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                   "He was a bigger man than you'll ever be

        T            O             M."

  What was left of the forces have fallen   back with their injured, and Remus   is sure that the full moon is upon them on   this very night. whether it's a curse   or a blessing in his bones anymore is   lost on him. what more was   there to lose, he thinks.

☥     “Does it ever stop?” he whispered, breathless. Pale fingers curled around the window frame, nails breaking into splinters as they breached and dug into ancient wood. Somewhere, in the depth of his hollow mind, perhaps he registered the pain. But if he did, he reacted naught. “Does it ever stop...” he queried, hopeless. And although breaths were not needed, he took them, and heavy they tore from his lips as he leaned out the window, staring into the starry night. Eyes distant. Vacant and lost, as within his chest, his unbeating heart twisted, attempted to drive agony into every molecule of his cursed being.

       “Does it ever...” he breathed, leaning out further until the night wind was chill against deathly pale cheek, with skin so flawless and cold it may as well have been carved out of marble. “... Stop?” he choked, as eyes grey as morning fog closed; black, short eyelashes touching skin. He could have let go. He could have released the pained hold of the window's frames, and he felt how if he did nothing, he could have so easily let gravitation take him over to the other side. It would be a breathless fall. One of precious seconds, filled with yearning wishes, ancient prayers, hollow whispers.

Wherein lay the point of going on, the way he had? It was a question which had haunted him for such a long time, you would think by now he would have the answer. Yet life was ever-changing, and what had once been his conclusion, could as easily be changed by the next day, the next week, decade, century... so he would ponder, and think, and wonder. He would let the time drag on, pulling him along whether he wanted it or not. What did he gain from the passing of time. More years to alienate him from the norm, yet more authority among those of his own kin. Never-ending days of dealing with existing, dealing with living yet not truly. Sometimes... perhaps even quite often, he wondered what was the point of letting it go on? He wondered, why not let it all end.

Ending it was often easier said than done, when you had somebody like him. Somebody so seemingly alive, yet not. The multitude of ways which could slay a human would not do him anything. Perhaps they would leave him in agony for a while, perhaps even a long time, if luck had it so, but it did not mean he died. After all, how could you kill something which was already dead. The eternal contradiction. Taemin breathed in the early morning air, letting it out in a slow exhale. Soon the sun would rise. It was washing the sky with pale, warmer palettes, the clouds becoming cotton candy. It was beautiful, and beauty was fragile. He knew he would not be able to stay there, atop the rooftop, staring at the brightening sky. If the sun crept above the horizon and licked his skin with its warm beams, they would not only warm, but burn, blister and yearn to give him a slow, agonizing death. Torture. Sometimes he wondered if he was not worth such torture. He had endured it before, sometimes self-afflicted, sometimes not. Circumstances would most often be the factor deciding whether he wanted it to just stop so he could stop hurting, or keep burning his skin because he deserved to be in pain.

He was not holy; there was no God which loved him, and wearing wooden rosary beads around his wrist would ever remind him of it. But whether he considered himself holy, whether he was a cursed creature belonging in the shadows, he was also a creature of conscience. It was, after all, that which brought these musings to his mind. And it was hand in hand with the care that he did, after all, feel for certain people. Despite telling himself time and again that he would never do it again, never let himself get attached, never letting human become precious to him, he had. There were people that mattered. People who he would not wish gone. People he did not want to accept, that one day he would have to watch them die from him, leaving him behind. But that death? He would be damned if he let it catch them in its claws before their time. He had seen it happen before, he had powerlessly been witness to the death of people dear to him, and each time it would haunt him.

☥    Ritch. The sheet of paper was torn from its spine of spiral, to be discarded and float to the floor, forgotten as the leaves of coffee brown amongst the remains of vibrant autumn. Ritch. Upon the floor, a litter of unwanted paper, stained by ink and words of emotion. Upon the desk, neatly arranged sets devised for writing. A notebook of typical description; pale blue front, white pages with lines upon lines upon lines. And then there is him. His hands, pale as petals of white lily—an ironic symbolism, for there was nothing innocent and pure of his passing, so long ago.

Smudges of dark blue ink speck his skin, seek into the crevice of nail meeting soft skin. The thin fingers of a pianist grasping onto the delicate wooden shaft of his pen. And the nib, oh the nib another ironical game, as silver was dipped into ink, and silver dragged across paper, creating fragile words with what could wound him. Had wounded him. The precious metal had burned and pressed against his skin, as a snarl of frustration had left the back of his throat, escaped past lips rosy pale and full—holding hollow beauty even as a frown lay etched between his brows, and his eyes appeared as though bottomless lakes of black.

Ritch. Another paper, discarded. He did not even care to crumple it up any longer, but let it float to the floor, gently swaying down until it slid to a stop amongst the rest of wasted emotions. So many things left unsaid, and not because they did not scream for a voice, but because they could not carry themselves beyond the cage of his dead heart. They were trapped, surrounded by barbed wire, and not even squeezed into narrow sentences on a paper could he arrange them, and let himself breathe.

“Blast it all,” he muttered as a dot of blue ink grew slowly over the sheet of paper, the pen nib resting without a movement against it. Until a quelled fit of frustrated anger had an inhuman hiss passing clenched teeth, and the pen nib buried into the back of his hand, springing forth blossoms of maroon—the hiss of the metal burning his skin matching that of his lips before his own was wrought into a breathless cry, and he yanked the pen back. Reflecting sources of light, the beads of blood trickled over the back of his hand, and dropped onto the dark sheets with the faintest of sounds, in the suffocating silence which followed.

[ The distinguished doctor would really rather believe that he wasn’t the pouting type but the entire situation here was making it exceptionally difficult to keep himself from sulking petulantly; forced to play the part of some manipulated pawn in the every twisting game that was sweeping everyone and everything that found itself unfortunate enough to be in the twenty mile vicinity of Sherlock Holmes. An ordinary, insignificant apparently, one of many pawns that his flatmate and Moriarty think can be thrown around at their whim--- to be scored of and score from. Heart staccato in his chest, mouth set in a firm line, an expression of utter displeasure. John Watson was a big boy, wasn’t he? And thought that he should be able to play with the big boys as well; instead of here while he waited for further instruction because if there was anything that he had learned during his deployment and now;;

     It was that compliance came fairly easy when one was thrust into a compromising situation like this, and when one was strapped with God only knew how many sticks of dynamites, one didn’t talk back.

Distorted as it may sound there was a certain sort of victory that came along with the realization that he had seen their greatest antagonist’s face before the egotistical Holmes but his thrill lasted all of mere seconds when it came far too real that his life was in danger once more--- that Sherlock was walking into a trap and there was nothing he himself could do about any of it. Nothing at all but stand there while looking like a total joke as he waited for the scenario to play, so there it was, and a pawn is a pawn is a fool. On principle the weathered male makes an effort not to use words like helpless; like stuck but it was as it was and there it would stay. So, that victory, it didn’t last so long and especially not after it came to realization that the individual he was dealing with wasn’t alone by any means. ]

[ There’s the slightly unpleasant aroma of chlorine and sweat filling his nostrils; dread dancing up his spine at the thought of what might happen to him or anyone around him if he felt the overwhelming need to sneeze or had a peculiar itch. One wrong move, one step in the wrong direction, and everything could just--- blow. John didn’t know what was worse; that or the fact that he had been reduced to a mere damsel in distress by some megalomaniac manic who insisted having his overcompensating cronies follow through with his dirty work. While all he could do was wait; wait for the powers that be to decide it was time for him to play his part though at that really meant was stand there rendered one hundred percent useless. Another word he loathes; because out there he’s deemed quite useful but in the world of Sherlock Holmes and this man--- he’s that pawn.

Poseidon: our characters are stranded on an island together after a shipwreck.

☥ Mischief had its risks of misfire. It was known to him; always had been, though that did not mean that his inclination to fall into less thought-through ideas was ever banished from his mind. So it was this time, when he and Suzy had found the temptation of the sea one too difficult to pass, they had in the midst of it all swallowed one too many. There had been nothing wrong with the rowing boat they had found, and nothing wrong with the weather at hand—at least, so much could be said at the time they had left the shore. Though clouds had domineered the sky in a grey cotton blanket, it was dry and a quiet swell of heat lay in the air. Perhaps that ought to have been their first warning that something were amiss, for it was the kind of humid heat that held promise of something else entirely. So it had been, that whilst out at sea they had been, the storm had come upon them, and for the waves they could not see the land, and lost themselves so profusely.

“At least we’re alive,” were Suzy’s words, as sat there on the shore of unknown island they found themselves. She was right that they were lucky to be alive—at least she was, for he was more difficult to smite than to conjure up a storm upon him. You could have drowned him at the sea and he would be no less aware than he was now, sitting with clothes drenched and his pale skin cold. He knew she no doubt longed for the sun to peek through the clouds now that the worst of the rain was past, but he dreaded it. Heat it would bring to both, but what to her was pleasant would burn on his skin. Yet he could not offer her any heat—his own carcass of a body cold but without a shiver coursing through.

“… What do we do now?” he queried, staring upon the boat, or what now remained of it. A broken skeleton of wood which had only narrowly managed to carry them past the reef and into shore. Perhaps with some work it could be fixed, but it was in no position to set out for sea again at this state, and certainly not in the next couple of days.

“You go find us dry firewood, and something to eat,” Suzy ended up saying after a moment of silence had reigned between them, and she must have seen the frown appearing upon Taemin’s features, as she broke into a smile. “I will stay here and make us a shelter. See how fair that is?”

“I say flip it around,” he told her, brushing strands of slowly drying hair out of his eyes with an impatient hand. “You will go look for firewood and food, and I will stay here and make us shelter.” Inwardly he mused that it was not as though he would benefit from any food the island was able to offer, after all. Sans the living, breathing vessel of life that made out Suzy, and he carefully chose to keep his mind away from those trails of thoughts and hungry temptations.

“Let’s play on it,” she said, at once holding out her hand, closed as a fist.

“… Are you serious?” he asked in askance, but despite the manner in which he said it, there must have been some part of his twisted mind to which it appealed. For holding out his own hand he was, closed as a fist and coaxing a grin onto Suzy’s lips. “You lose, we switch,” he muttered out, before they played their game of rock, scissors, paper.

Scissors, he chose.

Menelaus: my character gets something precious stolen from them by yours.

☥ It was a game for two, but one which had a solitary winner. A game which had its ending already written by the ages, yet it was lain down with words so ancient that the tall, young man who so foolishly walked into it, could not possibly guess their answer. So there they were: two men, facing one another, both so proud and sure they held control firmly by the reins. “Are you disappointed yet?” Choi Minho asked, his voice a deep resonance that needed little volume to carry. His eyes were unyielding, gazing steady, framed by eyelashes long and dark—he would have thought them meant for a woman, had he not been handsome enough to dispute any claims of confused genders.

“My only disappointment is that you are there,” Francesco admitted, though it was said so lofty, light and casual, as glimmering in the dark, bottomless lakes of his eyes there lay amusement, “and not here.” His lips curled into an impish smile, reminiscing that of a mischievous child as he gestured quietly, for the ground a mere feet before him.

“You think I’m that easy?” Minho scoffed and played along, oh what a curious mouse for the cat was he.

“Whatever could you take my invitation for?”“It’s obvious,” he claimed.

“Then if it is obvious, why not tell me, so that I might know too?” Francesco queried, the words soft velvet teases passing his lips as his eyes remained unwavering upon the others. A staring match, unrivalled by distractions around them; it was night and most were deep in slumber, the strings of streetlamps along roads their illumination. But that was not the game with the high stakes; it was the scapegoat which made the board upon which the battle for control was already at large. Had Minho cared to try look away, he might have found he could not do so. Had he tried to walk away, he would find his reasons for doing so diminishing quickly, second by second, draining from his reasoning. In his mind, logic and inhibitions were thwarted; his control, gently stolen… something so precious, withered in the face of death.

“You want me,” the altered mind of the handsome mortal conjured, as without his own notice, steps were taken forth, one after another bringing him closer to Francesco, the boy who was not a boy, the abnormality which did not care for the wine of Jesu, but the blood of man, God’s image.

“I do,” he confirmed softly, taking a step forward himself, greeting him with pale hands, unbuttoning the top button of the man’s shirt.

“Have me,” that voice, deep and once so sure, succumbed without a hitch to leave a mark on his memory. He had lost what he held onto so dearly, that which he had tried to cling to by hiding behind an Internet persona; the absolute control of how you are presented. Within the grasp of the devious sin that made out Francesco, he was rendered to naught but a puppet, for the simplest of reasons: To feed that which could not sustain without acts unholy.