#rejectory

what if they’re actually saving you from the damage they couldn’t fix? from the emotional wreckage they couldn’t undo? from the grief they never meant to leave in your hands?

ps: but my chaotic-romantic head made up a scenario that somewhere out there, they’re trying so hard—becoming the best version of themselves while watching you grow from afar… just so you both can meet in the middle. healed, ready, steady, just in time.

MOODBOARD: frederick chilton & abel gideon.

IS THIS REAL?

Spirit has been dutifully, diligently taking the drugs Hannibal prescribed her for sixty days. The cocaine she had already prescribed herself keeps her awake until she crashes—always on her own, never again in Abigail's old room. But that isn't new.

Blood, too, isn't new. She remembers how Erik Eriksson's eyes gushed, how blood leaked almost greedily from the sockets. She remembers the piercing shriek in her head when he finally, finally died.

She doesn't hear that now. She falls to her knees on the cabin's hardwood floor and stupidly, futiley tries to scoop blood back into the woman's body via the gaping wound across her throat.

PROMPTS FROM CYBERPUNK 2077 (PART 1)

" the hell i don't. " she half wants to haul him in by his wayward scruff.

His choice communication slides a course off the heart and instead pinprick's an interlude — her gaze rocks side to side in spatial information, looking for meaning or (attempting) a settle in feeling, cutting through confusion. The results reflect to the little, and lessoning, window of time for responding back before the silence swells into something unpleasant. Even the slower baseline pace of her normal speech patterns can only go so far.

❛ Bien sûr⸺ But the capabilities of any being are too personal to be hung up on any singular aspect of someone... no? ❜

The bigger preference to get out of nonspecific conversation takes precedence over someone else leading it.

he felt the bullet enter, then exit. a clean shot. what wouldn't have dropped him were the round not a .300. through a lung, his next breath stings of iron and the taste dissuades him from getting back up. joins in with wheezing, ragged inhales and a slow slump against the wall he'd fallen beside. somewhere in the near distance, beyond the fractured scene through goggles that still try to calibrate the field, he can hear yelling. gunfire. then silence. just the shuffle of combat boots and an extra pop ! to ensure those downed stayed down.

he waits for his turn, but it doesn't come.

an hour, maybe two, he'll be able to move without labor. breathe without drowning. but they never give him an hour, maybe two. the soldier isn't meant to need it. he should have already stood. shaken off the bite. he should be moving, even if it were shallow, desperate breaths. he's not, though, and he knows that's why he feels it. grazing, at first, the contact isn't gentle once settled. under the muzzle still locked tight, scented like pennies and flooding slowly. and he knows who it is without looking. so he doesn't.

a handler, not his usual, but the one he'd been tasked with, @rejectory smells of leather, oil, and a rich aftershave he doesn't care to know the name of. nothing so distinct it can be distracting, but enough to be certain, here. sure that his own hand, snapped up to seize a wrist he could, but doesn't, break — can come with consequences. reprimands. a firm reminder where he sits on a ladder he can never see through the fog. the soldier exhales, finally, and the sound come with it is sickening. a gurgle, someone else's death rattle, but not his. it'd take more than one round, more than a full clip, for that.

@rejectory wants to [ GUIDE ]: tony guiding clint through a crowded post-press junket by a steering touch to his elbow

WELL , THIS IS UNCOMFORTABLY NEW . newly uncomfortable . whatever .

those three fingertips on his elbow barely count as a touch and yet manage to be a very prominent part of Clint's sensory system right now . like an unruly child threatening to disappear at the grocery store the second mom turns away .

feels a little bit invasive , truth be told .

his voice drops low , one look cast to Tony from the corner of his eyes . " why exactly are we steering me through here like a horse at the rodeo ? "

The cold wind bit through Joel’s coat, sharp enough to sting. Snow crunched beneath the hooves of their horses, the rhythm slow and steady as they followed the ridge line. The trees around them were stripped bare, reaching up like bones against the slate-gray sky. Dead things clinging to life.

He shifted in the saddle, joints stiff from the cold and from riding too long. Two hours, maybe more, since they’d left Jackson. The silence between him and Tommy had stretched thin but familiar. Comfortable in some ways. In others, not so much.