the only way my brother and I can draw on the same canvas is magma rn and it won't let me use my finger to draw so in solidarity he drew using his mouse too and the result was something we've both agreed to tattoo onto our bodies
So I made this a while back now and I know it makes no sense but I’ve been thinking a lot about how Lancer’s probably the type of kid who hugs ppl so hard. Just absolutely squeezes the life out of them and no one really thinks twice about it because kids just do that. But I think sometimes there’s always a split second where the hug isn’t a hug at all, just clinging on for dear life because what else do you do with an open wound but put some pressure on it and pray the bleeding stops
Rouxls having to do certain shit in secret despite being the single most conspicuous creature to have ever gleaned the face of the planet is something I think about. A healthy amount
The amount of divided by zero energy in this man is unparalleled. He’s playing 3836-D Chess with himself and losing bc he cannot figure out he’s actually playing checkers
Caring is a performance until Lancer comes along and fucks it up so not caring is also a performance and he makes them fight for dominance on the regular
So I didn’t technically get this in my inbox but I was asked (probably as a joke, now that I think about it) to write about characters without actually writing about them, ie w/o mentioning their names/any spoken dialogue, etc. I did my best, but it’s either going to come across wildly confusing or annoyingly heavy-handed so this one was a hell of a challenge, touché to you. In that vein I chose to write about the boys again in the hopes that either of those problems would be mitigated somewhat...(the answer was no :D )
The paint chips in a forgotten corner. He never thinks to peel the broken piece back all the way to see what horrid hack-job mess lied beneath the already abysmal layer of rapidly disintegrating illusion, it’s difficult enough to keep gravity from forcing it to hang loose like an another irritating distraction.
Occasionally he’ll take to pushing at it with his entire body, in the vain hopes that the broken piece will somehow stick itself back together again-a mend that does nothing to address the overall ugliness of it, though it would at the very least relieve him of any burden of responsibility for its maintenance.
But each time it adheres lightly a brief moment before fluttering to rest at a wilt again. Much as the broken piece annoys him, there’s little he’s actually willing to do about it besides complain.
So he ignored it.
There were more important matters to attend to.
Until today, when he swears it crumbles into dust between his fingers, saturated with darkened stains that bled into his own clothing, and he feels it thrum within his embrace as he again desperately presses it into his own body to make it stop, make it stop-
The broken piece clings to him just as desperately, flushed colors diluted with water that ran down against him and it’s all he can do to just keep it together because he refuses to strip the paint any further, now terrified of the visions that stirred eerily beneath the ever-warping surface.
He can’t help but apologize with his numb lips for the sorry state of affairs.
Then, miraculously, eventually...it holds.
The broken piece melds itself to the rest of the wall long enough for him to let go.
It conceals the horrors underneath long enough for him to open his eyes again, though it’s not long before he decided again he did not care for what he saw.
It didn’t care right back, cracking with a splintered, bloodied technicolor smile of sorts as the leakage dripped to a halt before finally peeling away again, wilting back into its original place with a gentle wave.
He blinks, and in spite of the way he notices his door swaying open and closed he’s inexplicably alone again.
It’s only going to get worse, he hears someone, somewhere warn.
But it wasn’t his. He hadn’t been the one to break it, he was just left dealing with a problem that never should have been his responsibility-
Even if his negligence caused the issue to persist...he wasn’t strong enough for this.
He’s only strong enough to mount a shadowed blockade of furniture up against it the next day, and weak enough to pray it was enough.
“It’s cool dude. You can just pick it back up later”
aka that thing I told my friend after he got his ass beat by King Spade that I didn’t realize had horrifying implications/consequences until I saw that post by @girlwiththegreenhat and tags by @tysonfurybattlepass that both talked about how in the Chapter 1 soundtrack the game over track comes right after Spade’s fight theme and like uhhh hmmm.... :((((
But like uhhh yeah what would happen to Lancer if Spade had actually won? Nothing good, I’m sure.
(But here’s a non-sequitur excuse to attempt writing Jevil)
Time floats by at its leisure, tangled and lost within the swirl of the sky that turns, endlessly on and on into a blurred kaleidoscope of color he can’t escape.
He didn’t want to escape.
Everything made more sense here, in spite of his many attempts to explain until he was purple in the face, he found it a waste to argue anymore with the rare visitors who only sought to torment him further from beyond their bars until the door ultimately vanished one day.
He doesn’t mourn their loss so much as he laments the lack of company, but if freedom came with a price, it was a debt paid most willfully to have the faces meld into an antiquated tapestry, their voices like melodies of a song unsung for decades if it severed their desperate cling to him.
They’d had their chance at escape. They’d shunned him then, but it was he who was laughing now.
He had no trouble amusing himself, and the carousel turns steadfast either way.
That is, until one day, it stops.
The stagnation makes him dizzy, and he sits, more irate than he should be that the dark fountain seems to reach him even here, in his one haven of all places.
The sky flickers, glittering fractals hardening like unforgiving stone and the sudden rotten stench would have compelled him to retreat had he remembered how to stand on solid ground.
It’s under siege. He doesn’t know how he knows and he’s angry that he does, he swore he’d left that place behind long ago and yet it still plagues him with its existence, or rather, it’s threat at non-existence that he’d normally be quite keen to celebrate, had it not been equally eager to drag his world down with it.
It only builds. It cries in anguish, and darkness oozes through him like the blood of the fatally wounded that nevertheless attempts to rally him to arms for a cause he’s long abstained from when there were more pressing concerns…it truly was an impossible task to describe the bigger picture to those who were so short-sighted, so blinded by their own greed and selfishness-
Anger mounts. He tries to combat the stillness, that rushing, roaring sound in his head by bouncing himself but in his agitation the movement becomes too aggressive for it to procure the pacifying effect he was hoping for.
The floor is more abrasive than he remembers it being.
The world is smaller than he remembers it being.
Colder, darker…
Just as suddenly the world begins to revolve again.
Nothing but the silence he’s used to. The sky he’s used to.
He can still feel the steady thrum of the fountain, churning on as if it had only been his imagination, though he’s quick to forget the sensation, to shed the tether so long as it’s been made optional.
Of course he’s entirely puzzled, but makes short work of that, too.
He knows better than to seek clarity from nonsense, but that was the way they chose to live. Even if it does produce a smaller, inexplicable pang of grief in him from time to time.
It doesn’t concern him. The one rule he abided by. He moves on swiftly, content to let the incident be engulfed by the rippling folds of the technicolor horizon.
In spite of his wishes, it’s soon split, gouged out and carved roughly, and the unsettling shape of a doorway is ripped from the spatial fabric.
He readies himself-they wouldn’t take him-they wouldn’t imprison him again-
But whatever opens the cell door takes little interest in him.
Instead, the giant looming silhouette discards something crumpled and battered, littering his prison’s unwanted garbage into his own world by some delusion of superiority-
Though…the visit isn’t entirely unwelcomed, as his curiosity successfully quashes his annoyance at the disturbance.
He looks on. He listens.
“A pity you’ve gone insane,” it says, in a cadence he could almost place from a distant memory, “you could have been a hero. But instead you’ve chosen to stand against me.”
The lump he’s apparently speaking to remains silent, unmoving…the only evidence there’s even someone there at all a mere faint shiver as it regards them.
A call from beyond. Someone asks a question about the rest-
It answers, loudly.
“Dispose of them-! Tonight, we celebrate our victory!”
A pause, then more quietly, though no less intense.
“Though you have robbed me of much of its satisfaction…” it sneered, and he’s nearly bored at all the uninvited worthless political grandstanding they’ve spilled over until the oncoming softness its tone adopts gave him reason to halt his oncoming jeer.
“My son…I will be too occupied mourning your loss. I warned that the Lightners would kill you, and so they have. There was nothing I could do to save you.”
The distinct clang of metal makes him jump since he isn’t used to it, but the loud, sudden noise doesn’t seem to alert the lump, or even startle them.
Before long everything fades away, the world stitches itself up again and the door disappears, irritating brutish figures along with it.
The lump stays. Doesn’t disappear as he half-expects but he’s excited by the unexpected nonetheless.
A playmate…? There’s definitely a prisoner shrouded within that darkened silhouette that laid splayed upon the floor just far away enough from the world to acknowledge it’s turning…too far away to acknowledge their freedom.
Stuck still in the prison they hadn’t yet realized they’d escaped from. They’d understand soon how frivolous it all was, how meaningless their old life stood to reasonable context they’d never been given until now. Soon…
“Uee hee! It’s been ages!”
He scampers up. It’s quite small, smaller than anything he can remember almost…
“Want to play a game?” He asks, though doesn’t wait for an answer.
It never comes anyways.
He kicks it gently with the side of his foot in the hopes it will stir but nothing seems to work.
He conjures his magic, sharpened spades match the ruined symbols that mark them.
He releases them to just graze the outline of them laying there, useless and lame and boring, and its almost an insult to his embellishment for it to appear so lifeless amidst the bright and sparkling.
“Oh, you’re no fun, fun!”
His foot connects again but this time he uses it to roll it over entirely.
His curiosity gets the better of him yet again, and he stands over its small frame to get a better look at it, so long as it was going to loaf around in solemn silence he wanted to see what type of person he was dealing with.
As he approaches, it recoils. He laughs in victory but as the child uncovers itself to reveal the hue of the sky reflected off of its water-stained cheeks, flushed and bruised in an ugly concoction of colors he never realized clashed so violently-
Child…it…he-he was a child…why…? How did he remember…? He remembered this child from somewhere-?
The sudden sentiment brings him to his own knees as he backs away, and they spin together.
His entire body is already similarly colored, battered, littered with gashes and bruises, throat red and angry, parts swollen and torn and useless…and yet he did little to acknowledge his pain outside of his apparent lack of utility.
“…seems someone already played without me…” He mutters, disappointment marred with a streak of genuine sorrow.
The little one sniffs, whimpers in a way that pulls him, suspends him over an iridescent inseparable mix of memory and fantasy.
It’s familiar…? He sees a face appear. Nearly identical to the child’s. Decidedly much younger-an infant-but somehow he recognizes this one more, though he can’t be sure he’s ever seen it in person.
He…remembers(?) the tears, and though he hears himself laugh there’s a comfort in it than bears no hint of spite or malice. The pool of thought reveals to him a clarity he never thought possible in those days…he remembers being there-the baby cries but he’s there too-
He remembers-he produces a trick he’d been working on with-
He conjures the shower of diamonds that glistened in the dim light of the throne room, that shone just in front of the baby’s face in a way that never failed to elicit a giggle from the little prince as he watched mesmerized, distracted from whatever was causing him such pain.
He…?
Does he remember how?
He settles near his face, taps him on the shoulder and he lifts his head the smallest amount-
His muscles move on their own to replicate a display he’d seen in a dream once…diamonds dance in the air with a lightness he also didn’t remember.
The child stares, holding his breath.
But it’s clear as they finish he’s only staring through them. There’s no light behind his eyes as there once was…was there…? He’s tensing not in anticipation, but rather in fear, as though they were truly strangers to one another.
Weren’t they…? He’d never seen this face before, so heavy, laden with remnants of a world he’d long left behind…
Perhaps it was only another illusion.
The thoughts slip away, out of his fingers and away with the shimmering reflections he allows to dissolve in the air they weren’t compatible with anymore.
It’s not long before equilibrium renders him bored yet again.
The…he…it numbly lowers its head to rest on the ground as soon as the magic dissipates…back to the inanimate object it seemed more than content to exist as for as long as it took its memory to fade too.
“Have it your way!”
He bounds away, content to carry on about his business in a world that would have him, unencumbered by the residual misery of the hell that undoubtably lied in wait just on the other side of the cell door, for them to be turning on one another like this for such arbitrary reasons…
Loneliness still nips at him so long as the remedy lies there motionless, tangible in a tailspin that’s countered by the ever-turning carousel…
Well, it wasn’t any of his concern.
Much like the carousel, it would come around eventually.
