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forasecondtherewedwon · 2 years

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44 and any Topgun ship (I couldn’t think of one but this one made me laugh!)

Anon, knowing that prompt made you laugh was a great additional direction on how to interpret it... and which ship it was absolutely made for.

44. “You’re a virgin? How?”

prompt list

Something About the End of the World

Fandom: Top Gun: Maverick Pairing: Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia/Robert “Bob” Floyd Rating: E Word Count: 1643

After landing safely on the carrier, Mickey’s high on adrenaline and feeling courageous, so he tells Bob, “You were a real Sam out there,” because it’s the highest honour he can bestow.

Bob thanks him, sounding a little baffled, but he doesn’t otherwise react, and it’s such a crazy day that Mickey doesn’t even remember paying him that compliment until Bob brings it up a few days later when they’re back in San Diego.

“What did you mean when you said I was a Sam?” Bob stops him in the hallway to ask. He’s staring at Mickey intensely, the way Mickey used to stare at his abuela’s staticky TV when he was a kid, trying to absorb the plot of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode through the wobbly picture quality and patchy audio.

“Samwise,” Mickey explains.

“Oh. I thought you were calling me a missile.”

That makes Mickey laugh.

“SAM like surface-to-air missile? No! That wouldn’t make sense!”

“Right,” Bob agrees, smiling uncertainly. “Because… you meant Samwise. Uh, obviously. Of course.”

Mickey’s nodding happily until it catches up to him that he and Bob might not quite be understanding each other, and clear communication is vital. They’re back-seaters; it’s in their job description.

“From The Lord of the Rings,” Mickey reminds him gently.

“Oh, ok.”

Mickey’s eyes narrow.

“Sam Gamgee,” he says.

Bob’s exaggerated expression of comprehension is what solidifies it for Mickey: Bob has no idea who he’s talking about. He cocks his head to the side, his smile asking Bob not to bullshit him.

“Ha,” Bob laughs, short and breathy. “Ok, yeah, I’ve never seen those movies.”

“You’re a virgin? How?” The words burst out of Mickey and appear to stun Bob. Both their faces warm as Mickey hastily corrects, “A Lord of the Rings virgin.”

“I guess I am. I don’t know. I guess I just never really got into, like, fantasy?”

“But it’s so much more than fantasy! It straddles multiple genres!” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Adventure, drama, war, coming-of-age, epic romance. If you include the scope of Tolkien’s original works, you have to add poetry and—” Mickey cuts himself off, clenching a fist in front of his mouth to contain himself.

“Are you… mad at me?” Bob checks, looking worried.

“Bobby-boy, you are one in a million,” Mickey says on a sigh. He drops the fist and breaks out in a wide smile. “I can’t believe I get to introduce you to The Lord of the Rings.”

“I know some stuff. There’s, there’s… sword fighting. And good-versus-evil. And stuff. But I’d…” Bob nods. “…Yeah, I’d like to watch it with you.”

“Clear your schedule—”

“Uh, the mission’s over. All our schedules are clear.”

“—because there are three films, plus special features.”

“You’re the kind of person who says ‘films’ instead of ‘movies’?” Bob asks with a pained look on his face.

Mickey blows past it.

“If you’re serious about this—”

“I’m only, like, vaguely curious,” Bob murmurs.

“—then you need to prepare for it to consume the next several days of your life. Factoring in breaks for sleeping and going to the bathroom.”

He fixes his eyes on Bob’s. Bob takes a deep breath in, then nods.

“I’ll do it,” he says.

Mickey can’t resist pulling him into a hug. Why should he? He’s been resisting that urge basically since they met, when Bob told them his name and inelegantly swept peanut shells off his lap. Mickey gets attached fast and he falls hard, as the wealth of Lord of the Rings memorabilia he’s collected over the years can attest.

“Spoken like a true Sam,” he says, squeezing Bob tight.

—

Mickey couldn’t decide between inviting everybody so his movie marathon with Bob won’t feel like a date and inviting no one else so it does feel like a date. Torn, he just invited Reuben.

“What are we watching?” Reuben asks, striding into Mickey’s quarters and giving Bob an upward jerk of his chin in greeting.

“The Fellowship of the Ring,” Mickey says excitedly. He’s leaning forward on the couch, having just cued it up on his laptop. Bob’s already crunching away on the heap of popcorn he just poured into a large bowl.

“Nope.”

Mickey turns as Reuben backs away.

“What?”

“I can’t watch those movies again.”

“But you love Eowyn!” Mickey reminds him. “We’re watching The Two Towers next!”

“I do love Eowyn, but I also love not losing several days of my life I can never get back,” Reuben says. “Those movies are great in small doses—”

“Peter Jackson did not put his entire lifeforce into these movies for you to say you prefer them in small doses. Reub, it’s an epic. It’s… it’s… it’s the Third Age of Middle Earth, man, come on!”

“One, I know I’ve told you before how creepy it is when you say ‘lifeforce.’ Two, you can give Peter Jackson my apologies in your next fan letter, but you’re not gonna talk me into this right now. Those movies are a time suck.”

Mickey glances at Bob who’s chewing and listening intently. He looks back to Reuben and frowns.

“Don’t scare Bob.”

“Get out now,” Reuben hisses at Bob.

“It’s alright,” Bob assures him with a smile. “I wanna see them.”

“He’s a Sam,” Mickey explains.

At that, Reuben’s mouth curves into a sly smile.

“Oh,” he says, “he’s a Sam. Try to keep Sting in your pants then, Frodo.”

Bob chokes, but Mickey has to point out, “Only a fan would remember the name of Frodo’s sword. You’re in denial.”

“Actually, I’ll be in de-next room seeing what the normal people are doing. Have fun, boys.”

Mickey flips Reuben off affectionately before he shuts the door, leaving Mickey and Bob on their own.

He glances at Bob.

“Ignore him. You’re gonna love this movie.”

“I’m excited,” Bob mumbles through a mouthful of popcorn.

“Good.”

And Mickey’s excited too. He’s excited as the One Ring’s treacherous history is revealed, as Howard Shore’s iconic score shifts from horror to Hobbits, as Frodo leaps into Gandalf’s cart and he gets to quickly explain how they tricked the camera to make Elijah Wood look so much smaller than Ian McKellen. What’s surprising him is that he’s not excited about the movie, or even Bob’s reactions to it (well, he is, but it’s not the main thing)—he’s just excited about Bob.

During Bilbo’s birthday speech, their hands brush inside the popcorn bowl. Before Frodo even holds the Ring in his hand for the first time, Mickey holds Bob’s, the popcorn forgotten as their fingers intertwine. Mickey barely has a chance to say, “That’s Sam,” before Bob sets the popcorn aside completely and Mickey reads it as an invitation to shift closer on the couch. Before Merry and Pippin collide with Frodo and Sam, Mickey collides with Bob: he takes a deep breath and tilts his head to plant a kiss on Bob’s parted lips. For a moment, Bob blinks and processes this, but he’s a Sam after all, with wells of courage that make Mickey stary-eyed; Bob grabs the back of Mickey’s neck and yanks him into a longer kiss.

There are breaks. Brief ones. The Prancing Pony. The unearthly shriek of the Nazgûl on Weathertop. Gimli shattering his axe when he tries to hack the Ring in half like a total newb. Instead of detailing what they’ve missed, Mickey mumbles explanations too short to really be helpful, but Bob nods heartily and guides Mickey’s mouth to his again, and they return to the desperate work of fogging up Bob’s glasses and seeing who’s going to cave first and climb into the other person’s lap.

“I thought that guy’s name was Strider?” Bob checks dazedly as Mickey’s kissing his neck and unzipping his jeans sometime later.

“He’s got a lot of names,” Mickey pants. “Way more than they cover in the movies.”

“Like us, huh, Fanboy?”

Mickey grins against Bob’s throat.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Like us.”

He ducks his head to Bob’s lap and Bob’s fingers scrape across his buzzcut as he sends a moan towards the ceiling.

By the time the movie’s drawing to a close, Mickey’s sitting on Bob’s lap with Bob’s hand down the front of his sweats. Bob’s hard again, so Mickey rubs his ass back against him in a slow grind that matches the steady pumping of Bob’s fist. Based on an agreement Mickey doesn’t recall making, they’re drawing this out, and it’s agony to be jerked off at such a relaxed pace. On the other hand, his body feels like butter melted back into Bob’s chest, legs spayed wide as he sits on Bob’s thighs. He can feel Bob’s heart beating against his back. And then the hitch that disrupts its rhythm.

Mickey twists to look at Bob.

“Are you ok?”

Bob’s eyes are shiny as he glances from the screen to Mickey’s face.

“Is Frodo really going to leave Sam?” he demands thickly.

Mickey gives him a quick kiss, cupping his cheek, then promises, “No. Look.”

He lets his head rest back against Bob’s shoulder and tears roll down both their faces as Sam wades out to Frodo, ready to drown before Frodo would think him disloyal. Frodo hauls Sam into the boat and Mickey’s never been given a handjob by someone who’s crying before (nor been crying himself as he receives it), but it somehow adds to the tenderness of the moment, in his opinion.

When it’s over and Mickey’s even more comfortably slumped on top of him, Bob’s arms wrapped around his waist, Bob asks, “You think I’m a Sam?”

“Yep.”

“And you’re Frodo. I didn’t see a lot of this movie, but I can see that.”

Mickey smiles and tips his forehead against Bob’s.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” he says to confirm it.

#my writing #Top Gun: Maverick #the Fanbob agenda #Bob x Fanboy #Mickey 'Fanboy' Garcia #Robert 'Bob' Floyd #Mickey Garcia #Robert Floyd #Fanboy Garcia #Bob Floyd #Top Gun: Maverick fanfiction #Top Gun

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reddy-reads · 1 year

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book hype!

apropos of nothing, one thing I'm absolutely looking forward to in the very near future is A House With Good Bones by T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon). It comes out THIS TUESDAY, March 28, 2023, and I'm SOOOO hype for it. This is one of her horror stories.

“Mom seems off.” Her brother’s words echo in Sam Montgomery’s ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone. She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam’s excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out. But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above. To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.

I love Vernon's writing, from her stuff for adults to her young reader stuff (I love Nurk and Castle Hangnail). I think/hope this book is the one with the protagonist who is an entomologist, too, which is a major plus for me. (I love arthropods.) Her writing is witty and wry, and the stories overall have a warmth/kindness to them that is comforting even/especially when the characters are going through Some Shit--yes, even/especially in her horror books. Her writing reminds me of Pratchett in some ways (and yes, that is in fact one of the highest compliments I can bestow).

Anyway, if you want to read along with me, I've already preordered A House With Good Bones by T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon). I can't wait to read it :)

#book hype #books coming out

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bintadnan · 2 years

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Loving the Creator is the Highest Levels of True Slavery

How could I not to love the One who imparted me with my senses and bestowed on me knowledge I enjoy!? The appreciation of knowledge and the means by which I grasp knowledge surpasses all other tangible enjoyments for, indeed, He is the One who taught me, created my awareness, and guided me to what I have grasped. He reflects His Existence through every new creadon He makes, through which I can understand His perfection, through the perfection of what He creates. He created all of what and whom I love, be it tan gible or intangible. I love what I love by His will and Power, for He facilitates for me the means by which I realise what I love. Indeed, for me, the best of all enjoyment is to come to know Him, for if He did not teach me, I would have not recognised Him. How am I not supposed to love the One who created and [constantly maintains my life? The One in whose Hand is my provision and Unto Him I shall return? The One who created and adorned everything people like and inclined people’s hearts to all that. Whilst all what He created is perfect, His Capacity and Power is even more perfect! And, despite the [systemic and] marvellous creadon of His, His perfection surpasses and is more superior to the perfection of the created! The meaning of realising [of all that] is much more enjoyable than what is realised. If we see an astonishing sculpture, we would have spent all the time commending the artist and complimenting his work and his talent instead of paying attention to the work per se. This is actuallv where the pure thoughts land when it looks beyond the tangibility of objects; thev fall in love with the Creator of the work by necessity. That being the case, as much as a person can nodce the Creator through what He creates, is as much as he will love Him. When such perception is strong, it will originate feelings of longing (shawq) and concern (qaliq). If such perception directs a person to realise the supremacy of the Lord, it will generate feelings of fear (of Him), and if it directs a person to realise the Generosity of the Lord, it will generate strong hope.

-Captured Thoughts by Ibn al-Jawzi (رحمه الله)

#muslims #islamic books #islam #deen #ilm

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sarcastically-defensive17 · 4 years

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Do you think that maybe you can write something where the reader and calum are friends with benefits, they have been for a while but suddenly the reader grows and has been growing feelings for him but when she tells him he nearly goes off saying he doesn’t feel anything for her. After some time passes of them not together he realizes he misses her?

Thank you for this! So sorry it took so long! Also, I apologise for the boatload of angst but it just be like that sometimes! Hope you enjoy!

P.S the format looks super weird coz I had to post from my computer, sorry!!

Original story by Sarcastically-Defensive17

Benefits? - C.Hood

The closest relationships are also the ones with the highest risk of breaking.

Every decision has the risk of causing a downfall, or to further strengthen the foundation that the connection rests upon.

Whether need-complementary, or similarity based, every friendship or relationship is feeble.

Even ones like the relationship Calum and Y/N shared.

Y/N had been introduced to the men when they were still boys, and had been working as their band photographer for the years that they had been on tour.

She was there through the One Direction days, to Rock Out with your Sock our and to Sounds Live, Feels Live. All of tours were shot by her, and she loved every minute of it.

She wouldn't have chosen a different path, despite the trials and tribulations, the criticism placed on her work and the slander she faced for her deep friendship with one Calum Thomas Hood.

They were as thick as thieves. Almost every waking moment was spent with one another, and an emotion filled night during their three year break had led to Calum warming Y/N's crisp hunter green sheets through the night as their naked bodies pressed against one another.

It became normal, and they both enjoyed it. They could be as close as they were before and be able to share a deeper connection through their internal desires with somebody they trust more than almost every other person.

Their chests would be heaving by the time they finished, and they lay together. Sweaty bodies tangled under the covers, and random thoughts spilling from their lips.

"This is nice," Calum said. "Two friends, bumping uglies then chatting about noodles at 3 AM in the morning."

"Please never say 'bumping uglies' again or I will never bump your ugly again," Y/N snorted, pulling herself into a sitting position to pull a tshirt over her naked torso. "Also, you don't need to say AM and in the morning. It's redundant."

"Don't tell me what to do, you Wookiee," he groaned, voice soft as sleep worked its way to overwhelm his mind.

"What did you just call me?" She fixed him with a confused look, brow arched as she stood to her feet.

"A Wookiee."

"And that is..."

Cal shot up, sheet bunches around his waist as his eyes locked into her with such offense.

"What?" She asked, averting her gaze to calm the thumping of her heart.

"You are not allowed to be this hot, and this awesome while being so uncultured."

Her stomach erupted in butterflies and she fought the smile on her face by biting her lip.

"Such a dick, hood," she whined, turning away from him to shuffle through her drawer for sleep shorts.

"But that's your job," she turned with a shocked look on her face only to receive a wink from her best friend.

"Shut your mouth before I smack you," she tossed a pair of his shorts at him. He tended to leave many of his clothes at her house, even before they increased their relationship to friends with benefits.

They were going on nearly seven years, and over time he had gathered quite a collection of items left at her house, as she did with his.

She escaped to the bathroom in desperate need for air.

For the past month and a half she had been struggling with an internal conflict surrounding her best friend.

Despite her attempts to avoid it, she had inadvertently broken the golden rule of a friends with benefits relationship.

She was falling for him. Hard and fast, like an apple falling from a tree.

She had feelings for him when they were younger but they had been pushed aside in favourite of their friendship and various relationships they both had, but now; she couldn't fight it.

For a month and a half she had felt a stirring inside of her stomach whenever he was near. She's savored the moments they spent together and physically reacted to every compliment he bestowed upon her.

Only now, she didn't know what to do.

She had pre-planned to discuss her situation with him that night, but forgot temporarily when he showed up on her door with Mexican food, and a face like an aphrodisiac and eventually lured her into bed with the promise of watching a cheesy rom com afterwards (which she knew he would enjoy more than her).

Her reflection stared back at her in the small mirror that decorated the wall of her bathroom.

It was hard to gather the courage to confess something so earth shattering, but she was determined.

Countless hours had been spent discussing the situation with her best friend, Sierra, and they concluded that it was time.

"Now or never," she whispered to her reflection, attempting to force the fear down her throat. "What's the worst that can happen? Cal is a great guy."

She repeated her words in her head as she turned to exit the room, brushing her hands along the shirt she was wearing - that she noticed was Calum's.

It was exactly 21 steps from the bathroom to the bedroom where she could hear Calum laughing to 'Are we officially dating?' - his movie pic for the night/morning.

She stepped into the room and his eyes drifted to her, offering a smile as she nervously steps towards him.

Almost as if he could sense something was wrong, he pauses the movie, fixing her with a look that pulls his thick brows together.

"What's wrong?"

"Why do you assume something's wrong?" She smiles, one full of nervous energy and his frown deepens.

"Y/N, I think I know when you have something on your mind," he laughs softly, still eyeing her with concern. "You think I would just randomly pause my favourite movie? Hell no, spill the beans, sister."

"Ew, don't call me that." Her face scrunched.

"Why?"

"Because you're not meant to have sex with your sister!"

Calum's face mimicked her own, and he flicked her on the ear.

"Enough backtalk! Out with it!" He professed loudly, avoiding her swatting hand.

Her nerves threatened to spill over.

He was watching hers intently. So patiently. She couldn't help but let her mind wander to how much she adores him, even if she knew it was a dangerous game.

Steeling herself, she sucked a deep breath in through her nose, pushing it out through her mouth as she gathered herself to speak.

"Okay, um, I'm so terrified to say, Cal, and I don't want to affect anything but I can't keep it bottled up anymore and Sierra told me it would be a good idea to come clean and I hope you don't hate me but-"

"Y/N," he laughed, putting a hand on her shoulder. He was still naked, blanket still bunched around his waist to contain his modesty. "Spit it out, love."

She blinked, her eyes full of unshed tears and her mouth works before her brain can command it.

"I'm falling in love with you, Calum."

A whole 10 seconds passed with no words. Complete silence apart from the breathing of the two and Y/N felt her stress levels climbing with each intake of air.

"Calum?-"

"You're joking, right?" He laughed. He didn't laugh in a teasing way. No. He laughed at her.

Her features dropped only slightly, his laughs causing her heart to knock slightly lower with each tone.

"No, Calum. I'm not joking," she willed herself to look up at him, seeing the fear and what appeared to be embarrassment in his eyes.

He went silent again. It was not how Y/N planned for it to go at all.

"I understand if you don't feel the same way, I just wanted to get it off of my chest-"

"You seriously expected me to feel the same way?" His words came out harsher than he intended, but once they were released, there was no return policy.

"No, I didn't expect it, I just-"

He cut her off again, and she was beginning to get annoyed. "Maybe just, think about it. You're obviously confused."

He was patronizing her, looking down upon her as if she were a confused child.

She shrugged the hand that still rested on her shoulder, off.

"I'm not confused, Calum. I'm being serious," she was getting more annoyed.

"Look, I just think you're taking our situation further than it is," he laughed again, and she forced her heart to not swell at the melodic tone. "We're adults, no need to act like a lovesick kid."

"You don't need to be so harsh, Calum," she whispered. "All I wanted to know is if you felt the same way."

It was like a switch flicked. He was no longer laughing, instead, he fixed her with a look strong enough to practically force her to combust in her spot.

"How could you ever think I would feel the same way about you?"

It was a lie. He did feel the same way, once. But he refused to let the feelings resurface.

She was a friend and that is all she would ever be.

He didn't have time for her feelings.

"Why are you being so harsh?" Her voice was small and he couldn't see through his boiling annoyance to care. He didn't know why, but the idea made him so frustrated he could barely focus.

He scoffed. "How is that harsh, Y/N?" He was standing now, dressing quickly and pulling a new shirt from her dresser. "Get over it, it's never going to happen. I don't do that with people like you."

It was her turn to see red.

"What do you mean by that?" She snapped.

He sighed, rubbing a hand across his forehead.

"Look, I didn't mean it like that, I just meant that you're not what I need. Simple as that." he placed a hand on her shoulder again, expecting his words to sooth her.

"So I'm not good enough for you to have feelings for, but I'm good enough for you to sleep with?" She asked in complete seriousness.

Calum shrugged, his ego getting the better of him and allowing his anger to take over.

Whether he was angry at her or himself, he couldn't tell, but he no longer her had control over his tongue.

"Well, basically. I'm sorry, Y/N, but you're just not good enough-"

She smacked him across the face. Hard.

"I've been your friend for seven years and you say something like that to me?" She was gobsmacked.

Calum wasn't the type of girl to use women and then toss them aside like they were nothing.

"What the fuck?!" He shouted.

"Get out."

"What's your problem?" He spoke through gritted teeth, pinching his brows together in anger.

"My problem, is that you made this moment way worse than I could have every imagined it going." She laughed but it was humorless. She was fighting the tears from her eyes. "I knew you didn't feel the same, but I figured we could just brush it away, but no. Instead you had to make me feel like I'm not worthy of you?"

His anger was blinding, and he didn't even think for a second the capabilities of his words.

"Why would I ever want to be with somebody like you? You can't hold down a stable relationship, and to make up for it you fawn over your best friend and his band, trying to make a career out of something any genius can do."

She couldn't hold back the tear that fell as his words cascaded off of his venomous tongue.

"Get the fuck out of my house, and don't ever come back, Calum." He knew he pushed her to the limit.

"Fine," was his only answer as he gathered his few belongings he had with him and left.

By the time their Meet You There finished, she had found another band to work with, just as the guys had found another photographer.

She pulled out halfway through.

She still kept in contact with the other three, but she hadn't heard a peep out of Calum.

It had been nine months.

Calum didn't consider the weight of his words until a few days had passed and he didn't have Y/N to talk to. He didn't have her to laugh with, or watch movies with, or just spend time in one another's presence with.

He didn't realize how badly she was hurt until he spent a month attempting to make contact, only to be ignored and even blocked.

He missed her. He missed her more than how a friend would miss another friend.

He missed her touch, her scent, the sound of her laughter and the way her nose crinkled before she would snort out a laugh.

He missed the way her hair fell over her shoulders and the way she sounded as she said his name through a grumble.

He didn't care about the sex. Their relationship had existed long before they decided to become friends with benefits and he had planned for it to last a lot longer.

Until he made the decision to get defensive over a simple admission of stronger feelings.

Sure, he was scared to submit himself to the woman he had growing feelings for, but he acted in a way he never should have.

Especially not with her.

He was disgusted in himself and ashamed, but he also couldn't push down the feelings he had for her any more.

The months apart with no contact had done nothing to soften the blow.

Little did he know that she felt the same way.

She had secured a job working with a band called The Chainsmokers, and life was well apart from the longing for her friends and the man she had grown to love.

All well until she was asked to be the tour photographer for the Chainsmokers' 'World War Joy' tour.

It was the first time her and Calum had one face to face in so long.

The minute he saw her standing backstage as they arrived for sound check, he felt the tears prick at his eyelids.

Every hateful word he said that night care crushing down on his shoulders and he wanted nothing more than to hug her and let his internalized apologies spill from his mouth.

He had plans to do just that.

He was determined to pull her aside after their sound check and confess all of his built up emotions and apologies, and beg for her forgiveness.

He could wait for their relationship to reach the point it once had been, even to the next step he longed for. To call her his.

At the present time, he simply wanted to be able to have her in his life.

Y/N knew the band was coming on the tour. Their single together had been a massive hit, and they were bound to make many fans very happy.

She was sitting in the backstage area, cleaning her lenses to take test shots during soundcheck.

Drew snuck up behind her, resting his hands on her hips and pressing his cheek against hers.

He had been a distraction for her. Not a strong one, but enough to keep her warm when the nights grew cold.

"Hey, cutie, making sure you can make me look good tonight?" He winked at her, feeling her laughter through her cheek that was pressed against his own.

It was a forced laugh. She knew it. But she wanted to be nice to the man who had organized for her to have a new job. Especially after he showed her such kindness and legitimate affection.

She had feelings for him, but they could do nothing to outweigh the undying ones she had for Calum.

"Aww honey, I'm not a miracle worker," she quipped to him, turning her face slightly.

He met her lips with his own and kissed her sweetly. She smiled into the gesture only to pull away and turn her head.

She met the eyes of a certain Maori man, and she could almost see his heart breaking through his chocolate brown orbs.

"Calum?" She breathed, a gaspy sound that he was familiar with.

Without warning he took off, letting the tears that he had bottled up for the past 9 months spill over his round cheeks when he was locked away from everybody.

#calum hood #5sos #5 seconds of summer #calum hood x reader #requested #angst #its all im decent at #not even good just... decent

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anevermadebed · 3 years

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🍓(:

lu. to me u r joe dta, which is the highest compliment i can bestow upon a person. your dta memes? delectable! your fic recs? impeccable. ur lust for *****? unquenchable. anyway stream slow burn amv.

trade deal: send me a strawberry i send you a compliment

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tawakkull · 3 years

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ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 52

Wasil (One Who Has Attained or Reached)

Literally meaning one who has reached the final point in a journey or who has met with the one or the thing that one intends to reach, wasil, in Sufi terminology, denotes one who, having been saved from all the veils of corporeality and carnality one after the other, and who has covered all the distances that originate from themselves, has reached the final point of their journey, where they feel and experience the company of God Almighty, Who is the nearest of all to everyone and every thing.

Surmounting all the veils of corporeality that surround a human being, one within the other, and reaching the horizon of experiencing God’s company is possible sometimes by God’s special help and attention, sometimes by special knowledge of God, sometimes by the serious endeavors and efforts made during a spiritual journey, sometimes by following a path in which we admit our innate impotence and poverty, as well as our enthusiasm and thankfulness, and sometimes by extraordinary Divine attraction. All of these means of reaching the final point of the spiritual journey are the manifestations of God’s grace on different wavelengths. Without His grace and special attention, a traveler can neither be saved from the veils of corporeality and carnality nor cover the distances that originate from themselves to reach the intended horizon. God is the One Who is the nearest of all to everyone and every thing, and it is He Who also brings those who strive to reach Him for His sake closer to Himself. Unless God brings us near, no one can feel the delight, which is called meeting, nor can they experience His company.

When God manifests His grace, He makes everything easy; He creates the means of doing it and bestows it instantly. Anonymous Common people can experience such a meeting or its shadow when they go to the other world with belief. However, there may be among them those who are drawn to the realms beyond through an extraordinary grace and who are favored with special compliments.

As for the elect who are God’s noble, greatly favored servants, they traverse the distances that originate in themselves while they are still in the world, feeling as if they are experiencing the truth of We are nearer to him than his jugular vein (50:16) from the horizon of the observation of the heart and spirit, each according to the degree of their conviction and knowledge of God and their place in God’s sight. They breathe God’s company in their inner world.

There are others who are more advanced than the elect. They are the heroes of special favor and attention. They observe such things from the horizon of the spiritual intellect and through the mysterious windows of “secret,” beyond all modalities of quality and quantity and beyond the limits of time and space, that they have neither been seen by other eyes nor heard by other ears nor conceived of by other minds. We can describe these as the heroes who state: “If the veils between were removed, my certainty would not increase.”

If these heroes have reached that highest rank by following a spiritual path, then they are journeying “in God.” They rotate like satellites around the lights and mysteries of the Ultimate Truth, increasing more and more in profundity with every attempt they make, and even though they have realized the meeting with the One of all eternity, their journey toward Him is never-ending. They constantly pursue observations beyond “ certainty of knowledge,” continuously seek visions that lie beyond “ certainty of observation,” and experience intoxicating pleasures through the manifestations reflected in their world of spirit that emanate from the door that has been partially opened on “ certainty of experience.”

This peak of spirituality is where every hero of truth comes to see, know, hear, and experience the mysteries that belong to the realms beyond, and clearly discovers and witnesses the original essence and nature of everything animate or inanimate and their relationship with the Creator; in addition they are aware of the fact that everything belongs to Him, subsists with Him, and is bound to return and on the way of returning to Him. Those who are able to observe existence from this peak clearly see what is light and what is of light, what is separation and what is union, what is the pang of separation and what is the delight of reunion, what is transient and who is eternal, what is bound to decay and what is permanent. They confirm the truth of their theoretical knowledge on the basis of witnessing, observation, and experience.

Since this peak is also the horizon from which the Prophets, pure, saintly scholars, and saints observe and monitor the realms beyond, it is such an awe-inspiring and delightful area of special study for the heroes of meeting with God that it is impossibly difficult for there to be another Divine favor in the world equal to it. Reaching this point is a supreme attainment and rank; the favors that emanate from there are many and multifarious, and the point itself is where the world and the Hereafter are observed together. However, the hero of meeting who is distinguished with such degree of Divine attention and favors is and should be extremely reticent about the favors with which they have been honored, and is absolutely modest. They try to conceal their relationship with God even from their own eyes. Just as Divine Grandeur and Dignity require that there to be veils before the acts of God’s Power in the corporeal world, so too, the one who has reached the final point of journeying toward God and has been established there should not reveal the gifts that emanate at the peak of meeting with God. Even while they continue their relationships with the realms beyond the peak, they should frequently look down at the first step of the stairway which they have used to rise to that level and sigh in the consideration of: “We have not been able to know You as knowing You requires, O the All-Known!”, thus admitting their inability to worship God as the duty of worshipping God requires. As a result of this realization, they say: “We have not been able to worship You as worshipping You requires, O the All-Worshipped!” Thinking: “Why am I blessed with these Divine compliments and consideration even though I have never done anything to deserve them?”, the traveler should consider that whatever favor they have been honored with is purely a Divine gift.

If one with true knowledge of God, whose eyes are fixed only on the lights and mysteries beyond the Names and Attributes, attempts to reveal the Divine mysteries that they have perceived, they will not only be stunted, but will also cause shock and astonishment in the spirits of others. For this reason, such a person keeps their love and yearning buried in their bosom as something secret that has been entrusted to them, and they never reveal, nor are they permitted to reveal, the mysteries that belong to the realms beyond to those who have not yet been able to surpass themselves.

In fact, there are many who talk about these mysteries, but I think what they relate as mysteries must be their dreams or daydreams. All of those who talk about meeting with God are not ones who have reached the final point of spiritual journeying to meet with Him, just as everyone who follows a spiritual path is not one with true knowledge of God. One who has true knowledge of God is a hero confirmed by Divine grace, and is one who clearly observes the realms of Divine Names and Attributes and reads and comments what they observe correctly and without throwing others into confusion. This hero’s perception and awareness of the meanings that radiate from the corporeal or physical realm is called “ knowledge which is true,” while their observation of the lights and mysteries that belong to the realms beyond and further than beyond is termed as “ knowledge of the truth.” The Absolute Pourer of blessings causes this hero of spiritual knowledge to be aware of the mystery of His Glory beyond description, perception, and comparison, making this person happy and rejoiced with His special attention and consideration. Even though the mind cannot comprehend the true nature and occurrence of this mysterious favor, the conscious nature or conscience feels this trust with its particular capacity in waves of awe and amazement. The tongue prefers silence and the spirit falls silent in contemplation.

“ Knowledge of God’s Acts” is a Divine gift that may be sent to every initiate; “ knowledge of Divine Attributes and Essential Qualities or Characteristics” is a heavenly offering to the elect with a special capacity. “Knowledge of the truth” is a Divine favor and award for the most elect who have attained the level of developing their angelic aspect. Let those who are incapable of understanding continue not to understand, and those who are reluctant to accept insist on non-acceptance, those who are distinguished with knowledge of God constantly observe these mysteries and lights with the eyes of their souls and live in ecstasy.

In the eyes of the soul of those with knowledge of God there exists the light of spiritual knowledge; God’s help comes to them with the attainment of the mystery of this knowledge. Muhammed Lutfi As was summarized before (in the 2nd volume of Emerald Hills of the Heart) under the title of Ma‘rifa ( Knowledge of God), the attainments on the path toward knowledge of God are a mount, while those who have attained this knowledge are the rider, and their knowledge is their capital. For this reason, those who are devoid of this knowledge cannot traverse the distance from Him nor reach the point of meeting with Him, while a hero of this knowledge and meeting never thinks of turning back or being the lover of others. Why and how can such a person think such a thing when, in the words of Yunus,[1]they have found the choicest honey or the true source of all honey and have been nearly saved from the love of even their own soul. They have attained “the manifest conquest” or even “the absolute conquest,” which means being on the horizon of the manifestation of Divine Essence. Some of those who have been honored with this attainment at times live in such absorption and intoxication, like a happy one in whom the Lights of God are reflected, that they are aware of no one other than God, including themselves.

It should also be pointed out that there are so many degrees and levels of feeling and experience in this extraordinary attainment called “meeting with God” that none of the beloved servants of God who travel along the same route or axis can completely perceive the nature of another’s meeting with Him. Just as saints can know the ranks of each other only if God allows them to, the heroes of meeting being able to perceive the nature of others’ meeting with Him is also dependent on Divine inspiration. Unless God makes it known, no one can know what or where somebody is; students or initiates cannot know the mysteries of the guide’s or master’s meeting with God, and the master or guide cannot discover how a perfect student or an initiate with knowledge of God travels toward and realizes meeting with Him. It is the Creator Who knows everything, and others can know only to the extent that God allows them to know.

For this reason, as it was also the case with some of the Companions of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, since many perfect human beings, at least many travelers toward God who are candidates for perfection—even though they are favored with knowledge of God and meeting with God—cannot or are not allowed to know the horizon of those who have close relationships with God or the peak where they stand, they may not accept others of the same degree of nearness to God as them, even though the latter are pure, saintly scholars who are heirs to the mission of the Prophets; they may even go so far as to disparage them. This standpoint may sometimes be a risky trial for the travelers on the path toward God. Although, provided they keep silent about others and purify their hearts of bad moral qualities, they are candidates to be the doves of the heaven of sainthood, they suffer losses on the way to earning, either due to their biased love of their own ways or their hostility toward others or envy of God’s favors on others, and cause the people of heresy and unbelief to rejoice by taking up a stance against God’s close friends. Another cause of loss is that one sees oneself and their group as being great and qualified to guide others, while perceiving of others as insignificant and in need of guidance. There are as many paths toward God as the breaths of creatures and it is possible for everyone who travels toward Him sincerely to attain a certain degree of nearness to God and to realize some sort of meeting with Him. It is not vanity, self-esteem, self-assertion, or pretension, but modesty, self-denial, and mortification that are fundamentally important in traveling toward God. No one knows how many people who have been paid no importance by others have reached the Ultimate Truth, while many others who are self-esteemed and hold a position in people’s eyes have remained at the half-way point.

I think it is fitting to put an end to this parenthetical discussion with the following stanza by Ibrahim Haqqi of Erzurum:[2]

Haqqi, come and do not reveal your secret, If you intend to become matured on this path. Do not look down on the people who are ruined in appearance, There are ruins that hold secret treasures. It is primarily dependent on God’s grace and help – may God never leave us deprived of His grace and help – and secondarily on the endeavor (himma) of the servant that the one who wills or the willing one can desire God, and that an initiate can travel toward Him in accordance with the rules of travel, and that one who has reached the end of the path to reach Him can traverse the distances originating in themselves, and that all these Divine favors and blessings continue. Endeavor is an important provision for one who has reached the end of the path and God’s intimacy or special nearness and treatment is a special favor of Divine companionship for such a hero.

When used concerning the servants of God, the term himma ( endeavor) means trying, self-exertion, making an effort, resolution, starting an approvable task with sincere intention and feeling the excitement of responsibility with all the strength of the heart; when this term is used to refer to God, it denotes His response to all these activities (with special succor and reward).

Endeavor is an important dynamic for the traveler to the Ultimate Truth. The peaks that seem to be insurmountable are usually surmounted through endeavor, and it is also through endeavor that the steps along the stairway toward God and the pleasures and states of meeting with Him are determined. However, the travelers, the heroes of endeavor, are different from one another. A traveler who is always alert, in continuous pursuit of the realization of a goal with all their outer and inner senses, and always dreams of meeting with God with their eyes fixed on the door—such a traveler adopts a posture in the location where they are particular to themselves. While the posture of those who are trying to fulfill the Divine purpose of their creation in all their acts by carrying out what is necessary with their free will, is one of standing in perfect respect at the door of God. The worshipful attitude of another, of the hero of meeting with God, the one who has assigned all their endeavors, every day, hour, minute, and second of their life to earning God’s approval and good pleasure, and who is distant from all considerations of state and station, who always thinks of and mentions God alone, and turns to God on the way of knowing Him with perfect certainty, and who is forgetful of their own desires, seeking God alone, preferring a single instant spent in His sacred company to any other achievement – this worshipful attitude of such a hero of meeting is completely different.

In fact, being freed from all other physical and spiritual relationships, our turning to the Ultimate Truth with a feeling of great need and melting away in Him is God’s right on us and our duty toward Him. A human being has a single heart that can bear the love of a single beloved. For this reason, we should assign this Divine intellect of ours to His love alone, closing all doors on everything but Him, and fixing our eyes on Him in utter oblivion of even ourselves, with a yearning to meet the All-Loved and Besought One. A person is valuable to the extent of their endeavors. Thus, one who has reached God after a faultless journey is also a hero of endeavor.

The author of al-Lujja[3] expresses this heroism as follows:

If you want to fly upwards, unfold your wings of endeavor, For what is primarily required for flying are wings. Those who have kept their wings of endeavor stretched out have, by God’s leave, neither remained half-way nor fallen prey to wild beasts.

Some have interpreted endeavor as purifying one’s bodily life from attachment to anything worldly, one’s spiritual life from the pursuit of spiritual pleasures, and one’s heart from consideration of Paradise and its pleasures, thus being turned to the Truly Worshipped, Deservedly Besought One with all of one’s senses and faculties. I think they refer to the whole-hearted devotion which is mentioned in the verse, And keep in remembrance the Name of your Lord (and mention It in your Prayer), and devote yourself to Him whole-heartedly (73:8), which expresses a special attitude of nearness to God for those who have a special relationship with Him, and is a call to a different, special meeting with Him. Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, was the unequalled hero of such whole-hearted devotion and the foremost addressee of such a call. He covered his distance from God and was the nearest of all to Him. Despite this, Prophet Muhammad never slackened in his endeavors and used to make extraordinary efforts to be able to remain turned to Him and to meet with Him. He was in continuous pursuit of “what is more and further,” for he was the guide of all initiates, and the leader of all who reached and would reach Him. For this reason, he guided everybody to the path of becoming close to God and instructed them in the manners that were to be assumed for His company and His special nearness. This path requires endeavor, and that horizon wants freedom from any inclination to anything else but Him. How beautifully the author of al- Minhaj speaks:

You will never be able to have special nearness to Him in His private “lodge,” Until you are completely freed from inclination to any other but Him. It is a requirement of courtesy to take off one’s worn-out clothes so that one can don the garment of satin offered by the Sultan. Being a most important aspect of human nature, the heart is a house of God in the sense that it is where His special attention and favors are manifested. Unless it is purified of any trace that belongs to others than Him, the Sultan will not turn to it with favor, and without this, meeting with Him is not possible. Everyone who has arrived at the end of the path and whom the Ultimate Truth has honored by making them aware of His nearness experiences some degree of meeting, according to their capacity and the breadth and brightness of their mirror of spirit. The meeting of some is crowned with God’s special nearness and relationship and the one who has attained this degree of meeting is regarded as an “intimate one.” Literally meaning a close, bosom friend, this term in the terminology of some Sufi masters denotes one who feels togetherness with God at heart and in spirit to the extent that they only think of Him, with everybody else having completely disappeared from sight and being removed from the heart. This is companionship with God that is experienced beyond time and space and beyond all modalities of quality and quantity.

Some heroes of meeting voice this honor of special nearness by continuously mentioning God with His Acts, Names, and Attributes. This favor is called “ intimacy with mentioning of God.” There is another, deeper state which they call “ intimacy with God.” In this state one is completely freed from any concern for anything but Him, remaining continuously turned to Him with the sensations of all one’s spiritual faculties, and constantly breathing His presence without ever thinking of anything or anyone other than Him. In a blessed, figurative saying which is related as a hadith qudsi—the Prophetic saying whose meaning was inspired in the Prophet’s heart directly by God—God says: “I am together with one who mentions Me and I am an intimate friend of one who has acquired intimacy with Me.” In another narration in which Prophet David, upon him be peace, is addressed, it is said: “O David! Yearn for Me and acquire intimacy with Me. Part company with all else other than Me.” We should understand that by the phrase “parting company with” or “keeping apart from all else than God Almighty,” the travelers of the path to God should not feel any concern for anything or anyone but God on account of that thing or person itself. Nothing has an existence independent of Him and everything depends on His Names and Attributes. For this reason, those who have true knowledge of God always perceive the Names in whatever there is in the universe and feel a form of relationship with the creation on account of the Names Which are the source of their existence; thus they are gradually freed from other connections and are able to turn to the All-Sacred Being called by the Names, beginning to breathe “intimacy with mention of God” and “ intimacy with God.”

Imam al-Ghazzali[4] reminds us that intimacy with God is an exalted position which every traveler toward God cannot attain; he tells us the following:

Every hero who attempts to reach God cannot grasp intimacy with God; Even those who resort to every means they can find cannot perceive it. Those of intimacy with God are all noble, generous, purified heroes; They always work and act purely for the sake of God.[5] Those who have intimacy with God are the favorites of the realms beyond heavens and the most fortunate among those with nearness to God. They have traversed the distance that originates from their own selves, felt His nearness to everything, enjoyed special compliments as the ones who have reached Him, and have been firmly established in His intimacy.

In the state of intimacy that is beyond any measure, Divine manifestations are always felt on different wavelengths. It sometimes happens that certain manifestations of Divine Majesty touch and stroke the faculties of those who have reached Him, during which they feel enveloped with feelings of fear and awe. After a time, there is a period in which the manifestations of His Grace surround them, and at this time they find themselves with more profound sensations of intimacy. In the former state, those who have reached Him tremble and shake like trees and turn pale like the leaves turning in the fall. When faced by the showers of the latter sort of manifestation, they breathe: “I have found the honey of all honey, the source of all honey; let whatever I have be plundered.” In an atmosphere in which they continuously feel and experience new instances of attention and favors, they regard everything, including their own selves, as being among that which is other than Him, and thus try to keep distant even from themselves. Even if they live among people, they never get entangled in any veil, and hear, see, and speak about Him alone. They even avoid imagining anything that is transient or bound to decay, their eyes are closed to anything other than His Light, they regard any speeches that are not about Him as empty words, and react against any manners, speeches, or acts that do not remind of Him or cause to be aware of Him or increase the relationship with Him. Whenever they hear a speech or see an action that is not related to Him, they feel as if their heart was bleeding.

Those distinguished with true knowledge of God always preserve their respectful attitude both in the state of meeting with Him and intimacy with Him. They are always in a state of fear, due reverence, and awe. Whatever state they are in, they manifest good manners and modesty. Even though they sometimes feel a tendency toward affectation and utterances that do not comply with the essentials of the Religion in the face of the compassionate and complimentary manifestations of Divine Grace, they immediately tremble and pull themselves together due to their continuous awareness and self-possession, bowing in utter respect and assuming the manners that are required by their positions.

All that we have been trying so far to explain concerning “the one who has attained or reached” are certain features of the states of those who have reached the end of their spiritual journey and met with God. Those who do not experience or taste these cannot perceive or know them, and it is not known to what extent those who know reveal what they know. The sweetness of the honey can only be perceived when the honey is tasted, the smell of a rose is only sensed when the rose is smelt, and the spiritual states can only be known when they are experienced. A friend of the Ultimate Truth expresses his experiences to those who have not had these experiences as follows:

If you are a weeping nightingale, come to the rose-garden; Attain fresh fragrance from the fresh roses. O God! I ask you for belief which has penetrated my heart and certainty which does not mislead, so that I may know certainly that nothing but what You have preordained will not happen to me; and bestow blessing and peace on Prophet Muhammad and His family and Companions.

* Meeting with God and Wasil (the one who has attained or reached) have been described in the third volume of Emerald Hills of the Heart – Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, pp. 16–24. Here it is described together with “the one who wills” and “the initiate” on account of the final gifts that come in return for meeting with God or reaching the end of the journey, and the self-possession that is required in return for these gifts. [1] Yunus Emre (1240–1320). One of the most famous Sufi folk poets who have made a great impact on the Muslim-Turkish culture. His philosophy, metaphysics and humanism have been examined in various symposiums and conferences on a regular basis both in Turkey and abroad. [2] Ibrahim Haqqi of Erzurum (1703–1780) was one of the most outstanding figures in the Ottoman Turkey of the 18th century. He lived in Erzurum and Siirt in the Eastern Turkey. He was a prolific, encyclopedic Sufi guide and writer, who wrote in many subjects such as Theology, Morality, Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine. His Ma‘rifatname (“The Book of Knowledge”) is very famous and still being widely read. [3] The author of al-Lujja is Mawlana Nuru’d-Din ‘Abdu’r-Rahman ibn Ahmad al-Jami‘ (1414–1492). He is commonly called the last great classical poet of Persia, and was a saint. He composed numerous lyrics and idylls, as well as many works in prose. His Salaman wu Absal is an allegory of profane and sacred love. Some of his other works include Haft Awrang, Tuhfatu’l-Ahrar, Layla wu Majnun, Fatihatu’sh-Shabab, Lawa’ih, ad-Durrah. [4] Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1058–1111): A major theologian, jurist, and sage who was considered a reviver (of Islam’s purity and vitality) during his time. Known in Europe as Algazel, he was the architect of Islam’s later development. He wrote many books, the most famous being Ihyau ‘Ulumi’d-Din (“Reviving the Religious Sciences”). [5] Ihyau Ulumi’d-Din 4:340.

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pathofcomet · 4 years

Text

bride of ice (6)

fandom: dragon age: inquisition

pairing: female trevelyan / iron bull

summary: After the war is won, there’s always the next one. He’s seen her bleeding. In her delirious mutterings, half frozen to death, she was more human than all. (AO3)

It’s unnerving, that some people would turn to worshipping a rift, building a cult around the soft glowing of that hole in the sky, even if no demon is dropping through just yet. Fear can do many things, it can make one believe many impossibilities, but to adore and dedicate yourself to what might as well bring the end of the world is something she will never be able to understand.

“Even if it’s done in the hopes of appeasing it…” she murmurs, mainly to Solas, mostly to herself.

These people are on their knees, praying to the source of her nightmares. It scares her more to stay the night between them than between the wild animals in the mountains. She finds agents for the Inquisition in their rank; purposeless as she imagines she might have been, if their fates were reversed.

She has no way of knowing if, without the Mark bestowed upon her, she would have picked anything different but this place, or the immense grief of those separated from their most loved. Some days, she finds it difficult to move on even when she has the faith of Thedas as incentive.

The Herald closes their rift too, eventually. And their reverent, desperate eyes and pleas turn towards her.

“This will never get any easier, will it?” she asks once away, blissfully happy in the companion of her own party.

“Probably not,” Varric agrees, and she’s grateful it’s the truth even if it’s not what she would have liked to hear.

She closes rifts, yes – but this young woman is doing way more than that, in her days-long walks through the Hinterlands. Really, for someone with a glowing green hand, there’s really not much of it at all, Bull thinks. They gather supplies, return family heirlooms to desperate survivors, hunt so they can feed their ranks.

Even as she is one of the highest standing people in the ranks of the Inquisition, she goes out of her way, time and time again, just so she can help random people that they encounter, or to bring peace to people whose loved ones they just got killed in the middle of a fight. Most are nice and grateful, but there are enough times when she’s met with contempt or outright hate, and yet no matter which one it is, she seems unaffected. She takes it all as it is, and just pushes forward, even if she lets herself slip by her body stiffening, or a tighter hold on her weapons, a strain in her expression. It’s little things, but he has no doubt that he, or Varric even, can pick it up easily enough.

She gets better every day, though. Maybe because she allows herself a break from it from time to time, in late evenings when they pull their tents out and have a fire warming up. He makes hot chocolate – and blows their socks off, though he thinks Solas will never agree to calling `good` anything coming from a Qunari. He compliments Varric’s books, which he read on too long voyages. Trevelyan, blushing and unable to look at him, asks him all prettily to borrow some volumes to read in the evening, and he has to bite his mouth from inviting her to re-enact some of the… smutty scenes.

He has noticed, though he knows she didn’t quite yet. That whenever she’s overwhelmed, she looks at him for support in a battle. That she checks him out always afterwards, seeking wounds. That something in her eyes changes sometimes, when she catches herself staring at him when she certainly shouldn’t.

Bull doubts a noble from a house with religion as tradition knows how to recognize lust. Which makes it all the more fun to see it bloom all over her, as time passes. He will allow her all the time she needs, he will even let her bad innuendos and terrible attempts at flirting pass. He has messengers to catch behind tents for a quickie, and lost servant ladies showing off their teats for him – all burning with the need and curiosity for someone big and exotic.

He gives in to them, and not to the Herald for one simple reason: he hasn’t yet quite figured out what to give in exchange to her, because he knows with her, the sex is just not it. For her, the sex is just the means, not the purpose – and so he moans and grunts and spills himself in other bodies, teases and bites and licks against other skins, sated and satisfied. And all the while, she ends up more and more wound up, taut like a rope, beautiful and scared, exhausted and giving.

Who gives her… well, anything?

Most people everywhere have a system that works best for them. From what he gathered, even her old system wasn’t really working for her; and now she’s left looking around her, piecing together something new, but not quite whole. He should probably despise her for it, for the aimless conduct of her being, and yet he can’t help but be at least a little bit impressed for the fierceness with which she pushes forward, even if it’s desperate.

Desperate people can achieve many, many things. So he watches, silent.

There are some things that hit her more than others. The note in the Carta hideout makes her dizzy; she has to hold on to the table and urge her head to calm down.

Some rich Marcher they’re claiming was sent by Andraste. Zealous nugshit, if you ask me. Just a brat wanting a new title so she can win the noble pissing match back at home.

She fights almost in hysterics, sticking her daggers in darkspawn, continuing stabbing long after they stop moving, rushing ahead down stairs and already panting and heaving with effort against the enemies by the time the others turn the corner.

She’s not rich; she hasn’t seen a coin since taken by the Inquisition, and she wear a dead man’s breastplate. She’s been refusing the Andraste rumours since she first woke up after the Conclave, and yet each day is just another one of her against divinity. She’s never even been taken serious in the noble politics of her home, and she’s been nothing more than a womb pushed around between houses at her father’s request. And she’s so incredibly hurt that, despite the truth of her life, she’s nothing but what that piece of paper said in the eyes of anyone else but those already by her side.

On the way, she picks up Blackwall, because of course she does, and because Red especially asked. The man is good enough with a sword, and his words are pretty – good enough that the Herald is fooled, but Bull is not so convinced. But she picked Sera this time around, and so there’s no somewhat-spy Varric to confirm it with, and Blackwall joins their ranks.

Trevelyan actually likes him, because he offers her thanks and apologies, and calls her wonderful things and he holds himself with an elegance and self-confidence that she hasn’t seen since Ostwick, mostly because most here has been too young and too exhausted. Blackwall comes with the fame of his order, and the respect and kindness she gives him comes as natural extension of that.

“You didn’t have to, yet you took the time and effort to help me,” he says, and she’s already smiling.

“Anything to further the Inquisition’s power.”

“You are a formidable woman, my lady. I hope to never cross you. Perhaps it’s safer to show admiration from afar.”

She blushes, stares at her shoes unsure of what exactly she should say, hand pushing her hair behind her ear. She cannot even remember the last time someone acknowledged her as a lady; and Blackwall is probably the first person to actually… believe she’s also a good fighter, not just a great symbol, or promising potential. He seems to see her as good enough as she already is, not only as what she can be.

“Leliana makes sure to keep the sordid secrets away from the public eye.”

She only half-jokes. Besides her name, there’s not been much reaching the rumours mill, or anyway, nothing they didn’t want there in the first place.

“Well then. I won’t pry. I prefer to go on believing only good things about you.”

Ah, she thinks, there it is. Just because she’s not an amazing deity-like figure, doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist as someone better than she is inside his head; it’s just that he sees her as a woman, instead of a herald. Even like that, she is lacking and knowing that he can’t notice it makes her feel the so-familiar hole in her stomach, that makes her so uncomfortable when people push to touch her robes in reverence.

Bull notices her pass by, takes in the stiff shoulders and the sour face, and doesn’t stop her.

The next morning, they’re gone again. She manages to secure the horses for their Inquisition quickly enough, doing some good in the meantime as well. She also takes part in the races set up by Dennet’s daughter, and it’s the most alive Trevelyan looked ever since they met.

Sera, next to him, whistles. The Herald’s braid came undone in the middle of the race, and she’s not just smiling, but outright laughing whenever a turn is just an inch close to failure. She’s riding without a saddle, just her thighs tensed against the horse’s strong muscles, and her fingers are tangled in its hair. Her face is flushed with excitement – and he has to admit, her behind looks particularly nice like this, in her leather pants, body bent so low.

“Shit, where did you learn to ride like that?” Sera asks, once all courses are cleared, donations to the Inquisition are secured, and Dennet already started his travel to Haven.

“I’d also like to know that,” Jeanna adds, looking both proud and sad at having her courses defeated.

“Home,” Trevelyan answers, though the word seems foreign on her tongue, and home is a place that no longer serves that purpose, that no longer can offer her the comfort or the lessons. “From my family,” she corrects.

Because horse riding is the one thing she learnt directly from her mother, no teacher involved in the process, none of her father’s comments passed on this topic. Since lady Trevelyan was such a good rider herself, there was no real point in having anyone else pass the skill forward, and it remains one of her favourite things in the whole world.

She didn’t imagine she’d feel the thrill of it again; not like this anyway. Back at home, it was merchants and children and dogs she had to bypass on her rides through the city, and she’s raced with all nobles her age for years on most important celebrations. It’s a far-away memory, and yet it was so precious just a few minutes away.

“You looked really good, Boss,” Bull says, and she smiles.

“Race me back to Haven?”

***

For her, it’s not really a choice she mulls over. She picks the Templars, despite the Val Royeaux incident, in the memory of her brother, following the tradition of her house, because Cullen would approve, because she’s terrified down to her bones to walk in a negotiation with someone she knows nothing about, and so she chooses the over-familiar instead.

She takes Vivienne, because she would be able to handle the Orlesian nobles, in case things go south. She trusts Varric and all he’s seen, and he’s been in the middle of a Templar Order falling apart once before, so he’d be able to at least point out the signs if it comes to that. And she wants Bull with her, simply because she learnt to rely too much on him in the midst of a battle, because she feels like she can’t lose if he has her back.

Her reasoning is almost like a mantra, like a prayer that you mutter even if you know it won’t become reality, because you want hope to trump reality. And she needs this to go right, so she keeps reassuring herself of her picks.

Their nobles are doing a great job though, throwing jabs and threats with the sweetest voice, hidden behind the politest of words. She is lucky they are on their side, because sometimes phrases tied together can make or undo the destiny of the world, and she feels like this point in history where they’re all at, is one of those. Knight-Templar Barris seems to share that belief.

“Win over the Lord Seeker, and every able-bodied knight will help the Inquisition seal the Breach.”

The Herald sighs. “Wish me luck. I have a feeling the Lord Seeker will take some convincing.”

“We’ve been asked to accept much, after that shameful display in Val Royeaux. Our truth changes on the hour.”

“Hey, that sounds familiar,” Varric comments, though Barris has no idea what he is referring to exactly. It’s enough that it makes his own party more apprehensive pushing forward.

The standards rite – she doesn’t want to do it. Already just at the start of it all, and she’s already not succeeding in convincing the Lord Seeker of anything, but asking her to do something that is reserved usually solely to the Templars… It seems unfair and wrong, and there’s no real point or honour in her doing it.

“The Lord Seeker changed everything to meet you. Not the Inquisition – you. By name.”

“Why?” That is certainly strange, because there are many stronger and more capable in the ranks of the Inquisition, so to have this much intended focus directly on her makes her uncomfortable.

She still refuses the rite. She knows there’s no correct answer to it anyway, just a display of who she is and what she values. Which is why it feels so necessary that she doesn’t do it, now that she knows how much the Lord Seeker wants her.

Plus, she already knows the order inside her heart, and she hopes she proves it with every choice she makes, this one included.

However, nothing seems to come easy to the Inquisition. Lord Seeker sends his Knight-Captain instead, and he’s certainly unwell. They fight Templars gone mad, which is more difficult than their usual battles, because these are people trained their whole life to fight, going berserk in closed chambers.

“Like no Templars I’ve ever seen,” Varric remarks, one of his arrows hitting one between the eyes, just as he was about to strike down Vivienne – and he falls.

“Is that really important right now?” Bull grunts, taking a hit in place of Trevelyan.

“If it’s weird and I haven’t seen it, that’s worrying.”

She’d rather agree. This is already tiring and they’ve only just gotten started; when all have fallen, Denam is still alive and breathing, and even if he doesn’t deserve the mercy or the correct judgement, he’ll get them anyway. There’s no honour in killing a mad and already defeated man either.

From the notes and letters they find around the castle; these are Red Templars, but worse than Kirkwall’s ever seen, because they’ve been ingesting the stuff. It makes her skin crawl, and for the first time, she is grateful her brother is dead, if only not to see or experience this horror. If only she won’t have to wonder if he’s one of the tainted or one of the questioning ones in the Order.

Prepare them. Guide them to me.

“Was that the Lord Seeker?” she asks, the voice loud and clear in her ears.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Bull says, and he looks at her somewhat weirdly, maybe because he hates demons, maybe because he thinks she went insane too.

She stops in the middle of the hallway, shivering and trembling, unable to make herself move forward.

Show me what you are. I would know you.

She doesn’t ask this time around, already knows that whatever she’s hearing, she’s the only one hearing it. She wants to ask Vivienne about it, because she would recognize whatever magic’s at play. She wants to hear Varric mocking her over it. She wants to have Bull push gently at her back to get her moving again… But she’s afraid, too afraid that maybe this is really nothing but her mind playing tricks on her.

Fear catching up with her sense. She takes a deep breath, starts running ahead. Forcing her sense to follow her through. And then the Lord Seeker – no, the Envy demon – touches her.

She feels violated in ways she didn’t know were possible, her mind the playground of somebody else, her body sluggish. Her nightmares made real, walking around burning bodies once again, the worst part of her life relived over and over again, with each step.

She knows it doesn’t make any sense, she knows it’s not real. And she tries to stay brave, out of spite if not anything else, yet she can’t stop the shiver running down the spine when, in her mind, Cullen falls dead to the floor.

Do you know what the Inquisition can become? You’ll see.

Images fall and rise before her. The worst one of all is seeing her own face, but hearing a demon’s voice out of its mouth.

Tell me what you think. Tell me what you feel. Tell me what you feel. Tell me what you see.

She dies, betrayed and betraying. She kills, glorious and ruthless and merciless. The Inquisition’s reach widens, the wars grow, the reputation alone strikes fear. She dies, alone and mad.

A future that she doesn’t want, that she knows she doesn’t want – and yet one which is building up right inside her own mind and she’s helpless and can do nothing to stop it. She must see her own body fall, she must hear her own friends and companions throw insults at her, at a version of herself that she tries, hard and painfully, not to become. In her mind, just one word, no, repeated over and over again, like it makes any difference when the fade slips so close to her, when everything around her is seeped green.

Then, another voice, softer this time around.

“Envy is hurting you. Mirrors on mirrors on memories. A face it can feel but not fake. I want to help. You, not Envy.”

She almost sobbed and crashed when the demon conjured the face of her brother, by her side, two rulers like they were supposed to be from the dawn of time, ever since they were born. But if this was truly something that was meant to be, it wouldn’t have hurt so much to see it.

She trusts Cole because his is the only face that doesn’t pain her, that doesn’t seem to exist to torment her, or to get some truth out of her.

“All right, Cole. If you really want to help, how do I get out?”

“It’s your head. I hoped you’d know how to stop it.”

If she knew her own mind and her own feelings so well, maybe she wouldn’t have been here in the first place. But her head never looked like the wasteland Envy shows her, so it’s all just as new and foreign for her, as it is for Cole. This is not where she belongs anymore, but rather a demon’s playground.

She only has to move forward, that’s easy enough. That’s what she’s been doing for days and weeks, maybe even more, maybe from the very beginning, as a lady in a land that seems too far-away. It doesn’t make it any easier to see all those familiar faces paired with all those terrible words, doomed images.

You will bring blood and ruin and fear!

She does, gods, she does already, doesn’t she, even as the Herald?

“Unless you don’t. You don’t have to. None of this is real unless you let it be,” Cole says, voice close and near, even if his body is not – and she is instantly comforted, less disturbed at what Envy is showing her. She can guard herself better, with more ease, knowing that she is not all alone, knowing that there’s someone (something?) rebuffing all her doubts.

And with each step, the demon’s scenarios seem to make less sense, warped by its own ambitions and seemingly not at all connected with what Trevelyan actually wants. She’s not so afraid anymore, even when guards seal the fates of her advisors, seemingly at her own words – because she trusts the world more than believing it would fall in the hands of a tyrant.

And just because Envy would take her form, that doesn’t mean other demons would just follow its lead – and Orlais means nothing to her, or her forces, their purposes.

“You’re letting the Herald see more to sketch her shapes, but what she sees makes her stronger.”

Does it? It makes her believe less, which might actually be the same thing. Still, walking through a battlefield, in her own mind, followed by the shadows of demons, is the most unnerving thing she’s experienced, and she survived the Conclave. It’s an eerie feeling, like she’s not that much connected to the real world anymore.

“You’re making it hard for Envy to think. It’ll probably come out soon. It’s angry. But that’s okay. So are you.”

Weird, until Cole said it, she didn’t really realize that’s what she was feeling in the first place. But now that she has a word for it, yes, anger it is. She rolls the word around her thoughts, wills it her – as she pushes forward. She’s angry that she has to live through so many scenarios, tired of death and of intrigues. She’s angry that she is in the situation in the first place, because she for sure as hell didn’t agree to a fucking demon slipping inside her head, fucking her up even more.

She embraces the burning rage in her heart, she claims it as hers, the only thing she can have and keep from this whole mess. She nurtures it, with each figure she kills, and she’s heaving with it as she faces the demonic version of herself.

She’s angry even as she’s getting chocked, angry even as the demon promises more pain this time.

“What could you gain from being me?”

It’s the one question that the anger wants the answer to, a why me? hidden in more words, because even in her anger, she cannot comprehend what is so incredible and special about herself, that a demon would go through all of that trying to take over her. And yet she gets only a mocking, and just as little as Envy understands her, she equally as little understands it.

And she’s so fucking tired of this play-pretend inside her mind. She pushes, as hard as she can, against this fake, cheap version of herself.

“Get out of-!”

Her voice is loud – and she comes back to herself, just a breath away from the moment when that hand touched her skin, though she feels several years older and weaker on her feet than before. Bull’s hand at her back grounds her back to this, as she explains what’s been going on.

She’s still so upset, unjustly dragged in this mess as she’s already doing her best to stop the holes in the sky – and everything about her own body and thoughts feels foreign. She doesn’t feel safe inside her own skin anymore. She whimpers a bit, just the lowest of sounds, when they’re made to fight some more.

“Are you good?” Bull asks.

She just shakes her head, but says nothing; unsheathes her daggers instead, as she plans to do exactly what Ser Barris asked her to: show no mercy.

Something inside her snapped while stuck in there with a demon and the dark visions of a future. She fights like she’s fulfilling a personal revenge, calculated and cold and leaving nothing standing between her and her purpose.

I touched so much of you. But you are selfish with your glory. Now I’m no one.

She’s selfish only with herself. If she is to be a figure of so many people, then she wants to belong to herself too. Killing the Envy demon could not come sooner. And just because one threat is gone, doesn’t mean there aren’t many, bigger ones to come.

Trevelyan, the Herald of Andraste looks up at the sky, pats the pocket at her breast, knowing it to contain the note about the assassination of the Empress, and decides to call the Templars her allies. If the Inquisition is to close the Breach, then it needs willing people helping them out, risking their lives for the cause. There’s no point in shaming them for their failure, when it was so close to being hers as well.

“If Templars still stand against ruinous magic, this is the moment to fulfil your pledge.”

Were her brother still alive, he would be here next to her, fighting for the same cause. She wants to believe that, from wherever his spirit is now, he is proud of his little sister.

***

Her advisors though are not as pleased with her, or her choice. They’re all raising their voices around her, and she hasn’t even been allowed to wash away the grim from the fight and the road back, immediately pulled into the council room by Leliana. Her head hurts and she doesn’t even have it in her to defend herself in front of them. Defeated, she sighs.

“We still need to prepare for them. Regular lyrium.”

For a second, she thinks she’s back inside her mind, haunted by something from before, remains of a demon tied to her head forever. But no, everyone else can also see Cole – and her advisors are back to screaming and fighting again.

Cole’s voice is like cold, soothing water over her aches.

“You help people. You made them safe when they would have died. I want to do that. I can help.”

Trevelyan knows that – he has helped her back at Therinfal Redoubt, help without which she would not have been able to fight off Envy. And he has made her feel safe in the midst of her most terrible nightmares, and she breathes a sigh of relief, knowing that he’s next to her, again.

She wants him here; she knows that with a certainty that she doesn’t always possess. And she’s ready to fight everyone to keep him. She can’t even explain her reasoning, but if Cole was really a monster wanting to hurt the Inquisition, he already had several opportunities to do so.

“Cole saved my life in Therinfal. I couldn’t have defeated Envy without him.”

She remembers how lost she’s felt, when she asked about him after coming back to her own time and place, and yet no one was able to tell her anything. She’s relieved to see him, even if for such a short time. And Cole remains, on their side. Her side, first, she believes, but it’s better than not having him at all.

***

First thing she does after the council is check on her people. Well, actually, first she takes a bath and changes her clothes, and only then does she start moving around Haven – questioning, needing the support she didn’t seem to get from her advisors.

Josephine grabs her aside first, to ask about her holiness. She can’t escape it even in the middle of what she is supposed to consider her own home, and she is already tired of it. Cole talks in riddles that she barely understands, scratching at deep thoughts and buried feelings and her skin tingles whenever in his presence, yet his lack of filter is what consoles her most in him. There’s no hiding near Cole, and she wants to drop to the ground with the relief of not having to pretend anymore, not having to hold her back straight anymore. Hell, Cole walked through her mind and came back wanting to help her. It makes her feel worthy of what she is.

Vivienne is the one that understands her reasoning: with the Fade broken and so thin, the obvious choice is to rely on Templars to put some resemblance of order back together. They’re already walking towards a future that no Envy managed to envision, and she’s not sure how many destinies she’s forging with her choices, but it’s good that she has people disapproving and agreeing with her both, because it helps from going insane.

Cullen’s training the Templars, to the best of his abilities, and even if he doesn’t agree with Cole being here, Trevelyan won’t forget that one of the few people the spirit praised was the commander. Cullen’s a better man than most, and if he can somehow lead by example, spark the flame of change in the others, it’s more than she could hope for.

Cassandra deals with everything, continuously. That’s why she likes her so much, because they fulfil pretty much the same role, even if their battlefields tend to be quite a bit different. In time, the Templars will learn to come to terms with the idea that mages are just people, and too many of the Inquisition’s people owe their lives to magic and those wielding it.

“Still, I don’t disapprove. In fact, you did well. You made a decision when it needed to be made,” Cassandra says, looking earnestly at the Herald, like she didn’t just finish arguing over this exact topic just an hour before.

She likes Cassandra. She wishes she would have her determination and her power, both of spirit and body.

“Is that all it takes?”

“Most of the time, yes.”

That’s a depressing thought, hopeful too.

Varric’s been there with her, he knows exactly the kind of shit that they had to deal with out there. The Elder One seemed to take everyone’s worst nightmares and creating something even worse, and somehow their small organization is the one thing standing against his plans. It’s the kind of responsibility and weight that makes it impossible for her to rest properly at night, that brings waves of guilt whenever she’s not in the midst of doing something for someone else.

“Maybe you should relax while you can,” Varric says, passing her a cup of cider. “Things should be calm around here for at least the next hour. Take a moment to enjoy it. If the world’s about to end, I’m sure the Seeker will let us know.”

She laughs at his last sentence, and thanks him. Varric is, after all, a magician in his own sense, and words are his best weapon – and he’s incredibly charming and comforting. She sits next to him, sharing his alcohol and feels better than she’s done the whole entire day. He fills her cup again, over and over again, as they share stories of anything else but red lyrium and battles and the future.

She finds Solas next, when she finds the courage to get up and seek him out, so she leans on the walls of his hut, looks up at the sky, where alongside the dying sun, the gap of the breach is also glowing. Sometimes, the colour is so bright that through her window, she cannot tell if it’s day or night.

“Solas?” she tries, and her voice sounds unsure, but her purpose is nothing like it. She has seen the future, and the future is bleak and terrible and she wants nothing to do with it, but the future is not set in stone just yet.

“Yes, Herald?”

He’s always polite. He never chides her when she recklessly throws herself into a battle, or uses up too much of her energy on closing up a rift, just silently passing her a potion, reaching out with his healing magic. She never thought she’d become familiar so fast with something that she was supposed to fear, but especially Solas’ has become her pillar in a battle as much as Varric’s arrows or Bull’s axe. He’s not upset even as she picked the Templars, even as she brought mage-hunters in the same camp as him. She gulps, thoughts stumbling together in her head – and she feels more in control, drunk and unsure on her feet, than she was just a few hours ago, sober.

“Will it kill me? Closing the Breach, I mean.”

“I am afraid that’s an answer we can know only when it’ll happen. It shouldn’t, but you’re also not a mage, so wielding that much power at once might affect you in ways we simply can’t know, because you’re the first and only one of your kind.”

“That’s… less comforting than I was hoping for.”

She sighs, gathering her jacket closer to her body. She recently followed Cullen’s example and had fur sown on the inside of it, and it warms her up well. It doesn’t stop the chill running up her spine, just from the thought of a timeline in which she’s the one to bring forward an end. Solas is looking at her, alternating between her face and her hand, so she forces herself to smile faintly at him.

“Whatever you saw back in Therinfal, Herald, it hasn’t happened yet, and it says nothing about who you are right now.”

A well-needed reminder. She still has a second drinking session planned in her room later on, part washing away the nightmare, part catching up on years having gone without the comfort of a bottle instead of the dullness of her own thoughts. But she can’t deny she’ll walk towards the tavern with an easier heart.

“Thank you, Solas.”

Bull’s hate towards demons mirrors her own; the disgust and fear and anger too. But she’s drunk, which is why she is fumbling with flirting, asking questions about Seheron and its people – and maybe because she’s drunk, he answers it all and even walks her back to her room afterwards, glaring at any soldier brave enough to look their way.

***

The Herald of Andraste closes the Breach – quite easily too, when coupled with the Templar forces. The skies calm and the Inquisition proves that alliances work and forge a better future ahead, or at least work to stop destruction.

But nothing comes easy to Trevelyan. Nothing comes easy to the Inquisition. And just several hours after they close the Breach, Haven is under attack by forces under no banner. Dorian Pavus comes to warn them, and she has no time to mull as to why the name or his face are so familiar, as Cullen’s shouting out orders for the battle.

“Burn all the things you have to burn. Save all the people you have to save, but don’t let them get to us,” he says, the first order he gives her directly.

She mans and fires the trebuchets, and yet whatever time she earns through it all is eaten up by the appearance of a dragon. She tries to help out as many people as she can on her way to the Chantry; asks Bull to smash down walls, sends Cole ahead to aid Minaeve, while she climbs for Segritt, Sera helps Flissa. They fight mages on the way, all the while under the shrieks of a dragon, accompanying each hit of her weapons.

Much of being the Herald is listening to other people argue and fight over what to do. And she knows this Elder One is after her, simply out of ego at having stopped his plans so many times before, but she’s angry at him for existing in the first place, so she has no intention of giving in and dying for him. She cares only about how to stop him.

“Pavus!” she exclaims, just at the same time that the handsome moustached young man claps his hands together and says “Trevelyan!”, in the brief respite that the Chantry brings them.

And then, because Varric is also a dwarf prince from the Free Marches, he clears his throat.

“You can’t throw a nug in a tavern without hitting someone with a bit of Trevelyan in them,” he says from her side, and both her and Dorian snicker at the same time. It’s a funnier saying for those that are not, in fact, having any of the Trevelyan blood in them, but after so long away from their respective families, the two of them find it extremely funny to have found a far-away relative in the midst of an international crisis of gigantic proportions.

He grins and she smiles. The laughter, almost idiotically given the situation, almost bursts out of her, at this simple display of normalcy. According to the records that the noble houses keep on these kind of things, they’re some type of cousins so far removed that it’d be almost forgotten, if each of their houses wouldn’t like boasting the connection so much whenever the other one would achieve something.

“You are the Herald of Andraste?”

“Well, I believe I am a bit more apt than back when I was five, yeah.”

“Then, don’t suppose you want to die so young, no?”

Surprisingly, Roderick proves himself useful. There is a way out; maybe not for her, but for those who survived until now.

“If you are meant for this, if the Inquisition is meant for this, I will pray for you.”

She fears she’ll need more than his prayers to survive this time around. And she feels sorrier for her party, that she forces out there with her instead of allowing them a head start at retreat like the rest. But she can’t do this alone.

“I’m sorry,” she says – chocked and afraid. Cole grabs her hand, squeezes hard. She squeezes back.

“Oh, come on. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to get an asshole’s attention,” Varric says, readying his bow.

***

She might know less than the Elder One, but she knows and understands more than at the start of this battle. And yet, her last breath, as she falls through cracks, boulders and stone and fire following her, is a sigh of relief.

She wants to cry when she wakes, despite it all. Her head is spinning and her entire body aches. One of her thighs has a spike run through, and her ribs are at least bruised, if not outright broken, because breathing hurts. She wonders if she should lay here until the cold or a wild animal takes her, until life runs out of her body.

It’ll take the Inquisition’s forces probably days to return here safely and scavenge for bodies and survivors, and by then she’ll be dead for sure. It wouldn’t be so bad, to die just like this: a sacrifice done after a great win, balancing out the happiness with pain.

But slowly, she starts moving. She drags at the spike in her body, ripping her shirt apart to tie the material around her wound, though it immediately turns red with her blood. She feels lightheaded, her heart pumping faintly at her wrists, at the sight, her stomach churning finally realizing that she is bleeding out. Panic surges in her throat.

She shouts, the sound echoing around the tunnels, a frustrated, wounded wail, more animal than human. She doesn’t want to keep moving, she doesn’t want to find her way out of here, but she’s buried under rubble and stone and if she’s not getting out, then nobody’ll get in.

And fuck, she wants to live. She doesn’t want to end it here, when she’s done so little of the things she wanted to. She doesn’t want to just die, after decades of biting her tongue and nodding her head. She promised stories to Dorian, a sparring session to Cassandra. She promised herself a new dress and she promised Sera a picnic. She wants the normalcy too, not just the religion or the red lyrium or the cold nights.

She wants to be: more of herself, on more of this world. There are tears running down her face now, sad and desperate, and even if her entire body flares with pain, she starts walking. She’s angry at her fate, for making her go through all of this. She’s angry at herself, for not surviving better.

When she drops out in the snow, she sinks in it up to her knees. The wind howls all around her, carrying the sound of wolves too. Even she can feel the smell of iron coming from her wound, and there’s no doubt the scent will be picked up soon enough. She tries to hurry, though her entire body shivers and she pants with each movement of her legs. She leaves big, dark marks behind her in the snow.

She finds embers, and she believes they’re recent, warm to the touch, though she can’t be sure. There’s sweat on her forehead and she’s started seeing double, fever taking over her body in the cold and she can’t even feel the pain anymore, overwritten by the freezing of her limbs.

The lights at the horizon must be a mirage, then. Just like a man in the dessert sees the oasis of water, a dying woman in a snow storm sees the comfort of fire. She collapses in the snow, face forward.

***

Bull sits somewhat on the side, sharpening his axe, the blood caking on his arms. Krem has the self-preservation not to bother him, even as he positively seems the image of calm and peace. They’ve been helping the refugees evacuate and settle, find each other between the aftermath of that chaos, tending to the wounded, helping carry those left behind, identifying the bodies they could still reach from this side of the mountain, people fallen on the way, from their wounds, exhaustion or famish.

But now, with the fight dying down, the stone settling into its new place, there’s an eerie silence all across the valley, and between the members of the Inquisition. In the midst of their duties, they all seem to sneak glances at the hills of the mountain, looking for someone to prove something to them. It’s unnerving not to have the glow of the Breach above them, too.

Iron Bull throws his tools to the side, sheathing his axe.

“This is ridiculous. We have to go after her.”

And just like that, it’s like the spell is broken; Cullen is shouting for volunteer scouts, Cassandra getting up in an instant and coming by his side. Solas’ magic flares for a brief second at his fingertips, his eyes lost in the sky, where there’s no more gap, no brilliant colour. They put together a group of a couple healers too, and with Cullen opening up their party, they start scouting for Trevelyan.

Or her body, though he doesn’t accept this idea.

***

It’s a bit impressive how far she’s come, considering they find her quite close to their camp. It’s Cullen’s voice that raises a cry out of everyone else, and yet no one knows how to properly approach her. Bull shoves forward.

She’s delirious, limbs bent and broken in angles that he doesn’t want to remember a human body can turn to and there’s puddle of blood beneath her body. But, behind her whispered pleas – a prayer. He can’t feel the pity and relief, that at her darkest moments, she still turns to her best known comfort, but she’s still breathing and that’s all that matters. If she’s still alive, that means she can still make it. A potion is shoved down her throat by Cassandra, his hands shake too much to hold it steady against her lips, and she’s not powerful enough to strain against it, even as he imagines it burns against her throat and lungs.

When he picks her up, she screams and shrieks, struggling against his hold even as it makes the pain more blinding, even as her energy deflates with each push against his muscles, even as fresh blood surges from her cuts, even as tears form at the corner of her eyes. It’s instinctual, because in her haze, she cannot make out who he is, or what is happening, the edge of her dreams and reality too blurred, her memories brought forward in her mind, the actual present just a distant figment of her imagination.

Iron Bull knows to recognize the state and not take it personal. There’s a soft, blue glow around her body, as magic pulls together what’s been broken, soothing what’s unbearable. Her cries turn to whimpers, her forehead creasing in pain.

She’s not one for being carried, despite her background. She mutters her brother’s name in Bull’s chest, reverence and despair mingled in one single breath, and she cannot feel the cold of the falling snow, and she cannot see the darkness around the bright lamp that a scout is holding – but wherever her mind is stuck in, she’s just a girl in her teens, picked up by her devious brother to be dunked fully clothed in the water basin in the stables.

“Come on, Boss, you can’t die over this,” he says, hurries his steps, throws ugly stares at the mages accompanying them, their healing magic clearly not working fast enough, as she’s edging between feverish mutterings and unconsciousness. “You are meaner than this.”

Boss? she thinks at the back of her mind, and her memory dissipates, the world re-centres itself around the sound of his voice, around the strangeness of that single nickname in the picture that her brain is trying to have her stuck in. Then, slowly, things start making sense again: the familiar smell of leather, her armour and his strap both, the aching hurt in her hand where her mark still rests, the throbbing pain of her entire body, the taste of iron in her mouth and her unfocused vision, the silent reverence of her companions as she drifts away in and out of consciousness.

She’s muttering nonsense now, fractured names, begging, promises. He hushes her, softly and kindly, unlike she has ever known him, but once aware of her surroundings, she’ll believe it a figment of her imagination too, and not the comfort that it is, at her lowest.

He doesn’t really want to let her go, but the mages are quick in ushering him away once she’s set on a makeshift bed, knife cutting away at her shirt, magic strong in the air all around her body. She cries out in her sleep, struggles against the hands keeping her still at her shoulder – and he can tell the hold is not gentle.

Bull settles just a distance away, leaning on a tent pillar, closing his eyes, seemingly asleep. But he’s aware of the sounds around him, as Trevelyan slowly succumbs to sleep, as the mages finish their job on her, as Mother Giselle takes a sit next to her, as the advisors start arguing.

To wake to their uncertainty and their screams, after all she’s been through; he can’t imagine it’s the most welcoming of sights. They are all tired and defeated.

She wants to take back the good opinion she had on Mother Giselle. She makes mistakes, more often than she’d like to admit, and to rely on this old woman was simply one of them. Because now, as her entire body aches, skin dyed in purple, green and yellow, where her insides have been put back together again through magic not strong enough to leave her without the marks or the pain, the last thing she wants to even think about is how holy she might seem in the eyes of others.

Trying to recover after dying, again, she feels like nothing but one lucky bastard.

“Mother Giselle, I just don’t see how what I believe matters. Lies or not, Corypheus is a real, physical threat. We can’t match that with hope alone.”

And their army has been blown to pieces, their fighters have been wounded and their entire organization blown to pieces, all in just one night. A war that ended just as quickly as it began. She can’t believe others can’t seem to grasp how grave and serious the situation is.

“An army needs more than an enemy. It needs a cause.”

Her chest is still heaving, on the made-up bed holding up together her battle-worn body, as the people start singing her praise, a chorus of chants and unyielding belief.

For anyone just glancing in her direction, it might look like her wounds are still bothering her, and she’s trying to catch her breathe. Iron Bull, sitting in the darkness behind her, knows that the lady Trevelyan is having a panic attack. He is unwelcome by default, his faith in other things and his life somewhere far-away from the Andraste – but she is unequally unwelcome in the midst of those people, a figure so bright and so great that she’s above humans.

He’s seen her bleeding. In her delirious mutterings, half frozen to death, she was more human than all.

The first choked sob surprises even him – a first crack. And then her breathing quickens more and more, and she can’t catch all that air fast enough. She cries and wails, sound covered by the camp celebrating life, and eventually, wincing, she moves her arm enough so she can bite down on the leather of her armour. Silent, suddenly. Her body keeps shacking, until eventually she calms down.

She never seemed to understand the difference between sacrifice and self-slaughter. Until now, bruised and beaten, unheard and spoken over.

The Iron Bull gets close to her because no one else would. He waited, watching, but the Herald of Andraste remained all alone in her corner, with no one checking up on her beyond the state of her body. And yet, she’s been breaking apart for the better part of an hour, and nobody seems to care.

He sits down next to her bed, and she looks at him, surprised but not afraid. Her eyes red with her tears, her lips turned in an upset pout. She looks so much younger, closer to her actual age, now like this. Slowly, her eyes following his movement all along, he raises his arm, resting his hand on top of her, fingers knotting around her wrist, just above where her Mark rests.

Her breath hitches in her throat, and she stares at his much larger hand, holding hers. Just as slow, she moves her other hand, though wincing with the effort, to hold on to his. She keeps crying, tears silently falling down her cheeks, but she keeps holding on, so that something might feel human in the midst of all around her.

“You could have died, eaten by wolves, frozen to death,” he murmurs, and it’s chiding, but spoken so kindly, so low that it doesn’t feel like it.

He moves, ever closer. His other hand wiping her tears away, tangling in her hair once she calms down.

“We would have come for you.”

He sits there even after she falls asleep, so that she can get a bit of a rest without a soldier or zealot interrupting her. He allows Solas, because he knows she would. Whatever healing potions and spells they used, seems to work, because as she walks away with the elf, she’s already looking healthier than just an hour before.

No one sleeps that night, preparing for the trek through the mountains. All the way, she walks at the front of the people, Solas at her side, showing her the path.

“By attacking the Inquisition, Corypheus has changed it. Changed you. There is a place that waits for a force to hold it. There is a place where the Inquisition can build… grow…”

She looks at the horizon, stone growing out of clouds.

Skyhold, the one place that holds the skies. Isn’t the Inquisition doing the same?

#dragon age #the iron bull #female trevelyan #the inquisitor #DA: Inquisition #da fanfic #iron bull x inquisitor #iron bull x trevelyan #Iron Bull x female inquisitor #I LOVE THIS FIC SO MUCH there is so much blood sweat and tears in here #my writing

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astrobei · 1 year

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💌 folds this into a paper airplane and flies it across the room at you

(unfolds ur paper airplane, draws a little doodle on it, and throws it back to u)

WIBBLE!! u give me like. favorite younger cousin vibes which is the highest compliment i can bestow upon ANYBODY probably. i love how approachable and sweet u are— i see u hyping people up constantly but also just posting the funniest shit 2 seconds and i think that’s incredible! genuinely u have such a unique and lovable personality and i hope u know that i adore u from the bottom of my heart <3

#like even this ask made me laugh #eddie munson voice: never change user wibble-wobblegong #i don’t want to retype this tag without the l #in ur user #so just pretend it’s not there #okBye #/ask

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thejdw81 · 4 years

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There Are Words Words In German That Make Me Ponder & Question Whether Or Not There Is True “Elegance In Simplicity.”

The accredidation of the coining of the phrase and even the phrasing itself varies throughout the years since I first heard it, but at somepoint, within the beginning twixing and twaining years of this millenium I encounterd the phrase “there is elegance in simplicty” this was, back then known to have been said by Leonardo Da Vinci, who now apparently never said that and has via some form of the whispering or telephone game come to have actually said that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Be that as it may, the validity of the source of said coined terminology and it’s ever evolving annunciation are a moot point in German.

Germans have a saying that goes something along the lines of “why easy when hard/complicated works” or “warum einfach wann schwer/kompliziert gehts?!” Pronounced in an interrobang Satzmelodie or sentence melody because why not.

The reason the interrobang is so popular in German is you can be a complete and total idiot aka #vollidiot making a declaration (ending with an exclamation point), and before anyone can react adversly and call you out on your nonsense you can ask of yourself and all other parties involved the word or? pronounced “oder?”

The oder eaters, swallow the question or that naturally follows their exclamation and pronounce a statement said like it is gospel truth with a question lingering to it in true interrobang fashion, this way no German can be accused of being wrong or having a “kompetenz minderung” or a moderate competence.

To insult one’s intellectual capacites or thought processes is probably one of the highest insults or slurs a German on German verbally abusive toungelashing can achieve, it doesn’t really bother the foreigners, expats, migrants, immigrants, or $&%ß Outlanders the Fremde of the stranger or foreign or unknown as in unbekannt unacquainted kind in the least.

It is a distinctly German thing to take offense to/at the accusation of not fully having one’s wits about them, even if for just a moment or on one specific/fach thing.

These German on German slurs of the highest order, still sound to me like preadolescents attempting to mock one another, but within Germans interacting with one another in the German language uni- and multiverses...

“Waschlappen!...” (unsaid fur ein hirn, as in gehirn) That’s right, Germans go around calling each other washcloths or cleaning rags and rarely if ever follow through with the whole thought or labe of “Wash rags for brains.”

“Noodle!...” as in “Was fur ein Noodle...” Even that which goes unsaid is further mystified by having a third verse go more often than not unsaid “ist diese/es/er Mensch/Person” It goes unsaid because the word “Noodle” is the primary insult, if you follow all the way through to calling the same person a Mensch, it might ruin the mood or feel of the insult becaus saying “ach du Mensch” in informal German “auf du” is a back handed yet endearing compliment for the word Person or Human.

There are distinctions between Fachidiot, Vollidiot, and your run of the mill idiot. The latter is literally everyone that is not idiotic or more realistically “on the same page” as you as in you “have common ground” or “something in common” you can focus on, wich brings me to the Fachidiot or easily idot / specialised idiot, ususally a Besserwisser, or what English speaker would call a Know It All rather than a Better Knower, but Geman and it’s verbs... Especially auf Sie or in the formal version. A Vollidiot doesn’t really have varients or room for interpretation they, unfortunately are fully an idiot and that usually is bound or sealed with the equivilant of bestowing a curse upon the matter once the word Vollidiot has been uttered the sealing encantation will be uttered “Scluss damit” meaning Closed Therewith(in) or “kein Gespräch” the all encompassing No Discussion.

To compound on that idiom often expressed as proverb of wisdom surpassing any all that Solomon did and prounced as an idiom as well.

Sometimes, should the accusing party of the German influence choose to show genade or mercy they will drop the slur of “Noodle” and benevolently utter or mutter or proclaim or disclaim “was fur ein hirn!?” the equivelant to “what a brain” or Brainaic.

This German competency accusation stuff is far more serious that it sounds and devistates Germans beyond comprehension or belief, but what works works.

There are two words Germans use as sort of neutral intellectual off hand remarks, calling each other Depp or Fool and Alter or Older, Aged, Aulder, somthing having to do with Age, it can be used as either a compliment or insult a or a nickname.

It’s not very easy to fully understand because of the constant use of interrobangs, and the reality of how often it is not what you say but how you say it, the intonation or satzmelodie/sentence melody and betonung of how one says what they say in German that matters.

There are other words that end in zeug, meaning thing that stump people in their simplicity

Workzeug means tool or literally work thing

Flugzeug means airplane or literally flying thing

Feurzeug means lighter or literally fire thing

I laughed the first time I was called an Auslander, which literally means Outlander, because I remember watching the original Mad Max where the BDSM crowd was trying to take control of society and they kept calling one of the main characters an outlander.

Südlander is an odd one as well it literally means southlander, a person most likely born further south than the German borders of Germany, extending into and beyond the European Union grasp of Germany’s sphere of influence.

It is a term I have only ever heard directed at people of a darker complexion than I am, and has a sort of implication of being a gangster be that plastic gangster as they are called in Europe or wannabes as they are called by most Americans or not. ...The nicest way I have ever heard someone be called a südlander was in informal German auf du, they were asked “bist du Südlandisch” even that though carried several connotations beyond national heritage, there was that ever-present interrobangesque implication of being literally from the the south side of the tracks in the Südstadt or southtown of the city I was in.

I’ve been called Fremde, never to my face but directly in front of me before, this word means Stranger, or unknown or unacquainted or is implied to mean Foreigner without outright saying it which is probably why so many bloggers any YouTubers and journalists in Germany insist on being called an Expat.

No one really knows what to do with that word. I have read several article one in the guardian with the actual title “Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants” They did not do their due dilligence, it is a legal term for Americans on several .gov websites with reason and purpose cited for calling people expats. Search away!

Even The Local Germany an online news website wrote an article “Who’s an expat or immigrant in Germany.”

Quoara even has a question about the matter wondering if it has to do with socioeconomic status or race, sigh. Many folks that are not from America or England simply need to update the terminology on their laws and rules and guidelines for those who live outside of their country of origin.

To me an Expat lives outside of their country of origin but maintains the citizenship of their birthplace, an immigrant is someone who moved away from thier birthplace nationality and has or is in the proscess of changing nationaliities.

Either way, calling yourself an Expat to a German who uses oversimplified words and language deeper than Alltagssprache, Umgangssprache, Dialect or what the call the K?&§ language sounds Hoity Toity, or fancy as it gets, bordering on accusing yourself of being a pretentious luxus or luxurious and elegant etepetete or a schickimicki Auslander of the most schick schicksal (destiny) imaginable.

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krizaland · 5 years

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If it's alright, may I ask if you have any headcanons about Zim and possibly the Tallests, developing feelings for a close friend who's always trying to look after them? And regardless, your writing is lovely and I hope you have a nice day! ^^

Oh my goodness! I have been waiting for so long for an ask like this! Thank you so much for your kind words by the way!

For Zim:

Zim never really understood why you always wanted to hang around him but he assumed it was because you had acknowledged his superiority. However, Zim would be full of LIES if he said that he wasn’t touched by how much you looked after him.

Even though he would never ever admit it, Zim had indeed considered you a close friend.

Over time, Zim suddenly started to feel different about you.

At first, Zim simply brushed off his strange new feelings. Of course he wanted to spend time with you! You were a good ally and yes, you were indeed a friend.

However, things started to get stranger when his PAK started to spark around you.

After countless diagnostics and tests, Zim couldn’t seem to find out what was wrong with his PAK. It was only when his computer suggested he might have fallen in love with you, that Zim started to panic.

He couldn’t have fallen in love! If he fell in love then his whole mission would crumble!

Zim had to rid himself of his feelings for you before it was too late!

However, Zim didn’t want to stop liking you all together! He enjoyed spending time with you and while he’d never admit it, you were one of the only people who truly cared about him.

Zim’s meltdown was interrupted by Minimoose letting out a sympathetic squeak.

Once they had Zim’s attention, Minimoose begun to explain to Zim how Earth affection worked and suggested that he should ask you out, just to keep up appearances.

Zim swallowed his pride and agreed.

The next day, Zim’s PAK was a flurry of small staticky sparks. The sparks weren’t large enough to cause any real damage but quite a few things were getting stuck to his PAK.

Zim swallowed hard before clearing his throat.

“Y/N?”

“Oh hey, Zim! What’s with the serious look?” You asked sympathetically.

“We have known each other for one Earth year and 6 Earth months. During this time, I went from tolerating your presence, to genuinely enjoying it. I have been told that this is what’s called ‘being friends’. Lately however, a stronger, much more POWERFUL emotion seems to have overtaken me.” Zim explained as he circled you.

“Which is?”

“I have been told that this feeling is called…Love.” Zim’s voice shrank as he spoke.

“Wait! Are you trying to say that you’re in love with me?” Your eyes twinkled with hope

“Yes. Y/N! I bestow upon you the highest honor of being MY LOVE PIG!” Zim sang as he posed dramatically.

“I accept your offer, Zim!” You laughed as you watched Zim’s display.

“Wait. Really? I-I mean, YES! FEEL HONORED! FEEL HONORED TO BE MY LOVE PIG! FEEL HONORED TO BELONG TO ZIM!” Zim cackled as he threw his hands into the air.

For the Tallest:

Now I hope you won’t mind me shaking things up because these headcanons are going to revolve around the close friend being a one of the Tallest’s Irken servants!

For Red:

From all of the servant drones Red had, you were his favorite. You were always at his beck and call 24/7. You always listened when he needed to vent. You even put on puppet shows! You may have been a lowly servant drone but Red truly felt a connection to you.

As time went on, Red felt his PAK spark a few times.

At first he was nervous. No one could know he was experiencing an attraction at all! Let alone an attraction to a servant drone!

But after a few days of debating himself, Red finally settled on a solution.

“Servant drone, Y/N! Report to my private chambers at once!” Red commanded over the intercom.

You were startled by how urgent Red sounded but rushed to his chambers right away.

“Greetings, My Tallest! How may I serve you?” You announced with a bow.

Red felt his PAK spark a bit when he saw you bow. You were always so cute when you greeted him.

Red cleared his throat and gave you a warm smile.

“Y/N, I have noticed how hard you have been working and for that, I am truly grateful. As a show of my gratitude, I have a very special promotion for you.” Red explained as he clasped his hands together.

“A promotion?” You F/C eyes widened in shock.

“Yes. A promotion. You shall be promoted to be my personal assistant!” Red explained with a toothy grin.

“Oh wow! I’m beyond honored, my Tallest!” You tried your best to remain professional but your excitement was peeking through.

However, despite becoming Red’s personal assistant, you sure didn’t do a lot of assisting. On the contrary, it seemed that you were being somewhat doted on by Red.

Your usual dusty pink servant uniform had been upgraded to very expensive red silk robes.

Of course, you still looked like a servant drone but it was obvious that you had been promoted.

One of your tasks was to take care of some left over snacks he had lying around. Strange. He usually finished those. Red seemed to be encouraging you to eat the leftovers so you happily obliged.

It seemed that the only rule he had for you is that you couldn’t spend time with anyone else, which was fine by you since you didn’t have anything better to do.

Sometimes Red would have you stand next to him during special events.

If anyone asked, you were just serving him but in Red’s mind this was his way of taking you on a date.

It was a strange feeling being in love with a mere servant drone but Red got used to it.

You had to admit, you were starting to feel the same but tried to hide it. You didn’t want to upset Red.

However, part of you knew he probably wouldn’t mind your feelings.

While the two of you could never truly be together, it was still nice to be in each other’s company none the less.

For Purple:

Purple didn’t know how nor why but somehow you had caught his attention. You were a mere servant drone, yes but you were also so cute! He loved the way you saluted and the way you said “My Tallest.” just made his PAK spark with joy.

Purple wanted to spend more time with you but didn’t want anyone to know about it.

So he decided to try to discreetly get your attention.

He would often drop snacks on the floor and tell you to pick them up and take them away.

Your servant uniform suddenly had purple glitter embedded into the fabric. You didn’t question it and continued with your duties.

Purple would often have you follow him wherever he went. He would always look over his shoulder to make sure you were still behind him.

Purple would shower you in compliments.

“Great cleaning job, Y/N. Now I can see a pretty face staring back at me every time I look down. Oh look, you’re there too.”

You didn’t understand why Purple was so nice to you but you never wanted it to stop.

You loved the attention he gave you and you always worked extra hard just to see him smile.

#Anonymous #invader zim #invader zim headcanons #invader zim tallest #invader zim red #invader zim purple

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drdelicatetch2 · 4 years

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Love and Jealousy Chapter 2: The Meeting, The hurt, The Anger

Pity

It’s for those who need to be satisfied in their actions

For those who don’t believe in clarity.

It was the beginning of the new year and everyone had returned home from either royal duties, training or etiquette courses. The new years’ ball was about to begin its annual presentation for its royal prince and princesses; this would be the day that everyone would announce either marriages, proposals or courting. The ball would begin at 8pm sharp which would begin the presentation ceremony. Beautiful garland, gold and silver tapestry was place all around the grand hall. Wine, champagne, and sparkling cider were set around the room; servants, maids and butlers scurried this way and that to finish the final touches of the ceremony.

At last it was complete, and the clock stuck 8pm right on the dot; the princes would be first along with their spouse if they had any. The first prince arrived, a king now, and the announcer presented him as such as a small crowd formed down the elegant stairway to the floor.

“Presenting, King Sollux Saion Denki Captor and his Queen Eridan Harumagedon A. Captor, royal family to the Ki and Ume Water kingdom” he bellowed, and everyone watched as the royal couple stepped forth and descended the stairs. The next set of princes arrived promptly and then the next kingdom came forth “Presenting Gamzee Kozerog Makara and His Queen Tavros Telets N. Makara, royal family to the Lavanda and Bronza desert Kingdom” he said as they followed behind the few princes in line and then it was time, it was the Azul Kingdoms turn to present their prince “And now, from our own home kingdom Prince Johnathan Cornelius Egbert III, Heir of Breath to the Azul Kingdom and Future King over the Lapis Lands, Hail to the future” he uttered “ Hail to the Future” the audience repeated. Then it was time for the princesses to arrive and be presented, of course John didn’t care to much for the majority of the princesses he only cared about one in particular and he knew that they wouldn’t be there until the very end of presentation, so it began as such “ Presenting Feferi Dan Zise Peixes, Heiress to the Pin Hong water Kingdom” he announced but then she whispered something in his ear for him to say “ She is also available for courting at this time” he said awkwardly and she proceeded to float down the steps straight to Sollux ,Eridan, Gamzee , Tavros and John as they were discussing upcoming events in the kingdom and of course the recent marriage of Sollux to Eridan but before the discussion could actually commence…

John P.O. V

Feferi walked upon us and pushed herself between Sollux and Eridan very rudely and began to speak to no one else and I wasn’t too pleased with that entrance she had handed forward or the look on Sollux and Eridans’ face. One of complete unease, the other of hurt and slight anger but Eridan turned away and began to distance himself a bit as he had explained in a private letter to me* of his thoughts on Solluxs’’ true feelings for him but before I could interject “ Feferi..” Sollux said as he grabbed hold of Eridans hand bringing him close “This is Eridan…he is m-my Queen, we are married now, and I-I haven’t had a chance to introduce you two….” He said as Eridan grabbed his arm and his eyes lit up making Sollux blush yellow but hold his composure. Feferi did not like this at all, and you could see the distain on her face as she said these hurtful and demeaning words to Eridan “You mean to tell me you dumped me because you got married to some spineless, desecrated, useless sea dweller whose dad is a drunken retard and whose brother died because he chose to play hero and save a human!!?” she raged and I saw it, in that instant she broke his heart, Eridan is highly sensitive about his brother Cronus and so was Sollux “ You need to remove yourself from my sight immediately or I will have someone do it for you, I broke up with you because you refuse to acknowledge that we are better off without your mother and her delusions which cost a lot of people their marriages because she was A WHORE AND HAD A WHORE DAUGHTER TO BOOT!!” he hissed psiionics flashing and the crowd was silent “Miss Peixes it would be best to leave…now” I stated and she left the room in tears out of the room; in that moment she came into the room “Presenting Vriska Vacalie Serket, daughter of Duchess Maceria V. S. Vantas and stepdaughter to King Cratious S. Vantas II…and is available for courting at this time” the announcer informed and I just rolled my eyes ((Here comes another delusional factor in my life...again)) as she approached me to give her greetings; I acknowledged her and continued my conversation when I heard it finally came the sounds of trumpets that he was here “ Introducing the long awaited return of prince Karkata Cratious Vantas III, Heir to the Carmesi Kingdom, Son of king Cratious S. Vantas II, stepson and stepbrother to princess Vriska V. Serket and Duchess Maceria V.S Vantas; Beloved Son and miracle to the late, beautiful former Queen, Agaria Vantas!” he shouted with jubilation in his lungs. I looked up and saw him, dazzling in his black dress, low shoulders with long sleeves and just a touch of red at the collar along with his mothers’ favorite necklace. We locked eyes as many from the party came to look and awe at his immense beauty and the way he had changed over the course of ten years during his training as well as mine.

End John P.O.V

Karkat P.O.V

There he was right in my sights, so tall and handsome just like he was when we were small and there, she was my sister; a person who plagued me with bullying and words that hurt more than I ever imagined. The few times we encountered each other during my training she said mean things to mean, called me an orphan and said I should have been killed but I never told anyone, not even my father or her mother who loved me like her own. I kept my distance and finished my training, graduating highest marks in all courses including etiquette which she barely passed. I made it to John without a word, only thanking most guests for the compliments that they bestowed upon me and then we were face to face.

“Hello Johnathan” I purred at him lowly “Hello Karkata” he said in his husky toned voice “My don’t you look absolutely stunning, the color suites you so very well” he said looking into my red brown eyes with his icy blue ones. Suddenly though I was pushed aside and had lost balance thankfully caught by my best friend Gamzee Makara; looking up realizing who had pushed me aside in the first place “Vriska, prey tell why did you feel the need to push me off to the side with such haste?” I enquired and then she said the most hurtful thing I could have never imagined saying to my worst enemy.

End Karkat P.O.V

“You think that just because you left for a while that anyone would want a motherless loser who thinks he can satisfy any man by faking he is a girl and wearing the saddest outfit with the ugliest necklace on the planet; your mother was beautiful but you will never look like her, smell of her or even compare to what she really was! She’s probably rolling in her grave right now, wondering why you didn’t die instead of her at least that would save father the effort of having to raise such a pathetic son” Vriska said with an evil laugh; the room was silent and karkat was staring at her with tears pricking his eyes and his hands balled into fists as everyone stepped away from him as he ran to the outdoor terrace. When she turned to face everyone else, she saw that no one was laughing or agreeing with her; not a sound from anyone. She did see her mother crying in pure anger and her stepfather grasping a glass that shattered in his hand but then she saw John; stoic composed Johnathan was seething mad and he spoke with such venom in his voice “You” he pointed at her “Are a vile, evil and disgusting human being and will not be caught dead in the company of those who disrespect the sanctity of someone’s’ mother as you have just done to his.” everyone agreed with that statement then heard the bellowing voice of King Cratious as he stepped forward swiftly towards her “YOU!! You are coming home with us this instant! I am grounding you until further notice; apparently the classes we sent you to do not work!!” he stated “You have embarrassed me for the last time!!” her mother cried out as the king took her away “Johnathan please, please find him and comfort him; you are the only one to know of such true pain in losing a mother” she begged him. John bowed and agreed heading in the direction Karkat had went followed by Gamzee; they split up looking for him and Gamzee found him first alone, and weeping on the floor holding onto the necklace his mother had left him.

Gamzee P.O.V

When I found him, my heart ached for my friend; we had been through a lot growing up together, he was there when I proposed to Tavros the first time “Karkat?” I hesitantly asked and he looked at me with such hurt; throwing himself into me and weeping loudly with such hurt his body was trembling. “Why did she do this to me on my presentation day; I have done nothing but be nice and tolerate her vicious bullying” he said grasping my arm a bit harder as he cried deeper and louder than he had when his mother was murdered in front of him. “I do not know why she has done this, but she is being punished very severely by her mother and your father” I told him. He looked up at me and cried even more “You are my greatest ally Gamzee; I love you and thank you for looking for me” he said and we embraced further til he was done crying and softly wept. I looked up as I heard a knock upon the wall and there he was, John, looking concerned but still with rage in his eyes and I helped karkat up and they locked eyes immediately. John extended his arms to him and he gladly rushed into them holding on and beginning weep once more as john soothed him. I came to john closely and told him “John I thank you for caring after my greatest friend in all of this universe; please take care of him and do right by him” I said as I made my way back to my beloved queen and our friends. “what happened?” Tavros asked as he took ahold of my arm and I began speaking to the others “He is with john do not worry; I do hope john chooses this moment to share with karkat his intention of courting this year” I said “Oh yes, I do hope he does; karkat deserves the best and John is the best for karkat” Sollux replied “Yes, he has the strength and leadership to comfort and care for him just as you do for me” Eridan replied and we all laughed as his face turned a shade of yellow and he looked away from his queen.

End Gamzee P.O.V

John P.O.V

Karkat was still in my arms when Gamzee left us alone. I held him close as I normally do not do this with anyone except my mother, who has passed us on. “Karkat my dear” I said softly, and he looked up at me “Are you alright; I know this has hurt you greatly?” I inquired “I am fine Johnathan” I put my hand to his lips and stroked his face “Please call me john like you used to” I stated, and he blushed “Yes john” he purred. I kissed his hand and looked deep into his red brown eyes “I have an inquiry of you karkat” I stated, he looked at me with wide eyes “Yes John?” and I then sat him down and lent beside him “Would you, let me court you this year to get to know you even better than before?” I asked and he almost fainted on the spot “Yes, John, Yes I would love to, but you have to ask Gamzee for permission” he stated and I laughed “Of course I already asked him” I told him, Gamzee and I discussed this in the beginning of our friendship. We stood up together and headed toward the ball room and gestured towards the announcer. “Attention! Attention! Our future king would like to announce stupendous news” he shouted, and everyone looked at us; luckily his father and stepmother came back in after dropping off Vriska. “Karkat and I will be courting starting this year” I stated and karkat blushed. Everyone clapped and King Cratious came to us giving karkat a kiss and the forehead, shaking my hand with extreme adoration.

End John P.O.V

#karkat #gamzee #john #vriska #tavros #feferi #sollux #eridan #homestuck

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doctorstarinken · 4 years

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One Time For TeedaMac

Troye,

I’ll never forget the day we met. I pulled up to the studio at CalArts not expecting much to be honest. Nikko had told me he was going to bring a rapper and I my general attitude was “Yea, okay. Sure.”

You were a big dude, man. But you were a different big dude. Kind of like a Patrice O’Neal, Shaq, Biggie kind of big dude. Physically big, huge personality, big laugh, and more importantly you had a huge heart. There was a quiet confidence you displayed while you patiently waited your turn to hop on the mic that evening. Most people get -- myself included -- don’t really know how to act inside a studio. I’ve learned to tame that part of myself by being really, really enthusiastic and be really encouraging of everyone’s creative process. You’re not like that though. You just sat back patiently, cracked jokes, and picked our brains on our collective views on music.

That’s the other thing that won me over. I could sense that you were just a big music lover and music nerd. You asked me my views on trap, and I gave you some bullshit generic response to which you replied, “That doesn’t really tell me your opinion though.” I respected that. Before you even knew me, you had a charming gall to you to say what needed to be said.

Fast forward to when you got behind the mic.

Man... there are a few musical moments I remember vividly. The first time I conducted an orchestra, my undergraduate audition, my first day as a contracted/hired songwriter in a large studio, the first rehearsal I ever had with the lady who later become my wife, and the first time I heard you jump behind that Neumann.

Everything about your performance that evening was so flawless. Your voice, the lyrics, the flow, content, vibe, et al. You just had everything, man. And the best thing about it, you were fucking cooler than ice cold, bruh. You can spot talent by how hard -- or in this case, how not hard-- someone is working. There has always been such an ease in your delivery. Even when you fucked up, it was done with grace.

Just as I’ll never forget the evening we met, I’ll never forget the day Nikko called me to deliver the bad news. I was in Honolulu teaching underprivileged high-school students how to film score using affordable software and was lucky enough to work in a truly world-class studio. The folks who contracted me were also kind enough to allow me to use the studio to work on whatever projects I wanted to work on as long as I had finished working on the student projects beforehand.

It was exciting. I was flown out to Hawaii, was given a ridiculous per diem, didn’t have to pay out of pocket for lodging, and more importantly, I was working in the same studio that where a lot of my favorite records were made.

The plan was to get a lot of post-production out of the way for our project. Seemed like the perfect situation. Get flown out, work in a dope studio, and work on your own personal projects after-hours. What could possibly go wrong?

Just like I’ll never forget the evening that I first heard you rap, I’ll never be able to shake the feeling I got when Nikko called me and told me you were diagnosed with cancer.

I gotta be honest. I still can’t believe you were diagnosed with cancer. I still can’t believe you didn’t beat it. I still can’t believe you’re gone.

Intellectually speaking, I know you’re not here. What I mean to say is that, I recall visiting you before you got transferred to Keck and that I recall driving up to Fresno to see you for the first time since I got the news. I remember the day you called me and told me you were in a hospital in LA and that I could come visit you. I remember the weekends I’d spend with you kicking your ass on 2k and saying something along the lines of “Son, even if your make-a-wish was to get better at 2k, I’d still kick your ass. Fuck you. Guard this money ass three pointer.” I remember making jokes about how I preferred when you were incapacitated because at least you didn’t talk back. Honestly I think the nurses were a bit shocked, but we just had that relationship. We could say the most fucked up things to each and laugh about it.

During the day of your memorial, your pastor said that you fought. You fought everyday to survive and you battled this bullshit disease until you couldn’t and that the rest of us in the memorial should do the same. That is to fight everyday for life.

Truthfully, I haven’t fought everyday since you passed. It’s difficult. In my own selfish understanding, it wasn’t just that I lost a friend and a brother, I lost my fucking career. I poured everything I had into our record and while it’s very painful for me to listen back to it, I know it’s fucking good. It’s one of those things where I actually don’t care for people’s opinions about this record because I know it’s good and if someone doesn’t like it, it’s not for them. We made this record for us and we were about ready to usher in a new paradigm shift in hip-hop.

I know that probably sounds hyperbolic as fuck, but what good does believing in a record I can no longer perform in public do for me? Whether we were actually as good as I think we are is irrelevant, I knew we were going to the very top because I finally had a proper MC in my corner who saw eye-to-eye with me and an MC who could body any piece of music I gave them.

You elevated what I wrote. Without you, everything I wrote were just these bland academic exercises in showing people how well I can music. You gave my work heart and soul and turned it into art.

But now you’re gone and you have been since October. And as much as I’d love to fondly look back at our short time together and as much as I like to imagine of what we were both robbed of, I don’t think it’s really healthy for me to do so anymore.

I’ve always wondered about the human soul since I was a child. My grandfather died when I was very young, followed by my uncle, and during my teenage years my other uncle quite literally died in my arms. I’m not a stranger to death. I grew up christian so every Sunday I was reminded of the death and resurrection of Christ.

But for whatever reason, your passing really hit me hard. I wish I could say that I’d see you again some day, but I really don’t know where we go when our time on Earth is done and I think that’s what scares me the most. The idea that all I’ll ever have are the memories I shared with you is the scariest part. We didn’t know each other that long, but we grew close. You got to know me and I got to know you through our shared work. The music I presented to you was a tangible representation of my best self as expressed through sound. In turn, you gave me the best representation of yourself through your lyrics.

Collaboration is a sacred bond. My friend, Max, who I so wish you got to meet, told me that when he got on the phone with me to console me after he had learned I was grieving your loss. While there are a lot of things I don’t know about the nature of reality, I can say with full confidence that my favorite thing about being an artist is the communion that occurs where people are in a room trying to create something out of nothing. While I don’t know where we go after we die, I do believe in the divine because I have experienced with when working with talented people like yourself. There is a quiet agreement that we are all trying transcend our current situation and hopefully share that with the world.

Teeda, you were more than a friend and collaborator. You were my brother. I didn’t grow up with biological brothers, but there is an old adage that goes “you don’t have to be blood to be brothers.” While blood is thicker than water, the frequencies we pushed out into existence is the only connection I need to call you family.

While I wish I could wipe you from my memory as having to live with the fact that one of the most beautiful humans I’ve ever known has left at such a young age is too painful, I know that your spirit will always live on. I see your face in Alonzo’s and I’m always so hyped whenever Joss shares pictures of your son on her IG.

I wish it had worked out differently. I wish you had beat cancer and that we had gone on the road and fucking killed stages from here all the way to Manila. I wish we had more time to make more music and that we could have made your wildest dreams come true. I wish you could have shown your mom just how ridiculously talented her son is. (She shared me that story on how she asked her A&R friend to talk you out of rapping only for him to be like “Yo, he’s actually super dope. He’s a little raw, but if he keeps at it he can be something.”) I’m not sure if you heard, but at the end of your days at City of Hope, your mom would play our song all the time and the nurses and medical staff would always look in amazement that it was our song playing. One dude even said that you sound like J. Cole. I mean... I’m not the biggest J. Cole fan, but I know you loved him and thought he was better than Kendrick. I still think that opinion is mad trash, but you’re dead now so I guess you literally took that stance to your grave. Respect.

I had so many plans for us. I really did believe we could have done whatever the fuck we wanted to. You made us that good. But I have to let those plans go as I have to let you go. I wish I didn’t have to, but I gotta do like you and fight for my life everyday that I’m on this planet.

Working with you to craft the songs we have crafted will always be one of the highest honors I will ever undertaken in my life. Knowing that someone as talented as you considered me a friend, brother, and a collaborator will always be one of the highest compliments that anyone can ever bestow upon me.

Rest easy, OG. I truly hope we can chop it up in another dimension when my time here is through. I’ll keep a lookout on Zo for you. I promise.

-DMR

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bleedingmagitek · 5 years

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Kefka Palazzo (spelled as Cefca Palazzo in the Japanese version), is the main antagonist of Final Fantasy VI. The prototype to the Magitek Knights, Kefka acts as Emperor Gestahl's court mage carrying out his orders, but behind his back schemes for his own ends. Kefka is best known for his many one-liners, his maniacal laugh, his final boss appearance, as well as his sociopathic hatred of everything in existence.

Kefka is a high ranking member of the Gestahlian Empire. He is responsible for magitek experimentation, taking a great interest in the espers, and having used a slave crown to control Terra to take advantage of her magic. He is one of the leaders of the imperial military, leading troops into battle alongside General Leo and Celes to invade towns and expand the Empire. Unlike Leo, he is feared by his own soldiers. While Kefka appears to be loyal to Gestahl, carrying out his more sinister orders, he secretly plots behind Gestahl's back for his own ends.

While previous antagonists in the Final Fantasy series were distant, cold, ruthless, and bent on their goals, Kefka is loud, short-tempered, maniacal, and destructive. He is nihilistic, viewing life and civilization as meaningless, a view he uses to justify his murderous tendencies. Towards his allies, Kefka displays little patience, often talking down to or mocking them, and showing little remorse if they die. One of Kefka's defining character traits is his laughter, a high-pitched whooping cackle. Kefka is a recurring boss throughout, and also the final boss.

Appearance

Ever outlandish, Kefka resembles a jester or clown. In his original concept artworks, and in Dissidia Final Fantasy, Kefka wears an outfit composed of primarily red and yellow fabrics, a mismatched jumble of stripes and polka dots. He wears a red and white striped ruffle around his neck and a red cloak with a yellow and red inner lining. In his field sprite in the original Final Fantasy VI, as well as alternate artworks and, to a lesser extent, an alternate costume in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Kefka wears green robes with gold linings and red clothing. In his field sprite for the mobile and Steam rereleases, he has a white and red ruffle, purple boots, red clothing, and a brown robe with green fabrics and gold linings.

Kefka's face and hands are covered with white make-up, and he has red eye shadow. However, due to graphic limitations, his field sprite in both the SNES/PSX/GBA releases and the iOS/PC releases has his face and hands having the same skin color as most of the other human characters, save for red splotches below his eyes. His blond hair is tied into a tight ponytail, accentuated by an extending feather. In Dissidia Final Fantasy, his appearance is altered slightly, with Kefka gaining a wide grin resembling a Glasgow smile accentuated in purple make-up as well as having pointed ears. His height was listed as 5'4" for Final Fantasy VI, but he appears taller in Dissidia. In the original Final Fantasy VI, Kefka's sprite gave him slightly gray hair, presumably in an attempt to make him look dirty blonde. In the iOS/Steam rereleases, however, his hair color was explicitly depicted as blonde in the field sprite.

Personality

Although initially Kefka seems lighthearted and silly, his true nature is maniacal, short-tempered, flamboyant, destructive, and cruel. This is a result of him having been made into a Magitek Knight before the process was perfected. He is a psychopath with no regard for human life nor remorse for the atrocities he commits, and revels in the suffering of others. He cracks dark jokes, breaks out into hysterical laughter upon causing mayhem, and his only joy is causing senseless destruction, death and chaos. Kefka doesn't even consider destruction fun unless lives are lost in the process. He lacks the capacity to feel empathy, implied by his line "We needn't show mercy to those who side with the Returners. ...which is good, because I never seem to have any of the stuff." His bio in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy states he lacks self-control. He is ruthless, as evidenced by his briefing to his soldiers during their march to Narshe. Despite his insanity he is high-functioning enough to plot to access the Warring Triad and to betray his liege. He has no qualms with murdering many of his own men even for trivial reasons. It is implied Kefka is hated and feared by many Imperial soldiers for this reason.

When the Returners infiltrate the Magitek Research Facility Kefka claims he is all-powerful, and intends to become a god, suggesting he suffers from megalomania. After becoming a god he boasts the Returners have no chance against him. According to the Final Fantasy VI creation guide, he is narcissistic, being fascinated with the image in the mirror and dressing up for mirrors. This is implied in Dissidia with Kefka's mirror match quotes being compliments on the other Kefka's appearance. Kefka is a manchild, referring to fighting as "playing" and treating Terra as a doll to be toyed with. In the Japanese versions of Final Fantasy VI and Dissidia Final Fantasy, Kefka frequently uses the first-person pronoun boku-chin when referring to himself, a pronoun usually reserved for young boys, with small hints of this being shown in the localized version via him throwing tantrums at various points in the game. The Dissidia series also hints at his having crossdressing tendencies.

Kefka is characterized somewhat differently between the Japanese and international releases of Final Fantasy VI. In the former, his childish nature is emphasized, while in the western releases, he is depicted in a darker manner, shown knowing and enjoying the pain and suffering he inflicts on others.

What begins as a disregard to human life develops into nihilism, and at the end of Final Fantasy VI Kefka declares the lives of mortals insignificant finding no meaning in things like love and hope, and seeks to destroy the bonds of existence itself. When gloating about unlocking the ultimate power, depending on the version, he either wishes to exterminate everything and everyone (SNES and PS versions), or otherwise simply let people die out and encourages the Returners to embrace their own destruction (GBA, PC, and iOS versions). He finds the concepts of love and hope nauseating, and finds the Returners' examples of finding meaning for life in a ruined world sickening. He has a similar reaction in Dissidia, when he, deducing that Terra and Onion Knight are still friends after their battle, declares that it makes him "want to puke [his] guts out."

Dissidia Final Fantasy shows a more tragic view of Kefka's insanity. Once he is defeated in Shade Impulse, Kefka laments on the futility of life in a soliloquy mirroring his speech in Final Fantasy VI, and fades with a sad laughter. Terra speculates Kefka destroys to fill his broken heart. In Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy before the battle, she wonders if Kefka is being tormented when he repeatedly chants "destroy". Kefka's Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy Museum profile mentions he self-destructed to make himself feel better. This depression relating to his nihilism and being incapable of understanding means other than destruction to give meaning to life was hinted at in the original game when the Returners state what they hold on to to persevere in the World of Ruin. Kefka briefly pauses, as if sad, before ranting that he'll get rid of all dreams. In his god form boss fight in Final Fantasy XIV, Kefka declares that utter ruin is the only thing that will suffice.

In the Japanese versions, owing to his childish nature, he often uses the first-person pronouns boku and boku-chin, though he adopts the formal gender-neutral term watashi just prior to fighting the Returners for the final time, presumably indicating he was superior to everyone else by that point.

Abilities

Kefka grows more powerful as the story progresses. He attacks Sabin in the Imperial Camp with a simple Morning Star, and could be injured by any attack (although he remarks after the second battle he was holding back). In Narshe, he uses strong elemental and status spells for that point in the game, but they are overall weak in the scope of the entire spell list—his strongest spell at this time is Blizzara.

Kefka acquires more power by absorbing the espers' strength, and by the time he arrives in Thamasa, he can project illusions, single-handedly kill dozens of espers while being immune to their powers, and presumably can use Banish. He can disable the espers' powers, an ability implied to result in the destruction of anyone in close proximity, as evidenced by the disappearance of the three Magitek Armor troopers who accompany him when he uses it. He is still vulnerable at this point, as Celes stabs him aboard the Floating Continent, although he seems more angry than hurt.

Following his taking control over the Warring Triad, Kefka becomes the God of Magic and his strength increases exponentially. He gains godly magical powers to the point of being capable of warping reality as he sees fit: elemental manipulation, power bestowal, and magical absorption. His telekinesis is strong enough to levitate debris from the entire world to form his tower. He can project a pyramid-shaped magical field around him, although it is not specified whether it is intended to be a magical barrier, or a projection of his power. He has become able to use the most powerful of magical attacks, includUltima, and he is even capable of developing his own spells, creating a new spell called Forsaken, (known as "Goner" in the original U.S. SNES release) his signature attack with a magic power of 220, the highest in the game. He is capable of projecting the Light of Judgment, a devastating ray of energy capable of heavily damaging dozens of towns, doing so to smite those who do not agree to his desires (although he at one point implies that he often smites people simply because he finds it fun).

Kefka creates various new monsters to guard his tower, including the revived, but weakened, Warring Triad themselves. Kefka can use his wings for offense, appropriately referred to as Havoc Wing. In Dissidia Final Fantasy Kefka can use Havoc Wing in his regular form in addition to his god form, although he needs to partially transform into his god form to sprout the wings. He can summon angels to sap others of their strength, called Heartless Angel.

#Information #document file: Canon #Better than two evils: Kefka Palazzo

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