(no subject)
Random music challenge
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
3. For each song that plays, write something related to the theme you picked
inspired by the song. You have only the time frame of the song. No fair
skipping songs either; you have to take what comes by chance.
4. Do 5 of these, then post.
Just a caveat that I *am* skipping some, because I have lots of instrumental stuff on my playlist. Like, *lots* of instrumental stuff. About 15 anime OSTs worth. This is a good start to my day. A warm-up, since I want to write all day. =D
These actually came out really well! Although they're kind of dark and depressed, but, well, it is Benjamin. What can I do? They are not proofread, by the way.
1) Skillet, “The Last Night”
Length: 3:32
This is the last night you'll spend alone
Look me in the eyes so I know you know
I'm everywhere you want me to be.
There’s a certain comfort in knowing he’s never going to be alone again. He could say what he wanted about Edmund’s basement. The pain, the agony, all of it had been real. But what hurt the most - what had stayed with him after Zachariah had rescued him - had been the abandonment. The loneliness.
Knowing that God had left him there.
Oh, it was years later now, and he had started to understand it. He had conquered Edmund, and he knew that in doing so, he could keep the pain demon from hurting anyone like that ever again. He knew that what had happened to him was necessary if he wanted to accomplish that.
But that wasn’t really what made it okay.
It was okay now, for the most part, but it had very little to do with him having overcome Edmund.
It was an arm wrapped around his waist at night. Soft breath stirring his hair. The feel of a body pressed up against his. That was what made it okay. Because without what Edmund had done to him, Zachariah wouldn’t have loved him. Not the same way, anyway. Zachariah loved everyone - the big idiot was stupid like that - but the place that Benjamin held in his heart was special.
Benjamin cherished that in a way that approached heresy.
And didn’t care what God thought about it. Apparently, God didn’t care about it either, since he was still an angel, at least of some variety.
The loneliness was over. And that, that was what ended the agony.
2) Weezer, “Undone (The Sweater Song)”
Length: 5:05
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked
Lying on the floor (lying on the floor)
I've come undone
Benjamin spends a lot of nights wondering if he’s falling apart.
It’s different from how it used to be. He has Zachariah now, but that doesn’t always change everything. Years of torture couldn’t be erased by a loving hand, no matter how much they both wanted it to be. It’s been a long time since he left Edmund’s basement for the last time. Probably about a decade. He doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the passage of time. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Ian and Dominic - his two mortal friends - he probably wouldn’t have any idea it was passing at all.
Years and years. So he should be okay, right? Relatively speaking. And most of the time he is. He’d like to say that the nights he feels like he’s falling apart are directly proportional to something - whether or not Zachariah is there, how long he’s been away, what happened the previous day, how long it’s been since Edmund was last fed - but it isn’t, not really.
Sometimes it just happens.
He’ll wake up from a particularly bad dream - more often of Ilias than of Edmund. He knows that this irks the pain demon, that Ilias had, in a way, a more long-lasting impression on the angel. Benjamin could stomach all the pain in the world. Once Edmund was no longer feeding off him, those nightmares had faded rapidly, leaving only faint impressions behind. But the nightmares of Ilias remained crystal clear in his memory.
So some nights he woke up and simply lay there, shaking, feeling as if every piece of him was flying away, as if he was simply going to fall apart and be left there, a shivering heap of non-pieces. It’s true that when he’s alone, it’s especially bad, but even Zachariah’s presence doesn’t always help that much. He wished that it did. That might make sense.
He doesn’t know if it will ever go away, or if it will always be a part of him, just underneath the surface, waiting to attack.
He wishes that he could just be okay.
3) Hoobastank, “Crawling in the Dark”
(I just want everyone to know that this is from their first, more heavy metal style album, not their second, pop-rock crap album. Thank you. Also, my computer’s idea of shuffle is not amusing. Give me something with a vaguely different theme, please!)
Length: 2:55
Show me what it's for
Make me understand it
I've been crawling in the dark looking for the answer
Is there something more than what I've been handed?
Life is a funny thing.
Benjamin had known that ever since his own creation, some sixty-odd years back. It was part of basic training. That life was a glorious, wonderful, delightful thing that, by the way, didn’t make a damned bit of sense most of the time.
Life was a mystery. That was how God worked.
Sometimes, Benjamin wished he could get an instruction manual. He wondered if maybe this had been covered in his original angelic training, but honestly he didn’t remember a lot of that, so maybe it had been.
It wasn’t his own life that was the mystery. He’d gotten all that figured out ages ago. He had a purpose, and someone he would sacrifice everything for, and that was enough. It was everyone else’s lives that confused him.
Ian’s always-tenuous back-and-forth relationship of love, envy, and resentment with his father.
Malakai giving up everything to save the world, and Kiran and Shea being left behind to comfort each other in his absence.
Mika’s insistence that he was just fine, thanks so God damned much, even though at times it was obvious that he was anything but, and had always been anything but.
The people who took in animals only to abandon them at the drop of the hat.
- I could go on here, but the song’s over. Sorry! -
4) Savatage, “The Dark” (From Beethoven’s Last Night)
Length: 4:23
But in the night, the darkness breathes
If he wills it to be
Before his eyes, the music dies
But he will always hear me
Humans had always been afraid of the dark.
That makes about as much sense as anything else they did. In a world of lattes, laptops, and cell phones, where they rushed about trying to get everything done for absolutely no reason, it was still there: a primal fear of when the lights went out.
There were things, in the darkness.
Of course, there were things in the light, too. But they were less scary then. They could be written off to a bad hangover or maybe food poisoning. Besides, when you could see them, you had a slight chance of getting away from them.
Or maybe not, but, well, Benjamin didn’t think that knowing that would make it better.
The darkness held - had always held - things of unspeakable terror.
He knew that. He had spent three years in darkness. On the rare occasions that there was light, it was always because Edmund was there. That was how it seemed for a last time: that Edmund came out of the darkness. Just appeared as though he had been formed from it. And the light he brought then was absolutely no comfort at all, then.
When he had come out of that darkness and realized that, of all things, there was a neat suburban house with a white picket fence sitting on top of it, he had almost wanted to laugh. It seemed totally unreal: that such a mundane thing could hide such a terrible darkness.
Years later, he realized that all of life was like that.
5) Sister Hazel, “Change Your Mind”
Length: 4:03
If you want to be somebody else,
If you're tired of fighting battles with yourself
If you want to be somebody else
Change your mind...
Being okay isn’t as easy as it looks.
He can go days, even weeks at a time, when nobody realizes that. When even the people he’s closest to, with the sole exception of Zachariah, start to forget who and what he is.
He can do sparring lessons with Ian, drinks with Rylee, shopping with Mika, and tormenting the innocents with Dominic. He can do all that and more. Work at the humane society, where they’ve slowly started to accept that maybe he isn’t retarded. Go home to Zachariah and all his animals. Sometimes he even remembers to eat. Those days, he gets a warm smile from Zachariah. And then bed, and all the wonderful things that Zachariah is teaching him there.
He’s okay. And he truly is, it isn’t an act.
He wishes that it could last.
He’s never prepared for it, when it all comes crashing down. It can be anything that prompts it, really. A particular sound coming from traffic that sounds like a scream. An animal brought into the humane society that’s too far gone to save. Edmund’s harsh insistence that he needs to be fed, and the pain that always accompanies that, that he can’t help but feed on himself. He tries to restrict Edmund to a starvation diet, not because he’s afraid of the demon gaining strength again, but because he’s always revolted by his own reactions to that sweet and sour taste of pain and agony going down his metaphysical throat.
It terrifies him.
And then it will be over, whatever it was, and he’ll be okay again. He’ll pick up the phone, hands shaking, and call a friend. Go out and find something to do, anything, and start the cycle all over again.
It lasts a little bit longer each time.
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
3. For each song that plays, write something related to the theme you picked
inspired by the song. You have only the time frame of the song. No fair
skipping songs either; you have to take what comes by chance.
4. Do 5 of these, then post.
Just a caveat that I *am* skipping some, because I have lots of instrumental stuff on my playlist. Like, *lots* of instrumental stuff. About 15 anime OSTs worth. This is a good start to my day. A warm-up, since I want to write all day. =D
These actually came out really well! Although they're kind of dark and depressed, but, well, it is Benjamin. What can I do? They are not proofread, by the way.
1) Skillet, “The Last Night”
Length: 3:32
This is the last night you'll spend alone
Look me in the eyes so I know you know
I'm everywhere you want me to be.
There’s a certain comfort in knowing he’s never going to be alone again. He could say what he wanted about Edmund’s basement. The pain, the agony, all of it had been real. But what hurt the most - what had stayed with him after Zachariah had rescued him - had been the abandonment. The loneliness.
Knowing that God had left him there.
Oh, it was years later now, and he had started to understand it. He had conquered Edmund, and he knew that in doing so, he could keep the pain demon from hurting anyone like that ever again. He knew that what had happened to him was necessary if he wanted to accomplish that.
But that wasn’t really what made it okay.
It was okay now, for the most part, but it had very little to do with him having overcome Edmund.
It was an arm wrapped around his waist at night. Soft breath stirring his hair. The feel of a body pressed up against his. That was what made it okay. Because without what Edmund had done to him, Zachariah wouldn’t have loved him. Not the same way, anyway. Zachariah loved everyone - the big idiot was stupid like that - but the place that Benjamin held in his heart was special.
Benjamin cherished that in a way that approached heresy.
And didn’t care what God thought about it. Apparently, God didn’t care about it either, since he was still an angel, at least of some variety.
The loneliness was over. And that, that was what ended the agony.
2) Weezer, “Undone (The Sweater Song)”
Length: 5:05
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked
Lying on the floor (lying on the floor)
I've come undone
Benjamin spends a lot of nights wondering if he’s falling apart.
It’s different from how it used to be. He has Zachariah now, but that doesn’t always change everything. Years of torture couldn’t be erased by a loving hand, no matter how much they both wanted it to be. It’s been a long time since he left Edmund’s basement for the last time. Probably about a decade. He doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the passage of time. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Ian and Dominic - his two mortal friends - he probably wouldn’t have any idea it was passing at all.
Years and years. So he should be okay, right? Relatively speaking. And most of the time he is. He’d like to say that the nights he feels like he’s falling apart are directly proportional to something - whether or not Zachariah is there, how long he’s been away, what happened the previous day, how long it’s been since Edmund was last fed - but it isn’t, not really.
Sometimes it just happens.
He’ll wake up from a particularly bad dream - more often of Ilias than of Edmund. He knows that this irks the pain demon, that Ilias had, in a way, a more long-lasting impression on the angel. Benjamin could stomach all the pain in the world. Once Edmund was no longer feeding off him, those nightmares had faded rapidly, leaving only faint impressions behind. But the nightmares of Ilias remained crystal clear in his memory.
So some nights he woke up and simply lay there, shaking, feeling as if every piece of him was flying away, as if he was simply going to fall apart and be left there, a shivering heap of non-pieces. It’s true that when he’s alone, it’s especially bad, but even Zachariah’s presence doesn’t always help that much. He wished that it did. That might make sense.
He doesn’t know if it will ever go away, or if it will always be a part of him, just underneath the surface, waiting to attack.
He wishes that he could just be okay.
3) Hoobastank, “Crawling in the Dark”
(I just want everyone to know that this is from their first, more heavy metal style album, not their second, pop-rock crap album. Thank you. Also, my computer’s idea of shuffle is not amusing. Give me something with a vaguely different theme, please!)
Length: 2:55
Show me what it's for
Make me understand it
I've been crawling in the dark looking for the answer
Is there something more than what I've been handed?
Life is a funny thing.
Benjamin had known that ever since his own creation, some sixty-odd years back. It was part of basic training. That life was a glorious, wonderful, delightful thing that, by the way, didn’t make a damned bit of sense most of the time.
Life was a mystery. That was how God worked.
Sometimes, Benjamin wished he could get an instruction manual. He wondered if maybe this had been covered in his original angelic training, but honestly he didn’t remember a lot of that, so maybe it had been.
It wasn’t his own life that was the mystery. He’d gotten all that figured out ages ago. He had a purpose, and someone he would sacrifice everything for, and that was enough. It was everyone else’s lives that confused him.
Ian’s always-tenuous back-and-forth relationship of love, envy, and resentment with his father.
Malakai giving up everything to save the world, and Kiran and Shea being left behind to comfort each other in his absence.
Mika’s insistence that he was just fine, thanks so God damned much, even though at times it was obvious that he was anything but, and had always been anything but.
The people who took in animals only to abandon them at the drop of the hat.
- I could go on here, but the song’s over. Sorry! -
4) Savatage, “The Dark” (From Beethoven’s Last Night)
Length: 4:23
But in the night, the darkness breathes
If he wills it to be
Before his eyes, the music dies
But he will always hear me
Humans had always been afraid of the dark.
That makes about as much sense as anything else they did. In a world of lattes, laptops, and cell phones, where they rushed about trying to get everything done for absolutely no reason, it was still there: a primal fear of when the lights went out.
There were things, in the darkness.
Of course, there were things in the light, too. But they were less scary then. They could be written off to a bad hangover or maybe food poisoning. Besides, when you could see them, you had a slight chance of getting away from them.
Or maybe not, but, well, Benjamin didn’t think that knowing that would make it better.
The darkness held - had always held - things of unspeakable terror.
He knew that. He had spent three years in darkness. On the rare occasions that there was light, it was always because Edmund was there. That was how it seemed for a last time: that Edmund came out of the darkness. Just appeared as though he had been formed from it. And the light he brought then was absolutely no comfort at all, then.
When he had come out of that darkness and realized that, of all things, there was a neat suburban house with a white picket fence sitting on top of it, he had almost wanted to laugh. It seemed totally unreal: that such a mundane thing could hide such a terrible darkness.
Years later, he realized that all of life was like that.
5) Sister Hazel, “Change Your Mind”
Length: 4:03
If you want to be somebody else,
If you're tired of fighting battles with yourself
If you want to be somebody else
Change your mind...
Being okay isn’t as easy as it looks.
He can go days, even weeks at a time, when nobody realizes that. When even the people he’s closest to, with the sole exception of Zachariah, start to forget who and what he is.
He can do sparring lessons with Ian, drinks with Rylee, shopping with Mika, and tormenting the innocents with Dominic. He can do all that and more. Work at the humane society, where they’ve slowly started to accept that maybe he isn’t retarded. Go home to Zachariah and all his animals. Sometimes he even remembers to eat. Those days, he gets a warm smile from Zachariah. And then bed, and all the wonderful things that Zachariah is teaching him there.
He’s okay. And he truly is, it isn’t an act.
He wishes that it could last.
He’s never prepared for it, when it all comes crashing down. It can be anything that prompts it, really. A particular sound coming from traffic that sounds like a scream. An animal brought into the humane society that’s too far gone to save. Edmund’s harsh insistence that he needs to be fed, and the pain that always accompanies that, that he can’t help but feed on himself. He tries to restrict Edmund to a starvation diet, not because he’s afraid of the demon gaining strength again, but because he’s always revolted by his own reactions to that sweet and sour taste of pain and agony going down his metaphysical throat.
It terrifies him.
And then it will be over, whatever it was, and he’ll be okay again. He’ll pick up the phone, hands shaking, and call a friend. Go out and find something to do, anything, and start the cycle all over again.
It lasts a little bit longer each time.