IMPERIAL WILL

his is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight Natalia ♔ Citta ♔ apt g-3 ♔ healx3

[vimregiam-blog]

mesomer:

His eyes slide over to her with the mention of leaving – a luxury she had, but not him. He doesn’t pretend not to feel the pang of jealousy, which makes it easier. Luke rides out the emotion for as long as it lasts, which isn’t very long at all, and it fades with his next breath. He smiles – smiles at her, the story, and this stupid, dumb dog.

He shakes its paw like he’s seen some pet owners do.

‘I like this guy, myself.’ He lets the dog go; he points instead to the pug with its dour little face, already starting to fall asleep. ‘Or that one.’ His hand moves; it coasts over to the end of the pen they stand beside, all the way to a dog that nearly looks lost in its own fur. It waits obediently while a child tries to balance a teapot on its head, tail wagging leisurely. ‘But…’

‘I bet you like this guy, right?’

This one, the one right in front of them. It’s the antithesis, almost, to the image people think Natalia has: quiet, demure, polite and compliant in every respect. It’s barked in his face twice already, demanded his attention, and nudges his hand anxiously when he doesn’t go back to petting it. It doesn’t really fit her outward image, but…

‘He reminds me of you.’ Her? Her. It has to be a girl; he taps her on the head a couple times, earning another bark for his efforts. ‘But you’re not planning on getting one, right? I mean…’ He trails off, not out of objection, but for his wandering eyes.

The teapot has changed heads, now, and the pug wears it like a prize.

“Well-- I hadn’t planned on it.” The spotted dog wanders over to the pug, squinting at its makeshift helmet. It is quiet for once, and only for a moment, before it sneezes. The pug stands up with a jolt, and the teapot tumbles from its head.

The dalmatian barks, loud and rough like it’s laughing.

“Wouldn’t it be fun? And Guy wouldn’t mind..” He shouldn’t mind-- what with his “work experience” and Natalia’s patience for his special brand of “strays”.

The pug watches the larger dog sniff the spout of the teapot, with an expression that Natalia can only describe as dumb. It seems to be patiently lost, and she smiles despite herself.

“..Have you been doing well?” The question is sudden, but she speaks with a comfortable slowness, like this was always the natural flow of their conversation. She’s been waiting quite some time to ask. 

“It’s been quite an...adjustment-- for all of us. And you and I.. we don’t speak about things like this as much anymore.”

Things like this-- themselves.

She knows why, but there is no other way to start.

[gaidios-blog]

“Easy,” Guy responds with a bright expression. “I’m going to take them apart, see what’s going on with them, then put them back together so we can toast more bread with them.” He speaks pointedly because he’s excited about the prospect of seeing them up and running again.

After all, he wouldn’t leave them scattered about collecting dust. That was what he was trying to keep them from.

A grin spreads across his face.

“Hey, since you’re here though and your appetite is gone, think you could give me a hand? There’s a slot-head screwdriver on the counter top next to you. I want to pry the shell off this one to take a look at its coils.”

[vimregiam-blog]

“Ever the opportunist, I see.” She grumbles, but she moves towards the counter regardless. There’s a neat row of tools, screwdrivers to be exact-- long, short, flat, round, and sharp. She plucks several from the line, and if none of them happened to be what he needed, well-- it would seem Guy was out of luck.

“None of that seems as if it’d be particularly fulfilling.” She holds out her screwdrivers of choice, mouth pulled into a firm line, face challenging him to even suggest that none of the ones she’d picked were acceptable.

“You open them up, poke at what’s inside-- and then what?”

[roosterlord]

Three years.

Three years.

He’s not looking at her anymore. Though his eyes are locked to her hands, to the physical manifestation of the uncharacteristic uncertainty in her voice – his mind is somewhere else entirely. It … well, he knows Eldrant doesn’t feel like yesterday. The memories aren’t as ragged and raw as they were even a few days ago, after all.

But it doesn’t feel like years, either, and suddenly Asch finds himself standing in some sort of temporal limbo; like he’s been left behind, stranded on a rock as the current sweeps everything (everyone) further and further away.

(It’s a disgustingly familiar feeling.)

Then Natalia’s hand is on his – warm, still warm – and he only hesitates for a moment before returning the gesture. “I …” What should he say? What can he say?

“… I’m sorry, Natalia.” A pause, a breath, and: “For everything.”

The train comes to a shuddering stop, and Asch glances up to see he’s arrived. He stands slowly, not letting go of her hand. His grip is light – she can pull away whenever she wants, because he won’t keep her where she doesn’t wish to be – and he asks, “Do you … want to come with me?”

[vimregiam-blog]

It’s not a question she thinks he would ever ask-- not three years ago.

Steel squeaks, and the lines of his hands are so softly pressed against her wrists he is practically transparent. There is a delay; between when he speaks and when the words are strung together in her mind, and made sense of.

She isn’t indecisive, she isn’t contemplating her decision. She just wants to be sure-- that this is what he’s asked, and not what she wishes to hear.

"If you’ll let me, I will.”

It has been two stops since they’d passed her destination.

In the windows swirl a mess of concrete and cityscape, their own reflections obscured by how the light hits the panes-- like some distorted gray prism. She does not know where Asch meant to stop, and she does not feel compelled to ask.

Her hand grips his, and she is afraid to do much more.

To ask for much more.

[vimregiam-blog]

It’s something from the storybooks she’d read growing up-- the sky above them, that’s more chandelier than skylight with how it twinkles down at them.

It’s something pulled from the dreams she’d weave after a restless day-- the two of them here with her right now.

“Luke! Don’t fuss so much!” She smacks his hands away, fixes the tie he’d been tugging awry in an attempt to free himself. “There--”

She steps back, looks at the two of them standing side by side, and despite their surly faces she smiles.

“You both look very handsome.”

”Someone may even ask the both of you to dance-- if you do something about..” She makes a vague gesture at her own mouth, and waits for theirs to shift in complaint.

vimregiam || @mesomer || roosterlord

[mesomer-blog]

‘Huh?’

She smiles, and he looks, and immediately,

He scrunches up his nose in distaste.

‘… You’ve got to be kidding.’

She’s got to be thinking of someone else – someone else who Luke’s thoughts crash into, a battered ship in a sea that won’t stop churning. The dog harrumphs when he doesn’t respond, turning away in a moody fit that… makes his eyes soften, next. She’s got to be thinking of someone else, and so is he, for all the time it takes him to come back to the present.

It can’t be him she’s calling cute.

He stops scrubbing at his face, red, a moment later. He starts watching the animals, young and old and all sorts of fascinating, eyes glowing bright with questions. He interrupts himself, wondering how it would feel to carry one, missing the weight that used to pull down his item pack.

There is hardly a pause (but bigger than he thinks) when he bends down to stare at them, hand flicking out, hovering over a dog with spots.

‘You never talked about it.’ The drone of excited children nearly drowns out his words; he tips his head back, watches her in a way that’s skewed. Doesn’t feel any more perturbed for it, just  – new. ‘Wanting one. I didn’t think you cared about this stuff at all.

‘… did you?’

There’s a grinding noise in the back of his head.

[vimregiam-blog]

The memories are muddled and hazy, shades of red and green tangled together-- it’s hard to separate the conversations and assign them a definite partner. So she tries not to dwell on that-- they were both forgetful, and they’d had far too many conversations about far too many inane things.

“Well, it has been quite awhile.” The pug sneezes, licks the side of its mouth and stares up at them with scrunched up eyes (and she can’t really tell if it’s making that expression, or that’s just the natural state of its poor surly face).

“I asked father a few times-- for a dog. But I wasn’t particularly successful.”

Her gaze drifts over to his hand, and she smiles to herself, watching as the dog sniffs delicate l at his fingers.

“On one occasion I snuck a stray back into my castle. I carried it in under my skirt after the nanny had her fourth glass of wine.” The dog barks once, before reaching up to lay its paw in Luke’s palm. She reaches a hand out as well, fingers finding their way behind its ear.

“When I was found out, well-- father wasn’t particularly happy. She nearly lost her job and I wasn’t allowed out of the castle for months after.” She’s trying hard-- not to get lost in the nostalgia, not to fret too much on how she can’t decide who has heard this story and if one of them was an active participant in it at some point.

She shakes her head, like it will force the thoughts from her mind.

“I suppose this is my second chance-- which one do you like?” The one with the spots barks again, beckons Luke for his answer as well.

[draghons]

Source

[mesomer-blog]

who said

[gaidios-blog]

He’d insisted he wouldn’t bring anything back from the local flea market, but this was precisely what Guy told Natalia every single time they went. Every single time, he brought something old new back.

This time, there is a coffee machine tucked underneath his arm. At the sight of a familiar redhead stepping forward to lift Natalia into the air, it nearly becomes a very broken coffee machine.

“Luke? Luke! It’s really you!” he shouts, his eyes and facial expression lightening at the sight of their old friend.

A grin spreads across Guy’s face as he steps forward to give Luke a pat on the shoulder because he, too, must confirm this is real in his own way.

“You should probably listen to Natalia. She hasn’t changed a bit, if you know what I mean.”

@mesomer​ || vimregiam || gaidios

[mesomer-blog]

Hasn’t changed, he says – but, she has.

She’s never cried for him before.

The firsts are done, and now come the afters: letting her down, lifting his hands, worrying his lip even when a comfortable weight settles on his shoulder. It’s hard to look at her so he looks at him, Guy – and he feels that warmth in him again, feels breathing that comes easy and gets easier with every passing second.

It takes him a moment to speak, sound robbed by them and this and the dizzying lights, but when he does –

He puts a hand on both of them.

‘… Yeah.’ It’s a lot of things. He means a lot of things.

‘B-but you can’t cry, alright?’ he hastens to add, eyes flicking upward. He’s deeply fascinated by her tears, the thing under Guy’s arm, and the different in the way they look. ‘It’s just me. Remember?’

Just him.

mesomer​ → vimregiam → gaidios 

[vimregiam-blog]

It’s just him, and that is exactly why she can’t rub her eyes dry.

“Don’t--” Is all that she manages with how her hands won’t stop with their attempts to plug her tear ducts, but she’s not speaking to him.

Not really.

He deserves a better reunion than this.

He deserves more from her than this.

“It’s good to see you again.” Her voice is sure and steady, like it hadn’t just been rattling around in her throat. “But I would appreciate it if next time--”

But there won’t be a next time, none of them will let there be.

“-- you didn’t take so long finding your way back home.” She rests her hand on his.

mesomer | | vimregiam | | @gaidios​

[roosterlord]

He’s never been good with tears. Asch wants to say something, anything – probably an apology because she wouldn’t be crying like this if not for him – but the only thing he can do is sit there and stare at her, dumbfounded.

Because he very distinctly remembers the feel of steel and bone and flesh, the countdown of his heart as everything burned, and he can’t make enough sense of things to say anything but, “I am dead.”

(How can he not be?)

It’s not the right thing to say or the best time to say it; he knows that much, at least, but nothing has ever prepared him for anything like what he’s seeing now. The words don’t come easy – they never have. He doesn’t trust himself not to screw this up, whatever this is, yet he also can’t stand simply watching and doing nothing.

He’s never wanted to hurt her. (Not like this.)

So he speaks carefully, hesitantly, when he says, “I … won’t go anywhere.” Asch doesn’t know what’s real or not anymore, but he doesn’t care; Natalia is Natalia, even if he wakes to find her gone the next moment. His fists loosen, just a bit, though he doesn’t attempt to touch her as she did him.

“But, Natalia –” the words threaten to choke him, caught as they are in his throat – “why are you here?” His posture is rigid, as if Asch is attempting to brace for an impact. “I – you’re not –”

His breathing is shallow. “You’re not dead, right?” She can’t be.

(She deserves more than his own fate.)

[vimregiam-blog]

Somehow, it is the last question she expects-- the one question she never assumed he would ask. Everything else gives away to her confusion and disbelief, as if the possibility had never occurred to her.

As if she had long since given up on either of them ever being in the same state of being or not being.

“W-What, no-- I... I don’t think--” She stops, but her fingers knot together, and she wrings her skin like it will draw the answers out of her hands. Her gaze feels heavy, unwilling and incapable of being lifted anywhere off the ground.

“It’s been three years-- since Eldrant, since you passed away.”

Because that was what they had all accepted as truth, because that was the reality they had decided on-- Asch had died, and Luke would come back.

“I’m not.. I don’t think I’m dead.”

Silence rings and echos through rattling train cars, and Natalia tries to grab for words in her mind. Somehow they all slip through her fingers, barely tangible wisps that seem to have meaning until she touches them.

But she has to speak, because she’s thought about this more times than she can bare to count, and she has never been one to waste opportunity.

“I’ve missed you-- Asch..” His name is a mantra, nostalgic on her tongue because she has had such little chance to speak it for so long (but she has missed it for just as long).

“We’ve all missed you.” And she looks at him, because she’s still fearful she’ll never get the chance again-- hand on his, because even despite how strange it feels she needs to be reminded he is no more a ghost.

[thoughtsstained]

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Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - Florence and The Machine

[roosterlord]

She moves toward him, and he flinches.

He’s not sure what he expects – for her hands to pass through him, maybe, or for them to hurt – because, even in the good dreams, she’s always been just barely out-of-reach. Asch isn’t proud of it, this reaction, or of the way he remains rooted to the spot with his heartbeat pounding in his ears; he’s hopeful, and the thought terrifies him.

The higher he dares to fly, the farther he has to drop, and it’s always been a long fall when it comes to her. (Asch knows he doesn’t deserve this, that this is impossible, but he wants and wants and –)

Her hands are warm, and he trembles.

“Natalia.” Her name sticks in his throat, released on a quiet breath like a forbidden prayer. Asch tries to still himself; dream or no dream, he’s never wanted her to see this side of him. She’s not supposed to bear witness to the parts of him that still think Luke instead of Asch, reaching for memories that slip through his fingers like sand, because he’s –

– He’s scared. He’s so scared of what this means: her with her soft hands against his face, kneeling and looking at him like that – like he’s someone who’s worthy of her apology … or her sorrow.

But his tears have been used up years ago, so all he can do is clench his fists and press his blunt nails tight against his palm. To touch her is to capture the moon’s reflection in a pond – he won’t risk breaking this illusion with ripples. Not yet.

Asch doesn’t dare reach out as he breathes, “Why … are you sorry …?”

[vimregiam-blog]

There is a sort of static between them when her skin makes contact with his. But not the kind from the storybooks people who don’t know her would assume she enjoyed. It burns her fingertips, jolts the life back to her feet and makes her realize-- she has to stand up.

So she does, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, and tries to steady her voice as the empty train jerks through a turn and tries to force the both of them to move by its will.

She sits down, not next to him but beside him-- nose red and sniffing quietly, face obscured by her hands as she attempts to make it all stop (the crying, the way her nose won’t stop running, the way she reacts when she’d promised herself she wouldn’t be like this anymore).

“Because--” Her voice catches in her throat, against the jagged ends of syllables. Out of the corner of her eyes she sees the red of his hair and the way his hands are balled into writhing fists. She untangles her words from the sharp corners. “--because we thought you died, and because I nearly let all your sacrifices go to waste and--”

“..And because I don’t think I was ever fair.. or made anything any less difficult for you.” Asch, Luke, and rose tinted ideas in her head-- all in the name of pushing forward.

But it was never fair-- not to either of them.

“I.. you’re here, and I’m so afraid that you’ll leave again.”

[vimregiam-blog]

She is far more excited than someone her age should be.

But here, there are no imperial courts, snooty nobles, or wide-eyed subjects (perhaps not in the most literal sense, but none of them have any reason to turn their heads her way). She worries for them all, and duty is an incessant and never truly forgotten buzzing in the back of her mind but—there is something liberating about all of this.

“Luke, look at this one—no, here!” She yanks on his sleeve, paying little attention to how he jerks in surprise. The object of her attentions is a dog; a sleepy pug, barely eight weeks old and chewing excitedly on its own foot. “It’s cute… isn’t it?”

They’d stumbled upon it by chance—a fair by some local animal shelter in an attempt to find homes for their stock. The two of them stand out amongst the crowds of children and doting parents, and for a moment she looks away up and away from the pen of small animals—her gaze drifts between the faces of children and adults alike, and she turns to Luke—

“I suppose it’s strange to be this excited about something like this, but I always did want one you know.”

The dog looks up, and she smiles, nudges Luke with her elbow.

“He looks a bit like you, doesn’t he?”

@mesomer

[mesomer-blog]

who said

His eyes are on her, first.

Which is not to say that he does not see the rest of things. Does not use the rest of his five senses, which don’t feel like his but do. He sees – the sky, blue (the colour of her dress, a word he doesn’t know). Hears – distant snatches of their conversation, the world pouring in, his own silence. Tastes words he doesn’t say, breathes choking air still fresher than a second ago and – steps forward, into it all.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　‘… Hey!’

His hands are on her, first,

Lifting her up, touching, spinning – to see if she’s as real as he is.

He feels his mouth spread into a grin that is too loud, but he can’t stop looking at either of them.

The busy city street could never hold him back.

‘Shouldn’t you be looking for me?’

mesomer → vimregiam → gaidios

[vimregiam-blog]

Everything is red-- for a moment, for a fraction of a second, for as long as it takes for her to turn her head and draw a breath.

After that, all she sees is blue.

Her thoughts are a maze, they begin with outrage (at being addressed by a stranger, by being approached so intimately) and she isn’t quite sure if she’s managed to walk her way through them all-- but she exhales, and she’s arrived (and she’s confused, and afraid, but happy in between the tangled walls and paths).

The sky is blue, and his eyes are the green she remembers from the linen closets of hide and seek games, and the farewells and promises of reunions at Eldrant.

“You--”

She can feel the water already hot on her cheeks, and the way her voice cracks.

“Put me down!”

mesomer || vimregiam || @gaidios

[roosterlord]

He hasn’t spoken once since his arrival. Not to the ones in his apartment, or the clerk at the small corner store, or even the reflection in the mirror he doesn’t look at – 

– and that thought, the idea of seeing his face (his face), is the one that makes his hands tremble so much he can barely keep his grip on the railing. It’s been a little over a week, now, since he woke up on that table, and (he feels the leather press into him as he struggles, as he tries to move an uncooperative body, as he opens his mouth to ask why, as he tries to beg please – but all he can say is his scream, his scream, his) the sayings are true. Bad guys really do go to hell.

Really, whoever designed this as his punishment certainly did an excellent job – and Asch isn’t unduly surprised. The Order never really preached about what happens after death, but people generally accepted that bad things happen to bad people. Even dying isn’t enough to atone for what he’s done, it seems, no matter how painful it was.

And the fact that he still has to eat and sleep, well – he can’t pretend to understand the afterlife.

That’s why he doesn’t move when he hears it, not at first. It’s happened before in his dreams, where he’ll hear her voice and see her smile… but this is a nightmare, not a dream, and he’s not sure what he’ll do if he turns around to see an empty space where she should be. (Break, probably, as if he weren’t already fractured in every place that counts.)

But he can’t not look, in the end.

“… Natalia …?” His voice cracks, because – how? She can’t be dead. Even if she were (and, oh, does that thought scare him), she wouldn’t be here. Not … with him.

Ah. Perhaps this is the start of his next punishment.

[vimregiam-blog]

He speaks and now she’s sure-- now she knows it’s him.

Eldrant is not something she tries to forget, because that isn’t fair-- not to him, not to Luke, and not to her. But the good always yellows more slowly than the bad, and she’s seen too many times what the consequences of depending so much on his existence are.

So she’s learned to stand on her own, and she’s learned to honor him and not tie herself to him. So, she has learned not to expect him to come back.

But he is here, and she can’t bring herself to doubt much more or any longer.

“You’re here--” Her voice shakes, the train shakes, but her feet move, determined in their strides. He’s but a few feet from her, but the journey feels like miles. Her feet are lead, and gravity fights against her knees.

She kneels, movements soundless with how her heart rattles in her throat and the train skids against steel. Everything is blurry, and her cheeks are warm and heavy, but her hand finds a straight path to his face and her vision steadies-- hands on either side of his face.

“It’s really you, Asch--”

“I’m so sorry.. Asch-!”

The dead aren’t meant to walk again, and she is afraid to question the logistic and schematics of it all. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t see any need to. He is here, and she won’t let the journey take away from where they’ve arrived.

[gaidios-blog]

Guy calls it his workshop, except in reality, it’s the kitchen floor. He’s quite proud of the heaps he’s organized out of the toaster ovens. They were grouped by type, either straight toaster or convection oven, then brand, before finally into clusters depending on their levels of functionality. Most of their wires are coiled neatly with a rubber band, but the four pieces of kitchen equipment Guy began to cannibalize yesterday were strewn across the center of the room.

There’s a sheepish expression on his face, like an eight-year-old caught red-handed while smuggling his new pet squirrel into the house. He cradles his “newest” toaster in his arms. It’s silver with a small dent in its side, the polished right corner he’d been working on glinting in the light.

“It’s a toaster,” Guy finally piped up. “I mean, by the time I’m finished it’ll hopefully toast some bread.”

He sets the device on the counter top. This is the perfect opportunity to test his most recently refurbished one. There’s a slot toaster off to the side of the counter, one whose coils he’d finally gotten around to replacing.

“I know where everything is, and it never hurts to have some back-ups right?”

“… did you want some toast?”

[vimregiam-blog]

She thinks if she frowns any harder, her mouth may just fall off her face. The day has barely begun and Guy’s contraptions have already wrought more havoc than they were worth.

If they were worth anything at all.

“I’ve lost my appetite.” She punctuates her words with one more nudge, and when the steel cries against the ground she feels her expression lift just the slightest bit.

“What do you intend on doing with all these.. things.”

The sun slips into the corners of the room and gleams against the rust of the artifacts he’s accumulated and scattered. They cast a shower of bright dots along the ceiling, and Natalia would never admit out loud that it all looked just a little pretty.

“You must have some plan-- you can’t just let them all sit.”

[talesoftheabyss]

[vimregiam-blog]

He is a ghost in more ways than one.

He is a reminder, he is something to mourn, he is inspiration, and he is lost to her entirely.

It’s hardly an ideal place for a reunion, and it’s hardly the last place she expects to see the dead suddenly walk—the doors of the train slide shut with a soft but definitive sound, and she misses their automated wrath but just the ends of her sleeves.

It’s him—and she hates it that she doesn’t know right away, doesn’t know for sure.

He looks up and the train moves.

“Asch—” His name is an exhale, the tail end of a breath she’d been holding since she’d begun following that trail of red around the corner and through the steel doors behind her. She lets it go and she can feel the blood find its way to her feet and fingertips again.

She takes a step forward and the doubt is still there, still clouds her face and makes hands white with how hard she grips the wall of the train.

“It’s you, isn’t it..?”

If it’s him, she hates that she is so unsure--

so afraid of being sure.

@roosterlord

[vimregiam-blog]

Initially she’d thought the company might be nice-- but it’s been a little over ten minutes and she’s already realized how horribly optimistic she was being.

The two of them are brought here with the same purpose, by the same advertisement on a list that belonged so some man named “Craig”. The two of them do not expect each other, but she supposes the both of them had come here expecting the unexpected.

‘WEIRD SHIT FOR SALE

BELONGED TO MY DEAD GRANDMA

NEED TO GET RID OF ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$100 GETS YOU AS MUCH AS YOU CAN CARRY OUT’

The floorboards creak-- the sound is loud and agonizing, like they’ve years of pent up secrets to tell. Natalia wipes dust from glass, peers through the window of a display case and makes a quiet sound of contemplation.

“What sort of woman do you think she was-- the one who lived here--” She asks, cracks open the doors of the case and coughs when the dust lunges for her face.

@zelestias