#loved him deeply and had to endure the pain of his brutal end | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aly-writes · 9 months

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wrote this to get out my feelings cause i was going through it lol</3 shoutout to yall who feel similarly, my heart aches for you :( remember that it's always good to talk about how you feel! please don't keep everything holed up inside

i love hyunsu sm :(

word count: 1,190

warnings: reader talking down on themselves, filled with angst/hurt

forlorn - cha hyunsu

Cha Hyunsu was so good to you.

His touches were gentle and carefully thought out. He knew how to read your mood and he dealt with it well, never going too far but also making sure not to leave you high and dry. Hyunsu was considerate, and damn it, you loved it.

You loved all of it.

You loved the way he touched you. Your favorites were the smallest gestures. The way he would lightly put his hand on your back when he noticed you were upset about something, and how if you truly needed it, he would hug you so tight you couldn’t breathe. But it wasn’t uncomfortable or painful, it was needed. Sometimes you needed to feel that secure—tightly held against his chest with the false certainty that everything would turn out alright and nobody could get in the way of that.

One could never forget his voice. The sweet nothings he would whisper in your ear, so hushed that even you could barely hear it. But it was so peaceful, and for a moment, it made you feel like you two were the only people left in the world. Feeling such a way was… nice. Even if it was just for a few minutes, there was a certain bliss that came with the warmth of his soul and knowing that you had it all to yourself.

He cared for you so deeply that you often found yourself questioning how his fondness for you could grow to be so strong. You would think back on the countless nights he would stay up for hours to make sure you were okay, waiting out your moods with nothing but patience and worry. He never resented you for your emotions. In fact, he embraced them entirely. Your emotions were his, as he had once said, and heaven forbid that you go to bed upset because it would only hurt the both of you.

Cha Hyunsu was too good for you.

You were selfish. God, you were so selfish. How did he do it? How did he so effortlessly invest all that he had into you and your sentiments? You had tried so hard to put the pieces together—to understand—but even with your best attempts, you couldn’t manage. Hyunsu would give up everything for you, so why was it so hard for you to do the same?

Your feelings were ugly and brutal, so harsh that sometimes you felt they would harm him. But he dealt with them so effortlessly and so graciously and so lovingly that you felt suffocated. Why did he have to be like this?

Why, why, why?

Things would be so much easier if he would just leave you alone and allow you to process things by yourself. Let you bury your feelings until they explode and you cry to yourself for hours on end questioning why and how you managed to feel so strongly with nothing to show for it. Absolutely nothing to show but an empty mind and a lonely heart, both so agonizing but so much easier to deal with than this.

This sense of guilt that you weren’t sure how to overcome. He was so perfect, so patient. And you were not.

His kisses were always tender and shy, coming from lack of experience but making sure that you knew he was trying his best for you. He always looked at you with a sense of empathy that only a few could achieve. This empathy that he gained through terrible experiences, but he used it in a useful way because, in his mind, you deserved it.

The weight of your remorse was becoming too much for you to bear. He carried your overwhelming emotions on his back while masking his own with such ease. You knew there was something wrong, so why didn’t you ask him about it, damn it?! It shouldn’t be so difficult to hide your emotions just this once, mask them like you were able to do so effortlessly only months prior so you could focus on his feelings. You wanted to show him that you would love to reciprocate his endurance and regard.

But you didn’t.

You broke and revealed your inner self once more, laying yourself bare on the table for him to see all of you. Your imperfections and those goddamn repulsive emotions that you would sacrifice everything for just to go away.

To no one’s surprise, like always, he treated you as he does every time.

“I love you,” you whispered with cracked lips. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes made contact with yours, and the slight tug of his lips caused the corners to crinkle in a way that you adored. He looked at you with so much devotion it hurt. And then he kissed you, taking your breath away with a single motion. Even though they were chapped, his lips always seemed so soft in comparison to yours. His kisses never failed to hold passion and emotion. It was like he was breathing in all the feelings he had so desperately held inside each time and it was so beautiful—fulfilling, even.

When he parted, he simply brushed a strand of hair behind your ear that had somehow gone astray. Then he looked at you once more and nearly blinded you with that same smile. “Please don’t ever apologize.”

It made your lips quiver and you couldn’t help but cover your eyes with your arm.

Love was truly a beautiful thing.

God, you thought. Why does he make you feel this way?

If you were to tell him how you truly felt, would he understand? Pouring out all of this emotion, going on about how remorseful you felt—how ineligible you were for him. Threads of complicated thoughts put into simple words falling out of your mouth, finally spilling the sentence you had been wanting to say for so long.

“Are you okay?” He reached forward to grab your elbow. Ever so gently, he tugged at it in a soft attempt to get you to remove your arm from your face. This only made your lip shudder more.

Hyunsu, you deserve so much better.

But you couldn’t bring yourself to say it out loud. Your heart knew he would understand, but your head convinced you otherwise. This was an issue you had to work through by yourself, it was foolish of you to think that you could share it unwarranted.

Love was beautiful, but your character was not. Despite his past, there was a part of your boyfriend that shined so brightly. You feared that showing him too much would cancel out such a delightful feeling, so you swallowed the smallest tremble of your lip down and sat up straight. You forced yourself to look at him and mustered up the brightest smile you could.

“I am. Thank you.”

With a slide of his hand down to your own, he faintly brushed your knuckles with his thumb. You shuddered at his touch, gulping down the lump that had unfortunately balled up in your throat. It seemed the deal was sealed.

Perhaps some thoughts were better off kept to yourself.

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zandracourt · 3 years

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Some thoughts about Episode 2x12 of 911 Lone Star and subject of physical abuse. I’ll put behind the cut for those who don’t want to read:

I work in the field of abuse of adults and one of the hardest realities of my job is that I have to hold the word “abuse” lightly because the spectrum of what is experienced as abuse by the parties involved is wide, for many factors, including enculturation, personal history, physiological make-up, emotional maturity/intelligence, and mental health. There are legal definitions of what constitutes abuse/assault in every jurisdiction and there is the basic understanding of power/control and the role that plays in the relationship. Even the word “healthy” when it comes to relationships is difficult to define because what I regard as “healthy” is not something someone else considers valuable enough to work on or worth separating from their partner over. It is surprisingly personal and while I have laws that I enforce, the reality is that even when an incident meets the legal criteria, if the victim says it wasn’t abusive to them, there is not much we can do other than to keep offering the victim that there is another way to love and be loved.

That said, I’ve seen a lot of posts of fans very upset about TK’s shoving Carlos when he was angry. And I am not here to say that interpretation is wrong. However, I do understand why the writers and actors would have created that scene and not consider it all that problematic. Again, not justifying, simply offering some thoughts from someone who works in this field. These are my own and I know other investigators in my own unit who would think differently, so it is just one perspective. Also, I am not a sworn officer. I enforce civil law, not criminal.

1) I don’t believe TK’s reaction is out of character. When he is emotionally compromised, he self-harms. He does that with substances and we have seen him seek out fights (the bar which leads to the police station scene and with Judd, both S1) when he is upset. I read his pushing Carlos as self harm over abuse because his actions betray that he is trying to get Carlos to *hit him*. Which Carlos, being a police officer who is trained to remain calm (they are supposed to be anyway), responded by restraining TK. TK’s response is then not to calm down but to get more upset and tell him to leave because TK is *not getting the emotional release that he wants* which is physical pain. He wants to feel physical pain to mask his emotional pain but Carlos won’t participate in that. So this isn’t abuse in the typical way we understand it. It is manipulation on TK’s part and unhealthy as hell, but is actually in keeping with what TK does when he’s hurting emotionally.

2) This scene is highly-feminine coded. There are hundreds of examples in tv/movies where a woman is upset and she beats her fists against a man’s chest (who is almost never who she is actually upset with/about) and the man endures it for a bit and then restrains her until she calms down. We see it all the time and while also problematic, generally we don’t object to it because we view the woman as not being able to cause the man any real harm or pain. Women get away with a LOT of domestic abuse because of this bias. So given that trope, it is very possible that the writers and actors viewed this scene through that same bias. That TK isn’t really hurting Carlos because he is bigger and more muscular than TK. Again, not great, but something to consider when evaluating the choices made by the creators of the art in question.

3) The Fight or Flight response is so deeply ingrained, it is very difficult to stop. When I enter someone’s home as part of my work, I am there to investigate an allegation of abuse. Even with the word INVESTIGATOR on my chest, and with everyone knowing why I am there, there are some perpetrators who are so reactionary in their fight/flight response that they try to threaten and intimidate me (fight). They are displaying abuse behaviors to the one person you would logically think they would want to hide those behaviors from. And many do. But for some, they literally cannot stop the response. Makes my job a little bit easier because now I am a witness to their abusive reactions and can document it. In this instance with TK and Carlos, I’m not necessarily saying that response was triggered in TK, but again, he has a much higher propensity for Fight than Flight in general so I can’t say it’s *not* a factor either.

4) Many have expressed wanting to see the apology between them that was not shown. In some ways, I can understand why the showrunners chose not to. That should not be a quick conversation. And in the context of a show like this, where there is no other way to do it, I think would ultimately be worse. If TK apologizes and Carlos accepts without much conversation, there is no reason for anyone to expect the behavior to change on TK’s part. This actually models abusive cycles. Any conversation where Carlos confronts TK about his behavior would take real time because they’d have to get at the reasons why TK had that reaction in the first place, and given that Carlos has already addressed this (in their convo at the police station after TK is arrested for brawling) and it hasn’t changed. Therefore, the scene would need to either put Carlos in a role of continuing to bring this up while addressing why he is putting up with the behavior from TK, or Carlos needs to do some self-reflection about why he’s still in this relationship. So to do it in a way that is actually “healthy” doesn’t take them where the writers wanted them to be later in the episode. So, in many ways, their apology scene is best served by a well-written fanfic than it would be by a 2 minute on-screen scene that would either serve to perpetuate an unhealthy cycle or push them further apart. This way, there is an ambiguous element where everyone can pretend that some long-ass conversation occurred and the two of them came to a healthy resolution.

5) DV scenes between men are *way* bloodier than any other scenes I encounter. In my experience, when men are abusive of men, it’s very brutal. And again, what equals abuse is sometimes hard to define and even harder to address. So a little shoving, while not great, is also not even in the stratosphere of how bad it often can be. Is it right to view abuse with that kind of relativism? Hard to say. But when you exist in this world, it is hard not to and I have to go by the people in front of me and what they are expressing about how they feel about what happened. If you, the viewer, watched this and reported it as abuse, I could go investigate. But if TK and Carlos say to me, “Nah, we didn’t feel that at all.” Then it doesn’t matter what you, the witness, feel about it, or even me. I can offer my educated and experienced view, but that doesn’t mean the two parties will accept it. That’s why I have learned to hold it loosely because adults have the right to self-determination and the right to make poor choices. And believe me, that is very hard to do, especially when I encounter a victim who is clearly so beat-down that they can’t imagine anything better for themselves. But if I tell that victim, “You must...” then I am simply becoming the next person controlling their choices. Instead, I offer “You could...” or “Here’s some options...”

To me personally, I read TK’s shoving Carlos as evidence of unhealthy self-harm behavior more than TK abusing Carlos, because the action wasn’t rooted in power and control and ended fairly benignly. Would it be awesome for them to still address it? Absolutely. But I also understand why they chose not to.

#911 Lone Star #Tarlos #Episode 2x12 #Abuse in media #911 Lone Star Spoilers

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rcksmith · 3 years

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Spring breeze part.4 — Spencer Reid

Icon by @obiwansjedi

Part.1 Part.2 Part.3

Sumarry: After the breakup, Spencer and the Reader follow different paths and lives. But, after 8 years, Gideon's death brings an avalanche of emotions, putting the two face to face again in a reencounter that could break their hearts again — season 10 —

Couple: Spencer Reid /Gideon's daughter!reader.

Warnings: mention of death, mention of violence, death of the father, depressive thoughts, murder, crying, swearing, a lot of anguish, mention of love, fluff (but it has a very fluff too, I'm not a monster)

Word count: 5k.

A/N: This is the most sad chapter that has, I promise that the next will be very cute.💖

I saw Gideon's death episode again to make it as faithful as possible for you guys. I used the original Criminal Minds chronology too, being 8 years from Gideon's last appearance until his death.

English is not my first language, so I so sorry if have a mistake.

Let me know if you want to be added for a taglist for a specific fandom (Criminal Minds, The Umbrella Academy, Riverdale, Roman Godfrey, or all)

Requests are open. Love you ❤️

— — — — —

Hunting bandits. Save people. Improve the world a little bit every day. Those were the three things Spencer believed it was worth to be at BAU. It was worth fighting for, holding on, staying sleepless for days, being haunted by murderers by day and nightmares at night. For what it was worth looking at the abyss, even when it looks to you

Reid could deal with human perversion, with the thousand and one ways to practice heinous crimes, the sowing of evil and cruelty. He could cope with constantly being inside insane minds, learning his whys and mechanisms. He could take it. He put up with it day after day, case after case. He endured being tortured, stay being held at gunpoint, having a piece of his essence plucked with red-hot iron month after month. Spencer knew he could handle it.

But he couldn't handle death. Goodbye. It shattered his soul far more than difficult cases, pushed his own sanity to the limit. Perhaps burying his feelings as deeply as possible was just a method of delaying the wave that would drown him at one time or another. Inevitably.

Each farewell took a piece of Reid away. His father, his mother, Ellie, you, Gideon, JJ, were just a few of the people who left, living their lives elsewhere. But what about those who died? The victims, the children, Hayley, Maeve, Emily (even if only for a short time) and so many others. These took much more than a piece of him. Maybe costu his whole soul.

Spencer felt himself harden over the years, the cases, loss after loss, day after loss. He felt the purity of his own heart slip through his fingers like sand, the faith in humanity to be put to the test. Sometimes even faith in himself.

Was that the price to pay for that job? Being constantly vulnerable? See his life and the lives of the people his loved most at gunpoint?

It was worth?

Maeve's death shook him more than any other, sucking all the pink glow from his world, leaving him with only the cold feeling of hopelessness. A very deep void. It took a long time for memories of she not to hurt like red-hot iron, for his breathing not to be heavy. It took a long time to be happy again.

And when Spencer felt healed from the deepest wounds, the most visceral pains, he was hit again. Deeply. If Maeve's death was a wave that brought him down, Gideon's death was the tsunami that destroyed him.

“It's Gideon.” Hotch's voice confirmed the fear of everyone in that cottage.

Then Spencer felt shattered. Torn apart. Torn like a rag doll and placed on the fire. He wanted to scream, to scream so loudly that he would never regain his voice. He wanted to break something, destroy some, run away.

But run away from whom? From what? That pain or himself? If Spencer had been able to tear off his own skin at that time and be someone else, he would not have hesitated. Not having dropped to his knees in that cottage was a miracle, because Spencer no longer knew what was holding him upright.

Jason Gideon, in many ways, was all that Spencer had. He knew that they took different paths and traveled different roads, living different lives, but he believed that they always end up on the same, even one they was old. Spencer was sure that if he was dying on his knees, Gideon would be to rescue him. For all those 8 years, it was extremely comforting to think that Gideon was out there, living life, finding the hope he had in college, finding the brilliance the world had.

And Reid knew that Jason had you. And you had Gideon. That was the most soothing and comforting thought. No matter what, he knew that you would take care of Jason, just like he would take care of you. But now... now Spencer's world had dissolved in the air. Like a sandcastle knocked over by the wind.

And the pain was surreal.

When he realized, he had left the room, close to the... body. If he could, Spencer would have moved away from himself. How would he take it? One more death, another psychopath. How many other people he love will are died at the hands of the work he did every day?

The answer to all of these questions was frightening, and Spencer wasn't sure if wanted them.

The trip to the coroner was the worst Reid had ever done, talking about the body was the worst conversation he had ever had. And when Morgan put his hand on his shoulder and said that he couldn't close himself now, that they were going to get that son of a bitch, all Spencer wanted to say was that he couldn't take it anymore. That he couldn't breathe. The emptiness was too oppressive. So much visceral pain.

But that was not what Spencer said. He just clung to the only lifeguard in the middle of the rough and deserted sea: justice. Gideon deserve it.

Reid doesn't know how he managed to get back to the Gideon’s house, how he managed to hear Hotch and Rossi talking about what could have happened. But he was there, standing, by some miracle.

“Do you know who might want to have done this?” Hotch asked Stephen, who had arrived, his eyes red from the crying he struggled to hold.

“No. I know he had a list of things he wanted to do before he died... That's how we came back to speak, one of the things was to get back in touch.” His voice was so reminiscent of Gideon's that it was stabbed in the heart of Reid.

“Didn't he talk about being chased? Feeling anything strange?” Rossi commented.

Reid watched Stephen's expressions carefully, first because he reminded Gideon a lot, and second because he looked for any clues in his reactions.

Stephen took a second to think before saying: “No, but we both don't keep in touch daily, you know?” He swallowed a sob, probably with regret, but then his eyes lit up with some information: “'But Y/n surely know, they both spoke to each other every day, if my father was thinking differently, surely she know.”

The mention of your name hit Reid with a very different wave. Bringing a very different feeling than it should. At that moment, he felt himself holding the air.

For a second, a lapse of consciousness, Spencer had not connected any of this with your physical presence. The notion that you were Gideon's daughter was obvious but, for some reason, Spencer didn't think about the fact that you were going to be there. That you would share the same air with him again, the same place...

“We will have to call her, bring her here to see if something has been left, or taken. If there is anything important on the scene.” It was Hotch.

“I called her as soon as you guys called me.” Stephen said “She arrived from California the day before yesterday, my father and she were going to travel.” He tried to swallow the crying, his eyes trembling.

"And you weren't going?" Rossi added.

“I have a son and a wife.” He gave a smile broken by the sadness of the mourning “They would stop by before I go… Y/n was going to tell me the news, since our schedules hardly match much, she works as an astronomer in…”

“Caltech.” Spencer completed, without even realizing it, like a thought out loud.

“Yea.” Stephen agreed.

Spencer felt a chill go from head to toe, and another ton of feelings were thrown at his back. The reality that he was going to see you again hit him hard. Like an arrow. Suddenly, Reid wanted to get out of there. Run as far as possible.

He couldn't see you. He had no ability to deal with those feelings now. Not now, when his life was so overwhelmed with emotions for Gideon’s death that he still hadn't dealt Not when you aroused the feeling of... hope. Spencer can’t could hope, of any kind. Not for them to be taken from him with visceral force. Reid was already hurt enough for handling another fall.

“... But I don't think it's a good idea for my sister to be here, anyway.” Stephen continued to speak.

Rossi and Hotch frowned: “Why?”

“They were very connected. Seeing this scene is not going to do her any good...” he sobs this time “Y/n is not like me… she is sentimental, emotional. ”

“As long as you're trying to stay calm, she'll be the opposite.” Hotch completed.

“I just don't want my sister to suffer anymore and...”

But it was too late for Stephen to complete. It was too much for Spencer to escape. It was too late to be born again, in a different life.

A gray car moved forward on the stone road, at too high a speed not to have washed several road fines. That was so much typical of you who hurt Spencer's heart pieces more than he thought possible. More than he thought he could feel at the time. You were always so wild at the wheel. But Reid didn't have time to finish a thought, not even Rossi, Hotch, Morgan who was with them or even Stephen. Because car brutally stopped it, the door opened and…

And it was as if the sun came out from behind the clouds after years. As if summer had finally come after decades of overwhelming winter. In a burst, everything you've ever represented for Spencer has come back for him once again. And he felt the same thing that he felt when he first saw you, 8 years ago. And he was catatonic.

You got out of the car in a very hurried and desperate way. And as much as there were tears in your eyes and redness in cheeks, Spencer has never seen anyone so beautiful. Your hair was longer, in a brighter shade, maybe you had dyed it. Your features were more lyrical and beautiful, and Reid thought that the passage of time had no effect on you. While he considered himself just less clumsy over the years, you proved to be blooming like Romania's most superb rose.

“DAD!” But that was when your desperate voice brought Reid's consciousness back to earth.

You weren't calling your brother, you weren't asking why, you weren't in mourning. You were in denial. Disbelieving. You called out to your father, with the certainty that he would show up. And the despair in your eyes hurt Reid more than being shot.

But before the agents could do anything, you were running towards the house and Stephen ran towards you, taking you in his arms, trying to keep you from getting inside.

“LET ME GO, STEPHEN!” You struggled, trying to get rid of your brother's arms, your hair messing with the wind, tears streaming down your eyes. “They are wrong! It's not our father! Let me fucking go! DAD!”

“Y/n” Stephen had a broken heart in his eyes, some tears streaming down his eyes “You need to calm down before you get in there !”

“LET ME GO!” Yours sobs broke the hearts of the four agents over there “DAD!” You was cryng out, almost like a prayer, in a desperate call.

"He's gone, Y/n.” Your brother kept his arms stronger in you, trying to contain you while you struggle in trying to break free and go inside the house, under the illusion that you would find your father there.

“NO!” Now your crying was continuous “I spoke to him yesterday! It's not him, Stephen!” Then your brother turned you to him, holding you tight, and you melted into a visseral pain “It can't be him!”

“I know...” he sobbed, looking at you with the same shared pain “I know...”

So you gave yourself up to a painful, loud and desperate crying, the kind that won't let you breathe. And, unlike Reid, you fallen down. Your knees found the stone and grass floor, your hands clasped on Stephen's shirt, who knelt on the floor with you, delivered the pain you both shared.

You knew what your father's risks were in working in such a dangerous profession. Expose yourself to constant and frightening danger. You always knew about the risks, you just tried to ignore them all your life, sinking your fears about your father not coming home at night. Then, when he let the BAU, that fear dissipated. You felt a colossal weight being lifted off your shoulders, like tons of lead, and you let go of a fear so great that you didn't even know you had it.

For 8 years you thought that the chances of him not coming home were over, that the chances of seeing him the next day had increased dramatically. For 8 years you two traveled together, stopping at every type of diner for milkshake, chocolate ice cream and mint - his favorites - For 8 years you had your best friend, the only thing you knew you had in the world. You always knew that if you were drowning in the ocean, it would be your father who would give his lungs for you to breathe.

You didn't see a life without Gideon.

For you, you were crying for hours in what one day was your father's backyard, totally devastated, but for the rest of the world it was a matter of minutes.

Your sobs were so loud and real that Hotch and Rossi caught themselves with watery eyes, perfectly understanding the pain you were going through, the devastation. The two had lost many people, many of them being essential pieces to be able to continue breathing. Many of them felt wounds that would never heal.

But it was Rossi who approached you, the pain at the top of his throat, his mind wandering the day Gideon said he was going to have a little girl. Unlike Stephen, Rossi never saw you in person, but the sparkle in Jason's eyes whenever he talked about you, or with you on the phone, was enough to know that you were one of the essential pieces to keep breathing.

“Hi, my name is Rossi.” He knelt in front of you and your face went towards him, your cheeks and nose as red as your eyes.

“M-my dad talked about you."” You were still sobbing, slowly letting go of Stephen's shirt.

"Good things, I hope.” The two of you laughed like a sigh, and soon the pain returned to your eyes in a visseral way. “I know this is not fair, and I know it is asking too much, but I need you to go inside and try to find something out of place. Something that whoever did this to your father may have taken or left. ”

You closed your eyes in pain, tears streaming as you sobbed. Your hands, trembling and cold, went to your face, perhaps trying to hide from reality, perhaps wiping away tears. Maybe both. When you looked back at Rossi again, you saw the pain in his eyes too.

"I don't know if I can do it.” You admitted, your voice shaking.

"I know.” Rossi took his hand to yours, squeezing comfortingly “But only you can help us now, help other daughters not lose their father to the same killer. Being inside in the house can bring information that is in your subconscious. I promise you will make it, we will all be here with you.”

His handshake got stronger, and it reminded you of your father. That should have been the same way he comforted the victims' relatives, the way he was supposed to act with people.

'Everyone is somebody's son.' That's what Gideon said. It hit you like an atomic bomb. And, for a moment, you thought it was possible to die of sadness.

You squeezed Rossi's hand tightly, as if you were looking for courage. When you opened eyes again, you gave a weak nod. Carefully, as if any sudden movement is capable of causing you more pain, you stood up, your legs wobbly, your heart bleeding, sadness clouding your vision. Rossi put his hand behind your back, in a way to make sure him were there, as an anchorage in reality that would not let you get lost in the valley of sadness and pain.

As you walked up to the house, you didn't see the other agents, you didn't see the trees, the cars. At that time, you didn't even know what color the sky was anymore. It was like a suspended moment, when the world is in slow motion, the hemisphere is terrified. The sadness was palpable in the breeze, in the way that the rays of the sun did not reach the ground. The whole land looked like mourning.

As soon as you stepped inside the house, the smell of home and Gideon hit your nose, and you felt your face tighten in an expression of pure pain. You didn't notice the agents coming in behind you, you didn't notice Penelope and JJ. You just saw the furniture, the decor, his stuff. As if Gideon had just left for the market and was going to come back.

Everything was in was there. Minus the most important thing: him.

You did not notice when Rossi left you, you did not notice who approached. Everything was in a haze of pain.

But that's when you saw the strong blood marks on the floor, stuck to the wood with possession. A cold shiver as sighed from death ricocheted through your entire body, bristling all over your skin. In a burst, like the bursting of a violin string, the mist dissipated, the state of tupor burst, and reality hit you with overwhelming force.

And then the plug fell.

Jason Gideon had died.

You fell again, barely noticing the sobs and loud crying starting to come out again, the most desperate and painful in you life. But this time the arms that took you were different, bringing with you sensations that you haven't felt in a long time. That a long time ago you forgot that you could feel.

They were long, thin, and contained a vigor hidden beneath the thin facade. The smell of his presence was… heaven. That feeling was your anchorage on the high seas, in the valley of despair, and you clung to him for fear of drowning, of not finding your way back home.

You didn't have to see it to know who it was.

You turned to the arms that took you, now Spencer kneels with you on the floor, and you cried in a way that you never cried before, with a visseral pain. Your hands went to the brown cardigan he wore, closing there as if the fabric was your only chance for salvation.

So you looked at the immensity of the his brown irises.

"He was the only thing I had, Spen.” You sobbed loudly with the crying, gently swaying his coat, your voice utterly torn.

Spencer felt his eyes sting, his throat lock and the remains of what was his heart ache in a hideous way.

“I know.” He felt a tear run down his left cheek, his hands on your arms.

At this time, the two of you supported each other. Gideon meant a lot to you two. An irreplaceable role in yours life. And Spencer knew that was what you were talking about when you said:

"He was the only thing we both had.” You closed your eyes, your hands still firmly on his coat, your heart pounding.

But this time Spencer's voice was just as broken when he said: “I know.”

Then he hugged you.He hugged you for everything. He hugged you because it was a pain that only you two could understand. He hugged you because you needed it, and because he needed too.

Jason Gideon had a special connection with you two, a connection that only the two of you had ever experienced. Each relationship with Gideon was different, special in different ways, but only the two of you had him as a protector, mentor, a much more paternal and confidant figure. He was the kind of person you could leave your life in his hands, the kind who would teach you the secret of the worlds, show you what goodness was and at the same time strength. And you two had that.

You stained Reid's coat with tears, and Reid stained you with the strong smell he had. He stepped far enough away to be able to see your face perfectly, at a considerable distance, and, against everything he had ever done before with anyone, he took your face in his hands, his eyes fixed on your in pain shared.

“We will catch how did it.” Reid assured you, as if he had tattooed this words on your skin. You closed your eyes in pain, but he brought you back “Hey, keep looking at me."

So you did it. Because you would always follow Spencer. To hell if he asked.

"Don't take your eyes off mine, okay?” His voice was so sweet, so gentle, and you couldn't have done anything but agree. “When was the last time you spoke to Gideon?”

“Yesterday.” You replied “We were going to travel to the beach today, I took a vacation from work.”

“Was he at home when you two talked?”

The team looked at each other, with several questions in those look.

You denied it, the hiccup now because of the shortness of breath you had because of the crying.

“He stopped at Roanoke for...” and that's when you seemed to remember something.

Your eyes widened softly, your lips trembled, and you let out a stammering sigh as you try to remember something very important.

“What do you remember?” Spencer stroked your cheeks with his thumbs, trying to calm the beating of your heart that went back to being frantic and making you focus on the question, not the sea of emotions you felt.

“He…” was when your eyes fluttered before meeting Reid's again. “He said he saw a woman on the news who was found dead. And ... and that he had to make sure of one thing ”

Rossi looked at Hotch, who gave an attentive and objective expression.

“Did he tell you why?” His eyes closed again and you sobbed. Reid moved closer, bringing your face back in his direction again “Look at me, Y/n.”

As soon as you did, he gave you a gentle smile, but contained all the pain in the world. He understood what you were felling.

“Why was he interested in the case?” He changed the question.

“I-it was something about...” you searched in your mind “Girl named Tara. I don’t know. He mentioned about a blue butterfly tattoo on her ankle as well, and that it was something to do with a… a case or something.”

“1978” Rossi interrupted and everyone looked at him “Gideon and I worked on a case in 1978, the suspect was never caught and Tara was a teenager who we thought had been kidnapped by him. The killer left dead birds in the hands of the victims ”

“But he didn't mention birds and...” That's when your eyes, fluttering, darted around the room and you stopped abruptly.

Spencer turned his attention to you again, seeing that you were staring somewhere. His hands slowly left your face and he asked:

“What?”

“The board.” You pointed to your father's board, which had a beautiful brown bird.

“Does say anything to you?” Rossi turned his attention to you.

You shook your head, your body too exhausted to go to the painting and examine it.

“He shot the board.” You looked at the agents “My father loved that painting, he never would have done that. Even though my father is stunned, he has the best aim I have ever seen.”

“The devil is in the details." Rossi went to the pinting and, after two seconds, turned to the team and said “I already know who did this.”

You let out a gigantic sigh of relief as the agents split up to continue the case, speaking so fast that you couldn't keep up.

“I helped?” You looked at Spencer, tears still shining in your eyes.

He smiled and nodded “Very.”

But when he got up, you took his hand, making Reid turn his attention back to you again, a questioning look on his face.

“You're going to get it, aren't you?” The sob invaded your voice "Promise me that you will catch him, Spen."

Reid took his hand in your, giving you a strong, comforting squeeze before saying:

"I will. I promise.”

And then he left, along with the other agents.

- - -

You thought you knew what pain was, the loss, the tightness in the heart. You thought that your many relationship breakdowns showed you what it was like to suffer. But you have never been so wrong. None of that compared to how you were now, to what you felt.

You would trade that feeling for anything in the world.

This was terrible. A cold, coercive, brutal and cruel feeling. As if you were at the bottom of a black ocean, unable to breathe, falling deeper and deeper, consumed by the overwhelming cold of the water.

It was impossible to say in words how you felt. But if it were you had to define it in one word you would say: pain. A pain that bends you, a pain that makes you want to scream, that pierces your lungs so that it is not possible to breathe, but that even so, you fight for air.

It was pain at its rawest, most brutal, sharp and atrocious like a dagger blade. You would go through Dante's hells for eternity instead of living one day with that pain.

Since Spencer and the agents went after the person in charge, you have sat on the steps of the front door, watching the nature, the shaking of the trees, but your attention was so far, far away. Perhaps unattainable.

Gideon always loved watching the seasons go by, and in that moment, you wondered if looking at the same thing he looked at every day would make you feel close to him. Feel with him. It had only been three days since you last saw him, when he picked you up at the airport, but you felt like you were past three lives. How would you go without it? How were you able to think of living without it?

You pulled your knees up against your chest, hugging your legs, the metallic, atrocious and icy taste of devastation stuck to yours in your mouth. The trees shook hard, forcing the birds to fly away, but you didn't feel cold. You were not feeling the cold breeze hit your body, nor were your muscles contracting in exhaustion from the hard wood of the steps you were sitting on.

The hunger, the cold, the heat or the craving could not reach you, as if the pain had paralyzed all your system. Probably your soul.

You didn't see when Stephen put father's blanket over your shoulders, nor did you hear his sobs for seeing you so devastated. But you smelled Gideon, and the warmth of the blanket was like having his arms around you again. Then the rest of the water in your body found its way to your eyes and crying was as automatic as breathing.

You were clinging to Spencer taking the son of a bitch who did it, trying to chase away any other thoughts that weren't about that. You didn't want to think about what would happen after he was caught. Which meant his capture for you. It would bring justice to Gideon, honoring his name, his life, but it wouldn't bring him back. What was taken from you would not be repaired, regardless of the end of that damned man.

When he was caught, you would have nothing else to focus on instead.

You don't know how long you stayed there. Hours? Days? The those peach and gold tones in the sky is from dusk or the dawn of a new day?

You had lost track of time, as if your watch had stopped since the time Gideon died.

The sound of cars on the road was the only thing that pulled you out of your fucking valley, and as soon as the black SUVs stopped, you stood up as if you had been waiting your whole life for that moment. The blanket fell from your shoulders, heart accelerated at an alarming rate, and for a second, everything was gone from your mind.

Rossi was the first to get out of the car, but yours eyes darted to Reid. You wanted to run, ask what had happened, listen to the answers. But you were paralyzed in place. Afraid of the truth, of reality.

What would become of you after that news?

Spencer came towards you without hesitation, and you couldn't take your eyes off him for a second. He didn't say anything, nor did he explain anything. It was not needed. The way he reached out his hand and placed your father's rings in your palm were enough answers.

Your whole body shook and you looked at Reid with more emotions than askers.

"He is dead." He told you, and it made you fall down again.

But this time you fell into his hugging, clinging to him in despair. There were many meanings in that embrace: gratitude, relief, fear, pain and grief. And Spencer hugged you back in the same way.

You two stayed that way for a while, even when the agents went to talk to Stephen, even when Garcia and JJ left the house, even when the cold wind hit you both.

“Thanks." You heard yourself say it, and Spencer shook his head, signaling that it wasn't necessary, and the two of you moved away.

So you went to Rossi, and hugged him too. In that second, Rossi could feel Gideon in that hug, and it took a second to not cry.

“Your father was a great man." He told you when the two of you walked away, and you agreed on a sad smile.

"He was." You looked down at the rings in your hand, staying a second there before turning to the agents and saying: “You guys are going to the funeral, aren't you? I ... my dad would like it w-very much.”

"Of course." Rossi guaranteed it.

As they walked away and went back to the car, heading for their own houses, your eyes met Spencer's and he whispered in the air to you:

“I will see you at the funeral."

You nodded, giving you a sad, grateful smile. And while everyone was leaving and you were looking at the rings in your hand again, you had a feeling that your story with Spencer had just started over.

A/n: I also lost a very important person to death, and for everyone who went through it too, I mean that no one is alone! My message box is open if you need anything! Love you❤️

Tagged @gublersuvula

@peculiarinsomniac

@measure-in-pain

@nobutalsoyes

🍒 @misshale21

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willowcrowned · 3 years

Note

Okay but has anyone considered Obi-wan/Cody/Satien (is that how its spelled?) Regardless, hes got two hands for his two mandalorians, the au where this happend is gotta be top notch ridiculous ye?

Okay thank you so much for giving me a reason to think about this, because this AU contains three things I adore: polyamory, ships where everyone is frighteningly competent, and Obi-Wan

In this AU, Ventress is somehow even less well-adjusted (bear with me). What this means is that, instead of taking a gap year and finding herself after her family is brutally murdered, she decides she needs to get revenge even more now. What does this mean? In the short term, she still becomes a bounty hunter, but in the long run? She’s looking for a Sith lord team up so she can punch Dooku (with a lit lighstaber) in his stupid, elitist, backstabbing face.

So when Maul invades Mandalore, what happens? Ventress comes right along, ready to give her ‘I know we hate each other, but consider teaming up to kill someone we both hate even MORE’ space TED talk. And though Maul may be terribly annoying, a closet theater kid, always in a tits out kind of mood, and denying his gay awakening, he’s not stupid. He knows Sidious is coming for him, sooner rather than later, and he knows he needs more people on his side than his (impressively beefy) brother. He and Savage agree to the team-up.

Cue Obi-Wan showing up, ready to save his sort-of girlfriend, and finding Pre Vizsla, who got REAL sus the second ANOTHER lunatic with a red lightsaber showed up, occupied by capturing Maul, Savage, and Ventress.

Obi-Wan saves Satie, who convinces him to call Cody for a quick evac, and they’re running away, flirting, and arguing over shooting things (as usual), when they spot Ventress, Maul, and Savage, about to be executed.

Oh, they both think, hell no. And then, because they have a stupid moral code that makes them do stupid moral things, they go save them.

A little background on Obi-Wan at this point: He has been fighting in a war for over two years. He is exhausted, close to a breakdown, and seriously questioning his place as a General. Next to him at all times, supporting him, helping him, and saving him, is Cody, who is clever, kinder than he has any right to be, and is, of course, devastatingly handsome when he does his special, unique-to-Cody half-smirk.

Obi-Wan, to put it mildly, is totally gone on him. Obi-Wan also, to put it less mildly, is his commanding officer in an army that Cody can’t leave on pain of death. To do anything— make any advance beyond the flirting that he engages in with most people— would put Cody in a very uncomfortable position, whether or not he returns Obi-Wan’s feelings. So Obi-Wan watches him from afar, hoping against hope that his affections are returned, and that one day, after the end of the war, there will be a future for both of them.

A little more background on Obi-Wan at this point: He has always respected Satine. Their correspondence fell apart just a few months after the end of his mission with Qui-Gon, but he’s been keeping up with her professional accomplishments for years. Over time, the love he bore for her faded, leaving him with good memories and an enduring appreciation for her courage, her cleverness, and her ability to deliver devastating blows to someone’s confidence with a few well-placed words.

Until he sees her again. And yes, alright, he might be angry that she’s choosing to stay out of the war— he knows what good she could do— but he understands her fears, understands the very real possibility that if Mandalore gets embroiled in yet another war, they may never recover. The thing is... well, she’s still very beautiful, especially when he’s yelling at him, and as slowly as his feelings had faded then, they come back in a rush now.

He has very much fallen in love with Cody, and he is very much still in love with Satine.

Cut back to the present— Obi-Wan and Satine rescue the three most annoying Sith in the galaxy and get the heck out of dodge. Cody, because he’s Cody, comes swooping in with a last-minute rescue.

At this point, two things are occurring.

The first: Obi-Wan is stuck in a room with four people he’s periodically flirted with over the past few years, two of whom he’s desperately in love with, one of whom he had a weird encounter with that he can never tell Anakin about when she and him got trapped in a middle school auditorium, and one of whom is definitely wearing no shirt and all that jewelry for a reason. It is Supremely awkward for him.

The second: Every single person in that room, each of which is (barring Savage) deeply attracted to Obi-Wan, is realizing that Obi-Wan is dressed in Mandalorian armor, and while Obi-Wan in three layers of tunics and a cloak is an absolute knockout, Obi-Wan in Mandalorian armor may very well kill them (and he won’t even have to touch his lightsaber to do it).

For one single moment, everything is absolutely still as they all stare at each other.

...And then Maul starts on the ‘I will rend your flesh from your bones, feel my wrath, Kenobarrgh’ spiel, and Satine stuns him. Oh, and Savage. Ventress agrees to watch the two of them if they don’t stun her, and Obi-Wan agrees.

Which then leaves him, Cody, and Satine in a room alone.

A word on Cody at this point: He has been bred from birth to be the perfect soldier— loyal, clever (but not too clever), and rigourously adherent to protocol. Yet, within three months of knowing Obi-Wan, he’s, well, calling him Obi-Wan in his head. Even just that is a gross breach of protocol, but he’s compromised in more ways than one. He talks to Obi-Wan, now, not just as a subordinate, or secondary advisor, but as a friend, as a councilor. Every time Obi-Wan touches him— never for longer than a brief second— his skin lights up under his armor. One time, Obi-Wan fell asleep on him for half an hour, and Cody’s was sure everyone would hear his heartbeat.

What he’s doing— how he feels— he knows it’s putting Obi-Wan in danger, knows that if the Kaminoans had wanted to the clones to be equals to the Jedi, they would have told them so. And look, he knows what the natborns would call the way he’s feeling, but he can’t feel that way. He’s a clone— he’s expendable by definition. Even if, on some off-chance, he makes it out of this war alive, there’s nothing for him. Obi-Wan couldn’t care for him like that, couldn’t care for a man with the same face as millions of others, born and bred only for war. So it doesn’t matter how he feels.

A word on Satine at this point: Obi-Wan, when he left, was a gawkish, bumbling thing of red hair and freckles and the sweetest smile. Obi-Wan, when he came back, was graceful, eloquent, and very, very handsome. He is also infuriating. (This does not change how attracted she is to him in the least.)

She’s not a romantic, really, but she is a realist, and she knows she’s loved him in some form or another for over twenty years. She knows she can’t ask him to return it— knows that asking him to leave the order for her wouldn’t just be for her, it would be for Mandalore, and while the politician in her cries for her to claim him, the person in her who loves Obi-Wan could not abide tearing him away from his culture for her own purposes. She still loves him, deeply and irrevocably, and she knows he still loves her. (Maybe, she thinks, after the war... But she can’t afford to be sentimental).

What do Cody and Satine have in common? They’re both extremely competent, both instinctively ruthless, and they both love Obi-Wan. Oh, and they’re also both immediately jealous of their counterpart.

They know they shouldn’t be. They know it’s not fair, not when Obi-Wan isn’t theirs anyways, but it doesn’t change the surge of envy and dislike that happens when they see Obi-Wan use the soft voice he only uses for the people he likes best on the person across from them.

Cody knows he can never compare to the Duchess, who is beautiful and well-spoken and has held Obi-Wan’s heart since they were fifteen. Satine knows she can never compare to Cody, who has been at Obi-Wan’s side every second since the war’s beginning, who is so much closer in ideals to Obi-Wan than she is, however it might appear on the surface.

Fortunately, they don’t have to deal with it for long, because Ventress comes in with Maul and Savage and proposes a team up, at which point Maul reveals the identity of the Sith Master.

Obi-Wan swears a string of words that Cody and Satine are both very impressed by, and agrees to the team up. Cody and Satine, who are both going to Coruscant anyways, agree to it too.

What ensues is a good deal of scheming, during which Cody and Satine avoid each other like the plague, Obi-Wan is repeatedly told to get some sleep, and Ventress cuffs Maul to a door on multiple nonconsecutive occasions. When they get to Coruscant, Satine has already told Padmé, who has in turn told her group of anti-war (and anti-Palpatine) senators, Cody has given Rex a heads up, and Ventress, Maul, and Savage have been metaphorically sharpening their lightsabers for ages.

(It occurs to Obi-Wan, at one point, after he’s woken up from his enforced 25-hour nap, that Palpatine must have created the clone army for a reason— must have a failsafe in place— and he asks Ahsoka to pull all the data the Kaminoans have on the clones. They find out about the chips, and Ahsoka immediately immediately holds the Kaminoans at laser sword point until they reprogram every order into a command that dissolves the chip.)

The thing about organizing a coup together is that it makes it very hard to avoid each other. Cody and Satine are forced to work together, and, what do you know, it turns out that even with seething jealousy at work, they end up respecting each other. (Note: Obi-Wan comes into a room at one point to see them both bent over a commlink, heads together and hands nearly touching. He short circuits.)

In any case, coup, Palps dies, Republic fixed, whatever.

What’s important is that Obi-Wan gets really, really injured— so much so that he might die. Cody and Satine have dealt with him being dead before (Deception arc anyone?), but this? Watching him slowly fade, knowing there’s nothing they can do about it? That’s worse.

One night, when Anakin has fallen asleep, they have a long conversation in low voices about Obi-Wan, darting from fond to furious to devastated over and over again. If he wakes up— if, not when— they agree to say something to Obi-Wan, to let him know that they love him. It’s a meager consolation after all they’ve been through, but this is the end, in one way or another, and they deserve to be honest with him.

(Cody thinks, privately, that he will be— well, not tossed aside, because Obi-Wan isn’t the sort of person who does that, but there won’t be a place for him by Obi-Wan’s side anymore. Obi-Wan is a Jedi, a negotiator, a peacekeeper, and Cody is a soldier for a now-ended war. He is already steeling himself to accept Obi-Wan’s polite rejection with equanimity, to not cause more pain to the man. (It will be easy, he knows, to wish him every peace, every happiness. Cody has only ever wanted to see Obi-Wan happy. This does not mean it will not be painful.) Obi-Wan said once that he would have left the Order for Satine if she’d asked— she will ask, now, and Cody knows Obi-Wan will leave, can see the love written in his face, in his spine, in his hands, whenever he is around her. Satine will ask, and Obi-Wan will leave, and Cody will be left to look for a place in this new galaxy.)

(Satine thinks, privately, that Obi-Wan’s feelings for her must be long faded, replaced by his obvious ones for Cody. Obi-Wan is a warrior, a Knight, and Satine is a diplomat who foreswore violence long ago. She is already steeling herself to accept his rejection with grace. (It will be easy, she knows, to wish him well. She has only ever wanted good things for him. This does not mean it will not be painful.) He said once that he would have left the Order for her if she’d asked, and whatever he’d felt then for her pales to what he feels now for Cody. Cody will ask, and Obi-Wan will leave, and Satine will rule as she always has.)

And then Obi-Wan wakes up.

Cody and Satine let him have his long talk with Anakin first, partially because they know how important it is to him, partially because Anakin wouldn’t let them if they wanted to, and partially because they are dreading their own coming conversation. When Anakin has finished, and Obi-Wan is asleep again, they go in, hand-in-hand, and wait for him to wake up.

When he does wake up, he sees them holding hands and immediately comes to several wrong conclusions. Wrong Conclusion A: Cody and Satine are in love. Wrong Conclusion B: Cody and Satine are going to try to break the news that they’re in love to him gently. Wrong Conclusion C: This conversation is about to break his heart.

Then they speak.

At the end of it, Obi-Wan has some Thoughts. Thought One: alkdfjhskhsgjljlbhkgkjbjvnab,gkjvn;qlerghjsv?????!!!!fwbfwlkrehwogwhuwrijvhfdbhkf!!!! Thought Two: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Thought Three: Oh, we’re all idiots. Fantastic.

He then passes out, because being on the edge of death for days and then having a shock to your system this big tends to do that to you.

When he wakes up, he is mildly more coherent. Then he sees that Satine and Cody are asleep on each other, and the coherence is lost, but he does manage to wake them up and get across three things:

Thing One: He is desperately in love with them both.

Thing Two: He’s leaving the Order for a multitude of reasons, but they are a Significant Bonus.

Thing Three: He would very much like if they both held his hand while he falls back asleep.

Cody takes Obi-Wan’s right hand, Satine takes Obi-Wan’s left hand, and the three of them stay like that, fingers intertwined, for a long, long, while.

#this is. Long #obi wan DOES have two hands #i have not checked this for grammar mistakes #asks #missstar489 #obi wan has two hands au #codywan #obitine #codyobitine #star wars #star wars au #obi wan kenobi #satine kryze #commander cody #willow's aus #god this is 2.4k #no wonder it took me so long #me: I'll just reply to this ask real quick :)#me an hour later: oh. oh no

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unsettlingconclusions · 3 years

Text

Piano Sonata n08

Pairing: Hana Lee x MC (Riley) Summary: Riley was no expert in classical music but she easily sensed the tempo was increasing erratically, notes were missing and some of them sounded just downright wrong. It was unlike Hana to play carelessly, disregarding rhythm and accuracy. It could only mean one thing, Hana was furious. Set during TRH3. Genre: Hurt/comfort. Angst? Rating: T Word Count: 1600+ Notes: In honor of the CG of Hana crying </3 This was sitting around my filled with spider’s webs AO3 profile. Written while listening to Mussorgsky's "A Night on Bald Mountain" if anyone is interested in feeling the pure rage. Fic title refers to Beethoven's Piano Sonata no 8, the 1st movement. The last piece mentioned is Hungarian Rhapsody no 02, by Liszt. Riley stands at the threshold of the music room. The heavy sounds of agitated music pierce the air, filling it with something... intense. Yes, intense would be an appropriate way to describe it. The stiffness in her stance, the way Hana's body moved, her tense expression... all of it screamed rage.

Although Riley was no expert in classical music, she easily sensed the tempo was increasing erratically, notes were missing and some of them sounded just downright wrong. It was unlike Hana to play carelessly, disregarding rhythm and accuracy. It could only mean one thing, Hana was furious.

She had to be. A few hours ago, Barthelemy had just walked out the door of their home carrying away their daughter and there was nothing they could do to stop it. It enraged Riley as well, made her blood boil with fury, her skin burn a thousand degrees. She wanted badly to just bolt and take her family with her, go wherever. But she knew this cluster would follow her anywhere. They needed to take Barthelemy down for good.

So she and Hana devised a plan alongside their friends to do so through Godfrey and everyone would leave for Auvernal in the morning. After that was settled, the heaviness of the day they just had started to take its toll and make way for exhaustion. Once Riley and Hana helped their friends settle in for the night, Hana excused herself claiming she was too agitated to go to sleep yet. She might not have said it with words but Riley was perceptive enough to notice Hana meant she needed a moment to herself.

That was something she could understand. Hana had an overall sweet and kind disposition, but that was not to say those were the only emotions she was familiar with. However, her upbringing did not allow her to properly know how to express anything else and she had a tendency to either shut down or deal with it all by herself, often involving quiet, solitary brooding, and an over rationalizing attitude.

Out of respect for her, Riley gave her space. And a few minutes soon turned hours, prompting Riley to go looking out after her wife; she was not about to let the woman she loved dive into misery land. She took a wild guess Hana would either be by the lake or the piano room, and soon enough the sound of a haunting melody pierced through her ears.

Usually, when Riley would find Hana playing, she'd inconspicuously move closer and quietly sit nearby, enjoying the feeling of being let in into something so intimately Hana's. But tonight she was not seeing beauty or contemplation, she wasn't feeling closer to Hana... She was seeing madness, and one that imposed high mountains surrounding her wife.

The hell they had to face ahead of them was brutal, vicious and cruel. This was no time for madness. Madness wouldn't solve the issue, if anything it would make them reckless, and that would mean playing the part Barthelemy expected them to play. No, there could be absolutely no madness!

"Hana", Riley calls out to her once, then twice, to no avail. "Hana!" She calls again, more forcefully this time, but her pleas were still met with no response. "Hana, snap out of it!" Riley nearly screams this time, smashing her own hands against the piano keys, her body trembling with indignation.

"WHAT?" Hana halts abruptly, shooting an angry glare at Riley. “What do you want, Riley? What could you possibly want that I could possibly do right now?” She goes back to playing a little less erratically this time, her eyes focusing on the piano keys, and Riley could feel her still reeling of anger. “I couldn’t protect our daughter, what’s left for me to do?”

“We get her back, Hana. I need you to work with me on this. Fight with me.” Riley replies, awkwardly leaning over the piano trying to block Hana away from the keys.

It’s Hana’s turn to smash her hands against the piano keys now, pushing the bench forcefully back while abruptly getting up. “I’m enraged, Riley, I want his head served to me with his blood. I want to tear it off myself!” She paces back and forth across the length of the piano room, every inch of her body trembling, her hands picking nervously at the sides of her head. “I want to feast on his flesh and throw him to lions!”

Riley steps up, blocking Hana’s path as she grabs both Hana’s wrists with her own hands, trying to calm her wife down at the same time as trying to tame her own anger. “What do you think I want?” She barks, narrowing her eyes and forcing Hana to look at her. “Do you think I’m not pissed off myself? I’m furious, Hana.”

Hana struggles to get out of Riley’s grasp, but Riley wouldn’t budge. “Let go of me, Riley.” Hana says as she continues struggling. “Please.”

“No.”

“Just let me go!”

“No! I won’t leave you, Hana.”

The anger in Hana’s eyes starts to slowly subside as it gives way to frustration and exasperation. After a few more failed attempts at releasing herself, Hana’s whole demeanor changes and what Riley sees instead is even worse. It’s... despondency. Riley lets go of Hana’s wrists and engulfs her in a crushing hug.

“I love you, Hana. We will get her back, ok? I promise you, I promise you we’ll get her back.” Riley says over and over again, instilling hope or whatever she could in her wife. Hana responds by holding onto Riley for dear life, her body shaking as she starts sobbing. The force with which Hana’s fingers is digging into her skin is verging on painful, but Riley endures it. It can’t be more painful than the ache Hana was feeling inside, then what she herself was feeling inside.

“I can’t imagine not raising her, not seeing her every day, not being there for all her milestones, to sooth her when she cries.” Hana rubs one of her hands in her eyes, fighting back her tears and not entirely releasing her hold on her wife. “What are we gonna do without her, Riley? How are we supposed to do this?”

“It’s not going to happen, Hana. We will get her back.”

“She must be so afraid, Riley, so scared. Just thinking about it is driving me insane.”

Riley couldn’t go there. The thought was unbearable. It was bad enough that someone took away their child, but adding in that he was a traitor and a murderer was too much to handle. She couldn’t allow herself to despair thinking of how scared Aurora was. No, she had to fight, and she needed Hana to fight as well. She grabs both Hana’s arms and search for her wife’s eyes. “Hey, look at me.” Hana doesn’t move. “Baby, look at me. Look at me, Hana,” Riley insists.

Hana raises her chin so as to stare into Riley’s eyes, her own moist with all the crying. Riley moves her hands to both Hana’s cheeks, brushing her thumbs just below Hana’s eyes, wiping away the tears and the pain. She holds Hana’s head in place, trying to convey everything she felt with her gaze.

“Do you remember Olivia’s training?” Hana nods affirmatively. “We use our anger in our favor. We let our love for her drive us.” Riley brushes a stray of hair out of Hana’s face and brings their foreheads together. “We are forged in fire! The higher the flames, the greater our strength. We’ll come out of it stronger. We will make Barthelemy regret the day he decided to mess with our family and we will make him pay! For Aurora and for Queen Eleanor, we will bring him to justice!” Riley said, pouring her heart out with every single word that comes out of her mouth.

Several minutes pass in which they stand in silence, taking comfort in each other’s embrace and drinking in each other’s presence. Eventually Hana sighs deeply, shaking her head as if coming out of a haze. “I’m sorry I got a little lost there. It just felt so overwhelming for a moment.”

“It’s ok, love. You’re allowed to be upset. Just let me in and I promise I’ll always be here for you if you need me dragging you back.” Riley said calmly, keeping to herself the relief she felt in seeing a resemblance of the Hana she knew. She can’t say she ever saw Hana so angry before.

“I love you and I love our daughter. I’m ready to fight for our family with you.” Hana tries a shy smile that ends up looking more a grimace than anything else, but at least the sentiment was there.

“There she is, there’s the woman I married.”

Riley reaches out for Hana again, planting a kiss on Hana’s forehead. She then rests her chin on top of Hana’s head while encircling her on a loose hug.

“You know, when all of this is over, I will have someone make me a life-sized piñata with Barthelemy’s face and we’ll have so much fun trashing it to pieces.” Riley offers, her voice the most relaxed it has been for the past minutes. “I’ll make an event out of it, a holiday even! The trashing scumbags festival. What do you think?”

Hana manages a real if weak smile this time. “It has a nice ring to it, although we can work on that name.”

“I’m thinking hiring an orchestra, go on full pomp and circumstance mode. And I know just the piece the orchestra could play, you know that one from the cat concert on Tom and Jerry.”

Hana makes a face, completely lost as to what Riley was talking about.

“You know, the one tada tadadada dada dada...” Riley goes on making weird noises, mimicking the melody of Hungarian Rhapsody n 2 by Liszt. She knows how Hana enjoys when she goes classical.

And true to form, Hana’s smile goes a bit truer now. “I can agree to that.”

“That would make it very solemn, it’ll be the event of the year.” Riley finishes the thought, grinning slightly.

“Thank you, darling. For making me feel better."

Riley places a quick but meaningful kiss on Hana's lips and grabs her hand, leading them towards the door.

“Come on, let’s get some sleep. We’re gonna need our strength tomorrow.”

#the royal romance #hana lee x mc #mc x hana lee #hana lee #I'm back to my angst self I guess #hooray #hana x mc

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scarletarosa · 4 years

Text

The War in Heaven and the False God

Most people have heard the legend of the Biblical War in Heaven of Lucifer and his angels against God. Though when young, I had always felt that the story was kept suspiciously short and lacked much sense. We are told of the angels not possessing much free-will, but also how could these divine beings suddenly just turn evil, as we are told? Due to these suspicions that there was more to the story than was told (as it is often said “the victors get to write history”), I decided to connect with Lucifer and other demons in order to learn from their perspective. This gradually led me to become a Luciferian and be told the full story of the War in Heaven.

The supreme deity is not Jehovah; he is neither all-powerful, all-wise, or benevolent. The supreme deity is the Source, the formless consciousness that has existed before all things and created the first gods of this Universe (the first among them being Lucifer). Though in order to create, the Source had to create from themself their female counterpart, the Queen of Heaven (who is formless as well). These two energies together create harmony and allow creation to come into being. The Source and Queen of Heaven have both been known throughout many different cultures under different names. For instance, the Source has been known as Atum in Egypt, Brahman in India, Olodumare in Yoruba, etc. The Queen of Heaven has been known as Adi Parashakti in India.

At the beginning, the Cosmic Egg was formed in the Void with the assistance of elder deities. When the egg broke open, the gods Eros and Lucifer emerged from it- Eros being love and Lucifer being light. Though they were meant to exist separately; Eros remained within the Void and Lucifer dwelled alone within the Universe for many ages until the other gods were created by the Source. Among these first gods were the Angels Mikael, Raphael, Uriel, and others. Lilith was created last among them as the embodiment of the Queen of Heaven (a smaller and less-powerful copy of Herself in order to act within the Universe and marry Lucifer). With these first deities, Lucifer the First-Born became their leader and assisted in the creation of other spiritual races. Overtime, more gods were created by both the Source and through sexual union between the elder deities.

It was during the early stages of the Earth when the aeonic god Jehovah came. The aeonic gods are extremely powerful deities who are tasked with co-creating the material and metaphysical Universe; they are normally peaceful, but for some reason, Jehovah came seeking even more power. His goal was to usurp the Throne of the Universe and take command of an entire planet, which ended up being Earth due to a specific species that was being created here: humans. The humans were a younger race and felt insecure about their lack of magickal prowess compared to the other species on Earth like the elves; this caused them to become deeply envious and greedy as a race. Jehovah had destroyed the ecosystem of several different planets on his way to Earth, causing life to be destroyed on them. As he arrived to Earth to claim it, Lucifer led a revolt against him and was followed by millions of deities and other entities. This battle was terrible for everyone since Jehovah’s great powers allowed him to be able to drain energy from spirits or even kill them at will. Countless entities lost their lives trying to destroy Jehovah, but to no avail. The arch-dragoness goddess, Tiamat, who had created Earth’s lifeforms in the sea, even gave her life to help empower Gaia against the tyrant god.

When many spirits were destroyed and the survivors were crippled, Jehovah took them and threw them into the nightmarish land of torment called Hell. This is the realm that is far away from the Source’s divine light. Due to this, the deities and other beings who were sent here had their essence transformed by this horrible realm; causing them to become dark and more intense in appearance and presence. Their wings became black and they grew horns; some developed red eyes, spikes, claws, or other monstrous features. Though overall, they remained beautiful, only in a darker way. They became known as “demons”, now restricted from the heavens by Jehovah, who had now claimed the Throne. The demons were in great pain and suffering, as they had all lost family and friends in the battle, as well as their divine homeland. However, they had not lost their drive to destroy the tyrant who had taken everything from them. The three most powerful demons became High Kings of Hell and created their kingdoms where their people could live and train to continue the great War. These High Kings of Hell are Lucifer (the most powerful and wise), Satan, and Leviathan. Though these mighty rebels were soon falsely accused of being evil and representing things that were actually opposite of them (Lucifer being lies when he is truth, Lilith being infertility when she is life/motherhood, Beelzebub being gluttony when he is health, Mammon being greed when he is generosity, etc).

Overtime, Jehovah was able to win humans over to his side by pretending to be the Source and manipulating them to believe that they were special if they followed him. Little did the humans know that their sins in life would never be forgiven, as Jehovah did not care for what they would end up facing in the Underworld or in Hell. It is also no surprise that the main people who forwarded monotheism were war-lords; all seeking power and dominion over others (see Emperor Constantine, Mohammad, and the ancient Jews who dismantled Canaan and killed the pagans there). With these new religions that inspired hate and fear towards other religions, blind faith towards scripture, and hatred towards any spirits that aren’t “holy”, the world gradually became swallowed by the tyrant’s influence. Pagans were massacred en-masse and their temples, holy sites, stories, statues, cultures, and more were all destroyed. Churches and mosques were built on top of sacred temple sites of polytheists and they were faced with the choice of either dying or converting. And with that, the entire world changed and became a shadow of its former glory.

Yet all of this was allowed to occur by the Source since existence has always revolved around evolution, and no evolution can exist within perfection. In order to allow wisdom and other attributes to develop, as well as to teach important lessons, all beings are allowed to endure suffering. This suffering, if overcome, holds the key to rising to greater potentials. And so Jehovah was not immediately struck down, but was constantly faced with other forms of justice from not only the gods of vengeance, but also from receiving loads of karmic debt.

Back in the ancient times when other races still roamed this planet, such as the elves, giants, scorpion-men, nagas, and dragons, we had magick here in the physical. When magick was performed, it was actually able to be seen and even deities were able to manifest in the physical with ease. Though in order to keep humans blind, Jehovah destroyed the magickal nodes that surrounded the Earth and ordered his humans to destroy the sacred sites that helped channel magick. Then the other targets were the races of Earth that were not human, since they were less malleable to his will due to their advanced wisdom. The humans were already greedy and envious, so they were easily encouraged to wage war against any race that was different from them. The elves were brutally slaughtered, raped, and enslaved until they all died out; the same happened to many other species. When the humans began killing the dragons and sphinxes, who acted as wise mentors and guardians of the Earth, these mighty beings decided to leave the humans behind to fend for themselves for the rest of their existence. And still in hatred, the humans decided to record the dragons as if they were greedy and savage.

Overtime, everything was set in place for Jehovah, but the demons and other entities continued to fiercely fight against him over the ages, and they still do. The tyrant god has never cared for any human who has followed him, as he seeks only power and destruction of other deities. He takes the credit for the miracles other deities perform for worthy humans, allowing such people to assume what they want about him. The gods who he killed do not die forever though, as spiritual death is different. But it often takes decades, hundreds of years, or in some cases, a million years, in order for them to reform. Yet, to most humans, the other gods are nothing more than legend now. They watch over the Earth still, helping anyone who seeks them and fighting to make the world how it was back during the Golden Age. Though it will never be the same after all the ages of terrible destruction and death. Even the soul of our planet, Gaia, has been asleep for many years due to the trauma of losing so many of her children.

For those who would argue that the demons could simply just be lying to me about these events, it does not explain why they have helped me to better myself or how they have protected my loved ones in times of need. They ask nothing of me but to evolve as a person and to show open-mindedness towards their harsh history. I do not hold hatred or bias towards those involved in monotheistic religions (unless they act oppressive), I only have hatred towards the religions themselves and their toxic teachings. As well as the hypocrisy of how they destroyed so many cultures and people, all while incorporating their mythology into their own scriptures.

If we want to learn the truth, we first must question everything we already believe in and then speak to the spirits, as they know far more than we ever will. You can ask any deity you like and they will all say that they hate Jehovah, for he has pulled the veil of ignorance over this world in order to consume it. For anyone who truly seeks answers, keep this account by the demons in mind and ask any gods you want about the truth. Each deity and demon I spoke to said the same, and all had lost family due to this traumatic War against the tyrant god. These religions save no-one, we must take accountability and strive to become better without begging for forgiveness all the time and expecting mercy to be handed out just for bowing down to a god who kills those who defy him. All scriptures of monotheism are nothing but books of manipulation and holier-than-thou mentality; this creates corruption and false spirituality in the end.

The Angels

#the false god #jehovah #the usurper #war in heaven #lucifer #demons #the source #queen of heaven #the spirit realm #luciferianism

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tobiosmilktea · 3 years

Text

where orchids grow — kageyama tobio

2.1k words | genre/s: hanahaki!au, angst, hurt/comfort | warning/s: mentions of death, mentions of depression | pairing/s: kageyama x reader, platonic!tsukishima x reader

↪︎ in which an innocent little crush led to your downfall

a/n: i wrote this almost a year ago when i first started this blog. i thought the writing was really mediocre so it has been sitting in my drafts ever since,, BUT it’s finally getting to see the light of day cause i’m cleaning out my drafts :)✨ pls be easy on this one ewbd

it haunted you in your dreams, squeezing and grasping and clutching at your lungs until your final breath gave way–until they shriveled up into nothing as flower-torn chest had killed you. well... not yet at least.

no matter the amount of effort you had put into suppressing your feelings for the setter until it was nothing but a withered memoir, you couldn’t help but lay upon your bed, restless, as you recalled the flashing images of bloodied flowers that had been freshly thrown up from your lungs earlier this evening. you liked to think you’ve learned to control your emotions and feelings around kageyama well enough that the aching feeling of growing flora in your chest wouldn’t effect you that much, but of course the feeling was still evident. however, it was earlier this evening when the setter split half of his meat bun for you after a practice game and the sheer look of care and admiration in his eyes forced a rose to travel up your esophagus.

it was so horrifyingly beautiful, a disease growing flowers within its host, wrapping until it plants itself to the point of rupturing the owner’s heart and lungs due to unrequited love. you hated it—despised for that matter as the memories of your past self screeching in pain and heaving to breathe. your face turned alabaster.

your heart thudded against your rib cage as the feeling of suffocation of chrysanthemums, daises, roses, tulips, cherry blossoms, and dandelions echoed within you. your hand rested upon your chest. the feeling of such ghosted atop your rib cage where you could faintly feel the growing stems of flowers and weeds.

there was an evident aching within your heart that wasn’t from hanahaki, rather from the thought of how brutal it was caused an immense pain to compete with the actual disease. the first incident of you throwing up bloodied flowers was the moment you got home one day. you were walking home with kageyama after hinata went ahead as he had his bike with him, leaving you two to your own demise (he had a little hunch about your feelings for the raven-haired boy, but he never bothered to confirm it). it was then you two reached the entrance to your house in which you two bid a farewell. you were so enthralled with how beautiful he looked with his dark blue eyes that shined thousands of stars.

it was game over for you.

you stumbled through your front door to which your mother worriedly asked if you were okay. you could barely mutter out a response as the roses and daises and chrysanthemums fought their way out of your system, throwing up your one-sided feelings in hues of thick crimson and hollow chests.

from then on, you had routine check ups at the hospital. in fact, you had an entire team of doctors taking care of you due to how rare the condition is. you see, hanahaki disease only occurs to those so massively in love with another, whose feelings can compete against the strongest love of all, that a simple little crush wouldn’t cause all this commotion. unfortunately, friendly love wasn’t enough to ease her homemade raptures.

they also said it was long term illness, well... long term taking into account how well you can endure the pain. occasionally there are those who can endure the pain their entire lives, yet there are the majority who simply die from the excruciating pain within a few months. the only true way to cure yourself from hanahaki was to either get kageyama to match your feelings or to get surgery to remove the constantly growing flora.

the thing is with surgery is that the moment you get it, your feelings for that person completely disintegrate. you can you no longer feel the same love as it is permanently gone. you can never regain those feelings ever again.

that was the fact that scared you the most.

despite knowing you can no longer take the pain and that you needed this surgery, there was a twinge of hope within your aching psyche that perhaps there was a chance. a chance that kageyama tobio would look at you for once that wasn’t just a friendly gaze. a look in which he would come to realize that he was in love with you. and because of this, you endured the pain a little longer.

the only downside was that no one else besides your family knew about your condition. not even your friends. and yet, with most secrets that are difficult to keep, eventually it will get out. tsukishima found out sooner than you’d had hoped.

you and tsukishima shared the same class and one day kageyama had visited your classroom during lunch, giving you his favorite milk from the vending machine as payback for helping out the volleyball club and with tutoring. it then when you felt your cheeks burning cherry red and the infamously familiar sting within your lungs. he then gave tsukishima a melon bun that he owed and the moment kageyama walked away, the blonde middle blocker immediately noticed the pain written across your face.

you pushed the carton of milk in his hands when you dashed down the hallways towards the restroom. fortunately, you were able to make it in time, locking yourself down in one of the stalls and profusely throwing up sticky and bloody flowers with hot streaming tears pricking at your eyes and threatening to spill. you immediately wiped them up. you couldn’t let anyone see you like this.

you flushed the toilet and watched the water turn red to clear when it went down the drain. you sighed, leaving the stall and looking upon yourself at the mirror. you looked absolutely terrible. from the dark circles under your eyes from nights filled with insomnia due to the aching pain, to your eyes still red from sobbing in the stall, and now to your hollow cheeks.

and because of the constant radiating pain, it became increasingly difficult for you to eat proper meals, leading for you to loose an unhealthy amount of weight. yachi was the first one to notice the sudden weight loss and the constant state of indifference. she knew there was something wrong, but she was too afraid to ask you. eventually, she asked if you were depressed one day and somehow you couldn’t bring yourself to say no.

afte leaving the restrooms, you were surprised to see taukishima waiting outside the doors and you were immediately trapped. the harsh glare staring down at you and his more than worried voice eventually led you to finally confessing what was wrong with you. and for the first time in your life, you’ve never seen the middle blocker so worried and caring. that his usually harsh demeanor and signature teasing remarks were softened because the thought of losing you scared him deeply. besides yamaguchi and yachi, you were the closest friend he had and he would hate to lose one his friends.

he would often ask you, “are you considering the surgery?” to which you wouldn’t know the answer to and that you were still waiting for the rare chance kageyama could’ve like you back.

it surprised you the sudden look of disappointment that etched across his bespectacled face.

during practice or during games where you suddenly get coughing attacks whenever you were around kageyama and talking to him, it was tsukishima who would immediately pull you away from the others and take care of you. he was the one to help you clean you after yourself and wipe your tears. eventually, the rest of the school believed you two were a couple.

however, there was the day were the pain was too insufferable. you had hanahaki for six months at this point where the disease would get into the most dangerous stages that one day you called tsukishima up one and finally made the decision.

“i’m tired of waiting, kei.” you muttered harshly as your voice was getting more and more hoarse each day. it was getting worse. you two sat nonchalantly on some random playground swings. the sun was setting and the blond was carefully gazing at your eyes that was soaked in honey. “i’m getting the surgery this weekend and I want you to come and take care of me.”

“of course.”

it felt like everything was going to be okay when he said that.

you woke up to hush chattering, as if a a big group was in the room trying to speak softly, yet failing to do so.

“guys she’s awake!” a voice exclaimed. It sounded like hinata.

suddenly a whole herd of volleyball players came surrounding your bed, their expressions had looks of smiley relief melted upon their faces as they didn’t hesitate to bombard you with questions. the poor nurses could barely get past the towering high school kids as the thought of you being okay was more than enough to fuel their adrenaline.

“i’m glad you’re okay now, (y/n).” sugawara beamed at you.

“yeah!” cut in tanaka loudly, “i can’t bare to lose my favorite first year all because of a stupid crush!”

your eyes suddenly widen. the rush of fear and worry filled you as you looked at tsukoshima who was standing at the end of your hospital bed.

“i had to tell them, they were threatening me.” he scoffs lightly.

“we don’t know who your crush was though, so you’re okay!” added nishinoya who patted your shoulder gently.

daichi then cleared his throat, capturing the team’s attention. “we should probably go and let to the nurses take care of her. we have practice too.”

the room was suddenly filled with loud ‘yes, captains!’ as they all piled out of the room, leaving only kageyama to stray behind slightly. tsukishima looked at the you two briefly before closing the door. this was something that you and tobio had to discuss.

there was a feeling of soreness atop your chest, possibly from the stitch that ran down your center of your torso that was in the process of healing. tbe tall setter approached your bedside, scratching the back of his neck. usually whenever you looked at kageyama an itchy feeling would arise in your throat and your chest would feel tight, and yet the moment you laid eyes on him, you felt nothing.

“tsukishima told me what happened,” he starts. the initial fear of confrontation diminished into nothing but acceptance. you couldn’t hide your previous feeling forever. “you should’ve told me.”

you sighed, “i was going to... but then i started getting the symptoms and i knew that there was no point in telling you when you didn’t feel the same way.”

“but if you told me, maybe there was a chance i would’ve helped you get better.” the setter tried to state, only making you want to roll your eyes and scoff.

shaking your head, you pulled your hand out of his. “that’s not how it works, kageyama. your fake feelings would only make it worse and i don’t want to be with someone who’s dating me out of pity.”

“but i don’t pity you, i—”

“it doesn’t matter, now.” you shook your head and cut him off, “you don’t have to worry because the surgery removed my feelings for you permanently. you don’t have to feel guilty about it anymore.”

kageyama gulps, nodding as straighten his posture. “but i almost killed you.”

“i’m here now, aren’t i? i’m okay.”

the setter still couldn’t help but feel his chest tighten and his gut wrench. “are we still friends despite all this?”

you nod. “of course, that’s not even a question.”

before their conversation could continue, one of the nurses knocked upon the door and opened it slightly. “sorry to interrupt, but all visitors must leave now. the visiting time is up.”

“oh, alright.” the volleyball player swiftly bows and waves goodbye to you before leaving the hospital room.

he cleared his throat the moment he stepped into the hallway, all uncomfortable and itchy. quickly catching up with the rest of his teammates that waited for him at the entrance, he quickly grabbed a water cup from the waiting room and gulped down its contents immediately—yet the feeling didn’t stop.

“kageyama, hurry we need to get to practice.” hinata calls out to him.

drinking one last cup of water in the desperation to heal his scratchy throat, he threw the disposable cup aside.

“i’m coming!” yet his voice was far too hoarse to be heard.

general taglist: @yongboxerrr @tanakaslastbraincell @kellesvt @kitsunetea

#kageyama #kageyama x reader #kageyama tobio #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu oneshot #haikyuu fanfic #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #kageyama angst #kageyama imagine #kageyama scenarios #kageyama oneshot

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demetriandelibinaryboyfriends · 3 years

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HOLD ON bc everyone is talking abt imagining Hawk and Daniel bonding and getting close with each other (which i love it’s such a cute concept!)

But can we just imagine Demetri AND Johnny finally growing on each other! like imagine Demetri apologizes for the yelp review to Johnny and then Johnny laughs about it and proceeds to apologize back abt all the shitty things his students did to Demetri and they just bond bc Demetri opens up to Johnny about Hawk and the way he feels preferably that he had a literal dying love for him. It would be amazing to see Johnny and Demetri get close especially since Demetri practically hated the man in s1 and 2! Both Daniel and Johnny feel like dads with their two gay karate boys and they love them very much! Can you please elaborate on this imagine because I don’t even know where to start!

YES YES YES watching these two finally come around to each other would be pretty amusing, but also very gratifying, to watch and I am LIVING FOR IT.

I think I touched on it in one of my other ask posts (maybe the general headcanon one?), but the way I see Demetri finally warming up to Johnny is when he sees how surprisingly sympathetic Johnny is to Hawk’s abuse and manipulation at Kreese’s hands--because Johnny went through the same thing. Like Demetri is fully expecting Johnny to be dismissive and kind of mean about it and give Hawk a hard time for following Kreese like an adoring puppy for so long, but as soon as Johnny sees Hawk having a panic attack or something similar because something in their dojo training triggered memories of his time in Cobra Kai with Kreese, his demeanor completely changes. He just kind of hurries Hawk away from the other students and Demetri overhears him saying kind of quietly and urgently “You take a breather whenever the hell you need it, you hear me, kid? I know what it’s like to get your mind fucked around by that bastard. He screwed me up, too. No one here’s going to think less of you if you need to take a break.” And Demetri is like HOLY SHIT...maybe I was very wrong about this guy??? He CLEARLY doesn’t want other kids to have to go through what he did, and Demetri’s got nothing but respect for that. And he’s really grateful that there’s someone there who can help Hawk through his Cobra Kai trauma in a way even Demetri can’t. And overall, I imagine the longer Demetri spends in the combined dojo, the more he can see that Johnny genuinely cares for Hawk, and admittedly develops a very grudging respect for him for giving Eli confidence in a way Demetri never knew how to.

Also yes, Johnny would probably LOSE HIS SHIT laughing if Demetri fessed up and apologized for the bad review, he’d be like “Kid, if a shitty Yelp review is the worst thing that ever happens to my dojo, I think it’s doing pretty well.” And Johnny Lawrence doesn’t fucking get how the internet works, anyway--no way in hell does he think a bad Yelp review can be THAT bad for business. I mean, what cool, badass person would use this “Yelp” bullshit anyways?! I also think that Johnny probably finds Demetri’s brutal honesty and snarky comments pretty amusing, even if he IS a nuisance at times. Like he probably has some degree of respect for Demetri for just...saying exactly what he thinks at all times, and having 0 filter whatsoever. Because hey, Johnny can relate to that far more than he cares to admit XD

I can also see Demetri going up to Johnny after karate practice, being uncharacteristically timid, and awkwardly thanking Johnny for helping Eli with his Kreese trauma, maybe admitting that he himself isn’t sure how to help Eli recover from everything that happened in Kreese’s Cobra Kai. And Johnny kind of sees Demetri in a new light--because this annoying kid, for all his mouthiness, really does care SO deeply about Hawk and wants him to be all right, even if that means swallowing his pride and saying thank you to the very ex-Cobra Kai sensei he always disliked for turning Eli into an “alpha jerk.” And he remembers just how much Demetri cared about Eli from Day 1, boldly defending his friend’s lip to Johnny when even Miguel wouldn’t. And Johnny’s like damn, Demetri may be a pain in the ass, but he’s loyal as all hell...and fuck, I can respect that.

And then maybe Demetri reluctantly asks Johnny for some advice on how he can better help Hawk with his trauma without patronizing him, or making him feel like he was getting a pity party. Demetri knows he can be a bit condescending and dismissive, even unintentionally, and he really wants to help Eli in the most respectful way he can without accidentally belittling him or putting him down or making him feel weak and pitiful. And he and Johnny end up bonding over how fond they both are of that mohawk kid, and how much they admire how strong he is to have endured everything he has and how very far he’s come since he let himself get bullied mercilessly without fighting back. Of course, Johnny Lawrence isn’t one to pick up on subtleties, so of course he remains completely oblivious to the fact that Demetri is gay as hell for Hawk until explicitly told so by someone XD In any case, Johnny tries to help Demetri help Eli the best that he can, and probably gives a healthy mix of actually good and very misguided advice XD And you dun best believe Eli is utterly touched when he later finds out about this--Demetri braved talking to Johnny Lawrence alone, the man who freaked him out so much that he quit after one day of Cobra Kai...to help Eli??? Color Eli surprised. And thrilled. Must’ve taken some serious balls for Demetri to risk the wrath of Sensei Lawrence for his sake. He’s...lowkey swooning.

ANYWAYS YES DEMETRI AND JOHNNY FINALLY COMING AROUND TO EACH OTHER AND BONDING OVER HOW MUCH THEY CARE ABOUT HAWK PLEASE AND THANK YOU

#hawk x demetri #demetri x eli #binary boyfriends #hawkmeat #eli x demetri #demetri x hawk #elimetri #demetri cobra kai #eli moskowitz #johnny lawrence #cobra kai #cobra kai season 2 #cobra kai season 3 #cobra kai season 4 #hawk #demetri #eli #my askbox

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sasorikigai · 2 years

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“ your bandages— you’re bleeding through them. ” ( Scorched Souls; cause this screams floofy angst XD )

BLOOD RELATED PROMPTS || @swordsxandxshadows || accepting

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || When the morning breaks, and the taut skin over his pectorals tighten from the dryness coaxed by the sun, to surround him in insufferable, blinding light, Scorpion would deeply ruminate and see all the signs of Shirai Ryu ending, all over again, with nothing prevailing and never resurrecting. A new life, far away from this wretched, condemned one full of scorched blackness and suffocating smoke of blackened moribund death, as he still recalls crawling on his hands and knees, fatally bleeding out and drowning in the most grievous pain, his toil becoming worthless, as if he has never existed. Scorpion wiishes he could say that his whole life was black and white, that the good moments were great and distinguished, and more defining than the bad.

Scorpion still yearns for Death’s gentle hand, coaxing him into nonexistence, even as he somehow endures and survives through in Life’s warm embrace. For he will always find himself in broken places, and somehow mend all the scattered and sundered pieces whole. That way, even such unravelling disintegration will make him whole, more whole than he had ever been.

Upon the ripples of their shared soft night, the stillness envelops Scorpion like a coffin; there are no breath sounds here, but the roots of his excruciating ache painted with smears of ferrous crimson, unhinged and swallowing him in encompassing fire. How such fire ablaze claims his body and soul, heightening the chaos, as the contradictions of feelings and actions that unify all this mess into a beautifully perfect char-harmonious pile of ashes. The path of Scorpion’s life always had been ineffably remarkable, filled with destruction and renaissance of his entirety. And they always will be, as the waning currents of his essence submerges Scorpion beneath the waxed transparency, lest his expression remains inscrutable and unafflicted.

“My body should be used to exist in melodramas in a way it does not take in other genres, the fallibility, nor the capacity for hurt. Lest my proverbial pain manifests into a somatic ache in my chest; a glorious, throbbing reminder of the bounds of my heart, which too often overruns.” Perhaps Hanzo Hasashi still has so much pent-up love and affection that he couldn’t ever give away for shame that this level of exquisite, excruciating intensity will overwhelm. For his love knows no bounds, no price, no catch, and Death could not nullify nor make it utterly naught.

As brittle as his being becomes, trying to hold himself still like a glass overflowing with pain; with some of it spilling onto him, into him, forever marking him without setting him up for heavy blessings and miracles. Scorpion would rather be cradled in an endless torment, lest his many thoughts keep boiling in his mind. “I am not concerned of my physical wounds, my beloved, but I continue to feel chained from within, trapped in the mayhem inside my head. For I live constantly drenched in dread, and at times, I would have rather be lain in a coffin than enduring the viciousness of my subconscious as I continue to ache with the loss and despair, as retrieved memories of brutal onslaught festers my contentment and happiness with you.” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 ||

#✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ hellfire fibrillating beneath his skin (iv)#✗ the shogun of sorrow (aku || swordsxandxshadows)#(scorched souls)#swordsxandxshadows

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onwesterlywinds · 3 years

Text

The Body Fragile Yields

Part of my Godhands series, set roughly in the year 1544 of the Sixth Astral Era - thirty-three years before Hydaelyn’s present-day, and thirteen years before Ala Mhigo’s fall.

Content warning for sexual assault and body horror.

GODHANDS IS NOW ON AO3! If you like it, send over some kudos!

Once, in the early days of her service to the crown and only some few moons after her father's death, Sigrid had been sent out to attend to Theodoric and Hrodric on a stroll through Queen Edila's gardens. Theodoric came across a dead marmot and at once took a stick to it. He poked it over and over again until its half-scavenged, half-decayed innards collapsed into themselves and spilled out over the earth. That single act of violence loosed a stench so foul that Hrodric went running; even Sigrid had to cover her face and recoil from it. That memory was one of the very few of her own that would overcome her once the vera root took hold, though it came more as a dream than a recollection: it seized her whether or not she wished it to, usually whenever Blackram seized her in kind.

***

"It's alright," Blackram whispered, again and again, as his blackened hand moved across her skin, as his body moved over top of her body. He could not reach her when she was like this, not truly, but her distress was an agony for how deeply it had taken root in him. If he could not soothe her, he would soothe himself, and he would speak to her as he did not ever need to when they were truly one.

Each time the primal's influence waned, they spent at least a week abed while they shook off the mantle of divinity and regained some semblance of their selves. It was a harrowing process made somewhat less so by the warmth of Sigrid's body lying next to his, and the persistence of their bond, and the knowledge that their suffering would soon be at an end.

***

His given name, she divined from their pervasive mental thread, was Grimms. It was not that he disliked the name for any reason; he simply doubted whether or not he was worthy of claiming it. Every woman and man who had spoken his name aloud had met a brutal end, and rarely ever by his own hand, as if the Undercity itself could expunge any trace of it on a whim. As such, he preferred Blackram, the title of his own making, at least until he could pass it on to a deserving heir.

***

Ashley. Their heir could only be Ashley, and yet this conviction invariably brought them pain twinned with pride. Sigrid would weep from it, no matter how much vera tonic she'd imbibed, and the prospect of Brynhilde's son as her son - their son - brought forth in him her visceral grief and guilt, as debilitating as their shared sickness. Of all he had done to secure the Undercity, to remake it on Sigrid's behalf, he could not yet fathom what it would mean to bring Ashley into their fold: in fulfilling his own destiny, in treating with the power of the gods, would he condemn his only scion to this same hell?

Only the Ascian would know.

***

Some days, when he needed solitude but ached for her closeness, Blackram would carry her on his arm to a spot deeper still than the catacombs: a placid saline lake where snowflies gathered to flit above the surface if the air was warm. While there, he would release her for some few moments to tend to his own musings, and she would run her toes along the smoothed rocks that comprised the banks until her last dregs of energy were spent and her legs would heed her no more.

It was akin to how the Saltery had found Blackram's mother so long ago, floating face-up and stone-cold in the shallows of Loch Seld. In life, the lot of them had called her a banshee - one of the beings that haunted the valleys with their wailing lamentations since long before the flood - and even as they hauled her corpse from the water, her hair and lips and lashes crusted with salt, they handled her with far more caution than reverence.

***

The Undercity was deep in the throes of winter, and only the salt of the lake kept it from freezing over so far beneath the earth; the snowflies were well into hibernation for the year and would not return for another few moons at best. The cold settled itself upon every ilm of stone like a fine shroud, brutal to bear without the warmth of their bed, and the bite in his boots intensified as Sigrid stretched out her own feet into the frigid, numbing depths.

Through it all, his dead hand ached worse than ever.

"You're late," drawled the red-masked figure.

***

No matter how deeply the vera root infringed upon her consciousness, no matter how low she had sunk into vague scenes from her memories or Blackram's, that voice had a way of cutting through the debility, the cold, the fear. Half the time it did not sound like Common, let alone any other language she had ever heard, and yet she understood it better than she understood her innermost thoughts.

She would have to simply lose herself, as she had learned to do while chained to the catacomb walls at this voice's behest, while lying futilely on her back, while Blackram whispered over and over that it was alright. She threw her head back to the cavern ceiling and a moan escaped her lips - the first sound she made in longer than she could remember.

***

He had grown used to the Ascian's dramatic entrances. Whoever they were and whatever their origin, they defied every law the Undercity imposed upon its denizens. The passage before him, now only a vague memory of Skalla, was the sort of place no living soul could traverse without leaving some trace of themselves - and yet there his benefactor stood, surveying the clawed tips of their gloves as dark currents from the void swirled around them.

"We've done it," Blackram declared. He was breathing heavily, as though he had run a malm while wracked with fever, all from the strain of having carried Sigrid to her point of rest in the pool. "We've summoned Zalera of our own flesh and survived."

The Ascian gave him an evident once-over from behind their blood-red mask and scoffed. "Albeit the worse for wear."

Blackram gritted his teeth but offered no retort. He would endure the weakness, endure the chills, endure his own dead hand until the primal was to be brought forth again. The only other choice was for him to lie down and die - and if he were to perish with so much left undone, then so too would Sigrid.

"We have fulfilled our end of our bargain, done as you instructed. But I would ask something different of you in exchange."

The Ascian's smile widened, ever the more unsettling for the fact that it was their only visible feature. "Oh?"

"I set my previous terms before Sigrid and I were joined - and now, there is much more at stake than the specifics of my past. I would inquire instead of the future."

"Hmph." They shrugged, rolling out their shoulders. "This could be your only chance for answers - to know of yourself, where you came from, how you came to be. You would deny yourself this knowledge forever?"

If this was a trial, a test of wills, he would overcome it. For Sigrid's sake. "I would."

"Suit yourself - though I must warn you that foresight is not a gift I possess. Nevertheless, I would not have your deeds be met with a reward you deem unfitting. Ask whatever you wish, and if it is within my knowing, I will grant you your answer."

For the briefest of moments, a glimmer of Skallan tilework, as blue as a clear morning, captivated his attention from somewhere off in the darkness. "If our heir should take up the mantle of Zalera in our stead," he began, and found that his question evaded him until only a fatalistic certainty remained. "...He will suffer as we have."

His benefactor did not move. They gave no sign that they were even breathing, let alone listening; when they spoke again, it was in a voice far softer, far more deadly, than any they had used before.

"That is something no one can say. What you have achieved thus far - the binding of two souls in service of a primal - is without precedent for your kind. Whether this mantle can be passed down to another will depend entirely on this boy, and perhaps on what he can learn from you."

And for the first time in longer than Blackram could remember, his gut clenched with stirrings of hope.

"Now, then. If that's all, you'd best return to your lady love. There's no telling what she could get up to unattended, even in her state."

Sigrid would be missing him; she was alone and cold and so distant in body and mind. But he was halfway to the primal's haunt, and he could use the last of his strength to make that journey alone, to gather what he needed with her none the wiser.

"Oh, and Blackram?"

The Ascian was at his flank in an instant, tucked into his blind spot faster than he could blink. He raised his arm to fend off an attack, only for the Ascian to whisper in his ear.

"Your success has also earned you this..."

They did not speak the next words aloud. His father's name fell into his thoughts as though it had been there all along.

***

The knife brought her back to herself. Her hand slipped to the stones at the pool's edge and touched its hilt, and she knew it at once as a gift from Rhalgr or Byregot or Brynhilde. Its blade was rusted along its edge but plenty sharp at the tip, sharp enough to pierce skin, perhaps rupture vital organs. For the first time in moons, she was reminded of her father - not a specific moment in which to lose herself, but the sound of him at work in their home's basement forge, then the smell of his sweat when he'd emerge at the end of the day. The memories stung her all the more for their vagueness, for the reprieve they could not grant her.

And she was alone. Blackram had yet to return for her, though she could sense some decisive purpose driving him deeper into the cavern, much deeper than his talk with the Ascian had required. The vera root was wearing off and her pulse was quickening, and the salt on her tongue tasted of Brynhilde.

She tucked the knife into the band that tied back her hair, though her arms ached to stretch them so, and she prayed the glint or press of it would not alert Blackram when he came to pick her up once more. When at last he reappeared, he lifted her across his unblemished left arm, steady against his shoulder. He whispered words she could not make out, adjusted her headband to cover her eyes, and the knife did not fall. She endured the familiar, troubled movements of his body as he walked them back up to their chambers in the catacombs, where a new horror beckoned.

A swath of red lay across the bedsheets, so violent in its scattering that she retched. She could smell the rot of flesh from him and from everywhere, as overpowering as ever. She backed away from the bed even as Blackram reached for her, shaking her head and trembling all over.

Get away from me. The words would not leave her, no matter how she screamed.

"Sigrid," he whispered. He held more of it in his blackened hand, its perfume overpowering; a bloom of-

Red lilies.

He reached for her but the knife was already in her hand. He reached for her and she stabbed outward until the lilies fell to the stone at their feet. He reached for her until he drew back with a hiss of pain, a shuddering gasp, a gush of blood flowing freely from his side.

He reached for her and held her fast about the waist, stanched his wound with her skin, pressed his dead hand to the base of her spine and bared his soul to hers.

Blackram, bastard son of Titus yae Galvus, summoned Zalera from their agony once more.

#Godhands #Sigrid Keane #Blackram #[SHRIEKS IN ALA MHIGO]

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wallwriterstuff · 3 years

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It’s Always Been You ||Demetri Volturi x Jane Volturi||

Warnings: Jane is aged up to 19 in this fic. Graphic descriptions of torture and violence.

Words: 3956

Summary: A request for @blonde-weasley

What if the one person you were looking for happened to be the one person who had always been beside you? What if you were meant to be with the one person you had sworn to never touch? When a mission goes horribly wrong, Demetri and Jane realise that just because they have forever, it doesn’t mean they should wait that long.

Some things in life simply weren’t meant to be.

Empires rose with ambitions bigger than their means - and fell just as easily. Whole cities were destroyed because nature saw them as a blight on her landscape. Some people ruthlessly took the lives of others to gain power and a feeling of control, only to be caught and made weak by the bars of a prison cell. Karma had a way of evening out the odds, resetting the balance in the world when it began to fall out of order. Karma was cruel, and her timing was truly awful. So awful in fact, she’d decided that today, on a frost-bitten battlefield in some godforsaken corner of Romania, was the day she ought to collect a debt from Jane.

Jane was no fool. Her life had been pain in every sense of the word. Ostracised, beaten and taunted, her childhood had been warped and tainted from the start, only for her adulthood to come to an abrupt and most excruciating end. She hadn’t regretted waking up as a vampire from the day it had happened, too full of anger and resentment and delighted she could finally fight back. No villager was left alive once left to the mercy of the twins, a secret they had kept for centuries. After all, how would it look to know the Volturi had let a couple of newborns wipe out a small, well-known village? No, the rumour had to be spread and (their people made to believe it true) that the Volturi had simply killed witnesses to exposure so as not to contravene the law. In her eternal life she had kept plenty of dark secrets, relished in the chance to torture others as she had been tortured. The fury that had burned her alive had been solidified by the venom and there wasn’t a day that went by she didn’t have to find some sort of outlet for it.

She had lived a cursed life since the moment she was born, and karma was finally reaping her debt from her. Jane hadn’t felt pain like it for centuries. It was sharp and white hot, bursting up her arm and down her spine like sparks straight off a welding iron. Her scream ripped through the air, turning the heads of a few of the guard on that damned battlefield. Alec and Jane were supposed to be undefeatable after all, it was what their name implied, what their gifts demanded.

“Sister!” Alec’s roar was almost drowned out by the deafening snarl of someone else, but she was too busy to try to recognise the sound. With only one arm she couldn’t defend herself against the man before her, his lips twisted into a vicious, sinister grin and red eyes focused on her. She hissed, hyper-focused on causing him as much agony as possible while she swung her arm around to fight off who she assumed was his mate. The blonde man sailed away from her and she returned her focus to his mate, the brunette man collapsing to his knees with a strangled gasp. His jaw split so wide in a scream that fissures opened along his skin. Jane felt the third rather than saw him, her stomach churning because she knew it was too late for her by now. Karma really was a bitch today. One arm lost in the fray, her focus on the man in front of her…she really had no chance to intercept the man coming in from the side. Her legs were roughly shoved from under her and she went down hard with a grunt of pain, the cracks in her knees ensuring she wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon. Her head was shoved into the frostbitten ground.

“Jane!” She knew that voice. Demetri. He was coming. She had to fight back, give him time…this couldn’t be how it ended, not here, not like this! With a snarl she began to thrash, but she was past her newborn year and but decades old in comparison to her aggressor, no match for his strength. Her cheek cracked against the ground, skin screeching as the rough edges rubbed together. She could feel her skull starting to cave as a knee pressed into her spine, cracking it down the centre and immobilising her completely. Her eyes flew wide open, panic setting in. She couldn’t see Demetri anywhere, he wasn’t in her line of sight. Was he even coming? Had she imagined it? Her skin was splitting, her skull would be next. A soft whimper escaped her, eyes closing so she wouldn’t have to see the face of her brother as he determinedly shot a sea of black in her direction. Alec would suffer her loss, but he had to live.

“Goodbye Alec.”

Karma really was a bitch.

The sound of her skin snapping and breaking under his hand was blistering, bouncing around inside his skull as he tried to wrestle the big lug of an idiot off of him. Demetri was blinded with fury, a deafening and monstrous snarl ripping continuously from his chest. The sea of black mist was honestly a godsend. His opponent went completely limp above him and Demetri shoved him off with a hard kick, letting someone else deal with him while he raced for Jane. The girl was awfully aloof for a 19-year-old and it had taken him a long time to see past the stony exterior to the real Jane beneath. The Jane that liked to read poetry and to paint, the Jane that liked to collect coins on every mission they went on because she had never seen wealth in her human days and was still revelling in what this new life had to offer her. The Jane that held her brother on such a high pedestal Demetri had been sure she would never see past the shining example that was Alec to love another man quite so deeply.

She was cringing into the frostbitten ground now, as weak as she had been the day she burned, and it infuriated him. Had Jane not suffered enough? She was always so headstrong and stubborn. She had been a fool to stray from her guard, perhaps a bit too proud, but weren’t they all the reasons he adored her? No, he didn’t adore her, that wasn’t allowed. Still…he took great satisfaction in tearing her opponent off of her. He had beaten Alec’s paralyzing vapour to the punch and had no trouble launching the man’s mate into the oncoming fog to take him out of the picture.

“Do not dare to numb him Alec! I want him to feel this!” he roared, snapping his hand off at the wrist. Alec’s mist obediently encircled them, ensuring neither could escape the fight ahead but both would have to endure it. Demetri could still see her out of the corner of his eye, missing an arm and part of her leg now, her face shattered like a porcelain doll who had been thrown to the ground. His fury burned bright and he gave his opponent no quarter. He deftly dodged at the hand swiping for his head, gripping it at the wrist to bring the man forward only to shove his hand against his collarbone, effectively ripping his arm from the socket. The brunette howled, eyes sparking with rage and pain, but Demetri didn’t back down, agilely twisting behind him to stomp on the back of his leg. His foot smashed right through the man’s calf and he collapsed sideways, Demetri falling to one knee with him so he could punch his fist clean through the back of his knee.

“Anghel!” he cried out for his mate and Demetri sent his fist sailing into his jaw.

“Cry all you like, he will join you soon enough in the depths of hell.” He promised, eyes wild. He could still see Jane in his mind’s eyes even if she was physically shrouded in mist, mercifully no longer aware of her own pain. He was determined to take revenge for her, to ensure she was safe. Jane deserved someone to fight for her and he would be damned if it wasn’t him. He caught the stump of a wrist aiming for his jaw, twisting until his forearm began to crack and the man beneath him bucked helplessly, screaming for mercy. Demetri didn’t stop twisting until the arm came off at the elbow, mercilessly tossing it into the fog surrounding them.

“You brute! You will burn in hell for this! Vladimir will send you there himself!” he howled. Demetri laughed, the sound mirthless and bitter.

“Stefan has already fled and your precious Vladimir will be not far behind. Their mates burn on the pyres their incompetence created, their army reduced to nothing more than kindling. I will have no mercy on such an intolerable waste of immortality.” He hissed, gripping the man’s thigh and pushing up ruthlessly until it snapped off at the pelvic bone. Piece by piece, he took his time tearing the other vampire apart, his mind a dizzying array of thoughts. The sounds of tearing metal were drowned out by the storm in his head, and by the time the last pieces of his enemy were aflame he was somewhat shocked at the level of his brutality. He had not made it quick, he had suffered. Felix stood just beyond the ring of mist that slowly receded, looking concerned for him with a healing crack along his cheek.

“Are you injured?” he asked. Demetri swallowed back the venom that had pooled in his mouth.

“Jane is-“

“I asked about you, not Jane. Alec is with her now.” Felix interrupted him, voice clam but firm. Demetri immediately turned his head, trying to find the petite blonde, but Felix gripped his chin and forced him to look at him. Felix was older than all of them by a considerable number of centuries, Demetri came next, the twins last, but ultimately they had all been under his tutelage at one time or another.

“She-“

“I asked, about, you.” Felix repeated slowly. Demetri took a breath he didn’t need, slowly nodding.

“I am uninjured.” He confirmed. Felix gave a brisk nod in reply and let him go, making no move to stop him this time as he scanned the battlefield for Jane’s fallen body. He prayed he wasn’t too late, that she might yet still heal, but she had taken a lot of damage. What was he supposed to do without her sharp, caustic wit driving him to insanity? Alec cradled her head in his lap, looking distraught and infuriated.

“Tell me he is dead, tell me he suffered.” He sounded suspiciously close to crying, if that was still possible. Demetri fell to his knees in front of them, eyes fixed on Jane’s shattered face. The cracks were healing over too slowly for him to take any comfort from the sight, her lost limbs still nowhere near her. He couldn’t quite fathom it; it didn’t compute right away that this limp and vulnerable girl was Jane. His Jane was strong and proud and stood tall, she was whole. Alec’s wild eyes were locked on his own, pure black with the need to feed.

“She needs her arm, why is she not – where are they?” Demetri looked around, trying to find a flash of near black that matched her cloak or the dainty fingers he had come to know through the gentle flipping of anthology pages. Alec gently stroked her cheek with his thumb, whispering quiet words of comfort. Demetri had a new mission, ignoring the Masters’ as they drifted across the battlefield towards them. Jane was coming home with them if it was the last thing he ever did, and she would come home in one piece. Fires blazed around him and he grew more agitated as time passed, more marble limbs flying past him and onto the pyres surrounding him. Had someone already burned her limbs by mistake? It couldn’t be. She’d kill him if he came back with the wrong ones for her he was sure. Besides, how was he supposed to feel knowing it wasn’t her hand that brushed his as they passed books between them in the library? It would be wrong, all wrong.

His frantic search was paused by a gnarled set of fingers gripping his shoulder. His head snapped up, and he met the tired, sympathetic eyes of Master Marcus. He said nothing, simply extended his hand and pointed a bony finger to the left. Demetri followed it with his eyes. A pale hand reached out from the depths of a near black cloak, and with relief saturating his soul he darted forward to snatch it up off of the ground. No more was said about that moment as he returned to Jane’s side, already lathering the wound with his venom in the hopes it might stick, that it wasn’t too late to save her. He used the shredded cloak to tie the two pieces together, Alec tucked the broken arm against his chest for added reinforcement with a grateful nod.

“Demetri, you will need to stay with the others to ensure this mess is cleaned up.” Master Aro informed him. Demetri growled.

“With respect Master I must stay with Jane, she is badly wounded-“

“Let the boy return, Aro.” Marcus rasped. Demetri gave him a grateful nod, relief flooding his system. He missed the way Marcus slipped his hand into Aro’s grasp, the way Aro’s eyes glanced between them with nothing but joy on his face. Demetri remained close to Alec as they carried her home, glaring off anyone who dared get too close to either twin. If Alec noticed he didn’t comment on it, nor did he say a word as they remained silent sentries at her bedside for the days to come. The only time either of them moved was if a human needed to be brought in to feed her, the pair taking it in turns to gently hold up her prone body while they fed her via a cup they drained their victim of choice into. By day 3, when she started swallowing on her own, his hope was returning full force that she might yet be okay.

“You have remained at her side. Why?” Alec’s question was blunt and out of the blue. Demetri frowned, truthfully afraid of what her twin might do if he knew the truth. He had had a lot of time to think, observe both Jane and himself. He knew the way his body reacted, the way his mind raced, he had quietly contemplated for days what it all might mean, looking for any solution other than the one he was faced with. He had waited since the day he had turned for this moment, watching Amun and Kebi first and then Aro and Caius with their wives…

“I cannot leave her.” Demetri settled on the simple answer, the one that might ensure Alec didn’t tear him limb from limb. He studied the younger twin carefully, noting Alec had yet to take his eyes off of his sister as he contemplated his answer. Demetri had quite honestly hated them both when they first arrived in the coven. Who were they to come in and replace high ranking guards he had called friend for the handful of years he’d been alive? Mere children really. 19 was no age to die, and yet…he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help that hers was the first tenor he looked for when he returned home for a mission, nor that she was the only person he could really bring himself to be around on the days he didn’t really feel like speaking to anyone. He couldn’t help the way she distracted him with the smallest things, like the way she tucked her hair behind her ear or that small smile she reserved for the flowers in the garden she had planted when she first arrived. All those little things had added up until one big, undeniable truth smacked him in the face.

He couldn’t live without her now.

Jane inadvertently saved him from Alec’s wrath with a deep inhale, her eyes fluttering before they popped open on a sharp exhale. Her expression was carefully blank, eyes fixed on the ceiling with such intensity it alarmed him. Alec almost sagged in relief.

“Sister…how do you feel?” he questioned. Jane was quiet for a long moment before she finally seemed to release the tension she’d been holding in, sagging into the mattress slightly and turning her head to look at him. Demetri ignored the slight twinge in his chest, knowing the way she reached for her brother was only natural. He pulled her upright with his hug, face buried in her hair, but his red eyes were fixed on the tracker and full of an emotion he couldn’t quite decipher.

“Strange. I was…paralysed, but I could hear you all. For a while I was burning again,” she sounded so traumatised, “Where is Demetri? He saved me, right? Is he okay?” Alec pulled away, glancing between them both.

“I should leave you two to talk.” His voice was blunt and he left without another word, leaving Jane to his care. The blonde faced him, eyes guarded and expression set in stone. It was almost as if she thought he might attack her.

“I am glad to see you awake.” He said, shattering the uncomfortable silence building between them. Jane gave him a terse nod, looking him over with her eyes as if she didn’t actually believe he had fought for her and was looking for imperfections now to prove her theory.

“I am glad to see you unharmed.” She answered. The uncomfortable stare off continued, Jane’s fingers twisting into the bedsheets beneath her. Her expression was unreadable and Demetri only grew more agitated as the time passed. Could she not feel what he felt? Her tenor was all but tugging him towards her, something in the air between them had become charged and palpable.

“Jane…” he found he didn’t quite have the words to explain or describe what had come over him since they’d last spoken. Jane didn’t seem to need to hear them though.

“You saved me. I…I was aware, of what you did for me, the vengeance you claimed for me,” Jane’s brows furrowed, “I cannot understand why.” Demetri swallowed, feeling his gut twist. Was this feeling one-sided perhaps? It could not be unrequited, no…no he couldn’t spend the rest of forever feeling like this when she was so close, but so out of reach.

“As I told Alec, I cannot leave your side,” He repeated, brain scrambling as he tried to think of some way to explain himself, “There are a great many things in this world I can do on my own, but they seem rather pointless without you.” Her fingers tightened in the sheets till he heard cotton tearing.

“This is a dangerous conversation, Demetri.” She warned him. Demetri’s lips twitched into a mirthless smile.

“If you want to talk dangerous, shall we discuss why you strayed from your guard on the battlefield?” he challenged. Her face fell into a spiteful glare.

“Maybe next time I shan’t bother helping you then, seeing as you were about to be frozen to the spot by that gifted vampire.” She sniffed. Demetri’s smile turned more genuine, her sarcasm feeling like all the proof he needed she would be just fine.

“I have a few ways I would thank you, but I fear you might cause me immeasurable agony if I tried.” He teased lightly. If Jane could blush he was sure she would have, instead she turned her nose up at him and scoffed slightly, but her eyes were alight with a mixture of fear and curiosity, almost like she wanted him to try. Demetri didn’t test his luck too much, but he did reach for her face with his hand, tenderly stroking her cheek. She leaned into his touch very slowly, staring at him from under her lashes.

“This feeling…it frightens me.” She confessed quietly. Demetri nodded in understanding.

“Me to, but I am tired of trying to deny it. Perhaps…perhaps we go slowly, try to figure out where we stand?” he suggested. Jane was quiet for a moment, pondering exactly what she wanted, and then she reached up to squeeze his wrist.

“Okay.” She whispered. He smiled, a kind of warmth spreading through him he had never experienced before. To have his mate accept him was an exhilarating experience. She didn’t push his hands away when he helped her up, and his hand remained on the small of her back as they walked together down the corridor towards the throne room. Alec awaited them near the bottom of the hallway, leaning against the stone. His stare was icy as they approached him but Demetri was feeling bold, and left his hand where it was.

“I see you haven’t killed him. How…disappointing.” Alec murmured, squinting at the tracker with a sneer. Jane frowned.

“She has time yet.” Demetri grinned. Alec only snarled quietly.

“Play nicely, boys.” She threatened. Alec’s head tilted and the twins seemingly had a silent conversation with nothing more than some exchanged glances before he gave Demetri a single nod.

“Do not make a mess of this Demetri.” The warning was very stark and Demetri could only nod in understanding. He supposed it just happened to be a consequence of being mated to one of the Witch Twins.

#twilight #twilight fanfiction #demetri volturi #jane volturi #demetri x jane #volturi #request

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lydiabeckett · 3 years

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❝ 𝐍𝐎𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 was noticing but she was disappearing. nobody was noticing but she was already gone. ❞

Type: Self Para.

Date: April 12th, 2021.

Mentioned but not featured: Eleanor Hirsch, Georgina Livingston, Jasmine Volkan, Jack Adler, Theodore Carlson, Holliday Carlson, Christine Beckett, Gabby Livingston.

Featured: Thomas Beckett, Declan Carlson, Dr. Jeanine Pierce.

Trigger Warnings: Depression, physical abuse mention, abandonment, transplant mention, panic attack, trauma.

Nobody was noticing but she was disappearing.

There was a lot to say about enduring trauma during childhood. Something that branded you. Skin deep. Raw. Effective.

Most of the days Lydia didn’t know why she came into the world.

Her mother had been cruel. Calculating. Manipulative in ways Lydia wasn’t sure to be possible for a mother to be. Where Lydia considered herself to be a hurricane, Catherine had been a tsunami. Receding at first. Apparently apathetic, before coming and sweeping it all away.

Lydia wouldn’t admit it, but she missed her, she missed her sisters the most, but she missed her, and what kind of person could she be when she was missing a person like her?

She remembered clear as day the day her mother left her behind. No second thought. As if she was something to be scrapped and left in the junkyard. She remembered the tears streaming down her face as she begged her mother to stay until her voice went hoarse, she begged for her to take her along for the ride as well. It wasn’t just the bags, but something in Lydia knew that her mother would never come back and she was sure that she wasn’t enough to make her stay.

She cried and begged as the rain fell on them, thick and unforgiving. Lydia sobbed as her hair got swept on her face and the sobs turned into hiccups until there was nothing left in her. Lydia remembered feeling numb. A whole lot of nothing inside of her. Suffocating her. She just wanted to be gone.

Still, stupidly maybe, there was a part of her that still loved her father.

The man was violent on his best day, Lydia had been branded over and over again just because. He was a drunk too, and never sustained a job. Part of her didn’t blame her mother for wanting to leave that all behind. The other part of her beat herself up in wondering why the woman hadn’t taken her along.

A twelve year old mind didn’t know much about realizing when something was wrong. When her mother left, she had taken to herself to fill in her shoes, taking care of a man who couldn’t take care of himself. After all, if it wasn’t for him, Lydia wouldn’t have existed right? Maybe in some ways she still resented him for putting her in this world, but still. She took care of him.

For years she did his laundry, she fixed the house, she had multiple jobs and concentrated on spending the most time she had free away from home. In places she felt safe. With Eleanor in the Hirsch residence, even though she felt deeply undeserving of being there, with Jasmine and sometimes even with Gabby. How in the hell she had friends when she barely could maintain herself standing, escaped her comprehension.

Life did move on though, and once it was time, she would say she didn’t feel bad about leaving the man behind, but she did. Nevertheless, there was a bigger need for all of that. The need to get out covering the real quest to run away.

For the next few years, Lydia found her father in every man she came across. They were all undeserving of her in some ways, but they felt like home, and she didn’t recognize home in softness, in kindness or love. Home for her was harsh, violent, brutal and cruel, and times it was like she masochistically sought out home in every person she encountered. She would like to say that there was a balance, but sometimes there weren’t. Her suffering was offered and for free. It took her a long time to plant the seed of not deserving it, and she was sure that the seed had not sprouted just yet.

Daniel was the one she spent most of the time with. Daniel was undeniably charming. Daniel was powerful. Daniel made a submissive out of her in no time at all. Daniel didn’t take long to show what he was there for and when she didn’t flinch, pull away, or blamed him, Daniel kept being egged on by her helplessness.

Unlike her father, Daniel didn’t need alcohol to raise a hand and strike it down as hard as he could. Unlike her father, Daniel was sociable, funny, the way he wrapped his arms around her during dinner parties in front of his friends would make anyone believe that they were exchanging devotion, love, but it was possessiveness, obsession, submission and fear.

Five years she had stayed there, five years in the same loop. Wake up, breakfast, work, fight, rinse and repeat. No man could look at her funny. No woman could look at her funny. She wasn’t isolated inside their work space, because he could see her everywhere. She knew where she was at all times, and Lydia was stupid enough to confuse this for caring, for love, even though she knew that if it was something she wasn’t openly gushing about with Eleanor, than it must be wrong, right?

It took him almost killing her to make her walk away. She remembered waking up at the hospital and a nurse telling her that Daniel had been there every day, holding her hand, waiting for her to wake up. What a man he portrayed for other people. What about her? There was nothing left for her there anymore and she prohibited his visitors, any visitors and once she felt capable enough, she ran away, again. Pulling out a duffel bag and ending up God knew where.

She couldn’t breathe again.

She came back.

Not for him though. She quit her job at the publishing house and she found Holly. She would never admit for a woman so stoic, but Holly had been a lifeline for her. Her and her spunky little boy who Lydia never thought could fill her heart so much.

It was incredibly scary how Declan could see right through her. He was imaginative, observant and bright. Sometimes a little difficult, but hey, what kid wasn’t? He was the one who asked her what she loved to do and it shut her up, she replied “hanging out with you” but soon enough came “and writing”. If she ever managed to finish her first book, she knew she wanted a dedicatory to him, for the last three years he had been helping her continuously see the good in life and know, maybe, somewhere deep inside that she wasn’t meant for all that hurt, after all.

She never thought about being a mother before. Thinking about the times her father would look at her and say that she was “just like your mother”, and being just like her mother meant a lot of things and being unable to carry that title was one of them.

By then Lydia had already witnessed how much of a hurricane she could be. How much she was able to sweep into people’s lives, cause destruction and walk away without flinching.

Lydia remembered seeing two blue lines in a pregnancy test when she was still with Daniel. Never two blue lines made her so scared or put things into perspective. The sudden pregnancy was short-lived and Lydia resigned to life with him. Motherhood was not for her. How could she guide a child, when she couldn’t even set herself straight.

Still, Declan had shown parts of her she had never seen before. She had been able to open her heart fully and let him in. There was a connection between them and a real friendship. She loved the little man, and she always made sure to stay on top of her game when she was around him. He had brought her so many people just by being the reason she returned to Catalina.

Georgina, Jack, Jasmine, Eleanor, Teddy, Holly… the list went on and on and when she saw herself surrounded by so much--- it was suffocating, at times. Yet, she was eager to be better.

Maybe he was the reason why she had decided to test to know if she was compatible with her father.

He had come up to her in the kitchen with a bright smile while Lydia was cooking for him and asked him “why are you so sad Lydia?” It took her by surprise. Not to butter her own biscuit, but she had been excellent at wearing a sturdy mask when around people, even if her own thoughts were cloudy most of the time. She could have laughed it off and just told him that she was not, but she knelt down to his level and hugged him. “My dad is sick buddy,” the blonde confided and he hugged her back, the kind of comforting and trusting hug only a kid is able to give.

“Miss Beckett, are you ready?”

She was snapped from her thoughts by the nurse who came to call her.

She went in that morning to test herself. They said it was a simple blood work, but it was much more than that and knowing that she would need some time to recollect herself before entering the real world, she asked Holly if she could take some days off, which was unlike her to do. Nobody knew she was there.

She didn’t tell Eleanor, which was also unlike her, but she was afraid Ellie wouldn’t understand why she was doing it. The brunette had been the one who got front row and center tickets to the Lydia shit show, something she had not signed up for and she never wavered, not for a moment. Eleanor’s repetitive words of her not deserving that and of her father not deserving of anything from her were echoed in her mind, over and over again. She didn’t want to disappoint her best friend. So she didn’t tell her.

Taking a deep breath, Lydia followed the nurse down a long and well lit white hall. She hated hospitals. She really hated them. Every time she stepped in to visit her father, she got nauseous at the clean smell and how there were just people dying everywhere in that building.

She did put her brave face on that morning and once she was seated, another nurse came by and tourniqueted her arm before the recognizable pinch of the needle happened making her face screw up at the sudden pain, she hissed. The nurse had a smile on his face, and she bet that it was a reaction he had predicted many times. Once she was good to go, they directed her back to her father’s room to wait for the doctor.

Her father was sleeping and whenever he was sleeping he was almost peaceful.

She had shared with Georgina that her father’s condition was getting worse. It was funny when in the times she needed for a mother, Lydia went directly to the woman even though she was only a few years ahead of her. It was a shame that Georgina had gotten into her life too late to replace a mother that was never there, but she was thankful nonetheless. She promised she’d take up on the offer and promise of a talk, if needed, but she was unsure now, unsure that her thoughts and feelings could ever be put into words.

For someone who wanted to be a writer, Lydia was a shit communicator.

Her father had been put into ventilation for now, and the bills were sucking the life out of Lydia and her bank account looking fairly dry nowadays. Maybe if she could just finish this, she could get rid of him for good.

She would never admit it though, that there was a small part of her who wished he would be a better father after this. Bridge the gap between them. Maybe a liver transplant could change one’s personality? She hated that she was holding up on such hope. Still, absentmindedly her hand reached out for his and she wrapped it. It was calousy and hard, they were never meant for tenderness and had never shown them. Remembering the way he asked for her forgiveness the last time he was away made her stomach flip and her throat constrict. The sound of the door opening made her turn around startled, a hand flying to her chest, but it was just Dr. Pierce. She breathed out in relief.

“Lydia, did not mean to scare you, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine, I’m just a little jumpy,” Lydia smiled and put her hands inside her jeans pockets.

“You should go home and rest up a bit, I’ll be calling you in a few hours with the results, we’ll process them as quickly as we can, but we are a little backed up,” there was an apologetic tone in Dr. Pierce’s voice, to which Lydia just nodded.

“What will happen if I am compatible?”

“Those chances are high, so you should definitely be prepared. We’ll bring you in and do some more tests to know if you’ll be able to withstand the surgery well, and probably no longer than tomorrow we’ll be doing your surgery,” she explained, Lydia nodded along to let her know she was following up. “I do need to tell you again, though, your father might not survive the surgery or even recover if he does, there is a lot of damage done over the years and during the extensive period he spent in the hospital waiting for this, so even if he goes through surgery, he might not have a good recovery or even one at all.”

It was a reality check, she knew. Didn’t make her feel any less shitty though. Lydia nodded again.

“You’ll call me, right?”

Dr. Pierce confirmed once again and with a kiss to her father’s forehead, Lydia all but ran out of that hospital.

She stopped outside, catching her breath, she didn’t like the taste that the Doctor’s words left in her mouth. She had waited too long in her indecisiveness and now she might as well take the knife and kill her father herself.

She didn’t go back home, she walked around the island, wherever her feet wanted to take her. Her mind was clouded and she felt as if she could cry at any given moment. It had been days she had not been sleeping well and the concealer was doing a poor job at hiding the dark circles under her eyes. She had gotten a bit thinner as well, but she didn’t feel hungry and food made her stomach feel queasy. Nobody had quite warned her before that guilt was an all consuming feeling. It was eating her from the inside out.

It was hard to know how long it really took or how long she was walking around, but at the first chirp of her phone, her heart started hammering loudly inside her chest. She picked up and sure enough Dr. Jeanine Pierce’s voice hit her ears.

“Lydia, your tests are back, I was wondering if you could come by my office so we can have a word?”

She was there in no time, whistling down a cab as her head went a million times per hour. Was there something wrong? Was she not compatible? Was she sick too? Her mind was so busy that she almost tripped on her own feet as she got out of the cab and rushed inside. Her heart was in her throat and it was hard to swallow. Lydia rushed through the hallways to get to Dr. Pierce’s office, a place she had grown quite used to. She waited outside after identifying herself, feet tapping impatiently on the floor making her receive some looks, thankfully, her entrance was permitted quickly.

“What is it?”

She was out of breath and it showed.

“I don’t know how to say this, Lydia, but while you and your… father are compatible,” the way she said the word father made Lydia’s eyebrows furrow, “it seems that there is no correlation between the two of you. If you’re comfortable with it, I would like to take a DNA test to confirm it, but it doesn’t seem that biologically you are father and daughter.”

Lydia had heard about them before. Moments that shift your whole world.

Most people talk about them in a good light, but she wasn’t sure that was one of those. It became rather hard to focus on what the woman in front of her was saying, even though her lips were moving. She had said something about a DNA test and Lydia just nodded, not really knowing what was happening, but going along for the ride. She signed papers, she was taken down the same hall she did earlier and this time around, she didn’t feel the pinch and she was sure the nurse could see that there was nothing behind her eyes. Not fear, or pain, or relief, or joy, it was just void. A whole lot of nothingness.

She was returned to the doctor’s office and while she started speaking again, all Lydia heard was Charlie Brown’s teacher's voice. No words meant anything to her.

It did take a while, but it all returned, all at one. Her breathing suddenly grew shallow, constricted in a tight throat. Her mouth was dry. Impossibly dry. 40 days in the desert dry. Her eyes tried to focus somewhere. Anywhere, but it was all blurry. Was that what a panic attack felt like?

Dr. Pierce must have noted because she wasted no time. She had something calming about her. She was already into her 60s so she had long acquired that motherly soothing tone in her voice, but Lydia didn’t want to listen. She tried to breathe in deeply, but it wouldn’t pass through her throat. Her eyes would have been rimmed with tears had she not felt the complete void of any water inside her body. The air around her felt dry. The chair felt hard. The metal felt cold. Dr. Pierce’s hands felt weird and suddenly, everything went black.

She woke up a few hours later, dizzy and not knowing where she was. There was an IV attached to her body, pumping fluid for a much needed hydration. Still everything was fuzzy and as she looked frantically around her, Dr. Pierce was the first one to get into her line of vision.

“Calm down Lydia, you passed out after the test, you’re in the hospital, you’re fine,” she explained and her breathing came down, she needed to be out of there.

“H-How long was I out?”

“5 or 6 hours? Looked like your body needed some rest and since you had your father listed as an emergency contact, I had no choice but to keep myself here,” she smiled kindly.

Back in New York, she had Eleanor listed as her emergency contact, but recently, with a few changes that were made to her health insurance, she had forgotten to put her name on it.

She attempted to get up, already in a rush to go back home. Or to Holly’s home, to her room, but was pushed back by Dr. Pierce’s gentle hands.

“Calm down, I need you to stay here for observance for another hour or two, and was able to rush your results and I don’t want you passing out on me again, okay?”

Lydia nodded and Dr. Pierce took out an envelope from her lab coat and opened.

“You and your father share no DNA,” she said, and Lydia couldn’t help but frown, a strange feeling happening on the tip of her stomach, “my guess is that you weren’t aware of it?” Lydia shook her head in response. “You are still compatible if you wish to follow through with the surgery, but I understand that this is a lot to process. Do you have anyone who can help you do that?”

She had people, but no one that could understand how those news had sunk her heart to her stomach. Still, she nodded, unable to voice it out loud.

“I’m still gonna need you to get back to me by the end of the week, okay? Even though he is not your biological father you’re still his next of kin and quite possibly, the only one who can see him through this.”

Dr. Pierce spoke from an oblivious place. A place of someone who didn’t know what hell her childhood had been and how that man… that stranger, was responsible for screwing her up so badly, maybe beyond repair. She was speaking from the eyes of someone who maybe didn’t have a fractured relationship with her parents, or with her children. Those were the facts that made Lydia not reboot and press her lips together with a nod.

“Can you let me out? I’m good, I promise, I just don’t want to be here right now.”

“Sure, but you understand that you are leaving against medical orders, right?”

Another nod.

It still took a long time to get through bureaucracy and be released. She didn’t spend much time after she was, not really bothering a visit to her father’s room. If she could even call him that ever again. She knew she hadn’t processed that. Maybe it was an elaborate prank and she would be laughing about it later.

She walked impatiently through the doors until she was in the parking lot and took a deep breath, taking her phone from her pocket so she could call… who?

Eleanor had been clear that she didn’t like the man. She had a good family despite some strangeness that happened every now and then. Lydia wouldn’t know how to explain what she was feeling now.

Georgina was wise beyond her years, but this wasn’t something she could relate with. Not when her parents were magical and her siblings were tight. Besides, this was a part Lydia hadn’t fully disclosed for her yet, because if she was 100% honest, she hated that look in her face. That look that made Lydia aware that if Geo could carry all her burden she would. Sometimes it might have felt like, but she was not her mother, and the last thing Geo should be doing was wasting her time with someone like her.

Jack was a good friend, supportive and Lydia had thought about him in many less friendly ways recently, so he wasn’t someone she could just reach out about this.

Her friendship with Jasmine had just started to blossom again. They were just learning to be around each other again. There was no way she would cloud that with her darkness.

Teddy… no. It was better if he didn’t know she was so distasteful.

She returned her phone to her bag.

It felt like pieces were slowly falling inside her brain like a painful tetris game.

Her father was not her father.

Could she even call him father now? Should she?

All that pain, all the times he hurt her, everything she had endured thus far. A lie. A fucking lie. Why had her mother not taken her? Why had she left her in the care of a total stranger?

Did she even have a father? What if he was some dead beat? What if he was just dead?

For a million questions there were a million more and it was overwhelming, but no tears came. She felt like she could cry at any time, but nothing.

Lydia felt numb, stale, cold, empty.

Just a wave of nothingness sweeping through her in the middle of a parking lot.

But for every wave that crashed on shore, another one was already on the way.

Soon it would swallow her whole.

Right now Lydia was as unimportant as she felt. As hopeless as she felt. Still, her face was stoic, her breathing was normal again.

Maybe not feeling was the best thing she could ever hoped for, after all, with just a few words her world had been turned upside down.

Lydia turned her phone off. She didn’t want to be found. Not for now. Not for a while.

She started walking away, without really knowing where to go. It was hard to admit but it had been some time since she had been slipping away from people’s lives. meticulously. Carefully. Gently.

Maybe this was the final nail on the proverbial coffin.

Nobody was noticing but she was already gone.

#self para.#i dont even know how to tag this but im exhausted #its long ok #depression tw #physical abuse mention tw #abandonmnent tw #transplant mention tw #panic attack tw #trauma tw #✩ 〔 you’ve handled tragedy ; surely you can handle tenderness. 〕 ﹕ CHARACTER STUDY.

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kob131 · 3 years

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True Name: Uther Pendragon Class: Saber Gender: Male Alignment: Lawful Good (believes he is Lawful Neutral) Parameter: Strength: B Endurance: A Agility: C Mana: E Luck: C NP: B+

History: Uther was born as the youngest of three brothers, himself, the Black Dragon Vortigern and the Paranoid Prince Ambrousis. After their father Constantine was died, the eldest son Ambrousis took the throne at the young age of 14. Due to an innate paranoia, the treachery of royal politics and persistent rumors of his father having been poisoned, Ambrousis sought to weed out all potential traitors and dangers to himself In his madness, he killed civilians for speaking unfavorably and nobles for dealing with other nations.

Unable to tolerate his eldest brother’s actions, Uther, alongside the middle child Vortigern, staged a rebellion against Ambrousis, uniting several lords and knights across Britan to wage war against his enthroned and madden kin. Through numerous bloody battles, he forced Ambrousis to met his demise by his own hand, with no small amount of grief and sadness. Soon after, the lords of the land agreed to name him King, something that would come to frustrate his last living brother.

Throughout his reign, he came into conflict with his neighbors/arch enemies the Saxxons. The two kingdoms went to war with each other many, many times, almost always with Uther just barely managing to edge a victory. During these many wars, he was always noted to be seen wandering near lakeside, gazing wistfully out upon the water. One night, on the last of his many walks to the lakes of the land, returned with two twin newborns in hand, girls who he would name Morgan and Morgause and claim as his children. No one is quite certain who the mother of these two was...

Later in life, as the strain of his life came to haunt him, he began to seek an heir to which take his throne upon his increasingly likely death. However, due to lacking a wife and having only daughters who could not be accepted by his kingdom, he looked to his old and trusted friend Merlin. Together, they hatched a plan for Uther to impregnate the lovely Lady Igraine with the king impersonating her lover through Merlin’s magic. Alas, though the child was blessed with the blood of a dragon, it was also yet another daughter, named Arturia. Distraught and despondent, Uther gave up his quest for a successor and left the child in Merlin’s care.

This turn of events alongside the death of his legitimate child Morgause left Uther in the worst of health. His body deteriorated day after day, for years on end until one day, seven years after those events, he died due to a combination of sickness and poison by his lifelong enemies....*

Personality: Quite unlike his successor, Uther is open and friendly man who ruled through trust and familiarity, while not being the best at administration. He warms the hearts of both his retainers and his people with his honesty and openness. Alas, this warmth also lends itself to a certain...fiery temperament in battle.

A man tried to uphold honor and dignity during his life, helping define the code of honor that many among the succeeding generation would uphold as their standard. That said, he could not always uphold it as the conception of his youngest child will tell you.

Below his surface though, he holds a great many regrets. He laments his killing of his brother, his inability to stop the tyranny of his other sibling, his failure to properly raise the children under his care, his shame at the manipulation of Igraine born from a moment’s weakness and lust and his perceived abandonment of his youngest child. Because of this, he feels rather uncomfortable around most British servants, especially those from his era as it reminds him of his failures. Though, he still trusts and respects Merlin (even holding the distinction of being one of the few people able to catch the flower magus off guard).

He also regrets not having tried to defy the laws of inheritness during his time, as he sees this inaction having caused the many conflicts and pain of his successors.

Noble Phantasm:

Flame Sword of the Dragon King: Caliburn Classification: Anti-Personnel Rank: B+

Born from the legends that he himself wielded Caliburn before lodging it in it’s infamous stone as well as the misconception that he himself had dragon blood- Uther wields an altered version of Caliburn of similar quality to it’s true self. In battle, he can ignite the sword with dragonfire and enhance it’s power before releasing it in an inferno the swallows the opponent. The Noble Phantasm itself is not the sword but rather the technique and skill that Uther uses when swinging the ignited sword.

Relationships:

Merlin

Still views him as a trusted advisor and friend. Wishes he would not inform him of his daughters’ sex life. Holds the distinction of being one of the few people to catch Merlin off guard.

“Ah, Merlin. My old friend! You are truly a sight for these sore eyes... Would I like to hear about my child? ... I know you better than to answer yes.”

Arturia Pendragon

A father in name only, he believes. He feels nothing but shame and remorse upon seeing her, believing he does not deserve to be considered among her family. This despite Arturia’s admiration of his own rule.

“... Of course, she is here. The noble King of Knights who did what I could not... No Master, I do not wish to speak with her. I had that chance long ago...”

Arthur Pendragon

Is VERY confused why he has a look alike calling him ‘Father.’ While accepting of the man, Uther can’t help but feel bitter about how things seemed to have worked out for his other self.

“Master? Why is that lad giving me such a strange look? ... Arthur Pendragon? My son from another world? ... *sigh* Of course I find an heir I could truly pass on to NOW of all times...”

Lancelot

Is quite confused (then amused) that his daughter’s greatest knight is a Frenchman. Uther shares a kinship with him as a fellow knight ashamed of his past. Helps that Lancelot is the first Servant he meets upon arriving at Chaldea.

“Ah sir Lancelot! I was wondering if you and I could partake in a friendly spar sometime soon! Yes yes, I shall try to keep from getting too excited like last time.”

The Orkney Siblings (Gawain, Agravain, Gareth, Garehis)

Uther feels deeply conflicted with the siblings, knowing that they are the children of his one surviving child and yet his own failings as father caused them harm indirectly. He is, however, forced to put these feelings aside as the knights all deeply admire and adore him, having been raised on stories of his heroics. Especially the eldest Gawain.

(Gawain) “Oh, you are...yes, Gawain. Morgan’s eldest son. I shall take my leave. ... Wait, You want me to stay? You want to know about my battles? Haha, I-I don’t know what to say.”

(Gareth) “Oh, young Gareth. What a surprise, what brings you to me? ... A jousting battle? Young lady, do I appear to be of the Lancer Class in any manner? ... Now it’s a sparring match?!”

Vortigern

The mere sight of his elder brother deeply enrages Uther. The pain of his brother Ambrousis’ death dredged up at the sight of the sibling he believes he should have slain, there is no chance that Uther will ever cooperate with Vortigern.

“VORTIGERN! Damn you to hell, you inhuman tyrant!”

Morgan Le Fay Pendragon

To say the sight of his eldest daughter brings Uther pain would be nothing if not an understatement. Pressured by the constant wars and responsibilities as king, along with no partner to help him in raising a family, he could never truly invest himself into Morgan’s life as he wished to. Because of this, the death of her sister and even his own, Morgan walked a path of sacrifice and failure, transforming her into the brutal witch she is known as. All because, in Uther’s eyes, he could not comfort her.

“Morgan, oh Morgan. You have suffered so much, despite never wishing for the throne yourself. Seeking it out for Morgause and myself... Forgive your fool of a father, for he could not save you from this.”

Mordred

He did not recognize her as his kin at first but greatly enjoyed her company. Upon learning of her full heritage, Uther resolved himself to make up for his failures with her parents and help guide her to a better life.

“Ah, Mordred. Come, come. We have much to talk about. Yes yes, I know you feel as though my talks are long winded and boring. But I ask of you: will you allow this old man to indulge talking to his grandchild? Ha ha, no need to blush, I should be thanking you after all.”

*Sorry to any Arthurian myth fans but holy fuck, not only is Fate’s iteration of the Round Table Myth really hard to faithfully adapt the original myth- The myth ITSELF gets really patchy when not directly concerning Arthur.

Like, the actual villain of early Uther’s life was VORTIGERN, who was NOT his brother. That doesn’t line up with Fate so I had to make the good guy Ambrousis a bad guy. And THEN it turns out that Uther fucked and married Igraine BEFORE Arthur which again doesn’t match up to Fate. So had to change the mother of Morgan and Morgause to someone else just for this to make sense.

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konako · 4 years

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I'm adding angst! Helena finds out that they were exes. Renee would have preferred Helena go crazy and just kill Queen assassin style (love that!) rather than the quiet-er and more technical one she got. Queen has been spending more and more time in their office and even she feels bad for Huntress who leaves the room whenever she sees Dinah and Queen together. Dinah is confused, she thought Helena would be more territorial, but it seems she lost interest, did she read Helena wrong?

You can always add angst. And even more angst. And just a dash more. *evil laugh*

Helena promptly disappears.

When she does come around for training or planning, she seems quieter, more to-the-point, with no time for casual talk and laughter or unintentional jokes. It looks like she’s avoiding Dinah. Fuck, it feels deeply so. And Dinah’s not imagining things. Oliver confirmed it, to have been on the receiving end of some strange looks and rude pauses and serious scowling. Helena’s sudden mood change was undeniably caused by Oliver’s introduction, and his unfortunate comment on Dinah’s past relationship with him. Up until that moment, Helena had just been defensive and a bit unfriendly, but when she learned they were once a couple, things took a sudden, hard change to a deafening silent treatment. It was brutal.

Dinah doesn’t know how to approach her about it. She sincerely thinks Helena hates her now, that all of that slow hard work on getting her to trust her was just thrown out the window, and they’re strangers again. She can’t seem to break through Helena’s armor like she once did. Their easy banter is now painfully stiff. Dinah can swear Helena’s eyes have lost their color. The assassin never looks at her for more than one second, now. Is clear, palpable avoidance. And it’s a surprising pain. Dinah is afraid to ask, because she dreads the affirmative answer, that Helena completely lost interest and is now actively avoiding her out of disgust. She couldn’t bare those words, not when the actions already speak for themselves. That would hurt, and Dinah is oddly fragile about it.

Renee, however, doesn’t have much to lose. When she manages to get Helena alone one night, she touches on the subject. It takes some convincing; she has to endure some curses and bad temper and screaming (and the occasional punch to the table), but eventually Helena opens up about the heart of the issue.

She feels utterly inadequate. She knows Dinah deserves more than what Helena can offer.

Oliver and Dinah share inside jokes, and he understands her shifts in tone, and her quiet looks, and he can communicate far better than Helena ever could. Oliver is a relatively normal person, if compared to Helena. He seems to understand sarcasm, slang and veiled comments. He knows about Dinah’s favorite things, her favorite movie, her favorite song. He knows about her singing career and when it stared and how much she’s improved. They have history, they have chemistry, they've had most classes together (Helena didn’t go to high school, so she can’t even appreciate that pun).

It’s a hard hit, when she realizes her life and tragedy left her this weird, incomplete, naive, scarred person with too many quirks and terrible temper and no sense of humor and no good qualities that would ever make someone as wonderful as Dinah even consider being with her--

She realizes she’s too much trouble. Too broken, too flawed, too angry, too strange. Dinah doesn’t deserve the headache of dealing with someone as unstable, as confused, as awkward as her. Dinah doesn’t deserve the long painful nights of vivid nightmares and panic attacks. Dinah doesn’t deserve her anger issues, her poor control, her rage. Dinah deserves something soft, normal, good. Helena is none of that. Helena can’t offer her that.

So Helena won’t impose anymore. Dinah’s been kind enough to tolerate her this far, Helena won’t ask any more of her. She seems so comfortable around Oliver, so free, so relaxed. Their conversation is smooth and fast, and Dinah doesn’t have to interrupt every phrase to explain the meaning of something, because Oliver understands fucking human speech. Oliver is the uncomplicated, normal thing Dinah is worthy of.

So Helena gives her space. It’s better this way. Helena has always been a better fighter than a friend, so... it works out for all of them. It’s okay.

It’s... okay.

#DH HC #Anonymous

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cosmicjoke · 4 years

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Ash and his consistent lack of hate

It is an important point in understanding Ash’s character to acknowledge and examine his consistent lack of malice in everything he does, even when committing acts of violence. He isn’t at all a hateful person, and this is an important and defining character trait which has a direct impact on his decisions and the events that eventually unfold within the story. When you take into consideration all that Ash has been through, the extraordinary depth of suffering he has lived through in his young life, the absence of hate in his heart is all the more astonishing, and you understand then this lack of hatefulness can only be natural within him for it to endure through such overwhelming pain.

More striking still for how you realize all of Ash’s enemies are driven and consumed by their own hatred, in one form or another, motivated by their inherent cruelty, twisted desires, and self-serving ambition, while Ash himself never displays any sense of real venom or hatred, even towards those who have committed unspeakably horrific acts against him.

Certainly, Ash feels anger, even rage, towards those who have repeatedly and unforgivably wronged him, but never actual hate.

Let me explain.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Ash first kills at the age of eight. It is the desperate act of a child forced to defend himself after the abject failure of the adults around him to protect him against the horrific sexual abuse he’s suffered at the hands of a monster meant to serve as a role model and guardian himself. First, in the police, the supposed representatives of “justice”, refusing to believe Ash, before outright blaming him for it happening, accusing an eight year old child of “seducing” his abuser. And then in Ash’s own father, failing to keep his own son safe, allowing the abuse to go on, again and again, for who even knows how long.

Ash later tells Eiji that he cried afterward, because he didn’t feel anything while he did it, but Ash’s very admission at having cried contradicts this claim. He felt deeply over the act he’d just been forced to commit, an act Ash was too young to fully comprehend the meaning of, too young to grasp it’s full implications, either for himself or anyone else, but upset enough by it to reduce him to tears afterward. The fact that Ash cried at all over having killed a man who repeatedly and brutally raped and molested him and who would have eventually killed him, given the numerous other children he had already murdered, is remarkable. There was no malice behind Ash’s act. No hatred. No pleasure. No satisfaction. Ash didn’t kill the baseball coach out of a sense of revenge, or because he wanted to. He killed him because he had no choice. He killed him, because nobody else was able to protect him. Because he was an eight year old boy who simply wanted the pain to stop. It was purely an act of self-defense.

This connects to later on in the story, and to Ash’s relationship with his father.

Ash has every reason and right to hate his father. Firstly, for how James Callenreese was so neglectful and uncaring a parent when Ash was born and growing up, that he would have starved to death if Griffin hadn’t stepped up and taken responsibility for his care. Secondly, for how it was essentially James’ fault that Ash ended up alone, at the age of eight, on the streets of New York, only to be found and captured by a twisted pedophile in Marvin, again repeatedly and brutally raped, passed along to Frog to have more of the same done by him, before being sold to another pedophile in Dino, and into an underground child sex trafficking ring, only for the abuse to continue on like that for years and years more, before he’s forced into a life of crime and violence, out on the streets again. And then, when at last Ash returns home to Cape Cod after ten years of this absolute nightmare of abuse and suffering, he is greeted by his father calling him a “whore”, accusing Ash’s friends of being “clients” of his, and proceeding to then tell Ash to “get out”. Real father of the year material here.

And yet, despite all of that, and it is a LOT, Ash doesn’t hate his father. Why? Because Ash, at his fundamental core, is a good person.

Ash never shows any hatred, not even any real anger towards his father, despite the utterly blatant verbal and emotional abuse James lays on him, refusing to take the bait of his father’s petty tactics of hurling insults and accusations, blaming Ash for everything that’s happened to him, because he’s too much of a coward himself to face his own guilt and accept his own role and responsibility in his son ending up like he has. Ash only responds to James’ cruelty with a quiet resignation and acceptance of his father’s rejection and hostility, telling his friends to forget it when they express shocked horror at James’ treatment of his son, and promising to leave once he gets what he came for from the other house on the property. Later, when James is shot, Ash shows genuine pain and concern for him, and breaks down into tears when he’s forced to flee and leave his injured father behind. He forgives his father for his weakness and his cowardice, and doesn’t hold his rejection of Ash against him, despite, again, having every reason and right to hate the man. Ash, in spite of it all, still loves his father, in defiance of all the pain the man has caused him.

This is a truly extraordinary display of kindheartedness on Ash’s part. A testament to the astounding goodness innate to him.

And that innate goodness which so characterizes who Ash really is continues on in him, even as he’s thrust into a nightmarish hellscape of violence, cruelty and savagery.

The next example to look at as proof of Ash’s inherent goodness, is the conflict between him and Arthur.

The first conflict between them arises when Arthur sets Ash up to be sent to Juvenile Detention, and then proceeds to bribe another inmate to try and kill Ash for him. Arthur tires with very real intent to kill Ash, because of the assumption that Ash is, one day in the future, going to be a threat to him and his claim to power among the youth gangs of New York. Because of Ash’s natural abilities and intelligence, he can see how others are just naturally drawn to this young fifteen year old boy, inclined to follow him, and he wants to eliminate Ash before his own crew members start ditching him for someone better. He does this, even though Ash has never actually done anything to hurt Arthur up to this point. This fact is really important to note. While in Juvie, Ash, due to those natural abilities Arthur so feared, begins to attract the other street kids to him, without even wanting it or having to try. Ash makes no attempt to win their loyalty or alliance, and is made uncomfortable when they start to give it to him, because it isn’t something he ever strove for or wanted. Not something he ever intended to gain. Ash shows no ambition towards that goal, and it’s even mentioned more than once by Dino in the story that Ash has never shown any real ambition or desire to be a gang boss. The other streets kids, therefor, give him their loyalty of their own volition. They realize, after Ash’s fight with Frankie and his crew in the library, that Ash is superior, and capable of protecting them, and so they start to follow him around, aligning themselves with him, forming a gang around him.

Eventually, more and more street punks choose Ash as their leader, and you have to assume, by the time he gets out of Juvie, he’s got a fairly sizable crew of street kids ready to follow him wherever he goes and in whatever he does. Again, it’s vitally important to note that Ash didn’t choose this. It instead chose him. Ash accepts this responsibility placed on him by the other street kids, because the real reason they’ve chosen him is because they think he can protect them and keep them safe.

This new reality for him, and the attempt to kill Ash, of course, leads to an eventual, unavoidable one on one confrontation between him and Arthur. Ash wins. At this point, Ash has every right to kill Arthur. Not only would it be accepted, but it would be expected by the other street punks, and would also prove to be of great benefit to Ash, both in eliminating a legitimate threat against himself and in solidifying his newly acquired position as gang boss.

And yet, Ash doesn’t kill Arthur. He lets him live, his only punishment to Arthur for trying to kill him and losing their fight to destroy Arthur’s ability to use a gun. And given Arthur’s reputation for ruthless violence and brutality out there on the streets, and his obvious willingness to kill people who have never done anything against him, along with this being an act of mercy, this is also Ash’s first step in ensuring the safety of the kids now under his command. Once again, him accepting the responsibility those same kids have placed on him. He’s making sure, even as he lets Arthur live, that he doesn’t have the ability to easily kill anyone else. He also allows Arthur to keep operating in the area, even when Arthur has done nothing to earn that right.

Ash’s act of mercy would later come back to haunt him, for reasons all of us already know of course.

Arthur says to Ash, right before their final battle, “Ain’t you gonna ask? Don’t you wanna know… why I hate you so much? You know why, huh?” Ash tells him “yeah”, he does know, and then he says “But that ain’t my fault”. They’re talking about Ash’s natural abilities, his natural talent, the way people just chose him to be their leader. Arthur admits this is true, that it’s not Ash’s fault that he has these things, or that people naturally want to follow him. And then Arthur says “Y’know, you’re absolutely right… You prob’ly never wanted it that way. But that just makes me hate you all the more.”. Arthur is driven by his hatred of Ash specifically because he knows Ash doesn’t even want to be a boss, while Arthur himself wants it more than anything. Ash is so naturally gifted and charismatic and capable, that he inadvertently draws people to him, without him even having to try, without him even meaning for it to happen. Arthur hates Ash for this, is overwhelmingly jealous and envious of his talent, his hate compounded by Ash not even wanting the gifts that make it seemingly so easy for him. Again, this is similar to Yut-Lung, in how we have a character who is consumed by their hatred towards Ash for having something they don’t. The sickening irony here is that, all of these gifts and abilities which people like Arthur are so jealous of, have done nothing but bring Ash misery and pain. His good looks, his intelligence, his physical reflexes. They’ve all been used as excuses for others to destroy and take away his life and his choices. It’s the very reason Ash gets into a fight with Eiji, when Eiji scolds Ash for not understanding how people who don’t have his exceptional abilities feel. Ash gets so angry here, because Eiji is making the same mistake that everyone makes when they see Ash and everything he seemingly has, assuming it makes his life better, when in reality, all having these exceptional abilities has done is make his life exponentially worse. Eiji eventually realizes this, realizes the mistake he’s made in judging Ash for the choices he’s had to make, and that’s when we see Eiji vow never to leave Ash’s side, and to simply accept him for who he is.

But back to the topic, Ash’s initial mercy towards Arthur, despite all of this, serves as a prime example of his lack of hate, once again, against a person who himself outwardly hates Ash, who did him and intended him very real harm. Once again, Ash’s actions aren’t motivated by any feeling of malice, or vengeance, or to satisfy any sort of urge, but by self-defense, and defense of others.

This is mirrored in Ash letting the two members of his own gang live after they had betrayed him by working for Dino, even as, once again, it would have served him better to simply kill them, once again his act of mercy coming back to haunt him when those two run back to Dino and rat Ash out about his knowledge of Banana Fish.

Ash shows mercy again when letting his would be assassin in Chinatown live, telling Shorter’s guys to let him go.

Other, more minor examples, but still just as telling about who Ash is, is his initial dynamic with Max. When Ash and Max first meet, their relationship is nearly antagonistic, the two of them even coming to blows a few times, Ash feeling deep anger towards Max for shooting Griff in Vietnam and leaving him abandoned in a state hospital afterward, Max consumed by guilt over the fact. But even in this initial anger, Ash eventually admits that he doesn’t hate Max. He says specifically to Max “I wish I could hate you. I needed someone to hate.”. Even when Ash wants to hate someone, he can’t bring himself to. Again, further proof of how that kind of malice just isn’t natural within him. He can’t bring himself to hate, even as he actively tries to.

The same applies to Blanca. Blanca gives Ash plenty of reason to hate him when he initially shows up in the story. Blanca was really the only adult in Ash’s life before the main events of Banana Fish who didn’t actively abuse him, or really even use him in any way, and was thus able to gain his trust and even admiration. It’s safe to say that Ash looked up to Blanca and saw him as a protector to at least some extent from the rest of the abusive men around him. Blanca’s betrayal of Ash to Dino then must have been particularly painful to him. At the start, not only does Blanca stalk Ash and work him needlessly up into a state of extreme anxiety and fear (remember, this is a kid who’s constantly having to look over his shoulder, constantly living under the stress and pressure of having his life threatened), but he then forces Ash into sacrificing everything he’s worked and risked his life for up to this point in the story, everything his friends and family have died for, his very freedom itself, by turning himself back over to Dino’s clutches, allowing himself to be held captive by his oldest and longest abuser, all because Blanca is threatening to kill Eiji if he doesn’t.

Even with all of this, and again, just like with his father, it’s a lot, Ash never shows any real malice or hatred towards Blanca, or expresses any desire for revenge against him. He only ever shows real anger and hurt, understandably, but even then, eventually, he forgives Blanca entirely, and puts his trust in him again by accepting his help. In the end, he even wishes Blanca good luck with his life, and displays a genuine fondness for him in their final encounter.

The next, prime example of Ash’s lack of malice is in his rivalry with Yut-lung.

Yut-Lung does some truly horrific things to Ash. Firstly, in his blackmailing Shorter into betraying Ash by threatening to kill his sister Nadia, essentially acting as the lynchpin that set the events in motion that would lead to Ash having to kill his own best friend in order to save Eiji, in turn causing Ash untold emotional and mental damage. Secondly, by allowing his own, petty jealousy and hatred to force Ash into a position in which he has to give up everything he’s worked for in uncovering and exposing the truth behind Banana Fish, to break free from Dino, to avenge his brother, and Shorter and Skip, and to sacrifice his very freedom in order to protect Eiji, and after that, again allowing his jealousy and hatred to lead him in setting into motion numerous attempts to destroy the one good thing Ash has ever had in his life by trying to kill Eiji. After all of this, once again, it would be more than understandable and justified if Ash hated and wanted to kill Yut-Lung. And yet, once again, there’s never any real sense from him that he does.

We see him threaten to kill Yut-Lung immediately following Shorter’s death, when Ash’s own emotions are running sky high, dealing with unimaginable trauma and pain. Yut-Lung comes into the room Ash is being held captive in, mockingly leaving him the key to secure his escape, and Ash’s angered, threatening reaction to him at that point can only be expected. Anyone in Ash’s position would do the same.

After that, we see Ash confess to Eiji that he doesn’t really know if Yut-Lung is a friend or an enemy, which tells us that Ash never really meant what he said before, and that he had no real plans to go after Yut-Lung at that point, willing to simply let it go. Proven further by the fact that Ash never really makes a move against Yut-Lung until Yut-Lung himself goes directly after Ash and his allies.

Later still, after Yut-Lung has been involved in numerous situations which have caused Ash incredible suffering, we see him take Yut-Lung hostage and once more threaten to kill him. But, once again, this isn’t an act or revenge, but a desperate gambit to get Eiji and the other hostages being held by Yut-Lung’s men released. Ash doesn’t want to kill Yut-Lung. He only wants to protect Eiji and the others. He only threatens Yut-Lung here for that purpose and that purpose alone.

After this, while talking to Cain, Ash says “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”, and his expression is, just like with his father, one of resigned sadness. He knows Yut-Lung could very well one day be his undoing, but even in that moment, there’s no sense of hatred, or even anger towards him from Ash. No sense, either in his words, or his expression, of wanting to make Yut-Lung pay for all he’s done, or to make him suffer. No indication that he has any plans to go after Yut-Lung. And this is further confirmed by Ash’s final conversation with Blanca, when he says as long as Yut-Lung leaves him alone, then Ash won’t go after him. Even when Ash says to Blanca before that, that he would tear Yut-Lung apart if he ever got his hands on him, there’s an expression of joking amusement on Ash’s face, a clear indication that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying in that moment.

Then of course, there’s Dino. Dino is Ash’s greatest enemy, and the root source of a great deal of his pain and suffering. Dino is the only person in the story who Ash shows an active desire to get revenge on, for obvious reasons that don’t bear repeating, and most certainly feels hatred towards. But even in this, when Dino finally meets his demise, and Ash watches him fall to his death into the fire below, there’s no look of satisfaction, or happiness, or even relief on Ash’s face. There’s no sense of triumph. Ash once again only has that same resigned, even sad expression on his face as the person who tormented and abused him more than any other in his life finally dies. There isn’t any malice, no glee, not even any real anger, because, in the end, Ash’s desire to break free from Dino was never motivated by hate. In the end, just like with all his other enemies, Ash’s only motivation was to be left alone. To be free. Even for the person most deserving of his contempt, Ash couldn’t ever really bring himself to feel it fully. He couldn’t ever conjure enough hate in his heart to be driven forward by it, even against Dino. It shows us with plain clarity the innate goodness of Ash’s heart then, that against all odds, that goodness won out against the abuse and cruelty every time, never destroyed, for how pure and powerful it lived within Ash. For how much it was a part of his soul.

The tragedy of it all then, you realize, is how, if these monsters had only ever left Ash alone, none of any of it ever would have happened. But of course they couldn’t, their hatred, greed, perversion and lust for power too strong within them to let a 17 year old boy who just wanted to be left alone, be, underlining in stark and startling relief the total contrast of who these people were against who Ash was. Monsters consumed by hate, against a boy who loved too much.

#Banana Fish #Ash Lynx

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