𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐊𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐙!

𝐖𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝, 𝐠𝐨𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝. An independent and selective, low-activity Ryland Grace from Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. This blog will be a steady blend of both book and the movie adaption. Being both multi-verse and multi-fandom with forays into high fantasy and sci-fi settings, expect, too, dabbling into personal headcanons. Themes and narratives include that of space exploration, humanity's last hope, crushing isolation, and becoming, through the grips of the primal terror of death, someone stronger, braver, and brighter for those you love.

An independent Ryland Grace from Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, drawing from both book and the movie adaptation. Please refer to the pinned post for rules and Ryland's about before interacting. 

For this moment, she is not a queen. She is not royalty. She is just Niamh.

"You know I've never been good at doing what I'm supposed to," she answers. "And you're wrong. That love of mine is standing right in front of me."

Her veil dropping, he knows she's still that heart in her, more enduring in her kindness than the years had found him. His heart stops. That's why he'd loved her in their youth, hadn't he? She grabs his coif, and when their lips slot — something hysterical writhes in his gut.

Oh. "Ma'am." This, this isn't something he deserves. It isn't. She talks like she has clung to the thought of him for autumns, summers, winters, too, and the honey in her kisses? It's all real. With a sound, he's weak to accept it anyway, that beast in him whimpering at a morsel after years of hungering. This is a banquet. Even her smile could have fed him were he not so greedy. He kisses her back. Where to start? My god. The taste of her— He tears away, taut nerves frazzling.

they had said they would find a fitting home in the first town they came across... naturally, that had turned to the second, then the third; each place wanting in some way the last had not been, or else failing by entirely different means. the first monastery had seemed too occupied with halls crowding orphaned children. the second had sat wrong in riku's bones for the opposite reason -- too quiet by half and too strangely barren of children altogether. the third, truth be told, had possessed no fault of its own safe one, for the moment they had crossed the convent threshold, the little one had broken into a wail until its face purpled. riku and henry had exchanged a look then, and decided unanimously that they best turn about to the gravelly road again.

that had been a fortnight ago.

a time in which they had said, with no small certainty, that the roads were no place for a child. and yet... here they sat beneath a star-dotted sky, circled round the smoldering bones of a campfire with said child wedged between them, happily gumming away on its own tiny fists as riku tried pry loose whatever hair strands clung to the skin.

indeed, so much for certainty.

"cute when it's sleeping. less so when it decides to pull out all of my damn hair." a titter-- the child, or henry? doesn't matter, riku arches an unimpressed brow nonetheless. "what's so funny, hm?"

How right. The stars, diabolical creatures as they are, giggle in their silvering — and with some derision, evidently, for Riku's humbling. How horrible to mock her! And how villainous to tease her! But so be it; perhaps at least the rest of the hour will show more care. Here, Henry would admit that he has thought of this longingly, a life where he'd both a woman and a babe with his head in the grasses. It possessed a...quality, he supposes, something primordially homey and altogether right, and at once, he thinks of both tartlets made from apples and a cottage with a sheep pen. A daydream. Idyllic! And on the road, plainly impossible.

Or perhaps not.

"Nothing! Just, anyone ever tell you you take to it?" No way. Henry cracks an eye open, head tilting in the pillowing bed of late-May grass, valeria curling like will-o-wisps at his ear, and looks to her. He smiles. The scene is cozying. The toddler — she calls it 'it', and he, 'little devil' — snuggles closer against Riku's thigh. "You know. Being a mum." He shrugs. "He's right obsessed with you."

Sleepers Peace @copperboltsblog has suggested that the concept of the sculpture of the same name by Greet Desal would be great do with Henry and his animal companions - and I totally agree! So here's my take on it |06052026

Unlike Henry, his eyes did wander, too unapologetic in his current state to even realise that he was very much appreciating his form as he stood there within reach, yet somehow he behaved himself beyond looking. It was tiring to behave, to be good, when he wanted to burn something, yet he was far too drunk not to set himself on fire in the attempt. "So you say, I can see I disturbed," it was obvious that Henry was wearing anything at all because he came knocking at a horribly unfair hour.

Dorian laughed briefly as Henry stated the obvious, had been about to say something clever, something self depreciating maybe, deflect the wounds Henry was poking at. Pretend they didn't exist. The wine cellar was in fact not deep enough, and Josephine had cut him off already, but it was so much better than the swill they served at the tavern that he now had to make do with.

There was an urge to leave, to close this conversation as Henry poked, pull himself away from the one man who could tear down the wall he had tried to build, pretending that he was in fact better than everyone.

"What else is there to do in this horribly cold castle? Throw around fireballs, bother the nobles pretending to play court? No, getting drunk seemed the right choice," at least he wasn't bothering anyone, didn't plan to until he saw the flicker from Henry's window. The walls were coming back up, and maybe it had been a mistake to be vulnerable, it's not like anyone here cared about the person he'd lost. They most likely rejoiced at the thought of the son of a dreaded Magister being gone.

He shook his head. Hesitated. As though a branding, hot, harrowing in its blistering trailing, he felt it like a rod, this mage's longing gaze like a stretch of scorched earth. Evidently, Dorian was emboldened, Hal imagined, by both his drinking and the wantonness of a man twice-starved. In truth, he wasn't quite certain how to take it, this curious and maddening dance of theirs like bees in his belly. It was new. And, sure, not new entirely, no, but this man was no woman, and those rifts that divide them—! Henry's heart thunked. Dorian's uncertainty struck like a hammer.

"Stop that." He looked to him -- plainly. "You aren't bothering me. Opened the door, hadn't I? Always gonna if it's for you."

Right. Suddenly, realizing it as the blow connected, bruised him, he felt it, too: the cold, tapering creep of the ice-cold chill. Huh. Unconsciously, their darling Warden shuddered. Indeed, he rather missed the closeness, too, the warm of it, and was honest enough to admit as much, feeling himself like a stretch of gaping yearning, but a worsening voraciousness for touch and skin. It was why Henry struck his arm back out, his strong hand settling like some tether to Dorian's wrist. "Stay." And don't hide again, or I'll come back running...! Like a dog. And by the all that is holy, may I show no mercy.

want feels like many things to him. in some ways, arthur can discern that ache deep between them. you won't hurt me, he says before the thought has finished settling in his own brain. he can feel that cruel desire in henry, a twisting pain for restraint. it shows in the gleam of the wolf's eyes. in the way the beast holds onto him and refuses to let go. in the way his voice, roughened sick, says run but his body stays. betrayer. a thief of feeling, arthur and henry both.

the slayer does not flinch when he is grabbed, claw-like nails digging into meat until his flesh turns red and he blinks like pain is an afterthought to this fragile thing between. he has met hunger before, yes. been reduced to a meal by things far grander and greater than the shivering man before him—the crazed, deranged man with a snarl in his teeth and a tear in his eye, wishing for the world to grant him the mercy of restraint. arthur has stared hunger in the face and seen nothing beyond it but a waiting grave for the whole of him. nothing else but hunger.

this was not that.

henry shakes in his grasp. henry pleads, fierce and frantic. henry panics. henry looks at him like he might cry if he could, if the moon were not as harsh at it promised to be and his head not swimming with so much sin it spilled from the seams of him. arthur watches with those kind eyes of his, the dark browns a little gilded at the edges, the moonlight caught on the pallor of his skin and the thin redness of his lips. yes, i am mad, arthur thinks, and has to stop himself from smiling with that particular curve of insanity that's wrapped him so utterly still in the hands of fear and hurt and hunger. there were times when he thought he would throw his tired body into the endless void of it, fulfill some want or another to end the hunt once and for all.

this was not that.

no. he wanted this because he wanted the man beneath it, still trying to reach him under the weight of his own cursed fate. he wanted henry. and he would do anything for him.

cold hands slide against the warm skin of henry's arms—not pushing away, just holding where the muscle jumps, above the elbow somewhere on both sides. arthur holds henry still as if his grip alone could stop the other's shaking. “ no. ” he says, firmly, in a voice low and deep and sure of itself. he doesn't care that the grip on him tightens, that the edge of his flesh tears, that henry growls with a face contorting in that hunger so viciously that, for a second, it does not look like henry at all.

arthur holds him tighter.

“ i am not going to leave you here to fight yourself just because it gets harder. i trust you, hal. i know who you are beneath all this. and if i have to stay to make sure you come back to yourself, then i will. i will. ” his face softens, the edge of pain pulling his lips into a small, helpless smile.

But Arthur — flattened, pinned, hounded solidly beneath his hulk, imprisoned, quartered and with no panic at all — has never, never really, felt want in him. Henry. Gaze wobbly, his shoulders quavering, the knightling feels it keenly, the punch of his moonsick as it goes tearing down rib bones. And to be fair, Arthur's definitively seen his anger, and seen, too, his foul obsession with slaughtering those men who had burned his home. By all accounts, Arthur should further sickened by want, the shades of it always so dark and bruising and dead and cruel, but that's not all...! Look at him! The want for restraint! For something gentler...! And beneath it all: violence with a beauty like spring through the frostbite.

Something animal whines in him, or perhaps something human, but then, Henry imagines now, humoring in a feral bout of lucid thinking, they aren't at all so entirely dissimilar. Want: to him, it is blood, certainly, but as Arthur looks up, expression so enduring -- he feels it festering: the want for protection. To go and protect him. It is human. Arthur's hands glide up his arms, the muscles there straining to control themselves, and this bud of some uncontrollable feeling roots like a seed in the bed of his heart. It's affection, undoubtedly, but his illness them, all his feelings, and intensifies their flavor so that they may fizz at his gumline. It's sweet. Arthur has often stared unto greed, want, but he cannot yet know what stares at him now.

"You--" You've lost it. You're mad. And yet, here, here, here. The boy in him croaks. Henry's nails still sink into his skin, breaking the barrier and letting drip blood blood, and he feels it, the want to drag him closer, greedier past his ribs, and to take him in his heart as one whole being. He's starting to realize this want is the butchering of care, of something very close to love if he just dares but to think it. And he does. He does because he has to, because his body's not his own now. Everything -- it's more intense, more bright, and Arthur's so, so soft.

Henry collapses. He digs his head into the ground next to Arthur's head, confused, and smells the iron of the drops of blood. "That's right. You've got me. But you don't even get it, do you? You don't! Don't even know what that means!"

His heart pounds. The woods are twittering about them, sounding to him like the bursting of handgonnes, and Arthur's heart...! It's louder. Henry's hands press his shoulders harder, meaner into the ground. "You have me, and it's like--"