Hi! I love love LOVE your writing so much!!!❤️❤️(it’s the only thing sometimes that can help me reorient myself when life sucks)-
Idk if you’ve already written a work like this- but could you write about a villain who fakes being in a relationship with hero to get information. Hero absolutely loves them and thinks that they can finally be happy….but then Villain breaks their heart- while saying they never loved them and that it was all a lie.
and then later on Villain regrets it and realizes they are actually obsessed with hero and go full psycho?
The hero had spent their childhood watching as their parents fought viciously with one another. Slamming doors and breaking plates, and then sullen, withdrawn and nearly silent conversations illuminated only by the dying lamp in the corner of the living room. Whatever the hero’s parents had, it wasn’t love, and never would be. The hero had no way of knowing if it ever had been.
And then the hero had watched as time after time, their sister loved someone with her whole heart and was left shattered on the hero’s doorstep at the end of it. Fairytales that ended with no happy ending, ripped up love notes and a hundred playlists made for people their sister could no longer bear to name out loud.
The hero had watched their entire family reach for love and fall flat every time, and had resigned themself to a fate of the kind of heartbreak you cannot escape. The kind that hangs over heads like a cloud and fogs mirrors.
And then–
The villain. The hero had met the villain, and the villain had smiled, and they thought maybe, just maybe, they had beaten the curse. That they were meant for the soft kind of love they had only imagined when they were young, before the pain of it got too great.
The hero had let the villain intertwine themself into the hero’s life, and they had thought they were okay. They had thought they had made it.
Which was why, now, they couldn’t seem to make themself think anything sensical at all.
The villain settled the file in front of the hero gently, on the table they had picked out together with as much care as one was capable of. They almost, almost, looked like they regretted it, face soft and breakable.
The villain cleared their throat in the silence. “If you just read it–”
“What, can’t say it yourself?”
The villain stopped, swallowing. This was the first time in a very long time the hero had seen them look unsure.
The hero scoffed at them. “I know about Project Pegasus.”
The villain went very, very still. They looked down towards the folder.
“So then–”
“This?” the hero picked up the folder, waving it once. They tossed it onto the floor without looking. “I’ve already read it. Two weeks ago.” They stared at the villain, and did their best not to blink. “I just hoped it was fake.”
The hero wondered if maybe, this was what had happened to their parents. If they had spent all of that time fighting and hating one another and crying in darkened rooms just so they could spend the rest of it constantly reaching back towards one another. Pretending that the file wasn’t real. That the fights were nothing more than a blip in existence and not the roots of a rot so deep it would never be fully cut out of them.
They had wondered about a lot of things, curled on the bathroom floor around that wretched file, but mostly they had wondered if they had always been meant to end up here. If this was what being doomed felt like.
The villain blinked.
“You hoped it was fake.”
The hero felt a little like they couldn’t breathe. They sucked a shallow breath in through their nose anyways.
“If you–” their voice broke. “If you were me, would you want to believe it?”
The villain’s shoulders, almost imperceptibly, slumped.
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, are you?”
“Yes,” the villain said, but in the space where they should have explained themself, where they should have said it was fake, and that they loved the hero more than anything, and that this little apartment meant everything to them–they said nothing.
“So, what,” the hero snapped, voice wet with barely held back tears. “You’re going to tell me you didn’t mean for me to fall in love with you? That this was an accident? That you’re sorry again? That you never meant to hurt me–”
“No,” the villain corrected gently. “You were always meant to fall in love with me.”
A tiny sob wormed its way out of the hero’s throat before they could stop themself, and they pressed their shaking fist to their mouth before anything else could follow, turning away.
“It was just about the information,” the villain said, and the hero shoved themself back from the table, just to get further away from the love of their life.
“You knew what you were doing,” the hero said bitterly. “You know me. You knew. You knew I would never be able to get over this, and you did it anyways–”
“It’s my job,” the villain protested, and it took the hero everything in them to remain standing. “It wasn’t personal.”
“You made yourself my world, you made yourself into my everything, you made me fall in love with you–”
“I never made you do anything.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t get to say that. This was your goal, wasn’t it? Own up to your accomplishments. Go on. Tell me how proud you are. Do it.”
“Hero.”
“I loved you,” the hero was screaming, maybe.
And there it was. Past tense.
Loved.
The villain stepped back like the hero had slapped them.
“Hero,” their voice was barely a whisper.
The hero picked up the file. Rifled through it once more.
“Hero–”
The hero held out the file. The villain didn’t take it, hands remaining limp at their side.
“Take it.” They gestured with the file. “Take it, and get out.”
The villain sucked in a breath.
“Hero,” the villain said again, uselessly.
“Tell me you love me, then. Tell me you meant it.” They gestured to the file once more. “Tell me that this is the lie.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me.”
The villain opened their mouth, and for a second, the hero hoped–
“I don’t love you.”
The hero wished the villain had just killed them.
“I never loved you. It was all a lie. A really, really pretty lie.”
The hero wanted to say something elegant to that. Something biting and vicious and jagged in the same way the inside of them felt right now. They wanted to say everything they had felt earlier, every thought that had cut them so that it could cut the villain too.
Instead, all they managed was a choked, “Get out.”
They threw the file at the villain.
The villain didn’t bother to catch it, letting it slam into their chest. It thudded against the floor, papers spilling out in a halo around the villain’s feet.
A part of them wanted the villain to argue further.
A part of them just wanted the villain dead.
“I’m sorry,” the villain said once more, and then they were gone.
The villain had known as soon as the hero had thrown that file that they wanted the villain dead.
That they were more likely to claw their own bones apart than willingly reach for the villain’s hand again, and the logical part of their brain was viciously pleased about it.
It made this whole thing easier. No lingering attachments to further butcher. Just a field, burned so badly nothing would ever grow in it again, and god, wasn’t that convenient for their mission.
A tiny, smothered part of their brain, however, wouldn’t stop screaming.
They drowned it.
But then the villain would catch themself glancing to their side in search of a smile. They would wait a beat too long after they said something, would wait for laughter, and then there would be none, and they would curse themself for it, and that little part of them would come gasping back to life and start screaming again.
Possibly it was that little part of them that had made them send a message to the hero, offering the apartment. It was the least they could do, right? Fuck up their life and then get the fuck out of it.
But the texts had said delivered, but never read, and three days later when the villain used their key to open the lock, they found themself stepping into a mausoleum and not a home.
They weren’t sure what they were expecting, but it wasn’t this. Dust hanging in the air. Blank squares left on the walls where pictures had once hung. Empty cabinets, empty floors, empty rooms; no, whatever they had been expecting, it wasn’t this.
For a reason they couldn’t name, they went from room to room, searching for something without quite understanding what. It wasn’t until they had come full circle back into the living room, fingers coated in dust and an aching chest, that the villain had realized. Ghosts. They were looking for ghosts.
Because there was nothing better to describe the way they felt right now other than haunted. And if there was something, anything, of the hero left in here to burn, to destroy, to exorcise, they could use it as an excuse–
There was nothing left of the hero. There were no ghosts. This place was just dead.
The villain made a shuddering little sound, and slammed the front door closed behind them when they managed to stumble into the hallway.
This was an easy mission, it was–
–two years and dates over ramen and houseplants–
–something even a new recruit could do–
–i love you’s in the dark and the scent of the hero on all of their clothes and–
–something the villain was trained for, countless hours spent–
–laughing and crying and rainy days and sunny ones–
–learning how to fake love, and somehow–
–the villain had forgotten it was fake.
The villain couldn’t breathe.
The villain had forgotten they weren’t supposed to fall in love, too.
The villain had forgotten they weren’t supposed to fall in love too, and they had just set their entire world ablaze around themself.
Fuck.
It really only made sense, then, that they found themself standing on the roof of their old apartment building as it burned. And when that didn’t work, they moved onto the next, until a third building went up in flames beneath their feet. They knew the kind of message it would send, and they knew exactly who that message would get sent to–
The hero landed on the other end of the rooftop, as far away from the villain as they could possibly get.
“Stop,” the hero hissed, teeth clenched. “Stop lighting things on fire to get my attention, just stop–”
“I’m in love with you,” the villain said, voice wrecked, and the hero reacted like the villain had shot them. They stepped away, feet bumping against the edge like the fall was a better option than the villain.
“No,” the hero said. They shook as they said it. “Stop it. You don’t get to do this to me.”
“I love you,” the villain said again, and the hero pressed a hand over their own heart.
“Stay away from me,” the hero managed after a moment. Another deep breath, and their hand dropped back down to their side. “Go do whatever it is you need to do, go ruin anyone else’s life, and stay out of the wreckage of mine.”
“We have a life together,” the villain tried. If the hero could just see, could see that they could fix it– “I’m sorry. I was stupid, I was so, so stupid. But you can’t just leave, please, just let me fix it–”
“I told you to get out,” the hero said, and there was nothing soft in their eyes as they looked at the villain. “What about the way I said it made you think it was temporary?”
“Hero, please, let me fix–”
“Villain,” the hero said calmly, voice sharp. “Some things aren’t meant to be rebuilt.”
All of the air left the villain’s lungs in a pathetic sort of wheeze.
“You’re my everything,” the villain choked out. “My whole world, and I’m so sorry. I was–I made a mistake, but you can’t just throw us away–”
“No,” the hero spat, and the villain flinched. “You burned that world to the ground. You’re standing in the ashes of it. You don’t get to come to me begging for it back.”
The villain felt unmoored. Like the world had shifted one step to the left and they had no idea what to do with their limbs anymore, no idea how to keep existing.
“But I love you.”
“The only person who feels anything when you say that is you.”
This time, it was the villain who stepped back.
“Please,” the villain whispered, and the hero closed their eyes.
“What were you expecting to happen. That I would forgive you? Would fall back into your arms? You could tell me that you’re sorry in every language for the rest of your life and that wouldn’t make what you did hurt me any less. So why would you think you could light a building on fire, tell me you love me, and then make everything go back to the way it was?”
“I–I don’t–”
“There is no back,” the hero said firmly. “There is no undo.”
“I don’t know what to do,” the villain said. A tear dripped off the edge of their chin.
The hero appraised them.
“Learn to live with it.”
The villain sucked in a shuddering breath.
“I can’t live without you, okay, I can’t–”
“Then die.”
The villain froze. They waited for the hero to take it back, but the hero just stared at them, face stony and cold. An avenging angel on the edge of the rooftop, firelight flickering at their back and smoke rising into the air, not an ounce of sympathy left in their bones for the villain.
And before the villain could say anything, say that the hero couldn’t possibly mean that, the hero spoke again.
“I mean it. You are not my problem.”
The villain was choking. They were drowning on air and the hole they had left inside of themself when they ripped the hero out of their life and the hero was just watching them–
“Please,” they said pathetically, and even as they said it they knew it was futile.
The hero didn’t bother to give them another response.
They watched the hero leave without saying anything, smoke beginning to sting their eyes and nose as their hands shook.
It felt terminal. It felt world-ending. It felt deserved.
this little spell did get out of control with the fire. as always, i keep water near by to easily put it out.
be careful with fire, and be careful putting it out. the moment that water touched that flame, fire lifted to the roof and i was scared shitless for my rent bond!
end the end though, the spell still worked. that fire and wax spread away from me, so it's now in the universe
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Ulf's favourite time to take watch is in the middle of the night. He loves how serene it is, and tracking his time by watching the moon set over the ocean. Also, nothing really happens in the middle of the night because all the potential enemies are also asleep. Has a symbiotic relationship with Edvin.
Wulf's favourite time to take watch is the last watch, in the morning. It means he gets a block of uninterrupted sleep earlier in the night, and he loves watching the sun rise while everyone stirs and wakes. He's memorised who tends to wake in what order, and he enjoys the feeling of being the first one up.
Hal tends to sleep very little on board ship, since he's either steering or subconsciously paying attention to the ship's movements. So when they're on land for whatever reason, he sleeps a lot. Unless he's in the grip of some idea, he might sleep twelve hours in one night (and then go back to sleeping two hours a night for the next three weeks 😬). Thankfully, he doesn't need a lot of sleep to function.
Stig needs a reasonably high amount of sleep to function well. He can live life on a little bit of sleep, but he won't really be having a lot of fun unless he's had eight hours at least. It doesn't all need to be taken during the night though - Stig is a big napper. He also sleeps in really weird positions, since he's quite flexible. A favourite of his is scrunched up on his side in a rowing well with his back against the side of the ship and his head halfway under his knee. It's a bit creepy.
Jesper sleeps all. the. time. He loves to sleep it's his favourite activity <3 It's because he's never sure when the next time he'll get to sleep somewhere safe is
Stefan remembers nearly every one of his dreams. He doesn't dream every night, but he remembers them all. They're mostly a bit mundane, but once every year or so he has a mildly prophetic dream. However, he doesn't usually realise it until after the event has happened - he looks back at his dreams in the few months beforehand and goes ahhh.
Ingvar takes a really long time to fall asleep but he doesn't mind because it's really calming and restful just to listen to the waves and everyone around him sleeping.
Lydia naturally goes to bed really late and loves the feeling of being awake when no one else is. Like Stig, she's also a big napper to make up the sleep she loses during the night. (They are nap buddies.) However, if she's tired enough she will go to bed and fall asleep Instantly.
Thorn must have 12 hours of sleep per night or he starts killing (this is why he is such a deadly warrior he's Sleepy)
