them, and an unused wifi access point- as well as a SOFTWARE PATCH, thank fuck. You might be able to perform some emergency first-aid-

Error: architectural entity field 0x07CF referenced without blueprint key. Update loop deferred until resource is released.

-but oh, god, that thing is right behind you! You don't have time to--

Be an EPIC THUG PUNK and square off with it?

Use your wings to take advantage of the FLAP DISPARITY?

How about this plan- just keep running! NOT BAD, EH, MAN?

Distract the eel by sacrificing the FILIAL TWINS?

Continued

[anonymous-ava]

Genshin Childe/Zhongli Fanfic Rec

A list of my fav childe/zhongli fics as I have read many and wanted to share. Fics with a heart (❤) are my all time favs. The list itself is in no particular order and except for two fics all of them are complete.

I’ve included trigger warnings in bold below the title, please read the tags before reading the fic.

❤ basket of knives | Oneshot (1/1) | Rated Teen (Angst, Hurt/Comfort)

TW: Depression, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt

“I just want to be loved,” Childe says to himself, to whoever is listening. “Is that too much to ask?”

They are on the roof once more, this time Childe’s foot touches the edge of the building as he daydreams of something that cannot be. The sky is blank and cloudy and perhaps Lumine fears it’ll all end when he takes a step.

“Not at all,” she says. It’s still the truth.

Contrary to popular belief, Childe hates his family but loves them all the same.

the sister | Multi-Chapter (6/6)  | Rated Teen (Humour)

TW: None

The tragic and unexpected death of Zhongli-xiansheng of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor occurred to the sorrow of many and the deep skepticism of a few.

time flies like an arrow | Oneshot (1/1) | Rated Teen (AU Modern, Reincarnation)

TW: None

He’s tired, tired of the unbreakable loop of watching his loved ones pass on, tired of getting attached only for the connection to be violently ripped away from him. He wonders if the real victors during the Archon War were those who perished, who died long before their godhood turned into a curse that chained them to the land that they were fighting for.

But that is not a problem for Childe to worry about. That is Zhongli’s burden to bear, delivered to him in a pretty package years ago in the form of a gnosis.

His very first contract.

(Zhongli and Childe, across many lifetimes)

A Sight for Sore Eyes | Multi-Chapter (36/?) | Rated Mature (Canon Divergent, Slow Burn, Humour)

TW: Graphic Violence

Childe's purpose in Liyue was to play the part of the fool in Signora's plans, all the while ensuring she didn't completely fuck it up.

Given her idea to "test the people of Liyue" was to release a sealed god on them and call it a day, for whatever reason believing this was an entirely reasonable benchmark to test independence on, Childe had a lot of preparations to do to keep the entire thing from collapsing in on itself like his mental stability in the abyss. Fortunately, there seemed to be enough pieces on the board for Childe to maybe possibly hopefully swing this in a way where everything worked out.

Now, if only they would stop leaving jobs like this to the blind guy.

❤ Lungs full of Roses | Multi-Chapter (9/?) | Rated Mature (Hanahaki, Angst, Humour)

TW: Graphic Violence

Childe had always assumed that he would die young. He had accepted that a long time ago, ever since he accepted the mantle of a Fatui Harbinger. However, he always thought that he would die in a glorious fight, his body broken but spirit relishing the strong opponent that had bested him. He was okay with that type of death.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Fate had decided to add one last insult to injury, because, here Childe was, dying because he had fallen in love with the ex-Geo Archon. The same Archon who seemed to have discarded him like an old toy ever since the Osial Incident.

---

In which divine beings are cruel and a cursed Childe starts preparing for his inevitable death because no Archon could ever love a mortal.

...Right?

(NOTE: The tags promise a happy ending but it updates slow and sporadically so be prepared for the angst)

if i choose not to see it, it does not exist | Oneshot (1/1) | Rated Teen (Humour)

TW: None

Zhongli might as well have just straight up told Childe. He absolutely refuses to think too hard about it.

or

Tartaglia's accidental guide to why Zhongli is most definitely a hundred percent not Rex Lapis. There is nothing suspicious to see here.