what is this horrendous tomfoolery.
Stolen from fugthimble.
Post a single sentence or more from each WIP you have, or from as many WIPs as you want. Provide no context/explanations.
Notes:
•• Fandoms are: Kingdom Hearts (come on, you should expect that by now hnng), Pokémon, Darker Than Black, Soul Eater.
•• Ratings are sort of all over the place, from G to R. Oh, and some cavorting merrily away in NC-17 territory, sort of. Also, some of the content/pairings may be squick. Oh, and expect creepyness. That's all I'm going to say now.
•• Content from the longer passages will probably never see the light of day, as they are currently in the process of being reworked.
1 •• Surrounded by the chains of his memories - fragmented, dulled, blackened with the bleary indistinctness of what he can barely remember - Xemnas steeples his fingers as he speaks to his empty audience. “We are the hollow men-or rather, as hollow as a group of travesties of nature united under one banner can be.”
* * *
2 •• And now, even if she wants to protest, to open her mouth and break the spell, she cannot. With her jaw set and her lips pursed in a determined line, she sits on her hands and bites her tongue as an impassive recruitment officer speaks to her in a stilted monotonous drone.
“You’re one of us now,” the young man says blandly, his voice barely audible over the telltale buzzing of machinery.
When he leaves without a further word, she stares at her reflection and runs trembling fingers over her shorn head. For a fleeting instant, she sees abundant auburn curls instead of short bristles which bite and rasp angrily at her skin-until she remembers.
“I’m someone else,” she whispers to herself as she pulls the cyan bowlcut wig over her head and arranges the fall of the artificial strands. “Someone else,” she repeats as she slides in the matching contact lenses, as her shaking hands pull on the uncomfortably stiff uniform.
* * *
3 •• Grandmamma forgot to mention one thing: the best predators are the ones you never know are there.
* * *
4 •• “Use your brain, Lea. Don’t insult our intelligences with such flimsy pretences. You know as well as I do what I’m talking about. I can feel it in my bones, and I can see the warnings spread across the stars, written in the language of the skies. So, I am certain, can you.”
* * *
5 •• Folders and receipts sent flying, Lea upended his chair in his haste to get to the window, pressing his nose against the cold panes as he took in the sight before him; a living blanket of shadow had engulfed most of the street, and, as screams rent the air, the darkness bulged, wriggled, pulsated and split, giving rise to numerous heads which struggled from the sea of black. Empty orbs the colour of old gold winked dully to life in the skulls of the creatures, and, as he watched, what might have been a maw split open from the closest head, zigzagged teeth snapping at the air. Above the carpet of struggling, writhing shadows, monstrous shapes followed: armour-clad creatures, with a thorn-wrapped heart insignia emblazoned on glinting helmets and breastplates, hollow eyes glittering as they advanced-twisted, canine-shaped beasts, with lolling jaws and tiny club feet, loping ungracefully forwards, their ungainly forms followed by all other manners of creature, each more hideous than the last.
* * *
6 •• Then, as abruptly as it stole over them, the moment passed; Isa blinked, shifting in his seat, and away from the silhouette cast by the telescope; his gaze was once more a familiar shade of green, bright as forest leaves. “If I didn’t know better,” he echoed quietly, “I’d have thought something was about to befall our world. Don’t you see? A strange chain of events have been set into motion by the disappearance of Ansem the Wise and his apprentices. I heard merchants recounting tales of their worlds being overrun by broiling Darkness, of curiously branded creatures setting upon their homes and rending their families apart with savage, unrestrained hunger, sharp and remorseless as the claws that rip then open. The sky is telling me to keep watch for changes, and even though I am no astrologist, I trust my instincts.”
An uncomfortable disquiet descended over the Observatory Tower as Lea goggled at him, at a complete and utter loss for words. “What have you been eating? I swear, this sleep deprivation is addling your brai-”
“This is no laughing matter!” Isa’s hiss carried all the pointed vehemence of a provoked cat. “Dark forces stalk the worlds, and if you wish to survive, it’d be best if you start taking more caution. For years…no, for decades, the Radiant Garden has been peaceful, and all of its people have been lulled into a false sense of complacency. However, this frail balance has been upended by the unusual circumstances which caused seven people to disappear without a trace, just like that.” Lea flinched at the sharp, clean snap of the other boy’s fingers, the sound like a gunshot in the silence. “I suspect the Darkness has kept away from the Garden long enough; it will grow ever bolder, until it rushes in to finish what it started.”
* * *
7 •• Silence descended upon them, leaden and uneasy. Lea shifted uncomfortably, at a loss as to what to say. “Now what?”
When he finally forced himself to meet the unflinching gaze of the other boy, he was stunned by the pained sneer that spread across Isa’s face like an oil slick, bitter, unnatural and sudden; the tone he spoke with was unexpectedly brittle, weighed down with frosted, caustic irony. “We survive.”
* * *
8 •• “Everything can speak, little blossom,” he whispers, materialising a thorn-bristling rose between his fingertips, “but you will find that those who are silent speak the loudest of all.”
* * *
9 •• But fire, fire, can be used to do nothing but burn and raze, to reduce grand empires to burning ruins.
It is greedy and all-consuming, and takes more than it gives: it may give warmth and comfort, security and protection, but inevitably, when it dances and spreads and gains a mind of its own, fire destroys.
That is partly why you like it, in a bittersweet, roundabout way. But there was another reason, too; it was a benign, innocent force once, just as how you were someone else, once.
You liked the fact that fire could spark a chain of events so powerful, so drastic, that it could change the world.
* * *
10 •• She sits in the bone-white silence and listens to the sound of her own tremulous breath.
In, out, in out.
* * *
11 •• If he’s a fairytale prince, then she’s not the princess he’s looking for-no, Naminé is the princess of nothing, the queen of zero, the faithful keeper of the long-gone.
* * *
12 •• There’s much to get used to. He has to get used to the fact that the world to his right seems to have fallen away into nothing, that it seems to have become nonexistent and as tangible as a dream, a memory, a phantom.
It is one day after his world changes. Bastard, he snarls at the bent-backed geezer with the sneering eyes. You let him go too far.
* * *
13 •• With snaking arrowheads, she paints her name in pulsing crimson upon his back. You are mine, Stein, she hisses as she drags black-lacquered nails across his skin. Mine until the end of time.
* * *
14 •• They have attachments. Ties. Bonds which serve to link them to this current life, to this current existence, preventing them from being cast adrift like yet another forlorn shipwreck, rudderless and despondent. They tell him that without their memories, they would be even emptier shells than they already are, if that is even possible.
If such is the case, what does that make him?
No memories. No recollections of the past. No patterns for him to follow.
To escape from his own questions, to escape from his doubts, Roxas casts around desperately for an answer, for a single link, a single pattern, that will serve as his tether to reality.
* * *
15 •• He was but a shell of a man who was too frail and weak to be able to properly comprehend what they were doing. Listening to Ansem would only be an impediment in the name of his goals.
* * *
16 •• By this point, all he had left were memories.
* * *
17 •• His eyes pin her like a butterfly to a collector’s tray, and the most she can force herself to do is stare back with as much resolve as she can muster.
* * *
18 •• True, we don’t have hearts. But we remember what it was like. That’s what makes us special.
Trite, inane psychobabble intended to befuddle naïve children, Saïx tells himself. He would much rather cast away the memories, especially after his former friend turns renegade-they have both changed far too much as the years progressed, and when he looks in the mirror, he is disgusted to find that he can no longer recognise the person in the silvered glass who gazes implacably back at him with the coolly aloof eyes of a stranger.
* * *
19 •• Something still exists as long as there is someone around to remember it.
* * *
20 •• Amber symbolises many things, she says serenely, whirling her transparent umbrella as she speaks; Maki and Amagiri watch the clear curved panes of plastic flash past their faces in a gleeful circular dance, shedding irregular droplets of rainwater upon the couch, the threadbare rug, the battered dining set. Their eyes trace the trajectories of each drop, scattered through the still air like a thousand shards of winking crystal, until the illusion dissolves and the sparkling beads strike unyielding wood, spattering upon the floor in blooming flowers of dampness.
* * *
21 •• He sees livid blue-fire eyes, a jag-jawed mouth which widens into a wicked grin; the voice which issues forth from the desiccated throat is unlike anything he’s ever heard in his life - it is hardly human.
Fourscore years ago, I was lost to the mountains, it hisses, a sibilant whisper that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
* * *
22 •• Summer brings with it the scent of clover, sweeter than a drop of honey on her tongue.
* * *
23 •• The next morning when she meets Jun in front of Route 201, he points at his sunburnt shoulders and grins with toothy, misdirected pride. “I feel like one of mom’s gratin bake things.”
* * *
24 •• It’s the sort of day where the prospect of charging through swatches of swaying tall grass is even more daunting than usual, the sort of day where nothing beats the coolness of an ice-cream, melting sticky-sweet under the sun, faster than it can be eaten.
* * *
25 •• Her knuckles strain bruised-white against her skin, and suddenly the silvered shards are singing as they fall; all around her screams the discordant symphony of breaking glass.
* * *
26 •• Against her will, against her screaming instincts, she becomes a vine - thriving, tangled - in his embrace; as he whispers sweet nothings into her ear, she bursts into bloom, trembling with the appalling wrongness of it all.
* * *
27 •• They fight more than they fuck-every little contact between them is down to who can draw blood first, who can leave the other gasping for air, who can grit their teeth and make the least noise.
* * *
28 •• “Aye, it seems as though I lost this match.”
With a fishhook smile and a jaunty salute, Ludor unbuckles his cutlass, thrusting it into the protesting arms of his quartermaster. “Take care of this,” he smiles-and turns to walk the plank before any of them can so much as sputter.
“I expect you to take care of her,” he adds, running a thumb over the carved wooden bowsprit. “I paid a king’s ransom for her, you know.” He does not mention the deal he had made with the devil of the deep blue sea-and what he had gambled away to a passing traveller.
When he takes the fateful step towards the welcoming grasp of the abyssal sea-beast, he doesn’t look back.
* * *
29 •• “This is a true work of art-it’s flawless, exquisite, it’s…”
When she turns and meets his eyes, her heart nearly skips into a standstill.
He’s barely changed, even if he’s older now - he’s still got that shock of unruly blond hair, the same dark blue eyes, the same lean build. It’s almost as though they never parted, as though he never left the Organisation, as though this isn’t another fragmented semi-reality she has sketched out.
The art critic catches her eye. “Are you the creator of this marvellous masterpiece?”
She giggles a bit at the strangeness of the words which tumble forth from his lips, but there’s no feeling in it. “Yes,” she replies, already turning to dissolve back into the crowd.
The young man reaches out, his fingertips brushing against her wrist. “Your name is…?”
As she speaks, the words catch in her throat like bramble thorns. “Naminé de la Mere.”
He frowns; his arm drops limply to his side. “Your name…it seems…almost familiar, somehow. Have we met before?”
Her heart breaks even as she shakes her head. “No,” she whispers, “never.”
* * *
30 •• Sometimes, when the voices of Hayner, Pence and Olette fade into the background, he imagines a voice which speaks to him as he watches the sunset paint the sky in a million shades of red and gold.
* * *
31 •• With phantom fingers, she reaches out to cup his face - but he doesn’t feel it, and only watches morosely as the melting ice-cream in his hands bleeds salty-sweet upon the twilight-stained ledge.
Don’t be sad, she wants to tell him as circles his neck with intangible arms. Even though you won’t know it, even though nobody will remember me…I’ll always be with you.
She wants to reach out to him - despondently oblivious, tired and uninspired - and tell him to enjoy what is left of his existence while he can.
Roxas, she murmurs as she rests her cheek against the top of his head. I wanted to stay forever, but you should realise that this was the only way.
But he can’t hear, can’t feel her-she could be a forgotten wisp of wind for all he knows.