oddsandends | 54th ♫ | I'm begging time to stop, just a little longer

54th ♫ | I'm begging time to stop, just a little longer

(Slightly Adjusted) Shameless Shipping Meme

There's nothing wrong with wanting to play out some cute, fluffy interaction. So break out the butterflies in the stomach, the hand holding, the love confessions, the NOTICE ME SENPAIS, and all the adorableness you can stomach - no matter if if fits your character perfectly or not. It's all about characters getting comfortable with each other while being total goobers and showing love.

It's shameless, sure, but it's fun!

Comment with your character, preferences, etc.
Reply to others.
Thread and doki until your heart can doki no more.

encouragement - You can't help crushing on this person because they boost your self-worth and make you feel like you're actually a decent person!!!

first date - It's a date! Or not. Maybe you're just at the skating rink, the intergalactic space station, or the five an dine at the same time.

badass with a crush - You're badass but you kind of want to just dote on that special person.

holding hands - Such a simple act that can make your heart pound.

acting like dorks and avoiding the questions - What it says on the tin.

impress - Hey, hey. Look at me, I'm awesome!

kiss - Happy kisses, cheek kisses, angry kisses, SHUTTING YOU UP kisses.

picnics - Get close to that special person while getting some good food.

hugs - You're so nice and soft.

denial - Feelings? No way. Let me repress those bad boys.

mean - Pull their pigtails because you like them.

unusually kind - You can't help but be really nice to the one you care for.

presents - Here, I brought you this necklace. Or - Here, I brought you the head of our enemies.

don't know how to act - I like this person?! WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO OH GOD.

defending - Verbally or physically, you're standing up for your crush.

telling them - You're going to confess...if things don't keep going wrong.

proposal - You want to be with this person forever and you're going to make sure they know it!

loving smut - The smut option, full of cuteness.

family - The catchall prompt for bringing up a family together. Whether it's pregnancy, babies, adoption or four-footed and fluffy kids this is the prompt for gooey family interactions.

wildcard

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ah. Right.

[Oh, did you hear that? That was the sudden weight of half a lifetime of guilt dropping on Aran again.

So he appreciates when she keeps talking, because he isn't entirely sure what to even say to that.]

...It must have been a shock. Hearing all of that. [...] I know that it was for me.

[Which is putting it very lightly. Shattered his worldview and everything he'd held onto for years, more like.]

If there's anything you want to know about... all of that, you can ask.

It...

[ Instead of looking at Aran, Narmaya's gaze drops to her hands, loosely clasped together atop the table. ]

It felt at first as though... something in the world had changed. Things seemed to look strange or different in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Then eventually I realized the one who had changed was me. Something was... missing.

[ Something had been taken. And there was no way of getting it back.

She swallows very hard. ]

Are you sure? I've... I've wanted so badly to ask you what happened, but it... it was so...

[ If it was hard for Narmaya, then what must it have been like for Aran? Dahlia Voliere had been a hero, yes, but she had always been a distant unreachable figure. Not a fixture of their lives, a constant presence –

Not a mother. If, indeed, she had even been that to him. Narmaya can't help but wonder now if she had. ]

I don't want to make you talk of things you'd rather not go back to.

Kind of like someone pulled the rug out from under you and you're just trying not to fall, huh?

[He's speaking from personal experience there.]

You can ask. [He says it so easily, as if she isn't right. As if these aren't things he'd rather keep dead and buried. As if he wouldn't just prefer to move on and pretend none of this ever happened, even as the whole world is left reeling.] Really.

If I can help you make sense of things, even a little, that's enough.

[ For a long, long moment, Narmaya stares him down. It's not just the eyepatch rebuffing her this time. There's something so easy about his voice and the way he says it that she finds herself truly unable to tell if he's bluffing or not. But even if he is, if she withdraws now, then she might never understand the thing she's looking for, let alone find it elsewhere.

So. She'll just go ahead and ask. ]

Did any of them ever explain why? Why... all this, all the lies. All the... things they had us do, just because we believed?

[A silence follows that question.

Why.

It's the most important question in this whole mess. The only one that matters, maybe. It'd been the one at the forefront of his mind, he knows that.

Why?]

...Because they didn't think it mattered.

[It's the heart of the matter, no matter who you're talking about. Either because they didn't care about anyone else or because they thought it would just be undone.]

How much were you told? About the truth?

[ She'd known all along the answer would be something like that, but Narmaya still draws in a soft, quick breath like she's been struck. It's one thing to know something in your heart and to then have it said so plainly to your face. It hadn't mattered. None of it and none of them had ever mattered. ]

They told us the Church was... not what it had appeared to be. It was hard to make out what he was saying because he was so heartbroken. He knew more than he told us, I think, but it hurt so much to speak of it, he could hardly bear to say more than he had.

He told us that what we had called a god had been more of a beast. A living darkness. And the heroes who saved us had been... cultivating our belief, to feed this creature. And that they now had been stopped, by all of you.

It's accurate enough. Probably all that most people will need to know. The details... they aren't going to change anything for them. Not in any meaningful way.

[Better it's kept simple. Black and white, so they condemn it more easily. It's for the best.]

...Some of them believed... really believed, that it would all be for the best, eventually. That they would make things better and everything would have been worth it.

Some did too, once, before they lost their way and darkness consumed whatever good intentions they may have had.

And then some of them, they just... didn't care. They were offered things they wanted and that was enough for them.

Surely they must've known better? Of all the people to fall for the whispers of a demon... surely not...

[ She says that, of course, but as she's slowly beginning to realize, few of the heroes had ever been the people Adelheld had thought they were. Perhaps they had been, long ago, but the truth is clear enough. By the time they reached Caleigh, their heroism was but a memory, if it had ever even existed at all. ]

What would have become of us, after it all? Of Adelheld? Would we be... unnecessary?

...Adelheld as we know it wouldn't have been around anymore.

[He might as well be honest about that. Maybe it just feels like... someone is owed the information, even if the public as a whole hadn't been told.]

They were planning to remake - redo - everything, from the ground up. Why not, when you have the power of a god? They were planning to start over and make the world as they wanted it.

Why worry about Adelheld? Why worry about its people and their lives?

All of it would be undone anyway, so it wasn't actually real.

[Aran manages to lay it out very matter-of-factly. Narmaya would be forgiven for assuming that it didn't even bother him, because his voice doesn't betray even a hint of emotion.]

Just like waking up from a dream...

[ She can barely understand it, let alone accept it. Whatever they had been promised by Caleigh, the heroes had once been citizens of Adelheld themselves, born and raised her as everyone else had been. They'd lived here their whole lives – how could it be so easy to throw that all away? ]

And if they'd had their way, none of us would have known a thing. It would've been the way things had always been, with no reason to question it.

[ And as both of them know, the Church had gotten very good at manufacturing that sort of environment as it was. ]

They say Sir Ulrich was the one holding the demon inside of him, but... what about the others? Did– all of them know it was a lie?

[ She almost asks about Dahlia directly, but can't quite bring herself to say it. ]

Yeah. They knew. They each had their reasons, but...

They knew.

[She knew.]

Sorry. I know none of this is nice to hear.

No, it... it isn't something you need to apologize for. It's just a little hard to take in.

[ She's already dreading having to explain it to the children. A few of the older children seemed to have understood that something had happened even if they didn't know what. But some of the younger children, so used to their routine had asked her why there was no prayer, no mass and Narmaya still doesn't know what sort of answer to give them. ]

How have you been handling it? I've heard it all second hand, but you had to come face to face with it. It can't have been easy.

Huh?

[He's a little stunned at the question. How has he been handling it? That's...]

Don't worry about me. It's fine. [It's not.] How I'm handling this isn't something anyone should be concerned about.

Eh?

[ And Narmaya looks equally as stunned in return. ]

If you're going to talk like that, then it's exactly what we should be concerned about! You can't just... dismiss yourself like that, Aran!

I can. And I will.

[This isn't negotiable, in his mind. It is how it is and that's that.]

After the part I played in everything, how it's all affecting me is my problem and my problem alone. No one else needs to be worrying about it, it's just a waste.

There are far better things to spend that mental energy on.

[ Narmaya isn't a fool. The change in his demeanor, compared to the bright-eyed boy she'd known all those years ago, had been clear as day. She hadn't thought much more of it – after all, she's sure that she herself is hardly the girl she was back then, either. But now she starts to realize that this isn't just something on the face of it. There's a difference, much further down than Narmaya can see. ]

Aran, I...

I'm absolutely not going to accept that!

[ Uh oh. She's not yelling – in fact, she's hardly raised her voice at all – but it's a voice that absolutely means business. ]

Would you accept it, if you heard one of your companions speaking like that? Would you?

[She's not yelling, but he flinches a little at her voice anyway. It's a much more... emphatic response than he was anticipating.]

That's not--

It wouldn't exactly be the same.

[Because they're all actually, you know... good people.]

It doesn't have to be! Your feelings matter just as much here as anyone else's. And if you say you had a part to play in all this, then didn't I have a hand in it too, just the same? When Mother Clarisse left the orphanage and I took over, teaching the children all of the Church's comings and goings in her place–

Would you say the same to me?

Of course not. Never.

But the things you did for the Church and the things I did for the Church, they're... [How does he make it clear that he's irredeemable without admitting to all the things he doesn't want to talk about?] You didn't know that what you were doing wasn't right.

But me, I've always known. That the things I was doing were wrong.

I just didn't care.

And so you think suffering in silence will make up for it? Is that how you're going to atone?

[ Narmaya doesn't know what he's done. But she can imagine that something awful enough to leave a tarnish like this on his heart – if anything is left of the boy she knew as a child, then he would want to make things right any way he could. ]

No. That's ridiculous.

[He admits that, that's simple enough. Atoning like that? Honestly, now...]

I don't do any of the things I do because it's my way of atoning. I already know that's impossible. I'm not looking for any sort of redemption.

[ Narmaya opens her mouth but finds there's nothing she can say in response to his words. Perhaps it's naive or cruel of her to pretend she had anything worth saying in the first place. She falls into a troubled silence, wishing with all her heart that there was something, anything she could do.

What did they do to you, Aran? What did they make you do? ]

Then... why suffer like this? Do you truly think so little of yourself, even now?

I...

[He doesn't know how to answer that. But no one's ever really dug this deep, before. Not to this part of himself, definitely not so easily.

He almost has to laugh. He would've, maybe, in the time when that came easily to him. Because it is funny, isn't it? The way she's dragging the truth out of him? Maybe it's just... that he can't really bring himself to lie to her.

Not to her.

So he's sure to avoid eye contact, because right now, he can't quite bring himself to look at her. And...]

Hah... Yeah.

Yeah, I suppose I do.

[And he tells her the truth.]

[ And that well and truly defeats her.

Narmaya can say as many pretty things as she likes about whose fault what was or that he's just as much of a victim in this as everyone else. She could say all those things, but finds that she can't. Because they would mean nothing, less than nothing, coming from her. It's so painfully clear there is a hurt here that she doesn't understand, a wound that she is only just beginning to see the edges off. How can she say anything to him when she doesn't know a thing that's happened? She stares at him for a moment, lost for words.

But... maybe it doesn't have to be words.

After a pause pregnant with unspoken words, Narmaya carefully unknots her fingers from each other and slowly reaches a hand across the table to take hold of his. ]

I won't make you speak of things you don't wish to remember. But... if you are even half the man I knew as a young girl, then how can you think yourself worth so little? I can't accept that and I won't.

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