not every story has to have a cruel ending!

Nodoka: Fernanda Ly, Jeon Ji-Yoon, Yella Bambi

Chiyu: Yuko Suzuhana, Meng Jia, Hieu Cao

"You never change. I suppose that's why people find you to be reliable. You'll be just as you are now, no matter how many times they come and go, and it will be so until the end of your days."

“Sweet boy, take care of your brother. He needs you.”

They were never equal, they were never the same. The two of them, the same size and height with the same exact DNA that gives them mirror faces, mirror hands and hearts and bones. Joshua considers them split in half, one person living two different lives. But Jericho knows better. They were never the same, not even in the womb, where one egg split into two.

“You’re such a good boy, you’re so responsible, take care of your brother. He needs you.”

Once, he was ahead of his brother, when they both came out it’s said that Joshua followed Jericho clutching onto his ankle. (Impossible, they were a cesarean.)

Twice, he was ahead of his brother, because he found his voice first. Strung childish sentences together while Joshua remained silent, refused to look at anyone else, refused to acknowledge.

He remembers in the back of his mind the way to movie his hands, recognizes immediately when Joshua’s move in his. A method of communication, because Joshua refuses to communicate with anyone else, and Jericho thinks he needs someone to make sure no one takes advantage of that. Take care of your brother. He always has.

Once, he was the focus, because he was the only one who spoke. Because he was a polite little boy, and because despite others’ interest in Joshua they could only ever get at him through Jericho. 

Isn’t this too much for them? Isn’t this too early? They’ve never been apart.

“Joshua has the whole world in his hands, he can go anywhere. He can do anything.”

“Jericho’s such a sweet boy, a kind boy, a generous boy. I’m sure he’ll understand.” And he does. Joshua is brilliant, Joshua is a genius, Joshua can do anything.

Jericho is sweet, kind, reliable. Jericho will understand.

(What is it that he understands, though?)

Without Joshua beside him at school (with Joshua in a private school, one his parents couldn’t pay for one let alone two children, one that was offered to them free of charge, but only for the brilliant one), Jericho feels like something’s been ripped from him. It was always him that had been there, like a shield in front of Joshua, like a shadow

and now

well, maybe that was all he really was. (”Take care of your brother.

He needs you.”)

"I can find you anywhere. I'm not the one who needs your reliability." 

He tugs at it, just a little, once when he and Nor are together. Just to see if she noticed, to see if she wouldn’t notice even if he slipped it off entirely and threw it out an airlock the next time he was alone.

She notices. It doesn’t surprise him that she does, it does surprise him how disappointed he is to see the look on her face when he tries it.

“Elwood,” she starts, with that pressed tone of voice that sounds a little like concern. Instead of talking, he smooths back her hair, draws his hands over her face, and then leaves to goad Jonah into smashing his face into the floor, to fucking and fighting and cracking open his skull to release those thoughts inside. It doesn’t work, which fucks him up because it always works. Nor’s inspecting hands or Jonah’s angry ones, at least one of them has always worked since they started all of this.

Until they hit a groove, a pattern, a routine

and Elwood started noticing where the space between him and them existed.

rp: will to live

characters: pepper coake & monica imahara ( @scyllass )

warnings: child abuse / neglect implied, casual ableism

When he asks her if she remembers the day they met, she always acts like she's forgotten. Rolls her eyes hard, "no, why would I bother to remember something as stupid as that?"

He thinks it would be hard to forget, especially for a girl like her who grew up with money and luxury. The way that he found her, the way that she was when he did, a dirty child laying in an alleyway for god-knows-how-long with only a handheld game to keep her company (it was at least two days, because he passed her one morning, on his way to school. And then again on his way back.

"Hey, uh, kiddo? You lost?"

"Fuck off shitlips, mind your own business."

"Geez! You don't have to be so rude! How annoying!"

She'd thrown a rock at him too, he remembers that.)

It was the second day, on his way to school again, and she was still laying there in that alleyway. Dirty and soaked now, her handheld game slipped into her pocket, because it had rained the night before.

(He'd been unfortunate enough to have conscience enough to stop, worry.)

"Were you seriously out here all night?"

"What does it look like, genius?"

"Why are you so rude? Geez."

"Because dumbfucks like you don't leave me alone."

"You're like, twelve, stop swearing so much."

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

He'd skipped school that day, dropping against the dirty damp wall of the alleyway to argue with a girl who'd slept there all night.

(She was eleven, not twelve, he learned. And when he asked sarcastically, "what, did you forget your way home or something?" he's shamed when she bites back:

"No, stupid, I can't walk.")

She couldn't walk.

So he picked her up.

("What the fuck are you doing you weirdo! Let me down!"

"I'm - stop kicking me holy fuck - I'm gonna take you - stop it - home."

"I. DON'T. WANT. TO. GO. HOME!"

Complete with a punch that nearly knocked the breath out of him, had him crumpling to his knees to keep from dropping her. Both of them, at the end of that, breathing ragged and staring at each other.

"Dude you're eleven and you're, like, crippled. You can't stay out here."

"Why not?"

"It's just fucked up, okay!")

He skips school entirely, chooses instead to argue some more until she finally agrees to let him lift her up, take her to his house. It took the promise of an outlet, for her to charge her game in.

It had been more than a full day, then, of her insulting everything about him. His home, his cars, his clothes, the bathroom where she cleaned up, the makeshift wheelchair he'd fashioned for her, his food, even the outlet on the wall.

"You're a brat, you know that?"

Hard to forget.

Just like when his father came home, burning with anger at how Pepper had brought a stranger home. Fed her food that cost them money, upped the water bill, made waste to a perfectly good broken chair. Hard to forget: the ice cold look in her eyes while his father yelled

and the way she spoke up, in such a weird tone. Sickly sweet, pitiful, nothing like how she'd been all day.

"Monica's super sorry, Mister Coake! I'll have my daddy make it up to you, promise!

Don't worry, he can pay!"

(And then, she nearly made Pepper's heart stop when she said:) "Imahara, should I spell that for you?" all innocent like that.

Hard to forget, a girl like that with a family that powerful

alone and dirty in an alleyway for god-knows-how-long.

"Are you sure you don't remember, Moni?"

"For the last time, I'm going to kick your ass if you ask me that again."

He never reminds her.

rp: from the ash

characters: persephone hua & hyacinth mandira @traumataako

warnings: abusive relationships implied, violent imagery

"I'm sorry," Persephone is saying, over and over with her pathetic sobs. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry -"

she's always been inelegant. More like a weed than a rose.

It's what Hyacinth always liked.

Even with her hair dyed away from her bright pink, and skirts instead of shorts, she still sticks out of their garden like a sore thumb. A girl who can't put on lipstick.

Lipstick red as roses is smeared across her cheek, smeared across the back of her hand where she's wiped it from violently, angrily. Her hair is floaty, picture perfect and a coppery color like a thousand pennies that belonged to his hand, useless as the change was. Hyacinth wants to tear it out of her head.

Persephone looks like she wants to tear it out of her head.

She's crying, and Hyacinth thinks that every romantic drama has it wrong when their heroine cries. She has an ugly face when she does it, red cheeks all blotchy and eyes rimmed just the same.

(She resists the snide thought in her head: that's because she isn't anything like a romantic heroine. That she, Hyacinth, if asked by her brother could do better.

Has done better.

That isn't anything to be proud of, she knows.

So does Persephone, her bruised kissed lips and smeared lipstick. This is nothing to be proud of either.

She has to remind herself: it's neither of their faults this went bad.

It's him.

It's always been him.)

Hyacinth wants nothing more than to press her hands against the girl's mouth, smear the red so it comes out more wrong, so it comes off in her hand sloppy and imperfect. He'd hate that, she thinks. Both of them ruined by each other. He hates that, that they ruined each other for him, that they broke each other apart to their smallest pieces and smeared each other across their mouths.

More like weeds than flowers.

When her fingers touch down, brush against Persephone's mouth, the girl jumps back. Her own eyes wide, her sorrys cut off halfway.

"Hya," not Cinthie, "Hya I'm so sorry, please -"

"That was never the right shade for you anyway, he was stupid to try," Hyacinth says, cutting her off. "Come on, I'll teach you how to take it off properly. It won't leave a trace."

(As good as a smear and mess was, she knew a better revenge was to make it all disappear completely.

rp: will to live

characters: jericho david & kat de la cruz & tb degawa @traumataako & @michirukaioh

warnings: disturbing thoughts, unreality, horror

He sits back, quiet and sober after Kat sets down her controller and stretches. After she turns off her recording, camera and microphone, and turns back to the two of them with a look that Jericho reads as curious.

"All of that went over my head," he admits, scratching the back of his neck as he looks to T for their response.

T has their eyes on the screen proper, that look on their face like they're inside themself, searching and searching for something they can't find. They look like that a lot, Jericho finds

especially in times like these, where Kat is in her own fugue in a certain game and even Jericho has paused to watch.

(They also look like that shortly before they leave again, weeks at a time

and shortly when they return home as well.)

"What do you think would be dragged out of us, if we were sent there?" T says finally, several minutes after Kat has already flipped on their laps with her DS in hand.

"What are you talking about?" Jericho asks, a little rough because he doesn't want to think of anything horrifying being dragged out of him.

"Psychological horror-monsters," T replies, dreamily, like they don't even notice Jericho's tone

which, isn't really that hard to believe.

"I think I'd like mine to have a spear through the gut. Just like... here," they say, pointing to a spot just above Kat's nose where her head sits on their lap. She hums, concerned, looks to Jericho for help.

"You gotta stop saying stuff like that. You're going to freak yourself out."

"Really? I haven't yet."

"Yeah... well..."

"I wouldn't let either of you go there," Kat interjects quietly. "We start driving into a fog, I'm making you slam on the fucking breaks."

T lays back, laughing the way they do

nothing in the world seems to bother them.

It’s always been the two of them.

Its only natural they would come up with such ideas.

(Young, alone for the evening, maman patting their identical heads equally when she says take care of each other now, maman will be home soon, though “soon” for eight year olds and “soon” for adults is a time zone that spans hours. They never think she returns home soon enough. Almost always, they’ve already tucked each other into bed, read stories and given each other “good night pecks”. Almost always, they’re already dozing off by the time the door opens.)