SOLA — Her Innocence, Sola— the anti-innocence— turns to face you. In the distance, you hear the tattoo of propellers, turning, sucking all the air. A strong wind whips her long, dark hair around her face. Her simple black gown billows behind her. The same gown she wore the day she resigned.
She has your eyes.
“Hi, Kim,” she says simply. “You don’t look well.”
PAIN THRESHOLD — Her voice is so familiar, and yet the moment she stops speaking, you cannot recall its sound, no matter how hard you try. And you have tried. Innumerable times.
AUTHORITY — What makes her think she would even *know* the difference between you looking well or unwell? She’s being presumptuous. She doesn’t even know you.
INLAND EMPIRE — She never will.
“I’m doing great, actually. Never been better.”
“Hey, I’m trying my best.”
“I’m *not* well. I’m so fucking unwell. I can’t take it anymore. Please, help me…”
“I’ll live.”
SOLA — “Hm…” She smiles apologetically. “Well, that’s all we can really ask for anymore, isn’t it?”
EMPATHY — She wishes more than anything that this was not the case. That you could ask for the world and have it.
RHETORIC — She tried to give it to you, and this is how you repay her? You’re gonna be in *deep* shit trying to explain that insignia you stitched onto her jacket.
“Um, about the jacket. It’s not what it… well, no, it *is* what it looks like. But I don’t— it’s— there’s nuance.”
“Is that really all you have to say to me?”
“I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Where are you going?”
SOLA — Her Innocence looks away from you, toward the wind. “Away,” she says, her voice distant and strange. “Yes… I’m stepping down, you see. The world doesn’t need me. It never needed me, really. It’s best for humanity to think for itself. No… it already *does* think for itself.”
She turns back to you with a small smile. The thought brings her peace.
PAIN THRESHOLD — But what does it bring *you?* She’s leaving you forever. Abandoning you for lofty ideals.
AUTHORITY — Let her go. Let her see how little you care. Don’t give her any satisfaction.
HALF LIGHT — Stop her. You won’t be able to live without her.
VOLITION — You have already lived almost all your life without her. You don’t need her. You have *never* needed her.
“What if the world *does* need you? Who are you to make that decision for the entire world?”
“Fine. Go. It’s none of my business.”
“So you’re just going to leave me behind again.”
“Please, don’t go. *I* need you.”
SOLA — “What else is an Innocence appointed to do?” Her smile turns wry. “You see? This is why I’m stepping down.”
Distant propellers turn and turn in endless circles. She glances toward them.
YOU — “Fine. Go. It’s none of my business.”
SOLA — “I suppose not.” Her voice and her face betray nothing. No sign of remorse.
YOU — “So you’re just going to leave me behind again.”
SOLA — “That was never my intention,” she says softly. “Surely you know that.”
INLAND EMPIRE — You will never truly know. No one will.
SOLA — She stares out at the horizon through the tendrils of hair that almost seem to threaten to swallow her. Her expression is strange and ambiguous, shifting every time you try and look directly at it.
YOU — “Please, don’t go. *I* need you.”
SOLA — She looks at you, and her eyes are full of what might be genuine sadness. But they could also be full of anything else.
“Oh, Kim… You must make do with what you have. I don’t know what else you want me to say…”
RHETORIC — What?! There are a million other things she could say! Forty-one years worth of possibilities! She could say *anything!* Anything at all… Even if she’d only left you a single word, it would be better than this…
VOLITION — It’s pointless to wish. Please, no more of this. It’s too sad.
“You could say that you’re sorry.”
“Say that I turned out all right.”
“Say that you’re proud of me. That you love me.”
SOLA — “Then I’m sorry.” She closes her eyes. “It was terrible of us to leave you alone.”
Her voice is utterly calm and emotionless.
PAIN THRESHOLD — No… Wrong, all wrong…
YOU — “Say that I turned out all right.”
SOLA — “You’re a good man despite it all. That is all I ever hoped for you.”
Again, there is no warmth to her words. No conviction.
VOLITION — Lieutenant… Please, don’t do this to yourself.
YOU — “Say that you’re proud of me. That you love me.”
SOLA — “I’m so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished. You wear that jacket well.”
Her eyes have nothing behind them. A pair of two millimeter holes in the world.
“I love you.”
PAIN THRESHOLD — Your lungs seem to constrict at her words. Your chest hurts more than it’s ever hurt. This wind is hard to breathe in.
YOU — “No! Don’t you fucking get it?! You don’t love me!”
SOLA — “Then I don’t love you.”
YOU — “You should be *ashamed* of me!”
SOLA — “Then I am ashamed.”
YOU — “I betrayed you! I betrayed everything you stood for! I’m a fucking cop!”
SOLA — “Then I am betrayed.”
She proclaims it as dispassionately as she proclaimed her love.
YOU — “For god’s sake, *say something real!*”
SOLA — She just looks at you. The propellers keep on turning.
DRAMA — She can’t speak for herself, sire…
LOGIC — Of course she can’t. Of course…
PAIN THRESHOLD — Your lungs feel like they could collapse. Empty, crumpled, dark. Hot tears prick your eyes for the first time in what feels like a long time.
SOLA — “Do you understand now?” she asks gently.
LOGIC — She cannot speak for herself because you do not know what she would say.
There are many memories that you have been slowly recovering, little by little. Your mother will never be one of them. Her, the revolution, the aerostatic brigade— they all died before you could even comprehend loss.
AUTHORITY — You did not become a detective so that you could find your lost mother. You became a police officer because you did not want to end up like her.
VOLITION — She can neither forgive you, nor condemn you. She is dead, Lieutenant. She can only be what you make her.
RHETORIC — You’re asking your own echo for answers…
SOLA — “Humanity must think for itself,” she says again, turning again toward the wind. “What point is there in asking me where to go from here? I’m a failure. We all failed…”
RHETORIC — The revolutionaries failed their children, and the children are failing their parents, and all of them are dying, dying, dead… What’s the point in any of this anymore? I cannot argue in favor of any of it.
VOLITION — There is a point. There is a way forward. But you won’t find it here, Lieutenant.
“I hate you. You made me everything I am and then you just *left.*”
“I miss you… How is it even possible to miss someone you never met? It’s like someone ripped a part of me out and all I can do is bleed.”
“I don’t know what I am. I need you to tell me what I am.”
SOLA — One last time, she turns back to you. She slowly bridges the gap between you and reaches out a hand to cup your cheek. Her fingers feel like your own.
“You are whatever kind of animal you choose to be,” she says, so quietly that you don’t know how you can hear it over the distant roar of engines. “I cannot make that choice for you.”
EMPATHY — She died hoping that you would grow up with the freedom to choose to be whatever you wanted. Instead, the world that raised you hardly let you dare to want anything.
VOLITION — But you can still make a choice. Humanity can still think for itself.
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has anyone asked you about deja vu...................... i am very Interested and Invested in this one..............................................
ohh yesss. I've made SO little progress on chapter 4, but it's a rare fic where I have basically the entire story planned out, so here's a scene from chapter six. featuring my favorite 1940s film cigarette motif, anachronistically slotted in there considering this takes place in the mid 1700s, but what can you do XD
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They fall together lazily, after, Dream leaning against Hob’s shoulder, Hob’s leg slung over his as they lean against the headboard. Dusk is falling, the room in shadows now as the sun has long since traversed over the roof. Dream studies the play of dim light over Hob’s shoulders, the softening of all his features in the shadows. The way their skin sticks together in the summer heat, almost too hot and tacky, and the way the faint breeze through the open window flutters the curtains and the long strands of Hob’s hair.
He runs an indulgent hand over Hob’s chest, down over his stomach and across his thigh, reading it all anew like he hasn’t just had Hob all over him. He is beautiful to touch, Dream thinks, but to do so carves a little hole of melancholy in his heart. Each brush of skin is like an echo, a memory calling to him across time whose origin point is distant now. Concentric ripples on a still lake, the thrown stone long gone under the water, and its thrower, too.
Hob’s found some cigarettes in the nightstand drawer, and slants a smile sideways at Dream as he sticks two of them in his mouth to light, and as Dream keeps touching him lightly. “Am I pleasing to you?”
“Yes,” Dream says, honestly, and Hob chuckles.
“Good.” He strikes a match, the flame flaring brightly in the dark, and lights both cigarettes. Meanwhile, Dream watches the movement of his hands. Hob takes one of the cigarettes from between his lips and holds it up to Dream, and Dream takes with his teeth, Hob’s eyes on him all the while. The tobacco is acrid on the back of his tongue when he lets himself taste it — which he does, because whatever Hob would give him directly from his own mouth, he will have.
Hob lets out his own breath of smoke, the breeze catching it and whistling it further into the room before it can linger. “You don’t strike me as a heavy smoker.”
“I am not,” Dream concedes. “And yet.”
Hob drapes his free arm around Dream’s shoulders, stroking up and down Dream’s arm idly with his thumb. “Getting a taste for it?”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” Hob echoes. He tips his temple against Dream’s so they’re breathing the same air, the same smoke. “Careful. It can be habit-forming.”
Dream takes another inhale of smoke into his nonexistent lungs. “I am aware.”
“Hard to break,” Hob stresses, close enough now that his lips nearly brush Dream’s.
“One would think it best not to start at all,” Dream says, as he takes another long breath in, and almost feels the tang of it in his chest like he were truly breathing the way Hob is.
“Bit late for that,” Hob says, though he doesn’t sound horribly chagrined about it. He tilts his head to catch Dream’s eye, and smiles, that warm, confidential Hob smile, like everything spoken is a secret between them, and it makes Dream want to whisk him away to the Dreaming to keep him forever, or twist his form back into Eleanor so he can have his husband again, or simply drop the façade entirely and see if Hob could possibly love him like this as Dream. And he does none of these things.
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Hey, so I saw you just did a crapton of asks so if you wait a while to answer this I completely understand.
The ask you answered about L. Eclipse flat out ignoring a... very forward suitor (COUgh cough me too buddy Cough cough) made me curious how our favorite boy acts when interacting with his subjects.
mans made a whole universe full of people, likely for reasons outside of just torturing sun and the others, so surely he atleast planned on socializing (or just.. didn't think ahead?)
Does he interact with them positively? Does he interact at all?
Also, completely unrelated, you posts about computer guts has got me thinking about what his internals must look like melded with his centipede stuff, and now i'm having blorbo thoughts about it.
Thank you for always letting me brainrot here, you always are an amazing host for my Thoughts.
AAAAHAIAHJQHSJWD THIS IS SOMETHING I'VE BOTH THOUGHT SO MUCH ABOUT BUT ALSO HAVE VERY LOOSE DETAILS ABOUT TBH LMAOOO
I have two main scenarios though!!! The first is that during the start, he was a very active apart of his "community" and would drink up as much of the attention as humanly possible! Over time, though, the boredom starts to kick in and he spends less and less time around his other followers, eventually only allowing Sunvant to see him.
The second scenario, though, is that he's able to find a balance between keeping up a good image to his followers—not in centipede form, mind you—but the moment the doors are closed and it's only Sun who will witness his wrath, it's time to boogie!!! 🐛🐛🐛
So generally, yes, he treats most of his followers decently because that will ensure they will stay loyal and they will also shower him in praise! The level of interaction just depends on how silly I wanna get LOL
There are still dissenters, though! Which is only natural, Lord Eclipse can't gain everyone's love via fear. Mysteriously, though, the more vocal ones always seem to go missing... I wonder what's up with that?
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