[millenarism]

Life is a Fate Worse Than Death || Drabble

Mentioned: Andrew Eugene Vitali, Anubis The Dog, Henry “Love-of-Lena’s-Life” Lacroix

Darkness had long since pulled a wandering mind under, steadily losing the ability to resist the siren call of slumber. A welcome deviation from decades of uneasiness masquerading as normalcy. Vision darkened by embracing lashes and eternities lost in the fray. France felt millennia removed from the obsidian abyss they had once called home—Rome had once been where she committed herself to an early grave, but somehow she had escaped. Escaped less alone than she had been when she was brought to the city by someone she now knew to be a stranger. So many people were strangers—and she’d loved them all.

The list was longer than she had intended and it spiraled through her mind, relentlessly, until the darkness faded to grey and a figure stepped from the shadows. A face like withered parchment, cinder and ash falling away from putrid, rotting flesh as familiar eyes bore themselves in the cavity of a hollow skull. A mouth without lips parted and teeth clattered to the floor. The figure spoke in a familiar cadence—his face something she had long since lost. A voice she had nearly forgotten.

A last letter.

Life is too short for so much sorrow.

So breathe, Lena, and be not discouraged. Do not mourn me, I don’t want your grief. Know that I’m with you in the grass, and crepuscular stars, and that somehow I will never leave you. Somehow I will always love you.

Thank you for a wonderful life, Lena.

xx Eugene

Lena would know those words anywhere. Words etched into her mind, hidden somewhere in the recesses of ancient books she had been gifted. Anubis the only living reminder of the man that had once loved her.

Andrew Eugene Vitali.

Magdalene was suddenly at the door of the Vitali Manor again. He was dying.

The flesh of a fist connected desperately with mahogany until weak skin broke. She called to him until her voice could no longer go on. Until her knees connected with the steps, posture rounding, with hands pressed to the ground. He was dying and she was alone.

He left her everything. Anubis the only comfort to be found in the month to come. The months before she accepted a mission that took her out of the country for a full year. Where she would be Krystyna Rudenko to anyone who asked.

The corpse stepped forward, shattering the memory, and forcing a scream from her throat.

Lena shot up in bed, a gasp wrapped around vocal chords, hand instinctively pressed to her stomach. Hazy gaze cleared and she was safe. Home. Anubis caught the disturbance and adjusted to check on Lena, but her legs swung over the bed too quickly. 

Feet carried her to the bathroom, knees hitting tile, chestnut tresses falling forward to shield her face. One hand remained pressed to her stomach, the other grasped the cold porcelain, as she was promptly sick. It was impossible to discern whether the tears and pin pricks of brackish liquid trickling down her neck were from hormonal adjustments or reliving the horror of watching someone die from afar and abandoning people she had once called family.

Her hands trembled and she felt weak.

The sound of whirring water disposed of the evidence and Lena managed to pull herself up long enough to wash out her mouth. Legs refused to cooperate for much longer than a moment and Lena pressed her back to the wall, sinking until she was seated with a hand on her flat stomach. Natasha had once said it would be dangerous for Lena to conceive because she could not feel so many of the signs necessary to carry a child safely to term. She wondered if she deserved this—if she could do it—if she would betray the family she bore just like every family she had found.

Lashes met, breath rolling over a tired tongue.

She would never betray Henry. He was everything. It was always going to be him. Lena would do anything for Henry and so she pressed her hands to the floor and stood, walking back into the bedroom where she was certain she would find him sitting up, waiting for her to come back. Right now she had to be strong enough to be open with the only person she loved in this world she didn’t deserve. 

Wiping perspiration from the nape of her neck with the hem of her camisole, Lena sighed, climbing back into bed, pressing herself against Henry’s side until she could hear his heartbeat.

One hand draped over his chest, an arm wrapping over her own stomach.

A breath that lasted several moments lingered in the air.

“I’m scared.”

                                                        cc: @alicemorganwrites 

[dailycelebrityedits]

[millenarism]

Clarity || Magdalene

      Mentioned: @henryxlacroix ; Charlie Lacroix ; Anubis

      Six hours since travel had opened in Rome, rays of sunlight peering through an overcast sky. A poetic mind may have found hope in the sight. Sixty-two hours since thick thread pierced soft flesh, lacing skin together attempting to obscure the memories with hairline scars. They would heal. It had already begun.

      The presence of the twins loomed behind Lena as she stepped up to the counter, phone in-hand. Bright irises peered down at the device, the departure location reading Rome. It was real. The destination Lena had left to the twins, wishing only to be among kindred spirits. French-speaking ilk. Consensus came in the form of Saint-Malo. A small, walled port city on the coast of France with a view of England, they said. Quiet. Though the waves could become relentless in terrible weather. A fitting new home for three terrors looking for peace.

“Miss,” the man behind the counter chimed in, breaking Lena’s trance.

      Lena looked up, giving him a smile before holding the device out. “Sorry, spaced out.” Lena never had the luxury of losing focus before. “Just picking up our boarding passes and checking some luggage,” she smiled, leaning forward on the counter.

“One-way. Don’t blame you,” he said under his breath as Lena placed the luggage on the scale. “Just need to see your IDs.”

      For once Lena did not have to reach for her alias. Two IDs slid onto the counter beside her, a quick glance over at Charlie softening Lena’s gaze. Her own placed beside theirs, passes printed and placed in a calloused hand. Tickets to freedom clutched to Lena’s chest.

      Walking through the airport, the must have looked normal. Three people traveling together, stoic gazes mistaken for tiredness. No indication of wrapped lacerations or the life they had left behind. The blood on her hands invisible; the count of lives she’d taken frozen in time. So it would remain.

      Two hours in the air brought them to Rennes, an hour by train and they’d made it. Saint-Malo. It hadn’t mattered where they would end up, only that it was away. Lena was no longer the Cessation shield of flesh and bone. With the twins she was home. The Hôtel Escale Oceania Saint-Malo looked enough like home for now, crisp salt water in the air a comfort Lena knew not she needed.

      Pulling luggage behind her, gentle steps lead her to yet another counter. The lilt of French met her ears before she had a moment to breathe.

“Magdalene Duval, Henry et Charlotte Lacroix. La réservation est sous Duval,” she smiled, holding out her identification.

“Mais oui. Nous avons attendu pour vous,” the woman nodded, leaving for a moment, coming back with a smile on her face. “Il sera dans un moment.”

      Lena looked perplexed momentarily, gladly filling out the paperwork and dispersing room keys to the two behind her, noticing a change in Henry’s posture. Lena turned, a man having appeared with a leash, Anubis pulling him across the floor. She dropped to her knees, the dog lunging into Lena’s chest, his head on her shoulder.

“Je ne savais pas que tu serais là si tôt.” Lena looked up at Henry, silent thanks echoing in her mind as she stood, the behemoth pressing his weight against her leg.

      Once in the expansive room, Anubis immediately leapt onto a reading chair, and Lena exhaled for what felt like the first time. She panned the scene, gaze finally resting on Charlie and Henry.

“We’re here,” she breathed. “I think I’m going to shower to get the rest of Rome off of me,” she surmised. “Then maybe we could explore a little, get food, and come back here and just—exist.”

Charlie was the first to accept the terms, something about being away from Rome having lifted darkness from her eyes. Henry simply nodded, surely ready to organize his clothing.

     Lena smiled, retiring to the bathroom. The water was not scalding as she stepped in, soot from bandages releasing hold on her porcelain skin. Dried blood rehydrating, the waterfall cascading down lithe limbs a peccant crimson. Ten minutes. Palms pressed against cheeks, warmth raining over chestnut locks. There under the water, with Henry and Charlie on the other side of the door, Lena felt home. The water ran clear. She had found what she was looking for.

                                                                                                Clarity.

[lfonsecadaily]

Napa Valley Film Festival - Actors Panel. 

source: @napafilmfest

[i-am-wordaholic]

[bolognaarmy]

Armed + Alexandra Udinov

[henryxlacroix]

An end neared on the line of the horizon. An army of ghosts fought its way through the forlorn scenery of a desert crafted from ice, to confront him with the turn of events, some may label as the inevitable. As though it had been foreseeable from the beginning on. Like he should have awaited its crimson-stained arrival with excitement and expectancy. Thrilled by the sight of blood leaking from lacerations and holes drilled into the bodies of mortal beings. Flawed humans with deranged views and poor priorities in a world as bleak as theirs, where only the shining violence could brighten up uneventful days, overcast by the fight for survival.

Irritation was a default emotion to clutch his heart and take a hold of his mind, in charge of his actions and guiding his thoughts down the endless path of eternal haze. He couldn’t bring himself to let go. Could not loosen his touch around her skin, allow his focus to avert and settle on something miniscule and of little importance inside the room’s eerie stillness. Breathing and two beating hearts inside chests of fragile ivory bone, were all it took to pass the time needed to bridge all the words not meant to be shared or uttered by quiet voices just yet.

The clear message hiding behind the words cascading from her soft lips were processed just before his stomach dropped. An exhale followed. In theory manageable – the plan he wrapped around her suggestion’s construction, to up and leave without a second glance back to witness the crumbling skies above Rome’s rooftops, being eaten alive by raging flames. His tongue curled against the sore roof of his mouth, his eyes’ focus slowly drifting across the line of her neck, along the curve of her shoulder down her arm to where his hand was yet to move ever so slightly. You and Charlie and me. His sister was the least of his concerns, as the thread lacing the hypothetical undertaking together. Seconds passed while he was still shy of words to be spoken in a broken reply, before chestnut-hued eyes met hers in a harsh contrast of darkness and light. A deep inhale filled black lungs as he leaned forward, brought his lips against her forehead and let them linger for a brief moment at the most.

He was not good at bidding familiarity farewell. For her, he would try.

[millenarism]

Warmth lingered, fingers clasped around her arm as lucidity found complete home in bright irises scanning their copper counterparts. He had seen war. Terror. Crimson lakes pooled at his feet and Lena recalled the number of times she’d stood opposite him, her reflection in the desolation. Lena was porcelain hardened into steel, each delicate pirouette bringing her further into ash. Spine rigid. A soldier. The one they sent out with a death wish simply because nothing seemed to penetrate her metallic exterior. Conditioned into recklessness, convinced of expendability and invulnerability, Magdalene was the prized child for the first time. Best in Show standing on a sepulcher to accept death as her prize. 

With him she was more than a machine. Magdalene was human again. Perhaps Henry was too. 

This was an opportunity. A chance at a future in which they lived. A future without the promise of premature demise teetered on the precipice of a single syllable. A breath Lena knew to expect to be silent and so her gaze never faltered. Even as chestnut irises drifted to where their skin met, Lena remained focused on his gaze. Doubt, however, inevitably crept into clear thoughts, clouding a steadfast resolve with trepidation with each passing breath lingering in dark lungs. It lasted a moment at best.

Lena was surprised the moment his gaze met hers once more; the gentle contemplation behind darkness slowly ceasing. Broad shoulders dipped and Lena released a breath she hardly remembered holding. Lashes met, the faint pressure of lips offering more than words ever could. 

Before he had the opportunity to fully pull away, slim fingers found the strong line of his jaw, drifting over darkness. Her gaze softened, something akin to appreciation drifting over lips, dancing behind radiant irises. Words she never needed to say. A thought meant only for him.

[henryxlacroix]

Jaw clenched, rows of ivory enamel grinding in the wake of a tremor, drawing pictures of crumbling constructs in a landscape, forlorn and bleak as a cold winter’s morning. The gloom seeped through clothes and skin, infected each pure cell, each thought of false innocence and intact sanity. A plant’s rotten seed was thriving with each day, while the war raged on, blood spilled and crimson poured from the wounds like-minded individuals inflicted. Kindred spirits, gruesomely haunting in their frightening appearance. The ghosts peeking through darkened eyes of various colors and different shades, all piercing through the air with razor-sharp gazes, eager to find a way out, bringing them closer to the daily goal of mere survival.

The concept of life itself had been taken from him, deranged and riddled into something far from any road leading to reality, as it was planted inside his brain by a false hero. His memories were gone, had slipped from his grasp and drowned along with all hopes and wishes he’d once harbored for his doomed future. Could not even spin theories of how it could have been, curl up the thread of daydreams neatly without making a mess of mistakes.

Her voice sounded strange in the empty room. The way it painted the walls with a shallow echo, cracking at the mere touch. He sat still, rough hands still holding her arm and face while eyes busied themselves with observing her features, battered by more than the aftermath of a fight. Only then, he attempted to make sense of the syllables spoken, reason for concern to increase and swell.

A deep inhale. lips of a lopsided mouth pressing together, a fine line on his features. The pressure added to her arm lasted a single moment. He lowered his gaze, contemplating in the risk of getting lost in the whirlwind of thoughts raging through his desert-mind.

[millenarism]

Delicate nectar dripped through plastic, traveling through steel as it pierced bruised skin, draining missing life force into the dark veins of a woman pieced together by a broken psyche. Lena was immensely fortunate that Henry was the most competent person she knew or she may have found the premature demise everyone feared. But now, with a crystalline elixir culling lucidity, Lena could feel her muscles release their grip on her bones. Parched fibres engorged, lungs expanding to capacity.

Fingers remained clasped around her jaw, rough palms keeping Lena grounded in a stark reality. Twenty seven would come in fewer than sixty days. An age she would be surprised to reach. One she nearly did not. It had been that precise desolate future – that same morbid sentiment – that had prompted her first confession to Henry. Words she could no longer leave unspoken after another encounter that should have left her exsanguinated on the floor of a cell. Damp concrete scraping against porcelain skin. But she survived and she would again, but surely cheating death could not last forever. Magdalene had reason to live. Reason to abandon recklessness. His grip tightened for a mere moment.

Thoughts formed long before words; her mind having trampled intent to speak until the syllables won a battle for voice. “You,” she breathed, “and Charlie.” A moment passed before she could convince the words to form. “And me.” It was suggestion as much as plea. Lena could no longer handle the thought of losing the people she cared for or leaving them with the grief she so often felt. And, by god, she cared for both of the twins. Charlie had become more of a sister than Myriam and without question Lena would walk into the line of fire for her, but—just maybe—she wouldn't have to. Just maybe. Maybe the three of them could create something more than contentment among chaos. Maybe something like home.

[millenarism]

And if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones. 'Cause most of our feelings, they are dead and they are gone. We're setting fire to our insides for fun. Collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home, It was a flood that wrecked this home.

[henryxlacroix]

The castle’s stillness conjured up an atmosphere of eeriness. Walls moved past them, further with each step he took. The stone walls’ sterile cold was seeping through the layers of his clothes and skin, infecting the flesh with concern, he could not allow to spread like a wildfire, raging flames dancing in the brisk wintry winds blowing across the lands and carrying embers out into the open.

Obvious sympathy and genuine care was not easily put on display and mirror against his face, carved into an expression of stoical neutrality. Emotions, which were not rarely set in direct comparison to the atrocious feeling of vulnerability. A crime of all things to be endured in a lifetime full of sorrow and grief, over all things lost in the furious flames of regret.

Doors swung open and a shadowy room was entered with fast steps. Sterile lights flickered to life only after her body was guided onto one of the beds for prolonged moments of rest. Quiet ruffling sounds in the search of everything the moment required. A gaze over his shoulder would have appeared grim for any invisible eyes catching sight of his expression in the empty halls of the med ward, devoid of people prying through curtains to steal glances at the injuries of someone he cared for. She needed to stop getting herself into situations, pushing her on the cusp of greeting death’s bony hand.

Gloved fingers set against her skin, while murmured words were supposed to resemble a poor attempt at catching her attention, holding it on a thin chord. Focus couldn’t shiver in the hurry of present time, falter and tremble along its way as the IV’s needle pierced through disinfected skin, straight into the vein beneath the pale membrane, while his left hand’s fingers dug into her cheeks, turned her head to the side to force her gaze into his direction.

“What happened?”

[millenarism]

Tendrils of crimson soaked chestnut tresses swayed in the breeze created by Henry’s trek through the silence of the castle. Fingers hooked at his collar began to lose their grip as Lena fell from the reality she’d spent six years protecting. The people within these walls. A makeshift home crafted from fractured pieces of tormented souls. Fragments of her splintered essence sprayed like shrapnel across the Cessations. Lena had known nothing outside of being the perfect assassin and interrogator, though she was losing parts of the dormant rage that had made her successful.

Sleep called softly, whispering sweetly calling Magdalene home to meet each face she’d seen. Each life she’d claimed. A firing squad a mile long and everyone would have their shot. Darkness began clearing, the edges faded in a desolate vignette. There she stood. The perfect mirror staring at its shattered reflection. Myriam.

Culled awake by the force of a hand, fingers directing her gaze. Blurred vision cleared, a path carved by tears she hadn’t noticed as lashes parted. Henry. He’d asked a question. Lena swallowed, voice rasping over an arid tongue.  “They said they knew,” she took a breath, “where we were.” 

Lashes met for a prolonged moment, but the assassin managed to open her eyes again. “I couldn’t-- there were,” she breathed again, “at least ten. I don’t--” A beat. She caught his gaze finally. “I don’t want to be the Cessation’s human shield anymore. Henry,” she trailed off, the thoughts and sentence unfinished though the tempest behind iridescent irises never ceased.

[ellaxwrites]

[millenarism]

“What are you gonna do, force it out of me? You wouldn’t know torture from a tickle if it stabbed you in the throat.”

[cithara-musing]

　　　　　　　　when ∂αякηєѕѕ lays her cяιмѕση cƖσαк, 　 　　　　　　　　　уσυr Ɩαмρѕ will call me нσмє

[wnq-writers]

Life is just what happens inside the triangle of death, love and friendship.

malessere (via wnq-writers)

[glenpowelljr]

[henryxlacroix]

The fog clouding his mind was likely poisonous, an image of eerie stillness spread across a gloomy area, some forlorn landscape. Volatile times were the artist painting chaos across the streets tinted in the color of blood, and bruises on the skin of citizens, devoted parents and their innocent children and those who may deserve each stroke of fate, that came their way. Bleeding knuckles and the smell of danger about to collide with his reality in the castle’s temporary security. One hour at a time and sleep was slowly becoming a strange concept encrypted in a foreign language he slowly began to unlearn. It was a matter of luck and not a matter of time, they were running out on. The future an image of uncertainty drawn against the dark line of a nightly horizon.

He felt as though he was caught in a current state of catatonia. His eyelids open, eyes lingering in the sensation of a burn, for they had been staring at the exposed ceiling of his room for a while too long. There was an itch inside his throat, a subtle urge to roll over onto his side, so the window would fall into his view and he could spend the following hours with the examination of the outside world, drowning in false tranquility.

Muffled sounds were echoing from the hallway, barely capable of much more than a mere scratch on the surface of his attention. It ceased to break through he stone-cold barrier of thoughts he’d built around himself as a poor attempt at distancing himself from current time, revel in the nostalgia of made-up memories. Only the thud, brought by the collision of knees and the ground, triggered a reaction. He sat up, quickly enough to conjure up a feeling of irritating dizziness, as his gaze lingered on the door, leading out of the confines of his room. 

Light flooded in, seeped through the crack of the opened door and he hesitated for a mere moment. A likely result of a brief moment of shock freezing him in his current position, before he bent down, observed her with clear worry written throughout the maze of shadows inside his irises, before he picked her up with ease, his feet picking up pace, as he rushed through the corridors toward the medical ward.

[millenarism]

Obsidian walls closed in slowly, lashes embracing as crimson stained skin met tile. Shoulders rounded, chestnut tresses shielding waning attention from view like a curtain, though strands tangled in each other’s brackish grasp. A steady heartbeat the only sound indicating she was alive. For the moment. 

Lungs expanded with decreasing efficacy, breaths becoming shallow and of hardly any use. A mind deprived of oxygen increased the pace at which the world spun and Lena promptly shut her eyes after having peered through dark lashes for a mere moment. If Henry was not in his room, the assassin could not be sure she could exert the energy needed to stand. 

Silence.

Muffled hums of dim lights no longer penetrated the psyche of the hyper alert woman. Lena felt tired. Never before had she felt such a looming need to sleep. Shoulders lurched forward, pulled down by fatigue and Lena thought for a moment she might fall asleep, but air caressed her cheeks instead. 

Henry.

Magdalene could not register the throbbing in her extremities, nor the trail of sanguine nectar flowing down her calf. Pieces of the world continued to fall away as she draped across his arms like satin, but Magdalene knew one thing: she felt safe here and nowhere else. 

[millenarism]

@henryxlacroix

Antonia had left the room once again, the same perplexed look on her face as when she’d managed to run a needle through puckered flesh without so much as a sound from her impromptu patient, but Lena could not stay here. Too many eyes. Too many opportunities for invasive questions. Too many opportunities to be shoved in a cell again and, without Archie, Lena had no bargaining chip. The assassin slipped off of the bed, peering down at herself through a glassy gaze, taking note of her tattered, crimson stained clothes. Lena was still immensely upset about her jacket being ruined, but she needed to get back before she -- as Antonia may have put it -- passed out from dehydration and exsanguination. Three beautiful new bullet holes had been closed by the doctor for now, but-- shit. 

Lena grabbed the mini armory she’d had strapped to her body and ran from the hospital. Attendants too busy with other people to notice her gave Lena a perfect cover to tear through the door. 

She ran. 

And ran. 

Vertigo caught up with her the moment fingers pushed open heavy oaken doors, but she continued running, unsure if Natasha was in the castle. Lena couldn’t afford to collapse in an empty med ward, so tired legs carried her up the stairs, stitches on her calf having torn two kilometers back. A single hand was strong enough to curl into a fist though her knock came in the form of fatigue forcing her frame forward. 

“Enr--” she managed as her knees hit the ground. 

[sarahsgellar-deactivated2024042]

You want to know what I am?

                                                I’m a survivor.