Expectations Vs Reality

Art by Léa Pinto

Betrayal

Day #4 and can I say @theprojectava broke my heart with this one completely? I feel so much for Kuro, and all that he’s struggled with, and then Lance there…It’s all so good.

Kuro knew warmth the same way he came to know betrayal, as that intimate brush of a blade against his heart. When he was in the Arena, there was no denying that every point of contact with another body sent a flourishing of heat beneath his palm, his knuckles, every available swath of skin that could sweat and trickle with blood. Warmth was the way a body bled, including his own.

It was the distinct difference between the living and the not-so-alive.

Kuro knew warmth because it drained out of challengers and the fear-drowned just like the light in their eyes at the end of every match. Warmth faded and faded until there was nothing left but the cold reminder of everything that had once been. He felt it in the smooth lines of the bars that kept him caged, the ones he wanted to break; he felt it in the hopes that kept him collared, telling him there was a heart still beating in his chest.

Mostly, Kuro felt it in the way he failed everyone, including himself. Warmth was everything he couldn’t have because he simply wasn’t good enough to hold it.

Which is what made that first moment he had stood before Lance so painful. Not the very first moment. No, the first real moment, the one where he was acknowledged as something far beyond Shiro and this notion of Champion he had tried to cling to like a sinner to redemption.

But his faith in that was dying.

He could not be the Champion because the Champion he knew never existed. Instead, he was left looking at the remnants of a man who was just that - a man, defined by his own humanity, the very thing he could not shed.

Everything he had been told held weight, this idea of a life he had to measure up to and then exceed? All of it was no more tangible than smoke and dreams. Kuro could wave his fingers right through them and poof! they’d be gone, which left him with a handful of nothing.

Kuro knew the potential of betrayal. He just never expected it to come from his own constructs. Even if those thoughts had been built up around him like Babylonian skyscrapers, in the end, they could only to be devastated by Truth. It left him with a world of rubble to navigate in search of himself. A thousand different ideas, a thousand different words to try to define himself again.

But there was warmth against his shoulder. It was sliding up his back in a way that didn’t bring pain like his body expected it would. Lance’s fingers were gentle as they glided across fabric and scars alike, and it put a different sort of pain inside of him.

A different sort of betrayal.

It was the kind of betrayal that was broken open over his own expectations. Where memory told him pain would spark, there was only kindness woven beneath fingertips. Where he thought to bleed, there came only a quiet understanding to mend his heart. And when weakness reared up yet again, stinging at his eyes, Kuro found the warmth of a body wrapping itself around him, and for the first time, he began to consider the worth of a human heart.

Not Shiro’s, but his own.

Nightmares

I didn’t think my heart would have broken anymore for Kuro after that last piece from yesterday, but yep. Seems it could still be chipped at a little bit more today. Since @theprojectava took the Shiro route, I thought I might try my hand at Kuro’s. I hope it turned out well!

He dreams he’s drowning in ink. There is black spilling into his lungs, staining the very life of him darker than the blood on his hands and the disappointment in his mind. It’s robbing him of breath, and it’s telling him that death will not come easy, that it will be slow and it will be painful and it will only arrive after he has paid the highest of costs.

He will never have a life to call his own.

But he can dream of it, and when he does, the nightmares come and eat the very best of them alive.

He cannot wake from them. As they devour the very best of all he could have hoped for, he’s made to watch, trapped in this pool of liquid devastation with his head just above the surface and his lungs burning for air. Every bit of the destructive nature the world wants him to embody sinks into his skin as he treads those waters, snuffing out the starlight in his cells and waiting for the entirety of him to go dark as a moonless night.

Until no hope can exist, no dreams can survive. Until there is only the remembrance of pain and loss, binding his will up as tight as Fate’s red ribbon, just as inescapable.

So, the dreams turn to horrors, and his sleep forgets what peace should be. He writhes and he turns, he cries out some nights, and on others, he simply cries. All of this outside of his own recognition, his mind lost to the harsher realities of his nightmares, for those projections seem real, feel real, are based on the very reality of his existence, and Kuro can’t avoid them for all he tries.

The day affords him control, however. Better control at least, enough to survive in the Arena, enough to not succumb to his wounds or the Druid’s tortuous machinations. He remembers the day Shiro arrived, and he remembers reminding himself that he still has control enough to not tear out the Black Paladin’s throat for the very lie that he has become, has enough wit about him not to claw into his mind for all the things he does not do. The Black Paladin simply sits there, watching, waiting, and Kuro hates to think that there might be pity in that stare, so he lets his dreams convince him there is hatred burning in those gray eyes instead.

And in those dreams that morph in the hazy mists of his subconscious, becoming monsters fit for the telling like all good stories need, Kuro lets himself pull apart the man that brought him to this, brought him his very existence.

Without Shiro, he would not be.

Without Shiro, he could be something else.

And then, Shiro starts to talk. His voice is calm, his words measured and even. There is a cautious warmth that permeates every syllable, a quiet need to understand. Bit by bit, Kuro begins to answer until the answers come easy, and he finds there’s something almost likable about this man who is neither Champion nor Black Paladin completely, but some human mix of the two.

Kuro comes to learn that Shiro is not him.

The nightmares still persist though, because despite that small flicker of warmth there in their cell now, the pain did not stop. Day in and day out, one or the other of them greet the Arena and its crowd. Night in and night out, Kuro dreams of drowning in a colorless void until there is nothing left of worth in him anymore. His dreams end when he becomes a monster that terrifies even himself.

He thrashes and he cries. He makes confetti of his bed sheets and gouges scars in the walls.

Until one night, something sparks in the nameless black of his dreams. Small and white, it bristles against the lifeless night, puts out tendrils of light that call warmth to his skin and calm to his mind. The monster he is supposed to be shrinks from its glow until it is nothing more than a shallow puddle, so threadbare Kuro can step in it without so much as a splash.

And then sleep comes easy.

Without Shiro, Kuro doesn’t know if he would have ever found peace.

you had that same look in your eyes

KURO WEEK - DAY 2: Identity

“And I cannot help but wonder,

where does ‘he’ end

and where do ‘I’ begin?”

Even after their escape, Kuro still felt the cold pressure on his back – the ever watching eyes of the Druids. Always waiting, always anticipating his next move to be a failure. Always looking for a reason to get to him. To hurt him and tell him how he needed to become the Champion – Shiro. Over and over again. Until he would believe it. Until he would embrace the idea of losing himself to the arena, and become their greatest weapon.

He could still hear them comparing him to his original sometimes. He knew he was an individual personality. He had to be. And still, after all this time, Kuro was at a loss.

He still wondered, what was real, and what not. What was him and what was Shiro? Which traits, which quirks, which likes and dislikes were exclusively Kuro? And which ones were copied from the original? Which facets of his personality were his? Which ones were only a mere shadow of a man he loathed and loved at the same time?

He was at a loss.

After all this time, Kuro still wondered, where Shiro ended

and where he began.

___

Okay, so my poor baby sometimes wonders if he’s a real, individual person or if his mind, too, is nothing but a copy. Second entry for the @kuroweek 2017 :3

stronger together

“Ah…uh…sorry…”

“Oh, um, It’s okay…”

================================

High school AU where Keith & Lance take the same train in the morning

They didn’t know each other’s name at first, Lance thought Keith is hot, Keith thought Lance is cute, but they never talked to each other (shy boys lol) 

Until this day, the train was full of crowd, Keith accidentally kabedon-ed Lance

It was awkward at first, but Lance tried make some small talks, then they finally knew each other’s name

Next step: change phone number lol

bonus:

Lance has freckles <3

Ok still pretty ambiguous but I can’t resist a chance to show off my boy‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥

Here’s the original (static) art piece I made for this scene!

hang on he just has to do keith’s hair THEY’LL BE RIGHT THERE

Wood and Resin Rings and Pendants

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