THIS IS A LOVE STORY.

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[usheirs-deactivated20200809]

all my aching bones are trembling ,  and i may yet fall apart  - won’t you stay with me ,  my darling ,  when the war starts in my heart ? 

ft .  @anchoir

[anchoir-a]

𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙳𝙾 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙷𝙾𝙻𝙳 𝚈𝙾𝚄𝚁 𝙻𝙾𝚅𝙴?

DAISY      /      in your teeth.      love has uneven edges but it is something you sink your teeth into. with love you give all of yourself over and feel everything as it happens- good and bad. for you love can be a fight, whether it's hard won or hard lost (or hard to hold on to), love has a way of leaving it's impression in your skin. it's not that it hurts, it's just that it knows your tender spots and seems to hit those first.

tagged by: @baseyra tagging: whoever wants to!

[wrongplaceworsttime]

Visit Original Link

oh ashes ashes, dust to dust

the devil’s after both of us

[anchoir-a]

baseyra​,      basira hussain.

the feel of daisy’s skin against her hand makes something within basira swell, like a rising orchestra, like a growing sore. iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou, she doesn’t say. basira wishes for the conviction that had brought her here, that had kept her alive, that she could save daisy, but – it’s gone.

and that’s the truth, isn’t it? there might be no way out of this coffin for her partner. the kind thing, the humane thing, might be to kill her, but basira is at heart a selfish person and she cannot do that. not before – her mind whirls, trying to put together some semblance of a plan, something she can obsess over and believe in and follow to a happy ending. 

would jon know how to help them? he’d saved daisy once before when basira couldn’t ( and how that had haunted her ). that could be the next step then, to find jon and whatever was left of his humanity and try to get daisy saved (saved, or ripped away from what was keeping her strong and safe? saved for herself or saved for basira, clipped and neutered and kept away from what loves her?)

and maybe this isn’t basira’s decision to make. her thumb strokes along the soft curve of daisy’s bloodstained cheek as if she’s doing something forbidden, something profane. but she knows better. “whatever you want to do, then.” basira says, and the offer feels strange and unfamiliar. letting the control go like that is terrifying in a way that has nothing to do with the blood around her partner’s mouth. she hadn’t realized how cold she was until she’s touching daisy, the warmth from her sinking into basira’s core, her heart, her bones, like there isn’t a single part of her that doesn’t have daisy’s burning fingerprints all over. 

“i don’t care. you’re my partner, daisy. i never should have run when you told me to. i never should have…” is she – shit, is she crying? or is it just the horrible heat of being able to feel again?

has her heart always beat so deafeningly when basira is near?      is it even hers at all that she’s hearing,      or is she so aware of the blood that flows within them both that she could hear basira’s,      too,      even with the distance of an outstretched arm separating them.      this small mercy of touch could freeze her in place if she let it;      going closer means removing her face from basira’s hand,      and that is nearly unthinkable.

nearly.      she does move:      slowly,      dragging all her sharpened edges along the dirty ground until she can rest her head on basira’s lap.      god,      how long has it been since daisy laid down?      since she stopped moving?      she never was good at keeping track of time;      even before the sun and moon were taken,      the days had blurred together.      basira always was the more logical of the two,      so much more grounded in reality;      daisy’s always moved in a rush of fear and crimson and knives and bullets,      and once she may have said they balance each other out,      thought the contrast was what made them work,      but she is no longer so sure.

‘      dunno what i want,      ’            she murmurs.      muffled,      curled up against basira as she is.      there are vague flashes of images in her mind when she thinks of want:      warmth and clean hands and safety,      daisy safe but more importantly everyone else safe,      safe from the world and safe from the eye that watches and safe from herself,      and conversely,      a thread of wanting for carnage and running and tearing things apart with her teeth,      anything,      anything she can reach.      the undercurrent of both warring strands in her mind,      the constant:      basira,      basira,      basira.

she shakes her head.      it is selfish to want the hunt and to want basira.      it will not end well.            ‘      don’t do that.      ’            puts something growling behind the words,      though there’s no weight in it.      she isn’t angry,      she just doesn’t know how else to make herself heard.            ‘      if i      ...      when i get bad again,      i want you to run.      always want you safe,      ‘sira.      ’            daisy turns her head up,      looks to basira’s face.      it’s never really dark anymore      —      the better to see you with      —      and she can reach up,      the blood on her fingers smearing with the tears she wipes away.      makes a mess trying to comfort.      (      and isn’t that what she always does?      daisy,      such a soft name for such a brutal thing.      )            ‘      ...      i don’t want to hurt you.      ’            i love you.

[rrazorlove]

bite the hand - boy genius // seeing red - @/its_not_safe_here on instagram // cop car - mitski // i know the end - phoebe bridgers // unknown // wishbone - richard siken // sylvia plath // gleipner - walter ford // cursedsuggestion

[anchoir-a]

WHICH NONCANON GAY SHAKESPEARE COUPLE ARE YOU?

DAISY      /      MERCUTIO & TYBALT.            Don’t you just love a good enemies to lovers story? The tension in the rivalry, the fire in the competition and the absolute homoeroticism of stabbing your love with a sword (not just your sword if you know what I mean ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ). You are free-spirited and hotheaded, unafraid to do what you want and constantly challenge social norms. You have hardcore chaotic gay energy, and there is a charisma to it, a method to your madness, and it makes you just glow like a beacon in social events. You’re all about living in the moment and pushing your luck to the edge, but sometimes that luck runs out, and you find yourself bleeding out on the floor, as you watch the person you care about walk away. And you wonder, did you push too far? Or did the universe just decide it wasn’t meant to be?

tagged by @baseyra.      tagging you? idk. say i tagged you if you wanna.

[dialecstatic]

“There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on fire. There are graves and they are on fire and the things coming out of the graves are on fire. The house you grew up in is on fire. There is a gigantic trebuchet on fire on the edge of a crater and the crater is on fire. There is a complex system of tunnels deep underneath the surface with only one entrance and one exit and the entire system is filled with fire. There is a wooden cage we’re trapped in, too large to see, and it is on fire. There are jaguars on fire. Wolves. Spiders. Wolf-spiders on fire. If there were people. If our fathers were alive. If we had a daughter. Fire to the edges. Fire in the river beds. Fire between the mattresses of the bed you were born in. Fire in your mother’s belly. There is a little boy wearing a fire shirt holding a baby lamb. There is a little girl in a fire skirt asking if she can ride the baby lamb like a horse. There is you on top of me with thighs of fire while a hot red fog hovers in your hair. There is me on top of you wearing a fire shirt and then pulling the fire shirt over my head and tossing it like a fireball through the fog at a new kind of dinosaur. There are meteorites disintegrating in the atmosphere just a few thousand feet above us and tiny fireballs are falling down around us, pooling around us, forming a kind of fire lake which then forms a kind of fire cloud. There is this feeling I get when I am with you. There is our future house burning like a star on the hill. There is our dark flickering shadow. There is my hand on fire in your hand on fire, my body on fire above your body on fire, our tongues made of ash. We are rocks on a distant and uninhabitable planet. We have our whole life ahead of us.”

— the fire cycle by zachary schomburg, obviously 

[anchoir-a]

eyesolate​,      tim stoker.

‘       I MISSED YOU TOO.      ’        her arms around him,      cheek pressed to the fever-hot of his chest      —       it’s almost a surprise to tim that sasha still fits there:       as if there should have been some monumental change,       some residual discordance to mark where their places in the cosmos have shifted.      piecemeal as he is,     wearing the roadmap of his destruction and rebirth     …      it’s almost a surprise,       in the same way that it’s not,         not at all. 

(        they’d had a conversation about soulmates,         once,         in the way you find things to talk about when spending long hours of office tedium with someone you can actually talk to     —      mostly tongue-in-cheek,        half an excuse to each wax poetic on their various esoteric knowledges and niche interests without sounding like prats,        another part an excuse to look closer into the lens with which the other viewed the world,         to understand each other on the things that don’t mean anything really,        and the things that mean everything actually when you really look at it.

tim,      in truth,        had really held no strong feelings about the concept,      but dug his heels in on the notion simply because he could,     because he liked the furrow it put on sasha’s brow and the way she smiled quizzically at tim as she tried to work out if he was teasing her.      because he’d wanted to play romantic for the afternoon,      step into martin’s shoes and buy into the notion that love could be so powerful a force in the universe that it might be written into our bones,     sewn into the threads of our very souls.     that there might be someone for everyone out there     —     not necessarily an other half,      because why would something so erratic as the universe ever deal in something so specific as monogamy     —      but a person,      people,       to add to the wholeness of ones own heart,      to complement and complete another in their own ways,      for however long they last in the scale of forever.

they’d talked all afternoon,      down in those basements lined with ghost stories,       straying and returning to the idea of soulmates as new thoughts occurred and with them,      new theories and rebuttals.      and tim doesn’t know really when it happened       —      where among the files the moment might be stacked and archived,      chronicled for future researchers seeking confirmation of the unexplainable and the cosmic,       or simply having the same debate in the same bored office-hours with the same something without yet a name or decisive action to take,       growing      —        but somewhere tim realised perhaps his theories of having another so in tune with the frequency of ones soul that it became tangible,      had just a little bit of everything to do with the way sasha would snort and break off into laughter before he’d even finished setting up the joke.         )

now,        a hundred years between that conversation and where they stand now,        sasha is holding him like she’s thrown herself on a grenade,      like she can retroactively protect tim from the blast and fallout if only she can keep him close enough.      and despite her urgency,      despite the way it clenches in his chest like he’s holding his breath and she’s his reminder to breathe,       it’s so inexplicably routine      —      as if they’d never missed a moment,       like months hadn’t passed and they both hadn’t become the monsters they’d read about in dusty old statements into equally archaic tape recorders       —      when tim’s hand goes instinctively to the pocket of her coat,       reaching around to find the keychain her house key is kept on,      and he walks them with deliberate,       shuffling steps and a chuckle into the fading pink of her hair,      a couple inches closer to the door so he can unlock it over her shoulder and she doesn’t have to let go.

the door swings open with the same groan it always has,      and tim thinks again that she really ought to grease that hinge even though he knows she never will,       and everything is different because he’d spent months waiting for the moment his heart would finally stop,      so he’d stop having to feel so overwhelmed and lost in everything;        because he’d kissed her once and known it would be the last time.             and now he’s standing in her doorway again,     held so surely in her arms that he almost worries sasha will melt into him too,     find her place among the waxwork and be consumed,       completing the patchwork quilt he wears as a body,      as if their soulmate theories could ever be proven by something so fearful as his revenant desolation.

and he’s not sure there’s room enough in his firepit-heart for how it feels like he’s come home.

‘       lucky for you,       ’        tim feels for the lightswitch on the wall,     still guiding them over the threshold as a single unit,      words as conversational as if he were talking about the weather,           ‘       i think my arms might actually be longer than they were before they got,      yunno,       blown off.       ’

it’s all so familiar that for a moment,      face tucked against tim’s shirt and eyes all closed,      it’s as if nothing has shifted:      that near-burning warmth coming off of tim just the remnants of a day spent in the sun,      the eye scratching at the back of her mind and whispering of unseen dangers simply imagination.      of course tim still knows what pocket she keeps her keys in.      of course he can unlock her door almost without looking.      no matter how much time has passed,      it’s a routine well-rehearsed;      they could do this in their sleep.

sasha does not know if she has a soul,      a self,      immutable and able to be understood by anyone without the ability to search within her mind.      even she doesn’t understand herself;      for every response she thinks she will have,      the reality is significantly more reckless,      and her mental-image has never adjusted to the experiences that have told otherwise.      in the calm of his embrace she is ready to abandon every argument against soulmates she’s ever clung to;      all the you’ve watched too many shitty rom-coms, tim      and      it’s impossible      and      why would something as vast as the universe care about individual human love falling to the wayside in an instant.

they’d never dared,      in the entirety of that long-ago debate,      to apply the word to themselves.      in this moment sasha feels entirely and terrifyingly sure that if she has a soulmate,      it is tim.

(      so they’ve changed.      so he is patchworked and half-waxen,      wreathed in holy flame,      undead by any definition of the word,      put back together by something she cannot fathom.      so her eyes are more static-silver than brown nowadays,      her voice laced with a power monstrous and beautiful,      her hair uneven around the tips of her ears as she haunts the nightmares of those foolish enough to tell her their stories.      they still fit together as seamlessly as ever,      and for this,      she could never be grateful enough.      )

he guides them through the door and she steps back just a fraction;      not quite letting go,      hands still ghosting over his shirt,      but far enough to look at him.      far enough to meet his eyes,      let a smile spread across her face.      (      she can’t help it.      love clings stubbornly on,      and she will not let him disappear a second time.      )

sasha is proud that she only flinches a bit at the blunt reminder of the explosions that had led them here.      the image plays back in her mind clear as day,      that last moment of eye contact between them so clear among the incomprehensible chaos of the circus’ ritual:      she had known,      going into the building with explosives ready to blow,      what would happen,      the shrieking finality of a banshee’s wail,      but the reality of that goodbye in tim’s eyes as he’d pressed the detonator had still shocked her.      it’s an image so oft-repeated but has lost none of its impact      —      and it can hardly hold a candle to the image of tim here,      in front of her,      alive,      in her apartment like it’s exactly where he belongs.      (      and it is.      )      

‘      lucky for me,      ’            she repeats,      rolling her eyes as she reaches back to close the door behind them;      they work in tandem to make something dark and half-empty into a home safe to exist in,      and it feels right.           ‘      luckier if you hadn’t been blown to bits in the first place,      but i’ll take what i can get.      ’

with a half-broken laugh,      sasha leans her head back on his shoulder.      it’s enough to just exist in the same space as him for a while.      she didn’t think she’d ever get to again,      after all.      softly,      after a second:            ‘      you alright?      what with the being blown up thing.      ’            she won’t press if he doesn’t want to talk about it;      she is all too aware that,      if she wanted,      she could lace her voice with beholding and make a conversation unavoidable,      but she doesn’t.      keeps her question casual,      though her voice is filled with such love and relief it renders all of her attempts at a carefree tone entirely void.      (      she can’t bring herself to mind too much.      )

[anchoir-a]

baseyra​,      basira hussain.

“daisy,” there’s some kind of benediction in her eyes, for all daisy avoids them. basira raises a careful, steady hand to daisy’s face, but stops just inches before cupping her cheek, waiting for a sign of permission. or a sign to the opposite.

that she shouldn’t be doing this, she should be going for her gun now. where is the cold-blooded woman that survived the unknowing, survived the institute, survived the end of the world? perhaps she’s drowning somewhere under all the tears basira can’t afford to cry.

“we can fix this,” basira says, like if she says it desperately enough it might be true. “we can. we can save each other.” the eye in the sky must be staring down at them, mocking, and some distant part of her snarls at the intrusion. “please don’t leave me, daisy,” like repeating her name helps somehow, like it’s a prayer. “we can –” she’s choking up. “we’ll get you back to –”

to normal? and how did you treat her then? achingly, basira remembers the kid gloves she’d treated daisy with after her partner escaped the buried. the things she’d said to jon, the things daisy might have heard. DEAD WEIGHT. god, how could she have –

how had daisy not given in sooner, when the alternative was a partner alternately too cruel and too scared to spend time with her? and what part of daisy had basira first fallen in love with? how much of her (how much of them) was the hunt? the spark in her eyes during a chase, surely. the wild way she laughed, like it was just as surprising and new to her as to basira.

what if she was doing the wrong thing, trying to strip daisy back to the way she’d been before. skinny and miserable? what if she’s always been doing the wrong thing?

“just don’t leave,” basira finishes, awkward and wrong.

actions are easier than words.      it takes her far longer to process anything basira has said than it does to rest her face upon the offered hand,      nearly gasping at the contact.      (      there is blood on her face,      and it must now be staining basira’s hand;      close enough to her mouth for it to have smeared off sharp teeth and onto skin.      )      basira is begging her to stay,      and she wants to scream:      where else would i go?

basira’s caught her.      the chase is over,      at least for the moment.      they can rest.

and then things snap into place and her eyes go a little clearer,      the call of her name slotting into her memory alongside basira’s,      where it was always meant to go.      daisyandbasira,      nearly one creature for how close they had once been.      basiraanddaisy.      slurred together:      she remembers a time she’d been able to look at basira and tell exactly what she would do,      exactly what she was thinking;      those little nonverbal ticks that pass for communication among partners as close as they.

‘      daisy.      that’s me,      isn’t it?      ’            her voice is low,      but some of the fear from it has dissolved.      it isn’t quite a question,      for basira has answered it already:      but it is something she had not known a moment ago,      or had not wanted to know,      for wolves do not have names and beasts do not have loved ones and if she is human she is not herself,      is not doing what she was meant to do in this broken-up skeleton of a once-living world.      she no longer knows how to care if she is fulfilling some bleeding destiny.

for a few minutes,      at least,      basira is far more important.      daisy can’t see far enough into the future to know if she can make it last,      if she can starve the hunt from her once more      (      faint memory of gravesoil caking her palms and choking her as it fills her throat with the stuff of tombstones;      of a hand pulling her out,      not basira’s,      but      ...      somebody important      )      and return to something shaped like humanity.      (      already her edges are softening.      knives dulled.      )

‘      i won’t leave.      promise.      ’            she is hungry for every stolen moment of humanity,      every moment of basira she could possibly get;      though unsafe,      though unwise,      though both of them should be anywhere else,      it seems the only option to stay here with basira’s hand gripped tightly in her own,      the other brushing against daisy’s face,      their names ringing in tandem in her ears.            ‘      dunno if you can save me though.      i don’t      ...      i don’t know’f i’m something that can be saved,      anymore.      ’            somewhere in the back of her mind,      she takes note of basira’s phrasing:      save each other,      and daisy wonders what basira needs saving from.      wonders if perhaps basira saying her name had been,      in itself,      a kind of salvation;      if this trust is something holy,      if the care with which basira treats her counts as redemption,      if it could clean off the blood and leave her shining anew.      daisy wonders if either of them would want it to.      perhaps both of them prefer daisy bloodied and monstrous.      she can’t quite recall.

[anchoir-a]

baseyra​,      basira hussain.

of course she shouldn’t trust daisy. basira’s lived her life all careful pragmatism, all smarts and odds, and she knows she’s being stupid, holding her hand out like this. but how is this different from any time she’s ever been vulnerable with daisy, from sleeping beside her after the coffin to the first time she trusted the blonde to watch her back in the field? a history of bad decisions, she’s sure that logical part of her will say, but it’s gone silent because basira will never be able to look at it, at anything she’s ever done for daisy and with daisy, as any kind of mistake.

daisy’s palm is rough against her own, rough and calloused and achingly familiar. it feels right, basira’s hand slipping into daisy’s, even if the other’s hand is slightly more than human, with more claws than nails. basira doesn’t care. basira will never care. not now that she knows what losing daisy is like twice-over. her fingers curl, carefully, anchoring daisy’s skin against hers, and it’s still not enough.

basira wants to hold daisy to her and never let go, hold her so tightly that their hearts fuse, grotesque and fairy-taled. ( and look at her, look at where she is now! spouting half-assed poetry instead of being sensible and reaching for her gun again. she’ll lie to herself and blame it on the apocalypse. )

“you’re my partner,” basira says, and the word feels woefully inadequate for everything that they were to each other, everything daisy still is. basira doesn’t know if daisy still needs her, with the hunt transforming her and singing its song in her veins, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t give up without a fight.

she laughs a little, and it comes out low and harsh. “we haven’t been safe for a long time.” and if i have to die today, this is how i want it to be, her melancholy eyes convey as she tries to  meet daisy’s gaze. how we started. with you, with me.

“i’m not leaving you,” basira says, even if it’s not what daisy wants, because she is selfish and cruel and maybe she always has been. you’ll have to kill me first. “tell me how i can help.” help silence the hunger, she means, but if the only way she can help is by hunting by daisy’s side, basira isn’t sure she could say no. if the only way to help was to open up her rib cage and let daisy eat her heart, she’d do it in seconds, but basira doesn’t know –doesn’t want to know –what little it would take to make her kill for her partner.

god,      basira’s laugh.      she wants to hear it genuine,      not this half-choked harshness,      but that’s far too much to ask for here,      and she’ll take what she can get      —      anything basira’ll give her,      anything at all,      because she doesn’t deserve any of it but she’s ravenous for it nonetheless.      ‘s what the hunt is,      isn’t it?      hunger for something that shouldn’t be yours.      she thinks basira might be hers anyways,      and isn’t sure if that scares her or not.

and so the list of things she knows about herself grows.      basira’s partner in every shade of that word.      someone basira trusts against all odds,      even as she looks with fearreflecting eyes in the dark;      someone who’s holding basira’s hand,      someone basira doesn’t want to leave even though it’s so stupid of her to stay.      someone.

she feels more solid,      more real,      more human than she does since      ...      she doesn’t remember.

and with that comes all the fear and the fire of humanity;      comes the bonedeep knowledge of that unblinking sky and the knowledge that she couldn’t survive losing basira,      and perhaps it’s easier to be nothing but bestial and monstrous and hungry,      nothing but fangs and blood,      but she’s being pulled into something softer by the second.      it won’t last.      this tenderness will die and the call of bleeding things will overtake her again but for a moment daisy’s nearly human,      nearly daisy again,      holding basira’s hand,      and      —

‘      it’s so loud,      ’            she murmurs,      quiet,      almost inaudible beneath the roar of her own veins in her ears,      her pulse hammering with a ferocity she cannot match.      (      it urges her to scream along,      tear her lungs up with the force of it as she hunts and kills and drowns out the sound however she can,      but she will not listen.      if she holds her breath she can hear basira’s heartbeat.            you should’ve killed me:      the thought enters her mind fully formed,      and she knows it to be true.      a broken promise.      she has to hold herself motionless to keep from glancing towards the gun.

she wouldn’t have stopped basira,      she doesn’t think.      would’ve fought,      but wouldn’t’ve had any heart in it      —      her heart’s always been with basira,      hasn’t it?      still won’t if it comes to that.      it would be the smart thing to do,      but basira doesn’t care about that,      does she?      just cares about daisy for some fucking reason.      she shouldn’t but she does and daisy cannot find it in her to be ungrateful for that.

‘      so loud,      ‘sira.      can barely remember anything before this.      just      ...      the hunt.      ’            she scowls down at the ground,      teeth bared.      the words scrape their way up her throat:      she owes basira explanations,      doesn’t she?      but she’s never been good at those.      words.      always all bite and no bark.      no reasoning to back herself up,      just instincts and urges and promises kept and oaths broken.            ‘      don’t know if i can trust myself.      i don’t want to hurt you.      ’

[violentwavesofemotion]

“They want me to be one thing. And I’m not one thing.”

— Alice Notley, from an interview conducted c. October 2017 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[anchoir-a]

pride icon!

[anchoir-a]

baseyra‌,      basira hussain.

are  you  okay.  it’s  a  stupid  question,  and   daisy’s  shrug  makes  basira  want  to  laugh.  but  if  she  starts   laughing,  that’s  already  too  much  emotion  on  display  and  she   doesn’t  think  she  can  handle  that.  careful  eyes  track  daisy’s   every  little  movement,  telling  herself  it’s  out  of  caution  and maybe  it  is,  but  she  also  wants  to  take  in  every  aspect  of her  partner,  memorize  her.  just  in  case  she  loses  her  again. in  case  daisy  decides  basira’s  a  failure,  no  good  at  her   promise,  and  kills  her.  or  leaves  her.  basira  should  know   which  one  of  those  is  worse,  right? her  voice,  as  she   struggles  to  speak,  makes  basira’s  heart  ache.  seeing  daisy   like  this,  struggling  just  to  talk,  just  remain  human  for  her –  would  it  be  kinder  to  let  go,  let  her  give  into  the   hunt  and  rip  basira  apart?  would  it  hurt  both  of  them  less? “if i  ran  i  might  lose  you,”  she  says,  her  own  voice  rough  not from  disuse  but  from  emotion.  her  hands  twist  in  each  other, animals  of  their  own,  calloused  and  slim.  “and  if  i  lost   you  again  i  think  i’d  die.” she doesn’t realize that it’s true until she’s said it, but it is. DAISY  –finding  daisy,   even  if  it’s  to  kill  her,  has  been  the  only  thing  basira   has  keeping  herself  alive,  keeping  her  shooting  and  slashing   her  way  through  the  screaming  flesh  and  staggering  upright  out of  the  burning desolation.

without  her partner,  without  these  stakes,  basira  would  have  given  up miles  ago,  so  it  looks  like  daisy’s  saved  her  again.  she  glances  again  towards  the  gun,  out  of  her  reach  and  taking  that  horrible  choice  away  from  her,  at  least  for  now.  she  holds  out  a  hand,  a  careful  gesture,  an  offer  for  daisy  to  come  closer.  greedy,  selfish.  basira’s  missed  her  so  long,  she  needs  to  feel  daisy’s  hand  in  hers,  to  know  that  this  isn’t  some  fucked  up  dream.  “i  trust  you,”  she  adds,  maybe  as  a  response  to  daisy’s  question,  maybe  because  she  needs  to  say  it  before  she  explodes.  she  means  so  many  things:  she  trusts  daisy  not  to  kill  her.  she  trusts  that  daisy  still  loves  her.  if  she  has  to  die,  she  trusts  daisy  not  to  make  it  hurt.  

how basira frames losing her like it’d be something so terrible to be unthinkable.      thinks she’d die if it happened.      she can’t conceive of it      —      can only process it in reverse,      tearing the words apart and reshaping them:      losing basira would be a fate worse than death.      worse than being torn apart by sharp teeth and sharper claws.      she’s found basira again,      and if basira had run,      she thinks she’d’ve chased her.      not for the thrill of the hunt that roars in her veins but for something deeper:      love is a word she cannot quite form in her mouth but that must be it,      mustn’t it?      nothing else could hurt this badly.      like a wound.      she glances down at her own chest and half expects to find it bloody.

basira’s hand.      this must be a trick,      a beartrap waiting to be stepped into,      some part of her thinks.      but no.      there’s something in the tracking of basira’s eyes that’s familiar,      the easy memorization of someone well-loved.      (      is that her?      is she loved?      )      she stares with too-wide eyes,      yellowed irises and catslit pupils,      for a moment too long,      but not taking basira’s hand was never an option.      she will always take basira’s hand.      (      and if it is some sort of trick?      faint memory:      promise me.      doesn’t quite remember the promise itself but knows she would not blame basira for keeping it.      )      her hands have sharpened into points but her movements are so slow,      careful to a fault,      inching close enough in increments,      reaching out her arm and placing her hand so gently against basira’s.      just barely touching.

she doesn’t remember the last time she touched anyone without intending to kill.      doesn’t recall the last time softness was in her vocabulary      (      or,      to that matter,      the last time she cared enough to have a vocabulary at all,      not relying on simple instinct      ).

‘      you shouldn’t,      ’            she says.      not even close to a snarl anymore.      just      ...      quiet.      shouldn’t trust me,      almost delayed enough to forget what she’s responding to:      such a declaration and it’s wrong,      it’s foolish,      trust isn’t meant for a world like this nor a creature like her and against all instinct she does not want to see basira hurt.      doesn’t want that stupid trust to turn around on her.      still:      her other hand comes up to circle basira’s,      a silent plea not to let go regardless.      it’s selfish.      she’s never claimed to be anything but.

‘      it isn’t smart to stay.      ‘t’s not safe.      you’re smarter than that.      ’            she doesn’t say don’t leave anyway,      doesn’t beg for the things she wants.      doesn’t even know how to put all this want into words.      she’s watching their hands instead of looking into basira’s eyes;      isn’t sure she could stand to see herself reflected in familiar pupils right now.      (      doesn’t know what she’s worried she’d find:      that she’s just as animal as she’s felt the past who-knows-how-long,      or that she’s unbearably human as she faces the woman she loves?      )

[anchoir-a]

eyesolate‌,      tim stoker.

“     yea, yea   ,   laugh it up   ,    james.     ”       tim had not been scared.    the  bats   ,   as tim has decided they were  ,    had been an unexpected rustling in the rafters   ;   a disruption in the otherwise   ,   frankly pretty uneventful mapping of the first floor   —    no big deal at all.    just caught him off guard.    and he’s sure they were just bats.

 it’s not like it’s even overly spooky   ;  the house feels more like something out of an old scooby-doo  ,   with dust so thick it catches your footprint cartoonishly in the beam of torchlight as you look behind you, and half the furniture draped in white painters cloth.   the statement itself   ,   for fear of sounding like jon   ,    honestly hadn’t been much better   —   something something , voices ,  something something , the dark , wicked house , awful , etcetera etcetera  —   but still, tim had fought tooth and nail with jon to do some proper follow-up , even managing to find more cohesive arguments for the necessity of their exploration than just waggling his brows and pointing out how long it’d been since their last B-and-E.

he flashes sasha a wolfish grin in their torchlight   ,    knocking her right back with his elbow. 

          “      see how you’re laughing when i feed you to the bat-ghosts and leave you here. you’re trapped now.     me and the ghost-bats have been in cahoots with the–    what was it  ?       spooky fog  ?    this whole time.    ”

‘      oh,      of course.      how’d i miss that alliance before?      —      i’m sure if i pulled out a microscope,      there’d be ghost bat shits all over your flat.      it’s been your evil plan all along!      you’ve lured me into your ghost batcave,      stoker.      ’            feigns the action heroine putting together the villain’s plot,      all incredulous doe-eyes shining in torchlight as she connects the dots.      their voices bounce off the dusty walls and echo back.      it’d be eerie if she weren’t so focused on the incredible importance of their conversation      —      as is,      she brushes a hanging cobweb out of her way absentmindedly,      grinning right back at tim.

all the statement’s spooky cliches had been upstairs,      anyways.      ground floor’s got nothing for them.      up they go.      there’ll almost certainly be more bats upstairs,      and sasha takes a bit of glee in the prospect of seeing tim jump at the sound of them again.

pauses on the stairs,      turning back to tim,      giving him a look up-and-down.            ‘      tragically,      you’ll miss me within five minutes of leaving me here.      spooky fog won’t even have a chance before you charge back in to rescue me.      or is that part of your plan as well?      make yourself look heroic?      i’ll tell you now,      i’m not going to buy it.      ’

[lyric-aes]

tam lin (traditional)

[ofvast]

[anchoir-a]

thinks abt how anais got marked by the beholding specifically because of a lapse in being watched — her family didn’t care enough to keep an eye on her and as a direct result she fell into an old ritual site & became targeted by the eye