thehellhoundofearth38 - Tumblr blog

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Dylan O’Brien as Heinrich Treadway in Infinite (2021)

[thehellhoundofearth38]

I love dogs and I loved these dogs. I mean, I can’t tell you how many mornings I would arrive to set and just immediately get on the ground and have them climb all over me and lick my face. I love dogs licking my face. I’m not afraid of that. I love it. - Dylan O’Brien

[thehellhoundofearth38]

how it started:

how it’s going:

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Crowned With Flames - Critical Role Fan Song

lyrics under cut

Keep reading

[thehellhoundofearth38]

[thehellhoundofearth38]

The real question might be, how do we know he’s not still asleep?

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Entry #10

As we’ve settled down to sleep, with Apparition and Shadow nearby, Max settled by my left hip, Blip settled by my right, Deacon unconscious a little bit away so that I can wake if he stirs, Adam Cizak in direct opposition to him, and Kamikaze and Focus up on the mountain, I’ve found myself thinking of some lines.

Kira got really into poetry after Jo died. She’d write beautiful poems on anything she could find. There’s a scrapbook back at my house that Gabriel, Malia, and I made together of every little poem she made. We wanted to give it to her on her 20th birthday. I hope, if Freelance has gone to my house, that it’s still there. Anyways, she used to write a set of lines that weren’t hers but that she said felt important to her after losing Jo and Deacon and then nearly all the remaining Squad in that apartment fire.

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light.

I wonder if there’s a light for me. I wonder if on this road I find myself on, this path that will take me through the valley of the shadow of evil, if there will be light. Marshall promised me once. He promised that no matter how dark and scary the world may seem that there will be light. What I fear is that I was that light, and I burned too brightly for too long that now my light has gone out. Then I remember that I am surrounded by stars. Your team is the second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning, Lost Boy.

Deacon used to like this indie horror musical. I haven’t watched it since the last time he was a part of the Squad, but I remember the lyrics to one of the songs in particular. Actually, to be truthful, the whole album could be twisted to be about my life. Maybe, if I ever get off this island and ever get a minute to myself, I’ll watch it. I’d definitely have to twist the lyrics for it to apply to my situation. A line from Race for the Throne would pair nicely with the lyric.

Let the boy die, and let the monster rise.

It sounds like something that Apparition would say to me. Or, rather, it sounds like advice that he would give me now. I don’t know what this means, the fact that he recognizes my authority over anyone else’s on this island. I can even hear it in his voice, accompanied by that signature “chief” he uses now to address me instead of either of my names.

I wonder if I should listen. Should I let the Hellhound die so that the monster can rise? Deacon already thinks of me as a monster. I know that I am one. Should I unleash that? If I do, who do I give my leash to? Who could bring me back from darkness? What would I call myself then? Whose legacy would I be protecting then? Some combination of the Sentinel and the Sniper? Maybe that’s what the world needs. Not two, but one. An Arsenal.

I’m reminded of yet another poem, but the poem isn’t about me. It’s from Physician What, and whenever I think about the poem, I actually think about Focus. Focus is, at the very core of his being, a good man.

And Demons run when a good man goes to war.

I want to do everything I can to ensure that Focus remains that way. Deep down, Marshall is essentially a good person, and that is true of most of my team. I wonder, though, if... if, deep down... I’m not the good man that I claim to be. I wonder if, at my core, I am the killer they’re trying to make me into. I wonder if they see it, just under my skin, and they’re trying to pull it out. If I were the good person that Kamikaze or Shadow or Focus are, I wouldn’t have these doubts.

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Entry #9

I’ve been saying “with a little luck” a lot lately. Honestly, far too much than I should or that I feel entirely comfortable with. In all actuality, this team doesn’t need luck to accomplish the goals that we’ve set for ourselves. What we need is a damned miracle. There are no gods coming to save us, though. No divine moves that we can take. All we can do is change the rules of a four-tiered 4D chess game that has been in motion since long before most of us were born.

I wonder if you knew that this was going to happen. I wonder if this was what you wanted to guide me through. That’s what you said, remember? That you can see young heroes in need of guidance. Kamikaze called you out on that bullshit answer when all I could think of was, Why? Why me? Why does he want to guide me? You know, sometimes I wish I’d never gotten that answer. Maybe then you would still be alive and able to tell me what you think my next step is. Except I can hear you. I can hear you perfectly. You stand in darkness, but a light seems to come from within you so that I can still see your face. You look at me just as seriously as when we would talk at home, before I knew that you were the Watcher. Your mouth opens, and I hear your voice as clearly as I did then, as if you’ve never truly been gone. You say to me, “Kane, you know how this story ends. If you hunt down Freelance, corner and kill him, then you are no better than us. Don’t make our mistakes. Be the man that we couldn’t. Become the Sentinel that I couldn’t be.”

From three feet to your left comes another voice. “That’s bullshit, Pup.” The figure of my uncle illuminates, looking at me with the hard expression that’s seemingly always been on his face (I just know why now). “You know exactly what will happen if you don’t put a bullet in his skull: the cycle continues. You have to break the cycle. There isn’t a choice. There never has been. You just have to live with that now.”

Focus comes to stand at your right side. I haven’t noticed it before, but you’re roughly the same height. Maybe you have half an inch on him, but it feels as though you both stand at the same towering stature. Only, he doesn’t look at me the way a father looks at their child. That’s how he looks at Blip. He looks at me with the eyes of a brother who cannot save the other. “If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world stays the same, Kane. Your compassion is a weakness your enemies do not share. That’s what separates us and them. If you kill Freelance, you aren’t any different from him. Then all we stand for means nothing.” Apparition stands beside Uncle Mitch. The two parts of my mind. My two friends. The argument between my head and my heart. “Chief,” he starts, and it stings even here in this dreamlike space, “you know what I’m going to do. You know that I won’t rest until Fink is dead. You know that I’ll put every bullet I have into him to make sure that he’s dead. Freelance has already come back from the dead once. Someone needs to make sure that when he dies, it’s for real this time. We need to kill him, and then shut down Project Infinity, whatever it’s called and wherever it’s house now. Otherwise the world will never be safe from men like Freelance and Lynch.”

Here I feel torn. Here’s truly where my indecision lies. I’ve already decided to go undercover in Freelance’s/Fink’s ranks as Hellhound. My true decision is whether or not a death occurs at my hands. All of my friends, my partner included, have told me that this is my decision. What happens with Lynch and Freelance are for me to decide. I want to save Deacon, that isn’t in question. With Kamikaze’s cosmic capabilities, I know that we can save him. It’s all just a matter of how.

But Freelance? I want to kill him. I want to kill him just as surely as I wanted to kill Deacon when we first arrived on Cizak Island. Yet so many questions nag at the back of my mind when I think about that moment. There are too many unknowns. What if the same thing that happened to my former best friend happened to him too? What if he’s the man that was the first Project Infinity experiment? What if you and Uncle Mitch knew him? What if exactly what happened between Deacon and I happened between you, but you two didn’t find out because you couldn’t do what my friends and I can? How can I ever pull the trigger without knowing these answers for certain? Can I ever be certain?

I look to the space between you and Uncle Mitch. In this divide, I know that there is someone else supposed to be standing there. Someone is missing, something that will bridge the divide between my heart and my head.

It isn’t Ellie, with her advice not to play the game at all. As much as I wish that were an option, I’ve been playing this game since birth. I just didn’t know that I was playing. Now that I know, we can change the rules of the game and twist it to suit our needs instead.

It isn’t Deacon, who wants nothing more, it seems, than for me to find a way to win that means everyone still loses. If we can restore more of his psyche, maybe it would be him there. As it is, he wants me to go down into the darkness. He knows that I won’t ever come back.

I only hope I can figure out who it is before I am standing in the moment, gun pointed at Freelance’s head and him waiting for me to make my decision. Though... I know it’s me. I know that I’m the only thing that can bridge the gap between my head and my heart. Only I can find another way, if another way even exists at all. I have to take my place beside the ones I love, whether that step is as the light against the dark or as the very darkness itself. We have to be the miracle, or else no one has a chance.

[thehellhoundofearth38]

[thehellhoundofearth38]

The monsters were never under my bed. Because the monsters  Were inside my head. 

    - Nikita Gill

[thehellhoundofearth38]

This is how the story should go // LHZ

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Entry #8

Not a single one of us is the same person as when we arrived on the island.

We haven’t even really finished the mission, but with everything we’ve learned I’m not sure that we’re even concerned about that anymore. I honestly just want to blow that opening to hell, and my GMR with it for good measure, but that isn’t my call. That’s for Ellie to decide. She’s the leader when it comes to the cosmic side of everything. So, if we don’t blow it all to hell, I’m thinking that I still might bury my GMR in the sand.

I didn’t think that this mission would end with my faith in the GMP so profoundly shaken. It’s in Freelance’s pocket, in Fink’s. No wonder we couldn’t get a step ahead of him. No wonder it seemed like he always knew. He did know. Now that we know that, we can do something about it. After all, we’re heroes. At least, I still think of this squad as a group of heroes...

Focus seems the most changed to me after the events of the island. I’ve never really seen him doubt before. His faith in the GMP seemed to run very deep. To learn that the organization he trusted has been corrupted must hurt. I wish I knew what to say to make him feel better. He always has such kind words for those that are hurting. All I can do is give him my opinion and hope. Still, for every darkness there is a light. After the whole time travel incident, he seems... happier. He never seemed unhappy, but there was some sort of... aura... about him, for lack of a better word. An aura of tragedy. Now he seems like whatever doubts he has, that happiness will give him a sense of balance. I can’t help but wonder if that’s Kamikaze’s doing.

Blip is also different. I don’t know if she sees it, but I do. She’s shown herself to be a valuable member of the squad. Without her, the others would have never made it to the beach. Then Lynch could have taken away more from me than he has already. With her Connection to Kamikaze, we could communicate to them across time. Without Blip, I know this mission would have been another tragedy. We would have lost either Focus and Kamikaze or the rest of the squad. I’m not going to say it to Focus, but I’m glad she snuck onto the plane. She rounds us out. She’s the missing piece.

Shadow... is a little bit harder to place, but even she seems different. She’s finding where she fits with us. It’s been easy for Focus, Kamikaze, Apparition, and I--we’ve worked with each other before. Even Blip fell into place quickly. Shadow had to work harder to find where she fits in this group. I think she balances us. We need someone who gets excited at the fact there might be pirate treasure on a cursed island when the rest of us are wondering how it could go wrong. I think she understands this and has leaned more into that.

Then there’s Apparition. Apparition has always had a somber manner about him, but he’s grown even more serious. Especially around me. He started calling me “Chief” when we found out Kamikaze and Focus were sent to the past. He was the first to look to me for leadership. On the beach, he told me exactly what he thought; even though he knew I wouldn’t agree to it, he knew that I would listen to him. It stings, the name he chose, but I’ll never tell him that. The faith he places in me is terrifying. I’ve never known him to accept any sort of authority. Something changed. Something big has changed. I hope he’ll trust me one day to tell me about it.

And Adam Cizak. My heart breaks for him. It’s like looking in a mirror sometimes. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be him. I understand the loss of a parent - my own loss wasn’t that long ago. Still, for all my understanding of that, I didn’t lose my time. The strength that must take, to continue on despite losing literally everything and everyone he’s ever known. Thankfully, words of comfort translate across time. There aren’t many people I would willingly walk into water for. And he’s got the Gift of hydrokinesis. He’s my opposite in a lot of ways, but I’m not quite as scared of that as I was if he’s who the cosmos has decided must be my mirror.

Speaking of the cosmos, there’s even Deacon to consider. He was Lynch when he brought down our plane. Now, after another showdown, more verbal barbs than being stabbed in the gut, I’ve realized that the fight with him isn’t a physical one. It’s a mental one, a Connection one. He was so fractured, so broken. I can’t win this in a fight of steel and gunpowder. This is a fight I need Ellie for. Maybe with her help, that flash of Deacon I saw come back while we were all in the Connection, I can bring back the man that was once my friend. There may be hope after all.

Kamikaze. Kamikaze, my partner. Kamikaze, my sister. How much stronger she seems, and she wasn’t gone from me for that long. It’s one of the things I truly admire about her. Each time I see her, she’s that much stronger. I didn’t notice when we first teamed up, but I notice now. Every second of every day, she gets that much stronger. I wonder if she knows, or if she thinks she’s stayed the same. I wonder if she knows what I see when I look at her. She’s the literal embodiment of hope. She turns herself into a bomb, yes, but a bomb of hope. Hope is explosive and infectious. When I look at her, dealing with cosmic forces each day that threaten lies every minute of every day, I hope she knows that I will stand beside her come hell or high water, even though she is strong enough to do it herself.

Lastly, me. I’m not the same person as I was when we first arrived. Had I not found that note in the part of my suit that was my father’s, I would have shot Deacon. I would have ended his life without a single hesitation. I was that filled with rage and grief. I would have never found out what this Deacon knows. Without that, we would have walked right back into the belly of the beast. I know that my friends wouldn’t look at me the same way ever again. I don’t know if this is growth, or if I’ve just grown more comfortable with being a monster. I’m hoping it’s growth. I’m hoping this letter helps me continue to grow. I want to be a man that they’re proud of. That my dad would be proud of. Once I think I’ve achieved that, I’ve been considering changing my name. I’m still the Hellhound, but maybe I should also be the Sentinel. The Sentinel my father wanted to be. The Sentinel he still thought he couldn’t be when he was alive.

If this is the squad that they’ll write about when they tell the story of who saved the GMP, I’ve realized that there is no one else I would rather stand next to than these people. They are my family.

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Entry #7

My thoughts are a complete mess.

Freelance knows who we are. He knows who all of us are. He’s got my files, Ellie’s, Marshall’s, Clint’s. He knows everything about all of us. That means that the GMP isn’t safe anymore, if it ever was in the first place. There are very few people that I can trust now with that information in mind. Most of them are on this island with me, or at least some version of the island.

I wish my dad was still around. He’d know exactly what to do. I think I know what to do too, but that scares me. It scares me that I’m thinking about razing the GMP to the ground with a cleansing fire.

It scares me that the team is already looking to me to be a leader. The second Focus was off our version of the island, they started looking to me. How can I lead them? I’m just a kid from Brooklyn. I got my father murdered, my best friend nearly got kidnapped, and, hell, on my first big mission I got someone killed. How did I become the leader of what’s left of this time? Why do they trust me so much? I’m not worthy of it.

Maybe that’s why I told Deacon that he’d killed my father. Maybe I want to do something so terrible that they won’t look to me. Maybe some part of me wants to do exactly what he wants and take ourselves both out in some battle of mutually assured destruction.

I don’t know how Focus does this. I don’t know how my dad did. Clint’s already calling me “Chief” and deferred to my judgment. I wish I were more.

[thehellhoundofearth38]

Entry #6

A monster, he calls me.

And a monster I am.

If I accept the fact that I am the monster in the darkness, he can’t use it to hurt me. Not anymore.

My Old Man called Freelance the monster under the bed. What better to hunt a monster than another monster? Let the hunter become the hunted. Let Freelance get a taste of his own medicine. The ring of my steel and the shots from my gun will instill the very terror that Freelance sought to inspire.

I only hope I’m still called “hero” at the end of all things.

The hounds are howling, Freelance. Can you hear them?