Posts tagged reblog

==> Eridan: Start a new story.

You had a dream that might make the basis for something truly exceptional, if only you can dredge up the adjectives to make it work.

No one could say when the Goldhorn had come to Castle Angharad. No one could say, for certain, what it was he was; only that he was tall, and pale, and his eyes were the cold violet of crushed amethysts under water, and of the two jagged horns parting his black hair, one was wrought of gold. 

He did not age, that men could see. Generations had grown and passed in the stone crags of Angharad; the dark-armored sentries on the ruined curtain wall had never known a time when the Goldhorn did not dwell in his high tower facing east, its windows open year-round to the scouring of the elements. From time to time he would come down to pass among his subjects. The black throne in the drafty hall stood silent and empty except for once or twice a season, when he held court and heard cases and caused great banquets of baked meats and cold dark fruit to be raised for his courtiers.

He wore unrelieved black save for the vast purple stone on the third finger of his left hand, a lighter, more vivid color than the cold hue of his eyes. In the sharp curve of the stone a sigil had been carved and inlaid with gold: a stylized H, two curving lines arching away from one another, with a crossbar. Its significance, if in fact it had any, was lost to history. 

The Goldhorn, the maimed prince, held sway over all the land of Cariadoc, from the jagged teeth of the Grey Peaks in the east to the grasslands of the south, bordered on the west by the slow black waters of the river Nara and the impassable storm-scoured coastal cliffs to the north. His demesne was visited only by those who passed through on their way to brighter climes—or those who came drawn by the old, old stories that the touch of the Goldhorn’s pale hand would heal sorrow and hurt and the grief of a wound. Those who came seeking his aid often remained, part of his gloomy court in his crumbling citadel, and would not—or could not—say whether the legend was true. 

I know this isn’t quite canon to Brainbent. And I am in awe of other Bro contributions that are better detailed and more well-written.

But I wanted to add in that sometimes, when people demand you do “better,” maybe you’re not able to give it, because you’re already doing the best you can. Sometimes your best doesn’t measure up, because what you’ve been through in life has broken or scarred your ability to cope. Maybe your way of coping isn’t healthy but at least it’s coping.

It’s not written to redeem anyone. It’s just written for the older sibling trying to protect the younger one in a world that’s broken beyond repair.

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Today was one of those days, though you suppose it would be more accurate to say it’s been one of those weeks. The type of week where you see absolutely no point in getting out of bed, the type of week where you convince yourself that no matter how much effort you try and expend you won’t be able to get anything done, so why bother trying?

Your dads used to try and get you out of bed at times like this, they probably thought that if they forced the first few steps of action out of you then it would be easier to carry through with the rest of the motions. Sometimes you would let them, you would get out of bed, brush your teeth, have a shower, get dressed, but it was always on autopilot, and once those few bare basics were done your mind was left grasping for what to do next. At first you would try to mash out a few more lines of programming but your fingers never listened to your brain, you couldn’t find it in yourself to blame them, you wanted to stop listening to your brain as well.

 Once you realize that you had just been staring at the nigh blank screen of would-be code another wave of hopelessness would roll over you and you end up exactly where you were when you woke up, only now it’s  a few hours later and you have a few extra failures tacked on to the already too long list.

The first couple days aren’t as bad as the ones that come later, at first you feel so exhausted at yourself, life, anything and everything that sleep comes fairly easy  for you, it isn’t that hard to sleep through most of the beginning. Then you stop being able to sleep, you never stop being tired but your mind cuts you off anyway and stops you from getting the sleep that you so desperately want to have.

Sometimes insomnia decides to stick its middle fingers up at you and take away even that small respite. That’s when you’re left lying in bed, waiting for sleep to claim you or inspiration to hit you, or for the gradual trickle of energy to come back to you so that at the very least your limbs wouldn’t be as heavy and unresponsive if you wanted to try and force yourself through it. Forcing yourself through it was never one of your favorites choices however,  so you usually stick yourself in bed for the majority, your current train of thought being the only thing that dictates how you lie, who needs to be comfortable?

Hide your face in the pillow to try and keep out the thoughts telling you how easy, how very easy, it would be to just end it, to grab that nice bottle of pills and just take them one by one until the world starts spinning around you and then take a few more so the darkness will fade in, then one more just to make sure that the light won’t find you later.  Luckily by this point you’ve usually resigned yourself to failure so you don’t even entertain the notion of it working for you, you guess that must be your brain’s backwards way of looking out for you.

Pull the covers up and over your head to drown out the memories of all the stupid things you’ve done and all the things that you’ll never be able to accomplish. Your mind always  manages to drift back to things you never wanted to remember again, but for that brief moment when the light first cuts out you can pretend it was all just some terrifying phantasm, that your fathers weren’t really worried for your life, that you never actually tried to kill yourself. No matter how many times you try and fool yourself it never ends up working. Nothing ends up working.

Most often you find yourself staring up at the ceiling or over at the wall, when you’ve finally come to the conclusion that you won’t be avoiding your thoughts any time soon. This is the one that you hate the most, it’s what happens only after you’ve utterly failed at trying to drown out all the little thoughts plaguing your mind. This is the one you like the most, it’s when you finally start trying to think things over, you never make any life changing epiphanies, but it does put things in perspective. Of course perspective never made you feel any better, but it did make your thoughts just that little bit less hectic, that little bit more manageable.

Aradia started visiting you when it would get to that point, she would come in and start trying to make conversation with you, to try and draw you out of the funk that not even your dads could fix. It never ended well, when you didn’t flat out ignore her it would lead to yelling and you saying things you would prefer to pretend you never did. Hiding back under the covers only seemed to make your voice echo louder in your mind, you did it anyway in the hope that Aradia would leave sooner so  you couldn’t say anything worse. Sometimes it would work. The time between each visit scared you the most because you really wouldn’t blame her if she never came back, but she did, she always did.

After a particularly big fight she came to visit again, despite the relief you ignored her completely, not even bothering to turn your head in her direction to acknowledge that fact she had arrived. To your surprise she ignored you as well, sitting herself on the side of your bed without a word and without trying to coax you out from under the blanket. After a few moments you heard a strange sound, a cross between rapid clicking and metallic scraping, for a brief moment your mind flashed to as many different things as possible creating an amalgam of possibilities all mashed into one to fill in the blank. Before curiosity had the chance to get the better of you it stopped, replaced by an A note, the music continues  E B E A C and you find yourself getting lost in the tune.

You both stay still until what you now know as her music box has run out of wind, she doesn’t try to talk to you then either, the rapid clicking filling the empty space as she winds it up once more and it chimes back to life A F E F G. Some part of you wishes that she could just wind the energy back into you that easily, the rest of you shuts that part the fuck up and says you should be grateful that she’s bothering with this, with you, at all. You’re not sure how long she stayed there just repeating the motions for you so you didn’t complain when she stood to leave,  before walking out of the room she leaned down and pressed a soft kiss on your forehead, all in silence.

It’s practically tradition now, whenever you get like this she would bring down a music box, never the same one twice in a row, and sit quietly on your bed playing it for you. Neither of you would speak during that time, the only real interaction occurring between you being the goodbye kiss and the few times she attempted to massage the headache away from your temples.

You want to tell her how much you appreciate what she’s doing, how much you’ve always appreciated what she’s done for you, but you can’t think of the right words to say it. Instead of letting yourself get caught in the self-loathing of that thought you listen to the calming D E B C D A and just           let                     your   mind                                wander.

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AN: I’m not a writer by any stretch of the word but that music box picture gave me the feels so let me just throw these words at you and abscond before I begin rambling.

[this is so goddamn great. and canon. it is canon now.]

TT: Of course they mean you, Kanaya.

GA: Oh Gosh

GA: That Is So Sweet Of You To Say

TT: And accurate, as well.

GA: Oh

GA: Oh Gosh

[i’m reblogging this because it has been asked of Brainbent in the recent past, and when i read elementalsight’s words on the matter, i was impressed by how well-worded it was. it’s also spot-on to how i would have responded, and i decided that it was very much worth sharing with all of you fine people, especially those of you who are in a similar situation.]

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