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my mouth hurts like hell

I want to punch my orthodontist and tear out his jaw

.... but that'd be mean, so maybe not

He didn't like pain

Next time, if you want to hurt me, please just shoot me

It’ll hurt less I think

everlark in the big 25?? crazy

Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas

Title: Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas Rating: T Characters: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel, The Knight Warnings: Mild Body Horror, Suicidal Ideology, Hurt No Comfort, Second Person POV, Nebulous Narrative, It/Its Pronouns For The Knight

Summary:

It means to set you free. There is nothing left of you to save, you think. (But you should not be thinking at all.)

Author’s Notes:

In July of last year, I read a fanfic that I became obsessed with. I basically devoured over 150k words in a single night. I couldn’t put it down. I started writing fanfiction for Hollow Knight in large because of that fic. The first one I finished was Eyes. The first one I started was this. Imagine my surprise when the author of that fic not only went on to read my works, but also became one of my dear friends.

I’ve been too scared to even tell you about this project, let alone show it to you until it was done, @dropout-ninja. Forgive me. I hope this surprise pleases you. This was originally in third person but since I’ve been experimenting more with perspectives/tenses/styles, I figured why not spend an hour converting the entire damn thing to second person.

Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas || AO3

Aloud, I Pray For Calmer Seas

It is brave, you think, looking down the line of your broken body. It is braver than you are, to stand in this place and not break under the weight of the sea. The seals hold you fast; you are chained. It does not break them immediately but instead stands to gaze up at you. It watches you with a quiet intensity. There are no words exchanged between the two of you and you are certain that is for the better: this other vessel, small and unruined by the world, is perhaps the empty creature that you should have been, and if that is the case, you will not ruin it by trying words.

You could not make them even if you wanted to. Every thought that you have is filled with sickly-sweet burning that runs so deep within that you wonder if you would ever be able to put the flame out. You are not sure that you want to, even should the opportunity arise. Is this not your punishment, after all, for your failure? Is this not what you deserve, for the masquerade that has cost your king and kingdom everything? To burn eternally? 

It inclines its head to you. It looks side-to-side, and then back up to where you hang lifelessly in chains. You are a corpse that has yet to properly rest, with little difference from the husks that wander outside and attack anyone who passes by on sight. You are certain that there will be no difference, if it should release you. You will fall upon it with your nail and it will be forced to put you out of your misery: misery that you should not have been able to feel, misery that spelled your own ruin, misery that cost Hallownest everything.

It holds up one hand. You gaze down at it, but your vision is a hazy thing, damaged from the pustules that rest over top of your eyes like a veil of sunrise. You can make out that it does not have proper fingers yet and why should it? Without your king’s light, it has never had a need to grow.

(Plants need light. You are part Root, one of three parents, and so you need it, too, in order to flourish and bloom. There is precious little of it here in Hallownest now, but once it was brilliant, pale and cool and welcoming – you remember; it was under that light that you grew, that you flourished, that you matured. It does not have that luxury.)

It touches you. You try to respond, but your legs do not work. You are numb and what movement you can manage is agonised; plagued, horrifically, by the plight of hanging for so long and with so little movement.

It is a comfort, you think, to know that when it releases you to take your place, you will be put down like the dying caricature of purity that you have always been. 

You wish that your executioner did not wear so familiar a face, though. It bears the gaze of someone you knew once and it is painful. You do not recall that face with clarity, but it brings to mind a fear you have no name for and that in and of itself is upsetting.

A word rises through your mind, and then another, and another: It is weak. 

Not the vessel before you, no. Yourself. You are weak and you are afraid. You are not brave enough to refer to yourself outside of third person in cohesive words. No, feelings and images are easier. They have always been but you do not dare call either of them to yourself.

There is something inside this one who stands before you, a titan in a diminutive shell, that is both frightening and welcoming. Cold and terrifying. Warm and inviting.

( – broken shells shattering, so very loud, against stones that defy all reason to fly, that hang heavily in the air – not you, never you, you are faster and you are stronger and you will fight your way to that light; did you push them or did they fall on their own? did it make any difference either way? do you remember? do you know? ) 

She stirs behind your eyes. You feel her, a nest of maggots writhing within your skull and seeping down through your remaining arm and into the cavity where growths linger beneath your armour and cape. You are a ruined altar on which she is worshipped.

You are the vessel.

Both the prison that contains her and the one that grants her eyes into a world that she is largely forgotten in. 

The Temple of the Black Egg is covered in wicked veining and filled with a miasma that could suffocate a lesser being: it chokes in your throat with each breath you take, soundless and heaving. You watch it. You let your gaze follow it, the quiet creature so alike to you and so different. 

It is leaving. It does not release you.

You wonder if it will come back. 

You hope that it will not. 

-

You are dreaming.

You can tell when you dream, although it is always hazy. Sometimes it is sweet memories, places you recall that remind you of a time before your imprisonment. Sometimes it is even your father the king that you see and you are at your weakest in those times.

You have prostrated yourself before a memory enough that you think that you can tell the difference. She delights in proving you wrong by unravelling them time and again, until you fray. You have not broken enough to let her free but the both of you know that it is really just a matter of time. A when, not an if. She uses those sweet memories like a lure and you bite every single time, in spite of knowing better, or perhaps – perhaps because you know better. Perhaps some part of you longs for the punishment that you know would come if you faced Him and He had to see what became of His beloved Hallownest at your tender mercies. Your failures. Your mistakes. Your flaws. 

You do not deserve compassion and you certainly do not deserve to be free. You are the cause of the ruins.

She speaks to you sometimes, to remind you of that. She also speaks to you sometimes to suggest that she would forgive you. It is a lie and you do not want her forgiveness. You do not want anything from her at all.

This dream is strange. It is not at all like the ones that you are accustomed to, where you break under tender ministrations and are reminded, time and again, that all of this could be avoided if you would just let go; if you would just release her and yourself in the process. You harbour no delusions and she does not pretend that you will live through the ordeal.

(you want to die. you want it to be over. you want the pain to stop. you were never meant to survive. that you yet live is testament to how much you have failed and how far you have fallen, how far you are still falling – falling, falling, the sounds of masks breaking, crashing against stones that are lifted into the air and float, in a place with no light but there was light, there was His light, and He was everything to you, and He made you whole and He made you strong and He would never forgive– 

forgive me forgive me forgive me

it should not have been a me –) 

Your armour is polished and shining silver. You have both of your arms. These are not things that you know to be accurate to the waking world. You are whole: the entire shining package, riddled with flaws, feelings and tainted by your own mistakes. You are the Vessel but you are not Pure and you have no voice with which to scream about the atrocities that will come as a result of this mistake. Of your mistake, for it is your fault, it could never be His. The problem lies within you, and you alone. You wish to atone. You wish to fix it. 

Why are you whole?

Why are you here?

It is not her realm, but it is golden and it glitters and you want to rip the pillars apart with claws and tendrils of void until everything below you is but dust. It is bright and you are frightened. Light is an enemy, you recognise this: light represents her. (It represents Him, too, but this is harsh light, you rationalise, and you are so, so scared–)

You think you might be screaming in your head. You think if someone could peek behind the eyes (which work, you realise belatedly: as if you never succumbed to her at all), they would find themself deafened by the words that you are not supposed to know or have, by the thoughts you were never meant to possess, and by the fear that is a tangible thing that takes the form of dawn breaking over a mountain forgotten to the annals of time. 

It changes, then. You are familiar with the manipulation of dreams and them shifting around you is not at all strange anymore. Your nail is in your hands, resting, and you stand looking down at the floor as polished black shell rolls out an ominous welcome: come to me to fail to die. Live an eternal masquerade as something you are not and know that you brought it upon yourself, that you made this choice and you would make it again and again, nothing would change, because this is what you were bred for, this is your purpose and your destiny.

You are being watched and it is not by her. 

There is movement behind you and you turn to see the other of your kind. It is back, but it is not your pathetic, broken body that it beholds this time. It sees you as you once were, as the Pure Vessel primed to fight (to lose against) the blinding light of morning.  It stops to look at you and you are overcome with conflicting feelings. You do not want it there. You do not want it to continue this folly. It can only end badly for it. And what? What ifit does win? What then? You will be free.

That is more terrifying than captivity. 

Your cage’s bars are your own making.

It turns its head down. You recognise the gesture as a bow. You understand, in that moment, two very real and agonising facts: that it is not pure either, and that it has no intentions of taking your place.

It intends to fight through you to the embodiment of fury that you hold within. It is willing to cut you down to do so, but only in dreams. This is why it left. This is why it did not release you from your confines. This is what drove it here – to this place beyond the waking world, where it faces you not in your body that will break under its nail as surely as leaves shatter under the weight of a stag, but in your strongest form. And yet – yet –

If it should succeed, it will face her, and she will hurt it, too. She will break it, as she broke you, and it will be your fault.

( – let it fall once – let it fall so close to the edge so that you did not have competition, so that He would not see – you owe it better – )

You bow back. It is only polite. You were raised by a king, by knights, in the Pale Court 

( – that should have been your home; that would have been had fate dealt you different cards. did they ever love you, could they? do you deserve to be? you do not. a failure deserves to be discarded and forgotten and that is what you are. never forget. hallownest’s blood is in your throat and you are choking on it, asphyxiating without a need to breathe; had you a mouth, you could cough it up all over the floor and have a contrast worthy of respect – you think it would be orange, though, for there is nothing left in you that is not – ) 

and you know all about manners and civility. You never needed them before. You were a statue; a pretty, elegant thing in the corner of rooms, talked over as if you were not there and you listened, you took it all in, you learned. You were not supposed to do any of those things, but osmosis trains a mind, and you have one, even though by all rights and design you should not. You would apologise for that, if you had the capability. To Him. To the thousands of your siblings dead in a place untouched by time. 

But not to the one across from you. It has a mind, too. You are not to blame for that, are you? Is it your fault, as the other weights are? Your frustration manifests in the form of a scream without sound and the armour around you is glass; it shatters, it trembles, it breaks. Time has worn through its efficiency, too. 

It dashes forward, its nail held fast, and you retaliate by raising your own. The metal sings in the quiet of the arena and the glowing white of the seals is haunting. It throws shadows over the floor. It throws shadows over you, too, and you use embrace them.

You teleport.

It does not know how to do that and you are certain that you blindside it when you launch into a forward slash.

You have not won in a very long time. You have not even come close to winning in what feels like an eternity. When did you last catch her off guard? But you have surprised it and that puts you at an advantage. You push it.

You call Soul. 

( – and who had to die to give it to you? you, who have been sapped of all of your strength, who have had it so elegantly drained from you? are you sure it is soul anymore? can you tell the difference between essence and soul any longer? would you know? is there anything left inside of you that she hasn’t ripped apart and used herself to fill in the cracks with? you writhe, you burn, you scream in silence and she cares not, she cares not –

what care has anyone for an empty, hollow thing?

the hollow knight.

you do not deserve to be called that.

you do not deserve to be remembered.

you must win. )

You use that Soul to summon tiny throwing nails that fan out around you in a crescent. Your opponent (your sibling –) dodges under them to slash at you and you raise your nail to parry. It leaps into the air, dancing as if it owns it, on wings of Soul and starlight and it soars overhead.

It slashes and it hits you; you recoil and leap away.

Nails rise up from the floor. It is prepared for that attack; it dodges artfully (it must have seen similar) before vaulting across the arena toward you. You attack again. 

It becomes a dance that should be merry; that should be therapeutic. It is not. There is screaming metal and the rising desperation within you to save it, to stop it from condemning itself to your fate, and to save yourself. You want to die, you think, but you fight like there is still life left in you because terror gives way to resolve and resolve is the one thing that has always been yours. It is the only thing she cannot steal from you, no matter how much she tries and no matter how much undulating beneath the shell her terrible light does. She cannot undo what makes you you. She cannot rewrite your core, and your core is defined by devotion.

To Him.

And now to it, though you suspect it does not know. You are fighting it, after all. You likely seem an obstacle to its eyes.

You would beg its forgiveness – you would prostrate yourself before it, too, had you the capabilities. Let the waves of the sea within its small form crash into you until you are swept away and all that makes you yourself becomes a blank slate. 

But you are a stain and you will spread your pain. There is nothing that can cleanse the sin of your existence. 

It drags on, the fight. You try to heal and spheres of soul keep it from approaching you when you focus. As the duration extends and you are forced to block more and more attacks, you become increasingly frightened, and it manifests in your void. There are tendrils now that you call sometimes, the tempered solid of your shell becoming pliable like the void that you truly are. You use them to keep it at a distance.

You land several hits. It has to heal, too. 

But in the end, you lose.

( you always lose. when was the last time you won? )

You bow your head and wait for a finishing blow. You wonder if you will awaken. You are not sure that you want to. What has the waking world ever offered you but pain? You are crippled by shame and disgust with yourself; even in your prime, before the Infection took everything from you, you are no match for this other vessel. It is what you should have been and you are nothing in comparison to the vast sea that makes up its being.

It touches your face with tiny nubs and you remember.

Oh, you remember, and you hate that you do: you know now why you fear the dark as much as the light, for the dark has every reason to be angry with you for forsaking it and it – it stands before you, a tiny form that basks a fury so deep to drown in.

It is not angry with you. (It should be.) It does not want your pain. (It should.) It is doing this for you.

You wish that it would not.

It presses its forehead to yours. It holds you and for a moment, the terrible shrieking in your mind that is your own and not hers, is silenced. You know a kind of peace that you have not recalled in so long that it feels foreign. You welcome it and lay your head against its; you touch it with the ends of your claws and the fear returns like a tidal wave. It means to ascend. Light dances over your shell and you lift your gaze skyward. You know what melody comes next: the song’s crescendo as it – your sibling, this other vessel – leaps up. 

You are waking up. You are afraid of that, too. Hope has ever been your enemy and you are a stone sinking into waters deeper than you could ever hope to understand.

You do not want it to win. You do not want it to lose. 

( you should not be wanting at all. ) 

-

You ‘wake,’ if it can even be called that. Spellwork unfurls around you like a cloak of light in the darkness. The sound of the chains that bind you into the air is sinister: they creak and groan. You allow yourself to look at them as much as your position will allow. There is a fight happening elsewhere, but you cannot see or hear it; it is connected to you, though, for the burning light within is silent and still. Occupied, instead, by another shadow, one who she does not know as well and on whom her tricks do not work.

It feels as though it lasts forever and you know the second that it is over. Your chains snap, all at once, and you tumble toward the ground, a flightless creature crippled by time and the agonies of your experience.

You land roughly. You hear your shell crack under the strain and you bow your head.

It has won. It has done what you could not, in spite of your best efforts. You will live.

But do you even want to? 

I ate the worst shrimp of my life over an hour ago and I can already feel it trying to kill me

Hey can anyone who has heds tell me if binders or corsets help with back pain? I’ve been having horrible back pain more frequently recently and I don’t have a way to ask my doctor for recommendations because I don’t have access to chat with him.

Please I’m in so much pain

I think the world is angry at me for trying to draw gay women because the second i picked up my pen i was stricken by bathroom agonies the likes of which ive never felt

Drew this to fuck with people

does anyone want to watch my helly severance edit. i don't even know how to edit but this popped into my brain fully formed so i had no choice but to make it happen

Office space: addendum

Yep... yesterday's workout did a real number on my girl muscles. I've got minor strains in my forearms, shoulders, and weirdly, thighs (which is what I get for trying to be a human jack, I guess).

I realize now that I'm reluctant to tell the men in my life "I'm sorry, I cannot physically carry this; you need to do it for me" because:

It feels sexist;

Despite all the physical changes I've experienced this year, my frame is still the same - and I worry that people will extrapolate from this that I'm still equally physically capable.

I don't know what the solution is, but I need to figure something out before too long because I'm getting really tired of these injuries...

Jingle

🎵 “The worst part of shaving as a trans girl Is when you nick your nip” 🎵

Lip service

There’s only a handful of hairs left on my top lip; everything else has been obliterated via laser hair removal and electrolysis. All the same, I get pretty self-conscious about the few surviving stragglers and run a razor over them every now and then.

I just did that now, and somehow managed to lop the top off of two hair follicles (which are of course, as is their want, bleeding profusely).

HOW?! This is like playing Minesweeper with a 5 x 5 grid and literally one mine in the bottom left corner, and still somehow hitting it on the first try!

So..forgive me you're the first person I'm ever asking anything on Tumblr (Kinda new and I usually like to describe it like hiding in the corner and just watching everything quietly and leaving likes and I love your work) but I was thinking about your concept with 141 and reader dying and the notebook. Would there ever be a case where the others stumble upon it? Whether Price forgets (somehow) to put it away or someone's in the midst of searching for something and stumbles upon it?

Again, love your work, feel free to ignore this tho

Yeah, I think this type of readers people call “lurkers” which is cool🙂‍↕️you guys are usually the backbone of the audience, I enjoy you tremendously.

And that’s a really good question, anon!

You know what? Why not turn the heat up a little more for this pot with the frogs.

I can imagine Price not exactly forgetting it somewhere but harbouring it so close to himself that people start to notice. This specific notebook is always with him — under his armoured vest and in the front pocket of his shirts, on top of the stack of documents, edge of it peeking out of his pants pocket.

It’s always there when before he didn’t carry it with him. It’s small and simple, technically it shouldn’t rise any questions but Kyle is the first who notices it. Maybe because after your death he’s so sharply attuned to everyone else on the team, it’s practically unhealthy.

Kyle who watches John fumble with the leather bound corners of the little thing and wonders…what’s inside of it? They have been all grieving but your things have been taken by them all and shared fairly.

Simon doesn’t withhold your pictures or books with your annotations. Soap doesn’t say no when Gaz asks for one of the keychains. Kyle himself lets Simon and Johnny take one of your things each. Simon takes the big oversized T-shirt and Soap whisks away one of your hoodies, clutching it hard to himself, knuckles white with tension.

(Kyle will never admit but when he walked in on Johnny in hoodie with your name and rank on the back of it his knees buckled. For a moment a traitorous part of him thought you were there. For a moment he could breathe again)

So Price keeping something of you to himself almost felt unfair. It wasn’t, of course, no, Captain had every right to grieve and mourn in a way that made it easier for him.

But-

But Kyle missed you. Everyday and every morning he’d wake up, realisations hitting him again that you aren’t coming back. You are never coming back.

You disappeared so suddenly you were now everywhere.

The unwashed cup they couldn’t bring themselves to wash, the clothes and trinkets, the books and pictures. The notebooks.

Kyle remembers how you two played games in it, drawing X’s and O’s when debrief would get too long and your brains too sluggish to keep awake without external stimulation.

Kyle remembers you writing in them, so focused you oftentimes wouldn’t notice him getting closer until he’d plop himself down in front of you, pretending to pose. Your favourite model, wasn’t he?

Kyle remembers you smiling at him, eyes flickering to his face for a moment, your gaze so impossibly soft he feels like choking and burying himself next to you.

There is a whole life ahead. Kyle isn’t sure how to live it with a hole in this chest the size of your love.

It’s a selfish thought, maybe. Maybe he is selfish.

Maybe he should have been content with what he has been given. But he wasn’t.

So now he slips the notebook off Price’s desk when the man himself is so wrecked he can’t see straight. John’s drinking got worse after your death. Not yet enough to cause disciplinary action but enough to make them all worried.

Gaz has never seen him like that.

Why were they all lucky enough to meet you but not lucky enough to save you? Would the outcome be different if one of them went with you on that deployment? Could they save you if they knew how it ends?

Could they try?

Kyle’s fingers skim over the pages, your hoodie on him and if he pretends hard enough it almost feels like a hug. It almost feels like his body heat seeping through fabric is yours. Like you were just wearing it.

Like you didn’t leave at all.

Like you are coming back.

Kyle flips through the pages, gurgling wet laughter in his throat when he notices that you have been writing Simon’s jokes down and coming up with your own. (The “just got hospitalised due to peekaboo incident. They put me in ICU” joke almost makes Kyle choke).

Some part of him gets why Price has been guarding this specific journal so hard. Why he wasn’t letting anyone else close to it, because this right here is you.

Everything that’s left of your thoughts and feelings, of your humour and love, of your plans and scribbles.

It’s tangible proof that you were here. You lived, you loved, you thought. You were there and you were a person. Their favourite person. Their beloved one.

Maybe that’s why your small note hits him harder than he could have ever expected. A small resigned “I’m not sure I fit in. I’m not sure I’m not second…or fifth best in this case. Don’t even know if I wanna talk about it. Just plain stupid” splits Kyle’s scull open and leaves him bleeding and aching and shaking.

What…what did you mean “fifth best”? Why would you say that? What- no. Nonononono. No, it’s not fair. It’s not true, it has never been true.

Kyle feels like driving back to the cemetery and wrapping his car around the poll.

Kyle feels like clawing at the ground and sobbing-sobbing-sobbing.

Kyle feels like begging.

Please, no. Please, come back. Please, let him fix it, let him tell you the truth, let him tell you.

Kyle understands why Price was guarding the journal this fiercely. Kyle is so mad he feels like demolishing John’s office and yelling until his voice is raspy useless thing, vocal cords damaged, headache pounding inside his head and he’s burning from inside out.

Kyle looks at the page, his whole core so hollowed out you could feel an echo if you’d knocked.

Kyle doesn’t know what to do because you are gone.

Because he wants to say “I’m sorry, love, I’m so sorry, I’d be better if I knew”, he wants to say “come back and scream at me, come back demand attention, come back and hurt me in return just please please come back”.

He wants to say “I love you” in a hundred different ways, he wants to kiss it better, he wants to hold you again, he wants you back, why can’t you come back, why can’t he get you back? He will change, he will do better, he will pay attention, he’s sorry, love, he’s so sorry.

Soap finds him just blankly staring at the page and he doesn’t understand at first, concern sharpening his features like one of the razors he uses for his drawing pencils.

Johnny sinks down next to him, lips pressing to Kyle’s temple, breath panting when Gaz doesn’t respond because he can’t.

He doesn’t know what to say.

How do you live knowing you may never change what already happened? How do you keep going knowing your tenderness is decaying six feet underground, that your love is springing with flowers when they should have stayed above the ground and picked them? How do you get over it? How?

Johnny’s eyes skim over the page and Gaz can feel when the realisation sinks in, when the body next to him is getting poured full with raw ache and ice sharp panic.

Johnny asks “Gaz whose journal is that”, Johnny pleads “Mate, talk to me, where did you get it?”, Johnny whimpers “Kyle tell me it’s not theirs, Kyle please, Kyle say something”.

Kyle doesn’t know what to do other than wrap himself around Soap and hold him despite the thrashing, despite the disbelieving laughter that descends into gasping for air and clawing at his back and shoulders.

Kyle doesn’t let him get out and do something stupid, like drive to the cemetery and wrap a car around the poll and curl near your gravestone.

There is an awfully loud gulp and the journal is getting carefully taken off Kyle’s lap, Simon’s fingers long and scarred — things broken too many times to grown back straight and narrow, calloused pads of his fingers catching on the paper of the notebook.

Kyle has to drag him down to them, he has to practically kick the ground from under Ghost’s feet because the man looks like he will get the shovel and get you out of the coffin.

(Kyle doesn’t want to think how Simon refused to let them bury you, how he sat with you for days, until the decomposition became evident. Kyle doesn’t want to think how Simon placed a phone in your coffin despite knowing that you are not coming back. Kyle doesn’t want to think that Simon was terrified the 4 of them might bury you alive).

Ghost looks like the sky just fell on his head, crashing his spine and grinding down his nerves. Ghost looks like he wants to cry but doesn’t know how.

Ghost looks like how they all feel.

Kyle forces the man into their cuddle pile and forces his hand to wrap around Johnny, because Soap digs his fingers into them like he’s falling-falling-falling. System crashing, bomb ticking, Rome burning down.

Funny how Ghost never understood the phrase “going mad with grief”, always felt like it was a bit of dramatisation. People die every day after all, don’t they? It’s statistically impossible to never lose a single person.

Funny how Soap gets it now perfectly. The shift of tectonic plates in his brain, the rewiring of the whole system, pain so intense he might have ash for heart now.

Funny how it’s not funny at all but Gaz still laughs, face wet when Simon tightens his grip and pulls Kyle in, letting him hide his face.

Taglist: @synthe4u