“Can we…talk?” Talk doesn’t feel quite like the right request, but she’s not entirely sure how to best ask for a sidebar with your not-dead friend you’re obligated by divine authority to slaughter in the street.

Here is what no one tells you about grief: closure is not always catharsis.

Here is what no one tells you about grief: anger is an arsenic which tastes like ambrosia.

“I ran into Sascha earlier tonight,” she says, as if discussing Abraham, or Laurent, or Atlas, or any other mutual relation to someone with an unwritten obituary.

“Have you talked to him?”

It’s a bear trap in the shape of a sentence.

This is how the son of saints falls: not as lightning from heaven, but with muted apostasy.

He tries to ignore every instinct that demands action—ingrained wiring of a long conditioning. It makes him wonder if Sascha can notice whenever he tries to keep his distance—before a dagger can seal the deal.

( How did that one Shakespeare sentiment go again? The warnings of a friar to Romeo and Juliet before their death.

Lucas Hathorne has seen enough of the play to know the turnout. )

"Oh," is the first thing he says, while the music begins to slow. He'd promised the girl in the blue mask a dance—but Liem wants to talk, and Lucas wants to run, and the very thought of anything more than the present is a drowning man's fall. He's not too selfless to accept the kindled crash. ( Ashes, ashes, so the nursery rhyme goes. ) 

He looks down at his drink. Wine stained red; look once, and it's poison in a goblet, promised destiny at sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. Turn the angle, and it's blood against teeth—fangs sinking into skin, a buzz in your head, Sascha Levay hungry and needing—

He wonders why the realization—to be caught in the act—feels more like a long foregone conclusion than fear.

A broken little boy made his way back home underneath a star-filled sky. He hadn't been to the small one-floor house in a month, almost two. Some part of him knew he'd come back here eventually but not like this. Not with his eyes puffy from crying and his hands stained with the dried blood of his only friend. Blood that he'd spilled himself.

Lips pursed, Killian watched the outburst in silence. It wasn't a moment meant for him to witness. Yet, he perceived it all the same. Most might see the man crumpled on the ground, pleading to a god that likely wouldn't reply and feel sympathy.

Not Killian.

He wore apathy in the face of the man's plight. "Get up." he ordered, "You can't help your sister down on your knees." that's the she Bryan referred to. A sick and innocent girl whose time in this world was short and growing shorter by the second.

"I'm not surprised." he replied late, "You're a genius. This big machine of yours was bound to work." perhaps it's the excitement, but Killian smiled in Lulu's direction.

"Alien contact. How thrilling is that?"

The dead rise from the mist but only one impacts Killian in any meaningful way. His mother. Baby blues land on her face, and his clarity weavers. A tinge of pain. Of heartbreak and longing flashes behind his eyes. Replaced quickly by a wave of anger that pinpoints itself onto Tapu Fini and then Fernando.

Then the deceased move with the mist. They crawl along Killian's skin and scream insults spoken by the demons of his nightmares. Their words echoed inside the chambers of his mind and threatened to cripple him.

"You win." he admitted defeat

This wasn't a dream. This had happened, and he had been responsible.

The totsuzen fell to his knees and curled up around himself, sobbing.

It wasn't often in Yuki's life that he wept. He often held back his tears, hid everything behind an apathetic mask, but inside, Yuki had always been so kind and gentle. Death was something that he always had respected, that he saw such beauty in, and so it never really bothered him. He saw a freedom in it, a peace that he could offer those that would have suffered more horrible fates if they had lived. SPEAR had changed that. SPEAR had used him, trained him to be what he was. Brutal, and untamed. he thought he had had it under control. That he was free from them and their conditioning. But he was wrong.

“Where I’m from it’s free game once someone draws their weapon.” The life expectancy was also about two weeks where she was from as well, but that was irrelevant. 

THE MIRRORED HEART.

Which is equivalent to Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. A mirror, mirror stretched across the walls, reflecting the fairest of them all. For this short interim, silence hangs in the frames—washed across smooth, glassy surfaces where it’s absorbed as an absolute. An emptiness that is webbed and insidious; a soothsayer that persuades anyone to look where a glimpse catches reflections in return.

she knows a blade is more than steel and a means for defense, much in the same way her silks represent more than a pretty fabric. floating prominently through the gilded sea of her mind, the wave of thoughts reigns dominant throughout the creation of the piece.

expectancy of the arrival of her fellow house martell members replaces any want for slumber since the restless sensation sinks into the marrow of her bones. slumber’s no longer a prospect, being the ideal circumstance for arianne to delve into a sphere of solitude, contemplation passing the moments by until her time is no longer her own. ultimately, she retreats to the dunes surrounding sunspear, propelled by the pounding hooves of her esteemed destrier, plumes of dust billow behind her, creating standards and banners depicting the true emblem of her soul.

He did his best to block the things out. In his waking moments, everything had faded, but his dreams were more and more of the life that he had led before. The real one. He couldn't recall much of that though, and it left him feeling confused and empty. Seeing his partner though, knowing that he had his family back after the horrible things that ethereal had done, it made it worth it. And Yuki would never change that. Everything he did, he would always do again. Always... To make sure that his partner remained happy, because that was the only thing that meant anything to him.

In a movement that is swift and precise, Jack grabs the glass Lucas is holding, swirls it once, and proceeds to down its contents. The taste makes her grimace slightly. (More of a white wine person, if she had to choose.) A glance over the balcony is thrown to confirm the presence of an unoccupied walkway directly below. Jack reaches over the railing, lets go of the glass, and watches idly as it falls and shatters into crystal on the pavement below.