𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 * — a priv. & sel. multimuse. featuring vincent valentine of final fantasy vii. as imagined by sinna / sidonie.
𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙣 : the willingness to kill & die for your ideals, an eternity of loneliness, living between two deaths, imperfect victimhood, atonement in excess, girls against god, the body as prison, but also as playground, antigone's legacy, self - made messiahs, false prophets & the pains of loving them.
𝙞. 𝗱𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝙞𝙞. 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝙞𝙞𝙞. 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁
blogroll : @serapime
mobile friendly roster & rules under cut.
𝘙𝘖𝘚𝘛𝘌𝘙.
video games.
vincent valentine. final fantasy vii. primary. they/them.
aqua. kingdom hearts. primary. she/her.
edelgard von hresvelg. fire emblem: three houses. primary. she/him.
yuri lowell. tales of vesperia. primary. he/him.
louis guiabern. metaphor: refantazio. primary. any pronouns.
rufus shinra. final fantasy vii. secondary. he/him.
akira kurusu. persona 5. secondary. she/her.
marianne von edmund. fire emblem: three houses. secondary. she/her.
medusa gorgon. soul eater / removed from canon. secondary. she/her.
kaoru orihara. oniisama e ... . tertiary. she/him.
makima. chainsaw man. tertiary. she/her.
jan suk. naoki urasawa's monster. tertiary. he/him.
etc.
karen page. daredevil. tertiary. she/her.
𝘙𝘜𝘓𝘌𝘚.
i. this blog is permanently low - activity and mutuals - only. i have an office job and a busy life outside of that; this is just a hobby for me! please don’t assume that i will immediately respond to threads or asks, or that i work on a first - come, first - serve basis. i will respond to things as i find the time and energy to do so.
i am always open to having asks be turned into threads! i do try to put a lot of effort into them, so if you see potential in something becoming a longer thread, please feel free to continue the scene in a new post.
ii. please read the information i provide for my muses and keep it all in mind when interacting with them. do not make assumptions on how you think they ought to behave based either on canon or the popular fandom conception of their characters. know that repeated misgendering any of my muses is grounds for an immediate block.
iii. 21+ only, please. i’m old, this blog has mature themes – i just don’t want to be hanging out with kids. thanks.
iv. i have no tolerance for racism / transphobia / misogyny / lesbophobia / zionism / etc.
v. this blog will contain triggering / sensitive themes. while i will tag content as needed (using ___ /), if you are squeamish, this might not be the best place for you. many of my posts will either directly address or make reference to: extreme violence, gore, cannibalism, human experimentation / medical horror, body horror, suicidal ideation, genocide, child neglect / abuse, etc.
vi. i am open to shipping, although that is not my main concern on this blog. if something romantic does occur between our muses, please know that i’m semi - ship exclusive: i will only ship with up to two iterations of a character.
i request that you please also respect that most of my muses aren't terribly interested in men. do not try to argue with me over my muse's sexuality or claim that i am being biphobic because i prefer writing lesbians / strict wlw. i'm a dyke and get very tired of this!
i, for the most part, do not have any ships that are off - limits (within reason, obviously), but i never want to see sefikura on my dash. this goes for any ship where one party was underage upon meeting and the other was already an adult, but for whatever reason, this one seems to get a pass from most people. i will block you if you rb / post anything sfkr. i just do not want to see this on my dash.
as most of my muses are of age in most verses, i also have no reservations about writing nsfw on this blog. it will always be tagged accordingly and hidden under a read more!
vii. all of my graphics were made by myself, using a psd created by melinoegraphics. art used is from x, x, x, or x.
𝙠𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨. @spirestar : eighteen, a kiss while laughing, from akechi, to akira.
𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 - 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. you could chalk this up to pure stupidity, or maybe a total lack of regard for human life. she’s reckless and ruled by impulse, and if she wasn’t, she never would’ve found herself in tokyo. akira is fond of the gun. she puts the barrel in her mouth but does not pull the trigger because someone else has his finger on it. it is through luck alone that she stands here now, the toes of her loafers wet from the little waves rocking the surface of the pond, the tip of her nose and the apples of her cheeks flushed. for may, it’s a cold evening, with a brisk wind that rolls off the water and bites at their exposed skin. the chill goes unnoticed as her eyes crease into small crescents, a hand half - covering her mouth, shoulders trembling with a laugh that she can’t hold back. really, he’s too self - serious.
the stars, hardly visible through the heavy pollution of the city, must have aligned: after a pregnant silence, his sentence cut short by her outburst, goro laughs, too. it’s an odd sound. odder still is his face, which lights up in a way she’s never seen, because his features are always pulled too taut, like someone’s fingers were physically forcing him to smile. usually, his laugh is fake. all of him is. akira knows this and still leans in, still presses a kiss to the upturned corner of goro’s mouth mid - laugh. somewhere across the pond, something breaks the surface of the water, maybe a carp or a fishing bird. everything else is worlds away from them. he is soft and lovely against her, so she goes in again, but this time, their lips slot together. she expects to taste plastic or something bitter, like the glue on the back of an envelope. instead, there’s a sweetness lingering on the flesh, she imagines he just had a piece of hard candy that he let melt under his tongue, coating the inside of his cruel, pretty mouth.
the short heel of her left shoe sinks into the soggy grass as akira pulls away, slow. her cheeks are ruddier than ever and her fingers flex into a fist, then relax, then curl back in again. vaguely, she thinks she shouldn’t have done that. they both lack trigger discipline. suddenly shy, a tiny shake of her head sends curls tumbling over her forehead, catching on the thick rims of her glasses, which keep threatening to fog over, though she’s not looking at goro anymore. her tongue is dry and useless in her mouth. a cricket hums now in the reedy undergrowth, punctuating the quiet.
“ it’s nice, you know. when you smile. ” she says finally, the remnants of a last laugh curling up the ends of her words. lit only by the halogen bulb of the streetlamp streaking the water, her eyes return to his, which are completely unreadable under his overgrown bangs. akira’s hands find his, warm in her own, her thumbs pressing down into the delicate bones of goro’s knuckles. the skin and ligaments shift slightly. she sticks a pin through an insect. now, she can observe him forever. they can never get away from one another. “ a real smile. ”
she won’t say ‘ i love you ’, because she probably doesn’t. still, her heart lurches and settles high in her throat. not even a small cough can dislodge it. akira tries, but it remains trapped. a hard swallow doesn’t scratch it, either. the smile that she offers him is tinged with pain, but still a bit shy, maybe because she can still taste him when her tongue unconsciously darts out to wet her lips. gripping his hands tighter, almost hard enough to hurt, her head tilts to the side.
unhelpfully, she states the obvious. “ you’re a lot different than you are on tv when it’s just us. ” her voice is soft and flat. it is perfectly inoffensive. everyone gets vulnerable around her, she knows. their muscles go lax and tongues get loose, and she sits and takes it all in, her own edges fuzzy and undefined. she builds herself. she is the sum of many parts. “ i like you better this way. ” akira says this knowing that he is like her; his stomach is heavy with his many selves; and this, too, is not the real goro.
His head is like a fog. Blonde strands dangle in his face as he's pulled from the realm of lost time and into... whereever this is. The space under James's head is warm. Dimly a moment comes and goes like water pulling memory from him like a knot unraveling and then he recognizes the heat as a lap. Again blonde strands tickle at his face, this time more intently, clearly shaken at his eyelashes with the goal of stirring him out of his stupor. James blinks and tries to shuffle his awareness around, make sense of the world around him. Bokehs of light speckle his irises. There are eyes above him. He's being watched. This is a human body. This is the body of a lady. A lady, a woman--Mary? and his heart leaps about out of his chest--is bowed over the top of him, grinning down at him.
No, not Mary. This woman stinks of alcohol. Her lips are too red, her eyes too devious. James is too tired to be filled with some sense of repulsion but his hands at his sides twitch. An impulse he's afraid to name. Disgusting, I'm disgusting. Lips part but before he can say anything--
@openness says, "Here I am! All alive."
The impulse dies. A moth, belly-up.
Did I faint? I don't remember. Where am I? James wets his lips, his throat dry. His voice is barely audible but it's not because he's not trying to speak when he asks the woman, "Who are you?" and immediately remembers her name as Eva. "...Eva?"
"Are you alright? I don't ... remember how I got here. We--got here."
𝗵𝗲’𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀. eva hates him, she thinks, but holds her tongue, loose as it is. instead, she rolls the hate around the inside of her mouth. it presses to her soft palate, knocks the backs of her very straight front teeth, is cradled under her tongue, hot against the sublingual tissue. she can’t let it go. without it, what is she? nothing. anger is a sweet becoming.
fingertips brush over the barely - there stubble on james’s cheek— he’s soft, almost all - over, just like kenzo. but not quite, because his skin is clammy and cold and the eyes that look up at eva are not kind, just dead. is this what she deserves? the ground is freezing under her folded legs and the heel of one scuffed leather pump slips off, exposing a small snag in her pantyhose. she should really buy new clothes. these ones have seen better days, but all that's left at the bottom of her purse are some crumpled bank notes. ‘ and those, ’ she thinks, ‘ are for the bartender tomorrow, or maybe tonight. ’ she is rich in sin alone.
a plum - colored nail, chipped, fingers at the tender skin of the lobe of an ear. “ did you hit your head? ” eva coos. or, he’s strung out. he’s definitely not drunk, that fermented stench is too close, it has to be from her own mouth. his face, too, is bloodless. it’s like he’s seen a ghost. her lips curl into an odd shape, more mocking than fond. “ i can’t leave you alone. ”
continuing, tracing the shape of his ear, she considers the numbness spreading through her calves and up to her thighs, and wonders where she’ll sleep tonight. with him? it would be better than on the street, if only marginally. her father must be rolling in his grave. “ you were at the bar— we were. i come back from the corner store and find you knocked out, on the pavement. silly boy. ” venom drips from wet, bitten lips, wrapped in a paper - thin facade of compassion. she really, truly hates him.
𝙞𝙩’𝙨 𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙩, 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙞𝙡 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣. @asterites : “ the air feels different here— it’s like breathing someone else’s sorrow, someone else’s pain. ” to lunafreya.
𝘀𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝘁, 𝘁𝗼𝗼. she can feel it in the roots of her teeth, down to the jaw. it burns. the light in this place is paper - thin and fetid where it trickles through the glass panes, catching on and illuminating the little flecks in the air: fat, fuzzy motes of dust; flecks of grey kicked up by the movement of their feet across the stone; ash, lunafreya thinks, because there are swaths of the high walls that are scorched black; glittering, palely, around their ankles. this is a dreadful place. draped in loose silk, all - white, her arms come to wrap around themselves, as if chasing away a chill. her skin, too, is pebbled with gooseflesh. outside, the sun keeps all the children warm. the space within these walls is too far from the hot center of the galaxy to hold any of its residual heat, so they stand side - by - side, chilled to the marrow. the moon and its star. their hands do not touch.
that voice comes not from her sister, but something beyond her. when her lips part, she speaks from behind a veil. it is at once too close, almost whispered into the soft shell of lunafreya’s ear, and so far away, so far that she can no longer reach out and touch her. she is at once alone in this place. blind to etro and the world that eclipses with her, lunafreya looks, but sees nothing. only the air presses down on them. it reminds her of the water of a narrow creek— rushing into her ears and nose and mouth, slightly cool, and odorless. this is odd because the air is perfectly stagnant.
still, she considers her observation. lunafreya turns her head to one side, then the other, before settling somewhere in the middle, peering up at the vaulted ceiling. it seems so distant, hardly of the same world. they remind her of the frescoed ceilings of the palace, the ones in the wing that burned down. stella wouldn’t remember them. and she would never see them. this should strike her as profoundly sad, but instead, all she feels is a small, hard ball in her stomach. looking through different eyes, the moon will never know what the star sees, no matter how hard it tries. the gap between them is vast. “ i think a lot of people have suffered here. ” she manages finally. her voice is thin; it bends in the middle, collapsing, and is whisked away by the current. is this what it means to get older? to grow apart? tearing slowly from the ceiling, lunafreya's gaze comes to settle on the unreadable face of her sister. once, she could hide nothing from her. “ and they can’t let go. ”
thin blonde hairs, so pale that they are nearly white, shiver across her forehead. there is no breeze but the spirits move in spite of this. their heels must be bloody. lunafreya imagines them blistered and sore, all the flesh on their bones whittled down from their endless grazing, always towards some place that will remain out of reach. beside herself, she frowns. this makes her look younger, even when she's trained herself to turn the corners of her mouth downwards just so, properly ladylike, but no - one can see her but stella, and she does not care to keep up these appearances. “ that, i think, is worse than having died to begin with. i would at least want to rest. ” her journey, thankfully, already has its end written. this will save her a great deal of grief. can stella say the same?
At the question Johan realizes his error. Anna isn't lonely: how could she be? How can one person in a world experience loneliness if she has never known another person? Johan doesn't exist, so... "I don't wish for anything, really." But there's a questioning affect to Anna's eyes, the blue of them barely visible in the shadow of the bar, her gaze falling over Jan's childish pout, as if seeking his confirmation.
As if Jan could confirm or deny. Even sober, he's too infatuated with Anna to do anything other than nod vigorously. Johan might not have to kill Suk, but Anna just might do it for him, and not even intentionally. That would be cleaner, easier, he thinks, the thought as faraway and distant as Anna's eyes. He remembers the tears that poured from those same eyes when he asked her to shoot him in the head. How alive she had seemed at the time, her eyes not distant but wrapped up in the horror of the moment. It had hurt Johan terribly to hurt his sister like that, but the promise of a happy ending had all but been in sight. Anna, who is a nice girl, follows up her comment with: "It's just nice to spend time with you," and let her fingers leave the thin straw and flit just-so over Jan's knuckles.
Men love to talk about themselves. The bar isn't silent but it feels like it could be around Jan and Anna as Johan contemplates his next move. What to ask, what to say--it's not quite the same thing he does when he's dragging someone into a kill, but it's similar enough, and the shared bloodstream, shared heart, makes Johan's chest ache in a familiar way. It's not lonely but simple truth. His hand idly traces dry patches of skin on Jan's hands. Their hands have a thing in common: they have both held guns.
The monster asks: "Why are you lonely, Jan?" and his eyes raise from the spot where his hand rests on top of Suk's and those same eyes are huge, round, and perfect. Johan has never been lonely. He imagines their hands could bleed into one another. The monster imagines himself with Jan Suk's name and a mother who cares. Munch munch, chomp chomp, gobble gobble, gulp.
𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗲. he learned this in church. you can neither touch nor look at them. one of these rules is easier to follow than the other, and he had, but then the angel touches him and he is shocked to find that she is, in fact, very cold. no fire. it is only the pit of his stomach that burns, leaving him shifting in his seat. his face, too, is hotter than ever. the eyes that blink up at the center of his universe are doeish. moisture gathers on the surfaces. he’s been caught in the headlights. anna strikes him; she always does. “ why am i lonely? ” repeated, it sounds small and silly.
rolling this way and that, the question collects dust in the corners of jan’s mind. some spots haven’t seen the light of day for quite some time. ‘ i miss my mom, ’ or, ‘ i wish i had a girlfriend, ’ had she asked him a year, or even a few months ago, these would be the answers that immediately leapt to his tongue. but he is a little older now and must not act like a boy who has no worries in life. his knuckles tense under the cool crescent of anna’s nail.
free, a restless hand returns to his hair, pushing it away from his forehead and behind his ear, though this is a losing battle that he fights, because he went in for a trim not so long ago and it is just shy of being long enough to stay put: strand by strand, it falls back into his face. a sharp nose wrinkles in thought. he’s still a child. “ i don’t like being alone, and this job—,” this job, which jan had dreamt of. his life would be perfect if he had that shiny badge for brandishing, if he was rooting out all the bad apples before the bunch was spoiled, because hadn’t they been through enough?, he’d convinced himself of this. the reality was not so glamorous. it wasn’t the smashed up face of the twenty - something woman that changed his mind so much as having to be face - to - face with the other agents. they had the ability to break his heart, and into countless pieces. peeling back the surface and seeing the insides of this system, which the television set never quite captured— that is making him falter. inside the polished leather, his toes curl in, accompanied by a small shiver that sprints up and down his spine. every part of his hand that she traces feels as though it is being touched for the first time. “ well, it’s … hard, it alienates people. ” jan says finally.
an index finger rubs the sweating side of his glass. the ice has reduced to a soft - sided fragment of its original shape, its fluid remains swirling in a separate strata from the drips of liquor left at the bottom. he needs another. his voice is a bit softer when he continues, in a self - conscious way. “ it’s not really what i thought it would be. nobody wants to hear about it, either, and i can’t blame them. not really. you’re the only one who’s ever seemed interested. ”
it’s his turn. jan holds the mirror back up to her face, which looks drawn in this light, even when she’s taken certain precautions to mask this. “ why would a girl like you want to hear about all of this, anyway? are you a student? i- if you don’t mind me asking. ” a sheepish laugh is choked out, like that could mask the shock of his hand turning palm - up, fingers loosely curling around anna’s own. god, he’d do anything for her.
This sweetness is reserved only for girls like Anna. What do you see, Suk? Johan wants to ask what Anna looks like to people who aren't him. He can answer it only for himself. Anna is beautiful, Anna is smart, Anna is crafty, Anna is polite in ways Johan can't allow himself to be, and Anna is allowed to live. She is the only person in the world.
Johan shifts, the fine blonde strands of the wig moving over his arm as he moves a bit in his seat, pulling his cardigan lower over the arm that he had used earlier in the day to test swabs of lipstick, their creams staining the inside part of the dark fabric. Does Anna wear red? Does she wear nudes? Does she wear soft pinks or corals? Eventually he settled on a cool nude pink which now lives somewhere in the bottom of his bag: Anna likes things that make her look more like a person of this earth and not someone sailing in the skies above. This is some of Johan coloring his interpretation of Anna: if he is to be a monster he will wonder what it's like to be human. He's sorry to Anna for projecting some of himself into his portrayal of her, but then again he supposes that's inevitable after they were split in the womb. Still, there's no resentment in his voice when Anna asks: "An angel? Really?" and she takes a sip of her drink, now careful to keep the wig out of his face when he leans forward just so, heels carefully poising her delicate posture on the stool.
As he moves Johan wonders if in the daylight the fakeness of the wig would become apparent; in a bar with limited lighting it's not much of an issue, but in the sun? he's not sure if the masquerade would land as lovingly. That's okay. In the night, it's Anna meeting Jan and not Johan, so he doesn't have to kill him. "Don't you think angels must get kind of lonely?" Johan fiddles with the skinny plastic straw in the drink. "I don't know if I want to be an angel. But...it's nice to be paid a compliment. So: thank you."
𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱. this, he’s sure of. there is an axis on which all things rotate and she, lovely beyond words, is at the very center. jan is just a body in her orbit. heaven and earth are skewed and he slips further into his warm buzz. he leans towards her a little, almost close enough to nudge her elbow with his own, but he’s careful to not touch her, even as drunk as he is. she sounds so far off when she replies in that soft voice, that one that keeps coming to him as he stumbles into taxis and into the stairwell of his apartment.
languid, his head raises, and the face that peers up at anna is flushed and hot to the touch. his eyes are big and drooping at the corners, sopping wet, like posies after spring rain. “ are you lonely? ” it spills out before he can stop it.
inhaling quickly, he continues, as if to cover his tracks, “ i mean, i am, sometimes. more often than i’d like. i think everyone is, not just the angels. ”
the lip of the glass is cool against jan’s lips. it’s what he needs; dampness is conjuring below his arms, and beads at his temples. the night itself is not that hot, he doesn’t think, but the air in the bar is closer than ever and reeks of stale smoke and something sweeter. this second scent is powdery in an antiquated way, like something he’d catch in the hallway when his mom would leave in the early evening and would spend the time before shut up in her room. anna didn’t strike him as old - fashioned, not at first. but if he leaned in and pressed his face to the soft curve of her neck, would that powder room smell wash over him? what he wouldn’t do to push her hair aside, and die there. the glass is returned to the bar with an uneven thump, and jan’s hand, now free, pushes his overgrown bangs back. she’s going to kill him.
slick with saliva and whiskey, his lips are pressed into a pout. this is not intentional. increasingly, he’s just losing whatever control over the muscles in his round - cheeked face that he usually has— which is, frankly, not terribly much to begin with— as he watches anna’s slim fingers twist the straw in her drink. if only those were in his hair, or on the nape of his neck. his legs are restless, his heels going back and forth, sometimes touching, sometimes not. “ — do you wish you weren’t? ”
𝙞𝙩’𝙨 𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙩, 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙞𝙡 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣. @songsofreason : “ every fog that rolls in brings new faces from the other side. ” from v, to aqua.
𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲. it’s worse in the dark. everything begins to look either evil - like or similar to the people one used to know. this is worse because you know that they are no longer the same, that the thing before you is not a childhood friend, or an estranged child, just an afterimage in a familiar shape. these can do much more harm than the night - creatures with their black teeth and claws. aqua lays with her spine pressed into the purple - black grass and watches the sky. ‘ i know that when a star disappears, a world has died. ’ she thinks. ‘ people can survive this, but most don’t. ’ she did. she shouldn’t have. did any of the lightbearers? the girls in their long dresses and perfect, symmetrical faces? what of their loved ones? for all she knows, their hearts are long gone, snatched away with the halls and meadows that they once frequented, the fragmented pieces of which now make up her own personal world.
the master’s face is striped by the deep, sickly light filtering through the fingers of the hand held up above her. one of them is missing, the ring finger of the right hand. in its place is a useless stump. “ i used to be scared of ghosts. ” she says to no - one in particular. it could be to the man at her side, but she neither looks at nor acknowledges him. doing so may make him disappear. if that happened, she would be truly, utterly alone. every apparition follows its own rules, because the universe is vast and unknowable and all of its individual points do not abide by a plain set of regulations. some apparitions she can talk to directly and they remain on this side. these tend to be the ones that choose to torment her, appearing as terra, or the twisted face of ventus rejoined with the boy in the tendon - suit, or even eraqus in his death throes. others, aqua cannot even look at. acknowledgement of their presence would simply make them turn to water vapor, or whatever else it is that spirits are made of.
limply her hand falls to her forehead. the flesh there is cool and a bit damp. it could be the humidity of this place, which seems to always be dew - soaked and full of spores and amoebas that fill the folds in aqua’s clothes and make her skin slick. the fog is so thick that the world has shrunken down to them and them alone: her, half - dead and moth wing - grey with age; and him, translucent, so close that he could touch her, but he never does. her eyes list. “ but you’re not so bad. ”
all he does is sit there. sometimes, he speaks, though the strain in every syllable and the gasps between punctuation makes it seem, to her, that it causes him a great deal of pain. at least he doesn’t look like anyone she knows, or knew. he doesn’t blame her, either. maybe he should. but her mind seems to understand that it must sometimes rest, so v does not torment aqua. “ the others are worse. they never come when you're here, though. ” she says softly, in place of begging for him to tell all the rest to leave her alone and go back into the silver curtains, at least for a while, because for all her suffering, she has not lost her pride.
Satoru doesn't think about anything in beautiful terms. There is beauty all around him within the world and the flow of cursed energy that the Six Eyes permit him to see, filtered blessedly by darkened shades. Suguru stands and thinks of pavement as poppy as the two shadows lengthen on the pavement and to Satoru it's just the thing he's standing on and nothing more. He's never needed shoulders to stand on to make himself look huge--his white hair is aflame in the dying sun all on its own.
At being called for, Satoru only belligerently replies with: "Haaaah?" He raises his head from where he's stooped a little ways behind his companion, his hand extended to a resident stray cat who had sniffed his hand demurely only moments before, only for the thing to scamper off into purple-hued shadows at the sound of his raised voice. "Hey! You scared it off, Suguru!" Oh well. He's already getting back to his feet, the very bottoms of his ankle bones peeking out beneath the cuff of the pants that are already too short for him as he rises to his full height--Satoru Gojo is going to be a very tall man. it's a good thing the Gojo budget is more than plentiful right now as Satoru comes into his own, deciphering power far beyond anyone could ever imagine.
The sunset is already dying, fast in the late-fall season. Satoru shrugs his bag over his shoulder and saunters over to Geto. "How're you gonna make it up to me? Curry bun from the konbini?" Of course, a demand, not really a question--but not the kind of demand Satoru 'Gojo' would be expected to make of his fellow sorcerers. Rather, the demand a bratty teenager makes of his best friend. If he is going to be ascribed divinity, at least it's easier to be an annoying, bitchy, and frankly sometimes kind of bad friend in the interim. This is what Satoru revels in. No one can stop him: he knows that. They all know that. By the time he's standing shoulder to shoulder with Suguru, Satoru's practically beaming from ear to ear, the light turning his reflective shades just as orange as his hair seems in the catch of the sunset. Again his shoulder jostles as he adjusts his backpack, the firm fabric of the strap pressing somewhat painfully at the joint of his thumb as he does so. "And don't gimme that 'I don't have all night' crap, you know as well as I do you're going to ace that exam tomorrow. I mean, we're the strongest." Satoru knows this better than anyone--and the things he knows are true, as if willed by the very fabric of the world itself.
𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗴𝘂𝗿𝘂’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗮𝘁. his face is big and bright and burning. is this what she meant? she watches satoru draw up to his full height, or rather, the shadow that he casts, which stretches itself thin and makes its way over to where she’s stopped. her own is blacker than black. in her eyes is a vast sea of emotion with his approach. this is lost on satoru. he is more concerned with the white - footed cat, straggly and underfed, who scampered away upon her own arrival, albeit briefly. the lower half of his face is already broken in two, and beneath his glasses, he can imagine those eyes: glittering, blithe, unconcerned. nothing seems to stick with him for long. this is one of many differences between them, because any of her attempts at indifference are poorly thought of and executed.
their shoulders brush; not quite flush like they once were since satoru’s is an inch higher than her own, or maybe less if she stands up straighter; a recent and grating development. they resume their walk, loose gravel dislodged from the aging pavement and gritting beneath their feet. his demands are those of a child and his bag nudges suguru’s shoulder blade. she falls on her sword. there’s no resistance. “ do i really have a choice? ” the corner of her mouth twists up into something like a smile, though it is neither as effortless or big as his.
a stray strand of hair falls into his face as his head tilts down towards the sun - streaked ground, the upper half of her body shaking a little with a forced and silent laugh. “ unlike you, i have to study. ” he says, but doesn’t really mean it. satoru is right. they are the strongest. things have come easily to suguru for as long as she can remember. when he sits down at the small desk in his dorm, he flips through notes and textbooks not to commit anything to memory, but to check off that box: fulfilling the duty of a good student, and a diligent sorcerer. it is always a mere going through the motions. as a child, shadows opened their mouths and shared secrets unbidden. now, they put their fingers in his mouth and force themselves down his throat. they leave her stomach heavy and her limbs stiff, with swollen joints and an unrelenting nausea, and still. still. he is better than the rest, present company excluded. suguru is no fool. he has her beat at every turn. all she has is her resolve. she makes more of an effort than he ever has— and ever will.
extricated from satoru’s side, she walks a little bit ahead, towards a side street with the green and orange - awninged shop at its corner. she doesn’t have to say anything: he had already started to turn off the main road. no matter how hard she tries to get one step ahead, he’s probably already arrived at their destination. this should upset her. instead, all he does is level satoru with an admonishing look over his shoulder. “ it looks bad, you know. not putting in any effort. ”
𝗷𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. either that, or grass baking in the midday sun. it reminds him of the persimmon leaf tea they would brew in the ward. half - hidden under the shade of the elm, the heat remains at bay, though it burns his calves when the sun breaks through the interstice. sweat slips over a bare thigh. ‘ my life, ’ kaoru thinks, ‘ is going to end. ’
it will come back, or takehiko will. maybe both, because he is very unlucky. mariko doesn’t know the half of it. “ a nun? ” he laughs. “ i can’t imagine you in a habit. ”
that curled black hair under the hood, with over - bitten lips, which remain the single point on her face where his eyes return again and again. bright eyes give mariko a look that is half - appraising, half - teasing. she is everything but chaste. even with her spindly legs pulled to her chest, her small face clouded with emotion, there is an impishness to her. it’s hard to think of her swaddled and pledging herself to god. frankly, she’s too selfish. kaoru knows her well enough. this is not an admonishment of her character, because there is something to be said of putting yourself first, he thinks. too many pieces of himself are stuck in the teeth of others, of rei’s. he’ll never get those back.
his legs cross, butterfly - style, with elbows propped on either knee. a lazy grin makes its way onto his face, which finally has gotten some color back in it. he remembers laying face - up in the hospital with a hand mirror above him. the hair crowning the sheet - white face had lost its color, too. it looked grey as the winter twigs in a sparrow’s nest. today, it curls around his cheekbones and temples. like a rose, kaoru is in a second flush, however brief. his voice warms over. “ what about me? do you think i could pull it off? ”
kaoru’s lunch was small, and nothing remains. his appetite has returned, albeit slowly. treatment had left food a hurdle; everything too hard on her suddenly sensitive stomach, or, all at once, the taste of well - known foods was unbearable. now, he can eat a whole bowl of rice now without his stomach emptying itself. the same can’t be said of shinobu, who picks around her food with deft strokes, taking only the small bits of meat hidden under deep green leaves. still sixteen. holding herself hostage hadn’t changed her, not very much, if at all. “ you’re a picky eater. ” he says, matter - of - fact. ‘ you’re still a child, ’ is another way of saying this. children: he is surrounded by them. never does kaoru stop to consider that he has been forced to grow up too fast. takehiko took his hand and told him that he is mature and lovely and it is all he ever wanted to hear.
then, to the wind, “ you’re right, though. i could never be a wife. ”
