#gravityslingshot

The soldier blinks.

Words are taken in, processed like input typed into a computer and an answer spit out with no more human thought:

"I am here."

Elaine jerked from sleep as the dream of alert bells jingling in the forest sounded. It had been those bells that had brought them into her life. Body tense still. There's still no gauging on if this man in the tiara wants to do with her. Fuck her, kill her, or convert her to whatever fucked up religion it was they held loyalty towards. She was still trying to put a finger on it. Was it Satan or was their loyalty to Jimmy himself?

Head pounded in waves of pain, silently her body informing her the effect from the stress of so much guessing and second guessing.

It had only been one night with this group -- most younger than herself and their leader, all born after the initial infection.

Sitting up from her place on the floor, a hand instantly went to her temples in halfhearted attempt to will the oncoming migraine away. There, she saw him. Had he been waiting for her to wake?

                       Words  tug  at  his  heart.  Joseph  doesn't  blame  her  for  not  remembering.  In  fact,  he  blames  himself  for  it,  more  so.  'How  could  I  have  been  so  fucking  stupid  ??'  he  had  asked  himself  while  scooping  up  the  broken  pieces  of  her  emanator.  He  had  cried,  he  had  been  crying...  but  not  in  front  of  her.  At  least  not  now,  though  there's  evidence  still  left  on  his  face  from  it.

                        He  had  found  someone  who  could  put  her  back  together.  He  took  her,  fixed  her,  and  she  doesn't  remember  anything.  God,  how  he  could  cry  again.  The  world  had  been  so  cruel  to  him,  and  he  asked  for  nothing  of  it  except  her.

Prompts from HEX | accepting

The words give her pause. There is something close to irritation in the Sovereign's voice — dismissal, disinterest, disdain. Maybe he feels as though he doesn't truly belong anywhere. He was made to be a weapon, created to kill the same people he now calls family. He has tasted grief and loss and pain, but he is still made of gold. The air around him is still charged with pride.

She is calm. She almost always is, but Adam refuses to listen. Still, Mantis speaks to him patiently, sitting with him in Rocket's apartment. The rest of Knowhere seems to be tucked away.

"Adam," she begins, softly, slowly. "You are part of a team now. You are supposed to do whatever Rocket tells you to do. He is your Captain. If you keep disobeying him during missions, you will only put yourself and the team in danger."

Admittedly, Mantis is relieved that she is no longer part of the team. Not because she has stopped caring about the Guardians (she cares and she always will, she loves them more than she loves all the stars in the sky), but because being a mercenary made her skin crawl. Each wound she inflicted left an echo in her own flesh. Each life she took killed something in her.

“They're all chrome,” he says, and means it.

He looks up because she asked him to, because she's looking at him like the answer matters, like he matters, and the sky above the Wasteland is enormous and cold and full of burning things that don't care whether War Boys live or die. He knows that. He's always known that. But tonight the knowing sits different in his chest.

His eyes track the scatter of light. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. More than he has words for.

He thinks of Valhalla. About what the older boys used to say when the sickness came for someone too soon— half-life, half-life, he burned so bright— and how it was supposed to be comfort but never quite was. He used to believe in that. The burning. The glory. The witnessing.

He tries again.

“There's one,” and lifts a hand, the fingers still wrapped in cloth where the wound hasn't finished closing, points; “That one, right there— d'you see it? Brighter n’ the rest.”

He doesn't know its name. He never learned names for stars. The Imperator probably knows. She knows the kind of things that get passed down from mothers to daughters, from green places to memory, and he knows the kind of things that get passed down from War Boys to War Boys, which is mostly how to die well and not much else.

But he keeps his finger up. Keeps pointing. Because she asked.

IWTV SEASON TWO SENTENCE STARTERS // accepting

@gravityslingshot: ❛ Picked another one over me! ❜. Jack sparrow @ Elizabeth

Careful eyes study the man in front of her. It could be difficult at times to decipher when Jack was serious - so often with him, the truth was hidden behind jokes and quips and outright lies. But beneath it all, there was real emotion.

@gravityslingshot sent:

❛ if you can’t afford to look human, you’re going to the farm. it’s as simple as that. ❜ Kraglin for doomguy

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

His tongue clicks against the backs of his teeth, the sound is muted by the helmet of his suit though, however despite that the way his eyes narrow at the other man from behind his visor kind of give away that he's not too happy about what's said. His arms fold over his chest then and he snorts, that's a sound that actually escapes the confines of his helmet.

River should probably care more about the impending failure of their mission. Whereby mission was perhaps too grand a word for anything Slough House was involved with. And who could really care when the soft blue light from the aquarium cast such beautiful reflections on Sid's face. When she was still giving him that smirk after stuffing his head into this silly clown fish hat. Although it might give him a headache later. He's done more embarrassing things to impress women.