#altarshine

princess bride. / accepting. / @fevergrow​

        ❛ oh! ❜ she gasps dramatically, a hand flying pressed against her heart as she gazes at her boyfriend as the other flies up to her mouth. she fixes him with a look so flattered, as though he had just uttered words of the most beautiful poetry in the world to her, green eyes even slowly filling with falsified happy tears. ❛ babe.... ❜ she breathes, moving her hand from her mouth to join the other to grasp at her heart, wonder and love thick in her voice.  ❛ you really mean that? ❜ she stares down at her chest, before glancing back up at him, voice sot with awe.

chilling adventures. / accepting. / @fevergrow​

         ❛ you know, you’ve never been a coward, dem. ❜ she’s unsure what name to call her, now ( is she mordema or demitria? idly, blue wonders when those became two different people in her head ), and she consider herself lucky that the nickname applies to them both. they’ve all changed since the explosions, and not just in the obvious sense, but it seems to blue like something must be targeting her, considering the two biggest changes she’s noticed have been in her two best friends. obviously what’s happening to ledoux isn’t his fault in the slightest, but — it still happened, as awful as she feels thinking it.

         and then there’s demi — or dema, now. as subtle the change, it’s still there. she seems almost happier, now, and blue can understand that. she’s away from her mom, finally, and she knows first hand how liberating it can feel to finally feel like, for the first time, you’re in charge of your life. but there’s more changes than that happening in her best friend, and she’s worried about just how far she’s planning to go. the two of them together have always been impulsive, always tried to be as fearless as possible, but there’s something … wild in her friend’s eyes now, and she’s not quite sure what to make of it. and now blue finds herself worried that she’s done it on purpose. dema isn’t trying to erase demi from her personality, is she? 

@altarshine.  /  it’s safe here.

@shotfierce.  /  i want a new face.

She’s never going to have a child of her own, but that’s not for lack of wanting one. She just knows she could never bring another person into all of this without feeling guilty. So she finds other places into which to channel that maternal instinct of hers; she looks out for her friends, she keeps an eye on their lead anchor’s niece whenever she ends up at the studio - and she cares more about Raven than she thinks the girl knows.

Her friendship with Sloane has always been an unlikely one, but she cherishes it as much as she does any other in her life. That doesn’t mean she always agrees with everything the other woman does, but she tends to understand her reasoning - to a point, at least. It is through that friendship that she’s seen Raven grow into a young woman; seen her go from the girl who’d start at the sight of her sitting in their kitchen, to the young adult pushing against the walls that had been built around her, fighting not only for herself but for her new friends. And Rita is so proud of her that she feels it swell in her chest every time she’s reminded of just how remarkable a person she’s grown into.

But truth be told, she’s always been in Raven’s corner, even before her unexpected friendship with her mother began.

She’d been eleven years old when all of this had started, spent her own teenage years living through the chaos that had been Obsidian’s beginning, and spent most of her adult life working in an industry that veered between blindly peddling the official version of events to the letter, and throwing fluff-pieces at the populace in an attempt to distract them from what was going on around them. The decade spent in print journalism had been the worst of it - and it was also where she’d been when Raven was born. She’d been there right when the public version of Raven Falco had first been constructed, and she’d hated it from that first moment; she’d also quickly developed a professional reputation for refusing to work on stories that perpetuated the use of a child as some sort of political tool.

If anything, the distaste she had for her industry’s fabrications had only grown in the time since she befriended Sloane. What had seemed awful enough to her beforehand was made a thousand times worse upon actually meeting Raven. In the years since, as she’s moved up through the ranks at ONN, she’s tried to lead by example - tried to cull personal stories from at least her network, especially ones that would be more at home in the pages of J-14.

But in the aftermath of her personal life’s spectacular implosion, she’s dropped the ball on that somewhat. She’s dropped the ball on... Everything, the pieces of the life she’d had running through her hands like sand faster than she could pick them up. But it’s only when Phil, of all people, brings to her a story that had run the day before (when she’d not been there to stop it) - it’s only then that she realises just how badly she’s let things slide.

The guilt she feels about their part in fanning the flames of speculation surrounding Raven’s involvement with the Lost is overwhelming - that much is apparent from her expression when she catches sight of the youngest Falco. But even if she can’t quite meet her eyes, she doesn’t wait to be told whether she knows what was broadcast or not; she’s not stupid, and she knows Raven isn’t either. There’s only one thing she can do, and that’s apologise. Apologise, and hope she’ll accept it.

he feels awful for screaming.

he knows that he can't help it, because damn if he hasn't been having the worst nightmares of his l i f e since he started hanging out around falco towers so often. he figures it could be worse - it could be someone else getting hurt in the nightmares, or someone else could be waking up with burning chest pain. he'd rather it be him than anyone else. at least he can manage waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. ( it’s kind of like that one time he had a concussion. don’t ask him about that, he’ll talk about it for ages. ) 

of course, he never intended to wake up half of the house with him, but, to be fair, he never intended on even being in the tower in the first place, so he can't really be blamed for that. he only really comes here to hang around with zahara - sometimes tink or raven too, but usually he’s only invited around when zahara wants him there. 

he wouldn’t ever think to go to falco towers without her around. he’d sooner throw himself back into that dungeon.

he thinks things would be much easier if he had just stayed with zahara, but she and sloane were doing... "girl things"? he doesn't really know what that means other than "you have to sleep somewhere else, jag". so, he was asleep on the couch, but then his brain went into overdrive, and suddenly, he was back in the basement that was just under his feet, jesus christ.

still, though. he feels like a real shit for waking anyone up. especially someone like raven that could probably use just about as much sleep as she can get. he forces himself out of the awkward, couch-dwelling position that he fell asleep in in order to at least look a little presentable. which he thinks he's managing pretty well, seeing as he's not wearing a shirt and fell asleep in his jeans.

"hey, i-"

( he pauses. clears his throat. does he sound upset? he hopes not. maybe that crack just sounded like he choked a little. )

kiss meme. / accepting. / @fevergrow

05. a desperate kiss .

         it’s too loud.

         her heartbeat is pounding too loud, too loud, too loudly in her ears and the sounds of the fight, of skin hitting skin, and bone cracking against bone, and of people in pain ( of ledoux in pain ) swirling around her are twisting into each other and blending together, a wall of noise crushing her down onto her place on the ground.

         her eyes are shut tight — it’s too dark out to really see what’s happening anyway, and she’s not sure she’d really want to. the last thing she’d seen before her eyes had shut of their own volition was the silver glint of sharp metal clutched tight in the hand of the man in front of ledoux, and just thinking about it now makes her stomach turn and desperately want to check if he’s okay, but still she can’t open her eyes. 

         there’s a crash of what sounds like glass, and suddenly someone’s screaming, a high piercing sound that feels like it could burst her eardrums, and it’s only when she feels the burning in her throat that realizes it’s her. 

         and then everything’s quiet. 

         she decides that maybe she prefers the roars to this. 

         hands gently brush over her arms at the same time as a soft ❛ it’s me, miss, it’s ledoux, ❜ is murmured into her ear, and suddenly she’s burrowing herself into her boyfriend’s arms, sobs practically bursting out of her throat as she whimpers his name. 

         she’s not sure how long they stay there for, but after what feels like hours, she glances up at him through her tears, and presses her lips against his, frantically trying to tug him closer. she kisses him, hard and feverish, as though if she kissed him hard enough it could erase the last half hour from existence. she starts to murmur an apology against his mouth when she starts to taste the salt of her tears between their lips, but he kisses her harder before she can finish the word.