#codecerberus

this is almost all too familiar to a time once remembered fondly, leaves and dirt crunching underfoot, breaths ragged and moonlight and shadow weaving through the trees; wild things running. wild things almost free.

this is different - more snow, more limping from the smaller boy, breaths more haggard from the taller of the two; reminders that things aren’t what they used to be, running from authority with laughter on lips and camaraderie made in the midst of stray bullets.

“carter - !” he calls out, voice strange as a small thing, unfamiliar even to his own ears. steps are slower than his companion’s, burns charring skin and leaving him more soot than silver in the night. “they’re coming - quick - this way!”

(footsteps behind them are sounding too close for comfort, and hearts are beating out of chests; blame easy to put on a thing made of bruised knuckles and sharp words, blame easy to put on mischief-wrapped things made of devious grins and too-smooth sidesteps to questions raised) 

boy pulls his friend into a snowbank, tucks him into shallow burrows made from fallen trees and winters ignorant to their still-growing; small covers of snow and shadow. lets tails blossom from skin, cocooning the two in the soft whites, pure as snow outside. looks too ragged when he looks up at carter again, grin but a ghost.

“safe here, for now.” he’s breathing too hard, dim sparks in eyes barely there now. “think you can hold back your howls?”

“you’ve got to be fucking with me.” the boy deadpans, silver hair swaying when he tilts his head to look at his friend, set jaw and hard eyes betraying the usual air of nonchalance that he wears so easily. 

the boy is hardly one to help with the barricade - it is easy to say that fox-faced things run on small rebellions, but only of his own. fighting skin and the shadows curving on it. snapping at caged bars just to see if teeth can tear through metal. there is no organized chaos, no alignment that the boy calls his own. as expected from feral things, surely.

“so we’re saying we aren’t standing for metzger caging us in circus cages by caging ourselves inside the train?” soren asks his friends, voice wry, helping to stack furniture against the doorway halfheartedly for the sake of being difficult to metzger alone. 

“you know they’re gonna be pointing and jeering either way - leave or stay, doesn’t change a thing, least if we’re outside, it’ll be easy for them to know what kind of monster they’re calling for when i’m halfway done with ‘em.” 

It takes a number of drinks until Li Hua can settle into the skin she has donned—hair curled around her face and pinned back at the temples, dress clinging to her, shimmering like low light on a lake, lips painted boldly—perfectly filled in by Shahrzad’s hand with lipstick stolen off Arcine’s vanity. She’s unused to being dressed this way, every part of her accentuated, drawn out. It’s not insecurity—but unfamiliarity, like seeing someone else all together.

Only when her feet feel almost impossibly lighter, lips looser around her teeth, stomach slightly aflutter—three glasses or four?—that she lets go of the stutter in her step, the way her eyes catch glimpses of herself in every surface.

She beams at the world, tips the last of her drink into her mouth—carelessly walking to and fro, young and girlish and lost in the crowd without a direction, without anything to do but simply be.

(Is this paradise? Of course not, just a simple clause set off from the rest of her time at the Menagerie—the camera doesn’t pan to the cages lining the gilded ballroom walls—but they’re there all the same, just not in what her eyes focus on, not what matters right this very moment with the champagne haze floating through her.)

Through a small group of guests, she catches a glimpse of Carter—recognizes him by the set of his shoulders, the sound of his voice as it filters through the music—and she crosses the room towards him, sauntering up playfully. Li Hua cocks her head, finger plucking at his pocket square, before brushing over his lapel, “Look at you, Carter!” A small laugh rising out of her chest before she even knows its there, eyes crinkling, “You sure clean up well—shame this outfit doesn’t have a big denim jacket for me,” a facetious little pout, followed by grin as she looks up towards him, the chandelier light glimmering on her, strings and brass working out a melody in the backdrop.

(Paradise, perhaps? The way the lights shine on him it makes her think so for the briefest of moments.) 

leave a brotp/platonic ship in my ask and i’ll tell you: 

who steals french fries off the other’s plate

all of the above, that’s why when one orders they always order enough for all three of them jwekgkwe

who jokingly moves in for the kiss when someone asks if they’re a couplewe aren’t dealing with jin and his shotgun today wjegjwe no one’s making a move in but you’re getting a lot of scrunched up noses and triple chins of disgust instead

who has to bust or bail the other out of jailemme likely busting carter and soren out of jail, though they’ve probably all sat in one cell together before. probably right after they called emme and she thought helping them out meant keeping them company in there 

who gives the other advice/comfort about dating issueswe only play emotionally constipated characters here, they’re all a Mess when it comes to dating issues if carter talks about li hua soren’s screaming and if soren talks about bap emme’s screaming and if emme talks about anyone both carter, soren, and half the circus is screaming tbfh

who shamelessly cheats at games by reaching over to cover the other’s eyescarter and soren devise tactics to tackle emme when they suspect her of cheating, which is to say always. it’s not a game unless she gets bowled over at least once. 

who immediately calls dibs on the top bunkemme and soren would probably fight for it tbh

who starts and who wins the pillow fightsthey all start, no one wins. what matters is that there’s a broken lamp on the floor and more feather than pillow leftover when they’re done with it all

menagerie moodboards  |  soren x carter

he doesn’t know how or why, but soren finds himself in front of aladdin’s cage - or what was aladdin’s cage - in the dead of the night, letting the shadows of the bars loom over him. 

he doesn’t know sentiment, please remember, no possession to call his own, nobody to call his own - not even his own, not since birth, not since arriving here.

(and even if he knew of it, god knows this cage wouldn’t be it) 

“it’s gonna be kinda weird, don’t you think?” soren asks, eyes not leaving the gaze it held towards the corners of the cage but still recognizing the presence next to him. “not having aladdin across from us ramming his big old head against the cage during our shifts. we never did figure out if he was trying to do morse with us.” 

he smiles at carter, though it falters, though he won’t say it is.

“’s stupid to have thought he left for good, huh? though if any one of us would’ve been able to, it would’ve been him with his fucking frankenstein ass... whatever mix of things he was.”