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chocosvt · 4 years

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⚬ pairing: ghost!jihoon x fem!reader ⚬ word count: 9242 ⚬ warnings: abusive relationship, suicide ⚬ genres: heavy angst, romance, ample fluff

✧✎ synopsis: freedom was a word that had completely lost its meaning - unable to escape from a toxic relationship, you can only find happiness upon confiding in jihoon, the spirit of a writer who died a century ago.

✧✎ a/n: SORRY this took so long to post! i have a habit of holding onto completed fics for a while, bc i feel the need to endlessly proofread. i rly appreciate everyone’s patience :D

You didn’t understand him. You hated him.

You wanted to conjure a pair of scissors and cut the invisible rope that connected your piteous relationship. Tight around your wrist, you could still feel the indents left by his fingernails, how they pushed blunt into your skin like a stamp to a liquid, wax seal. There was no taste of freedom unless you left him, and yet, you lacked the strength, instead rotting in your own indolence.

The doorway to your cottage home burst open as you thundered inside. Smells of the cinnamon bread and ginger tea you had for breakfast lingered in the air, when the morning was soft and you were unaware of his incoming anger that would inevitably cumulate. Gleaming on the edge of the kitchen table was an old pocket mirror, a century-dull shade of gold with a rose engrained into its shallow dome.

Within the next moment, you were sitting inside your closet, frustrated tears pooling slowly down each cheek as you held onto an ignited candle. The flame rippled and danced in response to your ragged breaths. It was the only source of light, for darkness pressed in from every angle. Hands shaky, you set the candle to crackle on the floor, behind the pocket mirror you had opened. Looking into its small reflection, you saw the wet flakes of mascara stuck to your skin, how your lips were so bitten they became mottled with blood spots.

“If I ask for you,” you sighed, eyes falling shut, “will you come to me?”

You waited and listened to the dancing wick, then snuck a peak at the mirror.

Nothing.

Inhaling a deep breath, you closed your eyes and warbled again: “If I ask for you, will you come to me?”

The mirror was still open, casting an image of your broken countenance, marred by viscid trails of tears and a patience that turned thinner than the air itself. Every mark, every scratch left by his fingernails only sunk further into your wrist, establishing this control he had over you, until one day, his reign might become permanent. The thought forced you to hiccup a burning sob.

“Please!” You whimpered, tasting the sharp salt on your lips, “If I ask for you, will you come to me?”

Snap.

The sound of the pocket mirror being shut was accompanied by an overwhelming sensation of cold, like an arctic breath had just been exhaled into your face. Cautiously, you eyed the candle, in which its flame had stopped dancing and instead stood tall, almost as though it were afraid to flicker. The gentle light glinted off the mirror’s gold dome. At last, you picked your head up and met his eyes, honey-brown, like crisped sugar.

The noise that crawled up from your throat was a feeble squeak.

“Jihoon.” You said his name.

Even though each syllable felt like solace, that didn’t smooth the tremors in between. Unlike your boyfriend who was so assailing in nature and unreceptive to your heart, Jihoon read the pain from your body like it had been scrawled with thick ink. He reached out his hand for you to grab.

Head bent down, tears streaming toward your chin, you cried to him in that small halo of light, squeezing his glacial fingers, crushing his bones, yet he never protested or shook you off.

You had asked for him. And if it’s you, then Jihoon will always be there.

“A peach?” Jihoon murmured, staring at the sunset colour of the fruit in his palm. “I haven’t eaten a peach since… Since…”

“Since a century ago?”

Jihoon looked up at you, his face illuminated by the wax candle. “Yeah.”

He seemed hesitant to sink his teeth past the fuzzy, orange flesh, and kept stealing oblique glances at you. Wiping away a delicious trail of juice that streaked your chin, you encouraged him to just take a bite and stop ogling the fruit like it was plucked from outer space.

A peach was nowhere close to the strangest item you’d brought him. In fact, the sole manner in which Jihoon could connect with the simple indulgences of when he’d been alive was through you.

At first, he sighed, followed by slight apprehension, and then he stopped prevaricating. Jihoon brought the peach to his mouth and buried in his teeth, a loud slurp indicating he’d suckled out the juice just before tearing away a reasonable chunk. He chewed, chewed a little bit more, crinkled his nose and continued chewing. You raised an eyebrow once he swallowed, curious if its sweetness still held true to when he’d eaten the fruit in his youth.

“Not bad. Rather messy.” Jihoon rated with little mirth, his tongue then licking at a trail of liquid dripping to his wrist.

You eyed him whilst taking another bite into your own fruit.

The next time you met, you brought him purple orchids, wrapped in a crinkly, pale mint packaging. He buried his nose into their petals and took a breath. Jihoon had long forgotten the rain, it’s scent, but that’s exactly what the aroma reminded him of.

It was close to midnight, the autumn wetness clinging in a sheer mist, a cobweb almost, that drifted down the road. You stared into the fog, wondering if it might swath around you until you couldn’t see or breathe, only to thin away at the last moment, revealing a place that was warm and brushed with sunshine. There would be no boyfriend, no pain or fear, and you’d have freedom— a word that seemed to have lost its meaning as time wore its grit against you.

Leaning into the side of your boyfriend’s car, you watched him pace back and forth next to the gas pump, cellphone at his ear, occasionally tossing his head back in a splitting chortle whilst he blew plumes from a cigarette. A light rain pattered against the roof of the gas station.

You wanted to go home. You wanted to be tucked in bed, beneath sheets that smelled like summer lilacs. You wanted to close your eyes and dream about the phantom boy who lived in the closet, where your fingers would trace his skin and you might feel the heat from his blood. Yet you lacked bravery. Taking one look at your wrist constantly sore from his steel grip was enough to snuff out any defying fire. He laughed again, kicked his boot into the gravel, brought the cigarette up to his mouth in order to fulfill a toxic addiction.

Headlights suddenly pierced through the mist and tires rolled against the damp pavement. You thought about running onto the road with your arms flailing, hoping the driver would pull over and let you into their vehicle. They might ask where you wanted to go.

You’d say, “just get me away from him. Anywhere, I’m begging.”

“Hey!”

Turning your head, you saw him stalking toward you. In an unconscious attempt to give yourself space, you unpeeled from the vehicle and a took a step back, intimidated.

“Get in the car,” he spat, opening the driver’s side, “m’taking you home.”

With the decaying cigarette hanging from his lips, cellphone now stowed into his pants pocket, he slammed the door. The air inside the vehicle was acrid, stifling, ashes tumbling onto his lap as the engine revved to life. Grey smoke prickled against your eyes until they lined with water and glass. Just before you exited the gas station, your boyfriend rolled down his window and tossed the cigarette, only to reveal another from the glove compartment.

Sticking the wand in his mouth, he tossed you the lighter.

“Spark.” He demanded.

Your whole arm was trembling whilst you positioned the lighter close to the cigarette, thumb pressing down in an anxious flurry, teeth grinding together as you piously prayed the stupid flame would just blossom already so he wouldn’t get foul. Once he exhaled the first puff and took back the lighter, you sunk into the upholstery, hoping he didn’t see your tears.

“Jihoon?”

The boy had been occupied pulling pink tufts of cotton candy apart. The last time you two met within the closet, you were discussing an autumn carnival that took place each year in your town, how you spent the night with a pocket full of tickets and sugar floss melting against your tongue. Jihoon said he couldn’t remember the taste, the smell, the texture, so you promised to bring him a large bag stuffed with cotton candy. He glanced up at you, candlelight swimming in his eyes like a brightly coloured coy fish.

“What did you write about?”

He paused. Then, Jihoon was sitting with a straight spine, rubbing his index finger and thumb together, as though he were attempting to lure an ancient memory from hiding. You wondered if he missed literature, how a ballpoint pen glides across cream paper, the specific click that echoes from a typewriter, running fingertips across a leathered hardcover just to feel every bump and divot. You wished it was possible to read one of his books. He told you he burned them all, every page disintegrating into dust and cinders.

Jihoon looked at the last clump of cotton candy in his hands.

Delicately, he tore the floss in two pieces. Something deep inside your chest fluttered when Jihoon gave you the other tuft.

“Love.” He said, finding the vivacious reflection in your eyes, “I wrote about love.”

As a child, the darkness used to scare you. It was impossible to fall asleep without the dim glow of your aquarium or the fluorescent stars tacked to your ceiling. Things looked different in the dark, they became unfamiliar and colourless and shapeshifted into malignant creations that stopped moving only when the light touched them. Even now, the darkness was still harrowing, but you’d grown to realize that tenebrosity was much scarier when it lived inside human beings.

No light existed which could freeze them in their intent to hurt, no light which transformed them back into the coat over the back of your chair or the laundry pile lumped in its basket. And as you sat next to Jihoon on the closet floor, his gaze thoughtlessly wandering to your wrist, he knew you’d give anything to stay in the dark closet if it meant you never had to see your boyfriend again. You kept rubbing at your skin, squeezing in an anxious pattern.

“Stop.” Jihoon couldn’t stand to watch you repeat yourself. It felt like you were going to erase the flesh clean off.

“It helps.” You told him, though your argument was inconceivably frail, emaciated.

Suddenly, Jihoon reached across the space, his fingers falling over your wrist to bump away your pesky hand. The second you were unable to scrub at the fingernail indents, the scratches, the dull throb of every bruise he’d ever printed upon your skin, the breath died in your throat and there was a stinging sensation that burnt your eyes. Your boyfriend had ruined you. The wounds controlled you, left you in prostration and agony.

Before you could erupt into tears, Jihoon’s thumb began stroking back and forth over a fading scratch, a rhythmic movement, one that managed to calm you down until the tears slowly dried up and the flame no longer illuminated the glossiness of your eyes. He urged you to take a breath whilst he continued to brush soft reassurances across your skin. At first, you were offended by Jihoon’s interference, even slightly angered.

But the way he was so gentle with you brought you to capitulate.

“I’d never try to hurt you.” Jihoon whispered when you caught his gaze in the candlelight.

“I know.” You sighed, placing your hand over top his, “thank you.”

Your hands curled around the handlebars of the bicycle, slightly raised from the uncomfortable seat as you pedalled into town that autumn morning. An impending cold front gushed from the north, sweeping against your face in a harsh frigidity that caressed away any remnants of sleep. Tucking your chin into the fleece of your pullover, you stopped pedalling and allowed the bicycle to simply glide, maneuvering over the small pebbles and gorges in the cement.

A familiar house at the end of the block became closer, closer, closer, to which you bit down on your cheek’s inner flesh, your knuckles tensing like they could burst from the thin covering of skin. You stared straight ahead. It was too early for him to be outside. He was too lethargic.

Or was he?

“Hey!”

You’d been caught, a disarrayed haze momentarily warping your vision. The tires skidded to a halt on the sidewalk, your sneaker touching the ground whilst the northern wind nipped at your cheeks. He sat on his porch, wearing a burly-looking coat that appeared to be seldom washed, a flimsy cigarette perched at the corner of his mouth. Blowing a weak cloud of smoke from between his lips, he gestured for you to approach him, and your heart dropped.

Step by step, you walked the bicycle up his driveway, a few scarlet leaves from an oak tree spiralling down and colouring the gravel. Not even their warm tint could sugar coat that wicked, tight-lipped smile dancing from one spot of his mouth to the other. It was like the devil sat behind him, a myriad of strings on his fingers, and he was pulling each and every one.

“Where’re you off to, sunshine?”

“Into town. I’m getting some groceries.”

His eyes, bloodshot, much too hollowed at the early hour, gave you a once-over. You felt the sponge in your bones deflate. If a person’s stare could be washed from your skin, then you’d find the nearest hot shower and lock yourself inside.

He tapped some ash off his cigarette. “You don’t need to do that now, do you?”

“I-It’s a good time, actually. It won’t be busy.”

Don’t break down, don’t break down, do not let him infiltrate.

In an abasing fashion, your boyfriend laughed, like it was impossible to fathom that you could uphold a life, responsibilities, independence, beyond him and his fallacy of omniscience. He stood up and took another hit of nicotine from the cigarette. Then he was balancing the wand between his teeth, smiling down at you again, the devil’s strings metallic and unbreaking.

“Come inside,” he said, tipping his head toward the door, “leave your bike and we’ll share a nice drink, sunshine.”

You knew through mistake that it would be an unkind fate to deny him. Resting your bicycle against the porch, you trailed a few steps behind him into the house. Just before you closed the door, you drew in a long breath, examining the leaves on the oak tree, feeling that crisp air touch your face, looking up at small gaps of morning light between the grey clouds.

You always tried to remember the natural world, just in case you prematurely became a part of it.

Jihoon had set the notepad overtop his knee, one hand holding the papers still whilst the other clasped a black pen. Upon waiting for him to finish his prose, you fidgeted with the gold pocket mirror, pressing the edge of your nail into its infinitesimal grooves that created the rose. Time and time again, you wondered about the pocket mirror, a robust relic from the nineteen-twenties that the boy had gifted you.

“Done.” Jihoon announced, lifting the pen from the notepad.

The candle was rather inept at providing sufficient light, though you managed to read his looped, cursive writing with a surprising ease, with familiarity, like the words had been from a love letter you read every dusk.

Peaches and cotton candy are sweet. Orchids smell like rain. Scratches can fade.

You smiled at him. The inside of your chest was warmer than a July heatwave. After exchanging the gold mirror for the pen, you brainstormed a set of prose to match his. Jihoon had never looked at his reflection since he was alive, when oxygen still pumped to his heart and his veins hadn’t been replaced with frost. Suddenly, an idea sparked, and you wrote quickly.

Once you handed him back the notepad, he returned the mirror.

I’ll admire you so that you don’t have to. I’ll keep your beauty alive.

He circled the pen between his fingers. With knees pressed tight against your chest, you watched Jihoon’s teeth sink into his bottom lip before he hunched over the notepad, printing a line of clean cursive. Out of all the items you’d brought him, this seemed to be his favourite.

Jihoon passed you the notepad.

Letting the pocket mirror sit between your crossed legs, you held the paper close to your face, hoping it would help conceal the flustered grin.

If I had a second life, I would find you. I would take you away from the pain you have now.

“I wish you had a second life too.” You told Jihoon in a delicate, almost trembling voice. “I wish I could bring you into my life, even if it were just for one night.”

The boy nodded whilst he stared at the wax candle, one that a priest let you take home after you spent a visit to the church, hoping to discover some sense of purpose, some form of guidance. That was two years ago. Even though you had thanked the priest for the candle, it seemed completely useless. Or so you thought. Now, it was the only way you could differentiate every detail of Jihoon’s face, his skin constantly basked in a golden aurora.

“I think…” Jihoon murmured, sitting up slowly and staring into the warm light, “I think there is a way.”

Something seemed to be revolving in his mind, something that planted hope in your belly, and as he explained to you the procedure, you hadn’t realized his fingers gradually interlacing with yours.

The night of October thirty-first, that was the only sliver in which Jihoon could ever separate from the closet, the cottage house, and reacquaint himself with the earthy air and moonlight. It was the only time when the barrier between the human realm and spirit realm was significantly thin enough. Jihoon stood in your bedroom, dressed in an auburn, corduroy button-up vest, the sleeves of his white dress shirt cuffed to his elbows, his trousers hemmed along the leg.

Could those be the same clothes he wore upon taking his own life? You were always curious, though refrained from acting too inquisitive. The boy suddenly reached into his right pants pocket, shifting his fingers as though he were attempting to fish something out, until he glanced at the gold dome in your hand and a pink dust developed along the arch of his cheeks. These days, you’d been holding onto his mirror like it was a personal ligament.

He shrugged. “Old habit.”

Jihoon followed you into the living room. Whilst you tossed on a water-proof jacket and wriggled each foot into a pair of degrading tennis sneakers, the boy paused just in front of the fireplace. He touched the crimson brick, then stuck out two ice-cold palms. The embers were radiant and warm. They drew a beautiful glow to his skin. If Jihoon felt the energy of the heat, he didn’t express it. You stuffed the mirror into your pocket and called for him.

There was a slight drag as Jihoon seemed hesitant to part from the flames, twirling and alive, like he’d been trying to seek for a lost artifact that might still remain amongst the ashes.

“Nothing is the same.”

With his head constantly pivoting in order to gauge every detail, Jihoon seemed to realize that the town he moved into during the last century was starkly and scarily different. Houses now built over cobalt roads, where the wealthy had once let exhaust tumble from the pipes of their timely vehicles. A shopping centre stuck the middle of what was once a cornfield, always rife with healthy, luminous green stalks during the balmy summers. His favourite diner, where he used to gather all his papers and write until his pen lost its ink, listening to revolving tunes on the jukebox, had been replaced by a furniture store.

Jihoon didn’t sound upset, but jaded perhaps.

He’d moved from his homeland, Busan, South Korea, at twenty years old, taking with him little to no belongings apart from some clothes and a pocket mirror his girlfriend had gifted him. He desired a meaningful existence with his writing, hoping to make something, be somebody.

And yet, three years after leaving Busan, Jihoon had killed himself in his cottage home.

“A lot can change in a hundred years. Good and bad. ” You sighed whilst waiting at a crosswalk.

The boy shivered due to the crisp, autumn wind. “It appears so.”

He then clenched his teeth together. “Say, do you think I could get some new clothes? These have a few holes. They’re scratchy too.”

You glanced at the enormous, neon sign anchored to the shopping centre across the street.

“I think I can help you out.”

For the first time in a century, Jihoon stared at himself in a mirror. It was a tall, thin mirror stuck to a changeroom door. His decaying articles were folded on the bench, faintly stitched with the scent of wood pyres and dust and potent ink. It took Jihoon less than a minute to discover his new clothes, a dark blue hoodie and black sweatpants. The hoodie swallowed his upper-half. He seemed comfortable, warm, his fingers rubbing the inside of the fleece sleeve.

In a peculiar way, it hurt.

He no longer held the appearance of a middleclass writer who’d burn out his cigars on paper, always had a whisky shot coursing through his blood, some ash from the fireplace constantly rubbed to his cheek. He had no longer just stepped through a time portal into the most recent era. Instead, Jihoon looked like a student you might brush shoulders with before a lecture, or a modest stranger who’d catch your eye at a party.

If only Jihoon had actually been that stranger, rather than the boyfriend you have now.

“Don’t let go of my hand.”

You asked Jihoon wearily whilst stepping onto a cement ledge next to the sidewalk. Truthfully, it wasn’t that high. Truthfully, you just wanted feel his cold touch caress your skin.

He blinked up at your figure, the moonlight glowing behind you, outlining you in a silver, narrow frame.

“I won’t. I promise.”

Once you were steadied on the ledge, you began placing one foot in front of the other, taking attentive steps that had little to no breadth, and yet they felt like immeasurable strides. Jihoon held your fingers with a sweet pressure. You were almost near the end of the ledge when that autumn wind decided to ripple hard and fierce, and as you braced against the current, you lost your balance. With a small shriek you nearly stumbled over the edge.

Jihoon didn’t waver. His hands fastened upon your waist and he caught you in his arms, feeling your heartbeat that drummed through your chest and into his.

“W-Whoops…” Your laughter was anxious, embarrassed.

Never having been pressed against each other before, there was slight uneasiness. There was racing thoughts and cotton-hearts, a fleeting catch of the other’s eye and faces so close that you shared the same breath. His hands cupped at your waist; your palms flat against his shoulders. If you kissed him, would he taste like a Cuban cigar? Or a soft, warm peach grown beneath summer sunshine? Jihoon thought you smelled like an orchid.

However, you both peeled away from each other.

“Wait—” you remarked before continuing down the sidewalk, “you promised not to let go of my hand.”

Jihoon intertwined your fingers, his thumb smoothing quickly over the ridges of your knuckles.

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

The stars burned in their own soot, twinkling intermittently and spread apart across the blackness. Some were passionate and lurid, whilst others were dim, barely there, only glistering to indicate that their radiance still lived. You sat next to Jihoon on the train station bench, the heated rim of a paper cup touching your lips, stained with hot chocolate. After taking a sip and feeling the velvet against your throat, you handed him the drink.

Upon purchasing Jihoon’s new cloths, you’d emptied all the bills wadded in your pocket. A small palm of coins remained and you counted them aside to buy two train tickets in addition to a hot chocolate. The tip of his nose was slightly pinkish from the cold. His eyes focused on the steam, which he impatiently dispersed by forming his lips into a tiny O shape. You continued exchanging the cup until there was nothing more than a ring of wet cocoa powder at the base.

Jihoon began softly bumping his knee against yours whilst you waited for the train. He seemed unaware, though you couldn’t be certain. He had quite the array of small, endearing habits.

Suddenly, you felt a slight vibration inside your coat pocket. And then another, another, and one more after that. Once you slid out the device, something that was thicker than dread surrounded you, absorbing every ray of starlight. His snarl jeered at you through the texts.

[11:15PM | DO NOT ANSWER]: Why haven’t you responded to me?

[11:15PM | DO NOT ANSWER]: Where are you??

[11:15PM | DO NOT ANSWER]: What did I tell you about going out and not saying anything?

[11:15PM | DO NOT ANSWER]: You don’t just fucking do something like that.

You could already feel his ironclad grip suctioned around your wrist, his fingernails submerging into your flesh, carving out new scratches to replace the ones that had faded.

In the distance, you heard the train rattling and smelled the burning coal. You stuffed the phone into your pocket and pretended the texts were non-existent, yet, that characteristic glint in your eyes was much too candour. How was there a point in pretending when you gave away your own lies?

“Come on,” Jihoon stood from the bench, his breath ghosting into the nighttime air, “you have the tickets ready?”

As the train slowed to a trill halt, you nodded, revealing the two tickets from your pocket.

“Good, good.” He gently traced his fingertips down the back of your wrist before encompassing your hand in his. Jihoon squeezed firmly, leaned into your ear where his breath was ticklish.

Somehow, you didn’t feel afraid anymore when he whispered, “let’s go home, alright? I’ll help warm you up and we’ll go to bed together.”

The conductor accepted your tickets with a tight-lipped smile, and Jihoon’s fingers played with yours whilst the man readied his hole-punch. For some reason, your eyes drifted to the side of the boy’s neck, where ever so faintly, a reddish-pink scar curled around his pearl skin. It was the first time you ever noticed the mark now that Jihoon was no longer blanketed in the closet’s meagre light. The mark seemed painful, like something had been taunt against his windpipe.

You knew Jihoon had taken his own life three years after leaving the comfort and familiarity of Busan. You knew Jihoon had a girlfriend back in his hometown that he wanted to marry. He put love on hold to become a writer. He sacrificed everything yet gained nothing.

The universe was awfully typical.

Upon exhaling a soft breath through your nose, eyelids droopy from the drowsiness, you rested your temple against Jihoon’s shoulder during the train ride home. He must have thought you’d fallen asleep, for his fingertips brushed sweetly against your exposed cheek, his lips pressing to the top of your forehead, leaving behind the warmth of a tender kiss. Jihoon’s touch was always cool, yet it translated into heat.

Forcibly, you gulped down a surprised cough. You knew that was what an intimate relationship should be.

It was more so the fact you had never experienced it.

You kissed the boy’s jaw. His shoulder became rigid, though you were smiling with eyes shut tighter than a locket.

Jihoon mumbled lowly against your forehead, “you were supposed to be asleep.”

Refusing to open your eyes, somewhat petrified that gazing upon his face would further embolden just how attached were to him, you simply shook your head.

“I am asleep. I talk in my sleep. I’m sleep-talking.”

“Do you kiss people in your sleep too?”

Your eyebrow quirked. “Didn’t you just kiss me?”

“Because I thought you were asleep.”

“I am aslee—”

Jihoon’s palm gently cupped overtop your mouth, muffling the syllables. Your laughter was hot against his skin, and your eyes finally opened. No, you didn’t want to fall asleep. It just meant that the next morning Jihoon would be gone.

You removed the little mirror from your jacket and placed it on the night table, then pulled the cloth curtains shut as though you were going to disrobe. However, you only removed your jacket and flung off your bra, much too cognisant of your dwindling time with Jihoon, afraid that even changing into your pyjamas would waste the precious minutes. He observed each of your movements as he lounged on his side, taking up the left half of your bed.

How long had it been since he last sunk into a mattress, since he last had a warm body to share the space with?

Jihoon stared at the dull, golden dome of the pocket mirror. He remembered his past lover’s face, the pain she attempted to make imperceptible as Jihoon stood with only a single luggage case at the Gyeongbu Line station. It was the nearing the terminal of nineteen-seventeen.

His twentieth birthday had transpired only a week ago.

“Just come back, alright?” She had been thumping her fists lightly against his chest, long strands of black hair draping her cheeks, “promise you’ll come back to me?”

“I promise, Jieun. Everything I am is you.”

He framed her beautiful face in his hands, kissed her slowly, wanted to permanently grain the taste of her lip gloss against his taste buds as well as the powdery notes of her perfume. Before he could leave, she slipped her gold, shiny mirror into his hand, a momentum, a memory, something that would preserve her significance to him.

Three years after leaving Busan and Jihoon would only remove the mirror from his pocket so that he could polish the surface. He wrote her love letters, filled every one of his notebooks with limerence-indulgent poems until the twine could no longer keep the pages from bulging open. His typewriter clicked from every pale-yellow morning to the midnight crickets. Being in love felt like a high. He dreamed of their wedding, their first house, a baby tucked in their arms.

Three years later and Jihoon’s rotary phone started wildly buzzing. It was his best friend, Soonyoung. He was sobbing, pouring out hiccups and inarticulate fragments that Jihoon could hardly understand. It wasn’t until the impatient boy snapped at him to clear his nose and take a breath that those words pulled taunt and impaled straight through Jihoon’s heart like a crossbow. There was no blood, and yet it seemed to fill his lungs and bubble thickly in his throat.

“I’ve been sleeping with Jieun. For almost a year now. I had to tell you. It’s eating me alive.”

That same day, Jihoon received a postcard with a picture of cheerful Songdo beach, a place they had often visited to walk the waterline, wondering about their future The back was blanketed in Jieun’s rushed, tear-stained handwriting.

It was true.

They both admitted it.

In that cottage home, Jihoon threw a match into the brick fireplace. Every poem, every notebook, every piece of literature he’d ever written were gradually enveloped and burnt up by the monstrous flames. An hour later and he was standing in his closet, an apple crate under his feet and a segment of durable rope in his hands. The fire continued to crackle in the living room whilst the smoke drifted from the chimney. Buried in his pocket was the gold rose mirror.

In due time, the flames had become the only live part of the house.

As Jihoon continued to stare at the mirror sitting on your night table, he was consistently poked with a truth that made him ache so terribly: his spirit could only be freed if the mirror broke.

But if the mirror broke, there was no possible method for you to contact him. Jihoon could not be summoned, and in no way, shape, or form could he interact with your life, rather he’d be an invisible observer with infinite freedom. This became information he never shared. The conflict was too saturated, and as much as Jihoon despised his condemnation to that dark little space, it was how he discovered you. He’d quickly learned you didn’t have freedom either.

Your freedom only seemed to develop in the presence of each other.

Suddenly, the bed dipped. Jihoon snapped from his musing. The sheets wrinkled below your hands and knees as you crawled toward him, eyes sleepy, intent to create the comfortable position where the curve of your spine was seamless with his front. When your gaze flitted downward, you spotted Jihoon’s hand resting on your hipbone. He waited, and you grinned.

“It’s okay,” you reassured him, “I want you closer. Please?”

Jihoon’s small huff tickled your ear whilst he slid his palm flat under your t-shirt. It stilled, pressing to your abdomen, the cold of his fingers meeting your soft warmth. His thumb began drawing strokes just under your navel, to which your eyes fluttered shut and a calm sigh rose in your chest. Somehow, you wanted to preserve this moment, like how petals could be sealed inside an amber stone so that their beauty never degraded. Jihoon’s hand etched further up your torso, his fingertips tracing the supple underside of your breast.

He kissed that tender sweet spot just below your ear, until your eyes opened, gaze falling directly onto the pocket mirror. Aside from the intense heat, another sensation overwhelmed you, and with a breath that was nothing short of unease you looked back over your shoulder at the boy who’d be gone by morning.

“I don’t want you to leave,” your voice emerged in a telling crack, “I need you.”

Jihoon shook his head. Leaning forward, his lips brushed yours in a gentle kiss.

“I’m not leaving. You know that. I’m always here.”

The tears brimmed your eyes. “N-No, I need you out here. In physicality. Not just in a c-closet.”

Your emotions mimicked a violet insurrection, where they could not be quelled no matter how fiercely you took your bottom lip under your teeth, or how rapidly you blinked, hoping the liquid would retract itself. Instead, they flowered in one big uprooting. You suckled in a sharp inhalation that gave them even more fuel and greed.

“Dammit—I didn’t want to cry, but I c-can’t help it!” You covered your eyes with your palms. “I had so much fun with you tonight, Jihoon – I just don’t want this to end. I don’t want to have this pain. My happiness is ripped away every time I see him. I want it to be you but it’s not!”

The boy tugged at your wrists, urging you to uncover yourself. He succeeded at catching your eyes despite how distorted they were with water.

“Relax, alright?” He cooed, his face hovering over yours. “Let yourself breathe.”

The backs of his fingers brushed up and down your far cheek. Before a tear could roll onto his thumb Jihoon had already pecked it away. Heeding his words, you drew in a slow breath and felt the coolness fill each lung, all whilst he comforted you using a benign hand.

“You have me. You’ll always have me. Whether I’m palpable or not doesn’t change that.”

“I-I know…” It squeaked out with little conviction, “If I couldn’t have that mirror, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Jihoon traced his thumb below your teary eye. “You’d be fine, even without the mirror.”

He was met with a doubtful glance.

“Trust me,” his reverence shone through each word, “whenever you speak to me, I will always listen. Even if you can’t see me, or grab my hand. Even if you feel completely alone. I will always hear you. It seems unlikely, but it’s true.”

Honesty consumed the boy’s gaze. His reassurance was akin to a sewing needle that wove back together the collapsing fabric of your heart.

Jihoon’s tone then became even more earnest, and your eyes burned into his.

“I love you. It’s a bit cheap of me to say that considering my circumstances, but I need you to know that having met you… You reunited me with what love is, when I thought it was impossible to feel it again. Life is cruel. We can’t be together in the way we want. I can’t steal you away from him and make you mine no matter how badly I wish I could.”

His fingers paused atop your cheek. Jihoon swallowed and pressed his forehead to yours.

“It’s too late for me, but you have your whole life.”

He kissed you deeply, slid in his tongue to taste the cheap hot chocolate, his chest aching when he heard one of your soft gasps melt into his mouth. Your fingers carded through his hair, but then Jihoon pulled away, rubbing his thumb to your bottom lip whilst you cradled his nape.

“You deserve someone who will cherish you, protect you, sing to you, let you be vulnerable in every way and adore you all the same.”

With a ginger smile, Jihoon looked deep into your eyes.

“And you need to have strength. Okay, my love? Will you promise me?”

Another tear trickled and soaked into your hair. Jihoon was right. There was no second life, and you didn’t want to spend any remainder of your first anchored to a boyfriend who would never love you like Jihoon did.

“I promise.” You spoke quietly, printing a kiss to his thumb. “I love you too. I always will.”

Then it was time for bed.

After reaching toward the night table and plucking off the lamp, you nestled your head against the smooth slope connecting his neck and shoulder, smelling the faint tang of an ancient cigar on his skin. One arm draped across his waist, your leg over his hip, every bit of your warmth seeping through Jihoon’s cloths and into his cold body. As a goodnight rhythm, Jihoon’s fingertips swept along your arm, the contact slightly ticklish but a reminder he was still tangible, still holding you, still positively in love with everything that fabricated you.

His heart wouldn’t change, even if he was no longer burying kisses to the top of your head by morning.

“You better watch your tone, sunshine. That’s all I’m saying.”

He leaned back against the kitchen counter, next to the sink crammed with grimy, porcelain dishes that had most likely been collecting for a week. The windowsill above the faucet was lined with dead flies, the glass adapting a sallow hue, as though some type of algae was beginning to develop. A vase sat on the small dining table, filled with orchids, though the purple petals were shrivelled and the bulbs drooped like they were trying to escape the stem.

A cigarette was held between his fingers, to which he smeared off the ashes by rubbing it against the countertop. Squeezing your hand even tighter around the pocket mirror, you stood ground.

“I’ve been watching my tone for the last two years. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” He huffed, folding an arm over his chest. “Then I taught you well. Don’t make me teach you again.” The smoke wafted from between his lips, and he hacked dryly.

You couldn’t believe you were doing this. The only reason you weren’t blubbering through every word was due to your unwavering grip on the mirror and the tearful promise you made to Jihoon. Maintaining an ember of hope, you prayed this would be the last time you smelled the poison from his cigarette. Freedom felt like a walk out his front door.

“The way you treat me is disgusting. You don’t know anything about a real relationship.”

He might have been dense, but his instinctual evil knew contempt like the back of his palm. His eyes flashed, recognizing your defiance, your desperation to break free. Rather than the slumped posture against the countertop, he started to straighten himself out and bare his teeth.

“What the fuck do you know about a real relationship? I treat you like you’re supposed to be treated. I made you a better partner, and you’re not even goddamn thankful?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” You felt not a grain of fear, but great astonishment, in which months of belligerence bled through your negation. “You made me better? Did you really just fucking say that? You put me in the worst position of my life! You’re an empty-headed, narcissistic, manipulative asshole!”

It was like a pin dropping in an empty theatre. The words that harped from your tongue merely skimmed the surface of your resentment, and you might’ve kept barrelling down if it weren’t for the obsidian in his eyes. You knew that soulless look. Already, you could feel the ache in your wrist, see glimpses of his iron hand reaching for your skin. He ripped the cigarette from his mouth, smacked it into the sink, and immediately loomed over you, wrestling for your wrist.

“H-Hey, don’t fucking touch me!” You cried out, whipping your elbow backward.

“Don’t act up then!” He roared, clutching onto your arm and wickedly shaking it until your grasp loosened around the pocket mirror.

With a horrified countenance, you watched the artifact fly from your hand and rattle against the plastic, stained tiles. The fragile clasp broke, its gold dome popped open, cracked glass crumbling out from the inside. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t speak. Air stuttered on the tip of your tongue whilst you stared at the hundred-year-old mirror, now decimated and irreplaceable. It felt like the universe had an unforgiving hand around your windpipe. No breath left your lungs.

“What the fuck,” he muttered, his brow furrowing, “why were you holding that?”

Why were you holding that?

With your mouth agape, you locked eyes with the man in front of you, and for once, he seemed afraid. The pain upended itself in your stomach, it burst into your atrium, your veins and blood. It was electricity. A frustrated growl reverberated from deep inside and suddenly you were slamming your hands against his chest, pushing him backward, making him stumble and wheeze and fear your aggression until he was caught against the kitchen counter.

“What the he—,”

“Shut up,” you choked out like your whole life had been ripped away from you, tears leaking down your face, “don’t you ever come up to me again. Don’t ever put your hands on me. Don’t you ever speak to me. Don’t you ever look at me. You can’t keep me trapped in your little cage anymore. We’re fucking through.”

He was heaving in quick-paced breaths, and you could see the disorientation cloud in his gaze. Before you left, you scooped the broken mirror and all its fragments into your hands.

You stalked through his front door, but it didn’t yet feel like freedom.

Darkness pooled around you, exempt from the yellowish flame that wriggled up candle wick. Gently opening the pocket mirror, you placed it on the closet floor, holding back a brittle sob as the tiny glass shards collected against its bottom. Glass shards that could never be fixed or glued back together. It was unadulterated heartache. You wondered if that was how Jihoon felt when he watched all his books smoulder in the fireplace, having to accept the voice at the back of his head which told him his literature would be lost forever.

Your eyes were damp and welting with tears as they fell shut. Quietly, into the small space you whispered: “If I ask for you, will you come to me?”

But the world was silent.

You felt not a single gust of arctic air against your face, nor did you hear the pocket mirror snapping shut. Jihoon’s soft fingertips weren’t brushing your arm, your teary cheek, the tender inside of your thigh, assuring you he was right at your side. A shudder split through your body. It couldn’t be true.

You entreated him again, “if I ask for you, will you come to me?”

A terrible sickness disseminated from your gut. You felt lightheaded, dizzy, saliva coating the inside of your mouth as though your system was preparing to vomit. Perspiration dappled your forehead, and you were burning hot, yet your hands were trembling like you’d been confined outside during the coldest winter. You leaned over into your palms and let out a petulant shriek. It was unclear how long you stayed in the closet, wetly hiccupping and mourning. The pain needed to escape, no matter how viciously.

And even though you couldn’t see Jihoon, he was looking after you as a free spirit, absorbing your agony, ensuring you didn’t have to feel such torment all by yourself.

Eight months later

It was around lunchtime as you picked up your bicycle, resting against the ivy that coated the sun-soaked wall of the cottage. You decided to pedal into town and grab groceries. June summers were always pleasant, colourful; the heat was rarely unbearable or notably sticky and when you rode your bicycle, the breeze blew the scent of the neighbourhood honeysuckle into your face.

Soaring along the sidewalk, you felt – for once in your life – remarkably free.

When you neared that ominous house at the end of the block, you weren’t afraid, rather you continued pedaling with contentedness, brushing right by the driveway as though it were any other house one might pass on a bike ride. You didn’t think about your wrist. The scratches had long since faded. There was no more bruised tissue or blunt carvings from fingernails. Upon nearing the grocery store, you were creating a small list in your head.

You knew you wanted peaches. Ice cream if they had your favourite flavour. Vegetables and meat and spices for a stew. In fact, you were so concentrated on making the non-existent list that you didn’t even note the young man who’d just rushed out the market door. At the last second you jammed the breaks and gasped, feeling the inertia against your body.

Some of the papers and photographs tucked under the stranger’s arm dislodged, fluttering to the ground.

“Holy shit,” you set your bicycle against the store wall, “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t paying attention at all—here, let me help you.”

“I-It’s alright,” he replied, sounding a bit shaky as he joined you in collecting the papers, “I wasn’t paying attention either.”

When you grabbed one particular photo from the ground, you immediately froze.

It was grainy, black and white, but you could recognize that face amongst hundreds. His eyes, his lips, even the corduroy button-up and crisp dress shirt. He was leaning against a jukebox, hands in his pockets, a pen tucked behind his ear, grinning like he’d just struck the lottery. You were so entranced with the photograph that the stranger could only stand before you, a thick blush on his cheeks whilst he waited for you to finish ogling. It wasn’t until he slightly cleared his throat that you budged.

“Do you know this guy?” You asked after handing him back the picture.

“Well, not personally…” He scratched the nape of his neck. “But I know who he was. Lee Jihoon. I have this culminating project in my writing class. I thought it’d be cool to choose him since his story is so intriguing. I—,” Suddenly, he stopped, and laughed anxiously.

“Sorry, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about.”

His amber complexion turned increasingly pink. You’d never seen him around town before, but god—he was cute. He had these thin, circular glasses that sat on his pointed nose, a mole doting the upper arch of his cheek, the deepest brown eyes you’d ever seen. His hair was a bit disarrayed after you nearly struck him with your bicycle, the black strands fluttering against the summer breeze. And interestingly enough, he knew who Jihoon was.

“I know of him,” you smiled, though it was hollow, “his story is intriguing, according to what I’ve heard.”

The stranger seemed to sense your aching.

“Yeah… kinda sad stuff. Um, I-I’m Seokmin by the way. I heard Jihoon lived in this town so I’m trying to collect resources.”

You glanced at him thoughtfully and returned your name. Seokmin started organizing his papers, proceeding to shove them back under his arm.

“Resources?” Came your inquiry. “Like what kind?”

“Anything, honestly. I started researching him when I lived in Korea. I even got my hands on some copies of citizen records. I know he had a cottage around here too, but I don’t know the address. And that’s weird right? Knocking on the owner’s door asking about a deceased writer.”

“Seokmin.”

He pushed up the silver bridge of his glasses and gulped. “Yeah?”

“I think I can help you out.”

After taking Seokmin on a curt tour through the cottage, he seemed speechless, and quite frankly a little bewildered considering his luck at encountering you. Much of the cottage had been renovated and refurbished, all but the closet and the crimson fireplace.

The tour ended in your bedroom, where Seokmin shot a wary glance at the closet you had always kept empty, knowing what the cramped space entailed in terms of the writer’s premature death. You thought he needed to sit, so you assured him it was fine if he took a couple minutes on the edge of your bed.

With his documents next to him, Seokmin’s eyes once again probed around the room. He then sighed as you leaned against your dresser, to which you pondered on what had disturbed him.

“I can’t believe he burnt all his work. It’s just gone, y’know?”

Tapping your fingers against the wood, you nodded. “It’s unfortunate.”

“When I was poking around for information back in Busan, I heard he had this girlfriend who cheated on him with his friend. All his books were these amazing love stories based on her, but I guess he felt they were tarnished… So, he just… Destroyed them. I wonder if there’s anything of his left.”

Immediately, you stiffened. Stowed away within your night table’s compartment was the gold pocket mirror. You had removed the broken glass after slicing the edge of your finger on a shard, and only the antique shell remained. It was too painful to keep the mirror with you as frequently as before, so you stored it in a special place, and only accessed it when you needed to talk with Jihoon, when you really needed to feel his presence, even if it couldn’t be what it once was.

Worrying your bottom lip between your teeth, you approached the table and pulled open the compartment, revealing to Seokmin the pocket mirror, dulled and broken after a century of hardship. He outstretched his palm when you allowed him to hold it.

“S-Shit, I heard about this mirror. His girlfriend gave him this. Is it the actual thing?”

Folding your arms over your chest, you nodded. “I promise, it’s not a fake.”

Gently, Seokmin opened the broken clasp.

“No glass?” He questioned.

“Um…” You were nibbling your lip hard enough to draw blood, “Just… something happened, and it broke. It was too dangerous to keep the glass.”

“Oh,” Seokmin hummed, “that’s fine. It’s still beautiful. I can’t even believe I’m holding it.” His chest rumbled with disbelieving laughter.

“It’s so hard to see it broken…” You sighed, feeling your lungs shake and your throat tighten.

Seokmin looked up at you, how you gazed at the mirror as though it were a lost love. He rose from the bed and delicately placed the momentum back into its compartment.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.” The boy pointed out in a soft voice.

“Why not?” You sniffled, tears stinging your eyes, yearning to fall.

“Well, there’s this myth, I guess. People who take their own life are condemned to their personal grave. When items that were precious to them break, like that mirror, it sets their soul free. So, even if it’s painful for you, it could have been a good thing. If you believe in spirits and all that.”

For a moment, you simply held yourself firmer, staring deep into the kind earth of Seokmin’s eyes whilst this catharsis bloomed inside you. Even though you knew the mirror wasn’t necessary for Jihoon to hear or see you, it had been the most difficult tribulation you ever knuckled through. Trying to accept life as it was, not as what it could have been. Seokmin’s brow knitted together concerningly, his bottom lip pushing out, hoping he didn’t upset you.

“Are you oka—,”

He lost an ounce of his breath when you wrapped your arms around his waist, holding onto him tight whilst a few tears beaded toward your chin. Seokmin was at first stunned, though it melted off easily, and you felt his hand rub tenderly against your back. He murmured some small reassurances. His voice was incredibly dulcet, almost velvet-like, and you thought he’d make a good singer. When you took a step away to wipe up any tears, Seokmin gazed at you fondly.

“I’m really sorry,” you chuckled, fingertips brushing against your eye, “but thank you for saying that. It’s something I needed to hear.”

Seokmin shook his head. “Don’t apologize. Pain is pain.”

You smiled at him. He wasn’t wrong.

Realizing he needed to move on with his day, you lead Seokmin downstairs and to the front door, where he stood next to your lilac bush, the afternoon sun adding a touch of honey to his cheeks. Just before he left, you couldn’t help but note that he was fumbling with his words a lot, licking his pretty lips, running a hand through his black locks. Eventually, the boy found his words.

“Do you want to meet up again, maybe?” He quickly adjusted his glasses. “And we can do something? I-I think you’re really nice and cute and I still can’t believe you showed me around when you didn’t have to. I’m sorry if that’s too soon. I totally understand if you’d rather ju—”

“I’d love to.”

The overwrought nature to his face immediately cleared. Instead, Seokmin looked vibrant, so much in fact, that you could feel a familiar sense of warmth rise in your face. It was a sensation you hadn’t experienced in a long while, but it made you happy, inconceivably happy.

“Really? Okay, cool. Do you want my number?”

As you removed the phone from your pocket, your heart skipped a beat.

“Sure,” you eagerly complied, “let’s do it.”

And on that day, your life began in the way you always dreamed it would.

✧✎ a/n: again, i just want to apologize for my lack of posting (pls refer to my last update if you’re curious). I HOPE THE ENDING MADE UP FOR THE PAIN AND SADNESS lolll.

#caratwritersclub #seventeen scenarios #jihoon scenarios #seventeen angst #jihoon angst #lee jihoon #seventeen woozi #woozi scenarios #svt fanfic #svt angst #jihoon x reader #seventeen x reader #seventeen imagines #abuse tw #suicide tw

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tendertenebrosity · 4 years

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Ruler and Empress part 14

Masterpost here! Even the first few paragraphs of this is gonna contain spoilers for part 13, so if you haven’t read that bit yet, you probably should before going further!

Lian sat, numbly, expecting to hear the sound of guards rushing in at any moment to drag them away.

What have I done? I killed her. I never thought - I needed to stop her, but I didn’t think -

Lian could not believe what had happened. That the Empress had allowed the opportunity to arise, or that Lian had taken it. Any second now, this brief moment of stillness in which they understood exactly what they’d done would break apart, into terror and violence and inevitable consequences.

But there was… nothing. Incredibly, whatever noise Lian had made when they killed Elisandre, it had been slight enough that nobody outside this room had heard it. Hadn’t the guard that had brought them here stayed outside the door? Surely not, or he would be in here by now.

Lian sat there on the ground, surrounded by broken glass, beside the cooling, bloody body of the Empress. The curtain danced in the light of the softly glowing candles. And nobody came.

An unknowable amount of time passed before the pain of the cuts on their fingers brought them back to themselves.

I have to hide this, Lian thought, their first coherent thought in what felt like a very long time but must have been only minutes. Nobody knows - yet. If they find out - the guards, the Empress’ court - If they find out what I’ve done, what will they do in retribution?

Their breathing was harsh, ragged, filling their ears, as they carefully, haltingly started down the trail of thought. Lian wouldn’t have been so afraid if it was only themself who would pay the price - or at least, they liked to think they wouldn’t have been afraid. It would still be worth it, if Lian died but nobody ever heard that last order that the Empress had been planning to give out. But the Empress’ court was made in the image of its monarch - or the other way around, perhaps - so Lian didn’t dare hope things would stop there.

Far more likely that the penalty would fall on their country as a whole.

Lian raised their hands up to the candlelight, trying to gulp back their breathing to something resembling calm. No glass fragments remained; underneath the blood - oh gods, so much blood - the cuts didn’t seem serious. Their fingers stung fiercely, but they still moved.

It was astonishing that nobody had come for Lian already. But since they hadn’t… maybe there was still time for Lian to fix this.

No more time to sit here in a horror-struck daze; time to think. The breeze that pushed past the curtain still smelled of smoke. Lian had a thought of climbing down from the open window, but dismissed it; they could never make such a climb without rope, and what good would it do to flee and leave evidence of their guilt? Their people could not escape through a window.

It’s the middle of the night, and she called you out of bed. Who knows you’re here? Only that one guard?

Once the Empress retired to her bedchamber, Lian knew, she usually wasn’t disturbed until she emerged on her own. Only the most urgent of messages would be brought to her. So if the guards truly had not heard… and if Lian could return this little sitting-room to normal… her absence probably would not be discovered until long past dawn.

Lian took one final deep breath, and let it out as slowly as they could. Then they pushed themself to their feet, and into feverish activity.

The table was easy enough to right, the unbroken glassware set aside. But after that it was no longer avoidable; they needed to deal with the body.

As they lifted one of her arms - terribly warm and terribly heavy - they were appalled all over again at the blood. The smell of it clogged their nose, thick and metallic and nauseating. They’d seen this much blood before, of course, but if anything those memories made their stomach flip even more.

Wait. I shouldn’t get any more of it on me. Lian looked down at themself. Their right hand was already sodden, of course, and there was rather a lot on their chest, but amazingly, the rest of their nightclothes had only flecks. They tried to breathe through their mouth and let themself be consumed by the practical problems the body and the blood posed.

They went to her bedroom, holding their hands carefully away from their clothing. The bed, as before, was covered in silk and velvet; they hauled one of the covers free. They wiped their trembling hands and their face with a corner, then bundled it up in their arms to take it back to the sitting room.

It took them… gods, they weren’t sure, perhaps as much as half an hour and what felt like most of the fabric in the Empress’ room. But they mopped up the blood and the spilled water. Swept up the shards of glass, all but the tiniest pieces, with shaking hands and rapid, panicked breathing. Nobody knocked on the door as they worked.

Lian wasn’t particularly strong. Elisandre’s body was both extremely heavy, and nowhere near as heavy as it felt like it should be as they wrapped it up in the covers. The golden braid and the embroidered silk almost overwhelming the slight body with richness and heaviness. All of this. All of everything they’d been through, the power this woman had held over so many lives, all the damage that had been done… and in the end she was so small.

No, you idiot, Lian thought, a touch hysterically, as they managed to roll the fabric-swathed bundle over for the final time and tuck in the edges. It’s not all her, it’s not just her. Do you think the entire Empire will evaporate into dust just because you killed the person at the top of it? Was that what you thought? Idiot, idiot, idiot. You didn’t think. You should have thought! Their heart pounded so hard, and they were so clumsy, it seemed incredible nobody could hear the noise they were making. Any moment, the door could fly open, and everything would be ruined.

You should have thought this through. What have you done?

The edge of the window hadn’t seemed particularly high before, but it did now. Arms around one end of the bundle, heave upwards, find the tipping point and…

The terrible velvet roll slid over the windowsill and was gone, out of their arms in an instant, and Lian heard the flap and rustle as it fell, long moments of falling until it hit the garden bed several stories below.

Surely someone had heard that. Lian stood there, in the stifling candlelit dimness, and gulped for breath.

I’ve ruined everything. I’ve killed everyone.

They stuffed that thought away as unhelpful. They closed their eyes and made themselves take several more deep breaths.

They opened their eyes and surveyed the room. Did it look like it had before? Not perfect, but better.

They ended up rearranging the tiny tables and dragging a rug three feet to the left, to cover the places where blood was caught in wood grain. Tided the bedroom and rearranged the silken pillows.

Then they stood, out of breath, in the centre of the room, and realised that was all they could do. Part of them couldn’t believe they’d even got this far in their frantic, barely-thought out attempt to hide what they’d done. They would almost certainly be discovered as soon as they stepped out the door…

But that didn’t mean they could stay here.

Lian blew out the candles one by one. They rolled their sleeves up, retrieved their wrap from the floor where it had fallen so long ago, and arranged it around themself with exacting care, so that not a fleck of blood showed.

On their way to the door, they examined their own reflection in the glass front of one of the cabinets. Fine lacquerware and silver glittered in the dimness behind their washed-out face.

No blood showed. Their hair, still pulled back in its braid for sleep; the wrap tucked close under their chin; their eyes shadowed with tiredness and red-rimmed, but nothing more than that. They looked like they’d been crying, but as long as they didn’t look like they’d been frantically covering up a murder, Lian could live with that. They practiced dropping their gaze and looking only miserable.

Tense as a harpstring, as a bowstring, they opened the doors and padded out into the corridor on cold bare feet.

There was a guard at the end of the hall; less than a hundred metres away. Oh, gods, oh, gods. Lian swallowed back their heart, beating fit to burst in their chest, and approached him.

It was, they realised, the same one that had pulled them out of bed. An age ago.

“Her Majesty’s done with you, then?” he said, as Lian stopped a few feet away.

“Yes,” Lian whispered. They clutched their wrap tight with numb fingers, gaze fixed on the floor. Oh gods, was there blood on their feet? They had not thought to check… “T-take me back to my room, please.”

The guard stepped closer, intimidatingly close; he seemed to want to see Lian cringe, so they obliged, shrinking back. “That what her Majesty’s orders are?” he asked - was it suspicion, or just the guards’ usual heavy-handedness than made him press Lian?

“For now,” Lian stammered. “I’m to - uh - her Majesty will want me back when, when it’s light, but I…” Their voice dried up into a croak.

The guard looked them up and down, and Lian felt like their guilt was plain to be read on their face, in their shaking hands, the sweat that beaded their temple and their neck. The Empress’ blood was cold and sodden against their chest under the wrap. But they stood there, silent, and prayed he would take their stammering and trembling for distress at whatever the Empress had said or done.

Eventually he nodded, and they nearly collapsed from relief. He took them firmly by the shoulder and guided them back towards the darkened cavity that was the staircase downwards.

Lian sniffled, quietly, as they walked, and didn’t try to dislodge the hand on their arm, for fear of disturbing the careful arrangement of their wrap. Their head was spinning, and if they stumbled a few times on the stairs, the guard didn’t seem to find it odd.

How much does he know of what’s happened? Lian wondered. Of what she had planned for the morning?

If the Empress had told anybody else of her intentions, all that Lian had done tonight might not be enough. The cataclysm they had tried to avoid, a third of the city to be burned, could still occur.

The guard made an impatient noise as Lian stumbled, taking a step too quickly. They clutched their wrap desperately and held their body away from him as he supported them down the next few steps.

Once the corpse was found, Lian thought shakily, glancing over at him, this man would point the finger at Lian. Was possibly the only person who could, given that he’d escorted them there and back alone. If Lian was a different person, they might have been thinking of ways to make sure he couldn’t do that.

Impossible, even if Lian had wanted to.

The guard was mercifully silent as he escorted Lian down the stairs and through the silent, dim corridors. The sound of their bedroom door closing behind them was muted, soft, somehow definitive; footsteps followed as the guard walked away.

Alone inside the dubious haven of their bedroom, Lian cast off the wrap and their bloody nightclothes.

They could scarcely summon the energy, but after a long moment sitting on their bed and just breathing, they pulled it together enough to put the bloodstained clothes somewhere out of immediate sight, before they cleaned the blood from their chest and hands. This done, they crawled to huddle under their blankets.

I need to get rid of those, they thought, numbly, wrapping their arms around their shoulders in the darkness, trying to keep from shaking. Someone will find them. I can’t endanger the cleaning staff. Tomorrow, I’ll get rid of them. How can I get rid of them where nobody will see?

What do I do in the morning?

The Empress must not have given any orders for punishment of the city. Lian clung to that thought, using it as an anchor to pull themselves together. It had been a spontaneous decision, while Lian was there; she had been wild with anger, nothing she said had been calculated to her usual standards. So surely she hadn’t told anybody else yet.

In the morning, Lian would see to the aftermath of the fires. They would act as if nothing untoward had happened. Should they pretend the Empress had not even summoned them? Could they pretend to shock when someone told them of the fires?

Please, gods. Let me not have brought ruin on us all.

#Lian #Empress Elisandre #ruler and empress #royal whumpee #whump drabble #my stuff #violence tw #blood tw #death tw #royalty whump #emotional whump #subterfuge

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aroworlds · 4 years

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When Quiver Meets Quill, Part One

Alida Quill is just fine spending hir holidays alone with a book if it means freedom from hir family's continued expectation to court and wed. When hir co-worker Ede sets hir up with a friend and won't take no for an answer, Alida plots an extravagant, public refusal scene to show everyone once and for all that ze will not date. Ever.

Ze doesn't expect to meet Antonius Quiver, a man with his own abrupt, startling declarations on the subject of romance.

It isn't courting if he schemes with hir to pay back Ede ... is it?

Contains: One autistic, aromantic organiser extraordinaire armed with coloured ink; one autistic, aromantic officer a little too prone to interrupting; and an allistic friend in want of better ways to go about introductions.

Content Advisory: Aromantic characters pressed into dating along with casual references to general amatonormativity and ableism.

Length: 2, 261 words (part one of two).

Note: Posted for @aggressivelyarospec‘s AggressivelyArospectacular 2019.

I don’t date, court, woo or pay suit to anyone.

“Do you ever do anything but work, write and read?” Ede Thimble leans across the counter and stares at Alida with intent brown eyes, ignoring the crate of straw-packed ink bottles at her feet. Ten minutes ago, she offered to shelve them. “You come here, you spend the day looking things up and writing things down, and then you go home and do the same!” She sighs before waving her arms and the trailing sleeves of her dress with extravagant enthusiasm. “Yesterday was a holiday! You could have spent it dancing, drinking or gaming! Anything involving another person!”

Alida Quill sets down hir pencil, working to hold back a frown. Hir family owns the business—the name Quill is a byword in Elsten for fine stationery—but as the youngest of the three Quill siblings, hir thoughts on matters of hiring go ignored.

Did Jan select Ede because her inquisitiveness gets under Alida’s skin?

“I didn’t just read. I went to morning service, I baked...”

Spiced apple cakes, the sultanas conveniently “forgotten”. After which ze curled up by the fire, book in hand, and spent a glorious, undisturbed afternoon flipping through a collection of fairy tales for hir catalogue of stories that don’t end in marriage. Hir siblings and their wives patronised dance halls and gaming houses, granting Alida a rare half day with nobody to annoy hir about avoiding friends and family.

“Temple!” Ede rolls her eyes and leans against the glass counter, putting fingerprints over a surface Alida just finished polishing. “You’re not even pious! Do you go anywhere not home, here or services—”

The door opens, admitting a blast of chill air and a pair of damp student mages in brown robes, and Alida grits hir teeth at the thud as the taller lets it slam closed. Both carry empty string bags and a folded piece of cream paper—good cotton rag watermarked with the Academy’s crossed-wand seal. Why the Academy wastes expensive paper on yearly materials lists, ze’ll never know.

Ede straightens and gifts the students her warmest smile. “Good morning, sirs! I see you’re looking to get ahead of the winter’s commencement class. Smart! Can I first tempt you with our newest brushes, or would you prefer me to work through your lists?”

Alida permits hirself a sigh of relief and returns to inventorying the shelf of journals and ledgers.

Ze considers Ede no small trial, between her questions and a lackadaisical attitude to cleanliness. Yet Ede’s ability to charm and flatter, a gift Alida doesn’t wish to possess, frees hir to manage stock orders, shelving and the accounts book. Ze answers questions and handles sales when needed, but Alida prefers to leave the art of convincing customers to Ede and Jette. As if either will think to dust the shelf or turn the bottles labels-outwards when displaying!

By the time Ede sends the students back out into the weather, bulging parcels wrapped in spelled wood-pulp paper, Alida stands on a stool behind the counter, positioning the last of the new inks. Ze doesn’t know how to answer people asking, for the umpteenth time, about hir prospects; ze always knows how many nibs, pens and brushes are contained within the store’s array of redwood drawers and shelves. Hir hands give the glass counters their sparkle, the wood its gleaming richness, the leather chairs by the window their waxy softness and scent. Ze laid the fire warming the shop against the cold outside. What’s wrong with finding contentment in hir work? Why isn’t this a worthy life, hir days spent in labour enough for bed, food, clothing and a reasonable number of books?

Alida wonders, not for the first time, if ze should have tried to pretend belief and gender enough to join the Sisterhood.

“Rain!” Ede declares in the smug tones of a woman who charged an extra ten cents for the protective paper. That fewer people dare the streets in a worsening squall doesn’t diminish her joy; she claps her hands, swathes of blue wool and white lace shrouding her fingers. “I love when I can make rich mages pay for something extra!”

Alida takes up hir duster, steps down off the stool, doesn’t fall when hir toes catch the hem of hir skirt and moves to hir nook by the counter. Hir small desk, hidden from customers by a display case of envelopes, holds a ledger, a brass cup of pencils, a wad of cat fur and a tin of wax polish above a drawer that doesn’t quite close. Spell more wrapping paper sheets, ze writes at the bottom of the day’s list, nodding at Ede so she doesn’t think herself ignored. “Not all the students are rich. The Academy is expensive, but that doesn’t mean some people don’t save up. Or that those people can afford to replace a soaked journal.”

Hir parents sent hir, back when the family thought Alida to make something grander of hir life through magic.

“They’re richer than me.” Ede sighs again; Alida represses the urge to mention that Jette pays Ede wage enough to support her mother and fund a penchant for lace. “I tell you what—I’ve got a friend who makes those annoying corrections, and I can’t get his nose out of the newspaper, either. I bet you two’d get on like anything. Instead of temple and reading, how about I introduce you next Endday lunch?”

Alida twists the folds of hir skirt through hir white fingers, watching the wind hurl rain against the front windowpane. Didn’t Ede understand Alida the first time ze explained this? “I don’t date, court, woo or pay suit to anyone.”

“You’re just like Antonius, Alida. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before now!” Ede opens her mouth as the door admits a regular gentlewoman in a long coat, a sopping newspaper held above her head in a vain attempt to protect her dyed suede. “Good morning, good sir! Such dreadful weather out, and so early in the season! Should I help you now, or would you like to first stand before the fireplace a minute?”

Wet newspaper, coat and boots, along with the door the customer struggles to close, create puddles enough that Alida darts into the stockroom for a mop and bucket.

Please, ze prays as ze works the mop over the floorboards, let Ede forget this plan as easily as she forgot about the crate of ink bottles.

***

“You need to meet Antonius,” Ede says the next morning, entering the shop without a greeting or by-your-leave while Alida places two small logs above the flaming kindling in the fireplace. “My cousin brought him around last night, and I swear he said five words—and most of those were contradictions! Things he read about!”

Alida takes the poker and shifts one of the logs to get more air underneath, biting hir lip. If this Antonius discussed books or articles, he likely said more than five words.

“See? You’d get on like ducks on a pond!” Ede bustles towards the fire, peeling her gloves off her hands and tucking them into her belt before unbuttoning her cloak and hanging it on the hook beside Alida’s. “Like priestesses in the vestiary!”

“Like priestesses in a room for storing clothes?” Alida asks, returning the poker to the rack beside the grate. Is this an absurd double-entendre? If so, why the vestiary? Surely there’s better places for those goings-on than the religious equivalent of a cloakroom? “And what did I say to make you think that?”

“You had that look where you’re bursting to correct me.” Ede sighs and turns to warm her back, hiking up her skirts and inching as close to the fire as is safe. “You think I don’t know that look? Alida, you must meet Antonius. He’s perfect for you.”

Ze glances around the shop in search of distraction. The counter gleams, the table with scrap for testing pens sits cleared of yesterday’s samples and the shop cat, Miep, lies asleep on the armchair closest to the fire. The floor doesn’t look dirty, but Alida will sweep while Ede double-checks the paper inventory. That should redirect her from this horrible conversation.

“I don’t date, court, woo—”

“I know! Please, Alida, please. Just once.” Ede crooks her head, fluttering her long eyelashes. She’s pretty in an artistic, skilful way, never in want of admirers: this morning she pinned her myriad black braids into labyrinthine coils and knots adorned with white lace and ribbon. “You need to talk to people! Do something on a holiday that isn’t a book!”

Alida shaves hir brown hair to avoid prolonged morning ablutions. Ze’s always wondered, but never dared ask, how early Ede rises to groom, dress, eat and walk the ten blocks along the Wine Canal.

“You’re people!” Alida jerks hir hands in frustration. “This is talking!”

“Talking talking. Talking because you want to, because it’s fun, not because we’re stuck in a shop together six days a week. Please.” Ede drops her skirts, setting thick layers of wool and cotton to rustling, and turns to face Alida, her narrow hands outstretched. The fire gifts the underside of her dark fingers, protruding from their wreaths of lace, a rich, reddish shine. “Antonius needs someone, and you need someone. You’d get on so perfectly if you wet blankets dried out enough to try!”

“I don’t—”

“Think about it. Please!” Ede whirls away from the fire and heads to the counter, perhaps surmising that she’s pushed Alida past general annoyance into I-can’t-bear-to-look-at-you anger. “Do you want me to wipe the counters?”

Alida, fighting to calm hir voice, darts into the stockroom for the broom. “No. I need you to double-check my counts on the paper inventory. All of them.”

Even Ede’s strangled curse isn’t enough to make Alida feel pleasure in revenge—not after the stabbing betrayal of one more person failing to understand hir.

***

Over the next three days, Ede finds a wealth of excuses to mention her cousin’s cousin. He was top in penmanship at school, is an amateur historian, and once rescued a drowning kitten. Alida has to admit, past Ede’s tendency to deliver criticism as an enticement, that Antonius sounds more interesting than most. Similarity holds no meaning, however, when one partner wants what the other can’t offer. If Ede can’t accept Alida, how will anyone else?

“Please, Alida!” Ede leans over the desk, buttoning her green cloak. “Just talk with him! Just once!”

Alida, counting out the cashbox and checking the total against the day’s purchases while Miep rubs his grey cheek against hir boot, looks up, tired. If ze agrees, Ede will have learnt that she can badger Alida into anything with enough time and repetition. Just the thought makes hir shudder, given Alida’s struggle to correct that error with hir siblings.

“If you don’t like him or never want to see him again, I won’t say a word. Not one. Just once. Endday lunch. By the time we walk there and back, it won’t even be an hour!”

“Ede—”

Ede looks right at Alida, her brow furrowed, her hands fisted and raised to her chin in a gesture resembling praying or begging. “Meet him once and I’ll never ask anything of you again. And I’ll come early and shovel the ash from the fireplace for the next week.”

Miep yowls, looking up at Alida. Every evening, ze checks the books, counts out the money and feeds the cat, in that order. Never has their routine stopped Miep from demanding that Alida disregard human tasks in favour of his fish or mince.

“You’re supposed to also catch mice,” ze mutters. A cat’s badgering bears no unexpected consequences. Alida need not struggle to realise what will happen if ze feeds Miep when he requests. Acquiescing to Ede, though? Meeting someone Alida doesn’t know and can’t predict?

In the shop, strangers rarely deviate from standard forms of communication and intent. They ask questions about stock, prices, quality, delivery. At temple, services provide memorisable, rote shapes of interaction. Outside those worlds, where people new to hir can and do say anything? Ede, Jan and Jette desire the unexpected; Alida doesn’t understand why.

“Alida!” Ede waves her hand in front of Alida’s face. “Don’t just ignore me!”

Can ze agree in a way that means Ede won’t again harass hir? A public refusal, perhaps? A bold, dramatic declaration of Alida’s unwillingness to engage in romance, in front of Ede and this Antonius? One announced in such a way that embarrassment will keep Ede from thinking Alida suitable for anyone? Word will come back to hir siblings, but they already think Alida prone to shameful outbursts. Why not?

Alida writes down hir last total, releases a sigh of relief at the matching numbers and carefully returns the stacks of coins to the box. “Never ask anything of me again and shovel the ash for a fortnight.”

Miep meows as the lid clicks shut, butting his head against Alida’s skirts.

Ede bounces upright in a cascade of fabric, her sleeves flapping underneath her cloak. “Done! By blood and name and craft! Oh—please wear your blue, white and red skirt tomorrow! And your red coat with the long tails and brass buttons! And your good cloak with the satin lining, because the hood looks so pretty with your eyes, and...”

Alida will feed the cat and lock the shop behind Ede, but before ze goes go home, ze has some planning to do.

And a few signs to make in coloured inks.

#aggressivelyarospectacular #aromantic #aro writing #arospec creations #actuallyautistic #fiction #original fiction #original fiction and prose #fantasy #aromantic and autistic #autism #amatonormativity #romance mention #ableism #k. a. cook #long post #very long post #extremely long post

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bloodinhershoesrpg · 7 years

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Congratulations Becky, you have been accepted for the role of Barbara Donne with a faceclaim change to Kat McNamara! Your application was the first I read over and to say it provided a great start would be, quite frankly, an understatement. I am absolutely enamoured with how perfectly her struggles and reasoning for being who she is to date resonated within your app, how vividly you have portrayed the many facets of Barbie and how well they harmonise within your writing which I can’t wait to see liven up the dash soon! Please send in your account with 24 hours and have a look at the checklist before you do!

REGARDING YOURSELF

Name / Age / Pronouns: Becky, 19, she/her.

Activity: Activity is subject to heavy fluctuation (anywhere from a 4-7), depending a lot on my uni schedule and when my tests are. However, I always will ask for a hiatus when it’s necessary and let anyone playing with me know what sort of activity they can expect from me.

REGARDING THE STAR OF YOUR SHOW

Character name and faceclaim: Barbara Donne – with a FC change to Kat McNamara? :)

CHARACTER DISSECTION

BARBARA. Hailing from the Greek word barbaros, meaning foreign or strange - she’s always figured that she had been named aptly. Always an outsider, always a stranger, even in her own skin, she takes comfort in Saint Barbara, in her strength. She knows how the story goes: every wound inflicted upon her healed, every fire brought near her skin extinguished. But she knows how the story ends and sometimes, in the dead of night, Barbie wonders if she’ll end up like her: end up the martyr, end up the sacrifice, with the insides of her veins painting the ground. ANAIS. French for grace, her middle name always seemed like a taunt to her – in her former years, she had always been lacking grace, been too much raw power and not enough silk covered elegance. But in recent years, she has lived up to it, coating her movements with an old world finesse like a second skin, moving through the ranks without a ripple, leaving onlookers always confused as to where she came from and how she ascended. (Surely, she cannot deserve it.) DONNE. Rooted in Irish mythology as Donn, the god of the dead – her last name always felt like a little bit of a promise, and a little bit of a curse.

PERSONALITY. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be? Barbie thinks she remembers being soft, being kind in the beginning – and part of it stems from her looks. She was born with delicate features, handpainted on a canvas of porcelain, doe eyes that changed with the context of her background (green in the woods, golden on cloudless mornings, honeyed hazel in the pale afternoon light), and hair so bright it was only rivaled by her smile. When people saw her, small and lithe and fragile, flighty in essence, a little dove that alighted in the palm of their hand, it was hard not to trust her, an impossibility to expect cruelty from her. And because the world craves sweet things, beautiful little souls, because it aches in constant hunger for a minute kindness, it swallowed her up, turned her softness into a warzone and layered her edges into knives.

So she remembers her obsidian mouth, flinty and stone cold but still beautiful – tongue cutting through skin so thinly, down at a molecular level, that most of the time, people didn’t even notice blood being drawn until they left, drained and cold. But she believes that everything has a purpose, and this portion of her life is no different. She remembers that it feels just as empty, just as painful, to be throwing words like punches as it does to receive them, and how truly heavy lies the head that bears the crown. She dissembles her weaponized empathy, sheds her cloak of cruelty – it never suited her well anyway.

So here she stands, bearing kindness around her neck like a cross on a chain, letting it glint and dangle in front of everyone, takes the shattered glass hate and grinds it to dust beneath the molars of her smile. She tastes war, heavy on the back of her tongue, and everyone knows the innocents are the first to go. But here’s the beauty of being delicate: when she shatters, all her broken little pieces will cut them right back. And everyone leaves none the wiser; everyone thinks that it’s their fault for breaking it in the first place. Everything has a purpose, everything is by design.

BACKSTORY.

i. dig up the bones

Her father likes to talk about the day she was born – about how when her mother finally had her after an exhausting eight hour labor, she had said, half delirious, “She will have a hard time of it.” He likes to talk about how her mother had cried and held her close after that, rocking her gently as tears dropped from the tops of her cheeks onto Barbara’s forehead. “She is so beautiful, and the world will not stand for it. Don’t argue with me. Just answer me this, my love: why do flowers wilt? Why do they wilt, when they should bloom forever?”

He has no answer for that question, and Barbara learns early on not to ask it.

But her mother is right, in the end. She spent her childhood tucked away and loved, hiding like a little mouse from the rest of the world, spoiled sweet to the core. But the world finds you eventually, and everything will come all at once.

It starts because her hair gleams like a halo of fire around her porcelain skin, and the kids at school tug at it and make fun of her for the translucence of her cheeks when blood rushes to the surfaces and matches her hair. They call her carrot-top and throw the baby carrots from their neatly packed lunches at her, and she finds out everything can hurt her, no matter what it is.

She goes home and cries in her room, cursing her hair and her fair skin and her thin frame. She wishes she were big and burly and tall, so no one would dare hurt her. She begs her father to let her take self-defense over dance, but can’t find her tongue when he asks why. So she channels her hurt and her anger into ballet – it makes her feel beautiful and strong, this tulle-layered corner of hers, far away from playground wounds. (All this hurt and loneliness and spite bites her in the ass one day, when they say her dancing is too much the raw provocateur and too little of the soft princess they’re looking for.)

Either way, her wishes aren’t heard, and this is how she learns the casual cruelty of children.

It changes in high school – while she’s not big and burly and tall, no one dares pick on her because her beauty becomes her sword and her armor. Boys who used to pull her pigtails find themselves wanting to tug her hair for different reasons, those who laughed at the easy blush of her cheeks covet how naturally color comes to her, and with time, they want to press bruises into her skin with their lips and not the packaged contents of their lunches.

She is a stroke of lightning upon her childhood tormentors, just how a vengeful god smote St. Barbara’s killer where he stood after her death. She hides wolf grins behind demure hands, sharp teeth snapping, blood-hungry. Is she not made from the gilded dust of monarchs of ages past, sitting pretty with a crown tipped on a bed of curls?

Payback feels like freedom until you stop and realise you’re still just as pissed as before.

ii. but leave the soul alone.

In the end, it’s love that unclasps the years of trauma she wore swathed around her delicate shoulders, that pulls her down from where she played judge, jury, and executioner in her academy. They find her in an empty training room, lights dimmed and pushed up against the mirror, only it’s not any of the boys they find her wound around, and the lipstick prints on her neck attest to that fact.

Barbie is all little red riding hood to Isa’s big bad wolf, and she’s homesick for a sixty second love, hungry for the sink of her canines.

She is quickly and swiftly ousted from the uppermost echelons of academy hierarchy, but she can’t bring herself to mind. (What she does mind are the slurs pressed in whispers behind her back, dyke dyke dyke.) So she goes back to drinking venom insults and letting it drip off her lips like honey instead, lets herself be repainted kind-bubbly-weak-Barbie, kind smiles reaching welcoming eyes, the Sistine Chapel amongst a sea of sinners, a safe harbor in a storm. She pats the seat next to her and her quick taps sound like welcome home, stay for a while.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

LINDSEY DAVIES. Barbie offers smiles and hugs like an olive branch, offering a friendship. With all the attention driven her way, the whispers plaguing her have abided, instead bitterly haunting Lindsey. They’re a strange duo, abrasive as Lindsey is – but they work surprisingly well. Barbie tries to be a cushion, a buffer of sorts, in social situations, working to smoothing the edges of Lindsey’s demeanor, acting like a balm in hostile situations. While she comforts those left in the wake of Lindsey, a small part of them rejoices to see them put in their place by her words.

CRISTINA REYES. Like attracts like, no? Despite how the rest cage around Cristina like she’ll pounce at any moment, expecting the flower to sprout a pair of fangs, Barbie edges closer and closer, curious to see what sort of kindness the other girl offers, and for what reason. After all, there’s an explanation for everything, and nothing comes without a reason.

REGARDING YOUR INSPIRATION

HEADCANONS.

PICK UP YOUR HEART ON THE WAY OUT. Barbara’s always been in the minority (her name taunts her, foreign, strange little Barbie). Statistically, less than 2% of the population possess either red hair or green eyes, not to even touch upon having both – she honestly doesn’t know why she expected to be part of the majority when it came to love. Boys have wanted her since middle school – since they discovered redhead was a porn category – but she has never wanted a boy; not in the same way they want her. She’s tried, really, she has, to convince herself that she wants them – she’s kissed many a boy feral and left them to scramble in her wake as she leaves. But let’s just say it straight: she’s not.

FAIR FOLK. Barbara doesn’t lie – much like the mythical fae of fables long forgotten, she only speaks in truths or not at all. Of course, this doesn’t stop her from concealing the whole truth, letting others falsely assume their own truths or speaking poison edged half truths. But a full on lie, she cannot and will not do.

NICOTINE FROM A SILVER SCREEN. It’s a stereotype, rail thin ballerinas who have a cigarette for dinner; but it’s the truth. It’s not uncommon to find her outside, white Insignia hanging off her lips, exhaling tobacco smoke like it’ll cleanse her.

ANIMAL PERCEPTION. Ever heard of a saying that animals have a sixth sense? Barbie bonds with animals of all kinds, offering birdseed in her palm, petting every dog or cat she comes across, and those who look at her and see undeserving written across her hiss in anger. Fuckin’ disney princess or some shit.

Thank you for reading! i would have written more but i’m also really guilty of always writing last minute apps; best wishes & really great job with everything even if i don’t get the part x

MOCK BLOG. https://barbiemocks.tumblr.com

#accepted #accepted:barbara

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