#faultyconscience

[marblecarved]

@faultyconscience sent a letter to minerva mcgonagall: ‘‘ i didn't have very much when i came here, so i guess i'm kind of trying to make up for that. ’’

prompt: endless wonder.

Minerva nods in understanding at Remus' words, a short movement that is soon followed by a smile that, though just as short, doest not lack in kindness. ❝ Do tell me if you ever need help in getting anything, Remus, ❞ it's rather strange to refer to him by his first name instead of the mister Lupin she was more used in pronouncing while he was her student, and the note of hesitation in the tone of her voice, clear at the err, makes this quite clear. Still, she continues, and her tone shifts, hiding the hesitation in pronouncing his name as though it was never there. ❝ Anything at all, I'd be glad to help. ❞

[heartsdefine]

↪ memes / accepting!

@faultyconscience said: ❛ now there’s a sight for sore eyes . ❜ - for wy from remus <3

        the stupid giggle she lets out is humiliating and she hates herself for it immediately. clearing her throat, wynonna glances up and away from him, fidgeting with a ring on her hand. “you really mean that, don't you?” he's always been so embarrassingly sincere.

[clawsextended]

@faultyconscience asked: "there - you can cry. it's okay. i would never judge you for that." - from Emma

“oh fuck you.”

hands raise immediately and clap over her own mouth so quickly. her spine goes rigid, ramrod, muscle and gummy flesh leading to the protruding promise of each knob. one could count them all with meticulous perfectly — her body makes an aghast question mark. she half-curves into herself as though preparing for the blow that will inevitably come.

she feels herself pale — all the color leaves her and she blinks so swiftly it’s the shutter of a camera. click, click, click, click, those eyelids touch her cheeks, leave dewy tears still dotting the landscape of her face. there are ridges— a nick at her upper lip to the left, a faint but jagged line that decorates her elegant throat, that irregular stsrburst like a bullet’s perfect entrance wound, and only by chance. the butt of that gun had stricken her perfectly, squarely.

she swallows hard. eyes widen and round out further, and everything inside of her forces her to keep herself from biting down as hard on the scarcely thin webbing of her hand as she can. she imagines that would be the worst thing she could do, but she banishes the thought.

she swallows a sobbed apology, so wet and slippery it simply disappears once it escapes.

[clawsextended]

@faultyconscience asked: “no one gets to treat you like that, you hear me? no one.” - from Emma <3

her mouth opens. closes. opens again. she doesn’t know how to explain it, no. doesn’t know how to let her understand — because she knows it’s wrong, deep down. she knows she doesn’t deserve the scathing glances or the judgmental whispers from a couple people who did not even raise their own child daring to question how she raises hers.

do they think she doesn’t know….? she does. she pretends not to, maybe, a lot of the time. feigns that she’s too stupidly bullheaded to pay attention. she lets snow think that she is, of course, so up her own ass she can’t notice the world around her. she lets david assume she’s reckless and obstinate. she allows it.

why wouldn’t she….? that’s all it’s always been. a kid raising a kid, she’s had that thrown at her endlessly. but holly has never been anything less than her daughter, and she’s not at all blind to this conservatively minded nuclear family bullshit they’re obsessed with.

(emma’s perfect how she is. neither of them understand if they stopped trying so hard maybe they could even begin to be parents. but all they do is show her they’re too selfish to deserve that.)

she glances down swiftly and then away. her jaw works anxiously at its hinge. her palms flatten at the knees of leather leggings. fingers flex and relax again, dying to go anywhere but here. she slides her hands under her thighs as discreetly as she can.

“i just — i just don’t want you having to get into it because of me. it’s not fair to you.”

and it eludes her that it is also unfair to her.

[clawsextended]

@faultyconscience asked: [ see ] sender sees something that reminds them of receiver and texts them a picture of it - I’m lazy to switch blogs but Emma’s sending her cat memes

selina’s upside-down, phone held out in front of her, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. a smile quirks onto her face, immediate — the full-throated chortle of dragonfire burgeons in that chuckle. its delighted.

she has a folder of cat memes. actually, she’s come to find that this is the best reason for her awful memory. if all the bad things can be so suffocating, can’t the good things be just as soothing? can’t she remember them fondly with the same flush of reality? why shouldn’t she be able to remember exactly the moment she was sent a silly little cat picture?

she tumbles backward with a tiny lift of her hips, hard enough to tuck and roll back to standing. she pivots in place, ever graceful, saves it to the album roll.

she thinks it’s much too funny, after all. considering the fact that if she wanders a couple feet emma will be two rooms over. (two rooms? what is she, rich now?)

[atomiqueen]

@faultyconscience — cont'd.

Lee catches that quick glance and understands why it's so brief; it had been difficult to watch her become that, too. "No one is proud of who war and disaster makes them, and if they are..." Well... It's clear in her words, the way she shrugs, what her opinion of people who are proud of what they've done and who they've become. For herself, she did what she had to and she would do it again, but that's not the same thing as pride. "No." She shakes her head softly, her voice consoling. "Not right away, no. She was even...herself for a little while. But after the bombs, all that radiation..."

        Lucy's eyes are wide and wet with unshed tears. She can hear the ghoul that was her mother snarling at the table behind. It's such a terrible sound when Lucy can't even really remember her voice. It's all just an approximation of distant memory now.

        Her father has fallen conspicuously silent, and she can't find it in her to care.

        “Why...why keep her like this?” Lucy asks, unable to help herself. “Why not put her out of her misery?”

[eraserisms]

" i would rather die than suffer indignity. "

Sent in by @proditeur

Curling his right hand into a fist, Shota rubbed into his own eye trying to will it to produce some tears. Upon hearing Regulus' words, his hand opened to rub over his face completely in a downward motion.

He let out a soft huff that could almost pass for a laugh but still, he gave the other man a shake of his head. Aizawa couldn't say that he was surprised to hear such a statement from Regulus. "Well, I hate to break it to you but, there is no such thing as dignity in death," Shota retorted. "It's always ugly, always. So, you might as well get used to enduring indignity in life, it might prepare you for the future, the end, the inevitable."

[clawsextended]

sleep always eludes her. it’s been that way since she was a child, when sleep was an impossibility interrupted by the banging thunder of her father’s bellow. she’d begin to nod off or worse, always worse — how the dark would swallow her up when she couldn’t keep awake long enough to listen, to hear for the deafening boom before the thunderclap of a palm.

as an adult, horrors conglomerate in ways she can’t run from no matter how fast her feet hit the floor. no matter how fast selina becomes, how high she can jump, how dire the force with which she can strike — she can’t get away from herself. it’s the one thing that’s always there, the constancy she can’t kill.

(no one understands what it’s like to live two lives all the time, for that second life to ooze, insidious, into your waking moments. what it’s like to be trapped alongside your own brain with frothing extremity, watching you operate always through glass. the only you is never you.)

it’s her third cup of coffee of the morning. she’s been puttering around the house trying to hang a chandelier, bouncing between that and trying to assess the electrical wiring. she figures houses made by magic have a pretty complicated infrastructure. she doesn’t assume regina knows anything about the difference between a wall that’s load-bearing and isn’t.

which is certainly an unnecessary thought process to have while doing three different things, but she’s selina so of course she’s having it. the studfinder beeps against the wall in a few continuous, shrill sounds until it stops. she pockets it and hums like it makes complete sense to her.

and then a weird sense of something tired tugs for her attention. she’s stifling a yawn, suddenly, blinking and blinking. when did she get so… tired?

tired enough to wander to the couch, curl up in the corner like a kitten, drifting. the ladder stands in the center of the room, the chandelier forgotten alongside, the whole process half-done, a strange sentinel to this moment. selina leaves nothing half-done, not ever.

she loses herself finally, swallowed by that chasmic abyss she’s always fought against.

@faultyconscience