#pathologized

[developmentalteachingstuff4me]

[spirestar]

List your 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms, then tag 10 people // characters are not in any particular order :]

beatrice, umineko when they cry

2. nero & vergil (is this cheating...idc), devil may cry

3. solid snake / dave, metal gear solid

4. clara / the changeling, pathologic classic

5. kaine, nier replicant

6. phoenix wright, ace attorney

7. milly thompson, trigun maximum (not stampede etc)

8. yuri kariya, i want to hold aono-kun so badly i could die

9. junpei, 999 (9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors)

10. michel bollinger, the house in fata morgana

special mentions: caim from drakengard, kim kitsuragi from disco elysium, zevran arainai from dragon age origins, red from transistor!!! that's my girl!!!!!!!!! emily kaldwin from dishonored, ada wong from resident evil, guydelot from final fantasy xiv my niche favie. adding this list is definitely cheating the system though. i'm such a #rulebreaker

tagged by: @pathologized

tagging: anyone who hasn't done it yet >:)

[spirestar]

@pathologized

“Battler,” Kyrie’s voice, lukewarm and unsweetened, reaches Battler’s room before she does. As if motherhood were an afterthought, only when she arrives does her face shift to help her assume the role. Outlined by the empty frame of the ajar door, Kyrie knocks on the newly-painted wood, performing one of those jokingly halfhearted courtesies that only someone you trust can offer. Then, uninvited, she slips inside, leaving the door wide open. “Settling in well? Do you need any help unpacking?” Ignoring the state of Battler's room, she recites her lines clearly. The smile she wears is soft and unassuming. “Do you want to get lunch? Ange is hungry, so I’m taking her to a café.”

His dad is such a bastard. He hasn't shown his face once since the funeral a month ago. Battler knows that in his own way Rudolf probably thinks he's doing what Battler wants him to--He's been avoiding him for years now, so why would he want to see his father now that they're forced to live together again? Well. Battler doesn't know what he wants. He doesn't want to see the man but he does wish he'd at least pretend to care. It's complicated. It's the worst.

Battler is sitting on his undressed mattress unpacking a box of books and posters when Kyrie's voice rings out from somewhere down the hall. She appears and knocks and he knows she's just trying to be nice so he shoves the small stack of Poirot novels he's been organizing to the foot of his bed. He's an adult now technically but he can't help looking at the adults in his family as a separate group of humans entirely--Kyrie is one of the few he'd say he knows well enough to understand a little. In the last six years, she's probably the one he's seen the most often after all. And she's kind of cool.

"Sure, I could eat," he says with a grateful smirk at her. Really, Battler is tired: of this quiet house, of the stiff way people have been treating him since his grandparents died, of not having school to see his friends and fill the hours. "You're not letting Ange pick the cafe though? Right?" Here, Battler's expression gains a painfully genuine warmth. It's so easy for him to talk about Ange, despite the circumstances that drew him away from the Ushiromiyas to begin with. Battler never imagined he'd have a little sister to dote on and take care of. He loves her and in a way he loves Kyrie too for sharing her with him. It would've been easy for Kyrie to get Rudolf to send him away to a paid for apartment or something, he figures. Or to his grandfather. "She'll just keep getting plain onigiri if she gets her way. And, ihihi, y'know she got bored going through all my socks?" He gestures with one hand toward a rumpled pile of socks that are spilling from an old suitcase and snorts a little laugh. Luckily he's wearing some socks already, so he grabs his sneakers from under the bed frame and pulls them on.

There's a bandana holding some of his hair back (he hasn't had time to fix it up since arriving late last night and then waking up with plenty to unpack) and he's wearing a black band t-shirt that looks like it's meant to be oversized but fits him like a normal shirt and black parachute pants that crinkle quietly when he stands up, now shoe-ed. He towers over Kyrie a little bit. It's another good reminder of the time that's passed. When he was twelve and thought he might hate her, he was only as tall as her upper arm. "Don't worry about my stuff, Kyrie. I'll get it handled. I can take Ange for a snack if you're too busy, I don't mind." All you have to do is ask. For all his flaws, Ushiromiya Battler is still a sweet boy and he's a boy without a mother. He's not looking for one in Kyrie. He just wants to get along. "Seems like my old man's useless without you." Or maybe he always has been. Yeah, that feels right to Battler.

[fatedevour]

FIELD STUDY WITH @pathologized CONTINUES FROM THE RUINS

The Dasturs and other Trainee Dasturs are elsewhere - further away in the heart of the overflowing forest ; they always want to be further away from Zandik. He does not care for them either. Besides, if they were elsewhere, then it means they couldn't STOP him as the otherwise would. They could not try to chain down his desire and hunger for knowledge ; or lash out at him for mere suggestions. ( The thought alone makes his jaw clench. ) GOOD RIDDANCE.

Though, there is one who remains with him oddly enough. But the unsettling red iris of his eyes remains fixated on the machinery that has his attention like a tiger closing in for the kill and who intends to see to it that nothing escapes. In the desert, your survival depends on your intense determination. Those pampered here in the forests would HARDLY UNDERSTAND.

Sohreh's response comes as a surprise ; Zandik tears his gaze away from the machine to look at her and the notebook she's dropped, before answering.

" KNOWLEDGE. Unfiltered and untarnished. " A restlessness itches beneath his skin, the desire to dissect the robot not unlike that of dissecting biological organisms. " Evidently what lies below ancient metal is something that even those who claim unrivaled power are wary of. " He pauses only a moment. " I'm going to look. "

The other Dasturs will not be happy. But Zandik has never been one chained by caring what others think of him. He will not dampen himself to make himself more palatable. He will not be silenced for asking what others dare not.

" Are you staying here? " He asks, indifferent to the response as he adjusts his bag and marches towards the machinery. HIS FOOTSTEP UPON METAL ECHOES LOUDLY. Delight swirls, manic and ever-eager for more.

[ivsreta]

Deliverance shifts his jaw. Like crushing himself into dust, he denies the urge to turn away, and forces himself to look at her. He knows it’s not her—even as her face, lifted from his un-abandoned memories, ripples in front of him. Even as her name catches in his throat as he swallows it down. It catches him by surprise, occasionally. How unbearable the things he effortlessly bears can sometimes seem. He squints, ice-eyed, watching that familiar visage shift between strangers—kaleidoscopic and nauseating. His empty hand tightens around nothing into an impotent fist. For a brief eternity, Deliverance can’t disentangle his soul from ■■’s mirage. Finally, his frigid voice unfurls. He makes a simple demand. “Who are you.”

the only me is me. are you sure the only you is you? his head is splitting; there are names that rush through his head: veritas. jasmine. magdalene. he believes thease are not names that belong to him, yet the familiarity is so comforting, so natural, so undeniable. this figure before him rejects these names, rejects his form--while the body is something that looks like it belongs to him, he knows it does not.

i am ██████. his name, his true name--suddenly it is forgotten, or rather, it cannot be said. he tries the name of his head but it escapes as only a strangled noise. he clutches at his head in pain, struggling to form a single word. voices overlap, voices that sound as if they are his own, but he cannot tell as he cannot speak to confirm as much. this identity being forced upon him, while so familiar and comforting, is being rejected. i must adapt. he tries to silence the voices, silence the creeping feeling of his identity being overwritten, silence this so-called ██████. he lets out a primal scream as an image flashes in his brain--he was split four ways once, and he doesn't remember how or why. new words start to ring in his ears: halite, core, herrscher. he cannot tell if these are words for him, or for the person he is being mistaken for. he cannot erase this overwhelming feeling of loss and confusion. 

“ tell me. ” he manages to say this much, though it feels as if he had to swallow rocks to do so. “ tell me--who do you think i am? ” this is not just a question--it is a plea. put me back together again.

[aicidos]

hi.

HEYYY HI HI (with evil intent) can we write jjk please

[insolot]

:)

There's a voice. Then a face, then a pair of eyes. Then a smile. Then the lack of a smile.

And suddenly he's too aware of his body. The sharp bones and abused nerve endings, each little molecule of what makes him a breathing being lit up in a screeching cacophony of pain. Everything is so unignorably alive and thus, in pain; even the wound long closed running its jagged edges down his chest springs back to life. A phantom ache---no, not phantom, and besides, ache's too kind a word. It is burning and screaming and horrific in its irrefutable presence as the experience of pain. It is much too much and too present and too overpowering and he wants to scream, so badly does he want to scream, but in lieu of it he offers a smile, half-turned, a weak broken wing yet fluttering.

"Theo... Ah, Theophilus," he begins, the tone of his voice entirely devoid of its natural upturned chime. He is not there yet remains present nonetheless. A great gloom has overtaken what was once a pair of warm eyes; they have grown beyond what a kind of hollow dull could entail. Empty. Dead. Unsmiling. "I suppose I should've expected to find you here."

He wants to be elsewhere. He wants to be nowhere but here. He wants to be in a different room, different building, outside, six feet underground. He wants to feel the weight of Theophilus' arms around him, the steady sound of his heartbeats each marking another second of his life as it lulls him into a comfortable numbness. He doesn't know what he wants. And none of it matters anyway. "I... I am glad, though. I am."

This could be the last time, after all.

He considers taking a step forward, then grounds the waning weight of his body into a single place, locking his joints as if they were made of cold stone. But the mask still slips---his feeble smile falters further.

Vincent is a statue of a quiet saint chipping away in the wind; he is glowing with the particular sheen of sickness or death. There's a faint bite lingering on the left side of his neck, left by a mouthful of teeth that had marked him, not quite out of love or passion but the need to possess. It itches terribly under the weight of those eyes.

A display of needless cruelty he is an unwilling perpetrator of, his skin a pale canvas upon which someone else writ a statement of their superiority. Their victory, ever present.

The guilt stings as it should.

He thinks of Lupin, and of Nero, and of Amos, and it is then that he notices the lack of a wedding band on Theophilus' fingers as he is overtaken by a borrowed yet strangely personal grief, something he has no right to internalize as his own but does nonetheless. Because he is selfish, broken, tired, incorrigible, so fallible, and walking forward, then, step by heavy step, towards what is now just a ghost of an almost-lover. He is walking without the faintest bit of consideration for what his next movement could cause, how much it will or will not hurt - not knowing even what it will be.

There are voices all around them, none of them clear in his ears. They grow quieter with each millimeter of distance closed until they turn unrecognizable, until it is hard to tell if they even existed at all. Someone exclaims his name in the distance, their patience wearing thin. He overpowers the body's urge to flinch.

Vincent buries his face in Theophilus' chest and it is a punishment. He wraps his shaky arms around him and it is an apology.

No sob to stifle, no tear to soak into the material. He no longer remembers how to cry.

"For old time's sake," he whispers softly and if it was anyone else, he would not bother to assume they could hear it. But it's Theophilus. And he knows he will. The knowledge alone leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. "As good a farewell as any."

The click of a heel. Absence of warmth. Vincent is steadily walking away from Theophilus, not daring to look back. He slithers past faces familiar and unknown, past people he has spoken to and those that never thought to spare him a glance. None of them offer him a word.

If anyone notices the way he digs his nails into the vein just underneath the skin of his wrist, they do so in stone cold silence.