lost in darkness

[lucisdei-deactivated20151011]

( &. Klaus ) ; betterxfeared.

❛ I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife. ❜

        As though a blade belonged in her hand… His words chilled, reminding her again of the expectations he bore. That  c o n d e m n a t i o n  must lift from her lips in attack. That she, like others before ( so many others! surely he had long lost count… ) would inevitably turn upon him. That some horrors were too much to be born, some sins too great to be forgiven. He forgot it was she who stood before him, not Elijah, ever ready to remind him of his faults. Not any of those who heaped accusations eagerly upon his head. 

        Not one who loved, without condition. One day, perhaps, no matter how  e l l u s i v e  it might prove to be, that would mean something. Until that day, however ( for clearly it was not the present moment ), she must with patience and gentleness remind. And so mask the horror upon her features, the shudder which the violence implicit in his words evoked. Attempt made, she reached out as if to take his hand, though her blindness hindered her.

                ❝ Never, Klaus. Tell me, and I will listen. And I will forgive, and I will love. ❞ 

        No knives, no carving away at a soul wounded long ago, weathered by long years, scarred by injuries scraped open again and again. What she could not heal, she could love. 

[ofblindsight]

&. THIERRY.

-

    Point of fact, she looked awful, but he wasn’t about to tell her that so baldly. Nor lie to her or offer false comfort, since such words would do nothing to help either of them, only remind them just how distant normalcy had become. He sighed heavily, for it wasn’t as if this were any surprise to either of them. Goodbyes for a human with as many years as she could only be put off for so long. What a mess, with both of them fighting tears like maintaining appearances meant anything.

    “Here.”

    With one hand he preemptively reached into his pocket and removed a handkerchief, pressing it into her hand. Much better than the box of scratchy shreds of paper some thoughtful nurse had placed on the table near her bed.

    “Gonna miss you, princess.”

    Not that anyone wouldn’t. But most everyone who cared about her would be able to see her at least once again, before the very end. This small reprieve… Say something. You won’t get another chance. Not in life, and possibly not in death either. Thierry couldn’t say for certain that he believed in anything like an afterlife with heaven or hell, but if any soul was bound for a heaven, it’d be hers. His? Well, that was debatable. How long has it been, sixty, seventy odd years? Decades of meeting for coffee and dodging Klaus and playing her music. For half a second he wondered if he should’ve brought his instrument, but then shrugged it off. There was no time anyway.

        A hurdle breached, but in the effort to overcome it, to finally acknowledge her looming death, her breath caught, and she drew air into her lungs in a shuddering breath. Gonna miss you. Because this was it, the end of the road. Not the last breath she would breathe, although for a moment she wished it was, but the last exchange of words. Klaus would return, and Thierry flee, and no further arrangements would Elijah be able to make. That this had succeeded was no small blessing, as it was. 

        But oh, that her breath might cease and with it all this pain depart. That all might return to their lives, look forward and stop clinging uselessly to this moment, to her final moment. Klaus might return to his city, Ana to her final years, Elijah to Ana, Thierry to Marcel and his music. That they might begin to heal, not tear open skin yet unharmed but expecting a wound. 

        Lips trembled against tears as she fought to keep a smile. 

              ❝I won’t be really gone; you know that, right? I’ll still be here, with all of                      you, in a way.❞ 

         Except she alone b e l i e v e d. But in heart, she would remain, even when soul left to meet her God. And to that she would cling, not in desperation, but in certainty. 

              ❝But I’ll miss you too, even before… even once you have to leave. I wish…❞ 

         But no amount of wishes could end the feud which kept him away now. And so even before her death she would miss him, but those words she could not speak. How long? Hours, days, weeks? She feared the interim more than death itself, feared the pain which must accompany each breath, missing those who yet stood around her, with whom she had passed such long years. Missing her family, unconventional though it had proved to be… 

[ofblindsight]

⊰ ( KLAUS ) ⊱

-

    Of course he wanted nothing more than to believe she lived, had been resurrected by some power unknown at Elijah’s behest. But too insistently came the demand ofhow? and the sheer incredulity which resolutely held to the view that any current experience of her combined hallucination and memory. Not real, not real… A dream, perhaps, and the cruelest yet in years of longing and mourning. For now and again his sleeping mind would spin the fantasy that she had never died, and that they still had all the time in the world in which to walk together, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes simply side by side. Whether those that ended happily ever after or those that ended with her crumbling and fading away at his touch were worse, he couldn’t say; the falsehood of joy allowed a peace which cut just as sharp as reliving the end.

    No, she had died. He had buried her, he had written letters to her memory, he had burned their city. That was real. The pain gnawing away at him day in and night out, suffering in the dark resolutely without pinpoint of hope, scorning the world and himself, tearing against the guilt of having failed her ever since the delivery of her very last letter, that was his reality now. Here in the cemetery, this haunting represented the final wreckage of his sanity.

    And yet if anyone were to find a way, it would be Elijah. He would not have told his brother of the venture for the simple fact that Niklaus had quite purposefully left Elijah no way to find or contact him. Isolation had been far easier to deal with than the inevitable pity, the judgement, the sage advice which helped not at all.

    But if by some tiny, slim impossibility she was here… Slowly, hardly daring breathe, he stepped forward. Should this prove unreal, after all, he would not be able to feel her. A simple test, really, and already she reached out towards him in invitation. Niklaus hesitated once within arm’s reach, scanning her face and listening with desperate concentration to her heartbeat. By far the most convincing hallucination yet. Or perhaps he simply wanted to believe it too badly.

    His hand met solid flesh instead of passing through her fingers, and he flinched despite himself.

    “How is this possible?”

        Agonizing, the wait. To stand and watch those features she had known only in glimpses, the smallest shifts which gave some physical form to inward chaos. Oh, Klaus… and I might have spared you all this… But she had not, had not realized, and the passage of time she could not reverse, even if another lifetime had been bought for her. An eternity, for she would not make the same mistake twice. And if Klaus had not the heart to see her consigned to immortality, Elijah would, that he need not watch his brother’s descent yet again. 

        She bit the inside of her cheek to balance the sudden drop of her stomach at that flinch, the thought that her touch must bring such a shudder. No, Aline. You are whole. No matter what loss or infirmity you feel, as if physical flesh must rot and decay with each passing moment, it is but illusion. The reminder did little to ease the knot her gut seemed to have twisted itself in. She had left behind Heaven, and there could be no easy life. Except that she stood here with him, and if she had endured the last month, surely all would feel better now.

                                                              If that flinch wasn’t sign of something deeper…  

        Looking down at their hands, she laced her fingers through his, slowly, that he might pull away if he so choose. Trust me. But the plea could not leave her throat. She did not look up when she spoke. 

                 ‘ Something about spells and witches and a huge amount of power… Elijah                       knows more, of course. ‘ 

        Elijah who had spent eleven months searching for a way to bring her back, who had convened enough witches of sufficient strength and the power of a rare eclipse, for which they had traveled half way across the world. Daunting, to wake up in a place entirely unfamiliar, dark, if only in contrast to where she had been before. She glanced up only then, eyes searching his for some gague of his thought. 

[lucisxdei]

⊰ ( Klaus ) ⊱

-

     Another year, another day spent gathering up his determination and hobbling through the city as the world’s deadliest flower thief, laying the awkward bouquet in the grass. Klaus crouched alone before the headstone, unchallenged and silent as he stared at the letters carved there. Anger had dominated on his last visit, twisted curses against the fate that left him alone here, not abandoned so much as tethered, reviling the corollary that to have inevitably meant to lose. Even that bitter fire had by now subsided, though, and for once no letter waited inside his jacket to be placed beside the flowers. No furious rush or agonized poetry fought its way to paper and pen prior to his visit. What words had he left to say, for himself or to her? The sledgehammer of her simple nonentity still reverberated in his skull, and he found himself wishing yet again for thought to cease running around and around in these ellipticals. 

     Footsteps in the grass behind him drew his attention briefly before he shut them out, not bothering to turn. Today of all days, he had no intention to be drawn into interaction with another person, unless it was to vent the blackness settled behind his ribs. The thought raised guilt, Elijah’s desperate this isn’t what she would have wanted and lines of ink quavering I’m afraid. His mouth twisted in a grimace, gaze dropping to the flowers a moment before a voice froze his blood. 

     Klaus?

     A figment of his imagination, he insisted to himself, and yet he could not stop his spine from straightening, shoulders stiffening. You’re hallucinating, nothing more. You cannot hear her voice anymore, not really. This is in your head. And yet he heard a heartbeat behind him, breaths drawn in and out. Turn around, you’ll find nothing. 

     Rising, Niklaus turned. And stopped, breath preemptively indrawn to curse his rotted excuse of a mind. This cannot be.

      Aline stood before him, with heartbeat and breath he had detected moments earlier, feet pressing into the grass and body casting a shadow along the ground. Watching him, unscarred eyes tracking his movements as they never had in life, gaze resting directly on his face with astonishing new nuance in its set and expression. 

     “You’re not real.”

     He spoke in a whisper, voice unsteady as his wildly fluctuating pulse. What new torture was this? To not only be subjected to entirely too convincing visions, but to see her as she ought to have been, as she never had been in their long years together?

         She desired to smile, but could not muster the expression as she gazed on him. There was nothing she had not known, no warnings Elijah had not given of his brother’s state, and she thought, somehow, in dim memories so foggy, so lacking she could scarcely recall them, she had already seen. But to stand now on his plane, confronted with the truth, was another matter entirely. 

                 She should never have left. 

        The thought brought such wave of regrets that a sudden murky vision forced her to brush away tears. A laugh, part bitter and part hoping to brush away the absurdity in quiet acknowledgment of her folly. To cry now? Elijah had done what was needed, and they could set things straight. 

                 ‘ If I’m not real, we’d better talk with Elijah, because I’m pretty sure he’s                       convinced I am. ‘ 

        Her words, a weak attempt at mustering something lighter than dim thoughts, sounded hollow even to her own ears. A smile found its way to her lips, no less uneasy. How pathetic, that after seventy years she might be so awkward with him now, as if she were but twenty-seven again, uncertain of him, uncertain of them, fearing at every moment he might push her away for the safety of his solitude. 

        Perhaps he would have been better for it, though the damage was long done. And what horrors it had wrought could only now be undone if he accepted her again, put aside acknowledgment of all the impossibility. She reached out, slowly, offering him her hands, though didn’t step forward. He must come to her, must have the time to piece together horrors of long years, of loss, of all the things she was spared in being gone. 

                ‘ It’s alright, my love. I’m  h e r e. I’m back. Elijah brought me back. ‘

                                                                                                            And I’m so sorry… 

[ofblindsight]

&. moving blogs ;

I’ve moved Aline to a new blog. Let’s say I need a fresh start away from this dash and all that’s been weighing me down here.

Aline can now be found at lucisdei.

[ofblindsight]

&. moving blogs ;

I’ve moved Aline to a new blog. Let’s say I need a fresh start away from this dash and all that’s been weighing me down here.

Aline can now be found at lucisdei.

[ofblindsight]

&. s e m i - h i a t u s ; 

It’s been a few days coming, but I cannot handle all the major blog-hopping I’ve been trying. I have too many accounts, and I need to simple devote myself to a single muse, not five. And, unfortunately, that muse cannot be Aline. I haven’t the will-power right now to handle a fandomless, female OC. I will pop in on occasion to reply to my current threads, but only when inspiration strikes. I am unsure how long this will last. 

If anyone has been following my “family means” verse (i.e. my ship with niklausxmikaelsxn or Aline’s friendship with thierryxvanchure), I will be moving those interactions over to a side-blog on another account. The url is lucisdei if you’d like to be able to continue to follow my threads in that verse.

In the meantime, I will be spending my RP hours on my Klaus. 

[agentjester-deactivated20200120]

Peggy’s saying you can use your sexuality, you can use your wit, you can use many facets to your character (x)

[ofblindsight]

'The Originals' sentence starters.

"And the award for biggest ego goes to..."

"Are you so eager to meet your end?"

"Can I eat him?"

"Darling, we have to stop meeting like this. This is how rumours begin."

"Did you have to do that?"

"Do this one favour for me and you need never fear anyone ever again."

"Do we have any more booze?"

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

"For all I care, you can crawl back to Hell."

"Hey! Earth to you."

"Hold your tongue or I'll tear it from your gapping mouth."

"How dare you command me?"

"How long are you going to hate me?"

"I can't share my secrets with you unless we trust each other."

"I despise voicemail."

"I don't really care about what you want. Let's talk about what I want."

"I like how your mind works."

"I swear to you, the day will come when I'm not so easily subdued, and on that day, I will make you suffer."

"I was protecting you."

"I will fight for my family until my last breath."

"I will not leave you behind."

"I will systematically destroy everything they hold dear."

"I'm going to kill every last one of them."

"If I had a dollar for every mess my family has gotten me into."

"If I want something, I'll take it, and nothing – nothing will stand in my way."

"If you ever betray me, I will make sure you spend the rest of your eternal life in exquisite agony wishing for a merciful death."

"If you knew even a fraction of who I am it would break you in two."

"Is it evil to take what one wants? To satisfy hunger even if doing so will cause another's suffering?"

"Is that what you want, to be normal?"

"It just seems like you need all the friends that you can get."

"It's a little early for day drinking."

"Kill a demon today, face a devil tomorrow."

"Let's go kill them all."

"My hatred for you runs so deep it's difficult to pinpoint its origin."

"Please feel free to choke on it."

"Poppycock! I would never bite you"

"So you're having weird retro sex dreams, get over it."

"Sudden moves make me jumpy, and homicidal."

"Ten minutes ago I was fully naked."

"That wasn't me."

"That's right, you don't have any friends."

"The longer the game, the more they suffer."

"The monster in me can only be checked by the monster in you."

"There is a special place in hell for your kind."

"There is something fundamentally wrong with you."

"There's no real peace in revenge."

"This house is like a freaking swamp sauna."

"What better way to punctuate a day of peace than by killing someone."

"What have you done?!"

"What kind of monster do you take me for?"

"What makes you think I'm afraid to die?"

"What the hell are you doing, you ruthless bitch?"

"What wine goes well with treachery?"

"What's worth dying for is not love?"

"When I go after someone, I don't miss."

"Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?"

"You are the architect of your own unhappiness."

"You deserved far better than this."

"You disgust me."

"You do know you're entirely demented, don't you?"

"You don't care about me!"

"You have a warrior's heart. Perhaps I'll keep it as a souvenir."

"You relinquished your right to touch me."

"You waited too long before you came to rescue me."

"You will not break me."

"You will pay for this."

"You're gonna wish you never laid eyes on me."

"You're nothing."

"You're so hot when you're angry."

"Your dad was a dick."

[ofblindsight]

I’m feeling terrible tonight and like I just want to delete blogs... this blog in particular. So I’m going to sign off and go elsewhere so I don’t do anything stupid. 

[all-the-garden-roses]

Hayley Atwell for Country & Town House Magazine, December 2012.

[ofblindsight]

Life is cruel. Why should the afterlife be any different?

                 { meme | accepting } ; reaperiisms

                ‘ Not all of life is cruelty... there’s a whole lot of bad, yes, but there’s                     good also. There has to be, or there wouldn’t be such a word as                     cruelty. Same as we need the bad to feel the good. If you only see                    the cruelty now, that’s all you’ll see there, surely, as well. But if you                    can find the good... ‘ 

        She doesn’t say those words, heaven and hell, knowing the dangerous line that religious terminology treads, but those are in her mind. If one was to leave this world, the laws no longer applied. He had his own laws for up above, for those forgiven. 

[ofblindsight]

"One good deed is not enough to save a man from a lifetime of wickedness."

                  { meme | accepting } ; burzxm

                ‘ Perhaps not, but it’s a place to start, Mitchell. ‘ 

        And from there, another and another until one’s habitual tendencies were turned toward good. Not easy, surely, and Aline would never dare claim it should be… But evil thus far needn’t mean evil for ever. And diminishing the good one could do would serve no end, save to trap one in that very cycle of darkness… 

                ‘ Can’t you see that? ‘ 

        Aline had not meant for her tone to sound so pleading… 

[ofblindsight]

⊰ ( Gwenneth ) ⊱

-

               “Gwenneth. Gwenneth daughter of Ternyon. My father is a lord                  in these lands.”

   She had led her stumbling companion down the hill where she had found her, into a valley deep and narrow where a stream gushed over smooth stones and the waist-high grass gave way for oaks and beech-trees. As the stream broadened and the valley tightened, the ground became rough and difficult to tread. She slowed down, searching a path they both could follow. A glance over her shoulder to the valley sides now towering above her revealed no sign of life. Would they be safe here? For how long?

                  “And we need no longer be strangers. Fate led you to me, and                     me to you. I don’t know what the gods mean by that, but if you                     have nowhere else to go, you might as well come with me, no?”

   Shadow and light shifted above them as she led their way, slowly now, in under the trees. The riders would be reluctant to take their mounts in here — they would be at a disadvantage between the trees, and even if they saw the tracks leading in they would suspect a trap, such as the dunlendings had led them into many a times before. Sometimes over-confident young lords would lead their men into trees or deep valleys, only to find the path ahead blocked, more warriors than expected waiting for them, and retreat difficult in that terrain. Slaughter followed such as the hill-people rarely managed.

                  “We can stay here for a little while, I think; we’ll be safe. There                     are, uh… riders following me. But they will not follow me for                     long. When it darkens I will return to my lord father, and you may                     follow, if you please.”

        Fate let you do me. Was it true? Did fate guide each step mortals took, lead them together, pull them apart, playing the entire world like a complicated game of strategy, tugging on a puppet’s string? Aline was not sure she believed. He was much more concrete, the god whose worship she had unwillingly served for long years. In whom she had not believed, until little by little she became convinced he must exist, or surely... Surely none of that pain would have occurred. 

        But Aline had not the heart, the strength, nor the breath to argue. Doubts she kept quiet, silent though they pressed and screamed fervently against her mind. But of one thing Gwenneth was undoubtedly correct. Aline had no where else to go. Why not, then, trust a stranger, who without being bidden offered to her the aid she doubtless needed? Aline could not flee forever. She would run out of land, would find herself in the company of those less than kind... Better to stop now. 

                ‘ Regardless... I thank you, Gwenneth, for not turning from me, though it might                     endanger you to slow your steps to guide me. ‘ 

        A relief to have a name to place to the voice, by which she might address her. Daunting, though, to know a lord’s heritage lay upon her new-found guide. In the north, at home, there were no such titles of nobility or status... One eked out the living they could for self and for family. Vast expanses of land left little contact between communities... Aline pushed all that aside. If matters of rank came to the surface... they might tend to the matter then. No need to dwell now upon potential worries. 

        Her free hand steadied her among the trees, for she felt the shift in the air about her. The smell of foliage pressing about her, the bark, the dappled light... 

                ‘ May I ask why they follow you? ‘ 

        An innocent question, born of curiosity and a desire to understand the woman who had guided her this far. To share in her own struggles, as Aline’s were so far removed and so unspeakable.  

                ‘ And if you are willing, and no trouble it would cause with kin and family, or                      with your father, for I am nothing but a stranger of as humble birth as can                      be imagined, far to the North... then I will accompany you home. But I would                      not cause trouble, nor be more of a hindrance than I must... ‘

[naturaekos]

“You’re allowed to scream, you’re allowed to cry, but you are not allowed give up.”

Unknown (via naturaekos)

[venividivicii-blog]

Pirates of the Caribbean sentence meme! Quotes from all four movies under the cut - 300 total! Send in a sentence or send in ☠ for a random starter!

1. A wedding? I love weddings! Drinks all around! 2. Best start believing in ghost stories. You’re in one. 3. I feel nothing. 4. You’ve seen a ship with black sails that’s crewed by the damned, and captained by a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out? 5. But I have seen a ship with black sails. 6. So this is where your heart truly lies, then? 7. I’m actually feeling rather good about this. 8. I thought I had you figured. Turns out you’re a hard man to predict. 9. A dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. 10. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you have to watch out for. 11. So we’re all men of our word, really. 12. Well, you’ve proven they’re mad. 13. That’s not much incentive to fight fair then, is it? 14. In a fair fight, I’d kill you. 15. Put it away. It’s not worth getting beat again. 16. I want you to leave and never come back. 17. I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means ‘no’. 18. Well, I suppose if it is worthless there’s no point in me keeping it. 19. The code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules. 20. One good deed is not enough to save a man from a lifetime of wickedness.

Keep reading

[ofblindsight]

             … Give me new Phoenix  w i n g s                                to fly at my desire.