#theixth

THE END OF A TOUR is a somewhat liminal time for an idol. tours themselves, for someone of nebulously mid-tier fame like CHIAKI, are rare enough that no matter how tired said idol is, it's outweighed by the sheer excitement of having some level of freedom when she finally gets to tokyo. between shows, chiaki has her run of the city. karaoke, visits with her family, shopping, carefully-disguised visits to bars and clubs when she can sneak away from her bodyguards, the lot of it.

it isn't one of these situations, however, that chiaki is caught up in when it happens. she's onstage, instead, at the tail end of her penultimate tokyo show.

because fuck her, right?

the visions come in flashes. here-and-gone, epileptic. and they aren't just visions — they overwhelm every sense when they overtake her. blood on her hands, in her nose, spurting. open gash. something cold and heavy in her hand. scalpel in her hand, slicing.

what it is, she realizes with a lurch of dizzying nausea, is an open cadaver underneath the sickly-white light of an operating theater. no, wait — it's too dark. where is she?

sense of a different body.

sense of a different mind.

and then, all at once, chiaki is slingshotted back from whatever the hell that was, only to find herself on the stage floor staring into the lights above — and the face of her bodyguard, concern etched into the lines of his face, as he scoops her into his arms and carries her half-conscious body offstage. what — what the hell. what the hell.

she's in the dressing room when it happens again. one second, she's working the makeup off her face with a lavender-scented wipe, still in full costume. the next, she's staring through the reflection in the mirror at an operating table that has somehow appeared in the room behind her. atop it, an open body. beside it, a woman in a mask whose skin and hair are nearly as pale as her own. there's something familiar about her sallow eyes, but chiaki can't place it through the overwhelming deluge of shock and confusion.

for a moment, she just... stares. blinks a few times, in hopes that the pale woman and her nightmare theater will go away. when it doesn't, chiaki lets the arm with the makeup wipe fall into her lap, face still half-undone. maybe all of the blood should freak her out more than it does, but she's never been terribly squeamish.

❝ are — ❞ oh. ow. sung-out throat. chiaki grimaces, shakes her head, tries again. ❝ are you real? ❞

" but that doesn't mean it's gone just yet. " from caitlyn

// she nods, leans her head against the map on the wall. it's like they're always chasing down dead ends, everytime they make progress, they end up losing track again, or they run into another wall, or they get distracted by something else.

her eyes wander over caitlyn, hesitantly, before leaning into her vision. " maybe. " , is what she says, when she smiles. " you should take a break. you've been thinking about this all evening. " maddie suggests, but she knows that caitlyn won't take it to heart.

everytime she says something genuinely caring, it falls on deaf ears. like caitlyn isn't truly here with her. like she's up in her head, up in the clouds, up somwhere entirely different. thinking about entirely different things.

Gideon tries very hard to suppress a smirk, even though she meant that comment - she really does think martinis taste like pine trees, even though she hasn't the foggiest what a pine tree tastes like, let alone looks like, she's only heard of pine trees and had them described to her, and the first time she tried a martini was five minutes ago, so it's half conjecture at this point - but somewhere between the look of death on the Tridentarian princess' face and her palms going down on the table, she fails. Miserably.

Hayden lifts the burrito to his lips taking a bite out of the wrap of egg, sausage, hashbrown, and some other tidbits. It's early in the morning and they occupy Makima's office. Hayden seems content staring out the window of the highrise and enjoying his fast-food delicacy. His comment is out of the blue.

A hand remains in his pocket, as he chews slowly. And then he swallows.

"I mean, we have enough money. Why keep doing this?"

The ninth house scion had no hopes of flushing her liver, her kidneys. By time Ianthe had gone in for a pitiful kiss, Harrowhark was too slow to dodge. She's wanted to, surely. Truly. But with a brain so catastrophically fucked up, her reflexes were the perfect scapegoat.

Her eyes remain wide open, naked horror piercing back at Tridentarius. A void of black iris, quickly warming as the nun's face paint threatened to bake right off.

Be still, love. Infidelity, to a corpse and a ghost and a body that had been with her through all of this. But flesh calls the flesh, loneliness is transferable. It seeks its level, full of violent potential.

Harrow is stunned, for once in her short life. All she can do is rest her hand on Ianthe's shoulder, yet can't bring herself to push her away.

Her brow furrowed. The event horizon is broken, the black hole is breached.

She kisses Ianthe back.

She's never kissed before. It's chaste, would be clumsy if she didn't just stay still and take it. But that's what she did to start.

⋆｡‧˚ʚ💋ɞ˚‧｡⋆ 𝐢 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧’𝐭 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐩𝐭 // dio + jinu

Maybe it's the feeling of vertigo, or maybe seeing the waves of the Honmon move beneath her feet. It could be the pain on her burns that nearly hid her patterns. Panicked brown eyes look down to her now clawed hand. It's the sudden, sharp pressure in her head that causes her to stumble. She makes it over to her vanity, hands holding onto the wood as if it would disappear.

In the midst of her vertigo, she knocks over her lamp. Without thinking, she grabs the wire with an already burning hand. She drops it into the water she was drinking to cool it. Her body lowers to the ground, a clawed hand gripping the wood as her knees hit the ground. Already half-lidded eyes close, waiting until everything stopped moving.