I humbly request Amphoreus men with a Halovian reader, reacting to their freaky psychic abilities, the bird wings, halo, and how they absolutely cannot take a hit. Listen, songbirds are infuriatingly fragile, I've had them as pets. Trust me.
Porcelain Divinity
Synopsis: Bearing wings, a halo, and psychic power—but none of a soldier’s resilience—they bewilder, frustrate, and ultimately enchant those hardened by strife.
Tags: Anaxa x Reader, Mydei x Reader, Phainon x Reader, Halovian!Reader, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Psychic Powers, Romance, Soft Moments Amid War, Found Family, Banter, Protective Instincts, Emotional Vulnerability, Character Introspection.
Warnings: Blood/Injury (Minor Descriptions), Emotional Distress, References To Death And War, Fragile Body Horror (Mild), Intense Affection Veiled As Irritation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms (Grief, Overprotection).
[Part 2]
You collapse again—on the obsidian floor of the abandoned observatory—your breath rattling like loose parchment in the wind. A crimson splotch decorates your feathered shoulder, delicate bone nearly shattered by a minor deflection.
Anaxa doesn’t curse. He hisses, like steam beneath cracking stone.
“Did I not explicitly say, do not engage the arcanum juggernaut alone?” he snaps, striding over with the rage of a dying star and the precision of a surgeon.
You try to sit up. “I was… fine until the explosion.”
“Ah yes,” he mutters, kneeling beside you, his gloved fingers glowing faintly gold as they hover over your wound. “Because explosions, I hear, are famously gentle to brittle-boned divines with wings made of hope and denial.”
You laugh—wince—then laugh again.
“Mockery and martyrdom,” he says, dryly amused now. “Tell me, were you also planning to sermonize while bleeding out?”
You glance at his solemn face, and something flickers behind his eye. His palm hovers over your chest, your halo flickers uncertainly above.
“You fascinate me,” he says suddenly, voice lowered. “A being born of sky, dipped in prophecy, yet somehow you break like chalk on the first draft of history. That fragility…” He frowns. “It enrages me. Because I fear it.”
Your breath catches. “Why?”
“Because I can’t predict you. Can’t control it. And it means I might lose you before I finish understanding why your soul sounds like a song I’ve never heard before.”
And with that, he lifts you gently—not like glass, but like truth: weightless, dangerous, and deserving of reverence.
You flutter down from the ridge, landing beside Mydei in a half-collapse of feathers and grace. Your wing twitches. Your knees buckle.
He’s at your side in a flash.
“Not again,” he murmurs, voice soft but grave. “This is the third time you’ve dropped like a sparrow from the sky.”
You grin despite the blood on your lip. “But I made the shot.”
His eyes narrow, flickering with both pride and quiet exhaustion. “Yes. And nearly died again doing it.”
You flop dramatically against a nearby stone. “Halovians don’t die. We ascend.”
“Halovians bleed,” he growls, tearing fabric to wrap your shoulder. “You bleed more than any warrior I’ve fought beside. Even with your psychic shields. You're all mind and light, and not enough armor.”
“Wouldn’t exactly match the vibe,” you whisper, voice waning. “Halo, feathers, choir energy…”
Mydei lifts your chin gently. “Then I’ll be your armor. Even if you hate hiding behind others. Even if you tell me not to.”
You blink. “You’re not scared of me?”
He smiles faintly. “You terrify me. Not for your power. But because you’re fragile… and you keep throwing yourself into storms like you’ve never seen rain before.”
You feel tears build.
“Next time,” he whispers, lifting you onto his back like you weigh nothing, “you fly behind me. And stay behind me, songbird.”
You are unconscious for exactly three seconds after the explosion.
Then you blink awake—to see Phainon hovering over you, white hair dusted with ash, his face absolutely wrecked with concern.
“Oh my stars,” he breathes. “Are your wings bent? Are they crumpled? Your halo’s flickering! That’s not supposed to flicker, is it?”
You wheeze. “They just… clipped me. I’m—”
“You’re not fine,” he says, scooping you up and running fast. “You fell like a dropped porcelain plate. I thought—” He bites off the rest, clearly shaken. “You psychic types need a ‘do not poke’ sticker on your forehead.”
“Maybe a ‘caution: glass soul’ sign?”
“You're laughing again,” he says, scandalized. “How are you laughing?”
You reach up, brushing a soot-smudge from his cheek. “Because you’re cute when you panic.”
He flushes, nearly trips, then keeps running. “I panic because I like you, featherbrain!”
There’s a long pause as you rest against his chest, halo now steadier.
“I don’t care if you’re fragile,” he murmurs. “But I need you to let me help. You're made of light and high notes and cosmic static, and I’m… I’m just a sword. But I can cut through the dark for you.”
You press your head to his shoulder. “Then I’ll be your guiding flame.”
Phainon smiles through the tears he’ll never admit were there. “Deal. But if you faint mid-sentence again, I will wrap you in bubble wrap.”
I don't understand how some people hate/dont like Phillip, when he is in fact a realistic character. A person who behaves on outwardly moralistic goals while deep within behaving from a standpoint of rather selfish desires + a sort of sadness and rage from the loss of his possible girlfriend and mentor, possibly translating to the sort of selfishness to ask more people to fight for him + possibly fueled by self sacrificial guilt ( survivors guilt ) And of course along with the tiredness of fighting the same fight back to back and losing people again, then being dropped into Oswald's Distorting Extravaganza, then being shown visions of his worst fears come to life before him, and spoken from the perspective of people he just lost, like he's obviously struggling and being pushed to his brink again and again, he himself hasn't done anything wrong and has acted in the direction of what he has assumed or understood at the time would be the right thing to do. Phillip is a shadow, a reflection of all of us, and in truth he should simply be a cautionary tale of the horrors of the world.
This is also further exemplified by what Roland says upon witnessing Phillip transform into the crying children.
He expresses empathy and says that Phillip most likely just feels cornered at this point, and it's once again just a showcase/reflection of how we feel when we don't know what do, and a concentration of the sort of helplessness which we all experience sometime, somewhen in our lives.
The Boom episode where Sonic refers to someone as "just some guy" is funny also because Sonic views himself that way. He doesn't go around shouting from the rooftops that he's the world's saviour, or demanding special treatment for all he's done. In Sonic's own words, he's "just a guy who loves adventure". He does good because he wants to, and believes any one else can do the same. There's no pedestal for being superior, and if there is, he's not claiming it.
Regeneration is such an intimate moment. It's a huge personal change in like nearly every sense of the word.
So can we talk about how out of all the New Who Doctor's the Ninth Doctor's last words in this huge moment were entirely directed at Rose?
I'm sure the experience is perceived differently for every Doctor, but Ten describes it like dying. And with the way some of them seem conflicted about actually having to die when it really comes down to it, yeah fair. Add onto that that you won't actually die but you will have to redo all of this effortful self discovery you've spent years doing all over again because you will be completely different. Add onto it the fact that all of your hard work, everything you've worked for, everything you've earned is about to potentially be completely undone in a manner of seconds. You'll remember yeah, if you're lucky or if you wait long enough. You'll remember the important stuff. But the game's changed now and you're expected to pick up where you left off like the controls haven't been tampered with, flipped, reversed, inverted or worse. Some of the controls might not even exist anymore. And that's just your reaction to it. Who knows how your companions will respond. Yeah. This moment is huge. But if you've read this far you've probably watched the show. So you don't need me to tell you that. The Doctor's various final moments make a lot of sense with all this in mind. They're goodbyes but not necessarily dedicated to everyone else. Their very last words always seem to be just for them, and, on a more meta level, the audience/viewers.
And then there's Nine. Nine who loves this girl so much that he shares in the vulnerability of this moment with her. Holds a one sided conversation with her, doesn't look away once. His last words are entirely for her. He's literally dying, burning from the inside out and trying to make sure to ground her, keep her calm as he is literally DYING. Can you imagine the uncertainty of not knowing who you are about to be, the fear of knowing that everything you love about your self and life may just vanish before your eyes and then add on the very literal sensation of burning to death and you spend your last moments trying to make sure someone else is calm because they look, understandably, scared?
Ten's last words were a silent plea not to change. Eleven's were an acknowledgment of all he did and was. Twelve was a reminder, a promise, a request, many things for himself. Thirteen's was a sendoff and a greeting to whoever she was going to be. Fourteen's was a comment about how happy he was with the ending he got. Fifteen was a celebration of the experience of who he got to be.
Nine is the only one whose entire regeneration speech was focused on one person and one person only. And it wasn't him.
wanted to post a ramble i wrote to myself in my notes app in like late 2024-early 2025 (i can't remember) when i first got into THH via Therm playthrough:
does anyone wanna talk about how gut wrenching it would have been for taka to beg mondo not to leave him rather than to make him understand. yeah i know why he asked the latter, but the words "don't leave me" are just so fucking raw and imo more impactful
this poor fucking dude CANNOT catch a break. first his grandpa royally fucks up so he's brought up in a financially struggling family (which i'm sure had dire effects on him mentally. i like to imagine the reason he became so obsessed with studying and succeeding in school in the first place was to be able to graduate and get a good job to support his family financially). then, he can't make a single friend for his entire young life. then gets put into a fucking killing game (which sucks if you're literally the embodiment of good morals), but plot twist he makes a friend! yippee finally! and then the friend dies lol
bro fought the autistic-making-friends battle for YEARS just for his first friend to be ripped away from him
i like to imagine the loneliness is eating him up inside
when he was younger and he would feel loneliness creeping in, he'd shove it aside to focus on his studies. but eventually this led to MAJOR burnout and social isolation that was slowly driving him mad. it's totally understandable to me why he completely crashed out after chapter 2. like the universe was playing cruel tricks on him, teasing him with his first real taste of friendship (🏳️🌈) only to shatter it
he tries not to let the loneliness bother him or to show that it bothers him but it does. he's spent hours of his life literally studying from like books and stuff how to make friends and he just can't understand why it isn't working. i mean, he knows he's off-putting to some degree, but he believes with enough effort anything is possible. so why isn't it possible for him to make friends despite all the effort he's putting in? maybe it drives him to an identity crisis
all of that to say i think it would have been insanely emotionally impactful to have taka scream "please don't leave me" at the end of the trial. maybe something like that was said? i cant remember. begging for his very first and only friend not to make him lonely again
'oh,' thalia grace thinks, 'this is going to hurt'.
because at fourteen years-old, thalia does not know how to love without loss. all her life, everything she has loved has been inseparable from grief, inextricable from its gasping, gaping maw; she does not know how to love something without losing it.
it had been easier, in a way, with beryl. with her alcoholism and drug use, her death had only been a matter of time - the question had never been if, but rather when and how. thalia knew it, and she suspected that even beryl herself had known it. when she heard of the car crash, she did not mourn; you can't mourn someone who is already dead.
but jason. he is the worst loss of her life - the disease in her chest, the gaping, festering wound. he had been the worst because she had loved him more than anything else she can remember loving in her short life, and because she had loved him so much, she had never expected to lose him.
she can still see his face: cheeks soft and round with baby fat, blue eyes brighter than the summer sky, his scarred mouth lisping around the syllables of her name. she cannot think of him most days; she keeps the memory of him locked inside a room in her heart, its key she has hidden deep inside herself - so deep she doesn't know whether she will ever be able to find it again.
sometimes, she feels that everything she loves bears the deep, bloody grooves of her nails carved into their flesh, because she no longer remembers love without the violence of it being torn from her fingers.
so tonight, she looks over at luke and annabeth, their peaceful faces illuminated by the soft glow of the campfire. annabeth is curled in luke's arms, her head resting on his chest. luke holds her close, in turn curled around her: brother and sister, father and daughter.
thalia loves them. does she love them more than she loves jason? she doesn't know, but they occupy the same space that jason does in the crevices of her ribcage, and that surely must count for something. thalia loves them, and she will lose them one day, just like everything and everyone else she has fought to keep with her broken-nailed desperation.
this is a story she knows the ending to. there is no other story.
It's wisteria trees in the spring, it's sweet plums in the summer. It's gardens full of fuschias, meadows full of lilacs, it's a natural rarity that pulls people even further in. Vivid and eye-caching is the purple of Rumi's hair, trailing down the length of her back in an immaculately decorated braid, drawing eyes to her like a bird of paradise in a zoo enclosure. Beautiful is the purple that envelops her, her signature, her brand.
But not all that is beautiful is good. Purple is wickedness , it's venom seeped in veins, poison that kills. And purple are the thorny vines snaking across her whole body, melded into her skin. Not the beauty that would attract crowds, but instead the kind that would threaten them.
Her patterns are snakes and she is the modern day Medusa. Perhaps it wasn't her that lied with a powerful man (she thinks of Mi-Yeong and her nameless father), maybe she didn't personally invoke the wrath of a scorned goddess, but it was her who bore the curse regardless. Marked as such that no one could look at her without turning to stone (After the Idol Awards, backstage. They were frozen, unmoving), without wanting her dead (Mira raised her weapon first, Zoey soon followed).
And those who knew, knew not to look at her at all (Celine, who couldn't look, who couldn't touch,who couldn't love her).
Sometimes she dreams of carving them off with a paring knife, stitching the normal parts back together, painting over the scars, pretending they next existed - the pain endured would be easier to live with then the pain of existing this way - a grotesque wolf in the body of a beloved herder's sheep. A demon posing as the people's princess.
She looks at herself in the mirror again, as she has countless times.
they were just boys. confused and angry with the world. james has so much to live up to. and yet he is overlooked, because their hero favors another boy.
he works so hard, and is it all for nothing? stuck as another nameless top of the class. it means nothing in the end. kogane is the only noteable one. the brilliant pilot who flunked out.
and now he’s back, with a grizzled new look and fancy new ship. he saved the universe. and what are you? another faceless nameless pilot. except keith also didn’t ask for it. he never meant to be so… alien.
you can’t even be angry at him. you’ve always wanted to be him. maybe he wanted to be you.
