Miserable ★ Soul

"Nice Save, Partner!"

(They don’t ask. You don’t correct. Some lies are better burning.)

characters: columbina, arlecchino, scaramouche, signora, childe

tw: unhealthy attachment / fixation ─✦ fatui haven

✦ Columbina thinks you’ll leave her.

She knows it, the way birds know the arrival of winter before the sky changes, embedded deep in her bone marrow. Each time you reach for her, she hears the motion like it’s a goodbye rehearsed in slow motion. A soft-motioned lie. Every touch, a countdown. Every look, a funeral.

“Go slow,” she tells you, every time, as if pace could bargain with fate.

In her head the plea is harsher, needier, embarrassingly devout: Stay slow. Stay here. Stay mine—if thou must be anything, be mine.

She whispers to herself that your pockets are already full of feathers she dropped, that when you leave, she’ll find you again by following the trail of her own molt.

She thinks love must be scooped gently into cupped palms—too firm, and it shatters; too loose, and it slips away like sand between fingers.

She never asks why you always come back. She’s afraid the answer will feel like a final breath.

✦ Arlecchino believes you’ve already started to rot her from the inside.

Every time you look at her with anything resembling tenderness, it's just another serpent threading through her ribcage, scales scraping each intercostal. Time drips slow, and with each drop, her spine learns the shape of… routine. Not discipline,no, nor order or anything with sharp edges she’s been raised by. Routine, habit of expecting to see you with your usual book in the morning, a habit of expecting your “Goodnight.” with the voice sleep has softened. She expects her hands to shatter it even at the cost of paralysis. She never does

She calls it fondness when her hands tremble; misnames it fever when she dreams of you. The truth is duller and therefore more dangerous: you’re building a memorial of you inside her chest. She thinks you mean to hollow her out and perhaps, she hopes you will.

When the children laugh in the halls, she imagines your laughter between theirs, sharper, fanged, and it warms her in a way no hearth dares.

She cleans your cup herself after you’ve left the table. She looks your fingerprints on porcelain too long then intended.

She wonders if this is love or plague, and if there’s even a difference. She decides there isn’t. Both eat from the inside, don’t they?

And when you touch her jaw, her pulse stumbles so violently she almost expects to bleed.

✦ Scaramouche thinks you mock him when you smile.

Your teeth are too white. Your joy, too easy.

He sees your smile and files it under performance—an elaborate trick, some radiant imitation of the sun. There is a laughing someone embedded deep in his skull, always pointing. He has decided it is you. This belief is a spine, it keeps him uptight when your eyes are puffy from too much sleep and you’re blinking lazily, or when you tap your lip in thought, or when you kiss the mole under his eye—and the room tilts like a disaster happening in real time.

He catalogues you with a scholar’s spite: pupil diameter when the lantern light flickers; the way your voice lowers on unsaid things, tremor amplitude when your name is spoken by the wrong larynx.

Later, petty and private, he glares at the air you just walked through—as if even oxygen ought to apologize for touching you first.

Behind a locked door, he practices your expression on his own, a counterfeit miracle, and whispers to the mirror, mechanized and soft:

“You were laughing at me. Weren’t you?”

✦ La Signora believes you admire the fire, not the woman burning in it.

You call her beautiful and she wonders if you mean her flame’s posture. If it’s the myth’s silhouette you love, not the grief. She thinks you do not notice the way her hands tremble when she touches snow.

She thinks you see a goddess. Not a grave dressed in perfume. So she remains perfect.

Because if you knew what people used to see before they saw a witch—you might love her for it. And she doesn’t know if she could forgive you for that.

✦ Childe thinks you underestimate him. On purpose.

That you call him good to keep him docile. That your laughter is a leash around his neck you pull when you expect him to stay, sit, roll over. That kind is the word you choose instead of killer. And he does play along, he smiles; soldier-turned-suitor, places a warm palm against your lower back. But in the back of his mind, he’s waiting.

Waiting for the moment you stop laughing. When your voice stills mid-joke but your grin remains, before widening. When your eyes sharpen, not soften.

You’ll look him full in the face and say, “I knew you were lying.”

𐔌՞ ܸ.ˬ.ܸ՞𐦯 Somehow I've hit 10,000 followers?! I genuinely don't understand how this happened, and only you guys are to thank. When I started this blog last year, it was just a space to dump my little head canons and thoughts. Somehow, that brought 10k of you to my URL and I am absolutely mind blown because what???

From the bottom of my heart, thank you. For following me, for being a silent reader or a vocal one, a liker, a commenter, a reblogger, an ask sender, a mutual, or all of the above. Thank you for supporting me in any way shape or form. I truly appreciate you for stopping by my little corner of the Internet :) - Soul

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ Event Rules

To celebrate 10k, I'm opening my inbox for small blurb requests! I've done this in the past and I know many of you have been looking for me to do this again so I figured what better time than now!

₊⊹You may send your ask on or off anon!

₊⊹You can send a Fluff or Smut prompt/question/concept!

₊⊹Please state the love interest (Xavier, Zayne, Rafayel. Sylus, or Caleb) that you would like this prompt to be written about.

₊⊹You may send prompts for pairings like SnowCrow or StarFish but please understand it may take me a little longer to answer your request because multiple love interests take me just a tad longer to write!

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

too shy to post anywhere yet so i'll stash it here hehe 🔅🦖 Flickering lights. Cold room. The smell of the ocean sticks to your clothes as the officers watch you like a hawk.

Yes, your name is Jurard and no, you're not drunk. You don’t drink. Of course you’re going to cooperate. It was just like any other regurgitated tragedy, you know. Tepid compared to most. But the law left no room for refusal. One minute you were staring at the edge of a bridge with the roaring waves below, wondering how long it would take to sink to the bottom… and the next thing you know you’d been picked up, ‘peacefully apprehended and detained for questioning’.

SEC. 46 This section duly acknowledges that individuals who drown may undergo posthumous reformation of the limbs and respiratory organs to adapt to an aquatic environment.

You had this 18th birthday celebration at your place… right. Yes, you remember. The ultimate golden standard in campus for getting thrashed or so the seniors claimed afterwards. Fucking ridiculous when you think back on it now. But that wasn't what made your heart soar that time, no. It was seeing Hakka walking in through those doors. Who’s Hakka?, they ask, as if they didn’t already know.

“Everyone knows about the strangling, the… the cannibalism. But no one really follows the law to kill on sight, do they? Or at least that’s what dad told me. Wasn’t old enough to remember my sister or how he took her to the nearest dock.”– Student C, 22, A Documentary on the Subspecies Anthropisces Gracilis

It had been a while since you last saw him. You couldn't believe he was there. At your party! Willingly! Granted, he didn't talk to you and just stood by the pool all night but it was a start, wasn't it? All in all, it was a great party. Like an idiot you had begun tending a small flicker of hope.

SEC. 49 This newly formed species retains enough of their physical features but none of their sapience and shall be reclassified as dangerous wildlife

When you wake up at three in the morning with a massive headache, you think not even this can dampen your mood. That is, until you find him- ex friend, secret love of your life- now swimming in your pool with unnaturally translucent skin, his baby blues swallowed by endless inky black. He smiles and beckons when he sees you but the sight of his clawed hand sends a shiver down your spine.

It's your friend… yet it's not.

Your friend had always loved belting out metal loud and free, yet this one is calling to you like a caged siren and it's the saddest song you've ever heard. It was a cacophony of incomprehensible sounds but it stole your breath just the same. Memories flash unbidden of Hakka laughing at something you said and for a while you try to catch your breath, will yourself to hold off the regret, the anger, the tears. You look at the sky and see traces of stars that were not quite engulfed by the rising sun and knew what you had to do.

SEC. 58 In cases where it's not immediately exterminated, it must be surrendered to a state-run facility. Anyone found in violation of this clause will be punishable under Article 3541 of the same code.

After leaving a message to both of your parents you set off to the sea at god knows how early in the morning.

You're a jock, if one had to be tactless about it, and your friend is- was - a sickly, adorable geek so you doubt this new incarnation of him could ever pull you into the sea by force. You wrap Hakka in wet blankets, carry him in your arms to your car all the while thinking how he fits so well against you. And under your breath: Not like this, god no, I never wanted it like this.

It was barely past four when you caught sight of the sea.

When you lay him down on the waves, Hakka turns to you. The sadness and confusion on his face could almost be called human. He sings his sad tune again like a plea. You turn to go because merpeople are worse than dead people. No matter how much you talk to him, how much you hold him, he's cold through and through. Hakka's not coming back.

Hakka was warm. Hakka was brave.

Hakka's laugh lit up the room and he was brimming with love for everyone he met.

Hakka refused to cry. Hakka pretended not to mind when you wouldn't meet his eyes like the rest of the class.

Hakka's smile dimmed day by day and you didn’t do anything.

Hakka heard you tell a room full of other people that you didn’t know him.

Hakka just looked at you blankly while he was strapped to that hospital bed, bandages on his face, machines beeping in time to his pulse.

Hakka eventually stopped talking, singing, laughing, crying, or doing anything at all when you were in the room.

After all that, it’s no wonder he avoided you like the plague and whichever cruel hand saw your greed that night must have punished you for hoping otherwise.

He... God, he hated you more than anything in the world, and this- this thing is looking at you like you're the only one that matters.

Yes, merpeople are worse than dead people. Because you know he's gone but he's here and there’s no fucking way you could tell him what you wanted to tell him last night when you saw him sitting alone by the pool (I love you, I'm sorry, Kill me, Let's go somewhere far away, just the two of us; Run away with me, Be with me, Please, Please) because you're an idiot, a coward, a selfish-

"Not go."

You shiver at the cold autumn wind and goose pimples prickle your flesh.

Merpeople don't talk.

"Not go. Pl... stay?"

You look at it- no, him? It's clasping its throat, struggling; opening its mouth then closing it again ( "A koi out of water," you hear Hakka laugh in your head). It wrinkles its nose in frustration and it was so like him that you unthinkingly reach out your hand.

That’s when the creature pulls you forward with unexpected strength. You barely even had time to hold your breath before it plunged both of you into the sea.

You try to break free but it’s clinging to you like ivy while opening its gaping maw. Sharp claws glint menacingly close to your face and you squeeze your eyes shut, thinking, 'This is it. I'm gonna die. I deserve it' but the pain doesn't come. Instead, you hear familiar words so you open your eyes to see it struggling to speak in a strange, stilted melody.

"-..ppy ..rth.. day. I- miss... y... J...rd"

The way the current carried his voice through water was strange. Clear, ancient, yet unsure- it was like hearing a nervous Hakka through an old phonograph. You're crying but the sea is wrapped all around you so it carries your tears away like it was never there. Half a minute later you feel your throat burning and your vision blurs at the edges. Air. Humans need air. Of course. It didn't seem to matter now. You fight to keep your eyes open for Hakka- because it's him, it really is him - and he looks so worried that you open your mouth to tell him, 'I'm okay’, only to choke on a mouthful of salty seawater.

Fuck. You wanted to at least hear him say your name again. Why is his face so close anyway?

And then he was kissing you, pushing air into your starved lungs. He pulls you up towards the surface and drags you to the edges of the sandy beach. You cough out some sea water while desperately trying to hold on to him but with inhuman strength he pulls away. You're more than sure now. It really is him and… and that's heartbreak on his face.

Holding on to the last vestiges of your consciousness, you croak out, "Hakka. Hakka, please. Take me, drown me- don’t- I just - don't leave me."

He says- sings, really-

"Can't. Love you."

Yes! Cloche Jin (NRC) is stuck in closet-cosplay, so her influences from Cloche Goldbelle is more on-the-nose. Otherwise, Cloche Jin latched on to Goldbelle because they have similar personalities, Goldbelle is from the LL equivalent of China (Nuandi) but assimilated into western-esque culture, and similar surnames (金/Gold). Since Goldbelle fits mostly into Chinese beauty standards (pale skin, straight black hair, clear skin without freckles/moles), part of that is internalized in Cloche too.

It’s from her admiration of the character that Cloche chose her “English”/non-ethnic name. (ATP any namesake is better than ~obedient child/son) What are the chances of her classmates knowing what animanga is? She can always pass off the similarities as a coincidence.

it would be so awesome