#they all die

[that-bitch-kat3]

every canon complaint marauders fic be like:

[bitsandbobsofwriting]

In The Next Life, My Love

A quick little bitter drabble that I didn’t have time to develop fully but needed to write.

TW: The ending is not open. Everyone’s dead yo. Angst.

It’s dark and cold, where they are, The King and his servant, and the end is coming. They know it’s coming, no point denying it, or fighting it; they’ve been locked up for so long that their wrists, once strong and thick and soft, rattle in their chains. The mould is getting to them, making their heads ache and their skin crawl, but they have each other, and in the darkness they each have a light in the form of the other’s exponentially bony fingers intertwined with their own:

“Merlin,-”

The King coughs, and this one word—this name that now means everything to him, and perhaps always had—quiet and rasping and so very very pained, saps almost all his remaining energy. His companion comforts him the only way he can, a cold, damp-wrinkled thumb scraping the back of his hand, and waits patiently until The King’s chest calms enough to allow him to continue:

“-in the next life,-”

Merlin interrupts him, his voice more quiet, more rasping, more pained, but far, far more determined:

“I’ll serve you. Always, Arthur.”

“No.-”

His dismissal, his order, is the loudest noise either of them have heard in days, and Merlin flinches, moaning quietly as the pounding in his head, which he had managed to forget about, magnifies significantly:

“-no, Merlin, no.-”

Arthur’s continuation is so quiet, so soft, Merlin has to think for a few seconds before he can process what he’s said:

“-In the next life, Merlin, I... I...-”

He sighs, or sighs as well as he can when every breath he takes in is as shallow as a puddle on cobblestones and painful as a knife to the chest; his eyes close, though he couldn’t really tell they were open before, his vision having become so blurred he couldn’t tell his thinning legs from the rotten floor. There’s a long pause, and the only evidence Merlin has that his King hasn’t passed on between one word and the next is the rattling breaths he hears from beside him. 

Breathing is what he focuses on, what he holds on to. It had been a cacophony before; an orchestra of inhalations and exhalations had surrounded them, before the candles they’d been left with had burned to nothing and the others had stopped breathing, one by one.

Merlin has always known his King well, so when he stops speaking—stutters, stutters, stops—he doesn’t worry, Merlin knows Arthur is just searching for the right words. Always, always searching for the right words, and never quite finding them. Always searching, always being too afraid of settling for something subpar, so never saying anything at all. Every time it happens, it breaks his heart a little, but every time Arthur tries again... it mends him.

He lets him think.

Think.

Think.

Think.

Another stroke along the back of his hand prompts Arthur to continue. He’s not sure he’s found the right words, but he thinks they’ll have to do:

“-In the next life, Merlin, you will not serve me for a second. Not for a second. In the next life, I’ll find you, you won’t have to find me, I’ll find you, and I’ll tell you that I... that I love you, and we’ll spend our lives together again, but... but better. I promise, Merlin, next time it will be better.”

His voice cracks and crumbles and falls apart as he whispers his secrets to the darkness. He wonders, for a moment, if Merlin were really alive. If perhaps he’d died days ago like the others and he was just imagining the squeezes, the strokes. The hand he’s holding is cold enough and stiff enough to be from a corpse. He thinks maybe the breathing and coughing were just echoes of his own, that maybe he is alone in the depths of the earth. The silence—other than the rasping rasping rasping breaths so similar to his own—stretches long enough that Arthur is halfway further to being mad when Merlin finally, really, replies:

“Ok. I... Ok. Just... promise me one thing?-”

Arthur hums, and the choking noise is something terrible, but it gets the point across, and he figures the clicking sound coming from his right is Merlin twisting his head, so he can at least pretend that they’re able to look at each other; Arthur follows his lead, and he likes to think that, when he opens his tired, dry eyes, and squints through the pitch blackness, that he can see something blue peering back at him:

“-Have better timing, next time?”

Arthur can hear the smirk in his voice, and he thinks, if he’d had enough energy, he could cry and wail and scream at the prospect of the next life not being promised, and even if it where, their meeting in it not being guaranteed. He can’t conceive of a world, or an unworld, whatever comes after he stops hurting so much, in which he doesn’t have Merlin’s smirk. As it is, the only reaction his starving mind can manage is a single, small tear slipping down his cheek as he tactically twitches his pinkie finger in Merlin’s grip, and mumbles back:

“Promise.”

The silence descends once more, and when Merlin speaks, or, more accurately, when Merlin forces his last breath to take the form of words, he realises, in his last spark of thought as his tongue collapses over the very last syllable, that his last remaining companion may not have remained long enough to hear him:

“I love you too, Arthur.”

~

The End.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH.

Anyway.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Hope you enjoyed😅

[corvidserpens]

From a fanfic writers point of view I’ve been writing the most devious, soul wrenching, tear inducing piece of works recently… now I love reached the point where I ask myself if this work of written art in monstrous form should ever be released for the world to see or kept lock away in the darkness, hiding its horrors.

Aka: I reverted to my dark phase

[weedgrinderfullofteeth]

yeah yeah yeah i know that les mis is mostly known for being a musical so most of the fans are inherently just theatre kids but i really think this fandom needs more gruesome borderline horrifying gore and violence 🤷

[corneille-moisie]

well my earbuds arent the only ones dying =\

my speakers also are dying apparently

[someominousecho]

just had the horrible thought that maybe season 5 will end like The Young Ones did

[phantom-of-the-501st]

ANDOR SPOILERS

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Me: I love Nemik :)

Nemik: *dies*

Me: Dank farrick, not again ;-;

[clara-maybe-ontheroad]

My roommate's predictions about who dies in The Untamed

So I've been making my roommate watch The Untamed, he likes it a lot (and has a crush on everyone, which, same), and as we were finishing episode 15 I asked him his predictions for the different characters :

Lan Wangji x Wei Wuxian : "we know they survive from the flashback, also I know it's censored but they have to fuck at some point"

YanLi : "she can't die, she's one of the only female characters, I just don't want her to marry that jerk"

Jiang Cheng : "no way he becomes Clan Leader ever, he's so annoying

Jiang Feng Mian : "he's such a sweet dad, he is not dying, he'll have plot armor"

Madam Yu : "she can die, I don't care"

Wen Qing : "she's my wife, she can't die, and also she will end up married to Jiang Cheng, they're so cute"

Wen Ning : "he could make a good death for dramatic effect"

Jin Zixuan : "I can't remember his name and he's a jerk so he can die"

Nie Mingjue : "I want him to invade me, he's so powerful he will survive them all"

Nie Huaisang : "who ?"

Wen Zhuliu : "he's such a badass, he must get on the good guys' side eventually"

Song Lan x Xiao Xingchen : "ugh they're so hot, I hope they'll stay married forever"

Meng Yao : "who ?"

[variberry]

hey hi hello

i just had a very random, very disturbing thought: because she’s an allicorn, twilight sparkle is most likely going to outlive her friends, her family, and i pray to god that im wrong about this one–spike. also cadence and flurry will outlive shining armor. also also, discord is going to outlive fluttershy and that shit hurts man.

its 10pm on a monday and im bawling my eyes out

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[dirt-mccracken]

As much as I want to be a wholly joyous about the fact that Henry Kissinger is finally fucking dead, as he deserves... There's a lot of me that can't help being upset with. With the fact that he lived to 100 years old. He got better medical care, better housing, and a better, more stable life for those 100 years than billions on this planet ever going to see and he did it specifically through exploitation, state sanctioned murder, and lies. He lived to 100 years comfortably on a legacy of violence that rarely threatened his personal comfort. I want to be joyous that he's finally dead, because the world IS better with him dead, but the reality is he won a long time ago.

[protoctist]

i know ryoko kui is a real one because she wrote 97+ chapters of a manga about fantasy ecosystems and food chains and not once did she write the phrase "survival of the fittest" (it's a bad phrase) (it's a social darwinist phrase even) (hated amongst biologists) (doesn't make sense) (darwin didn't use it) (coined by an business major) (one of the worst phrases in pop science) (no good)

[stil-lindigo]

The UNRWA is concerned that if they do not receive more funding they will run out by the end of February please spread this message

in case any of you missed it, despite the ICJ's ruling for Israel to facilitate MORE aid into Gaza, the global west has responded by cutting funding to UNWRA, which is responsible for delivering significant amounts of aid into Gaza, as well as surrounding areas such as Lebanon. The countries cutting funding consist of the US, Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, Swritzerland, Italy, Germany, Finland, Canada and Japan. This was all due to a claim by Israel that members of UNWRA were Hamas-members or sympathisers which, at the end of the day, is a claim that concerns only 12 members in a total of 30,000.

Without proper funding, UNWRA is likely to run out of resources by February of this year (only another month) and urges the countries that have suspended donations to reconsider. This is a blatant move from the colonialist countries of this world to starve Palestinians even further when they are already facing unforeseen levels of famine.

Please take some time out of your day to call your reps, your political leaders and urge them to restart their funding. In the meantime, here is a link to donate to the UNWRA.

[demigods-posts]

i don't know man. but sometimes i think about percy breaking the news to nico that his sister's dead. and nico plummetting into depression, screaming at the boy he once thought of as a hero to die. and percy watching this ten-year-old disappear into the shadows mid sobbing. and percy's shaking and traumatized and exhausted. but he forces that pain down his throat and accepts the role as the prophecy kid so nico has a chance to create a future he wants. while percy's is set in stone. and i don't know man.

[tariah23]

The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.

[hellenhighwater]

When my nephew was four, a friend of the family passed away. The man was in his 90s and died of natural causes, and we were going to the funeral. We sat my nephew down and explained who this was, and that he had passed away, and now we were going to a sort of quiet party to celebrate him, and that there he might see the gentleman in the casket, and he might be very still, because he had died, but that everything was alright.

My nephew contemplated this calmly for a few minutes, and then said, "I think he will be very flat."

What.

It turns out that at age four, my nephew's only real context for death was roadkill, which he frequently pointed out while we were driving. He therefore believed that the only way anyone died was getting run over by a car.