#escape from the cycles.. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

If you dial 1-866-584-6757, you can leave an audio post for your followers.

#escape from the cycles..

dictee · 1 year

Note

thanks so much! i'm doing some vc skimming and got to the part in ttotbt where lestat tries to convince louis that he wants to be in lestat's place and louis is like 'actually i don't' and that reminded me about that excerpt you shared about desiring the father. then i started thinking about how louis' only two fledglings were women turned under very dubious circumstances almost like louis was a victim of reverse stealthing, vampire style. and how armand had similar hang ups about becoming the father. sorry for rambling lol

np!! that scene is sooo crazy to me bc lestat is operating off the assumption that his desires are natural and innate and universal and louis is like no you sicko lmfao

reverse stealthing is a WILD way to put it LMFAOO. but no ur right and especially with armand emphatically not siring any vampires for 500 years [although repeating marius cycles w mortals in many ways...] until daniel....i want to watch yellowjackets rn so im not going into it but wow armand character of all time.

also i read through the article again and it's actually very interesting to me like obviously has its limitations but theres really soo much psychoanalytic stuff going on w rice and they (the writers) have a lot of sharp observations. just skimming i found these particularly relevant

#I think i do want to read memnoch also like its soo badly written as a whole but i've been reading caroline walker bynum and #U could really write a whole paper comparing vampire pop mythology to late middle ages theology about blood and christ and gender.#Society if i was physically capable of reading post queen of the damned vc [the picture is worse]#obsessed w repetition and return...the way it is a gothic narrative even on the meta sense bc the author herself cannot envision meaningful #escape from the cycles..

40 notes · View notes

majosullivan · 1 year

Text

Raine you don’t deserve this in the slightest but I can’t deny how funny I find this

#they just can’t escape from the mind control plot lines #someone free them from this cycle #the owl house #toh #raine whispers

16K notes · View notes

kaurwreck · 5 months

Text

I think Dazai, while young, became attached to Natsume when Natsume was lonely and so was he (which is why he calls him Sensei in the Dark Era, like the protagonist in Kokoro); that Natsume brought Dazai to Mori after Dazai attempted suicide (which is why Dazai never touches him in Bar Lupin, why Natsume follows him from the Port Mafia to his meeting with Taneda and then to the Agency, why Dazai knows Natsume well enough to allude to his history to Tanizaki and to recieve the jump drive Natsume brings him in the Cannibalism arc— Dazai knows him); and that Natsume performed a partial skill transfer similar to Kyouka's mother to ensure it could not come that close ever again (and that's why Dazai is one of the few if not only touch/contact-based skill users whose is involuntary).

I think No Longer Human isn't merely nullification, I think (similar to how Bram's skill reverses death but through the framework of vampirism and Atsushi's slices skills and regenerates in addition to his transformations), there is more to Dazai's skill such that it precludes him from dying (which is why he can stand in front of a hail of bullets and be thrown by Chuuya through several buildings in the Port Mafia, why he can't seem to commit suicide successfully, why Kunikida and Chuuya remark on his preternatural inability to die, why Dazai says to both Atsushi and Fyodor with such certainty "you can't kill me," and, cheekily, why Kunikida tells Dazai in 55 Minutes "You're no longer human! You've lost that right!" when Dazai says he finally managed to die, however briefly).

I think Natsume's skill bends reality in the shape of the narrative structure over which he had such mastery and he decided that whoever he failed to snatch from the cyclical jaws of misery and suicide before (again, borrowing from Kokoro), he would not let this boy die; and how cruel that must have felt at first (which is why Dazai hates pain— he's been denied the easiest escape from it that he knows), but how reality bent to weave a narrative such that Dazai could be saved again and again in such a way that might shatter Koroko's inescapable loneliness (this is why, in 55 Minutes, it's implied HG Wells might not have existed, might have been an apparition from an earlier era, as if reality itself rippled space and time to reconjure someone who made sense to protect Dazai when it seemed unlikely anyone else could; why Akutagawa happened to have business there; why Akutagawa and Atsushi happened to cross paths).

It's well known that the titular cat in I Am a Cat is a calico. But, the story was based on Natsume's IRL cat, who was a black, striped cat. And aren't Dazai's bandages a little like stripes?

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bsd dazai #bsd natsume #bsd meta #It's utter nonsense #But it would fracture the cycle presented in Kokoro #the plot is nonsense and the power scaling is silly and the escapes from certain doom are ridiculous because reality bends to save dazai #but while protected #dazai is frozen and unable to move forward #not unlike sleeping beauty preserved in her coffin of glass #and its atsushi's tiger #his relentless tiger that never lets him stop #that drags him forward #and akutagawa whose ability can eat space and who relentlessly strives to progress forward #who will conclusively shatter the cycle of loneliness imprisoning the narrative #anyway #is it anymore ridiculous than the rest of the story #because i dont think it is

100 notes · View notes

butchladymaria · 10 months

Text

Immortality, Motherhood, and Pain: A Closer Look at Annalise and the Doll

Finally revisiting this from ages ago, because the parallels between these two are just SO fascinating. Content warnings for discussions of misogyny, genocide, abuse, and pregnancy/childbirth.

This analysis will cover the parallels between Miss Doll and Queen Annalise through the lenses of the misery of immortality, the trauma of marginalization, and the liberation they find in motherhood. Both the Doll and Annalise are undying, both coded as mother figures, both marked by death, and both very, very alone.

Miss doll and Annalise are the only characters in the whole game who are undying. You can kill them, but not meaningfully - not in any way that matters - and they seem to know it. Neither will try to stop you, nor will they fight back, should you choose to attack them. They will come back, and your violent betrayal will have seemingly meant nothing to them. They both are very aware they will outlast whatever violence you may inflict upon them. It's evidenced in their dialogue:

If you attack, Annalise says:

“Enough. If only Our life was so easily forfeit… Grieve not, for Us.” “How sad this is. If only Our life was so easily forfeit…”

If you attack Miss Doll, she used to say:

“I must have displeased you. Go on, shut me down… Even so, this vessel will remain in your service… So have no fear."

I think this point of comparison highlights just how deeply they've both been desensitized to violence and abuse. They do not beg for mercy, they do not put up a struggle - they only remark on it with distant chagrin. They both seem keenly aware that their flesh need not be in one piece to fulfill its purpose.

But where Miss Doll was made to embody the Victorian patriarchal ideal of womanhood, Annalise wields womanhood as her last weapon against the dehumanization of the church’s genocide through her queendom. Upon being resurrected the next time you return to the dream, Miss Doll will act as though nothing had happened at all. However, if you bring her flesh to the Altar of Despair, Annalise will call you an arrant fool, and remind you that “Vileblood or no, forget not; We are thy Queen”. Miss Doll kneels to serve the hunter, while the hunter must kneel to serve Annalise. Miss Doll has been conditioned to passively accept dehumanization and submission, yet Annalise demands respect through your submission even in her dehumanized state. Miss Doll is subjugated by the trappings of womanhood, while Annalise is lifted from subjugation by her womanhood, in some ways.

I find this fascinating, however, because while Miss Doll appears in every way as a pure, demure Victorian woman was meant to, they are also dehumanized through the denial of gender. To Gerhman, their creator, they are nothing more than another tool of the workshop. An object. Even the Doll themself uses neutral "I" pronouns to refer to themself in the original translation. I think it is pertinent to note that the only canonical reference to Miss Doll as a "woman" comes from Eileen. In the original Japanese text, she refers to the Doll with a term of endearment reserved for young girls. Miss Doll's appearance is the historical ideal of the subjugated woman - yet when Eileen confers upon her the status of "woman", she does so in an endearing and humanizing way. Therefore, for both Miss Doll and Queen Annalise, the status of womanhood is a rebuttal of their own dehumanizing subjugation: Annalise as "queen", and Miss Doll as "daughter".

Both characters are arguably seeking/find liberation through motherhood. Miss Doll gets "Childhood's Beginning": their creator and animator have both been put down, the hunt is finally over and they are no longer bound to serve its participants, nor must they watch their beheadings. They cradle the newly ascended hunter. It is a highly atypical “motherhood”. It exists in the performance of the role rather than the biology of childbirth. In the same way, the Doll possesses a highly atypical “womanhood” which exists in performance alone, rather than in biology or even identity — but nonetheless, it is real, and it is hers. I, perhaps too optimistically, choose read it as humanizing for them; because unlike their “womanhood”, Miss Doll is allowed to choose this for themself rather than having it imposed upon them.

In the same vein, Annalise seeks to birth a child of blood for a similar but perhaps more somber reason. She wants a child because she wants an heir — which is to say, because it is the only way she may once again have kin. Because it is the only way she may fulfill her duty as Queen. She witnessed everyone she ever knew or loved — surely her own family included — slaughtered before her eyes. Annalise seems to seek motherhood in order to be a homemaker - in the most literal sense possible. She wants to rebuild the community, the home, which was so brutally torn away from her. She wishes to restore honor to Cainhurst. For Annalise, having a child is an open act of rebellion against the genocidal eugenics-frenzied bloodthirst of the Church. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason Alfred is so hellbet on destroying her, why the Executioners imprisoned her the way they did, was to strip her of bodily autonomy so she couldn’t “reproduce”. Her desire for a child is her way of seeking liberation for her and her people.

In this sense, taking up the role of a mother, of "women's work", is what confers the agency upon both Annalise and Miss Doll which had been otherwise stripped from them. Annalise's by the genocidal eugenics of the Church, and Miss Doll by the pact of servitude she was seemingly born into.

#percy theoryposts :)#i'm aware this is a generous interpretation #miss doll #bloodborne is very much about womanhood and the trauma it brings but i think its a stretch to say that message is executed perfectly #the few fem-presenting characters who get hopeful endings do so by escaping/trying to escape a cycle of violence #but it also involves taking on very traditionally feminine roles which have historically been subjugating in and of themselves #so you kind of have to take from that what you will #but at least the pattern seems to be that those roles are liberating and powerful when they are CHOSEN rather than forced #ie: arianna is FORCED to become a mother #and this is not remotely empowering to her #i think it comes down to the concept of socialization though: the doll CHOOSES to become a “mother” in the symbolism of the game #but they also have been conditioned their whole life to know nothing but serving others #so its....................... iffy #i also dont know if i'm certain this was Intentional on the part of fromsoft. bc especially in elden ring they dropped the ball slightly im #but its MY interpretation god damn it #plain doll #bloodborne #queen annalise #annalise queen of the vilebloods

98 notes · View notes

chippuyon · 1 year

Note

There’s something about Rei basically telling his father:

“YOU can stay miserable, I actually have a family who I love, peace✌️”

Like Rei is living his best life with his husband and daughter doing French Toast at the other side of Japan, while Suwa will stay miserable by his own volition lmaooo

For realll he's living the life.

You just reminded me I forgot to talk about THIS line which is genius??? This is the first and last time Rei calls him father as an adult. Aside from the literal reason that he's not Rei's "Boss" anymore since he's quitting the org, it's also his bittersweet way of acknowledging that the man before him did raise him to some extent. He's saying farewell to both the org and his biological ties to his father, without denying that either were a part of his history.

#do you think his father checks on him #and realizes how much he choked the life out of his son #do you think he'd be regretful that he let his heir go #or maybe some tiny part of him still cares #maybe a tiny part is happy his son escaped from the cycle #i still hate the bitch but emotional complexity is fun #chip answers #buddy daddies #buddy daddies spoilers

156 notes · View notes

stewykablooey · 1 year

Text

everyone on my ‘no kendall!!’ post tagging it with ‘kendall look at me this isnt you’ like. it very much is guys. this is the most kendall thing he’s done all season.

#he’s never closing the portal he’s never letting go of that wire hes never beating the allegations he’s never escaping the cycle #evil is a relay sport guys #we know this. we’ve known this from the start.#succession #kendall roy #m

130 notes · View notes

syn0vial · 10 months

Text

also, thinking now about how boba’s relationship with mirta is practically the polar opposite of the one jango had with him him. like,

jango with boba: you are my heir, you are an extension of myself, you are everything i could have been, and i will do everything in my power to make you a perfect and uncompromising carrier of this legacy.

boba with mirta, gripping her shoulders: our bloodline is fucking cursed and i will do everything in my power, including literally actually dying, to prevent it from dragging you down with us

#WE LOVE A BREAKER OF CYCLES #also i like to think about the transformation of how boba views his family’s legacy #it starts out as a gift from his father. the highest honor. his ultimate purpose.#and it never stops being those things to him!#but also: it curdles. he talks about being cursed. tainted.#that legacy becomes something hungry and terrible something he has to fight to keep limited to himself and not his loved ones #he feels relieved when mirta marries into another clan. bc maybe that means she’ll escape.#maybe it means she won’t have to carry it like he did. at the very least maybe it means she can put it down #boba fett #boba fett meta #fett feels #mirta gev #jango fett

70 notes · View notes

ikemenomegas · 1 year

Text

Omega!Gojo Satoru x Alpha!Reader

I believe we are fated to do the things we choose anyway*

gege akutami is the kind of mangaka who makes fun of almost all their characters. with utmost affection, gojo deserves to be bullied a bit. we love that he's a little heartless, a little frivolous, that he's powerful as a fact, that he cares a little bit strangely, so doing him a bit of justice, here's the mirror to Getou's youth story

tw: canon character death, spoilers for the manga, gojo's emotional constipation and egotism

Toji Zenin cut so many threads the day he arrived on the Tokyo school grounds, but the one between you and Satoru survived. It's already a miracle that Riko was the only one who died that day. The miracle of surviving should have been enough, but now you've lived long enough to find out how much you could love someone too. You get to see how afraid someone is of loving you. Gojo Satoru had one friend. Gojo Satoru had one mate. That was it, that was all he could let himself have.

Springtime Tokyo is still cold. Not as cold as up north in the mountains, but the winter uniforms are blessedly warm. An assistant manager drops you off at Tokyo Jujutsu Technical School on a milky March morning where you are met by Yaga-sensei, the first year teacher.

This teacher has some kind of idea about building community, which is why he's clustered the four of you first-years in the same building, around a loud blue-eyed boy who barely takes one look at you, squinting around a pair of blackout sunglasses, at your purposeful non-expression, before he is grinning, far too wide and it feels like he gets even louder, movements expansive to pull you into the range of an argument he's having with a tall slim boy with long hair tied at the back of his head.

Yaga-sensei just shakes his head and introduces you to Ieri Shoko, who is physically leaning away from the noise as if to escape some blast radius and has the most distant smile you've ever seen in your life on her face.

It's unsettling is what it is. The dark haired boy is just rolling his eyes at the one who had somehow both dismissed you and pulled you into his orbit. The automatic response is to try and get that attention back, but you have at least a little more self respect than that. You climb the stairs to take a room on the same floor to Shoko-san's and leave them to their snipping. You don't see Gojo fall silent for half a second before carrying on bickering, Yaga now stepping in to separate them.

School hasn't quite started yet. It's a boarding school so everyone is just around, getting the lay of the school, setting up their rooms, exploring Tokyo, running into one another and trying to figure out how their pieces fit together.

Satoru has already sorted you all into neat little piles of adjectives

Polite: the boy with the long dark hair, Getou Suguru, although this doesn't necessarily mean nice he notes gleefully. Self righteous and reactive, as in he can be baited into a no holds barred fight, which is new for him. He hasn't been able to fight someone who could hold their ground for more than a minute since he was thirteen. Subversively irreverent.

Morbid: the shortie with the short hair, Shoko Ieri. She discovered her abilities somewhere and even Satoru has to admit some of the diagrams she pulls up are admirably disgusting. Neutral. Satoru has never met someone else who sticks so close to their own whims before but she isn't like anything he expected, dismissive, meandering, goading. And she can't explain how she does what she does, which is aggravating because he can't do it.

And you, the new one. The last to arrive. Fresh meat. Quiet, wary.

You catch him not following you, but showing up near where you are a little too frequently to feel coincidental while you're making a point to meet the upperclassmen. He adds opportunistic and watchful to the list when he notices you do this, but some of the older students seem to find it vaguely endearing - the clan ones like a small animal they can toss treats, the recruited students who aren't trying to suck up to the clan kids with the cautious familiarity of greeting another outsider.

He tries tossing you a treat, granting you some offhanded attention in the common space of what is now the first years' block. Suguru laughs at him when you mostly look confused and apologetically tell him you've never seen either of the movies he wants to debate before refilling your water bottle and wandering back out onto the school grounds with your umbrella.

School starts regardless with some tentative unspoken agreement between the four of you to try and be friends, or at least classmates. There is after all, no one else to be friends with.

Class is boring, so Satoru watches his classmates. Where Shoko is passive and watchful and Satoru is staring into the air, you're openly attentive and Suguru more casually mirrors your attention. Which makes him want to call you another boring small-town bumpkin

Except you are in the same the advanced mechanics elective he is, and you and Shoko become animated discussing the curse anatomy lectures. Yaga takes you away to practice hand-to-hand with his dolls while he lets Satoru and Suguru pummel each other, which makes him think you must be too fragile to handle the two of them. Most people are, so he doesn't think much on it.

Satoru sometimes goes out alone to train when he can't sleep. He lashes out at the wooden dummies on the practice field, ducking under wooden arms and lashing out to see sections of it spin faster. On one of these nights, a week or two into the first year, he sees you standing outside the track, leaning on a railing, face buried in a thick scarf. He's aware of your vague attention, watching him without any particular interest, like how one might watch water sliding under a bridge, but when he sneaks a glance around the practice dummy, you're just as often more fixated on the sky. The moon is full and you're watching the clouds chase across the deep blue expanse, listening to Gojo Satoru's knuckles impacting on wood. And then at some point, he looks over and you're gone, your weird cursed energy signature fading in the dark.

Satoru only sees your technique the first time a substitute makes you spar with everyone else during training while Yaga is away. Apparently the teacher is someone you know because you get into the first argument he's ever seen before you send a spear flying so fast it hits the center of a target and topples it over.

The same teacher makes you fight Satoru, to already defeated attempts at appalled refusal. He'd usually help you push back just on principle, but he hasn't gotten to go on a mission with you yet and his sometimes oppressive curiosity has settled on whether you actually can keep up with him after all.

You can't, but this is Gojo Satoru at fifteen, not fully realized, and the first time he fights you he amends how he feels about "opportunistic". He flies right at your face and swears he makes contact, but you step back at the last minute and he feels an impending impact from his left that is almost the same strength as his own attack. He tries again and you twist out of the way much faster than he had expected. He tries to throw you and you end up descending slowly to the ground, trying to get the teacher to end the bout. Eventually Satoru overwhelms you and breaks your arm when you try to block too many hits in rapid succession. Shoko fixes it, and you wince with gritted teeth and tears in your eyes but don't cry or sob or glare at him with the kind of face that is calling him names you can't say out loud. The demonstration has him, fortunately or unfortunately, folding you into the energy of your little first year group like you'd been there all along.

He's a shaman clan kid, so it's interesting to see you now as not necessarily opportunistic but curious about the other sorcerers, about other people. What a novelty, to be inconsequentially curious. If he'd been too curious as a child he would be either lectured on responsibility or nearly drowned in related gifts meant to appease his moods

You don't appease his moods and the attention of him, one of the strongest sorcerer of the generation, doesn't appease you.

Satoru tries to bait you and things go right over your head. He tries to disrupt your silent, invisible schedule and you let him drag you away with minimal fussing, especially when Shoko or Suguru is involved, but will wander to the side on outings and either find some accidental trouble or something that makes him a little surprised at the intensity of your focus.

He forces you into a combat-determined wager that demands you stop using honorifics with his name and Suguru's name and Shoko's name (without asking the other two) and there's no way for you to get out of it or win so that forces some artificial closeness that becomes real. Language is very important for creating distance, for creating hierarchy and Satoru somehow isn't interested in a hierarchy between you.

He is however far more self conscious of his omega status than Suguru is. He won't say it, but it's a relief when none of you make a big deal out of it when you find out and also a surprising comfort when you and Shoko who don't have to suffer through the literal additional headache of heats try and make them comfortable

For Satoru this involves distracting him by playing video games with him, watching movies, or tossing balls of paper at him while he tries to stop it with his technique. Mostly he's with Suguru, especially if they sync up, but Satoru doesn't have the same heat symptoms as him. During first year even though he sleeps more than he does as an adult, it's typically less than the rest of you might want. Where Suguru gets tired, Satoru will get cranky and mean because he's bored and feverish and Suguru is too tired to entertain him. His family also was never very comforting during his heats so he knows what to do as far as nesting, but having people around is new for him.

He likes to call and text you if you're on missions during these times, which is typical given his clan's sensitivity to him being around alphas at these times.

So even when you're on campus, you and Shoko only spend a few hours with him at a time. Sometimes you play games and the heat makes him almost slow enough to beat on a DS link game. Sometimes he makes you do his homework. Sometimes he likes to throw throwing things at you to see how you use your technique to deal with it.

He adds "sentimental" to the list of adjectives when he realizes he can so easily pressure you in these times into revealing more of yourself to him than you usually do. He's bored and there's only so many things to talk about before you start telling him about an encounter with one of the rare cats that will tolerate living around the cursed energy of the campus, when you grimace and tell him about a terrible noodle stand in Yamanashi province that you still crave somehow, when you tell him about saving fallen leaves in a heavy dictionary you use for that purpose, or the one time you reveal that you've kept every pair of shoes your parents bought you to wear on the first day of school. You tell him these things and it makes him feel like maybe, someday, he might want to tell you things too.

It's not soft but there's a softness to it. A genuineness in the four of you together, in Satoru's and Suguru's growing strength and self surety. Satoru tries to make himself the center of the world, because it's fact that is where he has been all along. But he's not so easily the center of your world. You didn't come from his world.

Satoru doesn't fall. He doesn't think hard about why it becomes so. He barely thinks about it all. He just knows at some point that you're one of his. You're one of his and he wants you to pay him the attention he' accustomed to as center of the world (except he doesn't maybe. He'll be able to say it one day that what he loved was you treating him like he was as human as he could be)

He's terrible at acknowledging whether this possessiveness is anything in particular. After a sparring session, you watch Shoko patch a cut on Suguru's arm with so much longing and a pang of something worms its way in Satoru's chest. He crowds in next to Suguru before Shoko's done, draping over Suguru's shoulders. You don't see the way Satoru's eyes flicker from Shoko's steady hands to your wide-eyed gaze.

He's jealous the way a child is jealous of a favorite toy, hooking his arm around your neck if any omegas outside of school talk to you in the street. If you brush him off when he's trying to use you as a tool for self-affirmation, he sulks around until you acknowledge him in some other way and he will not admit to a single soul why it matters. When he's forced to go home for holidays like oban and returns in a terrible pique, you may fight with him if he lashes out in the worst, most personal ways. You push back and talk to instead of around him or through him and you also don't realize that is why he backs off.

He realizes slowly that he has to be careful with you. He forgets sometimes that you're more fragile that Suguru, that you need help Shoko doesn't need. On what you call the "worst school trip in existence" and Shoko calls "lucky we didn't all die" and Suguru smiles and calls "well we all made it out in the end", even Satoru got injured, yet he feels invincible, like he caught a bullet and threw it back.

When Toji nearly kills him and everyone he ever cared about, he awakens with the power to keep it from happening ever again. He thinks he can carry the world for all of you, for everyone, reveling in his power. He doesn't realize that his presence, the gravity well he made in the monster class's lives, doesn't exist the same way while he's not there because he has a tendency to think everything will be easy for him to fit back into when he returns, or not to think on the fact things could change at all.

Then Suguru leaves and the center of Satoru's world, his reference point, collapses

You're there in Shinjuku the day it happens. It's getting cold again. You're there to meet Shoko. Suguru has gone missing, Satoru is... away. Again. Still. He's been absent whenever he is around anyway. The jujutsu world doesn't have the resources to devote to hunting curse users in particular so the effort to find Suguru has been halfhearted at best and even if he's on your minds, you have jobs to do still.

You're there in Shinjuku and when you don't find the person you're looking for, you find someone else, It shouldn't happen, but it does. You run into Satoru, mind reeling at Suguru's betrayal. You nearly don't see him and he nearly doesn't see you except he sees everything and he's been walking around the district like a ghost.

He appears like a ghost too, tall and pale and ridiculous eyes. You'd tried to see if the world reflected in them once, but now it's more obvious to you than ever that it's just him, nothing more and nothing less.

"Let's go back," he says, and for the first time in months, you return to the college, side by side on the train, feeling like there should be more people in the near-empty car. You get as far as you can before you get to a station that's closed where you can no longer transfer and then you get out and walk in silence.

You walk like there's another person jostling for space between you. When you get to the school, Shoko meets you at the red tori gates. When you get to the mostly empty dormitory building, now a little emptier, Satoru looks at you. And looks and looks and looks. This time, he feels like you might disappear in the pre-dawn light casting your faces in blue.

Maybe it's because he's already lost one precious thing long before he noticed it was gone that he grips your shoulders tight, so tight you almost wince, but turn into it instead, tilting your head as though, were you less careful people, you might brush your cheek against his hand. Just for a little bit of comfort, for a little familiarity.

Then Shoko makes a noise at the top of the stairs, the scuff of her foot, the tap of her palm on the banister. What a terrible day it must be if Shoko is interfering. And you step away.

Satoru doesn't go to bed. For the first time in his life he feels like he doesn't know who he is. He watches your light come on and then go off. He doesn't see you stand at the mouth of the hall leading to Suguru's room with a blanket around your shoulders until eventually you turn away and fall asleep on one of the common room couches, near to where a year of his body in the same spot had left an indent. He doesn't think about the world where you aren't here, where he never sees you again, because he can't quite fathom it.

Because even when he was gone, he never felt like he had let any of you go

It makes him feel sick to his stomach, the closeness of someone else, but it feels worse to push you away so you sit shoulder to shoulder with him some time in the morning. He pretends not to see the new dark shadows in your eyes. You sit and watch the mist burn off and pretend his warmth can hide how the world is a little colder.

*I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you ― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars