icon meme drabble-ish things
Hey, Kia, I finally finished them :D :D :D Even if they're crappy. And really depressing. I think all of them except the Soul Eater one (which has no premise, whee) are really depressing. 8D
1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and write a drabble about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.
Drabbles and icons behind the cut, don't want to break your flists, etc etc. Six in all. Spoilers in 3, movie reference in 1.
1. Firefly - Inara - ‘ when darkness holds your hand ’
2. D.Gray-man - Linali - ‘ in memoriam ’
3. Tales of Symphonia - Presea - ‘ what’s lost cannot be found ’
4. DOGS - Nill - ‘ lost in hell’s high heaven ’
5. Detective Conan - Haibara - ‘ reality all in the air that she breathes ’
6. Soul Eater - Death the Kid - ‘ of symmetry, blood, and cursed black stars ’
Firefly - Inara - ‘ when darkness holds your hand ’
It has been a week, since their crew learned the Alliance’s dark truth.
Nothing is the same, and no one’s willing to break the silence.
Inara walks the ship, with roses wreathed around her head and a veil clouding her face. If her dress had been pale, she could have passed for a woman in white. But instead, she’s clothed in dirge-dim black, and she’s walking the ship like a lost mourner with no last words.
She walks past Mal, and they do not say anything. They do not feel anything. They do not.
To say anything about what happened a week ago would be redundant, and they can’t broach the topic of themselves.
Captain, she inclines with a nod. Do you have anything to say to me today?
Nothing, he hardly replies.
She makes another round - without running into anyone else, because she knows where they’ll be and she’d rather not see all the jagged little pieces, not when her words will be empty and bereft of what they need.
The captain stands alone, in the kitchen, where no one’s there to see him. She can follow his way of thinking - it’ll be dinner, soon, and he has to take care of everyone, especially if they can’t take care of themselves.
He’ll bear the burden, alone.
She glides in, quietly, as though it’s not steel on which she treads. He looks up sharply, but realizes, lets his muscles relax. And says nothing. He’s not one for quiet, but she senses that hours could go by without a word, here.
She’ll break the silence, then.
“Would you like some help, Mal?”
It’s not quite light in his eyes, but it’s not quite warmth in her veins.
And it’s still a time of mourning.
D.Gray-man - Linali - ‘ in memoriam ’
It’s only when she’s dreaming that everything’s the way it should be.
Everyone is alive. Allen, and Ravi, and Kanda, and Komui, and everyone, too many to name. And everyone is smiling. Even the people on the street - whom they don’t have to be constantly vigilant about, because there’s no way any of them are devils in disguise, ready to attack or kill -
And the colors. Everything’s vibrant, like a child’s coloring book that has been filled to the brim with life. The sky is blue, their black clothing is less a mark of death and more the proof that they’re living, and red - red’s only where it belongs, like Ravi’s hair, or Allen’s eye. It doesn’t run in rivulets and pool in the cobblestone cracks.
Every single day, when Linali eventually wakes up, her eyes have to adjust to the fact that reality plays by a different, bleaker palette of rules.
And when her dark boots start winding around her legs, she closes her eyes, even though it won’t bring back the dreams. Even though it’s hard to imagine a world without liquid red.
Despite how she fights it, at some point, she might have forgotten how.
Tales of Symphonia - Presea - ‘ what’s lost cannot be found ’
They are travelling along the coast until the sky bleeds dark orange-red and the party decides to settle for the night.
Presea helps set up camp, but that only takes a short while. It’s Genis’s turn to cook tonight, with Lloyd and Colette as his helpers, so when she sees that she isn’t needed, she wanders over to the edge of the coast.
She stares at the waves breaking against the shore, and she can come up with words to describe this: liquid, clear, blue, red, crash, yellow, dark.
They just settled things with Alicia’s killer. Yet…she does not know, how to describe those feelings and emotions. She does not know if she can feel or not, either; she feels nothing, not what she supposes is called ‘anger’ or ‘happiness.’ When his body fell to the ground, she doesn’t think she felt ‘relief.’
She looks down at her childlike hands that do not reflect her true age, and wishes she could conjure up something. Bitterness. Regret. Or, again, any kind of feeling. So much was taken from her family in so little time.
There are footsteps behind her, but she does not turn.
“Presea.” It must be…Regal, she decides. “Dinner is ready.”
“Thank you,” she says, but doesn’t move.
There’s a shuffling sound, and then he’s sitting on the rocks next to her. He. Her sister’s…previous employer. Beloved?
Complicated.
“Do you regret…killing him?” he asks, staring out at the ocean.
“No.” I didn’t feel anything.
“I’m sorry that killing him won’t bring back…” and he stops, lets his voice fade with the sunset.
“Nothing can bring her back.” And then, “Nothing can bring back…my lost time, can it.”
“…I suppose not,” he says.
“What should I feel, about this? I don’t…understand, these things.” Any more, she supposes; surely, before…
And then he looks at her, and his eyes have a distinct light in them. If she knew the emotions, perhaps she could have put it into better words, but all she knows is that his face makes her chest start to clench, a little bit.
“I can’t tell you, Presea.”
“I know,” she says.
A few more seconds, and then, “I’m sure that we might be in danger of forgoing dinner if we don’t get back soon, or Lloyd and Zelos will have eaten everything.”
She nods, and takes her time in getting up. Regal is already standing, his silhouette outlined by the sun’s dying rays.
“But I am sure…that they will leave something for us,” she says, out of impulse.
“You might be right,” he replies.
Presea touches her fingers to her chest. She’s sure she felt something there.
DOGS - Nill - ‘ lost in hell’s high heaven ’
It’s a story Nill’s never told, because she has no voice to tell it with.
She doesn’t really remember the beginning, all lost in a haze of genetic experimentation and days half-unconscious, half too painful to remember. Nor does she remember the whitecoats, glasses gleaming and hands red and unfeeling. Though she knows the scientists liked to be hands-on about their experiments - the infliction was as fun as the analyzation, for them.
She remembers, before the buyers and the shuffle from place to new, bullet-stained place - cages. Others like her. No wings, never others with wings, but snouts, and horns, and fangs. And always fear, so much anguish and fear.
And the cages would empty and fill again, over and over and over, and eventually it wasn’t her own emotion that clutched at her heart so much as the vacant looks on their faces, the expression of their instincts that told them, this was it. This was the end of their line.
She couldn’t talk, but she fluttered her wings, made little sounds that she hoped were resemblances of something like comfort. Threaded her little fingers through the spaces between the bars to offer touch to the ones next to her.
“An angel, even down here,” one of them had said.
But even an angel can’t save us, as they were lead away - always away.
And her time came too, one of those days. And so she’d been bought and sold, bought and sold - and then Haine abruptly appeared, in a cloud of gunsmoke with a handful of steel.
She doesn’t feel fear from him - but she feels something worse, something deep and dark and deadly. For himself, and for everyone else.
So her wings flutter nervously, and her fingertips carefully ghost across his hands - he recoils, and it’s only later that he doesn’t mind any more, and only later that she finds out he can’t bear the touch of a female, because of the past - but she tries, to give him a semblance of something. Respite. Sanctuary.
He gives her that same weariness-tinged smile, and waxes about his waned past.
This is not her old cage, or his old prison. This is not freedom.
But she’ll try. Even if her wings don’t let her fly. Even if she’s not a real angel.
In this end-of-the-world, even the thought can count, sometimes.
Detective Conan - Haibara - ‘ reality all in the air that she breathes ’
Recess time.
Haibara gazed out the window at the children who’d raced to the playground first. Large, happy smiles; skinned knees and chafed lips; band-aids and blisters - the kids sported them all and one, one and all.
And then, Kudo’s unmistakably dry voice comes from behind her.
“Oi, Haibara. What’s taking you so long? They’re going to wonder what happened to us if we don’t get out there soon.”
“Hn,” she replied. And probably Ayumi before the others, because she and Kudo were here by themselves…
“Hey, Haibara. Haibara.” He started waving his hand in front of her face.
She gave him a blank, semi-cold look. “I’m not deaf, Kudo.”
Oh, really? she was sure he’d wanted to say out loud. Of course he wouldn’t, though; he’d simply make that ungainly face of his. His thoughts were always only his own.
Silence, punctured by the happy yelps from the elementary schoolers below.
Kudo sighed. “Then I’m heading out first. Should I tell them you’re not feeling well? Or that you went to the bathroom?”
She stared ahead, spoke her truth in a soundless undertone. “Tell them that they should enjoy their childhood while it lasts.”
“What?”
She looked at him, didn’t want to unravel. “Whatever you want, Kudo.”
And that’s always how it is - whatever you want.
Soul Eater - Death the Kid - ‘ of symmetry, blood, and cursed black stars ’
“You know, Black Star, maybe this is enough,” Tsubaki said, pressing the tips of her fingers together in that timid way she did sometimes.
“Eh? Why?”
Tsubaki almost couldn’t bear to do it, but she looked at Kid again. “Well…don’t you think…”
Patty giggle-laughed. “Kid’ll have an aneur-what’sit-ismicism!”
Maka stared at her.
“His brain will explode! Whee!” She broke out into another round of maniacal laughter.
“…Oh. O…kay.”
Behind her, Liz merely sighed and flicked imaginary dust off her immaculate nails. “Really, Kid, just ignore the bet. We all know you can write and draw perfectly symmetrically, so there’s no need to try to recreate a Mona Lisa or - ”
“But!” - and here Death the Kid slumped over, ready to break out into obsessive-compulsive-disorder-influenced sobs - “Now that I’ve started, it must be perfectly symmetrical! It must! And I must finish it! Otherwise I’m just a useless shinigami who can’t do anything or help anyone and - ! - ”
Liz sighed. “This is all Black Star’s fault. It’s too easy to get Kid worked up…”
Maka gave Black Star a look. Black Star grinned.
Blood started spurting from Kid’s nose, who slumped forward. Surprisingly, none of it dripped onto his artwork.
“Here, Patty, help me with Kid,” Liz muttered, propping him over her shoulders.
“I give up,” Maka said. “Black Star, you’re hopeless.”
Hm, that was all weird. And I wrote three of these today, haha. I thought the Presea one'd be hardest, but the Linali one was impossible. ...On the bright side, it got me to start rereading the manga, so yeeeeees. ;;;
And a really quick question about Black Lagoon, for those who know it: where exactly does the Lagoon Company live? I always thought the office had a few rooms where everyone stays, but now I see fics that talk about separate apartments, especially in Revy's case. Did I miss something? O_o;;; Also, do most people hate the current El Baile arc? Seriously? D: D:
'Cause after reading this one fic (it was multipart and...not bad O_o? but something was...jarring, dunno...), I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, my interpretation of the universe, characters, and pairing is wrong. That or authors are sounding more dictatorial and "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE WAY" in their notes nowadays...? And I plainly disagree with their interpretations...but when they're more talented than the usual, then I wonder, haha. ...Sigh.
1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and write a drabble about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.
Drabbles and icons behind the cut, don't want to break your flists, etc etc. Six in all. Spoilers in 3, movie reference in 1.
1. Firefly - Inara - ‘ when darkness holds your hand ’
2. D.Gray-man - Linali - ‘ in memoriam ’
3. Tales of Symphonia - Presea - ‘ what’s lost cannot be found ’
4. DOGS - Nill - ‘ lost in hell’s high heaven ’
5. Detective Conan - Haibara - ‘ reality all in the air that she breathes ’
6. Soul Eater - Death the Kid - ‘ of symmetry, blood, and cursed black stars ’
Firefly - Inara - ‘ when darkness holds your hand ’
It has been a week, since their crew learned the Alliance’s dark truth.
Nothing is the same, and no one’s willing to break the silence.
Inara walks the ship, with roses wreathed around her head and a veil clouding her face. If her dress had been pale, she could have passed for a woman in white. But instead, she’s clothed in dirge-dim black, and she’s walking the ship like a lost mourner with no last words.
She walks past Mal, and they do not say anything. They do not feel anything. They do not.
To say anything about what happened a week ago would be redundant, and they can’t broach the topic of themselves.
Captain, she inclines with a nod. Do you have anything to say to me today?
Nothing, he hardly replies.
She makes another round - without running into anyone else, because she knows where they’ll be and she’d rather not see all the jagged little pieces, not when her words will be empty and bereft of what they need.
The captain stands alone, in the kitchen, where no one’s there to see him. She can follow his way of thinking - it’ll be dinner, soon, and he has to take care of everyone, especially if they can’t take care of themselves.
He’ll bear the burden, alone.
She glides in, quietly, as though it’s not steel on which she treads. He looks up sharply, but realizes, lets his muscles relax. And says nothing. He’s not one for quiet, but she senses that hours could go by without a word, here.
She’ll break the silence, then.
“Would you like some help, Mal?”
It’s not quite light in his eyes, but it’s not quite warmth in her veins.
And it’s still a time of mourning.
D.Gray-man - Linali - ‘ in memoriam ’
It’s only when she’s dreaming that everything’s the way it should be.
Everyone is alive. Allen, and Ravi, and Kanda, and Komui, and everyone, too many to name. And everyone is smiling. Even the people on the street - whom they don’t have to be constantly vigilant about, because there’s no way any of them are devils in disguise, ready to attack or kill -
And the colors. Everything’s vibrant, like a child’s coloring book that has been filled to the brim with life. The sky is blue, their black clothing is less a mark of death and more the proof that they’re living, and red - red’s only where it belongs, like Ravi’s hair, or Allen’s eye. It doesn’t run in rivulets and pool in the cobblestone cracks.
Every single day, when Linali eventually wakes up, her eyes have to adjust to the fact that reality plays by a different, bleaker palette of rules.
And when her dark boots start winding around her legs, she closes her eyes, even though it won’t bring back the dreams. Even though it’s hard to imagine a world without liquid red.
Despite how she fights it, at some point, she might have forgotten how.
Tales of Symphonia - Presea - ‘ what’s lost cannot be found ’
They are travelling along the coast until the sky bleeds dark orange-red and the party decides to settle for the night.
Presea helps set up camp, but that only takes a short while. It’s Genis’s turn to cook tonight, with Lloyd and Colette as his helpers, so when she sees that she isn’t needed, she wanders over to the edge of the coast.
She stares at the waves breaking against the shore, and she can come up with words to describe this: liquid, clear, blue, red, crash, yellow, dark.
They just settled things with Alicia’s killer. Yet…she does not know, how to describe those feelings and emotions. She does not know if she can feel or not, either; she feels nothing, not what she supposes is called ‘anger’ or ‘happiness.’ When his body fell to the ground, she doesn’t think she felt ‘relief.’
She looks down at her childlike hands that do not reflect her true age, and wishes she could conjure up something. Bitterness. Regret. Or, again, any kind of feeling. So much was taken from her family in so little time.
There are footsteps behind her, but she does not turn.
“Presea.” It must be…Regal, she decides. “Dinner is ready.”
“Thank you,” she says, but doesn’t move.
There’s a shuffling sound, and then he’s sitting on the rocks next to her. He. Her sister’s…previous employer. Beloved?
Complicated.
“Do you regret…killing him?” he asks, staring out at the ocean.
“No.” I didn’t feel anything.
“I’m sorry that killing him won’t bring back…” and he stops, lets his voice fade with the sunset.
“Nothing can bring her back.” And then, “Nothing can bring back…my lost time, can it.”
“…I suppose not,” he says.
“What should I feel, about this? I don’t…understand, these things.” Any more, she supposes; surely, before…
And then he looks at her, and his eyes have a distinct light in them. If she knew the emotions, perhaps she could have put it into better words, but all she knows is that his face makes her chest start to clench, a little bit.
“I can’t tell you, Presea.”
“I know,” she says.
A few more seconds, and then, “I’m sure that we might be in danger of forgoing dinner if we don’t get back soon, or Lloyd and Zelos will have eaten everything.”
She nods, and takes her time in getting up. Regal is already standing, his silhouette outlined by the sun’s dying rays.
“But I am sure…that they will leave something for us,” she says, out of impulse.
“You might be right,” he replies.
Presea touches her fingers to her chest. She’s sure she felt something there.
DOGS - Nill - ‘ lost in hell’s high heaven ’
It’s a story Nill’s never told, because she has no voice to tell it with.
She doesn’t really remember the beginning, all lost in a haze of genetic experimentation and days half-unconscious, half too painful to remember. Nor does she remember the whitecoats, glasses gleaming and hands red and unfeeling. Though she knows the scientists liked to be hands-on about their experiments - the infliction was as fun as the analyzation, for them.
She remembers, before the buyers and the shuffle from place to new, bullet-stained place - cages. Others like her. No wings, never others with wings, but snouts, and horns, and fangs. And always fear, so much anguish and fear.
And the cages would empty and fill again, over and over and over, and eventually it wasn’t her own emotion that clutched at her heart so much as the vacant looks on their faces, the expression of their instincts that told them, this was it. This was the end of their line.
She couldn’t talk, but she fluttered her wings, made little sounds that she hoped were resemblances of something like comfort. Threaded her little fingers through the spaces between the bars to offer touch to the ones next to her.
“An angel, even down here,” one of them had said.
But even an angel can’t save us, as they were lead away - always away.
And her time came too, one of those days. And so she’d been bought and sold, bought and sold - and then Haine abruptly appeared, in a cloud of gunsmoke with a handful of steel.
She doesn’t feel fear from him - but she feels something worse, something deep and dark and deadly. For himself, and for everyone else.
So her wings flutter nervously, and her fingertips carefully ghost across his hands - he recoils, and it’s only later that he doesn’t mind any more, and only later that she finds out he can’t bear the touch of a female, because of the past - but she tries, to give him a semblance of something. Respite. Sanctuary.
He gives her that same weariness-tinged smile, and waxes about his waned past.
This is not her old cage, or his old prison. This is not freedom.
But she’ll try. Even if her wings don’t let her fly. Even if she’s not a real angel.
In this end-of-the-world, even the thought can count, sometimes.
Detective Conan - Haibara - ‘ reality all in the air that she breathes ’
Recess time.
Haibara gazed out the window at the children who’d raced to the playground first. Large, happy smiles; skinned knees and chafed lips; band-aids and blisters - the kids sported them all and one, one and all.
And then, Kudo’s unmistakably dry voice comes from behind her.
“Oi, Haibara. What’s taking you so long? They’re going to wonder what happened to us if we don’t get out there soon.”
“Hn,” she replied. And probably Ayumi before the others, because she and Kudo were here by themselves…
“Hey, Haibara. Haibara.” He started waving his hand in front of her face.
She gave him a blank, semi-cold look. “I’m not deaf, Kudo.”
Oh, really? she was sure he’d wanted to say out loud. Of course he wouldn’t, though; he’d simply make that ungainly face of his. His thoughts were always only his own.
Silence, punctured by the happy yelps from the elementary schoolers below.
Kudo sighed. “Then I’m heading out first. Should I tell them you’re not feeling well? Or that you went to the bathroom?”
She stared ahead, spoke her truth in a soundless undertone. “Tell them that they should enjoy their childhood while it lasts.”
“What?”
She looked at him, didn’t want to unravel. “Whatever you want, Kudo.”
And that’s always how it is - whatever you want.
Soul Eater - Death the Kid - ‘ of symmetry, blood, and cursed black stars ’
“You know, Black Star, maybe this is enough,” Tsubaki said, pressing the tips of her fingers together in that timid way she did sometimes.
“Eh? Why?”
Tsubaki almost couldn’t bear to do it, but she looked at Kid again. “Well…don’t you think…”
Patty giggle-laughed. “Kid’ll have an aneur-what’sit-ismicism!”
Maka stared at her.
“His brain will explode! Whee!” She broke out into another round of maniacal laughter.
“…Oh. O…kay.”
Behind her, Liz merely sighed and flicked imaginary dust off her immaculate nails. “Really, Kid, just ignore the bet. We all know you can write and draw perfectly symmetrically, so there’s no need to try to recreate a Mona Lisa or - ”
“But!” - and here Death the Kid slumped over, ready to break out into obsessive-compulsive-disorder-influenced sobs - “Now that I’ve started, it must be perfectly symmetrical! It must! And I must finish it! Otherwise I’m just a useless shinigami who can’t do anything or help anyone and - ! - ”
Liz sighed. “This is all Black Star’s fault. It’s too easy to get Kid worked up…”
Maka gave Black Star a look. Black Star grinned.
Blood started spurting from Kid’s nose, who slumped forward. Surprisingly, none of it dripped onto his artwork.
“Here, Patty, help me with Kid,” Liz muttered, propping him over her shoulders.
“I give up,” Maka said. “Black Star, you’re hopeless.”
Hm, that was all weird. And I wrote three of these today, haha. I thought the Presea one'd be hardest, but the Linali one was impossible. ...On the bright side, it got me to start rereading the manga, so yeeeeees. ;;;
And a really quick question about Black Lagoon, for those who know it: where exactly does the Lagoon Company live? I always thought the office had a few rooms where everyone stays, but now I see fics that talk about separate apartments, especially in Revy's case. Did I miss something? O_o;;; Also, do most people hate the current El Baile arc? Seriously? D: D:
'Cause after reading this one fic (it was multipart and...not bad O_o? but something was...jarring, dunno...), I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, my interpretation of the universe, characters, and pairing is wrong. That or authors are sounding more dictatorial and "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE WAY" in their notes nowadays...? And I plainly disagree with their interpretations...but when they're more talented than the usual, then I wonder, haha. ...Sigh.