take a hike

would you let me dislocate your jaw or is this relationship doomed

they're divorced. they weren't even married. this isn't romantic. they're definitely not platonic. they're cinematic parallels. they are fighting the narrative. they slowly built their relationship. they rely and trust each other. they were aggressively thrown into this. they want to bite each other's head off. they kill for each other. they live for each other. they should kiss. they would put each other in a blender. they're insane. they don't even realise. they're fully aware it.

Augustine said blankly, "Mercy, don't do this." "You never loved him as much as I did," she said without taking her eyes from John.

The way that Mercy is the one to take this chance and how Augustine knows it makes me insane.

+Full dialogue since my writing is yeah and I omitted a little to fit it – “This is the moment. This is the chance for unlovable Mercymorn – critical Mercymorn – to show she is the most capable of her name. Every time you have said I did not understand the human heart, that I was unfeeling, that I only knew worship without adoration… Watch me, Augustine. I am the second saint to serve the King Undying. I will teach you a lesson in forgiveness.”

ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

I think most stories could benefit from having two characters whose relationship is just "those two guys" (gender neutral). Most of the time if you look for one of them you'll find both of them. They can hate each other or be the best of friends or something in-between but they just can't find that same spark with anyone else. Their relationship is best described as "do not separate them". They are fully fleshed out characters individually but if either of them are left alone without the other for any reason it feels so wrong.

The Saint of Joy and the Saint of Patience

Based on the Leyendecker painting of course

ok but PYRRHA remembers pre-resurrection G1deon so now I want an AU where Mercymorn and/or Augustine start dreaming of life before the pre-surrection. Snatches of memories of when they were two completely different people but still a matched set, a double act, determined to live and die together, and that’s where Augustine’s theory comes from. Can you imagine waking from dreams of the two of you in a completely different, unimaginable world? Dreaming of this over and over again for 10,000 years? At first the dreams appeal to Augustine because Alfred is alive in them, and then he realizes it’s before widespread necromancy, in the dreams it’s only John who has necromancy. He realizes it’s on the First House before it became First House. He sees Cristabel (have we all decided she’s the nun? I sometimes wonder if Anastasia is the nun...) is alive. He realizes the pink of Mercymorn’s hair is slightly off, slightly artificial, sometimes in the dreams he notices her dark roots growing in. But then one day he dreams of roses with teeth and he realizes these are not dreams. They’re memories.

Maybe that’s what unites Augustine & Mercymorn across enmity--maybe one night, after everyone else has gone to bed and Mercymorn is nursing a drink, Augustine lights a cigarette and tells her he’s been having dreams. And he knows she’ll listen because he tells her he’s been dreaming of Cristabel and Alfred. And these dreams--they’re dreams of life pre-resurrection. Almost as if they’re memories. And then, not letting himself feel the cold horror he’s lived with for thousands of years, he asks: is there part of the brain where memory can be wiped completely? Is it possible to erase the self without erasing scientific facts or knowledge that the self knew?

What can Mercymorn say? That memory isn’t stored just in one place? That the brain doesn’t work like that? She hates Augustine and she wants to rage at him for daring to say Cristabel’s name but if what Augustine is implying is true, if he’s right, then she’s lost Cristabel 3 times: once to the 8th fold path, once to the mass extinction, and once because John reached into her brain and took every single precious memory Mercymorn has ever had. How can you mourn a loss you didn’t even know you carried? Are you allowed to mourn this loss? Maybe not. Maybe your only option is to avenge it.

Triple quickie with God

two characters who understand each other like no one else does and therefore hurt each other like no one else can

i’m being so fucking normal about the imaginary people that i made up in my head

love when a dynamic is like. this would be deeply toxic for anyone else but considering the people involved this is actually far and away the healthiest option

Making an EVIL polycule called the POLYCRUEL too btw

john 20:8 pt 1

pt 2

pt 3