A Little Sketch Of Broj Adir And Their Reporter-Wizard Buddy Belanor! They Like To Get Together, Smoke,

Magic

A little late, but I’m officially in love with these two, and I cannot scream enough at @theprojectava for all the amazingness of the stories she has woven for Kuro here during this week! They have been absolutely wonderful and I hope everyone has loved them as much as I have for they are beyond deserving of that!

Magic happens when a smile spins more hope than starlight.

Magic forms when a hand reaches out and calls your soul back to the home it never thought it had.

Magic burns warm beneath skin and puts a tumble in your blood flow, so much that your heart has to race just to catch up with the breath trying to fill your lungs.

It’s that odd flash of feeling lighting up your brain and sinking into your cells, reminding you that there is infinitely more to all that you are than the world you’ve known has ever told you could be.

Kuro doesn’t know what sort of tricks Lance is pulling, but he knows that there is something unearthly in the way Lance moves against him. His whole body has gone stiff, prepared for war though Kuro doesn’t know against who or what exactly. But, the anticipation is there, putting steel into his muscles and reminding him that so rarely is there a thing called peace, even during his downtime. He hasn’t gotten used to the Castle just yet in that regard, still waits for the time when pain will creep into his sleep and the nightmares will infuse their logic into his dreams until he can’t tell them apart any longer.

He still doesn’t know what it means to fight for the greater good, only that fighting is what he had been made for, and in fighting, comes injury and loss. He waits for both like a prisoner the jury’s verdict over the crimes against his own humanity.

How does one salvage their heart from themselves?

Magic.

His shoulders are the first to give up their tension, relief cascading down his limbs like a river seeking its resting place in the sea. Bit by bit, he falls into silence and marvels at the way a human touch can unravel the hurt and the expectations held by his body. Lance’s fingers trace along the edges of a scar, and while Kuro could tell him the story of that particular one, Lance doesn’t ask. He simply lets his fingertips walk the outline of it as if coming to know its shape and the story it held by touch alone. The same way one can look at a crater gouged into the earth, and know, without hearing its tale, that something of a small disaster took place here. It left its mark, and still the world continues to move, still a heart continues to beat.

Life is tenacious if nothing else.

As Lance slides his hands around to his stomach, Kuro feels the tension threaten again, rising dark as shadows at sunset, only to find it reduced beneath Lance’s laughter. The sound is soul-saving. It’s the hand pulling him to shore after months of near-drowning in the inky seas he called himself. Lance’s laugh, warm and light against his shoulder, reminds Kuro that there is something solid of himself worth building a future upon.

Reaching down, he slides his hand along Lance’s, slowly sinks his fingers into the space between the Blue Paladin’s.

Come home shouldn’t be this easy, but with Lance, somehow it is.

And as Lance’s lips continue to drift along his skin, luring the pain from body and thought alike, Kuro starts to wonder where the magic really is.

KURO WEEK - DAY 5: Nightmares

Eeeh… so this is kinda long. But I loved writing it. Also: it’s from Shiro’s POV. So… have this:

Monsters don’t have nightmares…

It took everything in him not to scream. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Wouldn’t let them know how afraid he really was.

No…

He had survived this once… He would do it again. Because now he knew how the cruel machinery of the arena worked, relentless and precise like clockwork. He knew what the Druids would do to him. He knew the rules.

Stick to the rules and survive.

And rule number one was to never show your fear.

Shiro could do this, he would survive and find his way back home. Home… wherever that was. A small, fragile smile crept onto his face. Of course he knew where home was. It was somewhere among the stars… Sitting in a giant robot lion and hunting every single Galra cruiser down in order to find him. He would survive this… for now there was Keith, burning with the force of a thousand suns, fiery red and blazing with anger. He had seen glimpses of what the Red Paladin was capable of… This man would tear the universe apart and burn the whole Empire to ashes, if that’s what it took to get Shiro back.

For now he would stick to the rules and buy his friends as much time as possible to come and find him. Him and-

Movement from the shadows caught his attention, followed by a soft sob. If it hadn’t been so eerily quiet in their cell, he might’ve missed it. Shiro froze at the sound, eyes trained on the the figure that laid curled up on one of the cots.

The first time he’d seen him, Shiro had actually lost it. He still had no idea where he came from – it didn’t really matter anyway. Because he was there nonetheless. He existed. He breathed. There was a soul in his yellow eyes, when he gave Shiro that look. That look of utter betrayal, like he’d hoped for something more, something that was definitely not a beaten and bruised Shiro.

He couldn’t really remember when or how the guards had maneuvered him into the same cell he occupied. At some point he’d simply checked out, mind going blank and numb, because it was all too much.

The Druids had taken his arm, stripped him off any right he thought he had, put him through fights against aliens twice his size… but THIS. This had been the last straw.

It was the day he met his clone, that Shiro actually cried for the first time in ages. He cried for himself. It was the same day he realized, that this would never end. They’d always find a way to break him, to bend and twist him, until his mind turned into something ugly. The evidence, the actual personification of their madness driven efforts, sat right in front of him and stared at him with piercing yellow eyes.

He had no idea how long they’d stayed like this. Huddled against opposite walls of the same cell and staring off into nothingness, until one of them had started talking. It had been awkward, looking at his own face and listening to his own voice, somewhat sounding off. More guttural. Some words even sounded a little…purred? It was almost off-putting to see his own face staring back at him and moving with expressions that weren’t his. It felt like watching yourself in a mirror, but your reflection suddenly stops moving along with you. Familiar features turned into something otherworldly, because someone else controlled them and poured their very soul into every twitch and pull of muscle.

They’d created a whole new being. The clone might’ve looked like Shiro, but under their shared features, there was a different person. Individual. Original. And so, so human. He even had a name.

Kuro.

How fitting, Shiro had thought at first. But he’d come to realize quite fast, that Kuro wasn’t the dark, evil minded counterpart he’d expected to hide behind that name.

In fact, the more they talked, the more Shiro got the impression, that their Galra-hybrid was more human than most people Shiro had met back on earth.

He had suffered. He had seen horrible things, survived even worse. He’d been ripped open and put back together, just to be torn apart again. Some days he would find the strengh to laugh at all of this… And some days he would break under the pressure and fear. Like any human being would do.

Days had passed. It was easy - too easy - to believe that Kuro was anything but a monster. Especially so, after he’d been carried back into their cell, right after one particular hard fight. Kuro had won, of course… But was the damage his body and mind had taken really worth it?

Seeing him like this morphed repulsion and mistrust first into pity, then into something else. Something Shiro didn’t really want to think about. It felt way too close to compassion.

He couldn’t let that happen.

Stick to the rules and survive.

And sticking to the rules meant no sympathy for Galra-clones.

In the end the universe wouldn’t have any of it.

Another sob brought him back to reality. It tore through the silence that hung between them. As far as he could tell, Kuro was still asleep on his small cot, but he thrashed wildly against invisible enemies and restraints. Maybe he relived his latest fight? His latest torture? Tears glistened in the dim purple lights.

In this moment he looked almost completely human… Vulnerable and scared and just so much younger.

Shiros throat went dry. Kuro wasn’t a monster… never had been… And that tore at his heart.

Despite what the Druids wanted him to be, Kuro was anything but a monster.

Without thinking, Shiro stood up from where he sat, back against the wall, and silently made his way towards the clone. Said clone was a mess; twitching and and clawing at the nightmares that plagued him.

Another whimper. Small and heartbreaking. He couldn’t take it.

Shiro couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, trying to soothe Kuro with a warm hand on his shoulder. But it wasn’t enough to make the nightmares stop…

Fuck the rules.

Soon he found himself huddled up on the small cot next to the other man, arms wrapped around shaking shoulders and metal fingers stroking carefully over a tense back. There were scars on his back. So. So many… Shiro didn’t even want to know what had caused these scars. Or the nightmares.

This man was definitely no monster.

Because monsters

didn’t have nightmares…

___

I know I promised there will be a happy ending to my Kuro week… But for now… suffer with me? @kuroweek

KURO WEEK - DAY 1: Madness

It was madness, that brought him into this world …

It was madness, that kept him standing …

It was madness, that made him survive …

And it was madness, that tore him apart …

Or: How Kuro lost his arm.

When he was created, he was an exact copy of Shiro – not a sample of his DNA, replicated and cultivated, but more like a copy of a photo someone had taken from Shiro in that exact moment. A copy that looked just like him, but somehow darker and more animalistic, twisted and bent to look Galra. To be Galra.

The Druids wanted a brutal, mindless killing machine, after all. So if Kuro would survive being the backup copy and pilot project to the wicked experiments they wouldn’t dare perform on the original, he’d get to be the replacement for their precious Champion in the arena.

But Kuro didn’t want to be anybody’s replacement. He didn’t want to be cut open or prodded at, he didn’t want to be experimented on or changed into a weapon. He liked the way he was now. Strong, but still soft on the edges. There was nothing wrong with that.

Sensing, that their clone experiment was way too human for their liking, the Druids opted for a different strategy.

They’d break him. Crush what little human-stemmed defiance was left inside the clone and make him comply by force.

They’d get what they want…

And so they made him fight in the arena, without weapons, without armor.

And fight he did, tooth and nail…

But he failed, losing his arm in the process. When he came around again, cold, sharp metal pressed into his flesh; wires and circuity replaced what once had been bone and tendons.

In that moment he realized, that if he wanted to live, he’d have to succumb to their madness. Because next time it wouldn’t be his arm, or a leg… They’d let him die and create a new clone. One that would be more submissive. Simple, efficient, … mad.

They’d always get what they want…

So he succumbed.

___

Yaaaay. It’s 12:21AM and it’s the 18th June in my country - so time to upload the first entry for the @kuroweek 2017 :D Omg. It feels so strange, because I drew most of my stuff ages ago. And looking at it now feels kinda weird. But I stil love it anyway. So…uh. Have some background story for my Kuro AU and suffer with me? :3

“children have got to be free to lead their own lives”

let go of the past, so the future can grow. a little au where allura is not part of the final sacrifice. she’s the future, she must go on and lead her life and the lives of her people in the new altea

Diana’s Familiars

Here lies the masochist who couldn’t draw animals, but still decided to draw three horses

It’s frustrating when Diana’s hair is the easiest thing to draw, really. It took me forever to get Ada’s hair. Although I’m comfortable with the result.

I don’t know if you remember, but Ada is a Dreamer, a creature who is the guardian of dreams and good memories. They only show up in the happiest dreams to their potential masters, and then manifest in the real world and seal their pact. Dreamers can intervene as much in the world of dreams as in the physical world. They are considered to be very docile creatures.

I have given our princess three horses, fellas.

¿Recuerdan que había dicho que tenia que dibujar a los familiares de Diana?. Bueno, finalmente ha pasado, mi gente bonita!.

no sé si recuerden a Ada, pero ella fue el diseño en el que pedí su ayuda para crear su paleta de colores tiempo atrás. A pesar de que una gran mayoría se inclinaba por el cuarto diseño, el numero seis fue el vencedor contando comentarios y reblogueos. Muchísimas gracias por todo su apoyo y comentarios chicos, realmente me han motivado como no tienen idea; no soy mucho de responder, pero quiero que sepan que realmente valoro mucho todos sus mensajes, comentarios y preguntas. Enserio no sé que rayos hice para merecerlos, ¡realmente los quiero mucho, chicos!

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.

My night has been

MADE

jesus in the hades art style

expectations vs reality