#these shallow graves | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rphelperblog · 2 years

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Beautiful YA Book Quotes

inspired by @enchantedwritingdesk - feel free to edit or change pronouns for rp purposes- varied subjects of quotes all considered beautiful written by critics in the realm of Young Adult books of all genres

“You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk.”

“If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.”

“Don’t get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.”

“We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither.”

“Broken isn’t the same as unfixable."

"Some walks you have to take alone."

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”

“Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today’s tasks.”

“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.”

“Don’t get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.”

“You should eat a waffle. You can’t be sad if you eat a waffle”

“Making a decision isn’t about knowing every potential consequence. It’s about knowing what you want and chasing a path that takes you in that direction”

“When I read, I feel emotion all on my own. Emotion no living person is making me feel.

“The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.”

“I think that maybe forgiveness is like change—it comes in small steps.”

“People really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it’s a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.”

“Even in its first faint traces, love could alter a landscape. It wrote unimagined stories and made the most beautiful, forbidding places.”

“I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.”

“If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system. That’s much more powerful than rebelling outside the system.”

“The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.”

“Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you.”

“We can’t know what’s going to happen. We can just try to figure it out as we go along.”

“Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.”

“What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?”

“The funny thing about armor is that it doesn’t just keep other people out. It keeps us in. We build it up around us, not realizing that we’re trapping ourselves.”

“Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can’t be in life.”

"Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story."

“When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

“Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.”

“Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves.”

“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”

“I feel like I need to speak out, because if no one speaks out, if no one says, this is me, this is what I believe in, and this is why I’m different, and this is why that’s okay, then what’s the point? What’s the point of living in this beautiful, great melting pot where everyone can dare be anything they want to be?”

"The universe is bigger than anything that can fit into your mind."

“Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.”

"I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good."

"You could rattle the stars. You could do anything, if you only dared. And deep down, you know it too, and that's what scares you the most."

“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”

"Things were rough all over but it was better that way. That way, you could tell the other guy was human too."

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

“We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That’s why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.”

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."

“Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.”

"I know that the whole point—the only point—is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

“I believed, and still believe, that you can build your dreams brick by brick. That you can accomplish anything with persistence.”

”A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” I really hate this expression. I bet fish would totally want bicycles.”

“It was impossible to feel alone in a room full of favorite books. I had the sense that they knew me personally, that they’d read me cover to cover as I’d read them.”

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."

"Child, no one is ever ready for anything. I would never doom you to that. What sort of adventureless life would that be?"

"The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like clouds, and she would ring them out like the rain."

Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it"

“She delighted in the smell of the ink, the rough feel of the paper between her fingers, the rustle of sweet pages, the shapes of letters before her eyes.”

“It’s amazing how the more you read, the less you know.”

“Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves.”

"It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys."

"As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”

"Because sometimes chance and circumstance can seem like the most appalling injustice, but we just have to adapt. That's all we can do."

"Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life."

"I'm done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed."

"Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it."

"Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live."

"We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong."

"There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it."

Why would you be given wings if you weren't meant to fly?"

"People never really died. They only went on to a better place, to wait a while for their loved ones to join them. And then once more they went back to the world, in the same way they had arrived the first time around."

"I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as the marrow in by bones.”

"You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it’s a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.”

"Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now."

"People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right."

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you."

“I trust you to find the good in me, but the bad I must be sure you don’t overlook.”

"We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken."

“It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.”

“Sometimes there’s beauty in the tough words. It’s all in how you read them.”

"But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way...Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield."

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough."

“I wonder what it’s like to have that much power over a boy. I don’t think I’d want it; it’s a lot of responsibility to hold a person’s heart in your hands.”

"Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other. "

“You need to be yourself, but you also shouldn’t feel like you have to fight everyone, even yourself, to be it.”

“I bet you could sometimes find all the secrets of the universe in someone’s hand.”

“Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.”

"Doubt everything at least once. What you decide to keep, you'll be able to be confident of. And what you decide to ditch, you will replace with what your instincts tell you is true."

"Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark."

“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.”

“We all bear scars ... Mine just happen to be more visible than most.”

"But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there."

"Just as a river by night shines with the reflected light of the moon, so too do you shine with the light of your family, your people, and your God. So you are never far from home, never alone, wherever you go."

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."

"When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly."

"Things are rough all over."

“I think you can sort of slip out of your life and it can be hard to find a way back in.”

“To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.”

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

"All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside."

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

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tojisun · 9 months

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our shallow graves — 01

recom miles quaritch x recom fem reader

!! smut (between fuck buddies outside of main pair) - minors dni; heat (as a theme); mean quaritch; power imbalance; references to (made up past), including death and prev dead lovers; worldbuilding; fast slow-burn; the reader adopts a nickname (callsign) which gets used // 3k words

: this chapter lays the foundation of the fic and introduces the initial dynamic of quaritch and the reader; reader’s callsign is 10/10 from that one penguin in madagascar; this fic made me fascinated with deja blu fr; hope u guys would luv it <33

next // m.list

you don’t understand why you were one of the early ones they awakened. sure you signed up for the shitty program – because who wouldn’t want to be an eight-feet tall blue alien? apparently, other than the scientists, you were the only one in your squad who wanted the transfer – but you didn’t expect to be the first in the line up.

to be in colonel miles quaritch’s squad.

other than walker and mansk, you knew absolutely no one from the deja blu team. but you’ve heard of them, alright. who wouldn’t? they have lines of kills and assists in terra and, now, in pandora; they are warmongers at most, rascals at least.

you stare up at their imposing figures, trying to make sense of the fact that they’ve all been killed in action.

despite not remembering much, you’ve come to terms with your own death during the initial war – a lone pilot, only meant to be an escort, gunned down by trudy’s bird before being further propelled into the lush forest floors of pandora by the banshees. it is a boring life story, one that is only worth telling because of your “sacrifice” in alien territory.

(you still don’t understand why the shrink insisted on showing you the syphoned clips of your death.

“it’s to help you move on,” she said as if she could ever understand the horror of seeing yourself fall to your death. as if you had not been a human trapped inside a fucking burning bird, being torn to pieces by, what could literally only be, flying dinosaurs. as if you were just another collateral. just another number added to the charts.

“i’m sorry,” she added, a small smile on her face as she turned to you, her hair tied in a neat bun and her white blouse tucked in her pencil skirt. “ultimately, thank you for your service, ma’am.”

fucking piece of shit.

you wondered if she even has a licence or the RDA just handed your files to some science nerd and was told to play god for their little blue alien. to fix you right up so that they could send you to another suicide mission.)

but that wasn’t the case for the rest of the deja blu. you know they were directly fighting; leaders of smaller squadrons, following the beat of papa dragon. walker and mansk, themselves, have touched down with guns in their amp suits, directly under wainfleet’s command. you don’t know how they died – you couldn’t even fathom wainfleet dying. and yet there he stands with the others, bald as fuck but imposing nevertheless.

your eyes shift to the man beside him. not the tallest, zdinarsik got that title, but the one in command.

colonel miles quaritch. big, blue, and seething.

one more thing you noticed in this whole fuckery is that your recombinant body is short. you stood about two inches shorter than walker, and she’s a full head shorter than anyone else. as you line up beside her, with fike on your other side, you three could very well make a groupie of santa’s little helpers.

wainfleet smirks like he’s thinking the same. you would have rolled your eyes at him but the colonel began to move close, his combat boots echoing against metal floors, snuffing out any noise from the squad.

“and who are you, kid?” he asks, standing directly in front of you.

you tell him your name, internally wincing when your tail unconsciously coils around your leg. you still don’t know how to control it – an easy tell of your anxiousness. the colonel’s lips lift up in a smirk, his eyes flashing at your tail in slight mirth, before recognition crosses his eyes.

“rico?”

you startle at the use of your unofficial callsign, a feat only made possible after climbing up the ranks and being heralded as one of the best pilots.

(trudy had been the best pilot in hell’s gate; the one with the most medals, and rightfully so. she was the one who ripped through the skies with her samson, zigzagging like she had been riding a banshee instead of a plane.

the one with the kindest heart.

there is a part of you that is grateful that it had been trudy who took you down.)

“yes sir,” you reply, blinking up at him after he’s dismissed your salute, feeling a little shy at being recognized, somewhat, by the colonel.

quaritch hums, tilting his head to the side in thought, watching you with narrowed eyes. briefly, you wonder if he’s asking himself why it had not been socorro who was awakened. to be honest, you are asking yourself the same thing because it doesn’t matter if you were one of the best, not when socorro, sweet and gentle and pregnant socorro, had the colonel’s favouritism.

(socorro’s child was a beautiful boy with sun-kissed hair and chocolate eyes. he was such a darling even though you’ve only seen the infant in passing, held lovingly in his mother’s arms.)

they could’ve made a blue alien baby this time around. maybe, then, they’d be happier too.

the colonel certainly doesn’t deserve it but socorro does.

“were you a private, rico?” quaritch asks, pulling you from your thoughts. he leans close again, dramatically bending his head down which highlights the difference in your heights.

“no sir,” you reply. “i was a lance corporal, sir.”

he hums again, finally backing up and giving you more room to breathe. then, he sends you a smile. “well then, welcome to the team, kid.”

the tension seeps out of you as you nod, thanking him before he turns to the other recoms, chatting amiably. walker bumps you with her shoulder and you see her smile from your peripheral.

you give her a smaller one before willing your tail to finally uncoil from your damn leg and act normal.

of course it just swishes behind you.

-------

training is gruesome. you honestly thought that it would be easier with your stronger and newer body, but with the colonel around, that thought vanished.

suicide drills were the squad’s least favourite, you especially. not only were the stakes increased to push the limits of your new bodies, but you all were always watched by the scientists, with their little sticks poking at your bodies and their little wires strapped down to whatever skin they wanted to bother this time around.

wainfleet started screaming at them, calling them “fucking losers,” and barking at them to give the squad some space. quaritch quickly took over, grunting that whether they were losers or not, whatever they were doing was necessary. that said, he sent the scientists a heated glare, making it known that his words do not necessarily reflect his feelings – wainfleet had taken this as his victory.

the tests weren’t fun, but you appreciated their purposes; through them, you learned that your na’vi DNA was extracted from a tipani warrior. the sentiment isn’t lost in you – they robbed the graves of the na’vi. you think you are used to what humans could do all for conquering pandora but for many days, you were unable to stomach any packet meal they fed your squad. walker had to talk you out of it because your unintentional hunger strike made you lag behind – an error that had you being summoned to the colonel’s office.

“we’re all tryin’ our best here, rico,” quaritch’s voice echoes in his office.

you’ve never been inside the one he had back in hell’s gate and you had hoped that you would never see the day of being in his current one, but there you stood, tensed as the colonel studied you.

he refused to sit on his customized chair, choosing instead to pace just behind his desk, his bulging arms hidden from your view as he clasped his hands behind his back. quaritch’s lips are pursed, almost pouty, and you beat yourself up at the thought of finding him – your nose scrunches at this – attractive when he’s busy scolding you.

“our circumstances ain’t ideal, but we’re back as some lab-grown native and we oughta take advantage of what we’ve become,” he says, continuing his tirade amidst your silence, snapping you out of your humiliating thoughts. “your little stunt costs us a delay on proceeding with a recon of the area and the only reason i’m not benching you is because the general has faith in you – faith that, frankly, i’m still not understanding.”

your back straightens at his words, and you tamp down the need to wince at his scathing tone. he is right, after all. for some fucked up reason, the general – both ardmore who’s stationed in pandora and gonzales who’s still in terra – backed the need to have your soul transfer commence. you still don’t know what it had been for, given that past your flying skills, you are just another idiot who knows her way around a gun. not memorable to many, except, apparently, for those in command.

(‘maybe this was why the colonel doesn’t particularly like me,’ you would think later, safe in your room. ‘socorro may have the colonel’s attention but what is a colonel – one who already failed his priority mission – against two generals?’)

“i’m sorry, sir,” you utter, clear but not loud, and quaritch just watches you again with his unwavering stare.

finally, he grunts, turning his body away from you to fully face the glass window that oversees the lower-level operations. you take this as his dismissal and scurry out of his office.

-------

“and she’s finally back from tryna kill herself!” wainfleet’s voice echoes in the nearly empty mess hall and you roll your eyes at him, glowering when he just proceeds to chuckle.

you plop your tray in front of walker, sending her a small smile which she returns with a cute beam. her braids are out of her hair tie today, letting them frame her face in the way you saw the omatikaya prefer. shooting a quick glance at zdinarsik’s way and it’s clear that someone else prefers it this way too.

“what’d the pukes say?” fike asks, sloshing around his packet meal, sneering in disgust when it jiggles like a slab of jello. more than the fact that you found out that your gene came from a corpse, this ‘food’ is about to do the trick of making you want to pursue starvation again.

“said i needa take so many pills.” you shrug, tearing open your packet of faux meat with pinched lips and your shoulders tensed like you’re expecting to be shot at. “apparently, i stunted my growth.”

prager laughs. “aww, you gonna remain short?”

“aww, you gonna remain hairy?” you shot back, snorting when prager just pouts as he raises his hand to rub at his fuzzy chin. gross.

wainfleet barks out another laugh at the exchange before reaching across the table to place an apple onto your tray. “‘ere ya go, rico. real food.”

you don’t know where he got the fruit, you don’t even know if it’s ‘real’ like he just said, but you do not have room to complain. fake fruit is a whole lot better than the slush in the compound.

“thanks,” you say, smiling bashfully, not expecting wainfleet, of all people, to adopt the mother hen role. he winks at you in reply, wiggling his brows, before straightening back up and fooling around with prager.

you dump the packet back to your tray before picking up the apple. you wipe it on your shirt before bringing it up for a bite, humming in delight at the crunching sound it made.

“delicious?” mansk asks from beside you, his lips quirking up in a smile when you turn to him.

“yummy,” you reply, humming, taking another bite. he snickers, bumping your leg with his, before placing his own apple onto your tray too.

“you gotta eat more,” is all he says when you make a questioning sound before bending over to hover his lips on the shell of your ear. “news spread fast that you got your ass reprimanded by the colonel yesterday.”

“uh-huh,” you mutter, unable to focus on what he’s saying at the sudden surge of heat engulfing you.

your lips feel dry all of a sudden, your throat parched from unknown thirst, and you turn to mansk, wanting to ask him what the hell is happening to you – was this the fault of the fucking apple? – only to see his own face flushed, blue skin turning into dark purple.

his eyes meet yours and all of a sudden, you feel like you are doused with gasoline and set ablaze.

huh. well, if that isn’t interesting.

-------

“jesus- devin, not too ha- ah!”

your back arches at a particularly hard thrust, your jaw falling open for a drawn out garble. the explosion of pleasure races across your synapses, filling you up with nothing but a deafening white noise. blearily, you recognize mansk’s bigger hands wrapping around your waist, lifting you up from his lap only to drop you down again. a hiccupped moan escapes your lips, your eyes rolling to the back of your skull, feeling your walls spasming around him.

“rico, fuck, so good. so good.” mansk’s voice is faint, falling from his kiss-swollen lips in murmurs. you would have missed it without your new heightened senses, but the sound of his voice tickles your ears, making your tail flick behind you as you preen at his praises.

a giggly “thank you” barely makes it past your teeth when mansk manhandles you again, humping his hips up to grind himself along your pelvis, driving him deeper. you choke on your words, unable to stop the moan that is punched from your lungs, the sound so loud that mansk had to cover your mouth with one of his hands.

“not so loud,” he mumbles, bumping his forehead against yours. the sound of his rugged voice makes you clench around his length, making you feel utterly stuffed. you drag your blunt nails across his back, your eyes fluttering rapidly, feeling yourself tipping into the peak of your orgasm.

mansk laughs. “y’r unbelievable.”

you do not know what it is that you said, your wobbly voice still smothered by his hand, as you get lost in the way he bounces you on his lap. mansk goes quiet, only letting muffled grunts pierce the air between the two of you, and you feel the sudden surge of primal need unleashing deep in your belly.

the tight clench of your abdomen almost hurts, your orgasm ripping through the remnants of your sanity. your last thought was: ‘motherfucker, why did no one ever tell you that the na’vi have heats?’

it is later when the haze lifts up that the warmth licking up from the core of your muscles – almost like it is burrowed deep within your blood vessels – is finally snuffed out.

mansk is asleep on his bed, dead to the world. you shuffle out of his loose embrace, blinking blearily before realizing that he had cleaned you two up. a small smile graces your lips as you fully slink out of his bed, looping your tail around your leg as you pick up the pieces of your off-duty apparel.

pressing a kiss on his forehead, and rolling your eyes when he sleepily bats you away like you are a fly, you grab your respirator and quietly leave his room.

standing in the empty hallways, turning your head from side to side, you study the stillness of the metal walkway with bated breath, afraid that someone will eventually see you making your walk of shame to your room. when the silence continues, you finally begin to move, lithe steps only broken by the continuous hissing from your respirator as you occasionally take slight sips of air.

nearing your room, your heart finally settles, your tensed back loosening up at the feeling of safety. you cross past one of the intersecting hallways, quick in your steps, when a hand reaches from the dark and grabs your wrist.

a scream nearly bubbles from your lips when a palm is shoved to your face, shutting you up once again. panicked eyes turn, trying to see who’s got such a strong hold on you, only for your heart to careen even faster when you make eye contact with quaritch.

no-

his sneer is terrifying, his bright amber eyes glinting with so much malice, it pins you right on the spot. cold dread washes over you like a tide, chasing away the quiet elation that settled deep within your veins. the heat is returning, you know that, but it is muted and mingled with fear that you can’t even feel the need to scratch the itch.

your ears are pinned onto your skull, your tail drooping as it wraps itself around your leg again. this time the colonel doesn’t look at it in amusement, instead he continues to glare at you.

“colonel-”

“next time, fuck around quietly,” quaritch barks out, cutting you off. “and go take a goddamn shower. you reek.”

he snatches his arm from your wrist as though he’s been burned before marching away, his combat boots echoing in the hallway. tears prick the back of your eyes and you run to your room, heaving, trying to calm yourself.

anger, hurt, and shame bubble deep inside your stomach, expanding, until you are finally reduced to tears. you cry your frustration away, hoping that by doing so, you would stop thinking about how good the colonel smelled as he glowered at you with his sharp eyes.

(if only you had glanced at quaritch as he walked away, you would have seen the way he burrowed his face on his palm, chasing the sweet scent that roused him from his sleep and pushed his own heat into its beginnings.)

#suns.f #our shallow graves #miles quaritch x reader #recom quaritch x reader #quaritch x reader #quaritch x you #recom miles quaritch #miles quaritch #recom avatar #suns #avatar the way of water #atwow #cliffhanger my beloathed (as reader) n beloved (as writer)

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