#justbrcathe

The city still smelled of ash and smoldering cinder when she awoke; bodies lined the street, broken walls, shattered windows, and cracked floors, left shards of stone, glass, and wood strewn across the roads. There remained a giant, dead, brain floating in the harbor. Joy and grief mingled in the volatile air. Basil had spent the entire day at the Elfsong literally sleeping off the battle and her exhaustion from the previous night. The sun was setting, adding to the confusion of her foggy mind and blurred thoughts. She could hear the energy of the street, repairs already beginning, shouting, mixed celebration. For nearly a quarter of a clock she laid in bed, something unusual for her, and cleared her mind. So much happened the night prior; so much remained to be done. Healing, rebuilding, helping; yet, tentative hope lingered in her realizing that for the first time in months her mind was completely her own. No tadpole, no mindflayer, no one else. It was exhilarating, and lonely. She could return to her old life of wandering and prayer, vanish back into the crowds; but deep in her heart, Basil knew that was impossible. Life would never be the same again.

But that could be a good thing.

After a time of lazing about, she got up, dressed in her usual tunic and picked up her staff, before heading downstairs to have a light meal at the tavern. On the house, for saving the city from mindflayers, of course. Once on the street, Basil picked her way across town. She healed the injured she came across and prayed with the mourning. IF she was recognized, she was hailed as a hero. An idea which Basil humbly downplay. About an hour later, she finally walked into Sorcerous Sundries. The visit had a selfish character: she wanted to check on her friends. On the bottom floor, she met with Cal and Lia who happily explained to her that hiding out in a tower full of wizards was a very safe place to be during a mind flayer invasion. But there were a few injuries among the magic casters that could stand to be looked at. Basil provided her talents as needed and then asked after their brother. "Oh, Rolan is upstairs." "You should check on him, he's holed himself up again." So, Basil climbed the steps to the second floor and took the portal to the tower.

High above the city, the tower was quiet and dark except for the magic lights in the wall sconces, cutting soft shadows across the stone work. A refuge from the smog and the blood and the violence. Basil drunk in the fresh air and the silence. Until she caught sight of Rolan at his desk, hunched over, and ever at work. She couldn't help but to smile. He noticed her a moment later. When their eyes met, relief flooded into Basil. It was like a storm finally breaking, trading grey clouds for blue skies. The pressure and static tension of the air washing away to the warm relief of a summer's day. All the fear and pain was over, it was over. She crossed the distance between them, meeting him half across the tower, and wrapped her arms around him. Basil pressed her nose into his neck and then pulled back, holding Rolan at arm's length.

Peeta kept himself guarded, always. He rarely let people in, rarely let himself hope. Before the reaping, he had known the expectations that were laid on his shoulders. Be paired with an acceptable wife, if he was lucky learn the trade of her family, if he was extremely lucky they would align enough to not be miserable, and then he'd fade into obscurity.

But her voice called out above the rest. Katniss Everdeen. Volunteering to save her sister. It ached somewhere inside him. The girl with the voice who could make the birds stop and listen. The girl who brought so much to the district. The girl who would die to save those she loved. Peeta noticed her, quiet observations, trying not to let her fill his mind too much. But then his name was called.

It startled him. Not impossible but improbable to say the least. And the dead silence that followed. Katniss received a send off, but crickets when Peeta took his place beside her. He understood. Understood even with the void of impending doom staring him down. He steeled his jaw, furiously wiped the well of tears away and started plotting.

But Katniss...Katniss and Haymitch had their own plans. Plans to save him. When the scrawling of her words etched across his ribs, he hadn't even felt it. No rushing warmth people mentioned when their soulmates words appeared. No, just the throb of his pulse weakening at the wound up his leg.

It was after the feast, after he woke up and his cognition came back that he noticed it. Everything changed in that moment. He had a soulmate and it was Katniss Everdeen. Yes, they were in the arena, but victory was in reach, and the promise they could both go home together.

Until it all fell apart.

She played the game, played the Capitol, played him. The way it felt like getting the wind knocked out of him by a knife in the chest, twisting. He'd felt pain before. But the it's the hope that really kills. The weeks before the Victory Tour, Peeta had iced her out. Mulling it over in his mind again and again. Fear, anger, frustration, nightmares all clouding his judgement. He couldn't face her yet. Not with her words etched into his skin as a reminder of what never really was. But it wasn't her fault. He knew that.

As his anger and hurt subsided, his embarrassment grew. He still couldn't approach her. Not when he was too afraid that he was going to say or do the wrong thing. So he mulled it over again and again. What he'd say, the different scenarios of her responses, how he'd reply to those.

@justbrcathe for Diana

She had been watching the woman from afar. Hiding in the shadows, blending in as if she were one herself. Silently stalking and observing, because the woman was different. She was unsure as to how, exactly, but knew that, without a doubt, the woman was. Something in the way she held herself. In the way her body spoke as she moved. The fluidity and grace and strength of some kind of fighter, she thought—but not a soldier.

Not a weapon.

She knew the moment she had been noticed. Heard it in the woman’s tone, in the way she called out, saying come out, face me, with her tone, despite not seeming to know where exactly to look. Saw the unhappy, suspicious, ready to fight in her body, etched into her expression.

it’s  not  often  that  batman  takes  him  up  to  the  watchtower,  preferring  to  leave  him  back  in  gotham  to  do  casework.  but  this  time,  he’s  pretty  sure  he’s  being  babysat.  bruce  has  been  overbearing  since  his  last  accident.  he’s  made  sure  tim  has  the  easier  patrols  or  is  paired  up  with  someone  else,  usually  him.  he  knows  why,  of  course.  a  warehouse,  an  explosion…  it  probably  hits  close  to  home.  

luckily  for  him,  superman  had  dragged  him  off  to  the  control  room  to  talk  about…  something.  and  batman  had  gestured  for  him  to  stay  behind.  

which  meant  he  was  now  wandering  around  the  watchtower,  taking  it  in  curiously.  he  avoids  the  main  areas,  mentally  mapping  out  the  less  traveled  areas  as  he  goes.  there’s  so  many  empty  rooms,  so  many  miscellaneous  storage  rooms.  he’s  pretty  sure  he  stumbled  across  three  workout  rooms.  but  it's  on  a  random  observation  deck  that  he  finds  his  project  for  the  evening.  there’s  a  console  there,  the  screen  flickering  oddly.  

"How could I not tell?" she replied Duri's question with a low voice, carrying a hint of sorrow. "It's in the way your shoulders carry a weight you can’t explain to others, the way your eyes flicker with guilt before you even understand why. It’s in the way you hesitate, like every choice feels heavier than it should." She paused, studying Duri with an intensity that could cut through stone.

"I’ve seen it before. Abdel had that same look — the one that screams you’re at war with yourself. A fight you didn’t ask for, against a darkness that whispers it owns you. And you don’t just see something like that once and forget it. No. I’d recognize it anywhere." Her tone grew firmer, unshakable. "But I’ll tell you what I told him: you are not defined by the blood in your veins or the shadows clawing at your soul. You can fight it — and win."

“He resisted? He was good?”

There was no short answer to this. Not an easy one. Jaheira’s jaw tightened as the memory clawed its way to the surface, unbidden and sharp as a dagger’s edge. She could still feel the heat of the fire she’d summoned to defend herself, the scorch of betrayal hotter than the flames. Abdel, in his worst moments, was not the hero she’d fought beside but a creature consumed by his father’s curse — the Slayer's claws as merciless as the rage in his eyes. He’d struck her once, a blow meant for an enemy, and in that instant, it wasn’t pain that gripped her but a bone-deep sorrow. She had called his name, pleaded for him to return to himself, but all she’d seen was the shadow of Bhaal twisting his features. It wasn’t Abdel who attacked her — it was what the Lord of Murder had tried to make him become. And yet, even then, she’d never stopped believing in the man buried beneath the monster.

"He was a hero," Jaheira started, a smile forming on her lips despite the heaviness in her heart. The kind of smile that came with a thousand memories — each one a piece of someone no longer there. "He was kind, selfless, and — by the gods — so stubborn. He fought tooth and nail to forge his own path, to stand apart from what was expected of him. And he did."

Her voice faltered for a moment, her gaze drifting toward the horizon, where the sun dipped low, painting the world in hues of gold and red. "He wasn’t perfect. No one ever is. But Abdel made a choice every single day. He didn’t have to, you know. It would’ve been easier to give in, to become what everyone feared. What his father expected. But he didn’t."

Jaheira turned back to Duri. "That’s the thing, Duri. Blood doesn’t define you. Not the blood of gods, not the blood of devils, not even the blood you spill. What defines you is the choice you make with every breath you take. Abdel proved that. He lived it."

Her hand reached out, resting lightly on Duri’s shoulder, firm but comforting. "It won’t be easy. It never is. But you don’t have to walk this path alone. I’ll be here." The unspoken part burned in her chest like a brand: because Bhaal be damned. If Jaheira had her way, the Lord of Murder would never claim another soul. Not one. Not ever.

Water lapped at the sides of the boot, a steady current, carrying them to shore on a gentle Western wind. Sea birds hovered on warm up currents drifting in from the cliffs, black shapes on a cloudless sky, and their bodies turned into narrow darts as they dove into the water in search of prey. The sky was blue, the ocean was blue, and their wind full sails were blue; their fleet of wood and cloth, mingling with the red flags and iron flanks of the Fire Navy ships escorting them into the Fire Lord's harbor, on their way to the Caldera, the Capital of the Fire Nation. Katara stood at the port side, watching the Watch Towers watch them as they sailed past. She could see equal unease and wonder in the faces of tribe: warriors, elders, the curious, and the diplomatic. She reflected that less than six months ago Katara had been apart of invading force in this very bay, and now they were escorted guests. Her father laid his hand on her shoulder and Katara looked-up to see mirrored trepidation, yet hope. She smiled and he smiled back, and remarked that 'things change, don't they?' To which Katara agreed, that yes, they did.

A welcoming party lined-up to greet them at the plaza. Men and women in elaborate red-black robes, servants, carriages with ostrich horses. Soldiers helped bring the ship in to port, assisting the Water Tribe sailors in tying down their boats and putting out the gangways. She disembarked in a shuffling line of bodies, following the chief and elders onto the dock. Then, she nudged her way to the front of the pack to join her father as Fire Nation officials graciously ushered them out into the plaza to meet the Fire Lord.

When Katara caught sight of Zuko, flanked by various ministers and nobles, and dressed in a formal robe, a grin split her face. She hadn't seen him since she left the Fire Nation, although they had exchanged messages, and letters. Katara stood at her father's elbow through a formal greeting, introduction, and gift exchange, a deft combination of Fire Nation and Southern Water Tribe ritual. Signs of diplomacy and peace, culminating in the Fire Lord clasping elbows warmly with Katara's father. At the end of the brief ceremony they were directed towards the carriages that would carry them up into the Caldera and to the palace. The spell of formality, at least to Katara, seemed to break as her tribe departed. Thus, she didn't hesitate to take her chance.

Basil awoke with a dagger between her ribs.

Splitting pain, piercing deep into the cavity of her diaphragm just center left of her sternum. Heat, blood, agony, the startled intake of cracked breath, she could not scream for her punctured lungs. Weight laid heavy on her thighs, body warm; cicadas cried for her. In a bloodied haze, she saw the stars, cold eyes. Steel severing flesh and tendon, and delicate skin, the fabric dragged into the wound. But in the same gurgling gasp of death, life claimed Basil. The deep well of energy and light, welling within her to meet in force the cold grip of darkness. She grasped at the wrist which plunged the blade into her chest and threw out her other hand in a blind shove. Light flashed at her finger tips, a radiant, brilliant glow that smashed into her assailant. The flash blinded her, the weight went off her legs, thrown away. Basil rolled onto her hip, choking, blood seeping between her lips as she exsanguinated. Pumping blood from arteries and veins into the cavity of her chest, oh, yes, she knew all the visceral science and reality of her condition. If she were anyone else, she would be dead in a minute. Unconscious before then.

She grasped the hilt of the knife, heel pressing into the fabric of her bed roll, and her body clung to the blood, pulling it in, gripping it as though desperate to hold on. Basil yanked it out with a growled snarl of pain. She barred her teeth like a rabid animal, blinking, eyes clearing. Laid out before her was, of all people, Duri, thrown onto her back side by the force of Basil's magic. Her clothes bloodied and skin of chest, and face, singed by the radiance. Basil panted, pushing up onto her knees. Pale blue light, gentle as the moon sailing overhead settled into the deepest well of her wound and did its work. Knitting together tendon and vein, repairing flesh-to-flesh, easing the bleeding which soaked Basil's shirt and hands. She looked down at the knife still in her grip.

Duri, had, stabbed her with this?

Basil pushed to her feet. She had set her bedroll far enough from the others, near the river, that their scuffle had not awoken anyone. The camp was still, it was just them, bloody and exposed beneath the stars. The water rolled. She licked her lips, composed herself.

Random OC NSFW Asks

You didn't specify muse, so, I'm going to do both Astarion and Basil. It's my blog and I do what I want.

Basil

Is a biter. She bites. Depending on the partner she may settle for kissing/ sucking on their neck or shoulder; graduate up to scraping her teeth; and if they're into it/ the right kind of person, straight up just biting them. It comes from a desire to mark her partner and to be closer, literally get her teeth into them. It's almost primal for her, probably an amount of oral fixation of some type, instead of any sadism on her part. She's not out to cause pain and because of that, this trait doesn't really come out unless invited/ discussed. Might look like: Basil kissing your knuckles then nibbling on your hand, biting you to muffle herself, or nipping your lip, or jaw, to tease you. She also likes being bit. That is 100% masochism. Basil likes it when it hurts a bit, or a lot.

Astarion