crestal downfalls [ shingeki no kyojin ]

⌜ five ⌟

⌜ five ⌟

and i can have all the power
this world might allow me to,
but none of it would matter if i can't have you

TW: sexual assault, violence

— x —

HOPE IS ONLY EVER PROFOUND when you choose it to be, only ever enough to keep you from falling to pieces at the seams when you let it bloom rather than wither away.

One too many times has Astera found herself making the mistake of watching it rot and die down. She'd wanted it to flourish, wanted nothing more than to soar in the feeling so full of it, but when life had other plans in store, she thought there to be the only option of abandoning it. Resigning herself to an aimless drift in an ashen world of aimless dreams.

Only, she found that she could not.

Some arbitrary part of her recognized the helplessness and fed to it like wood fuelled fire, but the embers of hope kept alive instead. No matter how prepared she was to see them extinguished, they triumphed over her despair, willed her nowhere else but forward. Forward and forward, until she would reach a crossroad again and feel the need to slow down.

Astera always had a penchant for going at a tantalizing pace, keeping up the back-and-forth chase where she'd snatch ahold of her hopes only to let them go again, but it would seem to subside a little bit more each time.

Until gone was the choice of giving up so soon, swept away by the relentless wind like it never once existed—like it had never been a choice at all.

She cradled her hope in the palms of her hands, loose, delicate. She was afraid it would disappear the minute she held it any tighter, that it would crack into pieces more jagged than the shards of her own heart. She held it like a lifeline.

Her hope was porcelain smooth, flawless. Cold to the touch when she regarded it with denial, but it warmed up when she opened herself up to it, tore her little game of masquerade apart ( i'm fine! she'd say, but when she cried, it was never born from happiness ) and she laid herself bare before the onslaught of light, a million ways unlike the hail of darkness she'd been expecting.

Right now, her hope is profound. But it isn't because she's chosen it to be, no. That isn't the case this time.

Like the whole of Jupiter's godly wrath flowing through untainted mortal veins: that's about as close as Astera can get to describing the sensation that abruptly consumes her when her eyes finally open.