shape shifter

you look like you're about to cry! A ROLEPLAY BLOG FOR MEREDITH ELKWOOD FROM TODD ALLISON AND THE PETUNIA VIOLET, ASSOCIATED WITH CITTA-ALVEARE. CURRENTLY A NOBODY LIVING IN DISTRICT BETA. TRACKING #STEADFASTKILLERS sidebar credit

[steadfastkillers]

it's just been raining

on my face

and if you think you see some tear tracks down my cheeks

please pleaseeeeee

don't tell dylan s***bell

i'm not crying

no

i'm not crying

and if i am crying it's not because of elijah-mun

these aren't tears of sadness because elijah-mun's sunday memes

it's because i'm thinking about a friend of mine who you don't really know who is dying

that's right, dying --

wait

[steadfastkillers]

irukananase said: destroy m e

[steadfastkillers]

Time's up.

psa: i hate you (i dont)

(“You’re Meredith?“)

Outside the somber gates, he’s an anomaly - tangled curls, dark wide eyes, smooth skin - all these things and nevertheless an anomaly, a strange thing living around other, normal boys, who don’t in the least have a chance of growing up the way he does. There, Meredith is mocked for the short breadth of his timer. At night, gleaming in the dark, there is no string of eight digits like most, but just a few, three or four, whispering to him he should count the days or hours rather than years or decades. In a way it’s both morbid and reassuring. His mother had had a brief timer too, or so it’s said when the social worker whispers among her colleagues - something like that is hereditary. Infectious.

At the least, very unlucky.

(“You’re late, but that’s okay.”)

And perhaps because she agrees, secretly, the woman who leads him, finally, from the graves of his old family to the white fence and wild grass and western air of his new home doesn’t hold his hand so much as touch his arm to direct his feet on the way. Taps him on the shoulder to tell him the time for farewells is over; makes a soft noise and grazes his wrist to usher him into the back of a cramped, musty automobile.

Even if it isn’t him, he sets his shoulders every time she ghosts a hand over his back, knowing: she’ll meet the one for her someday. He can see the clock’s telltale gleam, like a tattoo of silver or brass melded straight into the skin, whenever she tosses her red curls and bares her long neck briefly. It must be a pain to have it in such an inconvenient place. It could run down any hour, any day, if she isn’t careful enough or she doesn’t pay attention.

(“You don’t mind living with us now, right?”)

It’s a pain for him, anyway, with his timer sprawled across one palm, catching a glint of sun or lamp whenever he pushes his hair back or reaches for a bowl - or the handle of a car, embarking on several hours in stasis between cities. At least then he can fall asleep with bandaged fingers curled loosely in his lap, ticking hand tucked beneath the one for drawing. He can dream of warmth radiating from sun or skin instead of sticky leather, and only wake because the road gets rough or because the Elkwood house sits on a lazy stout hill and they’re here, they’re here, with a dirt-streaked boy pushing through the gate radiating impatience and sly, lovely charisma.

(“You’re going to love Petunia. Everyone does. Everyone should!”)

Elijah takes his hand as though it’s nothing at all, not the thing which every whey-faced government lackey who’s processed Meredith and pushed him along doesn’t like to acknowledge, not the thing he suspects he’s supposed to fear, but doesn’t either. He waves to the social worker’s back with the other - and that’s what makes Meredith’s heart stutter, perplexed. 00:00:01.

00:00:00.

(“You can call me Elijah.”)

It takes him a minute, a slight cradle of his wrist and the sudden shiver and clench of his right palm, maybe even a half-smile of mutually assured destruction for a face that’s too, too young to be so understanding. (The same goes for Elijah, though.) But he does, letting the ‘ah’ linger on his tongue a sliver longer than is characteristic.

He grows up under the shadow of certainty, and mortal satisfaction, and sudden love of knowing.

Really, Meredith grows up holding Elijah’s hand - and perhaps, in the end, dies the same way.

[steadfastkillers]

dorkhwi said: Just stomp all over my heart why don’t you (your Meredith gives me such dokis)

[steadfastkillers]

Banshee & Succubus

Banshee: If you knew one of your loved ones/best friends had only one day left to live, how would you spend that last day with them?

(This is…such a painful question…and full of TAPV spoilers…falls down…)

Meredith has made a promise to the one who is essentially his most important and dear person of all to be responsible for their death - the same person whose side he might leave physically, because they have places to go, people to see, Parliaments to incinerate, but never emotionally and very rarely mentally. If Elijah is about to die, it’s because he and Meredith have achieved what they set out to achieve: the toppling of the government that’s discriminated against, persecuted, and trodden on the backs of people like the Elkwoods systematically for literally years almost beyond counting.

They smile, they joke, they completely elude the authorities who now no longer really exist or carry any weight, and who certainly don’t have time for two former government lackeys or the wit to suspect them of involvement in the chaos. They have a glass; they play a game, looking like two boys over a round of chess Elijah wins, because he always does, but only by a slim margin. Perhaps it’s that he’s finally in a place where he doesn’t need to think so continually about the next move. He knows where he’s going to end up. He knows what comes next, and he’s known for a very long time: he made Meredith swear as much would happen exactly as it does, with a cutthroat jester’s singsong whisper. Maybe it was even over a table like this, Meredith’s pencil moving slow for once, because it no longer brings a blush to his face for Elijah to see him watching, recording.

In the end, Meredith presses the knife in slow. He doesn’t blink. Neither does Elijah - but maybe, Elijah smiles just a twitch, even though Meredith wishes he wouldn't curve his mouth so. Maybe he acknowledges, in the silence, they are both paying a debt in full.

Succubus: What’s one thing you can’t live without?

It would be mean to say Elijah after that last question, wouldn't it. (But really, there is nothing that Meredith couldn’t live without save his family. So maybe the knowledge of their safety and happiness. Maybe the sound of Elijah’s genuine laugh and the glimmer of Petunia’s relieved smile.)

[xfenharel]

Describe my writing style to me.

[angsty-askboxmemes]

Soulmates are too fluffy! We all now have time stamps counting down to the moment we're going to meet the person that gets us killed, inadvertently or otherwise. Send "time's up" for my character's reaction to their timer hitting zero right as they met yours.

[steadfastkillers]

ϟ Monsters-themed Asks!

Vampire: Someone offers you a chance at immortality. Do you take it, and why or why not?

Werewolf: If you had to spend your life with just one person, who would it be?

Witch: If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?

Ghost: Do you have any regrets?

Frankenstein: Is someone telling you how to live your life, or are you an independent person?

Mummy: If you were to fall into an eternal sleep, do you think anyone would miss you?

Zombie: Do you miss anyone right now?

Faerie: If you could get away with anything, what would you do?

Nymph: What are you like when you’re by yourself?

Mermaid: How far would you go to keep the one you love?

Shapeshifter: What would you change about yourself?

Banshee: If you knew one of your loved ones/best friends had only one day left to live, how would you spend that last day with them?

Siren: If you could make anyone do anything, what would you make them do?

Genie: If you had one wish that would come true and couldn’t be reversed, what would you ask for?

Fury: What is a word/phrase that you dread to hear?

Incubus: What would someone have to do to get in your pants?

Succubus: What’s one thing you can’t live without?

[steadfastkillers]

[boybandau-remade]

meredith should smile more

[thelostseasons]

steadfastkillers liked your post:Let me know if anyone wants to thread with Dad…

Read More

[steadfastkillers]

i mean hey dad im meredith

I MEAN hey daud im very pleased to hear you're....interested, as is elijah-mun

(it may not specifically be murder, but rest assured there are going to be plenty of opportunities as the elkwood brothers wade further and further into hive city's underworld, with the intention of tearing everything up and burning it down, for daud to...assist)

regarding just meredith and daud: laughs about this line

"His hands do violence, but there is a different dream in his heart" - The Heart (DH)

but by laughing i really mean this is something meredith and daud have in common so please pardon the sudden ache in my own heart; when you put up that rp ad i was actually on a different account but i felt right away meredith was the best-suited to offer up.

i have an open that might be to your taste here, as well as one from the homecoming pt2 event which may not be quite so suited, but could be an interesting meeting anyway, if you'd like to thread! if you want to plot/thread more thoroughly with meredith and elijah together (since they are so often inseparable, and absolutely people who move in tandem when it comes to bringing down governments and causing mayhem), you, elijah-mun, and i could also brainstorm threeway!

regardless...sweats...your daud is so great, it makes me want to get into dishonored even more....eyes your open starter hungrily

[steadfastkillers]

ending notes (event oo7)

after setting aside his silver key, meredith forgot about meeting petunia on citta, mistakenly assuming she was still in melbourne. but how could anyone forget dear sweet perfect honey pie petunia elkwood so easily???? meredith began to see petunia everywhere, as though he were always catching her slipping around a corner and away.

these small hallucinations were resolved very quickly after the event's end, like stitching up small cuts in his memory - though it certainly isn't pleasing in the least to meredith to think he's lapsed in his care for his most significant others, particularly as this left him unable to help petunia cope with her own somewhat more significant memory loss.

[steadfastkillers]

all the remains of a cadaver of days (open)

His drink lingers until the ice cuts the sharp taste soft, driblets sliding off the curve of the glass and seeping into the coaster: gold, gold, an ambiguous cross between cola and scotch he hasn't quite been tasting, a concoction the same muddled sheen as the walls of the small cafe where light doesn't quite gleam and Meredith doesn't quite either.

However rare it is to see him without Elijah's arm slung over his shoulder (as though his limb and elbow were shaped specifically for the other Elkwood to spider long, excitable fingers over during conversation), it's even more of a sight to see Meredith alone and without purpose. No one here knows it, but without a phone call to make to spread chaos or a schedule to follow while a pistol (a proper one, a very used one) sits close to his breast, Meredith has a strange evening to himself: unasked for, largely unwanted, but his.

Parliament and war are behind him, if not forgotten.

He can very well sip his drink as though he isn't waiting for anyone at all, and he doesn't need to peer up at the waitress - who waltzes by him several times without even glancing - to request in that quiet 1920s cadence 'another drink for a friend who's on his way.'

Fingers take to his straw; he stirs clockwise in a smooth, short arc. Meredith's right hand pores over a scrap from the tissues in the middle of the table and the ridges of an old pencil, not allotted to him by any scientist but forgotten by the worker who'd given him a menu.

Perhaps there comes a sound of interest, a dim, vague shadow over his sleeve, perhaps even a touch of palm to the table.

The stroke of Meredith's hand pauses, human features just forming on a corner of his yellow napkin.

His face turns up slowly.

[rabbitinthemoon-blog]

"What do you want?" I asked. “To be with you in hell,” he said.

Anna Akhmatova (via rabbitinthemoon)

[steadfastkillers]

but when i'm bad, i'm better (open, event oo7)

A week after Desmond - whose voice reminds Meredith of someone else whose name begins with D - so it's no wonder his eyes narrow imperceptibly as he pauses along the street to listen - Meredith shifts in his small, only occasionally shared bed, turning from side to back to sitting upright, exhaling the last wisps of his poor dream into the air of the chilly underground.

Waking to cold and concrete he's used to - or he supposes he is, after what he presumes has been a few days of sharing a room and a sparing wardrobe (only so much space in Beta's underground bunkers, after all) with the person he's always shared these things with. Even if a Hive City residence generally pales in comparison to the air and color of Melbourne, a cell in the former doesn't make much difference compared to a suit of subterfuge in the latter. In some small way, Meredith is always caging himself, maintaining a kind of unsettlingly clandestine, and somehow equally overlooked, quietude - which, now, much to his displeasure, has consistently been trodden on by retrograde pandemonium.

It would be easier to attribute it only to emotional secondhand smoke, the unrest of Hive City at large seeping into his skin like Sector oo2's noxious fumes his nostrils. But...that hasn't been the concern for quite some time, and at any rate, if it were, why would Meredith be in the least perturbed by the fears and losses of strangers? The only people whose happiness he's devoted to are Elijah and Petunia.

His family.

That's the concern at hand - that he should feel so distant from Petunia, and at the same time feel his skin crawl (his old cuts reopening, the grazings of skin he'd always shut down with sheer will, because he didn't have time for those aches and pains, especially not in his head) whenever he sees a girl with her build, her unhappy face, her hair tinge and a smile like a younger Elijah. Every time: he blinks, they round a corner or disappear into a taxi or a building. They disappear.

This morning, by the time Meredith moves into the streets, Elijah on one of his slumber binges even as their small food supply runs low, by the time Meredith catches a train to somewhere where he can at least literally breathe (Sector oo4 catches his eye as if by memory, though oo5 had been his original goal), the feeling's come back. A flicker of lavender in the crowd, a white and black earring - his expression barely changing at the sight - gone by the time he crosses the avenue, near steps into an alley, his errand quick to resurge in importance as soon as the mirage dissolves. Even further into the maze of side streets, though:

"Aaaahhhh!!!!"

His feet rock back and then shift just as his mouth opens a sliver, his hand moves to slip inside his suit; perhaps it's that he's been seeing her all over the city, and always - but he swears, that's a girl's voice. That's Petunia's: Petunia who loves him, Petunia for whom he would make a killing thing out of the wooden toy weapon in his pocket and ask at the same time that she not look.

Still, Meredith questions mid-step, rounding the corner, if he's made this up too.

[01898-deactivated20151102]

drawr

[steadfastkillers]

"Let me kiss it better."

"It isn’t as bad as it looks."

Elijah’s touch alone does enough to drain the hurt - or, barring that, reminds Meredith of how justified the feeling is, that Elijah can still smile when he offers, and that the gesture is half blade and half mischievous love.

And, well, they’ve both seen what happened to the other guy.

Elijah, leaning in, looking as though he’s remembering just that, makes Meredith smile too.

(alternately)

Meredith’s eyes move up slow, slow, brow high and knitted and eyes dilated and pause a jagged thing rather than a smooth silence. His mouth parts just enough to reflect parts careful attention, concern, a parting clarity through the fury, the adrenaline, the stuttering pain of torn skin and already rising bruise.

A breath rises, just the right cadence to be the shallow start of Elijah’s name or a cry of frustrated anger - and awkwardly, as it ends, Meredith pushes up on his elbows.

He isn’t saying sorry, because they deserved it, but he is…just by accepting the crooks of Elijah’s arms.