#ouch sorry

[lord-of-snails]

Ryland racing against time to save his twin brother Colt's life, even though he knows he's too late. In the background:

[not-that-dillinger]

[🔪:] Alan stared at Ed, his face pale. He staggered backwards, jot sure if he should call the police or try and hear the younger programmer out. His hands trembled, and he could hear his heart thrumming in his head.

He should've screamed. He should've called for help. Instead he stared into Ed's eyes, desperate for an answer.

"Why?"

[From the "send 🔪 to encounter my muse after they've just killed someone" meme. Doesn't need to be a thread if you dont want it to be, I just thought the angst would be spicey]

Ed stared at the corpse. He felt... nothing. Not... vindication, not anger, not grief or... anything.

His eyes flicked first toward the child backing away down the alley into the dark street, curly blonde hair sticking out from under a plastic viking helmet. Ed dropped the shard of glass that had been digging into his hand. He didn't even remember picking it up, but there were several other bottles littering the street, so he must have grabbed one.

Was that his blood or...

The glass shattered loudly in the too silent street.

"Beo, I..." Ed started weakly. He'd promised both of them he would never expose Beo to violence. Not after everything e'd already endured.

The child turned and ran, disappearing into the dark.

Ed didn't dare chase after Beowulf. E wasn't safe with him anymore. He had no right to take care of Petra's child after what he'd done.

Ed sank to the ground, his body aching from the abuse he'd endured in the fight. He wasn't a fighter, he had no experience or training in martial arts or street fighting, but when he'd seem that man, drunk and pinning Beo to the wall with a predatory look in his eyes, when he heard the things he said he'd do... Ed snapped.

Ed could feel the gash in his side, his shirt sticky-hot and plastered to his side. That would need stitches, if not surgery.

The state was going to take custody of Beo since Ed was clearly violent and unfit to take care of a child. Or at the very least while the investigation was going on.

He turned to Alan, finally registering that he was there. He knew he could trust Alan to take care of Beowulf, even if he hated the idea of burdening Alan with a kid he probably didn't want. He turned to him with a desperate look on his face. "Please... Look after Beowulf for me. E has no other place to go right now..."

[kittyandco-archive]

if not later, when?

Summary: At their engagement ball, she leaves without a trace. Wracked with the memories of their youth, when they thought their future would be peaceful and love-filled, Kitty abandons Hans on the dancefloor. The impending date reminds Kitty that he wants much more out of life than she believes she can offer him.

Word count: 802

A READ/LIKE/REBLOG IS GREATLY APPRECIATED! Thank you!

“That’s why I’m not marrying you.”

“What?”

Fear. A swarm of it, as thick as the fellow dancers in the ballroom. And as if they all listened, she emphasized every word. I am not marrying you. I. Am. Not. Marrying. You. I’m not marrying you. I will never, ever marry you. I’m not marrying you! Sounding it out, casting a curse. Or a promise. I can’t marry you, Hans.

The thought of becoming a Westergaard likened itself to a sweet, decadent poison; warm in the throat, violent in the head. Something about the idea called back to a dream, an aspiration, long left behind by time, by circumstance, by choice. In a young imagination - where the good parts separated by their own accord from the bad, repeating the sweet promises of a future all their own, away from this, his fingers across her cheek, or intertwined with hers, in quiet, haunting corridors made up with tapestries that had seen centuries, I promise, one day we won’t hurt, when we’re married - it all fit perfectly together, like love ought to… all this prettiness, only to be brought back with a pounding head and a still heart, emptied of hope. The closer the day came, the more was revealed; truths of engagement emerging from the darkest of places, day after day. Until the glass shattered.

It was nearly blasphemous to think, but tonight he could have been mistaken for angelic - a redeeming glow tracing his form, flickering in his eyes, as gleaming as the morning sun gracing the ocean’s surface. What remained of her memory - which she tried to shove out - was the nagging notion that his eyes were darker, then, when they weren’t old enough to realize any consequences.

A laugh escaped his lips, slight as the space between them, his eyes catching their immediate surroundings, as if she told him the sky was red, and he would check to prove her wrong. With her anger, the rageful hue of blood, and of passion, might as well have spilled out through the horizon. But by now, the world outside was black, only the pearls of stars mercifully satiating the darkness.

“Don’t kid around, Kitty.” But his eyes lied, to Kitty and to himself, reflecting in them an earnest fear, far from what he learned to appropriately display. And then, as if he had never laughed in his life, he returned to proper form. “You can’t be serious. What will you do? What can you do?”

She nodded her head confidently, grinding her heels. “I’ll simply leave.”

“What?” An urgency shot out of him, alarmed as prey, only because he believed she would, “You can’t!” He tugged her protectively - driven only by an instinct that he would feel dishonored not to act upon - her rigid hand blanketed in the two of his own. The music swelled as they touched, ripping through, inspiring the dancers. Somehow deepening the pain.

Still, Hans stood tall as ever, proud in stature, vulnerable in the face, but keeping his partner as any man should.

There was nothing to do but wait, even if it were useless. Explain why I shouldn’t go. You can’t do it. “I don’t need you to stop me.” But why can’t you?

How could she even say it, even if it were the truth. That she was never going to be what he wanted. Repeating each and every time she saw him, heard about him. A man like him needed more, was going to get more, regardless of anything. She wanted to think back to their youth. Exchanging glittery promises so pure that they read as lies now, the anticipation, the restless nights that offered respite to the nights busy with dreams. How easy it would just be to join everyone else, who were perfectly happy and remorseless to cast the spare aside. How unlucky for him to be number thirteen. How disdainful of them all to let her inherit an undue fate. How easy it would be… how easy it would be to just run into the night and never look back. Yet, she faced him for a farewell.

“Where would you go? You wouldn’t survive a day. Be sensible, Kitty.” Lowering his guard, he nearly understood. Just nearly. On the precipice, overlooking a cliff. His duty here in the Southern Isles had to be fulfilled as far as anyone else knew. His control housed in iron, he faced her right back. Not even his bride deserved the truth. Not until.

“I don’t need your approval!”

“I’m trying to help you,” his voice rose, gently authoritative. Warning. Their eyes met. She didn’t know, didn’t care if he believed her.

“No. You can only help by letting me go. I have to. I have to go.”

She broke away, leaving the only home she knew.

[macbeth-s]

the losers never knew stan as an adult. never knew what he grew up to look like or what he ever became. did he style his hair the same way? have the same hobbies and still acted wise beyond his years?

after everything ends and the dust settles and the grief and sadness sets in, the losers (or, what is left of them) visit his house to meet patty, to say a proper goodbye (because before their childhood bully turned murderer and a spider space clown were bot set on killing them and one thing led to the other and so they never really had much chance to before)

patty (wrecked with sorrow and grief and yet still the kindest woman the losers would ever meet) shows them all pictures of a stanley they never met, the stanley that was tore away from them. its 27 years of memories and milestones they weren’t there for. they sit on his back porch (only five of them now, where there should have been seven. empty gaps in their lives and hearts they’ll never be able to fill) the sun sets and the mosquitoes cover them in bites and they get wine drunk as they flick through pages and pages of stanley. old high school photos, his college graduation, pictures of his wedding, him at the grand canyon, the london eye, a wide grin on his face as he holds his favourite type of bird, all the cheesy photos he and patty took together.

((they take the melancholy trip down memory lane far too often these days, an easier way to catch each other up on the last 27 years spent apart that isn’t through tears and choked out sentences. bill had a terrible haircut through college and richie looks high in every photograph from his youth, they can see the growing loneliness in bens eyes over the years and mike just looks so so tired. bev had burnt half of her photographs, determined to be free of her father and her ex husband, doesn’t like to talk much about her wedding. they saw only a few of eddies old photographs, a brief trip to visit myra as they plan his funeral and god eddie had looked so miserable standing next to his mother in his wedding photograph and richie had cried so hard the losers had to drag him out of the apartment))

they tell patty that stan had seemed so happy, how sorry they are for what happened, for dragging him back into their mess and for dragging him away from her. patty (because its so obvious these strange childhood friends her husband had never mentioned feels all the pain and grief she feels just as worse) tells them he had said to her he always felt that something had felt off, that he was missing something big in his life he just wasn’t sure of what.

they leave late, tipsy and drowned in sorrow and childhood nostalgia. patty lets them keep their favourite photo of stan from their photo album and mike gives her a copy of the photo booth strip (“its the only photo we have of us all together, every thing else got lost to time”) they promise more meet ups, more exchange of stories of the stanley they knew, from his childhood (“so you don’t get spiders in you hair when you’re down here”) or of his and pattys years together (he had cried when he proposed, patty tells them, and they chuckle, leaving the night on a happy note)

((months and years and they still find it hard to imagine a world without the young boy who was so kind and brave and intelligent. who was scared and still loved them all more than anything))

[tin-can-iron-man]

Sometimes it really gets to me that Tony Starks greatest asset is also his biggest weakness: His mind.

[b33p-b33p]

❛❛ I’m not going to leave. I’ll stay as long as you need me to. ❜❜

"It's fine," he muttered. "I'm good, I swear."

...it was a bald-faced lie, of course. After Derry he wasn't actually sure 'fine' was something he was going to be able to classify as for a good long while, but there wasn't anything Bill could do about that, right? Plus, the other had his own life to get back to, he couldn't spend all his time making sure Richie wasn't going to drink himself to death or worse. It wasn't fair to him.

[mazharking]

seeing a gif of taylor swift straining rlly hard wondering what note is she trying to hit? G4?

[dreamsaremywords]

“Love is weakness. I’m sorry it has to be this way, but sometimes, it’s just the way it is. Can you understand that?”

Lexa stares up at her father through round glasses, blinking eyes that appeared twice their size behind such thick lenses. She exhales a shaky breath and scoots the bridge of her glasses farther up the nose they’ve been slipping down. She doesn’t understand.

Her father kneels beside her, expression even more solemn than it usually is. The dim light hanging overhead glints dully off his bald head.

“When is she coming back?” asks Lexa again, voice quieter. Much quieter than earlier, when she screamed and raged and her father left her alone in the house before calling her uncle. Uncle Gustus arrived and swept Lexa up in his arms and held her as she cried, and by the time she calmed down her father returned. Her mother still hadn’t, though. Not since she threw a vase and the glass crunched beneath her heels as she left towing a suitcase behind her.

“She isn’t,” her father says calmly. “She’s never coming back, Lexa. I’m so sorry.”

Lexa thinks the photographs of their family hanging on the walls. She thinks of the perfume her father let her pick out for her mother on Valentine’s Day. She thinks of the macaroni-pasted art pinned on the refrigerator. Her father must be wrong because her mother wouldn’t leave any of that behind. She wouldn’t leave Lexa behind.