#sorry i’m rattling on my cage door again

[badnew2005]

THE GANG TENDS BAR - we’re always running outside, out into the world, looking for riches and treasures, when we’ve got everything we need right here.

[candycandy00]

My Sweet Pet - A Suo x Reader x Sakura Fanfic Part 3 (Final)

You’re a hybrid cat girl in a pet shop, and Sakura Haruka is a fellow hybrid in the cage beside you. After becoming friends, he promises to protect you. A week later, you’re both purchased by Suo Hayato.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Smut. 18+. Fem reader. Hybrid AU. Suo and Sakura are bisexual. Oral sex. Overstimulation. Lots of cum. Use of aphrodisiacs. Threesome. Voyeurism. Humiliation. Dividers by @anitalenia and @benkeibear!

Thunder crashes, making you cry out in fear. You’ve always been terrified of storms, your sensitive ears picking up the rumbling thunder far too loudly. You sit up in bed and look around the large, empty room. For the first time since Suo brought you here, you miss your cage. At least then you were right next to Haruka, and during storms he would hold your hand through the bars and talk to you despite his shyness. 

Maybe he’s still awake! You pull back the covers, pull on a dress just to avoid being naked, and head down the hallway to Haruka’s room. 

It’s been a week since the two of you made love for the first time, and he told you he loves you too. Since then you’ve only had sex one more time, during one of your nightly sessions in Suo’s room. While you’d like to be intimate with Haruka more often, and you think he wants to as well, you’re both too shy to initiate anything on your own. 

As for Suo, he’s never had sex with you yet. You’ve pleased him with your mouth and hands, and he’s pleased you with his, but nothing more. Does he not want to? Or… does he think you only want to do that with Haruka?

The truth is that you’ve fallen for Suo just as you fell for Haruka. You love both of them. 

You stop outside Haruka’s door and knock very lightly. If he’s asleep, you don’t want to wake him. There’s no answer, so you crack the door and peek in. You can hear him snoring softly, see the vague shape of him sprawled on the bed in the dark. 

Closing the door quietly, you sigh and head back down the hall. Thunder cracks again, making you yelp and shudder. 

There was no session in Suo’s room tonight. He had to go to some sort of meeting and told you and Haruka to “have fun without him”. The two of you ended up watching a movie together on the couch.

Suo said he would be home late, but looking closely, you can see light coming from under his door further down the hall. Is he home? And awake? 

You walk to his door and start to knock, but hesitate. He’s probably tired from his meeting. Deciding you shouldn’t bother him, you turn to walk back to your room. That’s when you hear his voice carry through the door. 

“Is someone there?”

You stop. “Um, it’s just me,” you say. 

“Would you like to come in?”

You open the door slowly and step inside. Suo is sitting up in bed, a laptop open in his lap. You notice right away that his eyepatch is gone, but his hair is hanging over his face, covering his right eye. 

“I’m sorry to bother you.”

He smiles. “You’re no bother. I was just looking over some financial reports. Is everything alright?”

“Oh, yes, everything’s fine!” you say, a little flustered. “I was just having trouble sleeping and-“

Thunder cracks loudly, so hard that the windows rattle. You shriek and cover your ears, hunkering down in terror. Once the thunder quiets, you look up and see Suo closing his laptop. He pulls back the covers and says, “Do you want to come lay beside me until the storm passes?”

“But, you must be tired…”

He pats the bed. “I’m not tired at all. Come.”

Your heart beats a little faster as you walk over to his bed and crawl in beside him, under the covers. You’re not sure how close you should get, so you stay several inches away from him. 

“Did your meeting go well?” you ask, trying to break the awkward silence. 

“Yes, very well. Thank you for asking,” he replies, his tone polite as always. 

Another crack of thunder, and you wince, closing your eyes tightly. Suo moves closer, wrapping one arm around you. “It’s okay,” he says gently, “the storm will pass soon.”

You look up at him, your face flushing with heat at his closeness. It’s strange, but somehow you feel more shy in this situation than you do when you’re sucking his cock. 

He’s smiling down at you warmly, and you snuggle in closer against him. 

“Have you always been scared of thunder?”

he asks you, his hand absently rubbing your arm. 

“For as long as I can remember,” you tell him. “The noise startles me even when I know it’s coming.”

“I’ll be here with you,” he says, “so don’t worry.”

As he speaks, his head tilts slightly, causing his hair to fall across his face and uncover his right eye. Or rather, where his right eye should have been. There’s a mess of scar tissue surrounding the empty socket, spreading out slightly. He notices you looking, and reaches toward his eyepatch on the nightstand. 

“I’m sorry, this must frighten you. I’ll cover it up,” he says. 

“No, please,” you say, putting a hand on his arm to stop him. “It’s not frightening at all! I’m happy you let me see.”

He pauses, looking at your face. His expression softens. “I’m glad you feel that way.”

Thunder strikes again, and you bury your face in his shoulder, pressing yourself further against him. You notice something then, a firm bulge in his lap. Your eyes move to his face. “Suo,” you say, carefully watching his reaction, “can I… touch you?”

He hesitates for a moment, then smiles. “You can do whatever you want, kitten.”

Slowly, you slide one hand down his body, under the covers, and softly rub the bulge between his legs through his silk sleep pants. You can feel him getting harder under your touch, and you keep eye contact as you slip your hand beneath his pants. His breathing gets a little faster as you grip his warm shaft and move your hand up and down it. 

Still staring at his face, you ask, “Suo, do you not want to have sex with me?”

He reaches down and puts his hand on yours, stopping your motion. “We don’t have to do that. You have Sakura, right?”

Ah, so your guess was right! He thinks you only love Haruka! You suddenly pull the covers back and roll over onto him, straddling his lap, your knees on either side of him. In one quick motion you pull your dress over your head and toss it aside. Suo’s lone eye moves down your naked body, his face looking surprised. 

Your face is burning with embarrassment, but you won’t back down now. “Y-you said I can do whatever I want, right?”

His hands are at his sides, but you can feel his cock throb against your skin. He must feel how wet you are already. “Yes, whatever you want,” he says. 

You’ve never had sex in this position before, but it looked very pleasurable in the demonstrations you saw as part of your training. You rise up slightly and use your hand to position him right, then you sink down onto his cock. You gasp, realizing this position lets him go very deep very quickly. 

His hands move to your thighs, gripping them as you begin moving up and down, riding him with your head tossed back, moaning his name. 

You glance down at him and see that he’s watching you intently, as if he’s transfixed. You lean over him, putting your face close to his. “Suo… I do love Haruka… but I love you too! My heart beats for both of you!”

His eye goes impossibly wide, a faint pink tint to his face. You’ve never seen him blush before. Then, as if a thread stretched tight within him suddenly snapped, he rises up, pulling you tighter to him and thrusting up into you. His mouth finds yours, kissing you with more passion than he’s ever displayed before. 

There’s a strange desperation in the way his arms encircle you, pulling you so close that it feels like your bodies will meld into one. There’s a hunger in the way his lips kiss your neck. That’s when it dawns on you: Suo is lonely. You’ve seen no sign of any family or friends since you’ve been here, only the hired servants whom he seems to have little interaction with. 

You understand that feeling. Before Haruka was brought into the shop, you were the only cat hybrid there for three days, but before that, you were at a different shop for nearly a year with no other cats. Even earlier, in training, you had no friends to speak of. You were different from the other cats - more timid and quiet. 

You’re sure Haruka understands as well. He clearly wasn’t socialized like most hybrids. For him to be as feral as he was when he was brought in, he was probably alone for most of his life. 

And now the three of you are together. 

You place your hands on Suo’s face, looking closely at him as you both breathe hard. You lean forward and lick over his scar, gently, as if trying to heal him. 

In response, his grip on you tightens, and his hips lift from the bed, plunging into you even deeper. It feels so good, being fucked so deeply by someone you love. Feeling him inside you, against you, pushes you to your climax. 

Thunder crashes again, just as you cum. But this time, wrapped in his arms, his seed shooting into your depths, you hardly even notice it. 

*******************************

Sakura has noticed the change. How could he not? He’s hyper aware of two specific people at all times: his new owner Suo, and the woman he loves. For the past few days, they’ve seemed closer, more comfortable with each other. On one hand, Sakura is relieved that Suo has seemingly developed feelings for her. It means he’s very unlikely to hurt her (and makes any implied threats empty). On the other hand, Sakura can’t help wanting to have that same sense of closeness and comfort. 

He feels it with her, of course. The two of them spend so much time together. But he doesn’t feel it with Suo. He’d rather die than admit he wants to though. 

The attraction he feels to Suo is purely physical. That’s what Sakura has told himself since Suo bought him. With that ridiculously pretty face, Suo could seduce anyone. But now, Sakura wonders if that’s all there is to it. He finds himself wanting to talk to the other man, but holding back.

These complicated feelings are swirling in Sakura’s heart when Suo calls the two cats to his room for their “nightly session” as they call it. 

Sakura walks in, with her behind him. She rarely seems nervous or shy now, instead seeming excited. He’s excited too, his cock already growing hard in anticipation, as if it’s a natural reaction to walking into this room. God, Suo already has them trained. 

Suo is waiting for them with that irritating smile on his face. He crosses the room and kisses her on the cheek affectionately, then regards Sakura with the usual oddly blank expression before telling the cat to sit on the floor. 

Sakura does so, sitting with his thighs spread and his ankles crossed in front of him. Suo steps over and squats down in front of him, reaching up with graceful fingers to unbutton Sakura’s shirt. As Suo’s hands move down, grazing over Sakura’s abdomen, the cat blushes red despite his best attempts not to. 

Suo moves around behind Sakura, dropping down to his knees behind his pet and nimbly opening Sakura’s pants. Suo’s soft hand slides down into Sakura’s pants and grips his semi-hard cock, then moves up and down it with light, feathery strokes. 

Sakura fights to hold back a moan, pressing the back of his fist against his mouth to smother the sound. Suo’s touch feels too good, too soft, for Sakura to ignore. He can feel himself getting harder in the other man’s hand. Then he hears Suo’s voice behind him, close to his ear. 

“Kitten, let’s give Sakura a treat tonight. Take off your dress for him.”

Without hesitation, she pulls off her dress, dropping it to the floor at her feet. Sakura looks at her, and all hope he had of keeping himself from getting fully hard is gone in an instant. No matter how many times he sees her like this, it always takes his breath away. She’s so beautiful, and seeing her so exposed and vulnerable for him, knowing he and Suo are the only ones who get to see this lovely sight, makes his whole body heat up. 

“Come to us,” Suo tells her, then pauses and says, “I know! Get on your knees and crawl to Sakura.”

Sakura frowns, looking up at her sharply. “You don’t have to do that!”

But she’s already getting on the floor and beginning to crawl toward him on her hands and knees. Oh fuck, she looks so good like this! She’s staring at him, at his open pants, at Suo’s wrist peeking out from the fabric. 

As she nears them, Suo pulls Sakura’s cock out, his hand still stroking Sakura’s length. She gets impossibly close, her eyes glassy as they watch Suo’s gliding hand. “Haruka,” she says in such a sweet voice, “can I lick it?”

Sakura feels like his face is on fire as he breathes hard. He nods, watching her, enraptured as she leans forward and licks his tip. Her saliva mixes with his precum, and Suo’s thumb circles the tip, spreading it all around as she licks along the shaft. 

A groan escapes Sakura’s mouth. Everything feels so fucking amazing. Suo’s hand expertly stroking him, her warm mouth closing around him, suckling his leaking fluids… it’s almost too much. 

She takes him deeper into her mouth as Suo’s hand remains at the base, making gentle twisting motions. Suo’s free hand slides down between Sakura’s thighs and lightly squeezes his balls. Sakura shudders between the two of them, feeling weak. 

“You’re close, aren’t you?” Suo asks. “Go ahead and cum in her cute little mouth. She wants you to.”

Sakura glances down at her questioningly. She nods, not letting him slip out of her mouth. “Mmhmm,” she mumbles around him. 

Oh fuck. This is his shameful fantasy come true. The thought of sullying her sweet mouth with his cum… 

His will to fight any of this melts away, and he cums with a groan, filling her with his seed. 

Suo’s hands pull away, but her lips remain wrapped around him, sucking out the last drops. 

Sakura is barely aware of the other man standing up and moving around, only to sink down to his knees behind her. 

**********************

When Suo lowers himself behind you, you can’t help being embarrassed even now. After all, you’re on the floor, your face in Haruka’s crotch, your ass in the air. 

“Keep doing that until Sakura cums again,” Suo tells you, and you’re happy to comply. Having Haruka in your mouth makes you feel giddy with pleasure. His soft cock is already starting to get hard again as you lovingly lick and suck on it. 

Haruka makes a sound that’s half moan, half whine, and you hear fabric rustling behind you as Suo gently pushes your knees apart. His fingers slide up and down your slit. “She’s dripping, Sakura,” he says, making you blush even more. “I guess sucking you off turns her on.”

Haruka’s cock twitches in your mouth, fully erect now. Just then, you feel Suo slide his own cock inside you from behind, going all the way in. You cry out around Haruka’s cock, the motion pushing you further against him, pressing him further down your throat. 

“F-fuck!” Haruka mutters, his hand swiftly moving to your head to steady you. 

Oh god, they’re both inside you! 

Suo begins thrusting into your quivering pussy, slowly but deeply, each thrust rocking you forward on Haruka’s cock. Suo’s hand rubs down your back, along your spine, until it reaches your tail. He grips it, firmly but not hard, then gives it a light tug. Your whole body jerks. You didn’t even realize how sensitive the base of your tail is! You moan, your tongue swirling around Haruka’s tip. 

You’re feeling delirious as pleasure fills you, and in the midst of this, you hear Suo’s voice again as he leans slightly over you. 

“You’re so pretty when you’re sucking Sakura’s cock,” he says to you, then he raises back up, thrusting a little faster now. “Isn’t that right, Sakura?”

You glance up at Haruka’s red-tinted face. He looks away from you awkwardly. “She’s always pretty,” he says.

Suo laughs. “Well, that’s true! She’s really pretty when she’s eating dinner and starts humming without realizing it!”

Eh?? You didn’t know you’d been humming! 

“Or,” Haruka adds, his eyes shifting back to your face, “when she first wakes up and her hair sticks up everywhere.”

“Or when she gets excited and this cute little tail starts swinging around!” Suo says, squeezing your tail just enough to make jolts of pleasure shoot through you. 

Haruka’s eyes looking down at you are so warm and loving. “Or when she’s in the garden and puts a flower in her hair… she’s so beautiful.”

Your face is burning, listening to them talk about you so adoringly even as their cocks throb inside you. A particularly deep thrust from Suo shoves you forward, Haruka’s cock going halfway down your throat. He grunts, his hand tightening in your hair. 

“Are you close again?” Suo asks him. 

Haruka nods. 

“Hold on, let’s cum in her at the same time,” Suo says. 

The thought thrills you. You hear their voices, speaking back and forth to get the timing right, your body so stimulated that you can hardly make out their words. 

And then, they both cum, within two seconds of each other, filling both your mouth and your pussy. The sensation is enough to make you cum as well, your body trembling between them as they stay buried inside you on both ends. 

Ahhh, the feeling of being stuffed so full of the two men you love!

****************************

Suo is in a good mood as he walks through the front door, getting home late from another meeting. He told his two kitties to enjoy themselves in his room as usual, but he doubts they did so. Last time, according to one of the maids, the two of them watched a movie. They could be strangely shy when he’s not there to spur them on, despite it being obvious that they’d both like to enjoy each other’s bodies more. 

As he walks down the hall toward his room, he hears a sound that causes him to pause. It’s a desperate, mewling cry, as if begging for mercy. Are they actually in his room? At this hour? 

Almost at the same time, he notices what looks like trash strewn about the carpeted hall. He bends down to pick up a torn open box, and his eye widens. 

A few days ago, he’d picked up a box of catnip cookies, thinking he might let his kitties try them during a session. The box warned to only give your cat hybrids one cookie at a time, spaced a few hours in between, as the catnip has a powerful aphrodisiac effect. 

The box, which had contained twenty-four cookies, is empty.  

Among the debris in the hallway, he spots a familiar dress and a white shirt, both looking as if they’d been tossed aside in a hurry. 

Suo stares at his own bedroom door as the cries coming from inside intensify. 

“Seriously?” he asks aloud, then laughs as he walks over and opens his door. 

He finds his two kitties. The sweet woman he’s come to love so much is sprawled on his desk, all its former contents littering the floor. She’s completely naked, her legs spread wide apart, her hands gripping the edge of the desk as Sakura devours her pussy. 

Sakura’s shirtless, his pants open, one of his hands furiously stroking his cock while the other holds her open. 

Stepping closer, Suo can see that she’s got tears in her glazed eyes, her skin flushed and sweaty as she murmurs things like, “Haruka… I love you…” and “I can’t take anymore!” She’s clearly overstimulated, and Suo can’t even tell if Sakura can hear her. 

He taps Sakura’s shoulder to get his attention, and the cat looks up at him with equally glazed eyes. There’s a puddle of creamy cum on the desk beneath her squirting pussy, and Sakura’s lips and chin are dripping. 

Suo smiles. “I see you found the catnip cookies.”

Sakura doesn’t reply, only stares at Suo with that lusty gaze. 

“Let me have a taste of her,” Suo tells him, starting to nudge him aside. 

But Sakura suddenly straightens up and grabs Suo by the collar, jerking him close and kissing him. Suo can taste her on Sakura’s tongue as it invades his mouth. He finds himself leaning into the kiss, eventually licking along Sakura’s chin. When they separate, Sakura goes back to eating her pussy. 

Suo steps around to look down at her face, and notices that it’s covered in Sakura’s cum. He strokes her hair as she stares up at him and says, “Suo… love you…”

These two! They’ve become so precious to Suo that he thinks he could easily kill for them. 

“I love you too, kitten. Now,” he says, unbuttoning his pants, “since your face looks so lovely painted in cum, let me add my own color.”

[ironychan]

Scary Monsters

@dysphoria-sweatshirt @30spiders @sweatersexual @angrylittlesliceofpizza @writer652

Part 1/? - Rocco’s Closet

Part 2/? - School for Monsters

Part 3/? - The Waternoose Family

Part 4/? - The Terrifying Humans

Part 5/? - Hiding Places

Part 6/? - Nobody’s Fault

Part 7/? - Edge of Disaster

Part 8/? - Caged Monsters

Part 9/? - The Journey Home

Part 10/? - Portorosso

Part 11/? - A New Family

Part 12/? - More Obstacles

Part 13/? - Out and About in Genova

Part 14/? - Lack of Planning

Sorry this took so long. I got it written quickly enough, but then I had artist's block and I didn't want to skip the illustrations.

Daniela had not been expecting to find them there, either. She screamed right back. For a moment the room was full of terrified voices, and then everybody fell silent, staring at each other.

“So much for staying quiet,” Helena observed.

“M-m-mom?” Luca asked tremulously “What are you doing here?”

Daniela recovered enough to speak, and climbed the rest of the way through the closet door into the room. Her bare feet and hands were dirty, and her dress had a tear in the skirt – it had clearly been a difficult climb. “What am I doing here?” she echoed. “What are you doing here, young man? Your father and I were very specific that we didn’t want you doing this, and you deliberately disobeyed!”

“Signora Paguro...” Giulia began.

“And you two!” Daniela rounded on Giulia and Alberto, shaking a finger at them. “You helped! I’d talk to your parents, but they’re clearly in on the whole thing!” She glared at Helena.

“We need to stop shouting!” said Helena, holding up her hands. “Somebody’s probably heard all that, and the security guards will be coming to investigate. We’ll only make it worse if we keep arguing, so how about we compromise?”

“Compromise?” Daniela began, but then paused. There were voices talking downstairs... it was impossible to hear what they were saying, but they sounded urgent.

Giulia had immediately understood what her mother had in mind. “Signora Paguro,” she said again. “Harry didn’t want to go back, so we had to drag him here. He’s changed his mind now and he wants to go, so we’ll leave him here for when the monster researchers open the door, and the rest of us will go back to Portorosso! How about that?”

“But...” Luca began, but then caught Helena’s eye and saw her shake her head.

“I...” Daniela looked down at Harry, who smiled sheepishly. “That sounds reasonable, I suppose,” Daniela decided, “but you three are still in a lot of trouble.”

Luca really did want to argue, but he knew this was a fight he could not win, so he sighed heavily, and then nodded. “Yes, Mom.”

“How did you get here?” Helena wanted to know.

“I took the train, like you did,” Daniela replied, “and don’t think it wasn’t the most terrifying experience of my life! I don’t know how you do it,” she told Luca, “in this big rattling box that feels like it might tip off the cliff at any moment, surrounded by strange humans. I’m never doing that again! We’re going to swim home like respectable creatures.” She shook her head. “But yes, when I realized where you must have gone, I opened up your grandmother’s savings...”

“She has savings?” asked Alberto.

“Nonna collects coins that fall in the water,” Luca explained. “She uses them to bet at cards.”

“... and I was on the first train this morning,” Daniela went on. “Then I knew you’d said Palazzo Spinola, but I had to find the place, which was also ridiculous. Why would you build like this, where all the roads turn you around and go back the way you came, when you can’t look down on the place from above?” She glared at Helena as if she were personally responsible.

“There’s not a lot of space between the mountains and the sea,” Helena said. “They build things wherever they fit.”

“Then when I got here,” Daniela said, “the humans outside said you’d left after lunch, but I knew better. They wouldn’t let me in any of the doors, so I decided to climb up and look for another way, only to have you open the door and scream in my face! After I’ve been through all that, don’t you even think you can change my mind about taking you home.”

“Yes, Mom,” Luca repeated.

Daniela nodded, satisfied. “Good. Let’s go.”

“What? Right now?” asked Alberto.

“We have to make sure Harry gets home safe!” Luca agreed.

“We can’t just leave him on his own,” Giulia said. “He can’t be trusted!”

“I really can’t!” Harry said, then paused, thinking about what had just been said. “Wait a minute...”

“We just have to wait until the monster scientists open the door,” said Luca, forging ahead before Harry could try to correct them. “We don’t know when that’ll be, though.”

“It might not happen at all,” Helena warned. This had occurred to everybody else, but nobody had wanted to say so. If the scientists didn’t actually use this door, then all this had been for nothing and they were going to have to find another way back. Nobody knew if that were even possible.

There was a creak and a thump from downstairs, and then footsteps. Somebody had opened the main door downstairs, and as Helena had predicted, they were on their way up to see what all the noise was about.

“Oh, no,” groaned Luca.

“Quick!” Giulia grabbed one of the cloths from earlier. “Hide!”

They all scrambled underneath, using boxes and paint cans to prop up the sheets and make them look like they were covering furniture or supplies rather than people. It was hard to say how convincing this might be. It seemed to have worked on men who were tired and distracted and didn’t expect to find anybody there. People who were looking for an intruder might not fall for it at all.

“What if they find us?” whispered Luca, crouching in in front of his mother under one of the sheets.

“Harry.” Alberto poked the young monster. The two of them were curled up under Helena’s empty suitcase, left open beside one wall. “If they come in here, you pop out and scare them away.”

“What? No way!” said Harry, shaking his head hard. “There might be a lot of them!”

“Sssssh!” hissed Giulia, under the second cloth with her own mother.

For the first couple of minutes, Luca hoped the security guards might only search the first floor and then give up. That evaporated when he realized the footsteps were now coming up the steps. What had been indistinct voices began to turn into actual words.

“... said she thought her son and his friends were in here,” one of the men was saying. “I sent her home.”

“Should have escorted her the whole way,” another replied.

Nobody dared breathe. The footsteps came closer and closer, keys jingled, and then the ominous creak as the door opened. Flashlight beams darted around the room, one shining right into Luca’s eyes so that even with the sheet over his head, he had to close them. Would they move on, or had they seen something suspicious.

“Mamma mia,” one of them groaned. “Who do you all think you’re fooling?” He stepped forward and reached for the sheet.

Daniela stood up, hands on her hips. “Luca,” she ordered, “the water.”

That was right – they still had the buckets of water they’d prepared for disguising themselves upon entering the monster world. Luca grabbed the nearest one.

“Signora Paguro,” the guard said calmly as he pulled the sheet away. “We were very clear that...”

Luca threw the water over his mother. The security guard yanked the cloth away, expecting to see a harried-looking woman in her late thirties, and found instead a sharp-toothed, scaly creature with glowing red eyes and a lashing tail. Daniela couldn’t roar like the closet monsters could, but she let out a high-pitched scream to match the one she’d given when she’d suddenly found Luca, Alberto, and Giulia inside the room.

The guards dropped their flashlights and grabbed each other as they screamed back in terror, then fell over each other in their panic to leave. One was pushed to the ground as the other two left him behind. He was screaming insults at them as he picked themselves up to follow.

“And stay out!” Daniela shouted as the half-ran, half tumbled down the stairs outside.

“They’ll be back with more people,” said Giulia. “Just like they were for Harry. We gotta go.”

“What about me getting home?” Harry complained.

“Giulia’s right,” Luca said, though he didn’t like to admit it, either. They hadn’t chased the guards off for good, they’d only bought a few minutes.

“We’ll have to try somewhere else,” Helena agreed. She picked up one of the flashlights and reached for the closet door. “Daniela, you climbed up. Can you show us...”

Then suddenly another light came on – this one shining from around the door which should have had nothing on the other side of it by empty street and scaffolding. Everybody froze. Luca dared to hope that something tonight was going to go his way.

“Doc!” a voice called from the other side. “It’s working now!”

That had to be their cue. “Harry,” Luca whispered. “Over here, quick!”

Luca, Giulia, and Alberto surrounded Harry, ready to push him through any opposition they might encounter on the other side of that door. Helena and Daniela took up positions behind them, to fend off intruders from downstairs. There wasn’t much available by way of potential weapons, but Helena had the flash on Giulia’s camera, and Daniela hefted two fairly full paint cans, ready to swing them at anyone who came in. Everybody held their breaths.

The light under the door went out again. Luca wilted, thinking they’d missed their chance – but then the door creaked open, and a glowing eye peered back at him.

“Now!” Luca shouted.

He and his friends pushed Harry at the one-eyed figure. The monster in the closet yelped in surprise and dived out of the way. Meeting none of the expected resistance, all four children tumbled through the opening to land in a heap on a tile floor.

“Luca!” Daniela dropped her paint cans and ran after them.

As she did, the main door of the room opened again, and light flooded in. There were too many people from a camera flash to be remotely effective. Seeing no other escape, Helena, too, ducked through the closet door, and slammed it shut behind her.

As their eyes adjusted to the dark, the group saw that they were in a long tiled room. One wall held a row of door stations, similar to but bulkier than the ones at the factory. The other was covered with all sorts of equipment and dials, with pipes, hoses, and bundles of wire leading into the ceiling or across the floor to the doors. Books, papers, chairs, and coffee cups were knocked over and strewn around, and there were sounds of panic and shouting coming from out in the hall. Luca knew they had to do something fast, before anyone tried to come back in. He looked around, and soon found what he was looking for.

“Water!” he said, pointing to the fire hose coiled behind a glass panel in the wall.

He and Alberto yanked the door open, setting off an alarm as they did. Luca uncoiled the hose, and Alberto turned the wheel. Water blasted out, and Luca pointed the nozzle at Alberto to soak him first.

From behind him there was an indignant cry of, “hey!”

“Huh?” Alberto turned around and let Luca turn the hose on himself and Daniela while he inspected a row of cupboards on the wall. One was half-open – just enough to let the jet of water spray inside. Alberto pulled it open all the way, and found a tangle of legs in black patent mary-jane shoes, belonging to a monster girl of twelve or thirteen who was now rather damp.

“You two again!” she exclaimed. It was the girl they’d repeatedly splashed at Harry’s school. “What is this, some kind of conspiraohmygod!”

“It was an accident!” said Luca. He turned off the hose and came to help her, only to realize that she was staring right past him and Alberto, looking at something else in utter terror. When Luca followed her gaze, he found his mother shaking extra water out of her fins, and behind her were Helena and Giulia. Both of them were also soaking wet, but that didn’t matter, because both of them were human.

“Oh, no, they’re fine!” Luca told the girl in the cupboard. “They’re friends of ours.”

“They’re poisonous!” the girl protested. “Or venomous or whatever! You were there when we learned about it!”

The lab door flew open again, and four or five monsters of various sizes – though all of them smaller than the large, intimidating ones who worked as Scarers at the factor – barged in carrying a variety of improvised weapons of their own. One had a large wrench, another a mop, and the one in the lead, who had three eyes and eight legs, was wielding a cricket bat. He scuttled forward and pointed it at the group.

“Unhand my daugh...” he began, then his eyes widened as he saw Daniela. For a moment he just stared in astonishment, and then his entire demeanour changed. He stood up straight and put the bat behind his back. “I’m so sorry, Ma’am. Miss? You startled me! Uh...” he took in Harry, crouched and covering his head at Daniela’s feet, and Luca and Alberto, helping the girl out of the cupboard, all while Helena and Giulia edged to the site to stay hidden behind Daniela.

“I’m fine, Dad,” the girl in the cupboard said, rolling her eyes.

“Oh! Tarantella!” the scientist exclaimed, as if he’d momentarily forgotten she was there. He gave his cricket bat to one of his very confused colleagues, and scuttled forward to check on his daughter. “You’re... all wet,” he observed.

“That’s their fault,” said Tarantella. “These guys go to my school, and apparently every time I meet them, I get wet!”

“Oh,” said the scientist. He had the name González embroidered on a pocket of his white coat. “Wait, what were they doing on the other side of that door. Ma’am?” he turned to Daniela. “Were you scaring in there? If so, I’m afraid there’s been some kind of mixup...”

“That’s a very long story, Sir,” said Luca. Harry hadn’t said anything yet, so it was apparently up to Luca to take charge. This was where their plan ran out, so he was going to have to make things up as he went... and the first priority, he decided, was to make sure nobody panicked again. “Sir,” he said, “we need your help with something, but we need you to not freak out! So before we do anything else, you need to know that humans aren’t poisonous!”

“They aren’t?” asked González. He grabbed Luca by the shoulders, holding on uncomfortably tight as he gave the boy a bit of a shake. “You know that for certain?”

“Sure do,” said Alberto.

“Mom,” Luca said. “Move over.”

González looked up at Daniela again. “Oh, that’s your mom?” he asked, disappointed – but then his breath caught as she stepped aside to reveal Helena and Giulia. His grip on Luca relaxed, allowing him to wiggle free.

“This wasn’t part of the plan at any point,” Helena noted. Her eyes went to the closet door, but it was sitting quietly in its frame with the lights off, perhaps no longer connected. There’d been no more noises from beyond it.

“Miercoles!” whispered González. He started to step towards them, then stopped and looked at Luca for permission. “May I, then?”

Helena took over, and gave him a hand to shake. “Piacere, Dr. González. I’m Helena Marcovaldo, and this is my daughter, Giulia.”

“Ah... Javier González. ¡Encantada!” he replied, returning the handshake. After a couple of seconds he realized he’d gone on too long, and pulled his hand back to stare at it, turning it over to see the back. Then his face split into a broad, toothy grin. “I knew it! I knew it! Ha-ha! People think you’re crazy when you say Big Scream is hiding things, but I knew it!” He turned to his daughter. “Tarantella, didn’t I... ooooh, wait’ll I tell your mother! I’m gonna get a Gnoble Prize for this, I know it! The man who brought down the Scream cartel!”

Tarantella wasn’t impressed. “Haven’t you been saying that people who try to talk about it vanish?” she asked, worried.

At the same time, another monster poked one of its heads into the room, while another looked back over its shoulder. “Dr. González?” the first head said. “The police and exterminators have arrived.”

“Oh, no,” said Luca. They really should have had a plan for this part... but how could they have, when they didn’t know where they’d end up? And they certainly couldn’t have planned for Giulia and Helena being here. That had only happened because of the need to escape from the security guards in Genova. If only there were a third world where they weren’t in trouble!

“Oh, no,” González echoed. “Not this time!” He turned to his guests. “You two, you can just...” he stopped there, his mouth falling open. Daniela and the boys were drying out, and transforming.

“More water!” said Luca. He grabbed the hose to spray them all again. Tarantella shrieked preemptively and dived behind a trash can.

Dr. González clearly had questions about this, too, but he was much more interested in getting away with whatever it was he thought he was doing. He started up another door, and hustled Helena and Giulia through it. “Just wait right there,” he ordered them. “I’ll come and get you in a minute!” He then shut off the station, leaving Luca and Alberto slightly terrified that they would never see their friends again. Where had he sent them? It could have been anywhere.

There was no time to think about that, though. Moments later, a couple of policemonsters arrived, along with an individual in the yellow plastic suit of an exterminator. The latter was a hulking, hunchbacked creature with one head that peeked over the top of the other one, and the very long visor in that part of the suit made Luca feel like far too many eyes were watching him. All he could do, though, was stand in a line with Harry, Alberto, and Tarantella, while his mother and González took up positions behind them, trying to look like nothing had been going on.

“An alarm went off in here,” said one of the police monsters, a creature with three legs, two arms, a bushy mane, and far too many teeth.

“Ah, yes,” said González with a nervous laugh. “Yes, we’ve had a little... you can probably see, we’ve had a little problem with the fire system. Water everywhere! Don’t worry, nobody’s hurt. Of all the times for it to happen, it was bring your children to work day!”

“It’s okay,” Alberto put in, throwing an arm around Luca. “We’re sea monsters. We’re supposed to be wet, anyway!”

The other cop – a slug-shaped creature with a ridge down her back like a dragon – sighed. “You’ve really gotta get this place inspected, González,” she said. “This is the third false alarm this month.”

“It’s an old building, Maggie,” González replied apologetically.

“Just file the report,” Maggie sighed. “Maybe talk to the university council.”

“I’ll do that.”

The cops and exterminator took one last cursory look around the room, then turned and trooped out. Luca and Alberto allowed themselves to exhale, and González turned the other door back on to let Giulia and Helena back in. The boys had wondered if they might take the opportunity to flee, but they were still there, Helena with her hands on her daughter’s shoulders as they re-entered the laboratory.

“Where were you?” Luca asked.

“No idea,” said Giulia.

“We could hear voices talking in a foreign language,” Helena added, “but I don’t know what it was.”

Luca gave Giulia a hug. “Okay,” he said, “now we need to figure out what we’re doing next!” he said. “We have to get to the factory and...”

“Oh, no,” said Daniela. “We’re not staying. Harry’s back where he belongs, now it’s our turn. Dr. González, put that door back. I’m taking these kids home.”

“You can’t!” González protested. “At least... the humans can’t! I need them to prove my case!”

“Excuse me, you can’t just keep us prisoner,” said Helena.

“We can’t go back right away,” Giulia said. “They’re probably still looking for us in the Palazzo.”

“We’ll be charged with trespassing,” Helena agreed.

“Yes, exactly,” said González, though it was questionable how much he was listening. “I’ve got to get you out of here. We need a disguise...”

Behind him, the lab door opened again. “Hey, Doc,” said the exterminator, poking its two heads in. Surprisingly for such a large creature, it’s voice was high-pitched. “I think those two boys...”

It stopped dead, staring at Helena and Giulia. There was no time to do anything about it. Even worse, at that moment the air conditioning came on. Before the exterminator had time to recover from its initial shock, Alberto, Luca, and Daniela had all dried out and changed back to human form.

“Oh, no,” said Luca.

The exterminator stared a moment longer, then grabbed a walkie-talkie from its belt. “Hey, uh, Maggie...” it began.

Daniela took action. She scooped up González, discarded cricket bat and hit the exterminator over its larger head. The monster staggered.

“Hey!” protested the smaller head. This one had a deep, booming voice.

Daniela hit that one, too, and the creature crumpled. The walkie-talkie rolled across the floor and came to rest at González’ many feet.

“Hello?” asked a voice on the radio.

González picked it up, cleared his throat, and did his best to imitate the squeaky voice of the larger head. “Why don’t you go grab some lunch, Maggie,” he said. “I’m gonna help the doctor re-check some of his safety gear.”

“So they weren’t the kids you were looking for?” asked the voice of the cop.

“Nope! Totally different! Over and out!” González turned the device off and tossed it in a trash can. “Come on! We have to get you all back to my place! You three, get wet again!”

Luca ran for the hose. “What about Giulia and her mom?” he asked, as Tarantella took cover.

González stopped, frowning. “Yes, what about them?” he mused. He looked around, and his eyes found the fallen body of the exterminator.

A few minutes later, Daniela and the boys were sopping wet again, and Helena was wearing the exterminator’s yellow suit, with Giulia riding piggyback to fill out the hunchback and the second head. This was awkward and Helena couldn’t move fast, but they didn’t get more than a few sideways looks as they crossed the building’s lobby.

“I need to call my Mom,” said Harry.

“You’re going to tell your parents?” González was aghast. “Young man, they’re the ones keeping these secrets from the masses! Your father is probably the mastermind of the whole conspiracy.”

“I know,” said Harry. “I’m not gonna tell them we brought the humans, I just wanna tell them I’m okay. Maybe Dad will even be happy to see me.”

The front doors opened onto an expansive car park, surrounding by multi-storey buildings. González considered the options available to him, then headed for a van with a Monsters University logo and the word custodial painted on the side of it. “Tarantella,” he said, holding out a hand.

His daughter pulled a bobby pin out of her hair. González took it, and unlocked the back of the van.

“Great,” sighed Luca. Another car ride in the dark – the last one hadn’t been fun at all. There was nothing else to be done, though, so he climbed in.

“What are you guys even doing back here?” Tarantella wanted to know. “If you got back to your own world, why did you come back here where everybody thinks you’re criminals? And why did you bring the humans with you? Isn’t that just gonna get you in more trouble?”

“They weren’t supposed to come back at all!” said Daniela crossly. “I explicitly told them not to. Only Harry was supposed to come back.”

“But since we’re already here,” Luca added, “we need to find out what happened to Louise and Curtis and Mr. Sullivan. They’re in trouble and it’s all our fault!”

“Who are they?” asked González. He climbed in the driver’s seat of the van and started pulling the dashboard apart.

“They used to work for my Dad,” said Harry. “They’re fired now.”

“We’re gonna take them back to our world,” Luca explained. “We live in a town where they’re pretty okay with monsters. They even kinda got used to Harry. They’ll be okay there.”

“You can’t do that,” Harry protested. “What happens when somebody from outside your town comes to visit? Then they’ll end up with a mob, like the one that was after me!”

“Not if my Dad has anything to say about it!” said Giulia.

“I don’t really think that’s a good idea, either,” Helena put in.

“But we gotta do something!” Luca insisted. “Now that we’re here, we need a plan again. We need to figure out where they are. Then we need to know how to get in there and help them escape. And then we need a door that’ll go back to our own world. That last part is easy, at least.”

“Yeah, Dr. González has lots of them,” Alberto agreed.

“I can’t just let you all go before I publish!” González complained. The engine of the van rumbled to life, and he did up his seatbelt before putting the vehicle in gear. “I’ve got to do controlled tests and double-blind studies! There’s months of work ahead!”

Tarantella shook her head. “Dad, you said they assassinate whistle-blowers, remember? Maybe you’d better keep this to yourself.”

“Truth needs to come out,” González said firmly. “There are martyrs in any revolution.”

“I can just ask where they are,” Harry said, getting back on topic.

“You think your dad’s going to tell you?” asked Alberto.

“Not him. There’ll be other people who know,” said Harry. “And they’ll tell me anything I wanna know because if I tell Dad they were mean, they might lose their jobs. Even if they don’t, I can go anywhere I want in the whole factory. Somebody in there has to know. I’ll find out.” He was starting to sound like himself again.

“Great! We’ll go from there,” said Luca.“In the mean time, can we please stay with you, Dr. González?”

“Of course, of course,” said González. They pulled out of the parking lot onto the street. “I’ve got observations to make!”

González lived in a house not far from the university. It was far smaller than the mansion where the Waternoose family lived, no bigger than Louise’s apartment, but still larger than the Marcovaldo family home in Portorosso. The garage was big enough for two cars, although there was only one inside. The rest was full of piled-up boxes and mechanical parts. Gonzalez backed the van up as close to the door as he dared, then hustled everybody inside in the hopes the neighbours wouldn’t see.

“I’ve gotta take the van back and get my bike,” he said. “I’ll only be a few minutes. Don’t go outside, don’t go near the windows, don’t go anywhere!” He wagged a finger at them. “Tarantella! You’re in charge of making sure they don’t escape!”

“Yes, Dad,” she said tiredly, then glared at the boys. “Don’t get me wet again!”

Luca held up his hands. “We won’t!” he promised.

“As long as nobody’s gonna see us, we don’t have to,” Alberto agreed.

“Good.” Tarantella scowled.

She turned the inside lock on the door, and they closed all the blinds and shutters. Then, when they were sure nobody could see them, Helena and Giulia were able to get out of the yellow Eterminator suit. The inside of it was clearly a very warm and claustrophobic place. Both were sweaty, and took deep breaths of fresh air as they wriggled out the zipper in the back.

“It’s got a breathing system of some sort,” Helena observed, “but it’s not designed for creatures with noses where ours are!”

“Hold it!” Tarantella shouted.

Harry had been reaching for the kitchen telephone, but Tarantella was now skittering up on the counter to place herself firmly between him and it, her arms held out on either side. Harry scuttled do the left, and she did the same. He tried the right, and she kept herself in his way. They did this dance several times, until Harry gave up in frustration.

“Why can’t I use the phone?” he demanded.

“Because you’re gonna call your dad!” Tarantella replied. “Then my Dad is gonna be in trouble! He’s always talking about how anyone who tries to tell the world that humans aren’t toxic gets silenced by Big Scream, and since he was right about the humans I guess he’s right about this, too! Find a phone booth or something.”

“She’s right,” Luca realized. “The same thing will happen to Dr. González as happened to Louise and everybody. Then we’ll have four people to save instead of three.”

Harry brightened. “Then that’s a good way to find out where they are, right?”

“No, it’s not!” Luca, Alberto, Giulia, and Tarantella all spoke in unison.

“We need to make a plan,” Luca insisted.

“Right,” Alberto nodded. “You’re the idea man, Luca. How are we gonna do this?”

Luca looked around and swallowed. Everybody was looking at him expectantly, including Harry and Tarantella... and they were all counting on him. Helena and Giulia needed to get back to the human world safely. Harry needed to not get in too much trouble for running off, and to not get the rest of them in trouble by accident. Tarantella needed her father to not get thrown in jail. Daniela would be furious if he or Alberto got hurt. And now all of them were expecting Luca to figure out how to do it.

“I need a minute,” he said.

[imawreck]

Unsaid Goodbyes

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x Original Character

Summary: You should read it, then you’ll know.

Author’s Note: Heyyyy… I’m sorry okay 🙏 forgive me. Also, I'll be back on schedule with posting tomorrow, but for now this is all you get. Please, if you're interested, vote on my poll!

Warnings: Wounds, violence, shit ton of angst, Death

Word Count: 5,422

Max-

Hulk's roar rattled my very bones as I fought to find a way out of the cell. The solid wall of Vibranium-lined glass caged me behind it and refused to waver. I had no idea what was going on outside or why the security measures hadn't been tripped the moment that prisoner escaped as I pounded on the glass, eyes frantically searching for a weak point.

This glass was stronger than that of my cell, but maybe I could get through-

The thought died out of my head as an ache ran through my body from my side straight to my arm, resonating over my torso. No, I couldn't get out, not in this state. I was too weak. There wasn't enough time to take in what was going on outside the glass either, not with an enraged green giant trapped in a confined space with me.

Natasha's red hair caught my eye as another bone rattling roar tore through the cell. I stared wide eyed as she held her hand out, muttering something soft under her breath towards the enraged form of Bruce's alter ego. I watched in horror as the muscles of his massive shoulders flex before his arm raised, threatening her with a painfully abrupt death.

I moved as fast as my body would let me, my side screaming in protest as I made contact with her just in time to send us tumbling out of the way as Hulks' fist slammed into the pavement right where she had been standing. I picked myself of the floor, taking in the silver clouded reflection of Hulk's eyes, the way his body shook in rage and his lips pulled back in a snarl. It must have been the injection. Whatever it was, it had taken control of his mind, driven him mad with rage.

I caught Natasha's arm as she pushed herself off the ground to stand defensively next to me. "There's no use trying to talk him down, he's under some sort of influence. He can't hear us."

Just then he swung again, making us both leap apart as his fist once again slammed into the concrete, a spidering crack trailing up the floor as sprays of rubble shot across the cell. I scrambled to get as far away from him as I could. There was no way out of here, and if he got anywhere close to me, I wouldn't have enough energy to keep him off for long, if at all. Then there was Natasha. Natasha wasn't a super soldier, so if he got ahold of her, it would be the end of that. If Hulk killed her, Bruce would never forgive himself.

I couldn't let that happen.

I clutched my hands into fists, cursing myself for taking the time to change out of my tactical suit before coming down here. I didn't even have enough energy to grow a useful set of claws. So, I would focus on defense. All I had to do was make him tire out before I did.

I took off sprinting, sliding between his legs and clutching at the ground to bring myself back up again. Natasha trembled, looking as frantic as I was and put her fists up too. I called over the alarms, "Get to the doors of the cell! I'll distract him and see if I can't get him to bust out of the wall! Try and get anyone's attention."

The part of the cell level had a smaller cell that Bruce had turned into his personal lab after the experimental incident. He explained to me once that it was the safest place for him to be, because there was double the security measures. The cell would close, and there was a wall of glass and Vibranium that would encapsulate the whole half of the floor. And it had done exactly that. Little did we know it would bite us all in the ass like this.

I shouted over another angry scream from the Hulk, "Hey big guy, over here!" I waved my arms, running away from where Natasha stood wide eyed and gawking. "Come get me!"

The gigantic heap of muscled whipped in my direction, growling and grunting in frustration as he sprinted towards me with his arms raised. I jumped as high as I could, clinging to the metal exterior of the wall and heaving myself up towards the tall ceiling. I had an idea, but it was a big risk with my current state and crucial that his attention remained solely on me.

He tore up the wall hauling himself upwards after me. He was bigger, stronger, but I was faster. I kept at it, shouting down to him. "Come on dummy, you can do better than that." Each insult was rewarded with a shout or a grunt and an increased urgency to pummel me into the wall. I stalled once I decided we were high enough, turning to peer down at him and allow him to catch up. My chest was heaving with each breath I took, and my side sang in pain. "Come on Greenie, take a swing!"

Hulk clenched his fist in a fit of rage and leapt up a few feet, slamming his fist against the wall and denting it. I grinned, "You can do better than that!" I stuck my tongue out at him, dangling from a steel beam an uncomfortably close distance to him.

Once more, he swung his fist and I hauled myself up just in time to grip onto the next beam as the force of his fist rattled the wall. The metal groaned where he had hit, and I knew a few more hits like that would surely break through. And the quicker he got through the faster I could get Natasha and myself out of harm's way.

I swung my weight into the crater in the wall he had created, waving my arms and plastering on another grin. "Man, you can't do any better?" I was sweating with the effort it took to prevent my body from trembling at the exertion it took to maintain my posture alone. My strength was waning.

This time, he roared in fury and threw himself upwards, both fists raised to smash me against the wall like a bug. I leapt off the edge just in time, careening through the air and sliding down his back to land harshly against the ground. The landing vibrated through my legs and they throbbed in pain. Still, I forced myself farther away from his screams of anger.

Light streamed in from the whole in the wall, bright and hopeful. I smiled victoriously now, turning to catch Natasha's attention. Something slipped in through the hole though, slapping the ground and was followed quickly by another and another. I frowned, sparing a glance up at the hole where Hulk still clung near. Three distinct ropes slung through the opening and reached towards the concrete floor. I nearly cried in relief, hoping that my teammates were finally here to aid me.

The hope was quickly squashed the minute a black clad soldier slid swiftly down the rope and landed easily on the ground. Hulk didn't seem to notice him slip past, didn't even blink in his direction as he slammed his hands around the wall and continued to scream. The bright red emblem sewn into the front of the soldiers' uniform had my heart beating out of my chest and panic squeezing my lungs in a vice grip. My body took an involuntary step backward as I clutched my chest, fisting the fabric of my shirt in a weak attempt to reassure my heart it was impossible.

But he was right there, eyes staring at me through the ski mask he wore, and the ropes behind them slapped against the wall as more soldiers identical to him filed through the opening. Each and every one emblazoned with the ugly red skull of Hydra, and all of them hid their faces in those ridiculous masks. I continued to back away, fighting my panic and trying to figure out a way out. There were only three of them, surely I could handle three.

Just as I clenched my fists and readied to attack, two more slid into place at the mouth of the hole, blocking the only exit. They only moved to allow more men to slip down the ropes and join the others stalking closer and closer by the minute. Dozens of them.

"No," barely a whisper, "No, please no." I didn't realize it was me that had spoken until I forced myself to take a breath. This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be.

Hulk suddenly swung his head around as one of the soldiers spoke from the mouth of the hole, pointing towards me with a quick gesture of his arm. I watched Hulk mindlessly turn to me and drop heavily to the floor. His fists pounded against the ground as he roared out and took off in a charge towards me.

And I screamed.

The sound tore out of me, echoing over the walls and ringing in my own ears. I could feel the helplessness that had engulfed me. I knew that my body had met its limit, for I could only run a few feet before my knees gave out. Hulks form towered over me, and I scrambled away as his fist rained down on the concrete once more. Someone screamed from the other side of the cell, and it took me a moment too long to realize it was Natasha. She stood there, horrified and pounding against the glass of the cell. I could make out silhouettes of people on the other side, but the glare from the light streaming in through the hole made it hard to distinguish their faces. The soldiers stood scattered on the far side of the cell, hands on their guns as they watched the scene play out.

Hulk bellowed, distracted by Natasha's scream long enough for me to scramble onto unsteady legs. His body turned to hurl towards her, and fear was a living thing inside of me. He was going to kill her.

My muscles burned as I pushed myself with every last drop of energy I had, tearing past his towering form and slamming into the wall besides Natasha. I fought to stay on my feet as my vision sputtered and smudged with black spots. I blinked rapidly enough to clear them in time to turn my body, caging Natasha between my arms and the wall. The panic building in my chest tore out of me in another scream as I let the tears fall down my face.

It was like time slowed. I knew Hulk was only seconds away from hailing down on us, every nerve in my body was screaming and my instincts were pleading with me to turn and run. But I couldn't, not even for my dislike of the woman caged in my arms. She was important to people on the other side of this barrier, she was important to a group of people who saved lives. My face was inches from the glass, close enough to clearly make out the faces on the other side.

A red suit with an arm raised fired beams at the glass in a desperate attempt to break through, a figure weaving around people and attaching devices along the wall with a bow strapped to his back, and finally the crystal-clear eyes that stared at me from behind the wall right there in front of me. Those wide, agonizingly beautiful eyes. I couldn't help the wave of tears that poured from my eyes as I took in his face, saw the desperation written across his features as his voice barely met my ears through the glass. His hands were planted over my own on the other side as he screamed, begged for them to stop, for everything to just stop. But I knew what was coming.

I was going to die, and there wasn't anything to be done about it.

I simply stared at his face, forcing myself to smile just for him this one last time. Tears slipped down his face as his mouth moved in the same way over and over and over. 'Please, not her. Please, please, please...' I knew I couldn't be the one he was begging for, and it hurt.

But my time was running out, the few seconds I had were slipping by as my senses warned me of the oncoming hit. So, I held my smile and burned the image of his beautiful eyes into my memory, recalling his smile and the soft way he laughed. Letting the memory of his hands on my body flitter through my mind. My time with him had been the highlight of the century I had lived and suffered, and he would be my light until the end.

I pressed my forehead to the glass, letting my tears fall as a sob wracked me, trying and failing to think of anything other than the end nearing. I would protect Natasha so she could return to his side. If she was what he wanted, I would make sure I did everything I could in my last moments to keep her alive for him. I opened my mouth to tell him as much, perhaps finally confess in these last few seconds.

But my sentence never made it past my lips as the force of Hulks assault battered into my spine. I felt the impact, my eyes widening, before my bones shattered and all I felt was pain.

White, hot, all-consuming pain.

I watched vacantly as Bucky slipped from my vision and something cool pressed up against my face. I hadn't realized I had fallen until Bucky's face pressed against the ground on the other side, his mouth open in a cry I couldn't hear. But I could see his pain as it mirrored my own. I couldn't do anything but watch him sob and scream, throwing his fists into the cell until his blood smeared across its surface but he still kept trying.

I wanted to say something, to press my hand on the glass one last time and reassure him that everything was going to be okay even as the pain wracked my broken body. I could feel myself fading as I watched the black spots merge and expand over my vision, stealing my last glimmer of hope as everything was claimed by darkness.

_____

Tony-

I hadn't felt this helpless in a very, very long time.

I had tried and failed to get my systems back online, to tear my way through the wall just like the other two men beside me, but I had made this wall impenetrable. And I had never wished for something to fail so much.

Despair wracked me as I watched Max envelope Natasha against the wall, tucking her body away from harm and using herself as a shield. Bucky had begun yelling as he pounded away at the cell, screaming so desperately for Bruce to stop and get ahold of himself. His voice cracked and strained as he screamed, only stopping to breath in and start all over again as he put all of his effort into getting through to her. To Max.

But he couldn't. None of us could as we watched them on the other side of this god forsaken cell. We could only watch as Hulk's fist connected with Max's frail and battered body. Could only listen as the sickening crack of her bones echoed loud enough to reach us on the other side. Her scream would haunt me until the very day I died.

Bucky had crumbled with her as if it was him who had taken the blow too, pressing his face to the cold concrete and sobbing, begging whatever god watching over us to stop them. His fists clawed at the wall as the soldiers gripped her ankles and dragged her body away from the glass as her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Bucky began pounding at the glass again, cursing Hydra through his cries and tossing promises of painful deaths.

I had dropped my arm after the overheat warnings began echoing in my helmet. There was nothing to be done, no way to get to her even if we could get out of the building and get around in time to get to her. They would be long gone by the time we managed to get everything back online, and they were smart enough to trap us here so I was certain they would cover their tracks and prevent us from finding them.

And Max was dead.

In a matter of minutes, they had gathered Max's broken frame up on a stretcher and hauled her out of the crater in the wall. Two men turned with their guns and fired at Hulk's looming form, littering several rounds of darts up and down his side before they scrambled up the ropes and disappeared behind the others. Hulk's body crumbled to the floor as he shrunk back to normal, out cold on the floor. Natasha still quivered against the glass with her eyes clamped shut and shaking. We were just left with the blood splattered on the floor and the consuming silence that always followed these kinds of things.

Bucky remained on the floor, sobbing and clawing at the glass. I had never seen a man so broken, so torn apart. I hated him once, but I had learned to endure his presence. I had once wished that he would die and pay for all the pain he had caused just as I knew he thought too. I regretted ever even thinking of those things as I watched him break apart on the ground. His very soul seemed to shatter with every broken cry that tore through his body, drifting away on every plea that echoed in the room.

Clint stood with his shoulders slumped and his eyes on Natasha. I knew he wanted to get to her and comfort her after what she just witnessed. He hadn't even had the chance to hack the security to reach them before the damage was done.

I had failed them, and I had failed Max.

The lights flickered back on and a moment later a body burst through the stairwell door, drawing all of our attention to the ragged form of none other than Cap himself. His chest was heaving and his shield was gripped in his hand as his wild eyes took in the situation.

Once he realized there weren't any hostiles, confusion spread over his face. "What happened? The lights and everything went out, I couldn't even get to Friday. And the alarms-." None of us dared to answer as another one of Bucky's sobs ricocheted off the walls, tearing Cap's gaze to his fallen comrade. He was taking hurried steps the next few seconds and dropping to the floor beside him, his arms hovering over Bucky's back and worry lacing his words. "Buck, Bucky what's going on? Are you alright?"

The soldier wiped his eyes on the harsh fabric of his uniform and clenched his teeth as he tried to compose himself, "They took her." Bucky's fists shook against the ground beside him with restrained anger and sorrow.

Steve's head shot up, "Who took who? What happened?" His hand finally dropped to Bucky's shoulder in a firm grip, an attempt to console him I'm sure. I could only watch in defeat as I processed it all.

Steve's eyes lingered on the fallen form of Banner, dragging over to Natasha who now sat slumped against the wall with a hollow look in her eyes as she stared at the cracked concrete below her. Then he studied the blood on the floor inside the cell, then the smears of it in front of his friend before he finally dropped them back to the Bucky. Bucky's knuckles were busted and surely fractured from hammering against the glass. Steve picked Bucky's right hand up and examined the bloodied mess before he set it back on the concrete to return his palm to Bucky's shoulder to wait for his explanation.

With pinched brows and agony in his eyes, Bucky met Steve's eyes and I felt my heart shatter all over again. He sucked in a breath, "Hydra infiltrated the Tower and shot Banner with some kind of serum and he went all mad, triggered the security section of this room. He..." Bucky bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, so hard I was sure when he swallowed it had tasted like blood. "He tried to attack Natasha, and Max distracted him long enough to cause him to tear a hole in the wall as he went after her. Max and Natasha were going to escape before the other Hydra operatives came in through the hole and ordered Hulk to get them. I heard it. Then he- he started going after Max and she was so weak, so weak she could hardly stand." Bucky's throat bobbed as he choked back another wave of sobs.

I clenched my fist, "Max gave her life to save Natasha and they took her body."

Steve just stared at me, "How did they get inside?"

I moved, shifting out of his view to allow his eyes to find the crumpled body of the prisoner we had taken earlier. Bucky had killed him seconds after Banner had been injected, but things had already been set in motion. "I'm guessing they used our prisoner as an inside man."

Steve's brows pressed themselves flush together, "That would mean the whole thing was a setup. They had been planning this deliberately." He shook his head, clasping his fingers in a fist. "I told you we shouldn't have taken a prisoner."

Appalled, I stepped forward. "Now is not the time for 'I told you so's. Max was just killed!"

Cap shifted his shoulders, "She was a killer!"

"Max was not a killer!"

Every head in the room snapped the the curled form of the Super Soldier on the floor. His eyes were trained on Steve with anger like none I had ever seen on him before, not even the cold eyes of the Winter Soldier had ever met the ferocity that I saw roiling in them.

Bucky's chest heaved a breath, "She saved those people. The people living in that valley, they're rebuilding their town with Tony's help because Max told him they needed it. Max got them out before she flooded the valley and saved every single one of them." His metal arm groaned against his grip, "Don't you call her a killer unless you're ready to call me one too."

Again, we all sat in silence as his words sank into Steve like a lead weight. I could see it in the way his shoulders sank and his eyes glazed over. He felt the guilt too. "I'm sorry, Buck."

"Save it," He snarled suddenly, wiping again at his tear stained face. "We all know you hated her anyways." Bucky pushed away from the floor and brushed off Steve's hand. "I'm going to find that jet."

"Barnes, you can't go after them alone." I stepped forward. "We just got back from a mission and you're tired. We can-"

"No. No, I want to find them now before they've gone underground and we really don't have a way to get to them." Bucky's eyes blazed as they held mine, "I want them to pay for this."

I sighed, "They will Barnes, they will, but we have to think this through. They just hacked my system and broke into the Tower like it was nothing. They lured us into a trap and then sent us back with a trojan horse when we managed to evade it. Obviously, Hydra has gotten some kind of upper hand and we have to remain careful." I hoped that he would understand, but I could tell that he wasn't thinking straight. Hell, I was hardly thinking straight. The image of Max's body hitting the floor continued to replay over and over in my head.

Steve remained knelt on the floor with his empty eyes set on the tiles while Bucky clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly. Clint took to hacking the doors and I... I needed to reboot the systems. "Everyone needs to get some rest and we will reconvene for a meeting later tonight. That's an order." My words were empty, everything felt empty, but they had to be said for any one of us to be able to put our minds to finding those bastards.

_____

Bucky-

Thirteen hours, that's how long it had been since Hydra had obliterated any semblance of safety in this tower.

Thirteen hours since they had stormed in and murdered Max.

Everything felt numb, every part of me ached with the effort it took to simply walk or breathe, to live. I hadn't slept, couldn't. I knew what waited for me on the other side, the demons that would rear their heads and laugh at the misery I had fallen into. I knew that I would see her battered body on the floor, feel the desperation I had just hours ago all over again on a loop of torture.

So I remained awake.

I had retreated to my room, locking the door and refusing to see anyone while I tried to process what I had seen. I didn't want to accept that she was gone. Maybe it had all been just another nightmare and I would wake up any minute to her soft knock on the door and her voice filtering through that little sliver of light to ask me if I was alright.

I could almost picture it, the way she would smile at me in her oversized T-shirts she loved so much as she leaned against the doorframe. She was so small that her body barely filled half the frame. Her eyes, softer in the dim light from the hall, would warm my heart and melt away the panic that had held me. She would crack some witty joke to lighten the mood and scoot under the covers, never flinching when my metal arm wrapped itself around her waist. Strong and steady like she always was.

But I knew better. Max was angry at me, hurt by my stupidity and harshness. Trust was a fleeting an unsteady presence in my life, and I had let it take to the hills the second I doubted her. Max had never once hurt me and I knew, even in the past I couldn't recall, she had always been that way. Her purpose with the enemy had been to protect me and she had done it, and she had continued to do it even after they fell, not out of obligation, but because she had wanted to. She had been a friend, perhaps more, and I had let her die thinking that I hated her.

Guilt consumed me, swallowing me up and holding me in a vice grip. I couldn't even move, not an inch of me followed my internal pleas to get up and find her. My mind had convinced my body that there was no use in trying anymore.

I laid there in my dirty tactical suit smeared in my own blood in the darkness of my room. My feet hung off the end of the bed and my hair blocked most of my vision. Tears still fell from my eyes no matter how hard I tried to stop them. I wanted to be angry, I was angry, but the anger was nothing compared to the crippling sorrow that drowned my heart.

I didn't even flinch when Friday's voice met my ears. "Sergeant? Mr. Stark has requested for all Avengers to report to the meeting room."

I curled my fingers into a fist, the first movement I had made since collapsing on the bed. The stiff ache in my muscles reminded me of the very real circumstances I found myself in. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes." I needed to collect myself before I faced the rest of them.

Friday chimed in again, "You might want to hurry. The tower is receiving an incoming video call. The source of the call is unknown."

I shoved into a sitting position, eyes blowing wide. "What?"

"Mr. Stark is trying to single out its' transmitting location now."

My stomach dropped to the floor. I knew it couldn't be good, not so soon after everything. I took to the elevator as fast as I could, figuring since Friday was back that Tony had finally regained control of the Tower's systems. I gripped the sides of the elevator for support as it lowered me through the floors, finally releasing me to join the ruckus in the meeting room. Shouts of confusion and panic filled the air as I walked through the doors into the chaos of the team.

Everyone wore exhaustion on their faces, purple bags lingering under every eye I saw. On the TV monitor mounted on the wall there was an incoming signal, and all of the team were in an uproar of confusion. Tony was furiously typing away on the keyboard in front of him, the table having been turned longways so everyone could see. Each of us watched the screen with pensive eyes. I took a seat right as the video crackled to life.

The distinct lines of a hand were the first thing we saw as a man in a lab coat haphazardly adjusted the camera lens that went in and out of focus rapidly. The sound of metal clinking against each other echoed over the speakers as he finished fiddling with it and took a large step away to let us take in his face.

He was young, probably in his mid twenties, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He wore a blinding smile that sent an unwarranted chill down my spine despite the dim lights and the seemingly unthreatening appearance he sported. Something about the whole situation was off, but I didn't have much longer to analyze what was going on before he started talking.

"Hello! My, I must say it's a dream come true to finally meet the Avengers. I wish we could meet in person, but the circumstances haven't been exactly ideal." He gave a sheepish smile and continued with a disarming gesture of his arm. "My name is Roman Giles."

He waited for a long moment as if his name might hold some kind of significance to any of us. It definitely did not.

We all startled as he clapped his hands, "Well, anyways, let's get to the point, shall we? You took something that belonged to me several months ago. A certain weapon more valuable than anything else. Then several months later you stole another weapon. One nearly twice as important as the first. Can you guess what they were?"

The meeting room had gone deathly silent save for the heartbeats hammering in each of our rib cages. Tony finally cracked the silence with his shaky reply, "The Winter soldier and The Ghost."

Roman threw his arms up almost triumphantly, "Bingo! What an accomplishment." He bent forward and peered into the camera, "Hello Sergeant Barnes, enjoying your newfound freedom?"

I swallowed, the feeling like sandpaper. I didn't reply.

With a sigh, he stood again. "As you can imagine, the loss of our two most valuable assets was quite the problem. Our Fist and Shield had been stolen and we were left weakened. But, with a little bit of thought and recruiting, success was within our grasp once more." The smile he wore had soured, morphing into something wicked. "Your building has one of the most advanced security systems I have ever seen Tony Stark, it was quite impressive. Fortunately, we have an equally impressive team on our side and with your recent shortcomings in defeating Hydra's active bases you were just so eager for information. It was too easy to infiltrate your fortress, to get our weapon back from you. I would've liked to have you rejoin us Sergeant, but one of you will do just fine." He threw his head to the side and tossed an order in Russian, a moment later the distinct sound of a door opening filled the speakers.

So did the screams.

Tags<3

@hzdhrtss / @imdoingathingmom / @cjand10 / @calwitch / @blackbirdwitch22

[joandarxh]

Dark!john price x reader MDNI +18

Tw - kidnapping

“You're alright, sweetheat. There, there, now. No tears. Can you be a good girl?” Price asked you with a firm but soft tone as he looked down at you in your cage.

He had put you in the cage again two days ago and you're legs ached so much from not being able to stretch and it had made begging to go to the bathroom a humiliating familiarity. And the only thing you wore was the collar he had put on you. You nodded your head up and down as you looked up at him, the chain on the collar rattling excitedly.

“Yes, yes. I’m sorry for what I did. Please let me out,” you begged him, bottom lip trembling as the word bubbled out. You had begged him every time he had come to give you your meals and water and to ask him if you needed to use the bathroom.

“There’s my good girl. What did you do?” He asked, crossing his well built arms over his chest as he took another puff of the cigar between his teeth.

“I-I,” the word stammered out of your throat. “I tried to escape,” and you felt even smaller end and repeating it made your stomach twist.

Price stuck his tongue and shook his head at you and you felt the pit in your stomach drop. Was he not going to let you out? Were you getting more time in the crate? Nononono you wanted to get out and be good for him.

Tears started to brim around your eyes as he took a slow step toward you. And then another and you heard the clicking of keys and the door to the crate opening. It swung out slowly with a long creek and he stood at the end of the crate, holding out an open palm towards you.

“Come here, girl,” Price commanded with a click of his fingers.

Since it had been so long in the crate, you had to crawl out. But you didn’t care. You crawled forward eagerly with a wide smile on your lips as you happily escaped your crate and pressed your face into his open palm.

Oh god it had been so long since you had felt another person's touch. His calloused skin brushed along your cheeks and nose as you pressed it against your face letting out soft, hiccupping sobs.

“My poor girl. You didn’t like being in the crate, did you?” Price asked as he pressed his palm to your cheek and ran his thumb along your teary cheeks.

You shook your head and leaned into his touch. You didn’t want to go back into that horrible box ever again. You could be good. If you're good you get to sleep in and stretch your legs and even get clothes.

Price’s thumb dragged along your bottom lip as you snuggled into his palm. His eyes looked down to your body, you're breast, hips, and ass. You opened your mouth immediately as he nudged his thumb into your mouth and you started to suck down on it, looking up at him with pleading, teary eyes.

“There’s my good girl” he said as your tongue dragged up and down his thumb, head bobbing up and down.

He had expected resistance. Truth be told. What he hadn't anticipated was the long game you played. The quietness, the obidense. All an act to get him to lower his guard and then out the door you flew. He had arrogantly thought that because he went for a woman in her thirties then you would be more accepting of your new life.

Your old life, and other men, had all had their chances to disappoint. Maybe you would want a farmer that wanted to be with you and have kids and live together in your own paradise.

Oh how wrong he had been.

If it had been any other man than he would have laughed and said they would have deserved it. But it was him. And by some miracle he had found you before you had managed to hurt yourself or scare yourself. He had found you by the river, sobbing as you slowly realized there was nowhere to go. 200 acres of nothing. You had no clothes, money or food and you were alone.

He had been rough, he could admit it to himself. He had grabbed you by your elbow and wrestled you to the ground. You tried to scramble out of his grip but he was stronger. He moved you onto his lap and you didn’t even hear the belt before it came down on your ass.

Sobs of apology came too late as the belt came down again and again. You squirmed and clawed at him, crying and then cursing before falling back to the pleads for him to stop. And when it was done he put his belt back on, took off his coat and wrapped it around you before taking you into his arms as he mumbled softly to you.

Everything hurts. And as the coat came around you and he took you into his arms as he started to walk back into home. His words were soft and gentle and you hated yourself so much for wrapping your arms around his neck and burying you're face into the crook of his neck.

“My poor girl. You just got confused and scared, didn’t you?” He asked, snapping you back to reality.

You nodded your head up and down and sucked on his thumb. And then you heard the sound of his belt and froze. You haven't done anything. His chuckle rattled through his chest as he stroked your head with his free hand.

“You're not in trouble anymore, sweetheart. You can be good, can't you?”

You nodded again, and wiping the tears from your eyes and cheeks. You saw him freeing his cock from his trousers.

God.

You knew Price was well endowed, the way he wore his clothes, the shapely lump between his legs. But what had really sealed the deal was the way you felt his hard cock rubbing on her belly as he spanked you.

[inquisimer]

sometimes it feels like teeth

chippin away at @febuwhump with day 12: semi-conscious. A reunion in the alienage for Ariya & Cyrion, where she must face the fact that she cannot save them all.

read it on ao3 here

Female Tabris & Cyrion Tabris | Rated T | 1629 words | CW: mercy killing, blood & injury, illness, slave trade

-

No sooner had the slaver’s corpse hit the floor than Ariya was at the cage, shaking hands picking open the lock. The metal door sprang open and she pulled each of her captured family from the brink of despair. Some did look ill; before she could even speak, Alistair pulled poultices from their packs and set to work.

Thank you, she mouthed.

“Amore.” Zevran gestured to the back of the cage with his chin. A few figures remained and the bottom of Ariya’s stomach dropped out as she recognized the familiar dips and planes of her father’s silhouette. He was staring directly at her, mouth parted in disbelief.

“Papa,” she breathed, and then she was at his side, running battered hands over him, checking for injuries, praying incoherently that she had not arrived too late. His arms came around her and squeezed.

“I’m fine, da’len, I’m fine,” her murmured. Tears choked his voice, but when she pulled back they were tears of joy that matched the bittersweet smile on his face. “You came back for us. My darling girl.”

“Of course I did. I’m sorry I—“ her guilt swallowed her apology, surrounded as she was by the echoes of those already gone. Was that Valendrian’s blood on the wall? Leah’s tooth in the corner? “I should have gotten here sooner.”

“That you came at all is a miracle.”

A noise behind him drew Cyrion from the bubble of reunion. He grimaced and held out a hand when Ariya looked beyond him.

“You probably shouldn’t—“

“It’s okay, papa,” she said softly. “Whatever it is, I’ve…seen worse.”

Cyrion’s face fell. He shifted aside so Ariya could see the reason he’d remained in the cage. One of the younger elves was propped in the corner, skin ashen and sallow. Her hair was brushed away from her face from gentle caresses to soothe her suffering.

“Oh, Gwen,” Ariya whispered. She knelt beside her father and took a clammy hand. Gwen’s hazy eyes slid in and out of focus, but her head lolled in the direction of Ariya’s voice.

“Ari?” she mumbled. “issat you?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Gwendollyn was one of the first taken,” Cyrion said grimly. “I doubt she’d still be here if not for how sick she is.”

“Why is she so much sicker? The rest of you seem fine?” No sooner had she voiced the thought than the chilling realization that they might not actually be fine came to Ariya. But her father shook his head and gripped her leg reassuringly.

“We’re alright. Relatively. Gwen was—well—“ Cyrion drew aside Gwen’s dirty tunic, revealing a bandage that covered most of her abdomen. The blood that soaked it was dark—darker than it should be, even wounded like this, and the Blight in Ariya’s veins called out to this distant cousin of disease.

“Jumped in front of Mara’s little boy,” Gwen muttered, fingers fluttering vaguely over the wound. “Made a bad cough already worse and now we’re here.”

Ariya squeezed her hand. “For Tommy, of course. Oh, falon.”

“Just following your example.” Her lips twitched like they were trying to smile. “Since you were gone, someone else had to be the hero.”

“I don’t feel much like a hero today.”

Gwen’s brow dipped. “Of course you are. All these” —a cough wracked her wasting frame— “all of our family. You saved them—again.”

“I’m not so sure I did,” Ariya sighed. “The damage to the alienage…”

Cyrion winced.

“It will heal,” said Gwen, a faraway smile painted on her face. “Doesn’t it always?”

“Speaking of healing—“

“Amore—“ Zevran knocked against the cage, rattling the bars so they echoed in the now empty chamber. The last of the freed elves had left with Alistair and Morrigan as their guards back to safety. Piles of Tevinter corpses had been shoved aside and scraped of any valuable loot— including a beautiful dagger with snakes wrapped about the hilt, which glinted where Zevran spun it between his fingers.

“We need to be going,” he said, not unkindly. They’d traveled together enough that he recognized what Ariya had not yet acknowledged and there was sympathy in the smile he gave her. “The arl awaits our counsel and” —he tapped the documents tucked safely in his belt— “we have information that should be shared.”

“Of course.” To Ariya’s surprise, Cyrion stood readily, dusting his hands. Her confusion was only momentary, though, as he said, “Between the two of us we can probably move Gwen, I’d have done it myself if not for the condition of my knees.”

“Papa…” Ariya did not look at her father. Her eyes stuck on Gwen’s sallow face, tracing the bony edges of her weakened body, looking for something that defied what she knew to be true. But there was nothing. Ariya knew it, Zevran knew it, and, judging by the resignation in Gwen’s eyes, she did too. Only Cyrion still deluded himself.

Now Ariya had the unenviable task of giving words to dread and despair.

“She’s not just ill, papa,” Ariya said. “She’s…it’s a Blight sickness. Even if we took her back to the alienage, it would only be so she could die a painful death in lacking comfort.”

“What—but—we cannot leave her here! The cots in the alienage are rough, I know, but they are better than a cold floor and a cage. And if you intend to depart—well, I will not leave her to die alone.”

“Of course not.” Ariya’s hand rested on the hilt of her sheathed dagger, waiting. She still wasn’t looking at her father, but instead watching every half-conscious twitch of Gwen’s face. It seemed that she was slipping farther with every passing second, her eyes glazed and drifting, unseeing.

“How do you know for sure?” Cyrion demanded. “It could just be a rare disease—not that these Tevinters knew anything, but Alarith might have some potion, or know something!”

His fervor made Ariya wonder—Gwen had been a good friend, yes, though never so beloved by her father. But there had been a gap when Duncan took Ariya from the alienage; it seemed her father had filled it with another. She could not begrudge him that, but it still made her heart ache up into her throat.

“No.” She shook her head and finally met her father’s sputtering directly. “It is the Blight. I can sense it, now.”

I am not the daughter you remember went unspoken. There are things I can do now that you never wanted for me.

But this is how it is.

“I see. What do you propose, then?”

Ariya’s hand clenched around her dagger “It is unpleasant but…” she glanced down. “I’m sorry, Gwen, I’m so sorry. But a quick death is kinder, in the end.”

A long sigh deflated what little tension Gwen still held. Her head jerked in the semblance of a nod.

“Would you believe me if I said it was a relief?” she asked weakly. “I have felt it coming for days now. And—“

Her voice trailed off, eyes drifting around the room aimlessly before snapping back to Ariya. She blinked rapidly.

“If it is to be this way, I am glad it is you, falon.”

“I understand.” And she did, though she could not share the sentiment. Ariya pulled her dagger free. “You might not want to watch this,” she told her father.

“It’s okay, da’len,” Cyrion echoed. “Whatever you do…I’ve seen much worse, now.”

A pause, then Ariya nodded. She grasped the back of Gwen’s head, her fingers tangling a grip in the greasy strands of her short hair. In the depths of her foggy eyes, Ariya saw a world long lost: afternoons scampering about the alienage, swiping meat pies from window sills and climbing things that ought not be climbed. It hurt, so she squeezed her eyes tight, hot tears spilling over her cheeks.

One of Gwen’s clammy hands brushed over her knuckles, too weak for a proper grip.

“It’s alright,” she slurred, her awareness fading with every passing second. “See Deidre again. And rest. I want to rest.”

“You deserve to rest,” Ariya whispered, a steel to her heart as much as a pleading for her friend. She opened her eyes and brought the dagger to Gwen’s throat. It shook and steadying her hand was a useless endeavor.

“I am sorry, my friend,” she said. It was not as unfamiliar a pose as she would have hoped. But even after all this time—well, perhaps she should only start to worry if it did get easier. “May the Maker guide you safely in the Beyond.”

A smile spread across Gwen’s face just as Ariya slashed the dagger down. Blight-tinged blood sprayed from the mortal wound, but Ariya did not flinch. In a cold sort of horror, she realized she’d already offered the rag she carried to her father before any sort of anguish clenched her heart.

But such was the nature of war. It hardened even the softest soldiers—and Ariya had never been one of those.

She reached out and closed Gwen’s eyes. At her side, Cyrion sniffled, wiping his nose on her bloody, mucked up rag.

“We should go,” she said, a soft, gentleness to the request that she hadn’t bothered with for months.

“My little girl,” Cyrion said, so quietly she almost missed it. It wasn’t really for her anyway. “What happened to my little girl?”

Her heart clenched. I told you not to watch, she thought. I said you didn’t want to know.

But now he did. She tucked the bloody cloth into her pack and gestured for her father to go before her, so he would not have to look at her as they went.

There could be no turning back.

[ask-olive-huchers]

// closed past, open future.\\

((A “Ramshackle” oc mini Story!))

_________________________________________

The door slams, rattling the whole house. Distance mutters of frustration can be heard. Olive buried their face into the pillow, breath heavy. Their fingers dug into the pillow in pure anger. They were absolutely livid right now. A complete monster. Anything sudden could active the rampage.

There’s a soft knock on the door. It creaks open, as a little face peeks in. She stares at her older brother sibling, quietly shutting the door. 

“Livy?” She inched closer, standing a respectful distance away. She awaited an answer. But all that was heard was the loud breathing. She moves a little bit closer, starting to explain herself.

“I’m sorry mommy and daddy got mad at you. It was my fault! Please, forgive me?” She asked in a sweet tone, meaning no harm. She shook them, making sure they heard her.

“Livy..?” They ask again.

..no response.

she gets scared, shaking olive even more. 

“LIVY!! PLEASE TALK TO ME!” 

There was a loud noise just a second later. Followed by faint crying. Adi held her left cheek, backing up as olive stood tall. 

…

She’s awoken the beast.

“JUST, SHUT. UP!!” 

They lost it, grabbing adi by the collar of her dress. They’re thick eyebrows were narrowed, as they stared daggers at their little sister.

“YOURE RIGHT. IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!! EVER SINCE YOU WERE BROUGHT INTO THIS FAMILY, YOU TOOK AWAY ALL OF MY HARD WORK.” 

Olive throws her to the ground, she sobbed quietly, Absolutely terrified. Her eyes were glistening in the light. Along with several tears racing down her face.

“EVERY TIME I SHINE, YOU JUST HAVE TO SHINE BRIGHTER RIGHT??” 

They continue.

“THEY USED TO PHARSE ME. TALK TO ME. LOVE ONLY ME. NOW, THEY JUST SEE ME AS THE 2ND PLACE MEDAL.”

The door busts open, their father fuming. As the mother kneeled down to Adi, checking to make sure she’s ok.

Their father waltz over to olive, giving them a hard snack in the face. The room went silent.

“Get. Out.” Their father demanded, point to the nearest door.

“Don’t come back. DONT EVER, COMD BACK BOY. YOU HEAR ME?!” 

He pinned olive against the wall, his eyes cold and threatening. Olive looked losses still, shoving HARD past their father. They burst through the front door. The moon glowed in the night sky, along with a couple street lamps. They dash onto the street. They must have ran for hours at least. Before finally hiding in a near by alley.

They sit as far back as they could, completely out of breath. Olive sat in the corner, like a caged animal at the zoo. The ball themself up, tight too. Nuzzling their face in their knees. 

It was quite the cold night after all. 

Soon, the gentle tears soon turned into loud sobs and hiccups. They didn’t mean to hurt her. They didn’t want to hurt her. It was just too overwhelming! It wasn’t their fault! IT WASNT THEIR FAULT.!!!

..r-right..?

((So yeah! Olive is technically a run away- or uh, kicked out away?? I’m not sure what to call it but-))

((hope u cried :3/hj?))

((tags cuz I want you guys to suffer/j))

@ask-finn-hollis

@ask-jasper-cameron

@ask-sora-aguilar

@baileythebean

[misguidedasgardian]

The Lovely Hallows (II.I)

2. Slytherin

MASTERLIST

Chapter Summary: 

Pairings: Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader (platonic), Aemond Targaryen x Fem!Reader (future)

Warnings: Cursing, magical objects, Mugglephobia, magic!, might miss some warnings

Wordcount: 3.4 k

Notes: Alright, here we go! The description of the Slytherin common room was given after I watched a very lengthy youtube video of a player walking through it in hogwarts legacy the game. Sorry if Aemond doesn't appear much, they are children and they are drawing their own paths, but soon, this is some sort of enemies to lovers trope haha

“Remember love, once you are in your dorms, you have to…”, you tuned out the sound of your godmother’s voice, too excited to hear, for the tenth time, all the things you had to remember. She, as your parents, all had been sorted to Slytherin, so all the tricks and passageways had been taught to you since you were born. 

You ran towards Draco as you saw him in the platform 9 ¾ as soon as you ran by the portal, your godmother would have chided you, but when she saw Lucius she kept her mouth quiet 

Your poor owl rattled in her cage, anxious to get out as you ran with her in the cart.

“There you are!”, he said, “I thought you were going to be late”

“Never, have you met my godmother?”, you mocked

You said goodbye to your parents, amongst hugs and kisses, and you entered the train after giving your luggage, you wasted no time and walked to the back of the train, where the most spacious wagons were. 

You could tell who were the seniors, and who were the first years, you really looked like tourists, looking at everything wide eyed, and in marvel, you found a cart just for the two of you, but then you were joined by Goyle and Crabb.

You did not like to hang out with them, but Draco did, and besides they were like a package deal, and with Draco too. The train started its journey, and after you waved your godmother goodbye from the platform, you sat with an excited sigh, as you looked outside the window, leaving central London, you could see muggles from here, and you always found them fascinating

“I heard that Harry Potter is on this train!”, said Draco

“What of it?”, you asked, diverting your eyes front he outside towards your friend

“It will be annoying, that’s all”, he said, “The boy who lived and all that, like a celebrity of some sorts”, he frowned, squinting his gray eyes 

“Can you imagine if he is sorted into Slytherin?”, you asked with a smile, he chuckled

“We should befriend him”, he said, with well known mischief in his eyes, “if he is as good as they say, of course he will be”

“What if I’m not sorted into Slytherin?”, you asked, doubt in your voice. Goyle and Crabb looked at you, but didn’t say anything 

“Of course you will”, Draco said, frowning, you were a second of believing he was going to call you a name for even thinking such a thing but he didn’t, “they have to”, he said, and this time, he seemed more scared than something else

“They will”, you said surely, regaining your confidence, a Slytherin wouldn’t doubt it, and that seems to cheer him back up again 

The journey continued without a hitch, you entertained yourself by looking outside the window to the beautiful scenery, and then eating fudge brownies Narcissa had sent you in Draco’s special box filled with treats. Draco loathed them but she knew they were your favorites. 

The four of you looked at the door, where a boy came in the cart, gasping, he had clearly been running, he had dark hair but clear eyes

“Have you seen my toad?”, he asked, “I’m neville by the way”, you were going to answer him with a smile and present yourself

“How dare you speak to us?”, asked Draco with a disgusted face, the boy curled his lips and looked down, and then he closed the door 

“That was Neville Longbottom”, mocked Draco

“I don’t know who he is”

“a Half blood”, and the issue was settled. Soon you had to change into your robes 

When you got out of the train, to a platform in the middle of a wood, you were met by a huge man, he was a giant!

“My name is Rubeus Hagrid”, he presented, he seemed nice, “first years follow me!”, you followed gingerly, grabbing Draco’s arm leading him too. Hagrid took you to a small dock, where boats were ready for you all. You climbed on one with Draco, Grabb, Goyle and another girl, and the small boats rowed themselves 

The sun was hiding on the horizon, giving a beautiful sunset over the lake, it must been the Black Lake, your godmother beseech you to be careful when you are near it, because it said to have creatures on the bottom, like, mythical creature such as monsters and mermaids

But that was kind of silly wasn’t it?

Soon the night had fallen over the lake, and you looked all around the dark woods, and then...

You all gasped in surprise when you saw the view of the lake and the castle over a dark hill, at night, with all it’s lights lighted up, it was breathtaking, you had never seen anything like it. IT WAS HUGE! bigger than the Malfoy Manor, bigger than your family home, maybe ten times as both houses put together 

It was so beautiful

All the boats made port on a small dock, where you were received by another teacher in the Boathouse, without a word she led you up the stairs, and you all followed closely. There were a lot of stairs, and when you got to the top, you were all visibly gasping, but there was no time for that, you kept waking until you reached the huge gates of the main part of Hogwarts.

You entered a huge hall, big stairs, you went up those stairs to find your luggage arranged on one side, but you kept going, until another professor stopped you. 

“Welcome to Hogwarts!”, she greeted, she seemed severe, “Now in a few moments you will got rough this doors and join your classmates”, she said, pointing behind her, “but before you can take your seats you will be sorted into your houses, they are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin”, she said the last name with severity, looking right at malfoy, “now while you are here, your house will be like your daily”, you shared smiles with Draco, your triumphs will earn you points, any rule breaking you will lose points, at the end of the year, the house with the most points will win the house cup”

“TREVOR!”, the boy who was looking for his toad on the train jumped in front of the professor to grab his animal,  and she didn’t appreciate the interruption, but she continued nonetheless

“The sorting ceremony will begin momentarily”, she said and she left you. You wasted no time in turn to Draco and began giggling and whispering about how excited you are 

But his eyes went to a boy with dark hair and glasses

“That is Potter”, he whispered and you looked at the boy in wonder, that was the boy that “lived”? Draco wasted no time in approaching Harry Potter

“So it's true then, what they said in the train, Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts”, all eyes where on him now, and everyone began whispering in amazement 

“These are Basilik”, he introduced, you nodded, “Crabbe and Goyle, and I’m Malfoy, Draco Malfoy”, will harry become your friend? he seemed kind of nice 

But then the Weasley boy snickered

You knew who the Weasleys were, everyone did, they weren’t hard to spot, you had met your father when he visited the manor a couple of times searching for dark items in the name of the ministry in which he worked for. Uncle Lucius loathed him, because he had taken things from the manor,  but he always smiled at you and gave you sweets from his hat. 

But Draco didn’t take lightly when you make fun of his name

“Do you think my name is funny don’t you?”, he asked, and you panicked, Harry Potter was not going to be your friend you gathered, “I don’t need to ask for yours, red hair, and a hand me down robe? you must be a Weasley”, he said, “Soon you will find that some wizarding families are better than other”, he said to Potter, “you don’t want to make friends with the wrong sort, I can help you there”, and he offered his hand

“I think I can sort the wrong sort, thanks”, he said dismissively, and you gasped, he had rejected your friend.

For better of worse, Mcgonagall came back, slapping Draco on the shoulders with a parchment, and your friend returned to your side looking defeated

“Such a tosser”, he whispered, and you only nodded 

“We are ready for you now”, said McGonaggall

He seemed mad, but he looked at you softly 

“Remember Basilik, only Slytherin is acceptable, is where the Wizarding royalty is anyways”, he said simply, but loudly, even Harry turned around to look at you, you nodded, feeling an irrational fear of disappointing your friend even though you had no say in the matter

“He is right you know?”, said the girl whose name was Perkins, she was one of the pure-blooded families of the Wizarding world, one of the 30

“I’ll do my best”, you mocked, and she scrunched her nose at you. You will only take shit from Malfoy, but no one else. 

You all stopped in front of the sorting hat, it looked old and strange, but nervousness started to take a grip on you. You looked around at the great hall, it was breathtaking, the ceiling looked like a night sky, candles floating illuminating the dining room, it was amazing 

“When I call your name, you shall come forth, I will place the sorting hat on your head, and you will be sorted into your houses”, she said, and as she raised the parchments with your names on it, you felt incredibly nervous 

“Hermione Granger”, she called first, and a girl went up those stairs and sat on the stoll, whispering to herself to be calm.

As the hat was placed in her head, it came alive, a face being drawn on the old looking leather

She was sorted in Gryffindor

Then it was the time for your friend Draco

“Of course Malfoy was placed in Slytherin”, you heard boys speak behind you, you only smiled excitedly when Mcgonaggal didn’t even need to place the hat on Draco’s head to shout… “Slytherin!”

Many new students followed, many you didn’t even recognize and the opportunity you had vanished when they were placed in other houses, and then, Minerva called your name. Everything seemed to quiet down and stand still as you started walking wobbly the three steps, the professor smiled at you, and you smiled back, and then you took a sit on the stool, you finally got to see all the students seating in the great hall, all eyes on you, and you felt nervous, but a need to prove yourself seated deep inside you. The hat was strangely light when she put it in your head

“Mmmmm strange”, he purred, “I see bravery, yes, it will serve you right at Gryffindor, but also… a need to prove yourself, yes, I see that is more to you…”, the only thing you knew for sure is that you didn’t want to be at Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, you weren’t that nice or that smart anyways, “And I also see this resourcefulness, yes…. I know what to do with you!”, you closed your eyes in expectation and, “SLYTHERIN!”, when you opened your eyes again you were smiling, and your new house was cheering for you. Your smile was wide as you jumped to stand on your two, now secure, feet. You almost ran towards Draco, and took a seat by his side, as they kept cheering on! you were so happy, relieved, but also, deep down you always knew where you belonged. 

“I knew it, all pure bloods are in Slytherin”, he said, more happy 

“Aemond Targaryen!”, all the dining hall went quiet in expectation, and you looked back as the white haired boy went up those three short steps and sat down. Mcgonagall had this weird look on her face when she placed the sorting hat on Aemond’s head.

The sorting hat didn’t take as long as deciding as he did with you, he made his decision fairly quickly

“Slytherin!”, and the table lit up again. Most pure blooded families were placed in Slytherin, except of course, for the Weasleys, who were always placed in Gryffindor. And strangely, the Targaryens, Aemond had two sibling and they both were put on Hufflepuff 

As you looked at the table and saw your new family a warm feeling was placed in your chest, especially when Draco hugged you against his side. You knew how much he wanted this, and you knew how much he wanted you to be in Slytherin too, just like his family. You have succeeded. Aemond Targaryen sat in front of you, he had a smug look on his face. You exchanged looks shortly, and you felt relieved again.

The headmaster greeted you all, presenting the professors and the new ones for this year, and then, a huge feast appeared in front of you, amazingly, it had all your favorites! how did they know?

Crabbe and Goyle also joined you, even Pansy, and others you didn’t quite know.  

You enjoyed the feast, as you talked with Draco, Goyle, and others seated with you, the other older students barely even looked at you, but you paid them no mind. You didn’t know if it was because you were so excited and happy, but the feast ended as soon as it began, everything happened so quickly. 

Soon an older boy stood up from the table, and stopped right beside you were the first years were seated 

“I’m Felix Brunt, I’m the Slytherin prefect”, he introduced himself rather quickly, and he seemed truly bored, “follow me, I will take you to our dormitories” 

The entire first year group followed the prefect religiously, he kept coming down stairs from the main hall in the main building, until you reached something you will guess it was the basements and the dungeons, but it was greater than the rest of the construction, the style in the floor looked like golden scales, it you made so many turns and twists, you didn’t see anybody there but you. 

You stopped in front of a empty wall, a blank space in the stones between two beautiful carved pillars

“Pure Blood”, Felix said loud and clear. a scaly line on the floor came to life, a metal snake slithered over the wall, and on its wake, a door appeared

You all gasped, looking into what was the coolest of magicks

The door opened to you, and it revealed a small hall, beautifully decorated, and a set of spiral stairs coming down. He was almost running down, and you followed, the stairs were stone on the right side, but on the left side, it had pillars that let you see a beautiful waterfall falling down, it took you three floors to reach the end.

The small waterfall fell into a small pond, and your eyes feasted with lilies, and other water plants, carved in the stone there was a figure like a dragon, and as you looked on you saw all kinds of wonders, statues, paintings, decorations. 

You walked beyond the hall, and it led to even a greater one. It led into a huge hall, to the right, there was a huge living room with huge windows, through them, you saw what it looked like to be water, but it couldn’t be, could it? Where are you underground?

“What you can see over there are the depths of the Black lake!”, said Felix, “no matter what the mermaids say, just, don’t listen to them”, you could see all kinds of creatures swimming through the beautiful glass panels 

The living room had a huge vault like ceiling, with a glass dome that lighten up the entire room

it was breathtaking

The room was very comfortable, with tables, chairs and sofas to relax or study in, a globe was placed in one corner, and a couple of chess games, there were also many statues and skeletons of diverse animals, and bookcases filled with books

“This is the Slytherin common room!”, showed Felix, the prefect, “here you can chat, study, hang around, you are going to live here for the next seven years, this is your new home”, he showed, and while you all looked around in wonder, he seemed rather bored. 

You almost trotted back to the main hall, which also had many armchairs, and more study material

He led you to the other part of the hall, where you saw huge stairs, with a statue of who you guessed was Salazar Slytherin right in the middle, the stairs separated into, one set to the left, and the other one to the right.

“Up there are the rooms of the last years!”, he said, “you are forbidden to go up there, unless invited!”, he said, bored, “but here”, he pointed to two door on each side, “left for the boys, and right for the girls”, he said quickly, “your things must be already inside, good luck”

You shared looks with Draco as you separated, and you led the group of the girls through the huge door. It opened to reveal a huge tunnel-like construction, with a metal railing leading to what you guessed were the different rooms, all in a same circular hallway connected to all of them. The pillars amongst the huge corridor were beautifully carved, and as you looked up you saw domes of colorful glass. One door was open, you took it as a sign and you walked inside, you saw Umbra in her cage in a corner, so here was where you were going to sleep.

It had five beds, placed in a circular manner. And you were five girls, so you all were going to be sleeping here. 

The entire room was a circle, it had a huge fireplace on the other side facing the door.

“I’m here as well”, said Daphne Greengrass

“Me too”, you weren’t that excited about having to share with Pansy, but it could be worse, you believed. you all three looked at the girl who introduced herself as MIllicent Bulltrode, and another girl followed, Tracy Davies

“Don’t touch my things”, you said bluntly, “If you want something, ask for it and i will share”, you laid up for them, you all shared looks, as you crossed your arms, as Pansy did

“Agreed”, she said, you all looked at each other, and nodded, like coming to an silent agreement

“Us witches must remain united, as Slytherins, and as girls”, said Daphne, she was pretty, blonde hair, light blue, piercing eyes and a small nose. 

“Agree”, you said with a smile, Pansy smiled too, as did MIllicent and Tracy

“Just, keep everything tidy and clean”, said Tracy, looking around, you looked around as well

You went straight for your bed, it was a big bed, with a green canopy and carved wood. Each bed was placed under a beautifully decorated arch, each with a night stand on each side, and behind it on the wall, a beautiful painting. At the foot of the bed, was your trunk, with your cape and other parts of your uniform placed on top of it. 

You will never see the other common rooms, but you believed this was definitely the coolest and greatest of them all. You looked up to find a round skylight, through which you also could see the beautiful shapes of water drawn on the floor and all over the room.

All the girls were putting her things in place, on their night stands, Pansy was even placing a mirror on the wall

You were going to be happy here, you decided. 

Umbra hooted in her cage, looking at you with those fiery eyes, and you knew you were right. 

Taglist! @dreamingofyourmoons

[bluejaysandblackbats]

blood on your altar

Fandom: DC Comics, Titans (fab five), Aquafam, Arrowfam

Summary: Roy Harper is haunted by a strange sight he witnessed while on holiday by the seaside.

Chapters: 3/?

Characters: Roy Harper, Garth, Oliver Queen, Hal Jordan, Dinah Lance

Relationships: Roy Harper/Garth

Additional Tags: Cannibal Mermaid AU, Sacrifice, Cannibalism as a Metaphor, Secrets, Angst, Romance, Horror, 1950’s AU

Chapter Three: Male Rain

I couldn’t focus during dinner, despite everyone’s attempts to include me in the conversation. Ollie drove us home, and Hal and Dinah went inside. “Not you, pal,” Ollie whispered. I swallowed hard, wringing my hands. “If you don’t like it here we can go home—.” 

“No, I’m not—. I’m not ready to go home yet,” I answered. 

Ollie didn’t look at me. I sat in the backseat, feeling like a chastised child. “I’m not mad at you… Hal told me about the funny business in the ice cream parlor. I wouldn’t have brought you to this place if I knew—.” 

“Oh… I forgot that happened. You didn’t—. There was no way for you to know. No harm done. I spent the rest of the day at the beach, and I—. I like it there. I’ve had a lot of time to think… And I’m drawing again,” I replied. I glanced out the window. “I don’t know… Maybe I’ll start painting too. I’m sorry if I’ve been distant. I’ve been focused on something spectacular I saw at the beach.” 

“I should’ve known better. You’re inspired! Do you need money to buy paints or did you bring supplies in your bag?” Ollie asked. He never hesitated to pour money into my interests. I probably shouldn’t have dug such a deep hole for myself, but I had to say something to keep Ollie there. I wasn’t ready to leave. “If you feel the need to stay here after three days, I’ll send some of your things.” 

I smiled. Ollie tried to make amends for how things transpired a few months prior. To be honest, I wished he’d stop trying to fix things. I forgave him the moment my fist connected with his chin. That sounds brash, but we were never much for words. Sometimes, I wish we were. He loved me in his own way. He boasted about my accomplishments and proudly introduced me to his friends and associates. He turned to me, his lip curving up to the left. “Come now, Errol dear,” Dinah shouted from the porch. I laughed. Ollie bore an undeniable resemblance to the movie star, Errol Flynn. I slipped out of the car, hearing the distant beginnings of male rain. Thunder rolled in the background. I greeted the rumbling thunder, rolling my shoulders back as I entered the house. I changed into my pajamas and sat on the floor with my sketchbook. 

Hal visited me in my room, and I drew him with graphite. The creases by his eyes. The white streak in his hair. Hal sat quietly across from me, reading his book. When the thunder quieted, Hal chuckled. “Something’s rattling your cage, Roy… What’s going on at the beach?” Hal questioned. 

“Nothing,” I quickly answered. Worse than an admission of guilt. Unnecessary defensiveness. Thunder rumbled, and I chewed my lip and turned my face away, catching a glint of lightning in the distance. It didn’t look natural. 

“This is good abduction weather,” Hal whispered. The strange statement piqued my interest, distracting me from the awkward conversation we almost had. “Abductions… You know. Aliens. From outer space. Gosh, kid. Are you tired?” Hal chuckled as he playfully checked me for fever. I recoiled. Hal always talked like that. Crazy talk about aliens and ghosts. Mermaids and selkies. Fairies and fauns. Sometimes I liked to listen, but with all the thoughts swirling in my head, I thought I’d be sick. 

“Hal, I don’t wanna talk about aliens,” I mumbled, squeezing the bridge of my nose to stave off an oncoming headache. I flipped the page mid-drawing and started rubbing at the blank page with my thumb, absentmindedly pondering my earlier interaction on the beach. Hal touched my shoulder. 

“Get some rest, Speedy,” Hal whispered. He took his leave, and I shut the door and climbed into bed. I couldn’t sleep, though. I tossed and turned, finally settling on watching the steady downpour outside my window. I opened the curtains and stared longingly as the thunder rolled in even stronger than before. The flashes lit the room, the thunder shook the house, and I started to cry. Something penetrated my spirit, seeping into my heart and spreading through my body like a fever. My headache faded into something different. I could hear the faint sound of laughter in the distance. Sensual laughter. It started low. The gentle purr of satisfaction from the back of a man’s throat, built into a hedonistic chuckle, followed by gasping and whimpering. And then nothing. Nothing. I panicked, getting up to see if anyone heard it, too, but they all sat by the fire in the dark talking as if nothing happened. 

“Hey, Roy… Did you have a bad dream?” Dinah asked. 

“Did you—? Did you hear a man?” I questioned. I couldn’t catch my breath. I forgot I’d been crying, but I must’ve looked awful. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I struggled for breath. Ollie stood up and escorted me to my room. 

“We didn’t hear a man… Are you alright?” Ollie questioned. 

I nodded. “I must’ve had a nightmare. I’m sorry,” I apologized once I regained my composure. I climbed under the blankets and heard a faint giggle. “Ollie? Are you sure you didn’t—?” I trailed off. Ollie shook his head. 

“Want me to stay with you for a minute? You look pale,” Ollie whispered. I nodded, and Ollie sat on the bed by my side after I climbed under the blankets. I wasn’t used to him spending that much time by my side, but it was the most comfortable I felt in years. I lay on my stomach, and he gently patted my back. My lip quivered as tears forced their way out of my tightly shut eyes as I recalled the night Ollie brought me home. 

I longed for the family I knew, crying in an unfamiliar place, sulking in my newfound solitude when he startled me. He patted my back to the rhythm of a familiar lullaby. One hand. One beat. And in my mind, I was home. Then, he said something to bring me back. “We’re in this together now, Kid. I’m not going anywhere,” Ollie whispered. And tonight, he said something eerily similar. 

“I’m scared too, Speedy… But I’m with you. I’m a call away at all times,” Ollie reassured me. “You’re a good kid, Roy… I know you don’t believe me when I say it, but it’s true. I’m proud of you. Proud of my son.” It was perfectly timed. I needed to hear that more than anything. I trembled as I cried and he kept on patting. One hand. One beat. Taking me home. 

I could almost hear the singing. I relaxed, letting it lull me to sleep. That night, I dreamt of thin layers of snow on sand. Beautiful red dirt and white snow as far as the eye could see. Dusky green-grey plants dusted over with a fine layer of snow. It didn’t snow often in Arizona, but it was beautiful when it did. Ollie took me further north in California to see the snow, but it wasn’t the same. I could hear music in the distance, but I didn’t move.  I soaked in the tranquil cool of the falling snow and hummed along. I hummed myself awake, and Ollie sat beside me, half-slumped over, and snoring. 

The rain let up. What was a boisterous storm, quieted to a gentle drizzle. So, I got dressed. I didn’t care what time it was. I tied my shoes and pulled on my galoshes, creeping out with the beach umbrella, a towel, and my satchel. I left a note on the table, saying I’d gone for a walk on the beach. And that’s when it began…

[countrymusiclover]

Part 3

Part 4

His Sky

Tag list - just ask to be added @aintinacage

The high evolutionary had the guards drag me back inside the lab and pushed me down onto a cold operating table. They tied me down with hard zip ties before I grunt against them. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“I thought it would be a good idea at first. But then I rewatched this security video.” The high evolutionary pressed a button where I could see a screen come down replaying a horrific memory.

Sucking in a sharp breath I recognized that it was the night that our friends were killed. Lylla’s body fell a lot faster than it did when I was in that moment. Then I had to watch Floor and Teefs die until he paused the video of when I got thrown and Rocket was frozen jumping up into the air. “What’s the point of showing me this…”

“Because I noticed this certain factor that is something I can use to get 89P13 back here.” He moved in front of the screen pointing between me and Rocket. “You see he went to protect you here at that moment. If he thinks for even a minute that you are alive he will come back.”

“You’ll never convince Rocket to come back for me.” I snapped at him baring my teeth.

He grabs me by my throat where I began gasping for breath. “You don’t know what I can do. I made you 89K22!”

“Just because you made us doesn’t mean you can stop us from making relationships!” I spit in higace where he released my throat. Laying my head back on the table I blinked through tears.

High evolutionary crossed his arms over his chest for a second before he had one of the doctors hand him a shock baton. “I’m gonna ask you a simple question. Where did 89P13 go?”

“I don’t know - agh!” I winced when he zapped me with the electric poker when it hit me on the side of my hip.

He didn’t seem to believe me. “Where did 89P13 go!”

“I said I don’t know and his name is Rocket - gah asshole!” I screamed again clutching my eyes shut feeling pain again.

He pressed the electric device against me in a different spot where it was on my chest at the center leaving a burn mark. Sniffing through tears he stared darkly down at me. “One way or another I will get him back here. He is my creation and he belongs to me!”

“You made us for nothing…So we don’t belong to you anymore!” I growled trying to show that I wasn’t afraid and this is how our days went for years until I would see my beloved Rocket again.

Laying on the floor of a hard metal cage I had my arms and legs wrapped around me. With my tail curled up into my chest too. I just kept looking at the cell wall in front of me seeing that he had put me back in my same cell that they had repaired. So I was forced to stare at Rocket's old one. Lifting my head up I could hear some of the other animals making some noises. Getting to my feet I noticed that it was the baby raccoon cage. “Who’s out there!” I called out seeing a shadow of a figure from one of the lights near that cage.

The cage door opened from what I could tell but that wasn’t what brought me to a sobbing mess of tears. It was the voice I longed to hear when I forced myself to sleep after hours of our former sire torturing me. “I really am a raccoon.”

“Rock…Rocket. Rocket!” I mumbled softly before I rattled the door of the cage as much as possible, needing him to know I wasn’t dead like we both thought I would be.

Footsteps came running over to me allowing me to see those familiar soft eyes and the face that looked like a mask. “Y/n…..oh my god Y/n!” Rocket cried out gripping the metal bars of my cage where we were touching each other's hands.

“It’s me…it’s me, Rock.” I started crying happily through tears feeling a smile grace my face for the first time in years after everything that I have been through.

Rocket released my hand’s quickly sliding the key card and breaking my cage door like last time. “Y/n, I’m so sorry-“ I cut him off flinging my arms around his neck burying my face into the crook of his neck crying lightly.

He wrapped his arms around me holding me as close as he possibly could. I felt some tear’s from him falling down onto my face before we barely broke the embrace, still gripping onto one another. “You don’t have to apologize. But we need to leave before he finds you.”

“I’m not running anymore, Squirrel.” Rocket said quickly back to me.

Shaking my head I pressed my fingers into his foremans while more tears fell down my face. “Rock, if we don’t go he will kill us both now. That’s been his plan all along to get you back here.”

“I won’t let him hurt you ever again. I promise, my sky.” Rocket nuzzles his nose against mine.

“Awe this is just how I imagined how you would find her 89P13.” We turned our heads quickly where Rocket put me behind his back shielding me while we watched the High Evolutionary coming towards us slowly.

Rocket put one hand on a blaster he had attached to his hip. He also kept one hand in front of me that I grasped onto not wanting to be separated from him again. “I won’t let you hurt Y/n anymore.”

“Still so smart and yet so stupid all the same. You think that you will escape with her this time. You’re sorely mistaken, 89P13.” He dryly said.

Growling through my teeth I lifted my tail upwards in anger. “His name is Rocket and we aren’t your animals anymore!”

“You thought that you could escape me.” The high evolutionary walked forward before he used the power that he got from the purple device in the back of his head. He raised his hand and launched Rocket and I back against the cages. “You and that squirrel are nothing special. You wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for me!”

Forcing myself to my feet I didn’t care if he hurt me. I wouldn't let him kill Rocket if I had any say in it. “We’re not your experiments!” I launched myself off my legs, biting down on his arm where he screamed.

He stumbled around trying to make me stop biting his flesh. But when he grabbed my tail I let go and bit at his neck where he released his grip for a moment. “You’re nothing special if it wasn’t for me, 89K22!” He snatched me by my neck, throwing me harshly onto the ground.

“Don’t touch her!” Rocket ran forward reaching for his blaster until our master used his power and threw him into one of the lab rooms and into one of the electric light’s burning his body.

Scrambling to my feet again I ran into the room they were in while he was throwing him around like a rag doll. Running as fast as my legs would go I jumped on the master’s back trying to claw at the headset he had on. “Leave him alone - ah uh!” He rang me by the hair on my head, tossing me in front of him where I almost couldn’t get up this time.

“You’re an abomination!” He spat up at Rocket then he lowered himself to my level grabbing my chin in his hand. “And the only thing I ever needed from you was that brain of yours.”

I coughed when he kicked me in the gut with his boot and I hit the wall behind me. “Rock…”

“You think you have some worth without me. No!” The high evolutionary began to throw Rocket again while I held myself up on one elbow feeling more sore than ever. “Nothing but a step on my path. You freakish little monster. How dare you think you are more. 89P13!”

Rocket finally managed to release himself from our masters grasp, dropping down on his feet in front of me. “Names Rocket…Rocket Raccoon.” He retracted his blaster before he hit the guy with some energy.

“Rocket!” I cried out when he tried to come at us again when Rocket slightly turned back to look at me. Luckily something that had tree looking arms stopped him from getting closer to us.

A big gray looking guy threw the evolutionary onto his back. Another guy with a blaster hit him in the face. I also saw a blue girl with a robot arm and another with antennas knock him into the wall. The high evolutionary attempts to get up but finally a green skinned woman stabs him with a blade dropping his body on the metal floor. The guy in the red jacket with the blaster started peeling his old face mask revealing what Rocket had done years ago. “His face came off.”

“It’s a mask.” Rocket responded offering me his freehand tugging me up to stand with him. “Y/n, you okay?”

Groaning while I held my side I nodded weakly walking over to the group who had helped us. The high evolutionary was laying on the floor bleeding. “I will be now that I’m with you.”

“Look what he did to me….all I wanted to do was make things perfect.” The high evolutionary mumbled his final words.

Rocket squeezed my hand in his declaration to our creator. “You didn’t want to make things perfect. You just hated things the way they are.”

“Kill him.” The gray guy said behind us.

Rocket raises his blaster over his head but he only holds it for a second then lowers it. “Rock, what are you doing? After everything he’s done to us.”

“It’s not right, Y/n.” He looked at me then to his friends. “Because I’m a freaking guardian of the galaxy.”

The green woman said when a part of the building exploded. “We have to get out of here now.”

“We have to save them.” Rocket told them before we got any further to leaving.

The dirty blonde hair human slides on his feet to a halt. “We’ve got all the kids on board.”

“No Pete. The rest of them.” Rocket told his friend, sending me a sympathetic look not wanting to leave any more animals behind. So we all quickly unlocked the cages and let the other animals free. Running to the ship I almost couldn’t catch my breath once we were watching the former space ship we were on disappear away from us.

Sliding to a halt on my feet I put my hand on my knees feeling someone put a hand on my shoulder seeing it was Rocket. He takes my hand in his blinking through tears just looking me over. “Y/n, I’m sorry for leaving you. I…urgh I’m not good at feelings.”

“Rocket, you don’t have to say it if you don’t feel it. I am just glad to be free of that place. Now you can show me the world away from it.” Placing my paw on his face he leans his head into it sucking in a breath.

Yet he shook his head tugging me closer to his chest where our noses touched one another. “You need to understand this….you’re my sky, Y/n Squirrel.”

Remembering back to when we were innocent and all we wanted to see was what the sky looked like. Smiling up at the raccoon I loved, I responded back softly. “And you are mine, Rocket.”

“Let’s get you checked out.” He squeezed my hand in his and I knew the reason why was because he didn’t like showing his innocent side after what happened to our friends Lylla, Floor and Teefs. But he was over the moon to have me back by his side. And I felt the same.

Comments really appreciated ❤️

[yourimagines]

Nick x blind reader dating

Fluff

Hope you like it, I’m not an expert in this sorry

Blinded

* English is not my first language I apologise

* Triggers: Swearing, angst and fluff

Nick POV

“Nick?” She asked while staring in front of her. “Yes?” I grabbed her hands as she reached out to me, she smiles and crawls over. “Tell me about your fight from last weekend.” She sat down on my lap and slowly traced with her fingers over my face. “I won.” Her face lits up. “I know but tell me how.” The carefully traced my swollen bruised right eye. “I tackled him down and won by a submission.” “You’re eye is swollen.” I was admiring her, her beauty. “So is your nose.” “Yeah, got a few good hits on my face.” Her fingers went down to my lips. “Can I kiss you?” “Of course.” She smiles and carefully leans forward. I helped her by kissing her first. She smiles against my lips. “I wish I could see you fight.” “I can bring you along, you will experience it.” “For real?” I nodded but quickly hummed as I forget she couldn’t see me. “Can’t wait for it.” ‘Well I already hate it because I can’t protect you baby.’ “Me neither.”

—— next fight——

I was nervous, nervous for her. What if something happens in the crowd, she can’t see. “Nick baby, are you in here.” ‘See that’s what I mean.’ “Yes I’m here.” She walked in with Rino her blind guide dog. “Hello Rino.” His tail waggled as he saw me. “You’re ready?” “Yes me and Rino are ready.” “Cool, let’s go than.” I carefully grabbed her arm and she smiles. ‘Everything is going to be okay’

She was sitting in my locker room, Rino sat down in front of her. She was trying to focus on the conversation around her but it was difficult for her. “Okay I’m next, can someone get her to her seat please.” She stands up. “It’s fine, I can do it myself.” She grabbed the leash from Rino. “Y/n please let someone walk with you.” She turned around were my voice was coming from. “Nick I already have that guidance.” ‘Rino.’ “I’m fine, I hear you up there.” “Okay be safe.” She laughs. “Don’t worry about me I’m safe, be safe yourself out there.” Nate laughs and opens the door for her. “Thank you, Nate make sure he’s ready to fight.” “I will.” ‘How did she know it was him?’ He closed the door and walked over to me. “I like her, she funny.” “I know.”

I was walking down to the octagon, feeling confident and ready to fight. Before I stepped into the octagon I looked at her, she was sitting with Rino, holding a drink in her hands. ‘She safe.’ I got in and blocked out everything except the fight.

Y/N POV

I was listening to the commentators about the fight. Nick was doing okay. “Okay next round for both fighter.” ‘Come on Nick.’ “Here we go again, both are looking good.” People were yelling and clapping. “Nick holds a defence against him… is he going for a submission here tonight…” ‘come on.’ I held my hands together. “Nick has him in a guillotine…” I stood up, feeling the whole arenas energy. The vibrations from people screaming, cheering… “come on!” I yelled, Rino jumped up. “He’s tapped, Nick Diaz won the fight!” I cheered on him as I saw the vague lights shining on the cage. “It’s okay Rino, he won.” I patted his head and sat back down, smiling brightly.

Nick POV

I was waiting in my locker room for her. “You sure she knows?” I asked Nate “Yes, be patient is very crowded out there.” I sighed and paced a bit around. “Hello.” Her beautiful voice brought me back to reality. “Hey baby.” I walked over and she immediately hugged me. “Congratulations.” “Thank you.” I looked at her, she was smiling, looking happy. “Did you liked it.” She nods. “Yes absolutely, it was so intense and…..” she was rattling about the whole night. ‘I love her.’ “I love you.” She stopped and smiled shyly. “I love you too.” I cupped her face and kissed her, she happily kissed me back. “Okay love birds, we are still here as well.” She giggles and pulls away from me. “Sorry Nate, I didn’t know you were here.” She walks over to him, giving him a hug. “Congratulations.” He looked confused at me. “Thanks…” “wait you don’t know, never mind.” She pulls back. “About what?” “I didn’t say anything, just…forget about this.” She walks back to me. “Misty is pregnant but I don’t think they know it yet.” She whispered at me. With that Misty walks in. “Hey guys.” She walks over to Nate, my eyes fell to her stomach. ‘It does look like she’s pregnant.’ “I know you staring at her stomach.” I quickly looked back at her. “How do you know that.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not completely blind, I see everything blurry and the lights are vague. I see figures but nothing is in detail.” “You don’t see me?” She shook her head. “No not really but I see colour differences so I know your standing close.” She closes our distance. “But I see you in my mind, it’s weird to explain but I saw the fight, I felt it like I was there in the cage.” I smiled at her. “I don’t think it’s weird at all.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and kissed her head. “But how do you know about them.” “Rino, he’s a multi trained dog.” I chuckled and patted Rino’s head. “Of course..” we both laughed and where waiting to go home, ready to celebrate my win.

[himbowithapen]

Monsterfucktober - Day 4, Dragon

“Now then, my pet. Tell me what would make you squirm.”

Bertin stood at the edge of his cage, chained collar around his neck, while his master watched from the shadows. The cage dangled from a heavy chain, reaching endlessly up into the shadows of the dungeon, and rocked with his every movement. His master’s large claw rapped gently against the bars, and Bertin’s ears stung from the noise.

            “Please, master, let me bathe in your wealth.” He pressed himself against the bars and the bulge in his narrow underwear shot through the gap, the rest of his otherwise exposed body brushed up against cold metal.

            The claw pulled back, and his master neared his face to the cage. “Come. Let me gaze upon my prize for a moment before setting you loose on the rest of my horde.” Bertin stepped back from the bars, struggling to find his footing as the cage swung from his master’s intense breaths. He fell, landing ass-first on the cage’s fine, cushioned floor, then once more looked out the cage. A giant eye, as tall as his entire body, stared in from just outside the cage. He recognised that look of dissatisfaction, so common for his master to express when he didn’t submit. It was a look he grew to fear in all the right ways, to yearn for. As if it was reading his mind, his master spoke. “Bow.”

            Bertin took to one knee, lowering his head and body at the creature’s whim. He felt a burning sensation against his back, toned over time so it could admire his muscles. He didn’t dare say a word.

            “Very good, pet.” Its loud voice erupted like a cave-in, splitting the silence without hesitation or strain. Even its echo roared. Bertin’s body shivered at the mere volume of it, not to mention the depth and boom of its throat. It made his lions tingle.

            He kept his head low as he spoke. “So, may I enjoy your horde, master?”

            A thundering roar shook rattled his cage and made his heart flutter. “Impatient! Keep up that badgering and you’ll never touch my gold again!”

            Bertin dropped his other knee and pleaded. “Please! Please I meant no offence. I’m just so desperate. I’m sorry, master, I’ll be good and patient for you!”

A low huff shot warm air into his face. “Let me show you the consequences of being so impatient.” He felt the cage tip forward and his body smacked against the cold bars. He could see the ground below; tens of feet from where he rested lay a mountain of gold, glittering around his master’s leg. The leg moved and the mountain underwent an avalanche: coins and goblets clattered together and shimmered in his vision while they slipped down along the mound. Then the cage jostled back, and Bertin was thrown away from the bars.

            “What is my punishment, master?” He yelled from the bars as the cage shook back and forth. They were moving at great speed, and above him he saw the cage’s chain in his master’s mighty grip. A memory flashed through his mind; a time when he was behaving badly and refused to look at his master. That mighty claw, despite its size, hooked underneath his chin, and delicately forced his head up to meet his master’s gaze. It was mean, but always delicate with him.

            “You’re going into the human village, where you shall fetch me dinner.”

            “Dinner? For you, master? I doubt even the whole village will suffice.”

            His master spoke again, this time more endearing. “Not to worry. Fetch me a morsel then, something I may bite into.”

            Bertin felt his underwear strain to hold in place. “Perhaps you would like to bite into me? As hard as you like?”

            The cage clattered against the cave floor. Ahead of him, he saw daylight. “No. Your impatience must be punished, or else you may forget to respect me.” The cage door opened. “Go now; fetch me a morsel.” Several coins spilled out of the air and onto the floor in front of him.

            Bertin stepped out and shuddered as he stood on cold stone for the first time that day. But his focus, as always, went to his master. “Of course, I shall fetch my clothes and then—“

            “No. You will go as you are.” His master sneered as he spoke, delight seeping from the darkness. “And you will stay that way, won’t you pet?”

            Bertin looked down at his almost-naked body. “I—“

            “Yes? Is the task too much for you today?”

            He blushed. “Nothing. As you wish, master.” He scraped up the coins and left without another word. Excitement filled his body, and the urge to touch himself was unbearable. But, as he had agreed not long ago, he would only wank when his master allowed him.

He didn’t go as far as the village. As much as he understood the point of his task, that he was to feel degraded, he didn’t have the stomach for it. Instead, he stopped at a farm just shy of the village, where he paid the farmer a fair price for one of his cows. Even being seen by that one person was awfully humiliating.

            “You ain’t one o’ them nudists, are ye?” The man’s face was lined, and his eyes were small. Bertin reckoned he’d never seen someone so underdressed.

            “No. I– my clothes are drying.” He grinned, trying to keep his face straight.

            “Right… Well, it’s not my business.” The mans eyes drifted around, very briefly noticing his underwear. “You’ve not been forced to do this, have you? No friend or family abusing you?”

            Worry flashed through his mind. He kept his expression firm, trying to act as if the man’s words hadn’t cut him. “No, no. Nothing like that. But thank you for asking.”

            The farmer seemed unsatisfied. “Hmm… Alright. Well, if anything happens, you know where to find me. Don’t go letting anyone control you.” With that, he left Bertin with the cow, and Bertin began the trek back to the cave.

On the way through the woods, Bertin began thinking to himself about what the farmer had said. He’d always felt safe with his master. Even when he turned mean and delivered punishments, it was always agreed beforehand. Even the cage in which he stayed during their sessions was his idea. He liked being on display like that, confined to his cushioned circle and visible from all angles.

            When he wasn’t in his cage, Bertin often read books by the firelight in his robe and slippers. His master was often dormant, resting in his horde, and as much as Bertin wanted to be used by it, he understood that his master wasn’t comfortable with most forms of touch. It was that understanding that made him so comfortable in their relationship; no matter how they acted, relented their frustrations, or wanted to be satisfied, they would always respect each other’s boundaries.

            He never thought about what would happen if he asked to leave. They’d spoken about it, and agreed he was free to go if ever he wanted to, but in the months they’d been together, Bertin hadn’t once thought to. His master was kind, and he enjoyed living with it instead of back in the village.

“MOOOOOOOOOO!”

            The cow stopped dead in its tracks, and Bertin fell back as the lead went taut in his hand. He landed in mud, which stuck to his bare back and around his thighs. “What the hell was that for?!” He looked over at it, cowering, with its eyes locked on the cave entrance. “Oh yeah, I forgot you’re master’s dinner.”

            He pulled on the lead. The cow remained still. He pushed it, but to no avail. He tried for several minutes, only getting more covered in mud with each failed attempt, and eventually he gave up entirely and tied the cow to a tree before trudging back to the cave.

It was only a short walk. The mud dripped down his legs and dried on his back, and by the time he reached the mouth, he felt a while had passed. “Master. I’m home!”

            His master’s voice rumbled out from the dark. “So you are. You look filthy, my pet.” A large wing revealed itself in the light shining through the cave mouth. “Go, I’ve run you a hot bath.”

            Relief flooded his body. Bertin sank to the floor. “I’ve decided; I don’t like going out like this.”

            “Thank you for telling me. I’ll not ask it of you again.”

            “Thank you, master.”

            Its face appeared from the shadows: giant, red, and beautiful. A rare sight, even for him, as his master preferred to see and not be seen. It came closer, and he saw its mouth; giant, pointed teeth all in a row. Leathery scales made up its lips, which pursed closed as its mouth gently touched his face. He felt the tiniest suction on the spot where they touched, even for a human, there was very little power behind it. His master pulled back, and he touched his cheek with a muddy hand. A kiss.

            “Go now. Get cleaned up. After, you may do what you want. We will talk about watching you lie naked amongst the rest of my most treasured things later.”

            Bertin thanked him again, then rushed off to take a bath. He trekked mud across the hall but didn’t stop. His heart was racing, his cheeks were flushed, and he felt an entirely new type of erection: the rest of my most treasured things. Giddiness overcame him, and he threw his dirty underwear to one side so he could run naked through his master’s home. The loud beating of wings blew a breeze in behind him; it had gone to fetch dinner.

            He reached the bath soon enough: lined in a ring of lit candles, bubbling above the ring, and steaming, just as he liked it. Bertin brushed off what dirt he could and slid himself in, then closed his eyes and relaxed.

[turnpage]

send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list

generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by

feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.

❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ❛ I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ❜ ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661❩ ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ❨1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408❩ ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜

[strawhatsoraya]

*clears throat* ahem, hello, hi, it's me. i am here to ruin ur life — i mean request :) obey me fic feat. lucifer x reader, and the prompt is “if you interrupt me one more time— so help me god” (a lil blasphemy with your coffee, yk the vibes babey.) ily sora, xx fall in luv. do as u pls, u big brained beauty.

omg hdu OTL. I'm kidding, ilu. I have a lot hate relationship with Lucifer but you know this already. That tsundere ass ho testing my patience all day every day. In this little ficlet idea, Y/N and Lucifer's relationship still isn't establish (and will it ever??? who knows!!) and it is implied she had been giving Lucifer trouble (but like he deserves it imo so whatever) especially cause she gets up to shenanigans with Mammon. How dare his favorite betray him like this? Anyway!!!!! It's a cliffhanger and you know don't hate me. I know. I'm always teasing. Call me Edgelord-sama or whatever. Also I don't have a Lucifer banner yet so I can't make it pretty. Next time!

A Fire to Smother; A Fire to Own

LUCIFER X FEM READER | SFW WORD COUNT: 1.2k words of Lucifer doing the most WARNING CONTENTS: choking, mention of corporal punishment, Mammon be hanging from his ankles again nothing new SUMMARY: Y/N has somehow set fire to the House of Lamentation and we don't know why but Lucifer doesn't care. He is tired and Y/N gets under his skin, so he wants to make sure she learns her lesson for next time.

Fire in your veins, fire in your eyes.

He could see it from where he stood, ass laying on the edge of the desk, gloves hands leisurely pressed against  mahogany wood. He had seen that look in your eyes before, the epitome of defiance, the color of dark dreams meant to be kept a secret. You were a constant itch on the crook of his palms he found no relief for; the strange tickling behind his neck that a fresh new haircut could not solve, the annoying stitch inside a sock, digging, digging and digging into his skin.

You were the one splinter under his thumb, reminding him daily of his weaknesses. 

“I don’t care what your excuse is,” he says with a raised brow. You have tried talking your way out of the punishment repeatedly since you stepped foot into his all of–he glances at the watch on his wrist–seventeen minutes ago. His dark ruby eyes find your brown eyes. “I asked you to stay out of trouble and yet here…you…are”

The fire had grown bigger before he knew it. It was enough to make the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Like I said–” you start but Lucifer raises a hand, and begins speaking over you for the third time. “If you interrupt me one more time!” you yell, balling your hands into fists. “So help me God!”

The words are out of your mouth before you can think of the implications. Your jaw hangs open as you stare at Lucifer's face. You watch the way it bleeds off emotion until it is pale and empty. The stillness of his movements fills you with dread. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts, deadly quiet. He pushes away from the desk. As he steps towards you step back, but he is precise, and never makes a mistake. He reaches over you to push the door behind you shut. You try to gather your thoughts. They’re racing against each other, crashing and colliding. You wonder what kind of excuse Mammon would give now. Anything witty? Anything would work. Your heart is rattling against your rib cage, its reluctant prison. His breath is hot and humid against your ear when he speaks next: “Did you just use my Father’s name in vain?” 

You blink rapidly, neurons misfiring. You think, if you don’t die now of brain damage, you will die regardless in this very office. You might as well go down kicking and screaming.

“Well, from my understanding,” you mumble, your fingers clutching the fabric of your skirt, in your attempt to ignore the way Lucifer’s nose is buried in a spot behind your ear; sniffing. “You’re not on good terms anyway. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

The sound that comes from his mouth–the one that sends a chill down your spine–is a hiss that transforms into a low growl; primal, and devoid of most of its humanity. 

“You haven’t learned anything,” he says against the shell of your ear. His hand slips over your chest, and you curse the way your body reacts, the way your nipples feel erect under your clothes. His fingers reach your neck, and he tightens them around it. You gasp in an attempt to keep air in your lungs. “Perhaps that is my fault. I haven’t taught you well enough.”

He shifts his attention from your ear, and you breathe in relief, a bit too soon. His face hovers over yours, mouths millimeters apart. You swallow, saliva feeling oddly thick. His gaze is both murderous and lustful. It terrifies you, or it should, but your legs press tightly together in an attempt to stave off the lewd sense of anticipation. He bumps a knee against your legs, and pushes. You try to keep him out, but he outpowers you. His thigh slips in between yours and you see a smirk stretch his lips.

“You are the worst,” you tell him, pressing your thighs tightly together to keep him from moving his leg. He tests your resolve by trying to move his leg. You know he’s barely using any strength. Lucifer could snap you into pieces if he really wanted to. You take his choice to not fight back as a minor show of respect to you; the most basic of basic courtesies. 

He hums in contentment, stroking your pulse with his thumb. You scowl, thinking it would be just like him to take a critique against his person as a genuine compliment. 

“What should we do about your punishment? You could join Mammon and hang by your ankles from the ceiling,” he pauses to consider this. Lucifer backs away, taking his thigh with him. You sigh in relief and immediately tighten your legs closed. He looks you up and down, and allows his eyes to linger on the hem of your dress. “No, I think that would get in the way of Mammon’s punishment.” You accompanying him would teach Mammon nothing. “I suppose there are other ways,” he removes his hand from your throat and brings it with his other to his tie. 

You rub your neck uncomfortable as he loosens his tie. 

“Use of corporal punishment on a human like you would be…” Beneath him, he thinks, and Diavolo would definitely have big thoughts about it. Once again, you were more trouble than you were worth. “Distasteful,” he opts to say and tilts his head instead, tie undone. “So, I will give you two options.” 

You try to appear dignified by pushing your shoulders back and sticking your chest out. Once again, your nose is in the air, chin sticking out. Lucifer’s eyes narrow. There went that look in your eyes, the defiance that made his stomach churn.

“You can work and pay off all the damages done to the House of Lamentation, including replacing all the kitchen appliances burned down in the fire, the flooring of the corridor and the hall, the tapestries, the–” You raise a hand, holding back the urge to tell him to go to hell. You still weren’t convinced if Devildom was hell after all or a form of it. “Why are you interrupting me? You don’t value your life at all.”

You swallow, and choose to speak anyway: “And if I don’t want to pay?”

Lucifer blinks, and you feel as if it takes forever for his lashes to flutter back up. The red in his orbs makes you believe you hear blood, rushing and gushing past your ears.

“Then you can be my slave,” he says and frowns. His nose crinkles and he immediately corrects himself: “My personal assistant. For the next month should suffice.” He finishes in a cordial tone, his gloved hands slipping into the pockets of his slacks. His mouth is stretched in a languid smile, one you had never seen before. It makes you break out in a cold sweat. Still, you hold out your  hand and silently ask Mammon to forgive you. 

“Deal,” you say. “I guess I’m yours for the next month.” You wanted to threaten him. You wanted to lay down boundaries but something told you even if you did he would find a way to twist them however he pleased. His gloved hand is cold in yours; unfeeling and devoid of sympathy. 

“Interesting choice of words,” he tells you with a dangerous glint in his ruby eyes. “You should be careful what you say, human. I’m still a demon after all.”

[bonbonthedragon]

Meeting You Changed Me (21)

Dad!bakugou X Fem!reader

A series

Summary: When Bakugou leaves an ugly divorce, leaving him as a single dad he never can imagine himself finding love again, not when he was never actually in love. People manipulate and lie and he can’t trust anyone but those close to him and now protect what he has left. But maybe...just maybe he can give her a chance.

Warnings: angst, language, sensitive topics!, no fluff on this one sorry :(

Note: IM BACK…kinda. I’m currently sick and snot stained in bed soooooo….yeah, apple juice is the jam of recent and so is ice cream. Anyway… I AM SO SORRY for the wait! It was going to turn into just a week of rest but then I left you all for a 2 months! And I’m so sorry for the it but thank you all mostly for being so kind and patient! I never knew of such kindness and it really warmed my heart. Y’all are the true troupers for being so gosh dang sweet when waiting for such a cliff hanger if a story! I can’t promise I will be so active on this app, but I will be on it regularly to finish this story! Thank you all again and hope you enjoy! Love you!

Now with no further a due…here is part 21! Enjoy!!!

Series Masterlist

2 days after the incident

It seems even after we thought the war was over, history had more mysteries in store for us…

A light flashed in (y/n)s face, her eyes fluttering to adjust when a mans hand came to view suddenly. She drew back, freezing a bit at the sudden movement.

“Alright Ms. (L/n), just a few questions and your out of here.” The cop shuffled his files onto the table, laying it across and opening the manila folder.

…

The doors hissed once they opened, bakugou peering in to see a man chained to a chair at the end of the metal table. Guards stood outside, and when he closed the gate they caged in to watch it. The mans head still hung low, bakugou huffing as he took his own seat.

“We meet again, hero.” Asher wheezed

…

“That’s not a valid answer.”

“I do not know what you want me to tell you then.” (Y/n) bit back. “It’s the truth. I wouldn’t lie about my son. What do you lot get off at of having a mother under go this torture of the details about Ren’s funeral? I told you there was nothing after that.”

“Then how come there’s no body?” The cop recoiled, pulling up a picture.

Furrowing her brows, she took the photo he slid across the table. Her heart nearly stopped. He took the photo back.

“What did you do do him-“

“We didn’t. It was found like this just a day ago.”

…

“I was told you wanted to talk.” Bakugou grumbled. “There are much more satisfying places I’d rather be than doing this, so hurry the fuck up.”

The villains laugh was nothing but poisoned venom. “What? Like being up StarBrights pussy-“

The table rattled, knocking over as bakugou stood and reached across to grab Ashers collar, tugging him forward until his face was mer centimeters away from the blonds. A sadistic smile bloomed across the mans face, Asher spitting in the heros until bakugou just went in for a swing. The guards outside didn’t bother to budge even after the thud of Ashers body hit against the concrete wall and slid onto the floor. He groaned and bakugou tched, kicking at his chair that had fell and pulled it back up, sitting and crossing his leg on over the other.

“Speak something of interest to me or die.” He hissed

…

“Then who did?”

The man shrugged, “I’m asking you. We went to go get some samples from his body to-“

Her eyes widened. “You what?” She stood “you were going to dig up my boy? With out giving me the knowledge? Without my permission?”

“Ms.(L/n) that isn’t the point. The point is is we went there and it was already-“

“When was I going to be told Rens body would be poked and prodded at? His mother! Me! To dig him up without little remorse of his spirits rest and my feelings? Who in the hell do you think you are?” She leaned across, bracing the edge of the table. The cop scooted back, hand going to his guns holster. She froze, eyes darting to his movements. (Y/n) backed up and sat down. She wouldn’t cry, no weakness would be shown to this hatful man who called himself a hero amongst society. “Your bitter.” She spat. “All of you. You call your selves cops, people who save those in need but then you go and so things like this?” A scoff “unbelievable, the lot of you. You should be the one in question. Thinking you can just go and dig up the dead, giving the family little to nothing of what is happening.”

“That isn’t true, dear.” Her mother’s voice rang through the inter calm. No doubt her parents witnessing their chat through a camera under authority. Her blood ran cold. “We gave them permission too.”

“Miss I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.” The cop asked.

Hearing her parents involvement, knowing they could hear this conversation. Something in (y/n) splintered, so much so the hold she thought she had for these people snapped and she lunged for the door. The man was quicker, taking her wrist and cuffing them immediately. She whipped around, gaping at what he had done until he dragged her back to her seat, shoving her back down and attaching the hand cuffs onto the leg of the table. Fuck being strong, when he opened another file only for more photos of her son to come to view. All varying from evidence photos of his dead body on scene from that fateful night, to recent ones she had before he passed in their records. Tears welled in her yes and she wept at the sight of them. Each drop clacked an echo in the small room, sending the cops wince at that.

“Please,” she begged “why are you so cruel? I did nothing wrong, I didn’t know. I haven’t even visited him since the funeral, I couldn’t- can’t bare it.” She looked up, her face red and hair dismembered. “I want answers just as much as you. So please, tell me where by boy is. If it not you, then who would do such a thing?” She fell weak onto the table, head laying as her cheeks wet with tears and stained the surface.

…

Asher groaned, wiggling against his binds until he was face up and his head wasn’t smushed with the ground. “It’s amazing what people will do for some cash.” He began “or a fix. So when I began business with the doctor, he promised my life a world of green.”

“Hah?”

Ashe chuckled, “some people like coke, or weed. Some will froth at the mouth at the sight of a wad of cash, I can’t say I’m far from that. But ya know what really gets me going, hero?” He met bakugou’s eyes, his tongue swiping just above his upper lip “a promising catch.”

“Get on with your goddamn point or you can meet death row sooner than you thought.” The blond warned

“My empire was big even before I met Star. But when I did meet her,” the hero’s ears nearly bled at Ashers moan, he grimaced. “it was like liquid gold. Beautiful, sexy, arrogant but smart, and her quirk? Not so powerful but rather…useful if given the right treatment. At the time I didn’t want the chase, more so, I craved my growing wealth. But (Y/n) just kept leading me on, making me believe we could go further only to push me back. It was annoying and…addicting. I began to enjoy the waiting she gave me, like putting my body on the edge of an overdue orgasm.”

Bakugou snarled at that. This mans words were nothing but disgusting, but if it meant he’d get something out of him, then so be it. He would listen.

“I upped the relationship. I found her background wasn’t as pure as most thought, and dare I say,” his eyes closed “it was fun abusing that power. After a few lessons the girl was a wonder at dancing with a blade. Along with some continuous research in the black market of Japan, and my time with her. I wondered if maybe, just maybe if our quirks collided what we could create something extraordinary. It wasn’t old news, many have had it done before, hoping to make a useful child with a brilliant quirk. So before I knew I had to leave the country, I gave her a goodbye gift, something I would make sure to return and claim when it would be of use to me, of course.”

Bakugou felt his nails dig into his elbows. Ren.

“Though I’m not so bad, I made sure she was comfortable. Star was given a yearly allowance every four months. I know, maybe I spoiled her a bit too much. It was a win win, she would live on caring for my child comfortably and I would get to continue my game of cat and mouse while my empire grew. But after I knew the child was conceived, and his quirk wasn’t disappointing, I reached out to an old friend. All for One was nice enough to lend me some information on the doctor, a man who specialized with quirks outside of his job.”

His chest tightened. At his name bare, bakugou thought he might just vomit. All for One…that bitch was still alive and breathing, slowly rotting in Tartarus as the years passed. Bakugou hadn’t stepped foot in that place since high school. He didn’t plan too either any time soon.

“But,” Asher continued “when I finally did retrieve the boy, I admit it didn’t go as planned. The useless prick I sent did a terrible job at that. I sent my regards to the doctor and my bill was never payed, leaving me in a bit of dept to the old man. So after some thinking, I came back to the city. I met with the doc, who was surprisingly still alive. We chatted and he told me he had advanced with working with the body even if it was dead. Quirks apparently stay in tact with the hairs follicles even after death. How about that.” He yelled, a sour chuckle “in the end I got my sale, and my StarBright! But you piece of shit ruined everything! You took her from me! Made her fall in love?” He spat again at bakugou, missing just barely and hitting his leather black boot “I even offered him another! Now my ass is back in dept now that I’ll be in a cell when it’s born! I had everything! And you took it from me!”

His blood stilled. “What did you say?” Bakugou breathed.

Asher began to laugh again, hysterically “all my work! Ruined!”

“Before that!” Bakugou ran to his body, picking up and slamming Asher against the wall “WHAT DID YOU DO TO (Y/N)?”

Asher lips curled “He’ll come to retrieve the unborn kid when the time comes for me, then my dept will be paid and maybe I can pay enough to get out of this rotting hole. Now the doc can have a dead experiment and a live one! Hopefully my last visit was successful, made sure she was all nice and plump before I left, before you showed up that night. My men even were nice enough to hold her up for me-“ bakugou shoved Ashers head into the wall, so hard the concrete cracked and went to dust as his body got smashed to the ground and through the wall. Soldiers ran in, guns at bare and two wringing bakugou off of Asher. It wasn’t working, his fist kept on going until the villain was nearly unrecognizable, it was then he stopped as a cop got in his face and pushed him back. Kirishima and deku came into view, holding him off and shouting for him to stop as he struggled in their grip.

Asher managed a smile and choked, “a perfect victory, hero! I win! I always will! And you loose-“

“You fucker!” Bakugou shouted, sending another hit “piece of shit you’ll pay for what you’ve done! I’ll dismember you myself- MPHM!” Kirishima shoved a rag in his friends mouth as they dragged him out, kicking and writhing.

“Hey- hey-“

“Kacchan- please calm down-“

Bakugou shook his head violently, managing to get the rag out and huffing as his eyes pleaded to kirishima “(y/n) need an ultrasound- now”

They froze

…

the doors opened, (Y/n) sighing and shifting her head up, the cop looking over. Mina stood in the door way, her face becoming twisted at what was in front of her, Kamanari coming in behind.

“Oh-“ he began

Mina stomped in, going into the cops face threateningly “why the hell is she tied up?”

Kamanari scrambled to (y/n)s feet, undoing the handcuffs and fishing out a cloth to wipe her tears with. She thanked him with a small smile, massaging her already bruised wrist and wincing. The hero helped her to her feet, snaking a arm around her torso reassuringly. She didn’t flinch.

“What was that noise?” She asked the two “down the hall? Is Katsuki okay?”

Mina looked up at her, Kamanari doing the same and they looked at each other. She spoke “we should get you back to the hospital, yeah? We are done for today.”

Tags!

@notchesandbullets @jbunns-world @justanotherlifeff @boooooooooom @jazzylove @uwu-barnes @yaskna @shyonigirichan @schleepyflocci @kaldoesthings @sillyroyalty @waffleareniceandfluffy @riri002uwu @happygalaxymilkshake @the2ndl @lovelyakabane @cloudsgathering @bkgwrites @bookwormariah @officiallydarkgeek @cheesecakes-randomshitz @ahbeautifulexistence @lordexplosion-murder20 @vibrant-leaf @chims-kookies

@atsunflower @missalienqueen @ms-winnie-mathews @dis-baku-bitch @smellslikenonsense @artist-bby @ushislittlewife @bakugouswh0r3 @thekatsukisimp @stardream14 @celestialentitiesss @anime-for-live @energyaddicts-blog @gyros-cum-sock @fairywriter-oracle @graybiie @monetfatalia @roseycottage @kenmas-gf @assdood oofart @peacch fuz @itsoakaa @lilacgraveyard @1-jax444 @speedmetalqueen @mydorkyboys @neesssie @xoxo-teddybear @aomi04 @blightwulf

@answer-the-sirens @ghostlyarcanum @bananasquash @chop-zulyzulyyy @kamalymaly @bakucumsackslut @purplesakuraa

(They are full by the way! There are too many and it won’t let me tag anymore :( ) but be sure to check in on the Masterlist for updates and dates! Thank you for keeping up :)

[kassandras-one-braincell]

Kassandra x Fem!Reader - The Most Peculiar Wingman

Can be found on AO3 here.

Summary: You recently moved into a new flat and you’re hearing some rather unusual sounds from your next-door neighbour’s abode. You’re worried the mysterious woman next door is involved in something dangerous. Kassandra is worried that you’re the landlord about to bust her for her lease violation.

(Sorry if you don’t like coffee and/or you speak fluent Greek.)

Word count: 2568

.

Damn, you’ve lucked out with your new flat. The area is pleasant, the décor is tasteful – the windowsills could use a bit more greenery, but you’ll get to that – and the letting agent wasn’t a dick. Zero hassle with bills, minimal scuffs on the walls…it’s bizarre how simple your moving process has been.

But nothing can be perfect, can it?

Over the few days you’ve lived in your new home, you noticed some rather disconcerting sounds coming from the apartment next door. Nothing that disrupts your sleep, thankfully, although your post-unpacking nap was interrupted by a very loud thud against the thin wall connecting the two flats. Thumps, crashes and very disgruntled cursing in a language you can’t quite place tend to crop up in quick succession once or twice a day. Today, though, the odd sounds seem to be omnipresent.

The strange symphony is starting to get alarming; you’re beginning to ponder if the seemingly perpetually angry woman next door is involved in violence…or, forbid, organised crime? That would certainly explain the forceful thuds and grumbling. God, what if she manages to rope you into her shenanigans? What if she is armed?

After a loud bang and an exasperated “oh, fuck you” reverberates into your apartment, you decide to investigate.

Anxiously, you pop on some slippers and step into the hall, locking the door behind you (‘I’m not about to get robbed less than a week after moving,’ you think to yourself, ‘Oh, shit, I need to get insurance…’). Stomach churning with speculation, you make the arduous four-metre trek to your neighbour’s door. Biting your lip, you rap your knuckles against the wood.

A chorus of panicked shuffling echoes through the door, causing your throat to tighten. Footsteps sprint from one side of the room to the other, the sound of shattering ceramic shrill against the heavy thudding. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” the woman hisses, muffled by the walls, followed by some shushing and the rattling of something metal. Who is this woman, what the fuck is she hiding, why am I doing this—

Suddenly, the door swings open, revealing…oh, wow.

Your neighbour is an amazon.

Flawless bronze skin, chocolate hair strewn into an unruly braid, tall and shredded with lean muscle. Her eyes are a gorgeous tawny brown, the split second of alarm disappearing from her gaze, replaced by a sparkle that makes your heart hammer against your chest. Very kissable lips upturn into a charming smile, bringing your attention to a small scar above her upper lip quirking adorably. A deeper scar sits on her nose, and the pang of anxiety returns, but your eyes need only flicker back to hers and it melts away.

“You’re not the landlord,” she says with a rich accent and curious lilt. Your cheeks feel warm.

“Uhm, hi.” You fiddle with your thumbs, mouth suddenly dry. “Sorry, I moved in a few days ago next door. I just heard some loud noises and was wondering if everything was alright?”

Lips curving furthermore, she braces her arms on the doorframe above and, fuck, are they nice arms. Sun-kissed, bulging against her white t-shirt, three gnarly rings cutting into her right bicep that just scream to be touched. Is this her distraction tactic?

“Oh, sorry about that. I hope I wasn’t too much of a disturbance?”

When you finally pry your eyes from her arms, a tiny smirk registers on her handsome face. Bashful, you stammer, “No, it’s fine. But, uh, what caused it, if I may ask?”

The woman cranes her neck to scan the hall. “Can you keep a secret?”

Mob boss? Arms dealer? Axe murderer?

Clearly, your nervous speculations are apparent, because her eyes widen slightly. “Don’t worry, lovely, it’s nothing dangerous. I just have a pet bird.”

Breathing a shaky sigh of relief, you run a hand through your hair. Just a bird. Just a bird. Her face relaxes back into a casual smile. A fresh wave of warmth caresses your cheeks at the name she gave you.

Chuckling, you joke, “Must be one big bird.”

“He’s…an eagle.”

You blink back your shock. “How on earth did you manage to get a pet eagle?”

She laughs, the melody warm and addictive. “Poor fucker followed me all the way from Kefalonia. I didn’t have it in me to say goodbye, even if it violates the lease.” Her tone is affectionate, despite her less-than-endearing name for the bird. Pushing back from the door frame – hands flexing wonderfully while she does so – she gestures for you to step in. “Come and meet him, if you’d like.”

Everything about this woman is so inviting, you can’t help but gravitate into her apartment.

“I don’t think I caught your name?” you ask shyly.

“Kassandra,” she replies, flipping the ‘r’ in her buttery accent. “And what can I call you?”

Anything you fucking want. “(Y/N) is fine,” you manage, debating whether her flat is hot or your face is akin to a beetroot.

“That’s a lovely name. Suits you perfectly,” she winks. She saunters over to a shelf with a blanket hastily thrown over it. You can’t help but observe her firm-looking behind through her jeans. Kassandra tugs away the blanket, revealing a large eagle sitting grumpily in a cage. It remains put when she unlocks the cage, standing almost defiantly.

“Don’t be like that, Ikaros,” she chastises. The eagle – Ikaros – begrudgingly flies out of his confines, perching atop the sofa in the middle of the open-plan room. “He’s gentle, I promise.” You’re doubtful, but he isn’t making any sudden moves.

“He just likes winding you up?”

“Loves it,” she grins. “He’s a little bitter I put him on a diet since he was getting a bit fat. That’s why he’s been throwing some tantrums lately.”

You smile as she scratches the top of his head before heading to the kitchen. “Can I get you anything to drink?” Kassandra asks, giving you another heart-melting beam. “I have coffee, orange juice, I might have some tea somewhere—”

“Coffee would be nice, thank you.” She asks your preference and you state it, taking in the layout of her apartment. The place gave off a very homely, Mediterranean vibe, with warm colours and white furnishings. A few hand-painted ceramic vases were dotted about – maybe she did pottery – alongside some family photographs. Atop the dining table was a woven basket brimming with ripe fruits, as well as a laptop with a pile of messy papers next to it.

“Have a seat, get comfy,” she calls over the whirring of an expensive looking coffee machine. Shyly you take the chair by the unoccupied end of the dining table. Feeling nosy, you scan the documents by her laptop, but the handwriting was all in Greek.

A minute later, Kassandra joins you with a steaming mug in her hand. “Your coffee, madame,” she announces with a pantomimic bow, evoking a laugh.

“Merci,” you thank her. “How would I say that in Greek?”

“Efharistó,” she replies. You test the word hesitantly, wincing on the second syllable, making her laugh. “Not bad,” she chuckles.

“I butchered it.”

“Try it a little softer,” she smiles, lowering her voice, giving it a sensual cadence that made your head spin. Oh, she knows she’s attractive.

“Efharistó,” you border on whisper, gay little brain surging with the overwhelming instinct to do whatever she tells you.

“There we go!” The proud quirk of her lips is all you need to see.

Feeling your cheeks flush, you bring the coffee mug to your lips, hoping the steam from the beverage will help mask your fluster. You blow on the liquid and take a sip, immediately regretting the decision as you scorch your tastebuds, repressing the urge to hiss in favour of looking cool for the hot Grecian.

“Do you, um,” you start, ignoring the numbness of your tongue, “work from home?” You wave your hand at the paperwork by her seat.

“As often as my job lets me.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a museum curator,” Kassandra beams, evidently proud of her job. “A glorified history nerd who couldn’t be fucked with the extra academia, basically.” You snort against the mug, nearly spluttering coffee over her. Smooth.

“What time in history?” Her eyes sparkle at the question, passion shining through her irises.

“Mostly the classics, ancient Greece and Rome and all that. But I did my thesis on the evolution of weaponry.” You prop your chin up on your hand as she talks, eyes lazily focused on her lips. If not for the conviction in her tone, you would have zoned out and chased some daydream about kissing those lips. Kassandra reclines back in her chair. “Enough about me, though. Tell me about yourself.”

“You sounded really passionate, though. I don’t mind if you keep talking about your job.” God, you sound like a dizzy schoolgirl who’s hot for teacher. You scald yourself with another sip of coffee in reprimanding.

Kassandra’s eyes twinkle. “I don’t usually invite beautiful women into my home to ramble about cool swords.” You blush and set down your coffee.

The two of you talk for quite some time, getting to know each other, peppering in the occasional flirtatious remark. In her company, you somehow simultaneously feel comfortable and skittish. She’s so relaxed and easy-going, but her physique and seductive demeanour fills your stomach with butterflies.

An irritated squawk cut your conversation short.

Kassandra shoots Ikaros a look before turning back to you. “Sorry about him.”

You shake your head. “It’s fine, really. Damn… What was I saying again?” you ask sheepishly.

Squawk.

“Nevermind, I was probably babbling anyway,” you dismiss, sipping on your now cold beverage.

Kassandra chuckles softly. “Don’t be silly, you have the voice of an angel. You could read me the dictionary and I’d still be interested.” She probably said this to every woman she took a liking to, but you can’t bring yourself to care, far too flustered and feeling, for once, special.

Squawk.

Her eye practically twitches in anger as Ikaros flies over to the windowsill, makes unwavering eye-contact with his owner, and shits on the wood.

Kassandra looks like she wants to be euthanised.

“My god,” she mutters as you burst out laughing. She awkwardly rubs the back of her neck and grimaces, mouth parted as if trying to form some kind of apology for her eagle’s behaviour.

“I’m guessing you’re used to being the only one doing the flustering?” you tease, trying to lighten the mood.

Her disgraced expression shifted back to a playful one. “If I say yes, do I sound like a whore?”

Grinning, you shake your head. “A little cocky, perhaps.”

“I’ll take cocky.” She winks and gets up. “Your coffee is probably cold, can I get you a fresh one?”

“Oh, no, thank you. I’m fine.”

“The finest,” she smirks.

“Real smooth,” you roll your eyes, smiling regardless.

Ikaros caws from the windowsill, as if mocking Kassandra’s advances. Once again, her effortless charm dissolves into a look of frustration. She grabs kitchen towels and a bottle of disinfectant from by the sink and walks over to the window, nudging the eagle so he’d move out of the way. “Maláka,” she groans, cleaning up the mess from the surface. “Μη μου το χαλάς αυτό,” she mutters to Ikaros, earning a confused look. Kassandra sighs. “Usually I wait until after the first date before introducing a beautiful lady to this little shit. That way people don’t immediately think I’m just a weird bird lesbian.”

Testing the waters, you remark, “I happen to quite fancy women with an affinity for animals.” You bite your lip and add, “And, well, you’re…very attractive.”

Smugly, Kassandra finishes disinfecting the windowsill and walks to the kitchen with a little more vigour, your compliment proving to be an ego boost.

Once again deprived of attention, Ikaros decides to flap over and join you at the table. Instinctively, you flinch as the large bird flies in your direction, but all he does is stare at you, trying to analyse the stranger in his home.

“Does – does he bite?” you ask, hesitantly standing up.

Kassandra discards the kitchen towel in the bin, washing her hands. “No, he’s very kind to everyone who isn’t me.” She flashes you a wicked grin. “I only bite when asked.”

Stammering, you choke on air, struggling to find a response. Ikaros gives her a disappointed look.

“Shit, too forward?”

You shake your head. “Not at all,” you blush. “I’ve just…never met anyone quite like you before.” Ikaros seemingly gives you a judgemental leer, and you swiftly find yourself adding, “I-in a good way, that is!”

“Oh?” Her brow is upturned, her interest piqued.

“It’s…exciting.” The eagle shuffles towards you and nuzzles your hand, apparently deciding you’re worthy of his affections. The dark feathers atop his head are surprisingly soft to touch. Smiling, you give his head a few pats, inhibitions to the wind when cute little coos vibrate from his throat. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“I think it’s adorable,” Kassandra says softly.

You look up. “Really?”

“Really.” She joins the two of you and plucks a damson from the fruit bowl, feeding it to Ikaros while you pet him. “You’re the loveliest person to have ever set foot in this building, that’s for sure.”

Ikaros cocks his head in agreement. His beady eyes meet yours, damson juice dribbling from his beak. Do it, he’s silently telling you.

Screw it, let’s shoot our shot.

You clear your throat, mustering up some courage. “Are you free next weekend?”

Kassandra beams amorously. “I was about to ask you the same thing,” she grins. “How does dinner sound?”

Fuck yes. “Really good,” you blurt out excitedly.

“There’s this great Persian restaurant a couple streets over. I’ll book us a table?”

You gasp, having seen the building on the drive when you were moving in. “The place with the garden and the pretty lights, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“Sounds amazing.” Red in the face and heart pounding, your eyes dart about the apartment, fearing that you’ll combust if you look at Kassandra any longer. They settle on Ikaros, who gently butts his head against your hand, almost like a fist-bump. “Well, uh, I have a home insurance company to ring up, so I should probably get going,” you stutter.

“I won’t keep you, then,” Kassandra says, a tinge of disappointment in her tone. Ikaros squawks sadly.

“Thank you for the coffee.”

“It was my pleasure. Thank you for staying,” she winks. The eagle coos in agreement. You give him one last pat before walking to the front door.

“Oh, before you leave, there is something you should know…” Kassandra calls, moving over to you. She delicately takes your hand, frying your brain, and leans down to your ear. You feel faint. Lowly, she whispers, “…Our Hermes guy likes to drop-kick our parcels.”

Snorting, you look up at her in disbelief. I mean, what was I expecting? A kiss? Get a grip, woman. Kassandra laughs at your expression. “Use the amazon locker down the road instead.”

“You’re amazing,” you murmur, grinning. “I’ll probably see you before next weekend, but bye, I guess?”

“Chaire,” she bids softly, opening the door for you.

When the door closes behind you, you let out a ragged breath, excitement coursing through your veins.

You are so glad you moved here.

.

( The Greek clause is meant to say "Don't blow this for me" but I used 5 different translators and all 5 came back with slightly different things and I sort of ip-dip-doo'd it and chose one at random...sorry. )