a10rs 0n danse.

Independent RP blog for Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork. Full lore page currently under construction.Sideblog to 0nthecase.M!A: None.

[0nthecase]

// all right SO since I clearly do not have the attention span for multiple blogs and cosplay tasks at the same time, consider this an Official Notice

I am going on hiatus on here and @1adyofc10ckw0rk until after I recover from DragonCon (probably around 7 September if I had to guess at a specific date, but who knows). I will still be active on @thedanceofblades but, obviously, not quite at my peak.

Sorry about that and also sorry about not being Official about things until it was clearly just not working out. XD

I’ll see y’all later. <3

[askioniasgatekeeper-blog]

a dance with death [closed]

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

The Ball is suspicious. It does not want him here, in this room, of all rooms. Not any of them, but especially not this one. Not—

Orianna ignores it.

“No,” she says. “Nothing.” She fidgets, her weight steady on the balls of her feet while she reaches back to wind herself. “What does that mean?”

[askioniasgatekeeper-blog]

…odd. Odd and troubling. Shirou wonders why anyone would bother raising the dead with no clear objective in mind. Was it simply to see if it was possible–?

He supposes he’ll never know.

“I don’t know,” he admits, frowning. “Perhaps it means nothing at all. And if that’s the case–well, all the better for you, I suppose.” He just isn’t entirely sure what that means for him.

Shirou brushes his fingertips across the runes, a shiver coursing down his spine. He’s sure that it’s simply nerves, but this room gives him a grim premonition, a sense of something truly terrible looming somewhere beyond his perception. A shaky breath passes his lips, and he stands.

The door closes the moment he passes the threshold, and the feeling immediately starts to fade. Gods above… Shirou puts a hand to his forehead.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

The Ball relaxes somewhat as the door clicks shut without the newcomer behind it. But only somewhat.

“I don’t understand,” Orianna says. Already, there is a deep resignation behind the words; they’ve been what she’s said the most in her life by far, and to date no one has managed to clarify much. She is not entirely sure why she bothers remarking on how little she knows. “Should I do something?” And, if so, what?

[ramblingrhubarb]

The weather has been so nice outside! My heart is singing with joy! :D

[fleshforsaken]

Viktor guides her in silence to his workshop, wanting desperately to get this over and done with. He tells himself it’s solely for his peace of mind, not for her sake, not for the sake of Ori’s memory, but–

One day, perhaps, he’ll stop lying to himself.

The walk to the workshop is a short one indeed. Viktor wastes no time in clearing off a space on one of the tables, gesturing for her to come forward and sit. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says dryly.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

Orianna looks at the table, then at Viktor. “How?” she asks, genuine curiosity and bemusement. “I am never uncomfortable.”

Although she is—she is—There is a tightness inside her, like something’s caught on itself, like she should be running. (But where? And why?)

[fleshforsaken]

Viktor hesitates himself, quickly turning over all of his options in his mind. It would be easy to tell her no and bid her good day. Wouldn’t it?

(The idea of losing sleep over a problem is meaningless when one barely sleeps to begin with, but the thought of leaving a broken machine unfixed when that machine is literally asking to be repaired does not sit well with him, personal qualms be damned.)

No, he supposes. Not so easy after all.

“I see no reason why not,” he lies.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

Orianna doesn’t know better than to take his words at face value—as much as she can when he has no interest in showing any kind of face at all, of course. She takes a half-step forward as if there’s any way for her to find the workshop herself.

In an odd way, this place reminds her of her own house, but the people... there are so many more of them, and it’s clean and bright despite the lack of sunlight from outside, and she hasn’t seen any rats at all.

“Where do you want me?”

[fleshforsaken]

Viktor stares at her for several silent seconds, stunned by her words. The only indication she has that he won’t dismantle and destroy her are some decade-dry scribblings in a dusty journal about a boy long dead. How can she possibly–

He straightens, stomping out his doubts. “If that’s the case,” Viktor says, looking her in the eye, “then may I show you to my laboratory so we can get started?”

(He can’t help but think that Orianna never so much as saw the outside of his home while she was alive. And he can’t quite smother the ache that the realization brings.)

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

Orianna hesitates for a moment—but only a moment. And then she stands up straight, ignoring the Ball’s almost panicked input, and she nods.

“You want to now?” she does ask, though, because while she doesn’t remember much of humans she is fairly certain that they don’t drop everything because a sort-of-stranger walked into their door without asking.

[fleshforsaken]

Viktor draws back, one eyebrow raised. Several retorts come to mind at once–it’s a good thing that I’m not repairing the Ball, then, isn’t it?; I refuse to ask permission from a non-sentient, aluminum orb–but he holds his tongue. “If you would rather I keep my hands to myself, then so be it,” he says instead. 

A quiet snort. “I would understand if you don’t trust me,” Viktor adds. “I’ve gotten used to that over the years.”

He’ll never admit to how much it aches to say those words to her, of all people.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

“I do,” Orianna says before she even has the chance to think about what that means. “It doesn’t.” She cannot, will not, let him think that she doesn’t trust him.

(But she shouldn’t.) But that isn’t the Ball’s place to say—and if she does trust him, surely she would have a reason to, right?

[askioniasgatekeeper-blog]

a dance with death [closed]

[askioniasgatekeeper-blog]

Shirou takes a reluctant few steps further into the room, kneeling down to get a better look at the marks gouged into the floor. “I think–” think nothing, he’s absolutely certain–“whoever was here, in this room, meant to perform a… a resurrection. Or an exchange, I’m not sure which.” Again, he isn’t quite that well-versed in the actual rituals, just in how to take care of their results. 

“Whoever he was, he was apparently willing to die to bring you back.” Shirou can certainly empathize with such a sentiment, though while he has been tempted he refuses to acknowledge the voice in the back of his mind encouraging it. He shakes his head, as if that will chase out all such thoughts. “Did he give you any sort of… objective, that you know of? To fulfill some task you left unfinished in life, or to commit some sort of crime, or–?”

He glances at her over his shoulder, expression simultaneously expectant and concerned.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

The Ball is suspicious. It does not want him here, in this room, of all rooms. Not any of them, but especially not this one. Not—

Orianna ignores it.

“No,” she says. “Nothing.” She fidgets, her weight steady on the balls of her feet while she reaches back to wind herself. “What does that mean?”

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

She feels colder than she should. It makes no sense.

The Ball gives a muted, discordant whine. She aches. The thought of staying here hadn’t occurred to her until he said something, but now… but now…

“What would you do?”

[fleshforsaken]

“Take apart your external components,” Viktor says, “to get a better look at your inner workings and determine what’s wrong.” (Which is likely most of her chassis, if he has to guess.) “I would put you back together after a diagnostic, of course.”

He takes in a breath. His chest aches. “Beyond that, of course, I cannot accurately say.” After all, there’s just as much chance that he can fix her as there is that he might have to rebuild her from the ground up.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

She didn’t even know there was anything wrong with her (because there isn’t, he’s lying, he wants to take her apart and destroy her he’s) but then why does everything feel so wrong all the time, if she isn’t broken somehow?

The Ball doesn’t have a response for that, only a repetition.

“The Ball wouldn’t let you,” she says. Even if it helped her?

[fleshforsaken]

(It would be so easy to close his eyes and forget, forget how cold and solid her fingers are, forget the tick-tick-ticking that has tried to replace her beating heart. It would be so easy to lean into the touch, to let everything go back to the way it was all those years ago, just for one moment. It would be so, so easy…)

Viktor sighs, drawing a hand back to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Corin did a poor job of constructing you,” he says. He glances at her hand, still cupping his cheek. “If you plan on staying here,” he adds, tone so close to casual, “I could fix the mistakes he made.”

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

She feels colder than she should. It makes no sense.

The Ball gives a muted, discordant whine. She aches. The thought of staying here hadn’t occurred to her until he said something, but now... but now...

“What would you do?”

[fleshforsaken]

Viktor would need to take her apart to figure out exactly what’s wrong with her, and he’s fairly certain he doesn’t want to know. (But that’s what he does, he’s a scientist, he pulls apart the pieces of everything he can get his hands on and he figures out all of its inner workings–) 

…she’s apparently decided to plant herself in his complex anyway. He may as well make use of whatever time she intends to spend here. 

“He focused too much on making you look pretty and not at all on making you function properly,” Viktor answers. He runs the fingers of his human hand over the cold curve of her neck, pushing a breath out through his nose. “I could have made you perfect.”

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

The touch is familiar, but the way he looks at her is all wrong. Orianna doesn’t have breath to lose but she feels like she ought to, and that’s the worst part. She is missing so many pieces and she doesn’t even know what they are.

She reaches up, fits her own hand over his cheek. “I don’t understand,” she says.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

Her mouth tightens on itself and stops her from talking and she doesn’t understand why. Something ticks out of rhythm, pulling inside her neck until it crunches back into place. It isn’t right.

“I want you stop asking me questions I can’t answer,” Orianna says.

[fleshforsaken]

The sound causes him a pain that goes deeper than the physical. Viktor grimaces, screwing his eyes shut for a moment to cope with the noise. 

It at least distracts him, if only momentarily, from the frustration of this conversation. He crosses the distance between them, compelled by perfectionism and all the feeling that’s been boiling inside him since that snowy night in Piltover, and he puts his hands on her neck and shoulder to try and figure out what the hell is wrong with her.

“Corin should have built you better than this,” Viktor mutters under his breath.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

The Ball is furious

but it only answers to her and she is in no state to listen to it. Orianna feels like something in her chest ought to move, or hitch, or clench, but it just ticks away. She closes her eyes on an instinct she doesn’t remember, and—

—and nothing happens. He just looks. She doesn’t know what he should be doing but it wasn’t that, was it?

“What?” she says.

[askioniasgatekeeper-blog]

And soul. (1adyofc10ckw0rk)

send me a ‘soul’ and my muse will describe what they think your muse’s soul ‘sounds’ like [ no longer accepting ]

Shirou hesitates. Not because he cannot hear the quiet ambiance of her soul, but because he knows she should not have one. His voice comes quiet when he finally speaks.

“A music box. Soft footfalls, in a steady rhythm.” Shirou taps out the beat on his knee–one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. “I can hear… laughter, but faintly, as if from very far away. A woman–no, a little girl, humming. It’s all so very quiet,” he says, his face tightening in discomfort. “I hear some other sort of stringed instrument, but it’s… it’s as if I hear it through mud. More like the memory of music than anything else.

“There’s a ticking underneath it all, but it isn’t quite like yours. And a scratching, like a pen against rough parchment. A man’s voice–but I can’t make out the words. He sounds unhappy.” 

Shirou shakes his head, trying to put all the sounds out of his mind.

[bladesurgence]

// Viktor/Orianna if you haven't already gotten inundated?

nsfw drabbles | accepting

Keep reading

[screenshotsofdespair]

via hashtag-despair

[fleshforsaken]

“And I don’t know what you set out to accomplish in coming here,” Viktor replies, frowning. 

Well, other than to quell her own loneliness, but Viktor hardly sees that as an end in and of itself. He studies her face for a long moment, watching the minute changes in it. “What else do you want?”

If he just asks the right questions, perhaps then he can find answers.

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

Her mouth tightens on itself and stops her from talking and she doesn’t understand why. Something ticks out of rhythm, pulling inside her neck until it crunches back into place. It isn’t right.

“I want you stop asking me questions I can’t answer,” Orianna says.

[fleshforsaken]

“Well, you’re here now,” Viktor points out, lifting his head to finally look at her for more than a second. 

A machine should not look as lost and alone as Orianna does at this moment. The slight tilt of her head, the minuscule articulations in her face pinching into an almost pained expression (and Corin gave her expressions but no sentiment to fuel them why–). Viktor kneads his temples with the tips of his fingers, a sigh parting his lips.

“Now what?”

[1adyofc10ckw0rk]

Always so many questions with him when there is no way she could ever know the answers. Orianna is tense and annoyed, her fingers twitching against each other for lack of knowledge of what else to do.

“I don’t know,” she says. “This is your house.”