Ahaha… ready for another 🔔 poll? No? Too bad! What should my next fic be? Update Sweetness or abandon my dignity by breaking my promise and write something else?
Update Sweetness like i said i would
Goyuu horror fic (no porn only mystery and horror)
More porn! (Topjou x Bottomyuu this time)
Write multiple shorter fics (a variety pack of Goyuu)
Gimme 'blood' for Chrysi an Despair pleasssee (I am afraid of what you'll do with this ngl)
ALT TITLE: im funny because i only had to omit the word "blood", but i also refused to use chrysi's name in the entire writing until the very last scene with her.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: i stayed up until 6 am writing this because i was way too invested in this concept. thank you. now enjoy despair through the ages as he thinks exclusively of chrysi <3
———
She didn’t like it. Never did.
Despair knew that. She would complain of the coppery tang that haunted her tongue, complain of how it stained all her clothes, complain of the way it came and went. Shame would filter through all of her words, because in the end, she knew he could taste it whenever they kissed, could see the marks it left as ghostly imprints upon her.
He didn’t like it either. But unlike her, he didn’t grow up with the dislike of the life burning through his veins. Unconcern was more of his approach to it. Sometimes he remembered that his heart pushed more of it through his veins, sometimes he remembered it when it would drip from wounds inflicted upon their slaves, sometimes he remembered it as he passed the Colosseum and heard the sound of swords clashing. And, at more times than the others, he didn’t think of it.
Back then, he didn’t care.
He didn’t care until he started seeing her hunch over in pain as she coughed up mottled red and gold. He didn’t care until he would have to stop between their kisses to brush away the trickle beginning to creep from her nose. He didn’t care until he held her in his arms as she died, choking on it, forever staining her dress in a wine-red that could never be washed out.
Nor could he wash out the image of her in those last moments.
Despair tried not to think of it.
—
Eventually, he forgot how much he hated it. Or maybe it wasn’t that he forgot—it was more that seeing it now managed to spur some sort of sensation into him. A twisted sort of feeling, one that he knew was a perversion of her memory, but seeing people and places soaked in red made something twinge in his chest that would’ve otherwise stayed silent, and he liked to feel something.
So he continued on, following that wicked feeling of damnation.
Funnily enough, it tasted the same as the dripping darkness that came from the people he broke apart so easily.
And not so funnily enough, it didn’t have the same sweetness as hers.
He didn’t remember the precise taste of her lips when they kissed after one of her fits, but he knew for certain that this was not the same. It hurt.
Despair didn’t like to remember.
—
No longer did he think of the redness as something to be worried over, or something to hate, or even the terrible thrill that drove him from wonderful terrors and terrible wonders.
It was right back to unconcern.
No, not even unconcern. That would imply a sense of peace with regards to the subject, and Despair possessed anything but peace. Just a restless, quiet agony.
Maybe he’d define it more as… monotony.
Live as long as he did (though he’d never define the way he existed as living) and everything had monotony. Even the scarlet that dripped from the edge of guillotines, or the gush of crimson that came with a bullet to the throat. That was just another part of existing among humans. Life, death, and everything in the greyness between.
All threadbare and spiritless and wearisome.
They all were devoid of interest to him—until Despair started to wonder how she felt in her last moments as he stared into the eyes of dying men. There was a panic in their eyes that he was absolutely certain were not in hers.
That hurt more than thinking of her last moments being full of fear.
Because that meant she was ready to accept her death.
And though Despair had lived far too long, he couldn’t imagine being ready for death.
It wasn’t hope that spurred him onward. The idea almost made him laugh. Gods, hope had no place in his life.
Instead, he continued out of faded spite, and he knew, in his heart of hearts, that she would be displeased with his form of existence.
—
He stared at her.
At her.
The girl that he’d last seen with a dress more red than white, the girl that had been drowning on the selfsame liquid that was supposed to keep her alive, the girl that he couldn’t forget and that he couldn’t bear to remember.
She had some of it smeared over her face again, beginning to dry into the rusty wine color of a deep wound. The source of it, from what Despair could make out, was a cut—hooked over her right cheekbone and over her nose, marring the scattering of freckles, and almost hidden by the sweep of her disheveled white hair.
Her eyes blazed. “You’d better let me go before I knock your teeth in.”
Shock, more than actual fear, made Despair drop her wrist.
It was her—she still spoke the same way, even if she spoke in English instead of Latin—but she didn’t remember. He didn’t even know if she went by the same name. He certainly didn’t.
He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was an instinctual, cold, “Watch where you’re going.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he felt his cheeks heat in a way that they hadn’t in millenia.
She narrowed her eyes at him and all he could think of was the last time he’d seen those eyes. Just as glittering as he remembered, but now there was an edge in them that she never had with him before. Back then they were lovers, and now—
Now they were perfect strangers.
“Maybe I will,” she said coldly, “just as soon as you get out of my way and let me do my job.”
Perfect strangers getting off on the wrong foot.
Of all the times he’d thought of seeing her again, he had never once considered something like this. Something impossible, something new, something agonizing and confusing and bizarre.
“Your—?”
She knocked him over, the two of them tumbling to the ground together. Her knee jabbed into his hip and his head glanced off the ground hard enough to split skin.
He had a matching injury to hers now.
Before he could muddle through all of that, something whizzed over their heads, so fast that it stole all the air from the street for half a heartbeat. Then the air came rushing back, and the sticky wetness from his new injury dripped onto his collar, and she pushed off of him without a moment’s hesitation.
“And now I will watch where I am going as I chase that thing down.” She stared down at him with an arched brow and half-lidded eyes. “Enjoy the rest of your day.” She paused, then added, sharply, “You snotty bastard.”
Despair could only stare after her in the muddled heartbeats that followed. He could only stare and feel the warmth his stolen heart pushed through his stolen body and realize that, for once, he had a strange glimmering feeling he couldn’t remember ever feeling.
It was only when he pushed himself off the ground and followed in her footsteps that he realized that he might define the feeling as hope.
—
Her fingers were soft against his brow as she smoothed the bandage over the aching mark made by his negligence.
“You know, you should be more careful, Blue,” she said softly. “One of these days, you’re going to get your head knocked right off your shoulders and nobody will be able to patch you back together.”
Despair raised his brows, but wisely didn’t inform her that he’d already experienced that once. Except it wasn’t just losing his head—it was all of it unraveling, with only his emotional maelstrom as the core that kept him from unwinding too. It was harder to unknot something that was too tangled to have a distinct sense of self, after all, and by the time he did know who (or, more accurately, what) he was, it was too late to completely erase him from existence.
Her hand slowly left the cut and she traced down the planes of his face with careful fingers.
He caught her hand. At her questioning hum, he gently kissed the inside of her wrist, feeling the delicate thread of her veins pulsing with her heartbeat against his lips. He briefly closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of her being alive and being right here with him.
He opened them again, looking up at her soft expression. “Did you know that I love you?” he murmured.
She sat herself on his lap, their eyes meeting. A hint of a smile brushed over her lips. “Did you know that I’m sick of you coming home with unidentified liquids all over you?”
He smiled too, against her wrist, and he could feel her heartbeat get faster. It only made him smile all the more. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t unidentified.”
“Benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty. The right to remain silent.” At Despair’s expression, she laughed, and said, “If I don’t say it, then I don’t have to worry about the police getting me in trouble right along with you. This way, I am innocent of all your crimes.”
She said it lightly, but Despair’s heart still dropped. He still wasn’t accustomed to the feeling, despite the fact that he felt it every time she brushed over the truth of his chosen name. She’d been caught in his crimes before, and he hated remembering the result of it. It was one of the most unpleasant out of all the rusty emotions he was relearning.
The light in her eyes dimmed, and he realized too late that he hadn’t thought to mask his expression.
His cheeks heated at his oversight.
“It’s fine, Despair.” She dropped her head to his shoulder, settling against him so perfectly that it almost made his heart ache. “I don’t care about your crimes.”
You should. They killed you once before.
He stared at her wall blankly for a couple seconds, trying to clear his mind of the memories of screaming and sickly warm wetness marking his first stolen body’s hands with scarlet and the sheer fury that burned out all too quickly.
Finally, he rested his other hand on her head, threading his fingers through her hair.
“You probably should figure out some better strain-removal techniques,” he said.
She stiffened. Not for long—not even for a heartbeat, measured by the light pulse in her inner wrist—but it was long enough for Despair to feel it.
He’d disappointed her.
Despair closed his eyes tightly.
“You probably should figure out how to not avoid getting any new stains,” she shot back after an airless moment. “I’ve got the best stain-removing techniques in the world, but they’re not doing anything. You’ve just got iron-strong stains.”
“I hear unidentifiable liquids make the worst stains.”
“I hear that you’re a bitch.”
He smiled faintly.
Guilt twisted in his chest.
He wished he could bend to her will in this one instance. He wished he could change his errands. He wished he could stop it all.
He wished he could just return to a happy life with her and ignore the ever-ticking of the stopwatch that signaled the approach of his second Great Collapse.
—
She stood off the path in some bushes, her gaze on him, yet strangely blank.
Despair’s heart strangled him, coiling in misery. There was no hiding it. No denying. She’d heard what Femt had said, seen what Despair did.
Those unidentified liquids were no longer unidentified.
“I’m going to stop you,” she said, and her voice was mechanical and cold, and it stabbed Despair straight through the remnants of his revived heart with a rusty fork. A distorted version of a smile cut across her face. “I’m going to do everything in my power to keep you from killing people. Even if that means I have to kill you myself. I’m going to stop you.”
His eyes fluttered shut. The beat of his heart resonated painfully through his head.
“Then why don’t you do it?” he breathed.
It was a genuine question. He didn’t doubt that she had the ability.
She laughed, a strangled sound combined with a painful, short sob. “I can’t. Not right now.”
He opened his eyes to see her angrily wiping her tears away. Even from this distance, he could see the flush sitting high in her cheeks.
“Why not?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Because I still love you.”
She was misery in portrait. A moment caught in time, worse than when Despair held her dying frame, because now he’d done it to her himself. A brokenhearted girl, with leaves in her hair and the splash of red adding color along her freckles. Her eyes blazing, shattered tears spilling down her cheeks, hair whipping mercilessly in the wind.
His throat knotted. He couldn’t say what he wanted to—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, like the beat of a drum inside his head—and he couldn’t say the truth either.
And just like their reunion, the first time he saw her two years ago, his mouth worked on cold-hearted instinct: “That’s your mistake.”
He turned and walked away from her.
And he tried—he really tried—to not feel his heart collapsing in his chest.
—
The zombies hadn’t been his idea. Despair didn’t even need to question who caused it all—Femt loved the absurdity of them, the gruesome nature of their stories, all designed by the humans. And even though they weren’t Despair’s idea, he did enjoy the irony of it. Thousands of tales of humanity’s fall from grace, enjoyment churned from a vicious and terrible source, and Femt finally made it a reality.
Turns out humans didn’t quite appreciate the gesture.
He ignored the way the city streets stank of iron and copper, the way the ground felt more like a swamp, the way his shoes began to turn red with the remnants of the monsters’ feast.
Even something like this, he thought with a pang, made him think of her. She loved to play video games with zombies, her face expressionless as she controlled the character on the screen with finesse. Occasionally, she would shift underneath Despair (for he’d always lay over her, and she’d always rest her arms on his back) and mutter about plot inconsistencies he hadn’t even bothered to notice.
It was harder to file away his thoughts of her now. She’d been too recent, in his hands barely a year before, and she had left an unmistakable mark on him. Everything they’d done together was a moment trapped in amber and slid onto a tarnished string of memory.
I’ll stop you, she said.
Well, it was his second Great Collapse. He hadn’t been stopped yet.
You failed, he thought, and he didn’t expect the hollow defeat that came with it. It made him feel too light, like he was losing his grip on the ground below him. Which was technically true, he supposed, since he had lifted the church from the graveyard it had once belonged to and sent it halfway across the city.
Instead of dwelling on it, he bent down and retrieved the necklace Mary Macbeth had left behind when she lost her form. It glinted silver in the sickly light of the city.
He stared at it for too long, trying to puzzle out the meaning behind it. For a girl that claimed she never prayed—
How bizarre to have a necklace of a cross.
Mary was just like him—she didn’t believe in salvation. It was a pointless charm that held no meaning.
Despair pocketed it and walked towards the steps of the chapel, whistling aimlessly.
The feeling of being unmoored only grew with each passing second.
As he settled on the stairs, he rested his elbow on his knee and cupped his cheek in his hand. His head buzzed with pain. His body felt incorporeal. His heart twisted this way and that.
Why didn’t you stop me?
He wished she did.
He was glad she didn’t.
He stared blankly out the open doorway of the church, preparing for the arrival of the God-Eyes boy. Leo.
She would’ve liked him.
Despair felt that underlying gnawing of guilt, and he tried so hard not to. It wasn’t like he planned to kill Leo. He didn’t even want to. He just knew that it would be pointless to try and hope for something that was so out of reach and had nothing to do with his own hands.
If Leo died from the chaos outside, then so be it. Perhaps the kid’s death would be on his hands, but at least the sticky, coppery wetness wouldn't be.
Besides, Despair doubted the kid would die. He was much too resourceful for that. And so full of that damned hope. Perhaps that was what kept him alive for so long.
Despair wanted to laughed at the unfairness of it all. He wanted to cry. It was all so fucking funny.
His eyes suddenly focused on a figure walking up the incline of his lair. His heart jumped and he wondered if finally—
But no, the figure didn’t have long curly hair blowing in the wind, nor the distinct shape of a woman, which meant perhaps God-Eyes really did make it—
But Despair was wrong again, because the figure was tall and strong and distinct.
He just kept on whistling, watching the progress of the man as he walked steadily up the aisle. How boring. He wanted the man to get on with it.
And then the newcomer obliged.
The man’s voice came out deep and brisk. “So you’re the King of Despair. One of the Thirteen Kings.”
He made it sound like a business position. Despair almost laughed, the short, bitter kind that hurt his throat.
Instead, he said, “Oh, so you know my name. Good for you, Klaus Von Reinherz.” His mouth twisted in an ugly smile. See? He knew the other’s name too. “I’m almost surprised we haven’t met before. Well, it’s a pleasure. Now, get lost—you’re not the one I’m waiting for.”
And who was he waiting for?
God-Eyes.
And he knew he was wrong. He was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
He was waiting for her to come and fulfill her promise. He was waiting for her to come with hard eyes and the pointy end of her staff pressed against his chest. He was waiting for her to come and be past her love for him, far enough along that she could kill him without batting an eye.
Not because he wanted death. He still wasn’t ready. He would never be ready.
But because he wanted to see her again. He wanted to see her and know, without a doubt, that she was alright.
But maybe—and his heart dropped low in his chest—she was lying out there, decomposing, covered in that terrible red that soaked into his shoes barely even an hour before.
—
If rekindling the feelings had been difficult, relearning the movement of his original body was a million times harder.
Not because it was hard for him to control—though, the fact that he was still too weak to leave the hospital did lend itself to the accuracy of that assessment—but because he kept on staring down at himself, piecing together the memories that had once destroyed this same body.
Or maybe not the same body. Maybe—more accurately—a body perfectly identical to this one. The body that had the same black hair that he grew out longer than his father liked, the body that was long and lithe, the body that had the unmarred skin of a boy at the top of the classes.
Despair spent hours staring at down at himself, staring in mirrors, staring at anything reflective, trying to figure out the strangeness of his original form.
He was tall. He’d forgotten. He was considered even taller back then, an impossible height that sometimes startled people. And she was—
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Gods, he didn’t want to think of her. But it was harder than ever before, because he’d visited her in the hospital often, and he’d seen her mentioned in the news, and he was now in the body that had known her perfectly—had the face that she once loved, the lips she kissed, the hands that held her dying body.
Sometimes Despair wanted to scream.
“Penny for your thoughts,” a cheerful voice piped up behind him.
And his nurse didn’t help.
“Penny’s not worth much,” he said coolly, and he turned around to face him.
Adam inclined his head, amusement lurking in his eyes. “Maybe not, but it can get you a candy, if you’re in the right place.”
“I’ve never been fond of candy.”
“You’ve never been fond of transfusions either.”
Perfect segue.
Despair resisted the well of sarcasm that boiled under his mask of indifference. “Let’s just get it over with.”
He brushed past Adam into the hallway, careful not to bump him with the uneven movement of his body.
And he immediately staggered, suddenly feeling far too flushed and unanchored.
She was there.
She was in the hospital.
And she was dripping
red
all
over
the
floor.
Dripped red, dripped gold, dripped black, dripping in the loss of her own life, made more terrible by the diseased gold threading over her skin like a statue of shattered marble.
She didn’t even see him when she collapsed.
The scream he’d felt building up in his lungs all day—all his life—escaped.
i can’t wait to watch the leafs lose 25-0 to the avs. hutch will gift naz a hatty of hat tricks for his return. nate will score 4 goals while napping on the ice. mikko and cale will alternate for the rest of the goals. grubi will probably get a goal while hutch is giving them out. im ready for the dumpster fire.
