Also Not To Derail Anything But When I Saw The Cover And The Fact That The Other Guy Has Pink Hair I

Nezuko wakes up shaking.

Is it really waking up if you were already conscious, just out of control? As she looks at her brother's bloody form it certainly feels like the first time she’s opened her eyes since arriving in the forest. But who can really be sure?

His throat has been torn out. His clothes have been ripped to shreds. Underneath the ragged strips of cloth there’s barely anything left of him. Just some bone, some gristle. The inedible parts. His face is almost entirely whole though. As tears fill her eyes Nezuko wonders if this is because something deep down stopped her from being able to destroy her brothers face, but she knows that the only reason that part of him was left untouched is that there isn’t that much flesh there.

His eyes are glassy and unseeing.

Dead.

“No,” she whispers, the magnitude of this atrocity finally settling on her shoulders. “No, no, no, no-“

Her refrain only stops once she jams her hand in her mouth. Her jaw keeps moving as if trying to continue the refusal to accept reality and soon her hand is bleeding from the places where her teeth sink into it. The taste of her own blood sends a disjointed euphoria shooting through Nezuko’s brain and she jerks her hand back in horror. Desperate to somehow scrub away what she just did she shovels snow into her mouth to wash away the taste. She keeps chewing on it, pain zapping through her teeth from the cold, until she can spit it out without a trace of pink in the puddle of drool and bile she creates.

She scrubs the blood from her face so desperately that the snow makes small cuts in her skin. Better to be covered in her own blood rather than her brother’s though.

The thought makes her look back towards Tanjiro’s body. Her tears finally begin to fall.

“I did that,” she admits, the salt of her tears stinging as it floods her cuts and scrapes. She kneels down next to Tanjiro’s body. He looks peaceful and Nezuko hates it. Hates the way it reminds her how kind he was. How he would have forgiven her for doing this without question. “I did this. And I won’t ever let it happen again. Not to anyone.”

The forest grows silent for a moment in acknowledgement of her vow. Or maybe in shock that a demon would commit to such a thing.

After she’s said her prayers over his body she carefully takes out Tanjiro’s earrings. Nezuko doesn’t have her ears pierced yet so she just forces the metal through her ear lobes and is surprised by the lack of pain.

All that’s left is to bury him.

~

Almost as soon as she’s finished heaving snow back on top of the grave dawn begins to break. Before the first rays of light can inch above the horizon a primal fear takes hold of Nezuko and she sprints for the nearest cover. A cave that she digs herself into, deep enough that the sunlight will never touch her with its poison. It’s before she even realises it’s what she’s doing that she falls unconscious and begins to dream of brothers and blood and hell.

Nezuko sleeps for a very long time.

Scars, India Lawton / Becca Stadlander / This Party Never Ends, Diana Zhuk / Burning House in Winter, Bettmann Archive / Daria Golab / Shadow Work, Indigo / Painting Disaster From A Distance, Motohide Takami / Burn it Down, Brian Luong / Red House, Morten Schelde

New Fic!!

Word count: 1,338

Summary: Luz feels guilty all the time.

It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't know that she deserved it.

~

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

~

Fic under the cut!

Luz feels guilty all the time now.

Not guilty enough that she’s consumed by it. Not guilty enough that it stops her from doing anything. It’s just something in the background, something that pulls at her a little as she runs and fights and generally enjoys life more than she ever has before.

She mentions it to her friends. They don’t quite understand it.

“But you can do magic here, isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?” Willow asks.

“How can you miss being there when you fit in so much better here?” Gus says.

“They didn’t deserve you.” Amity snorts, like it’s obvious.

The last one makes Luz feel something different. She hopes she’ll figure out what sometime soon, once the guilt has ebbed away and there’s enough room for her to step back and look at her thoughts from a distance. Once there’s enough room that she might be able to examine the shape they take.

The problem is that Luz isn’t even guilty for what she’s done. If all she had done to her mom was leave her all alone in a different dimension then Luz wouldn’t even be feeling bad. It’s what Luz is going to do that keeps the low buzzing of guilt close.

Because Luz is never going back.

How could she? How could she return to a world where she can’t do magic, where she never fit in?

(where they didn’t deserve her)

Luz would do anything to stay in the Boiling Isles forever and considering the fact that all she has to do is not leave? Luz would have to have some twisted sort of mind to want to go back.

Her mom was going to send her to send her somewhere to get her imagination stamped out of her for three months. What if Luz returned and she tried to do that again? Then she might never get an opportunity to return to the Boiling Isles and then-

Then Luz would be feeling significantly worse things than a little guilt buzzing at the edge of her consciousness.

So she stays.

~

Luz is staring at the door that would take her back home.

Eda looks at her from over the cover of her magazine. “You planning to set that on fire, kid?”

“Yeah.” Luz answers without remembering that she probably shouldn’t be saying that sort of thing. Oh well, she thinks. It’s not like Eda’s going to judge her.

Eda puts down her magazine and raises a judging eyebrow in Luz’s direction.

Luz looks back at her and narrows her eyes. They’ve never talked about Luz going home and she had really been enjoying that status quo. “Your eyebrows are judging me.” she informs Eda. Just in case she wasn’t aware yet.

She nods slowly. “Yeah, they tend to do that kid.” She pauses. Like she needs some time to come to terms with the unprecedented fact that Luz would do anything not to stay here forever. “Bet it’s ‘cause they were wondering why you were going to set your only way back home on fire.”

“I guess that would make sense.” Luz answers, “It would kind of be an odd thing for me to do, from the perspective of your eyebrows.” She tries her best to look serious since this is a serious conversation despite how they’re both pretending that it isn’t.

They stare each other down for a while.

King comes and interrupts before either of them can break the stalemate. Eda looks particularly affronted when this happens, like whenever she’s avoiding telling Luz something she doesn’t use this exact same trick.

It’s odd. Luz thought Eda would have realised she’s a fast learner by now.

~

In a particularly unexpected turn of events it’s Lilith that ends of being the one to confront Luz about the whole thing.

She just had a fight with Eda. Obviously. Because the only time Luz ever runs into Lilith is when she’s just about to fight Eda or when they’ve just finished. It ends in a draw, like it always does, and Luz wonders why Lilith keeps coming back to fight Eda when she must know that it’s going to end the same way it always does.

Luz voices these opinions and Lilith squints at her with an expression that reminds her of Eda and her judge-y eyebrows. “Do humans not have families?” she asks, her tone full of honest confusion.

Luz isn’t quite sure how to answer that. She stays silent, waiting for King to interrupt like last time but remembers that King isn’t actually here right now and decides not to answer anyway. Maybe she’ll get lucky and someone else will interrupt.

“Well?” Lilith prompts, impatient now. “Do you have a family, human?”

Luz opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, “Why do you care?” she asks, which isn’t her best comeback but does the job of allowing her to avoid the question.

Lilith has the gall to roll her eyes. “I care about precisely two people in the Boiling Isles.” She holds up two fingers to illustrate her point. “My awful sister,” She puts a finger down, “and my wonderful protege.” She puts the other finger down so that her hand is in the shape of a fist. An irrational part of Luz’s brain wonders if she’s about to get punched. “So I think it’s understandable enough that I might like to know if the human that has the full adoration of my two favourite people might be leaving them someday soon.”

“Nope,” Luz starts backing away cause Lilith looks kind of angry and hence very scary, “No one’s leaving here. I am a-okay staying right here. Forever.”

“Oh.” Lilith says, expression turning surprised. Her eyes aren’t narrowed anymore and it makes them look far larger than normal. “I thought you were leaving.”

Luz looks at Lilith and feels something full of far too familiar guilt stirring in her chest. “That’s weird. I’ve never thought that before.” she says, because it’s true.

“But you have a family?” Lilith says because even if her and Luz don’t talk much she’s still one of the smartest people Luz knows, which is saying something since Luz is surrounded by geniuses these days.

“Yep. I’m staying though.”

Lilith frowns. “You should visit them. Family’s important.” Luz can feel herself starting to back away, the buzz of guilt rising again, but Lilith interrupts before she can get very far. “I’m sure that either Amity or Eda would drag you back before you could be gone for too long anyway.”

The words cause Luz to freeze. She hadn’t thought of that before.

Lilith had clearly been aiming for the comment to sound offhand, an afterthought, but from the way she’s a little tenser than normal Luz can tell that she really was trying to reassure her. It makes Luz wonder it Lilith might have enough room in her heart to care about three people one day.

“I’ll think about it.” she promises.

Luz keeps her eyes fixed firmly on the floor as she says it but she can tell that the words make Lilith smile a little anyway.

~

Luz really does think about it. She thinks about it constantly, replaces the buzz of guilt with wonderings over whether she trusts that her loved ones have their claws dug into her deep enough that they could never let her go.

One night, lying in bed and wondering the same things as always, she comes to the conclusion that she does. After the certainty has settled itself in her bones she has the best nights sleep she’s had in weeks.

In the morning she decides that she’ll wait a little. Let the certainty sink in a bit deeper. Let the amount she loves the people she’s surrounded herself with grow until the idea she won’t be able to return becomes ridiculous.

But then the Emperor comes and the portal burns and none of it really matters.

Luz starts feeling guilty again. She doubts she’ll ever stop.

continuation of this

It’s honestly ridiculous for her to be so floored by the sight of Catra in a suit.

Adora is the most powerful being in the universe. She’s made of starlight, her past lives span eons, Gods would bow to her and pray she stayed nice enough to deign that they live on.

But one look at Catra in that stupid suit and that stupid bow tie that isn’t even done up and that’s the whole point of them what the fuck Catra. One look at all of that and she’s practically incapacitated.

“Cat got your tongue?” leers Bow.

“Fuck you.” Adora says, more seriously than she meant to. Bow takes a step back, surprised at her vehemence, but seems to get it because he touches her arm and whispers a quick ‘sorry’ as he leaves.

She tries to brace herself for Catra’s approach. It doesn’t work. When she purrs “Hey Adora” in that smug voice she does when she’s feeling powerful Adora can’t help her face scrunching up in annoyance the way it always does. It makes Catra laugh which just makes Adora’s face scrunch up even more and the worst part is that she still kind of likes the sound.

Adora prays for the stars to give her strength. It doesn’t work. In fact, she thinks they might be laughing at her too.

Tell me I’m wrong

Disillusioned

Continuation of this and this

Pt. 3:

“Do you feel it too?” Adora asks Glimmer one day when she can’t hold it in any longer.

They’re eating dinner with Queen Angella and Bow. The table’s previous conversation, full of good humour and niceness, goes silent at her question.

“Feel what?” Glimmer asks carefully.

“Everything.” It’s not the right word for whatever it is but it’s the closest one she can think of. It makes Glimmer pause for a moment as she turns to look at Adora. Her gaze turns intense in a way that makes her look older, more like the Queen she might become one day.

“Only when I’m with you.” She says and Adora nods. It was sort of the answer she was expecting.

“Is it the same for the others?” Adora asks, because Glimmer isn’t the only person she knows who’s tied to the universe by chains of faith and stardust.

“Of course.”

A pause.

“I feel it all the time.” Adora says quietly.

Bow and Queen Angella exchange a look, half-knowing half-afraid. Glimmer just seems like she was expecting it though. Adora isn’t surprised by that, Glimmer is tied to the moonstone in a different way to her mother. Angella is connected to it in a way that’s full of magic and precision and order. Glimmer’s bonds with the moonstone are more hope and blood and chaos.

She-Ra is made of hope and blood and chaos. Adora might hate her for it if she hadn’t always been made of those things too.

~

link to Shana cause these lil drabbles are pretty much just me trying to copy her style

Reset

Take one.

Micah is strong. More magic runs through his veins than any other student his age. He’s a little too human for Shadow Weaver’s tastes but she’s sure that it can be trained out of him. Then she doesn’t train it out of him fast enough.

She pays for that. Dearly.

~

Take two.

Catra is angry. She’s full of desperation and rage and Shadow weaver can understand that completely. She hopes at first that the anger can be turned into drive, into a need it be the best. It works, sort of. Shadow Weaver can see that she needs greatness like Shadow Weaver craves it, but she buries it. Buries it under her need for connection.

It’s pathetic, Shadow Weaver thinks. Pathetic and childish. She writes Catra off as a failure perhaps a little too early.

~

Take three.

Adora is perfect. Start to finish. She’s Shadow Weaver’s magnum opus. But she’s also not quite right. There’s not enough doubt in her for her to belong to Shadow Weaver, and if she doesn’t belong to Shadow Weaver then she can’t control her. And at that point, what is the child worth? Really?

~

Take four.

Glimmer is untrained and messy and has just had far too much responsibility thrust upon her for someone so young. It’s the perfect breeding ground for dependence. Her magic is just like Micah’s and Shadow Weaver is reminded that if she’d just had a little more time with the boy then he could have been exactly what she wanted. She’ll have that time with Glimmer, she thinks.

She’s wrong.

~

Take five.

There is no take five.

It’s probably a good thing.

asdfnrjrft just thought about Duke and Tim both thinking of each other as the family’s impulse control and then one day both of them realise that the other’s an insane adrenaline junkie just like everyone else and then they’re both like ‘you’re telling me that no one’s been holding the brain cell this entire time?!?!?’

jaime