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bakerstreet2021-05-20 01:46 pm
Mix your blood with mine, see the life leave our eyes
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At Your Service (atyourservices) wrote in bakerstreet2021-05-20 01:46 pm
atyourservices) wrote in bakerstreet2021-05-20 01:46 pmEntry tags:
( ...oh, you think this is only supposed to be a bittersweet meme?
for those unfamiliar with the canon, tomie is from junji ito's manga of the same name and is terrible. no, seriously, she's awful in just about every way possible: vain, cunning, cruel, self-serving...and also a hellbeast from beyond our mortal realm. physically, however, she appears to be a beautiful young girl; she's so beautiful, in fact, that any man who sees her will instantly desire her and said desire will eventually drive him to madness. that part almost always ends in the death of both he and tomie. or maybe "death" is more accurate, since tomie is incapable of dying. time after time, murder after murder, she is reborn as long as there is some part of her body still remaining. even worse, if there's more than one bit of her out there, each piece will become a brand new, fully-formed tomie.
expect some dark business to go down here. vanilla's possible, of course, though fluff is not. more realistically, xeno, body horror, and gore/possibly death is more on par. if you have any hard nos, please let me know before we start so i don't tread into anything you're not down for.
*f/m because tomie finds men more useful and easier to manipulate, and she especially has a taste for older men or men of resource, but i'm down with playing f/f if you can think of a reason this ageless she-bitch demon creature would be interested in your lady. )
for those unfamiliar with the canon, tomie is from junji ito's manga of the same name and is terrible. no, seriously, she's awful in just about every way possible: vain, cunning, cruel, self-serving...and also a hellbeast from beyond our mortal realm. physically, however, she appears to be a beautiful young girl; she's so beautiful, in fact, that any man who sees her will instantly desire her and said desire will eventually drive him to madness. that part almost always ends in the death of both he and tomie. or maybe "death" is more accurate, since tomie is incapable of dying. time after time, murder after murder, she is reborn as long as there is some part of her body still remaining. even worse, if there's more than one bit of her out there, each piece will become a brand new, fully-formed tomie.
expect some dark business to go down here. vanilla's possible, of course, though fluff is not. more realistically, xeno, body horror, and gore/possibly death is more on par. if you have any hard nos, please let me know before we start so i don't tread into anything you're not down for.
*f/m because tomie finds men more useful and easier to manipulate, and she especially has a taste for older men or men of resource, but i'm down with playing f/f if you can think of a reason this ageless she-bitch demon creature would be interested in your lady. )
( love Traveller (either,) Diluc, Jean, Lisa, Albedo, Childe, but seriously open to just about any character in or out of Mondstadt, and cross canon is welcome. age gaps and upper teens are accepted. if you're unsure, just ask. Abyss plot-related is definitely viable as an option for how this all goes down, I love dramatic and painful stuff, and gore isn't a problem for me. if you have pet theories and headcanons for stuff, let me know if you want to play with those things. (Khaenri'ah Prince Kaeya for example, I'll roll with anything.) if preferred, I can write the starter. )
douma / kimetsu no yaiba / ice hashira au / ota - m/f for ships
lotusandlies
2021-05-20 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
[ who wants a brief sad oneshot thread like, as a dessert??
concept: zhongli stepping down from rex lapis into a mortal disguise meant he intended to live out...just the end of a fairly typical mortal lifespan, not that he was gonna kick back as an adeptus for another 6000 years. further concept: zhongli dying in the arms of a mortal friend/lover and being given overt permission to Rest. that's all i'm asking for here folks. can be after an assumed Long Time together, can be while the other character is still young; can be of ambiguous Old Age Disease or after a sudden injury, but in either case i'm looking for a healthy dose of It's Time So It's Sort Of Fine. (or that will be zhongli's feelings on it, anyway. the other character is welcome to handle this...however you'd like.)
open to the other character knowing who zhongli really is/was. also open to implications that they both scoot off to celestia together afterwards too, esp for other archon characters, etc. does not need to be ship, but open to it (if ship, for this meme, open to basically any castmate). also fine with just one character dying if you'd like. pm if you'd like to plot. ]
concept: zhongli stepping down from rex lapis into a mortal disguise meant he intended to live out...just the end of a fairly typical mortal lifespan, not that he was gonna kick back as an adeptus for another 6000 years. further concept: zhongli dying in the arms of a mortal friend/lover and being given overt permission to Rest. that's all i'm asking for here folks. can be after an assumed Long Time together, can be while the other character is still young; can be of ambiguous Old Age Disease or after a sudden injury, but in either case i'm looking for a healthy dose of It's Time So It's Sort Of Fine. (or that will be zhongli's feelings on it, anyway. the other character is welcome to handle this...however you'd like.)
open to the other character knowing who zhongli really is/was. also open to implications that they both scoot off to celestia together afterwards too, esp for other archon characters, etc. does not need to be ship, but open to it (if ship, for this meme, open to basically any castmate). also fine with just one character dying if you'd like. pm if you'd like to plot. ]
[ no one is immune to the world — neither god nor mortal. this, the vigilant yaksha knows. he has known it for a long time, has seen gods disappointing and corrupted, has seen human beings in their own trivial struggles, has seen both of these forms of life also in their glory: the founding of what in other worlds might be a kingdom and he their undying king but liyue has long been a land of god and the adepti spanning his earth on wing or foot, fleet and loyal and ancient as bedrock.
or had been.
the unfairness xiao suffered once was ultimately his own doing, his own fault for falling prey to an evil god who was stronger than him, who beguiled and then imprisoned him to a duty of terrible action. there ought never have been a turning point for someone such as himself, excepting death; but then there had been morax — rex lapis, now zhongli — and despite everything, yes there too: a fork in the path where xiao was certain there could not be one.
centuries passed.
the polearm he uses always feels like the day morax lowered himself before him so he could meet his gold eyes with his own and held it out to him. what it is made of is no consequence compared to what was truly bestowed.
and xiao has done his best to uphold his end.
the last yaksha.
but there had always been morax or rex lapis or then zhongli.
the truth is that xiao could not prepare himself for the true death of the one who stood apart. yet he had kept himself foreign, or made himself so, to the human world that rex lapis was so intertwined with. he could pretend perhaps that over the course of zhongli's mortality, he would come to or be forced to come to terms. such was the quiet lie under his feet that never touched the ground when he sat at a table in wangshu inn or at a stone communion in the mountain's higher eaves.
it is not possible to pretend with a familiar yet new — it has been years, long for mortals, and not long for that which this man once was and who xiao will always be, until he falls — form. morax was always beautiful. some of his power was in that. the anemo archon once said to xiao: "i liked to tease him. he was so serious, and a great many expressions on him were always new." xiao understood that 'venti' both complimented and criticized morax, but always with the tone of an old comrade if not a friend. though then what did xiao know of friends? he had only made the worst kind, the most incorrect of choices in that regard had he not?
until morax. until venti. until.
it seems wrong, the man with his head in the yaksha's lap, the red of his eye makeup still perfect despite the cracks fissuring his body where gold seeks to escape and, xiao guesses, finally become as much a part of liyue as anyone — god or mortal — can. how long since this place moved further out of the hands of her god and into her own? xiao tries to keep track, more-so since the change, but it is hard. the part of him that guiltily would look, on the rare occasion he saw morax, with wonder and something too heavy to name, suddenly looked at 'zhongli' with fear.
'human' is just another way of saying 'one day' — one day, i will die, and one day you will remember, and one day when you turn to look for what is familiar between us, it may not be there; one day.
this is not how it ought to have gone, too fast even for human beings. but zhongli is mortal now and so it goes that the corrupted poison in his blood will work that much faster. it shatters a vessel from the inside-out, and while it differs from other forms of corruption xiao has seen over the millennia, he knows that one consistency is that it must hurt a great deal. perhaps morax could not get all of the god out of him after all. human beings do not bleed gold or light, and xiao has a moment where he wonders far beyond his own capabilities.
he has given his love to what is worthy of love.
but it isn't enough.
and it is too late to admit that is the word.
what does he know anyway?
maybe he has been wrong about this too.
but xiao was once a gentle individual, who leaned curiously into the light and the dark with equal kindness and so became vulnerable. that gentleness was mostly tortured out of him, and it is, he has thought long, part of his penance — to not be near things, to guard at a distance, and to suffer the karmic accumulation of nightmare things because he was once one such nightmare, against his will or no. yet 'most' is not 'all'. the tapered fingers he draws back along the face of the one he still thinks of as morax or rex lapis, they are surprisingly soft for a warrior perhaps, and they are gentle; they are kind; they are i have no right to ask you to stay but i am asking — i cannot help it.
were there a way for xiao to siphon his life into 'zhongli', give up his conditional immortality for a very conditional mortality's second-chance, he would consider it. but this would break his contract and so even knowing he would want to, it is perhaps the twisting of the knife in his own soul that reminds him: that is not your choice to make.
not his life.
ordinary doctors would be hard-pressed to find a 'wound' on zhongli.
this ending comes from the inside, slow and fast.
and while xiao is not the one dying, he finds it distinctly difficult to breathe, a pain in his chest that is tight and heavy and years and years and years.
overhead the sky tinges closer to deep blue higher, meting into gold-red lower into the too-far sun now set. this too reminds xiao of morax whose face he cannot look away from for long but also cannot bear to keep staring at without any relief. the plains are quiet and xiao who has never been good at conversation even when he was softer, says nothing, meaning everything. ]
or had been.
the unfairness xiao suffered once was ultimately his own doing, his own fault for falling prey to an evil god who was stronger than him, who beguiled and then imprisoned him to a duty of terrible action. there ought never have been a turning point for someone such as himself, excepting death; but then there had been morax — rex lapis, now zhongli — and despite everything, yes there too: a fork in the path where xiao was certain there could not be one.
centuries passed.
the polearm he uses always feels like the day morax lowered himself before him so he could meet his gold eyes with his own and held it out to him. what it is made of is no consequence compared to what was truly bestowed.
and xiao has done his best to uphold his end.
the last yaksha.
but there had always been morax or rex lapis or then zhongli.
the truth is that xiao could not prepare himself for the true death of the one who stood apart. yet he had kept himself foreign, or made himself so, to the human world that rex lapis was so intertwined with. he could pretend perhaps that over the course of zhongli's mortality, he would come to or be forced to come to terms. such was the quiet lie under his feet that never touched the ground when he sat at a table in wangshu inn or at a stone communion in the mountain's higher eaves.
it is not possible to pretend with a familiar yet new — it has been years, long for mortals, and not long for that which this man once was and who xiao will always be, until he falls — form. morax was always beautiful. some of his power was in that. the anemo archon once said to xiao: "i liked to tease him. he was so serious, and a great many expressions on him were always new." xiao understood that 'venti' both complimented and criticized morax, but always with the tone of an old comrade if not a friend. though then what did xiao know of friends? he had only made the worst kind, the most incorrect of choices in that regard had he not?
until morax. until venti. until.
it seems wrong, the man with his head in the yaksha's lap, the red of his eye makeup still perfect despite the cracks fissuring his body where gold seeks to escape and, xiao guesses, finally become as much a part of liyue as anyone — god or mortal — can. how long since this place moved further out of the hands of her god and into her own? xiao tries to keep track, more-so since the change, but it is hard. the part of him that guiltily would look, on the rare occasion he saw morax, with wonder and something too heavy to name, suddenly looked at 'zhongli' with fear.
'human' is just another way of saying 'one day' — one day, i will die, and one day you will remember, and one day when you turn to look for what is familiar between us, it may not be there; one day.
this is not how it ought to have gone, too fast even for human beings. but zhongli is mortal now and so it goes that the corrupted poison in his blood will work that much faster. it shatters a vessel from the inside-out, and while it differs from other forms of corruption xiao has seen over the millennia, he knows that one consistency is that it must hurt a great deal. perhaps morax could not get all of the god out of him after all. human beings do not bleed gold or light, and xiao has a moment where he wonders far beyond his own capabilities.
he has given his love to what is worthy of love.
but it isn't enough.
and it is too late to admit that is the word.
what does he know anyway?
maybe he has been wrong about this too.
but xiao was once a gentle individual, who leaned curiously into the light and the dark with equal kindness and so became vulnerable. that gentleness was mostly tortured out of him, and it is, he has thought long, part of his penance — to not be near things, to guard at a distance, and to suffer the karmic accumulation of nightmare things because he was once one such nightmare, against his will or no. yet 'most' is not 'all'. the tapered fingers he draws back along the face of the one he still thinks of as morax or rex lapis, they are surprisingly soft for a warrior perhaps, and they are gentle; they are kind; they are i have no right to ask you to stay but i am asking — i cannot help it.
were there a way for xiao to siphon his life into 'zhongli', give up his conditional immortality for a very conditional mortality's second-chance, he would consider it. but this would break his contract and so even knowing he would want to, it is perhaps the twisting of the knife in his own soul that reminds him: that is not your choice to make.
not his life.
ordinary doctors would be hard-pressed to find a 'wound' on zhongli.
this ending comes from the inside, slow and fast.
and while xiao is not the one dying, he finds it distinctly difficult to breathe, a pain in his chest that is tight and heavy and years and years and years.
overhead the sky tinges closer to deep blue higher, meting into gold-red lower into the too-far sun now set. this too reminds xiao of morax whose face he cannot look away from for long but also cannot bear to keep staring at without any relief. the plains are quiet and xiao who has never been good at conversation even when he was softer, says nothing, meaning everything. ]
( ota m/f. no dub/nocon but pretty open otherwise. )
( ota mf, f/f with previous cr. she deserves some love, srsly. )
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