#nightmarxa

[crusadeidolon-blog]

Companion ||

Flashback Notes: Takes place nine years ago after he's lived at Park Manor for a year with Ara and her household.

"I love you."

Soft, clear, and steady, it broke the silence. A flower quickly bursting into bloom in the middle of the night like gunfire just hit the centre of all its darkness. That's what it was. What it always would remain like, filed in the cabinet of her memories she would never forget in the years to come. How could she? She glanced down at the air before her lap for a moment, as if sense needed to gather into a ball she could cradle to her heart, then turned her eyes to him. Bare, honest-that was her, but was that him too?

Injoon chuckled softly, as he always did. One never knew if he ever meant anything he said. This was a fifteen year old boy who could make anyone believe quite anything of him. He was gifted, able to grant universes to hearts one moment with overbearing charms one day, and tear down all such illusions he was just too masterful at creating in the first place the day after.

"I mean it." Simple words spoken as he turned to rest his eyes on the pair that stared right at him. They were sitting on the rooftop. That wasn't unusual at all. The sky was dark and glimpses of galaxies above appeared in the form of sparse and speckled stars far above. It would have been a night like any other but even Ara couldn't call such declarations and professions normal, from this boy she now considered family as much as she was tied to Ana by blood. He flirted around with anything worthy of carrying a skirt on its hips, really, but not her. Thankfully, honestly. He always went around people just to chase after and drop like broken dishes you didn't want to keep after. Being her-she didn't dare say 'brother' to herself yet, not certain of how long he'd stay-very good guy friend, her companion, Ara knew she wouldn't want him to abscond as if she and her family were temporary chases for him too.

"Isn't that the sort of thing you say to everyone, Inj-" She stopped. He didn't arch a brow, didn't smirk, didn't run his fingers back through his hair or shake out his bangs-good grief, he needed his own hair commercial on the telly someday, she thought, someday. Right now however, there was none of that and it stopped her good. So she waited to hear anything he could exhale from his breath.

His fingers threaded together, holding together like the titling of a prayer they both knew he wouldn't be making as he was definitely not religious. And he shook his held hands together once, bowing his head a slight-the utter seriousness of whatever point he was attempting to make driving right home into Ara's heart before he said a word when he kept his eyes on her. Injoon being serious about any matter of the heart was... rare. She was seeing a unicorn in pure daylight prancing about the heart of London city when he looked at her like that.

"That, would be the other ladies speaking through your mouth right there, mm? No. That isn't quite it. Allow me to speak without my-", he started, pushing his held hands against his chest as he sat there beside her, "-reputation, or say, my instincts as you well know, marring what I mean, yes?" He didn't wait for her to answer. It was rhetorical. There was some sort of monologue about to come and Ara could feel it sizzling in the air, that this was a moment to remember.

"I love you. Words like that come so easily, so simply, sometimes, don't they? You hear it from me when I spread what you know aren't really true somethings, to the ears of pretty little things all around us. They are pretty, no doubt, but not for long. There's nothing much aside from the exterior and you can only enjoy what's on the outside for so long before you start knocking on it, hearing it's hollow. Why keep anything by your side when you know it to contain nothing to be prized, mm?" His hands settled into his lap and Ara listened, slightly unnnerved by how easy it seemed for him to stare right to her eyes and speak the way he did. She almost had gotten used to it, with his being around for almost a year now at her home.

"You want to keep what is beautiful inside when you find things with such treasures on the outside, don't you? You want to think you can find things like that, an interior room filled with treasure far beyond what the eye can measure. But that...Ara... that's not quite usually the case. I think you understand. People are hollow, people care to carve beauty on the skin just to actually shield the nothingness that really lies there. But... not you." Injoon smiled, lightly. If he grinned lopsidedly as per usual, Ara thought for a second, it meant he was overwhelming you with his charms and he would bloody know that. Now, he definitely wasn't. She watched him warily, feeling her heart stop, soften, and hold, with all his words coming forth to surround it.

"You're already very pretty, Ara." He chuckled again, as if this was just a matter of fact, not an opinion-and he didn't even need to reinstate the incontrovertible. One of his hands had lifted now, the tips of his fingers weaving beneath the side of her cheek, her jawline as his face tilted, watching softly. "Beautiful." His eyes closed, and opened. "I hope entirely, that you don't forget that. Girls have shot confidence but you shouldn't." His hand dropped while his voice lifted to the air again. "Why? Because you have it too, within you. There's something people don't have that you do, in you. And I think it's to be cherished. Guarded. Admired. ...Loved."

The boy nodded. "I think I am aware people say I don't have a conscience, whatever that means to them. I think I do, but I don't know or care if it's the same as what everyone thinks one is. But I am sure I have feelings...emotions, hey, I'm human, aren't I? And I can love, too. There's something really good in you, Ara, that I can say I love. I also want to say I don't have family left in the world whose hands I could hold-" One of his hands circled around hers, his thumb making small circles beneath her knuckles. "-like this. You're family, Ara. Can I call you that? Do I have permission?" He grinned, for the first time while sitting on the roof this night. "I don't care if I do, you probably know that, as what I think won't change even if you said I didn't have any right to think so. Which, you wouldn't. I can tell, I think, that you feel the same." Squeezing her hand, he nodded once. "You're my sister, Ara. And I do love you."

[adephxgia]

"Red String of Fate"

49. Our muses are destined to be partners in crime, running from the law and trusting no one but each other.

[ i say this a lot but i really fucked this one up sorry ;; my idea kept changing and i didn't know what to do with it ]

Wanted posters, nosy police, even nosier investigators, and innocent bystanders. Their lives had consisted only of the aforementioned obstacles for months now. The only handicap granted to them being a mutual understanding for bringing chaos to the world and an unusual amount of trust invested within one another. Despite a strange lack of knowledge about each other (excluding their names, or aliases to be exact), no one could manage to break the two partners apart. Refusal to give up information that neither had a clue about on the other often led to the belief that they did not actually know each other. Many deemed them the “Stranger Couple.” And they would be known as such until their very downfall.

They had met during a classified mission that no one speaks of unto this very day. Dozens of dead bodies, hundreds of missing cases and files, thousands of firearms, millions of bills, all destroyed in a mysterious fire. Every trace of evidence towards the incident that day had been erased. All of it except for the last two remaining participants. Everyone else had died. Shot, stabbed, burned or choked to death in a frenzied escape from the hell hole they had all been contained in. An unexpected tragic event, the police department and news had called it. But those who were there, most of them knew that they would most likely never be coming back. None of them wanted to. Most of them knew they wouldn’t be making it home either, but a chance to be free was rewarded to the best of the best, and they would fight to their last breaths for the opportunity.

Some twisted, fucked up game of life forced on children who had just reached their teenage years. They had all been played as pieces in some inhumane game of survival, without a single way to prevent it. Stolen from their homes right from under their parents noses. Weeks of searching ended without one child returned to where they belonged. The area they had been taken too remained unknown until the day they all died. And that’s where they grew. Together in an unknown area, tormented by endless threats and impossible commands. Trained to be unbeatable forces obedient to whatever instructions given to them. Rebellion was the unfortunate end to several lives. Talking back resulted in an hour of torture. Maybe even more if one was truly disrespectful to their ‘masters.’

After, everything that happened before was no longer important and stolen from the survivor’s thoughts. That incident had become a thing of the past, never to be spoken about. The team would merely take whatever good occurred there and leave the bad in the back of vicious minds. Growing from one’s experiences was vital in all cases, even the most terrible. The two of them were a team not to be reckoned with. Without emotions to fuel their actions, the skills they learned being the one thing remembered from years of nothing but torture. The one thing valuable enough to actually remember. Routine ordered minds reconstructed to follow the deadliest instincts inflicted upon humanity. From theft to murder, it was as if it were needed to stay alive.

"Don’t trust him," she insisted, calm and composed compared to the nonstop fidgeting male beside her. "He knows you. He knows everything. He’ll rat you out and have you disposed of once you think you’re friends."

A whimper sounds from the male whenever the gun points slightly at him, flinching harshly as if pained by something. “Come on, A! We’re in the same faction. W-Why would I ever betray you?”

Breath coming in short, pants, she holds the gun in both hands, cautiously flicking its aim rapidly between her two foes. Her arms tremble with the heaviness of balancing the gun against her nervous unsteadiness. Sweat drips from her hair and rolls fluidly down her face, slightly hitting the corner of small, almond-shaped eyes before falling to hang at her chin. Both of her opponents stand with their hands up, not much difference between them, and she is frightened, absolutely terrified by the fact that there is a fifty percent chance she’ll make the wrong decision. She had fought so hard to get here and now it would all be deposited into one shot of luck. The minutes were swiftly ticking away, footsteps quickly approaching in the distance.

Time presses mercilessly down on her shoulders. Her burden being added to by limits. To trust a friend, or to trust a stranger? To put her life in a stranger’s hands or the hands of a man so caring and friendly that he protected her through out this all. Frustration causes her to press a hand to her forehead, stressed to the point of a throbbing headache. If not for attempting to maintain her confident stature, she might have broken down in tears and begged for them to just work together. Everyone here wanted the same thing. They all wanted to escape from this monstrous place called ‘home.’ Together they would be able to, but their ‘masters’ effectively brainwashed them to fight against one another. Selflessness would get you nowhere.

“‘Those who betray shall pay! Trust only those who you’ve been given the chance to analyze everyday.’ Remember?”

With just that, her previously muddled mind was cleared with righteous realization. Each faction had a motto to create union between its members, to create an easy way to identify your partners. The muzzle of the gun swings over to point at the woman, finger beginning to squeeze down on the trigger. Relief washes away the distressed expression on the male’s face and he even smiles, beginning to shuffle away from the scene. Gain breaks the first rule they learned when firing weapons. She closed her eyes as she took her shot, arms jerking from the force of it. Thump! The heavy sound of a body dropping to the ground causes her to open her eyes. Blood is splattered on the clothing of the other, leaking onto the floor from a wound inflicted on the limp and lifeless male.

Both women stare at one another with skeptical glances, uncertain of whether this meant they could trust each other now. Before the other can ask, Gain answers the question present on the nameless woman’s mysterious expression. “That wasn’t our motto. That was—it just wasn’t ours.”

The woman nods in understanding, bending down to strip the traitorous male of any items he had. There are several pieces of paper crumbled in his pants pocket along with a few bullets. The papers are tore into shreds and handed to Gain but the bullets are kept. She wonders if she should be terrified by staying with this stranger as she stares at the shreds in her sweaty palm. However, no time is left for lengthy thoughts and decisions. Running footsteps are heard closer now than they had been before. Voices screaming and yelling orders about catching any survivors and putting them to death. Their tragedy is not over yet. She has no choice but to trust the other until their escape from Hell is ensured in multiple situations.

"We’re getting out of here," her unknown companion explains while reloading a gun no one knew she had. "But I can’t trust you when I can’t see you."

"Together then? As partners?”

"Partners."

Their story was as simple as that.

[nahjoon]

Zzz

{'mumbles} pretty girl 

[ixnh]

“I think I broke it.”

"Are you sure—" Hiroki’s arms were crossed over his chest, rather childishly. "How can you break a special manga edition?" His voice slightly higher, he raised his hands up to the sky and groaned. "I trusted you with the goodness of my heart!"

[ixnh]

11. A weird/obscure fear they have:

Hiroki’s fear isn’t exactly obscure or strange, it’s something that has stuck with him since little: he is absolutely terrified of thunder. Thunder brings memories of nights he spent alone and terrified in a cold apartment on the scariest part of Seoul, memories that marked him as a child and that he refuses to go back.