I am an adult and don't want to interact with minors on the internet! If youâre under 18, please block me.
I love collecting gifs and art and do not post much shipping content, but as a multishipper that is down for fictional toxicity I engage with: seedcest, Faith/Tracey, Faith/Sara, Faith/Joseph where she takes him out in the end, Joseph/Jerome, Mary May/John, Joey reverse torturing John, John/Kim/Nick, Jacob/Staci.
I do my best to tag right but please curate me from your timeline with a block if you need to.
Both ways I would appreciate it if you also block @fifthessen-ce so I donât accidentally unwantedly interact with you via likes, etc.
I post a lot of Faith: I donât consider Collapse canon to her story in 5. Itâs based almost entirely on the gameâs cut scenes and wiki and is unrelated to the narrative in Henbane and to the self-empowered Faith of 5âs lead writer. Enjoy Collapse if you enjoy it! My own scope is 5.
âwalk the path and trust in the Father.â â FAITH SEED
another faith seed live-action manip đŤ taking the opportunity to tag @thirteensthings (thank you for everything) @laindtt @taciturntraveller @voidika @la-grosse-patate @socially-awkward-skeleton just to show my latest creation â¨
ive been replaying again!! and this time, ive been spending a lot more time in the henbane. its so weird walking around without faith appearing randomly now :( i miss her
When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, "Come and see." So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death.
A commission for our lord and savior @jellyfishstatic. â¨â¨â¨ Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to work on such a Biblically accurate depiction of the Seedlings!!! đđđ Not gonna lie, this work may have turned me into a true believer.
Let me in your atmosphere
Inching closer, but I fear
That I'll love so much, you'll slip away
Getting twisted in my head
Dreams are nightmares in my bed
Since the last night that I spent with you
The state never arrives to confront Edenâs Gate. The world still goes to war. Mary May finds herself in a bunker with the man she shares an unwanted history with.
I revived this from my drafts and thought Iâd post this here since Iâm not sure if Iâll finish the other unfinished sections for AO3! Spoilers for Far Cry: Absolution.
*****
Driving down a public road with a carload of beer and liquor shouldnât have Mary May white knuckling the wheel at the prospect of sirens behind her regardless that the car is Jeromeâs and nobody has ever looked twice. As a man of God heâs an unlikely trafficking accomplice, but he approved of flouting the Peggie-led county prohibition on the transportation of alcohol.Â
The pistol holstered at her hip isnât for the cops, itâs for the cult.
âthe air goes white, dims, and goes white again as the warhead detonates over one of Montanaâs not-distant-enough, still-operating nuclear silos.Â
The autumn dry answers the flash with quick-kindling fire. Mary Mayâs grip presses the blood from her knuckles as she floors it toward the nearest homestead she knows. She shuts her eyes as each successive flash burns blinding white as Montanaâs buried missiles vaporize unlaunched.
She canât reconcile the clouds mushrooming toward the stratosphere with reality. Even as the first bombâs blast wave catches her, even as the car flips, the bottles shatter and the air fills with the sour of alcohol, the surreality â dissociation â empowers her to climb out the busted out window and, bleeding arms sliced by the glass, run for the house.
Sheâs the second person there.
Her heart drops so low the weight of her own feet crushes her pulse beneath them faced with a man as vile to her as John Seed shadowed by the smoke-darkened sky and hued orange by spreading wildfires.Â
She would have given the world to run to human company.Â
Now, she would give the world to have arrived alone.
Glass-cut, bleeding arms stinging, she unholsters her gun.Â
One hand merely rests on his pistol, the other raised placatingly, his eyes beseeching. She knows intimately his every semblance of human emotion is serpentine manipulation.
âWe donât have to kill each other, Mary May. I already promised Iâll always help you.â He smiles. Thereâs an unkind force of compulsion beneath his words as he says: âYou know I meant it, because youâre not in prison. I protected you from the consequences of your actions.â
âYou blackmailed me. If you really think Iâm waiting out nuclear fallout with you, of anybodyâŚâ
âI think my brother was right. We can litigate it later, once weâre safe.â
She hates to concede the point, but she has no reason to antagonize him and risk dying before she even attempts to survive. She lowers her gun. He takes his hand off the pistol grip.Â
Survival becomes the imperative. Her heart-stopping concern that the bunker might not open to them in the time it takes to rifle the homestead for a key is alleviated when John produces his own copy. Of course he has one. Nieasha and Devon Howard surrendered their property to pad his vast portfolio when they became his converts.Â
Mary May pulls the hatch secure behind them and joins him at the bottom of the ladder.
He looks down at his watch under the bunkerâs stark artificial light.
âI think we made it in under ten minutes. Or at least weâre not far enough over to just go ahead and croak.â
Suddenly swamped with emotion, exhaustion, and the pain of her lacerated arms, she moves stunned past him to drop onto the old plaid couch. Looking down at her shredded skin, she begins picking out slivers of glass.
Head underwater, she is aware he gets on the radio but she ignores him totally until she discovers him standing before her with a first aid kit heâs scrounged from the prepper stash.
She searches the deceptively boyish face of the man she despises. She swallows around the knot in her throat. Her voice sticks:
âItâs gone. Montana. The Spread Eagle. Just⌠gone. Everything.â
âWeâre not,â he says. His weight depresses the couch cushion beside her. âGod must still have a purpose for you.â
John Seed has slunk around the periphery of Mary Mayâs life for going on the greater part of it, an unnerving man who revealed himself in his full callous horror in a room wallpapered with human skin. He wets cotton balls with alcohol and cleans her wounds with hands as careful now as they had been sadistic with his tattoo gun in hand. He tweezes stinging splinters from the wounds with nearly-painless efficiency.Â
âWhat kind of God would create a world as evil as this?â she says.Â
âThe devil is the ruler of this world. His reign is ending, and despite your refusal to atone for your sins, your baptism preserved you. God has chosen you to live on in Paradise.â
He believes that to the bottom of his frigid heart.Â
She faces the value of his continued faith in her election, remembering how close the bullet meant to end her life fired from the gun of his sycophant struck the dirt before John changed perspectives on if he meant her to die or live. She holds back from challenging his conviction.Â
She studies him as he wraps her wounds: well groomed, but not clowned up like a lawyer, this set of once-expensive clothes now part of his everyday rotation, dirtied and, in places, frayed.Â
She hates him the most when heâs roving town looking slick in a suit and tie, the tattoos that have proliferated across his skin over the years covered except for the ink on his hands. Heâs even more dangerous with a briefcase than with a pistol, remaking the landscape of Hope County in his brotherâs fanatical image.Â
Generations of history vanished with his every transaction. Family businesses passed into his cultâs hands. Happy homes emptied to hollow shells.Â
These familiar resentments plunge into the shattering knowledge that fires rage above them.Â
Every familyâs story has been wiped from the face of this land, and not by John Seed.Â
She lurches off the couch, staggering the narrow width of the bunker to plant her palm on the cold concrete wall and vomit up her truck stop lunch, splattering the floor with a mush that used to be bread and fries and pink hot dog.Â
âWe are going to smell that for days,â John says with annoyance behind her.Â
Of course heâs alright with this.
Of course he is.Â
Heâs wanted this. Looked forward to it. People are dead and dying, even more will die sick from radiation poisoning, covered in burns and sores with their organs failing, and heâs glad for it.Â
As glad as he was she pulled the trigger and blew her brother's brains out the top of his head to spray into the smoke-choked air and splatter the Montana soil.
She grits her bile-sour teeth and sneers at the wall she remains resting heavily against. Her heart pounds against her ribs in sudden fury. Her voice drips condescension:
âYour brother didnât get dicked down by God. He just listens to the news.â
Johnâs humanity disappears.
âWatch how you speak about him.â
She rounds on him.Â
âGo ahead and shoot me, John. My rotting body will smell worse than my lunch before itâs safe to chuck me out.â
The icy rage souring his expression makes a cagey retreat toward calm.
âThereâs no reason for blasphemy. I didnât cause you to shoot Drew, and Joseph didnât cause this. Things will become clearer to you, now.â
She declines to respond, going to look for a towel to clean up her puke with and then washing it in the sink with as little water as possible, wondering what kind of recycling system theyâre on.
Their tensions disappear into purpose.Â
They begin inventorying their supplies, counting cans and mason jars. There is an ample stock of beer and liquor, though less here than was lost with Jeromeâs car. Mary May knows from the stony remove with which John regards it that heâs considering disposing of it, but with both their energy beginning to flag he chooses to wait to however-inevitably harp about sobriety.
They finish their inventory and take turns splashing water on their faces before eyeing the bunks where, she realizes, theyâll be spending a period of time stretching toward an unknown horizon just feet apart.Â
âIâm more of a top bunk sleeper,â she says, thinking of early childhood and Drew, the little brother she'd loved and thought she'd known, but then offers with more generosity than she feels: âUnless you are.â
âI was mostly an only child,â he says, baffling her. He doesnât explain except to say: âYou should have read his book.â
Whatever he means, the point washes out to him taking a seat on the bottom bunk as he strips his shirt off.
Itâs a little unfair, she starts to think, that despite having breasts nobody thinks once when menâ
She doesnât finish the thought. Although sheâs seen the scars he so proudly bears on his chest, and sheâs seen his shirtless brother, sheâs never caught sight of the extent of his self-mutilation: more sins, some crossed out; his favorite word, YES, large on his abdomen; straight streaks of keloids shining across his shoulders in the electric light that donât share the same controlled style, like lashes.Â
She remembers his tattoo gun stabbing its needles into her, the vicious pain he inflicted inking her down to the bone. Heâs promised to cut a single strip of her flesh from her, someday, but it seems heâs made a long habit of carving up his own.
âDid your brother hurt you like this?â
He looks surprised to be asked.Â
âNothing that wasnât reciprocal. We believe in self discipline.â Placidly, he adds: âYouâll come to understand this, too.â
âa conversation-ending reminder heâs a psychopath.Â
She retreats the scant distance the upper berth permits.Â
*****
The scratch of Mary Mayâs pencil fills the quiet of the bunker, the calculations she scribbles on the paper ripped from one of the Howardâs notebooks familiar from years of taking stock of the Spread Eagleâs kitchen, beer, and liquor.Â
She slides the paper with their tallied list of supplies across the table for Johnâs inspection.
âTwo years.âÂ
He no more than glances over it, trusting her expertise, and nods.
âThatâs far more than enough. We can try to join the others, eventually, when itâs safer to walk the fallout. Itâs not a priority with this much to eat.â
Her brow furrows above the line her lips press to.
âThey donât need you to lead them?â
Blue eyes stunning in the cool white electric light stare clear and calm into hers. John smiles.
âI am the voice crying out âIn the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.â Iâve played my role in this.â
She had resented him painfully, inartfully tattooing âenvyâ she hadnât felt into her flesh. A wellspring of envy she doesnât deny bursts forth in her chest. Heâd been right too early. She longs for his faith, as delusional as it obviously is.
She rubs her dry eyes, willing back tears. She cried last night while he slept the sleep of the righteous. She promises herself she wonât shed a tear while heâs watching.Â
His focus narrows. Heâs looking straight through her eyes to rifle through her weaknesses.Â
âIt would be better for you if you atone before I bring you to the Project,â he says.
âShut up, John.â
His fingertips drum tabletop alongside their inventory.
âWe have time.â
âYou talked to them, on the radio?â
âThere had been a danger the bunkers could be misflagged as active silos. God preserved us. All three arks were spared from the strikes. A new worldâs coming.â
âIâmâŚâ She couldnât bring herself to say âgladâ, or anything like it. She offered a weak, pained smile in place of it, and said: âExcuse me if I believe that last part when I see it.â
âYou know, I like your defiance. But itâs no secret Iâve always liked you, Mary May.â He held up a placating hand. âYou think Iâm a creep, and itâs not mutual.â
She blows a strand of hair from her face, slinging an arm over the back of her chair as she slouches against its back.
âAt least let me be the one to say it.â
Griefâs terrible shadow suddenly engulfs her.
Paralysis spreads through her limbs. She wants to scream herself hoarse. She wants to kick the chair over onto the concrete floor. She imagines her fist striking the wall until her knuckles split.Â
She canât raise her voice above a whisper, saying:Â
âDonât you care, just a little?âÂ
He slides the hand resting beside their inventory millimeters forward across the table, a strictly metered gesture at connection.
âI canât. You wouldnât either, if you were me. My brother thinks itâs my least laudable trait. I donât want to tell you a thing about it. I think I will, when weâre bored enough for that.â
She dizzies with the aching thought of all the people she may never see again. Casey. Jerome. The neighbors who filled the seats of the bar she inherited from her mom and dad â people from all walks of life she chatted and laughed whose cares she eased with liquor, yes, but more so as a friendly face with a friendly ear. Â
âDonât hold back on my account,â John says.
By the time sheâs stopped screaming her throatâs torn raw. Sheâs staring at the chair she smashed into the wall. The first day of sheltering in place, and sheâll already have to straighten the leg.Â
She collapses onto the concrete, sobbing and snotting. She wipes her eyes on her bandaged forearm, thinks better of it, and uselessly shakes her arm out as if it could dissipate the salty damp sooner.Â
The dirt-backed walls eat sound, the devastated world outside hidden distant and muted.Â
She could no more hold back the grief than she can believe she let him watch her.Â
âGo away?âÂ
The legs of his chair scrape on the concrete. He passes her, shutting the door to the deeper bunker.Â