#I do not know how she does not succumb to the grief of it lol

[superscourge]

Before the Storm [AU drabble]

Summary: An AU where Tails is killed thanks to one of Eggman's plans going sideways, and Sonic goes off the deep end because of it. Shadow confronts him before he does something he'll regret.

Words: 891

TW: Major character death (implied)

Notes: wheeeee i dont think ive posted any sonic-related writing here before??? so this is um. scary. LOL. but i hope it's at least an interesting read <3 dont kill me im just a little guy ok

--

“What do you even think you're doing here, hedgehog?”

Sonic stopped in his tracks with a stomp when he was addressed. He didn’t turn to look at who had spoken; he knew instantly just from the voice. 

“What’s it look like?” he responded. “I’m avenging Tails. That's all there is to it. If you have an issue, then feel free to let me know once I'm done.”

Behind him, about twenty or so feet away, stood Shadow. He stared coldly at the other hedgehog. “You know I’m not going to just stand aside and let you do this, right?”

“Yeah, I figured.” Sonic shook his head a little. “I don’t get why not, though.”

Shadow narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

Sonic finally turned to face his rival, and when the two gazes met, Shadow could feel a chill slither up his spine. This…wasn’t Sonic. Not anymore.

“You lost someone important to you, right?”

Shadow’s ears perked. He wasn’t… Was he?

“She was taken from you, even. She didn't deserve it. She wasn't ready.” Sonic stared back at him, almost seeming to challenge him to deny it. “And neither were you.”

Shadow remained silent. He didn’t say a word, his expression unreadable. Sonic, figuring he’d caught him, just continued to speak. “So, I don’t get how you’re not on my side. You know what this situation is like. You lived it. You even tried to destroy the world because of it.” He waved his hand a little. “So why shouldn’t–”

“Let me tell you something.”

Sonic paused once he was interrupted. Across the way, Shadow’s expression suddenly became a bit more clear. He was angry. More than that, really–he was seething.

“The difference between our situations is that while, yes, I did act out of anger and grief and aimed to destroy the world with it, I did it because I thought that’s what she would have wanted.” He let that statement sink in for just a moment before he continued. “I’ve since come to realize that this wasn’t the case at all.”

Sonic’s ears folded back the longer the other went on, but Shadow didn’t let up. In fact, he began to step forward as he spoke.

“You’re right. I do know what it’s like to lose someone dear to me. I do know what it’s like to have someone who could light up the room with their presence alone, have their light be extinguished prematurely. And I do know what it’s like to want to end everything and everyone because of that loss.” He stopped approaching once he was only a couple feet away. “But, do you know the difference between you and me, Sonic? The true difference between our situations?”

He didn’t allow Sonic to respond even if he had wanted to. Instead, Shadow leaned in a little closer, his voice dripping with venom as he nearly spoke through his teeth. “I was able to get it through my head that that wasn’t what she wanted. I was able to pull myself together and not let myself succumb to my own misguided idea of how I was supposed to deal with my loss and grief.” He narrowed his eyes, then. “I was able to accept that causing others to suffer in her stead would not bring her back. Nothing would. And you haven’t accepted any of that.”

Something in Sonic’s chest twisted into a tight knot. His nose scrunched up into a slight snarl as he glared back at Shadow, fists clenched at his sides.

“You’re wrong,” Sonic spat back finally. “You really don’t get it after all. You gave up. You could have gotten them back for what they did to her, but you didn’t. You let them get away with it.” 

The icy look in his eyes told Shadow that his words had gone in one ear and right out the other. He wasn’t going to get through to him.

“So, I guess we are different, yeah. You chose to let Maria’s killers off the hook.” Sonic took a couple steps back. “I’m not making that same mistake.”

Shadow watched him for a few moments, trying to find some sort of sign that this was salvageable. He didn’t want to take drastic measures to stop a disaster from happening…but, this was Sonic. Drastic measures were par for the course when he was involved.

With a resigned sigh, Shadow began to back away as well. He had no intention of leaving, though. Now, he had a mission. “I see.”

Reaching up, he gently grasped the inhibitor ring on his wrist. He didn’t unclasp it–not yet. He was going to give Sonic one last chance to walk away from this. He could see Sonic’s eyes shift to look at the inhibitors before meeting his gaze once again, and he could tell just by that look that he still wasn’t going to back down. So…he supposed that was that.

“There is one thing about you that hasn’t changed, at least,” he noted, finally clicking off the inhibitor. He knew this would be an uphill battle despite the course of action he was going to take. 

“You still don’t know when to quit.”

[saarasabaku]

.

[burningcheese-merchant]

Is it just me or does Burning Spice give me a lot of possessive yandere vibes?

Wait, hear me out: Yan! Burning Spice x Golden Cheese.

You're right on the money, brother 🙌🙌🙌 You understand completely.

One-sided BurningCheese can't NOT have Spice be a yandere. That level of pure evil, plus all that suspicious behavior I outlined in my ship masterpost? Foregone conclusion, practically. She didn't just steal his Soul Jam, she stole his fucking sanity. She's the air that he breathes. The blood pumping through his veins. She's the only reason he's got left to live. The ultimate truth of the universe is that they were destined from the moment she took his Soul Jam. He belongs to her, and she belongs to him. It's as simple as that.

That hooded subordinate that tagged along with her to Beast-Yeast? The only reason he's still alive is because Spice was too busy focusing on his beloved. He HATES that little worm. He wants his head on a pike YESTERDAY. How dare he look at her? How dare he speak to her? How dare he smile and laugh and reminisce with her? This won't do. No, no, no.

Her friends, the other heroes? Absolutely not. Where were they when she lost everything? While she succumbed to grief and delusion for all those years? When she awoke in empty ruins? HE was there, in a way. By her side, through their connection via the Soul Jam. He's already done so much for her. She's always been in his thoughts, in his heart. The only thing keeping him going inside that prison was her. The thought of her. Her image, her voice, the unspoken promise between them... That promise to finally meet, to battle, to become one. Did THEY do anything like that for her? Did THEY hunger for her day and night like he did? Like he still does? She doesn't need them, they're all failures. They're WEAK. He isn't.

Her kingdom? Her people? All dead, you say? Slaughtered like pigs, stitched back together and stuffed into golden caskets in a feverish, feeble attempt at self-soothing? GOOD. She doesn't need them, either. WEAKLINGS. FOOLS. Had it not been that vile witch, it would've been him instead, because he can't stand the thought of her caring for anything and anyone else but him. She was enough for him, she was his entire world, why can't he be the same to her? How could anyone else understand her? Love her? Please her? HE can do those things. HE knows her, HE loves her, HE wants her, HE needs her, more than any of them ever did or ever will.

He broke out of prison for her. He sent his soldiers on a back-breaking hunt for her. He waited, and waited, and waited - in that tree, in that container, in his tomb, on his throne, for hours and hours and hours, for her. Just for her. He'd NEVER waste a single second of his time like this for anyone else. No one's ever captivated him like this before. Inspired him, hypnotized him. Not even when he was still a hero. She's different. She truly is a goddess. HIS goddess. They're two halves of one whole. So different, but so much alike in so many ways. It is destiny. THEY are destiny.

And if he has to resume his reign of terror, if he has to crush every spice under his command, if he has to comb every inch of Beast-Yeast- no, the WORLD - in search of her, if he has to raze what little remains of her civilization to the ground, if he has to rip all of her friends to pieces, if he has to beat that absolute truth into her himself, then SO FUCKING BE IT!

Haha delusional mass murdering stalker go brrr

Hope this unwarranted writing ramble satisfies you lol

[lady-harrowhark]

Would you mind. Explaining what the heck the locked tomb (is this the name?) is about. You post a lot of it and I know ✨ nothing ✨ but it sounds kinda interesting??? Into dumping is ok if you feel like lol

I would LOVE to explain what The Locked Tomb is and you DID get the name right and it IS interesting!

So, it's a book series written by Tamsyn Muir and three of the anticipated four books have been released so far. I say "anticipated four books" because it was originally a trilogy but then the last book was split up. I don't think any of us would mind if that happened again and it turned into a five book series. But I digress.

These books are notoriously hard to describe because they sort of encompass or transcend genres. It's a sci-fi fantasty horror murder mystery romcom situation. Plus, there's a LOT going on - I've often described them as an "intellectual escape room." There's so much happening that you don't realize is happening until it all comes together. Going back to the beginning after you've finished them is an entirely different experience than your first read because you can see how it was all laid out from the start - sometimes even in plain sight - and things take on completely different meanings. Also, each book is very different from the others. I adore all of these qualities.

So here's the gist of the premise for the first book:

Gideon Nav, orphan of mysterious origins, has been raised on the Ninth House as an indentured servant and trained as a swordswoman. The Ninth House has become isolated from the rest of the empire and its very existence is threatened by the dwindling population and lack of resources. Gideon is one of only two survivors of her generation, the other children having succumbed to a lethal illness when she was an infant. The other survivor is Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth, and the two have been at each other's throats their entire lives. Harrow's parents' deaths have been hidden from the rest of the Ninth (save for Gideon and a few of the Reverend Family's attendants) and Harrow has been secretly ruling in their stead for the past seven years, doing her best to keep the Ninth from falling into ruin. Harrow is a prodigious necromancer, specializing in working with bones. The Ninth receives a message from the Emperor requesting that each House send their heir and cavalier primary (a.k.a swordsman/bodyguard) to his home at the First House, where they are to attempt to piece together the process to becoming a Lyctor, one of his immortal Saints. Unfortunately, Harrow's cavalier has skipped town. Gideon begrudgingly accepts a deal meaning that she will pose as Harrow's cavalier in exchange for freedom from servitude. Upon arriving at the First House, the two meet the other Houses' heirs and their cavaliers and are informed that they will have to figure out the secret to Lyctorhood on their own, and that there will absolutely no communication with the outside empire. It's not long before someone turns up dead... and then another...

What immediately hooked me on the first book was the voice and tone; Gideon is a delightfully snarky narrator. Despite the humor, these books do not pull any punches with regard to emotional depth. Love and grief are at the center of everything these books do, circled by sacrifice and duty and gender and colonialism and religion.

This review is actually one of my favorite things to send to people to pitch them the books. It does a fantastic job of conveying both the premise and the tone of Gideon the Ninth. I also wrote a "pitch your fandom" piece that @wilfriede recorded and recently released. You can find both the audio and the transcript at this link.

I hope that gives you a sense of the series, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to ramble about the series that permanently altered my brain chemistry! If you ever get around to reading them, I would love to hear your thoughts :)

[a-lonely-dunedain]

OC Questions Tag Game

Ty for tagging me @merilles ! How’s this work, you answer the three questions about some OCs then come up with three different ones and tag people right?

(gosh I am so sorry this got so long winded 😭 Meril I guess that's a testament to how great these questions are lol)

1. How does your OC present themselves to the world (i.e. their persona) and does it differ from what they are actually like? If so, who do they feel comfortable taking the “mask” off around and why did that “mask” develop in the first place?

-Ah ok so for Tossdir it’s definitely his tendency to hide any pain he's in, both physical and emotional. I think this came about around the time his parents died. Once it finally sunk in to him that they were gone gone and it was up to Meneldir to take care of him now (something he was woefully unprepared for), little Toss got it into his head that he had to become as self-sufficient as possible as to not be a burden. He learned how to hide/downplay any pain he was in pretty effectively, leading people to think he was taking things pretty well and being very brave! But in reality it was just an unhealthy coping mechanism that no one really saw for what it was, so it persisted into his adulthood.

As for who he can take off the mask around… well not many people. At the point he probably doesn’t even realize he HAS it. He isn’t comfortable showing that kind of vulnerability around many people, especially considering it came about from a desire not to burden his loved ones with his pain. Eventually it did become easier for him to be open with Meneldir about it, and Ethedis too eventually.

- Ethedis has a similar-ish mask to Tossdir, but unlike him she’s very aware it’s there and intentionally maintains it. She uses her bubbly optimism to hide her pain sorrow and weakness, partially because she knows what a powerful weapon despair is to The Enemy, and partially because of the impact seeing her mother succumb to grief had on her. Her mom left because she essentially became too sad to continue living in Middle Earth, so Ethedis decided from a very young age that it is now Her Job to be a beacon of hope, a light in the darkness, a warmth amidst the cold! (All skills/titles she canonically has in game) so she’s not allowed to be sad or hopeless ever. (To her detriment in the long term. Shockingly, this is a bad way of dealing with your emotions)

That’s not to say her optimism is disingenuous or anything, far from it, but she’s just very careful to make sure she never shows it when the darkness begins to wear on her. It’s not really helped by the fact that certain NPCs will stress to her that her ability to inspire hope is one of her most admirable/valuable traits. That’s a lot of pressure, man! I mean thanks, but man!

-Margim's mask is one of solid stone, but she does actually have a sense of humor under there! It's pretty dry and kinda grim, but it is there. She's also just, generally a lot more caring than she lets on, even surprising herself with it. That part of her mask only started to slip for the first time after she met Celeair, and she was actually pretty alarmed by the change and the vulnerability that came with it.

-Celeair is a bit of an outliar in the sense that he really doesn't have as much of a mask as my others. He's a bit of a "wears his big heart on his sleeve" kinda guy, and lying in any form doesn't come naturally to him. This man has like, no filter.

2. What is one thing they could change either about themselves or the past? Why would they make that change? How would that change affect who they are and the world around them in their current timeline?

-Well, for both Toss and Eth the obvious answer is that they wish they hadn't lost their parents.

If Orndir and Elenath were still around would Tossdir have been able to convince Meneldir to come home? Would Meneldir have even left in the first place if he still had a family to vouch for him? Things would have been so different with them still in the picture, and probably for the better as far as Tossdir can imagine.

And Ethedis just wanted the chance to even meet Talagan. Ethuilas spoke very little about him, and when she did her words were always tainted with deep sorrow. Elrond was able to tell her a little more about him, but all the stories in the world could never truly make up for his absence. If her father hadn't died in the attack on Edhellion, her mother never would have had to sail, and they could all be living happily together in Rivendell. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. (it's either that or she wishes she was a half-elf or someone else who could choose a mortal life. *Looking Directly At Corunir*)

-Margim would have some pretty complicated feelings on this question. On the one hand: she wishes she was never born in Mordor, never had a Black Numenorean father, never abandoned by her birth mother, and that she NEVER had to endure ANY of the horrible things her life consisted of before escaping.

...but on the other hand: if things had played out so differently, she never would have met Celeair, and she never would have been there to save him when he was brought to Mordor. He would have died without her ever knowing him. And upon that realization, she decides she doesn't want to think about it anymore. Horrible things happened, but she overcame them and that's that. No sense in thinking about "what if"s because no amount of wishing will ever change the past anyway. And frankly, changing the past would mean changing her present, and despite all the pain that led her here, she wouldn't trade her current life (and by extension Celeair) for anything.

-Celeair he wishes he could have been there for his brother Halhir in the closing days of the War of the Ring. He was stuck in Dunland at the time, and while things were bad there he at least had the comfort of Margim's company, but all Halhir had was... a lot of dead friends. Celeair only learned about it after the war was over and he could finally travel back to Gondor, and the guilt he felt upon learning everything his little brother had to endure without him was... a lot, to say the least.

3. Drawing from the language of flowers, what flower(s) would best symbolize them and why?

Oh I actually already had this one figured out!

-Tossdir is red aster, symbolizing grief and undying devotion. This symbolism actually made it into lotro too canonically, so it seems rather fitting (with red aster being mentioned by name in a quest involving a ritual to honor the dead, and the same red aster model also appearing among the iconic "fields of red where life has fled" in Cardolan). Not to mention red is also His Color so it worked out perfectly.

-Ethedis' flower is either white lilac, symbolizing youthful joy, or snowdrops symbolizing hope, rebirth, and resilience. oh oh oooor possibly yellow tulips, meaning cheerfulness and hopeless love. (the hopeless love part is related to inherent angst of elf/mortal relationships *Looking Directly At Corunir*)

-Celeair and Margim: the humble dandelion! a flower I've always associated with them <3 specifically Margim is tied to the blooming flower, representing growth and resilience, while Celeair is associated with the fluffy seed head, representing hope and healing.

oooh gosh now I need to think of three questions to pass along and people to tag uhhh

What is a trait your OC can't stand in other people vs. a trait that they find themself drawn to

What animal would you associate with your OC? can be for in-character reasons (I.E their favorite animal) or a more symbolic reason

What is their biggest regret? was it truly their fault or some unavoidable tragedy? (and can they tell the difference)

annnd tagging uhh @find-the-path @aurore-parle-de-ses-idees and @rohirric-hunter ! (apologies if the questions are worded funny/unclearly it's 2:30am and I should have been in bed an hour ago lmao)

[goddevouringserpent]

thinking about them... (Yunia AUs)

not-a-Tarnished AU: remains a knight of the House of Caria, earning their respect and something resembling affection thanks to years upon years of loyal service. her competence and dedication lead her to climb in the ranks, so to speak, and earn a closeness with the Carians that she could've only ever dreamed of—with time, she even becomes Ranni's confidante, after a fashion. not quite Blaidd-level, but Ranni trusts in them as someone who is thoroughly and relentlessly dedicated to her, and who unlike Blaidd is not "programmed" to turn against her should she betray the Two Fingers; if Blaidd is Ranni's right hand, Yunia is her left hand. (or like. hands. there's four arms in there after all. or there will be.) worth mentioning that Yunia's hopeless puppy-love-crush on Ranni is still every bit as present as it is in their canon. girl is down bad, and in this AU it's even more hopeless unfortunately.

anyway, fast forward to Ranni's Night of the Black Knives scheme. this time around, as her Loyal Knight, Yunia is in on it—or as "in on it" as Ranni lets anyone be, anyway—even if, more likely than not, they didn't play any part in it. still, after the deed is done and Ranni's gone dollmode, Yunia gets to join the Caria Manor Inner Circle & continues to work for Ranni, towards the goal of the Age of Stars, alongside Blaidd and Iji (and allegedly Seluvis but we know how that goes, don't we). she'd be there when the Tarnished arrives, and... honestly I'm not sure she'd have a questline of her own because Yunia's quest is, ultimately, Ranni's questline. but they would be available as a summon for Radahn's fight if—and only if—the player has pledged their service to Ranni, then somewhere down the line they would also be available as a NPC summon for... Astel, Naturalborn of the Void, maybe? still have to figure that one out.

non-Tarnished Yunia's endings are always tragic. girlie does not get a break. if the player goes through with Ranni's questline to the point where they become her consort / give her the ring at Manus Celes, Yunia pretty much dies of heartbreak. the next time the player goes to Ranni's Rise, they'll find Yunia standing near the place where Ranni used to sit, as though keeping watch, and if spoken to she'll say:

"And thus, my service, my duty, my purpose... it all comes to an end, and I am left hollow. A severed sword-arm. No worth in me." "Ah, Tarnished... I did not think I would see you again. You have fought bravely. More than I could." "If I may be so bold, be good to lady Ranni, please. Take care of each other." "I know her moon will rise, brighter than star and sky. If only I could witness it one last time... but I have not earned the privilege. My silence is my oath, unto eternity."

then if you rest at a Grace/port out and come back/etc etc, you'll find Yunia's lifeless body leaning against Ranni's chair, and you'll be able to loot her armour (an unique variant of the Carian Knight armour) & her signature weapon.

on the other hand, if you reach the Mountaintops of the Giants and burn the Erdtree without having pledged your service to Ranni / unlocked Age of Stars as a potential ending, Yunia will invade you in Leyndell. killing her this way also lets you claim her armour and weapon.

----

Lord of Frenzied Flame AU: less meat in this one, but the gist of it is that I asked myself "what ending would Yunia go for if Age of Stars wasn't an option?" and the answer was that she would succumb to the temptation of the Frenzied Flame lol. or... to the grief of it, more like. the hopelessness.

because, like, in the Frenzyflame AU, Yunia loses all her loved ones, all she has ever worked for, the only sense of purpose she's ever had, and gains nothing. she has to see the way in which the House of Caria—which she had devoted her entire pre-exile life to—has fallen into disgrace and disrepair, and there's absolutely jack shit she can do about it. & in her canon, working alongside Ranni makes up for that at least, but in the Frenzyflame AU they don't have that (I'm picturing it's some sort of domino effect of things going very wrong, where they don't go all the way up towards Caria Manor because they're terrified of the state it'll be in & it's not as if anyone would be there, anyway, and therefore they never encounter Ranni; Rogier's quest would bypass that so I feel like he would die before he could decipher the whole deal behind the Cursemark of Death and therefore give Yunia any hope, no matter how small, of Ranni being alive and active).

and, man. Yunia would be left purposeless and adrift and THIS close to just saying "whatever, fuck everything". a sensation that would only increase as people around her—people she's grown to respect and, in certain cases, genuinely like—keep dropping like flies. so yeah, she goes off the deep end. may chaos take the fucking world. (also slightly motivated by the fact that she feels a world without Ranni in it is a world that deserves to be purged and started anew but shhh let's not mention that. let's pretend Yunia is well-adjusted and not at all an obsessive clingy individual with a crush so devoted it wraps around to being toxic. leal hound of the Dark Moon Princess my beloved.)

[trollioscereal]

tbh i actually dont think i like verral all that much...

6 n 6a

or maybe i am just nervous about having a serious antagonist who does horrifying things. I have antagonistic characters that are definitely morally grey and hurt others, but Verral has the vibes of an actual serial killer and not haha sexy danger man

Like he will hurt those he’s close to.

i dunno, im just rambling.

more below! lol

Verrah and Verral’s relationship is strange in that its siblings but also reminiscent of mother/son. She takes care of him and tries to direct him in a better direction (though still probably questionable, as Verrah ain’t a saint herself). She loathes and loves him.

Verral is immortal and HE HATES THAT. He hates that he can’t die. He hates teetering in this purgatory between life and death, anger and grief. His soul never laid to rest when he died because Verrah held onto him for so long and made sure he could never rest again for what he did to her. 

So he hurts others and himself to feel anything that will distract him from this eternal suffering. He kills others because he cannot do it for himself, and in some ways, believes he is doing them an enormous favor.

I do get really nervous with shipping him because anyone who tries to get close to him risk a lot of pain and would have to be very smart about it- the balance of piquing his interest and gaining his trust/affection, while preventing him from succumbing to the need to rip them to shreds.

So I don’t know if that explains why I am hesitant with any kind of romantic plots with him. Plots in general would be cool, but I don’t know how well it could go. 

[starwarsnonsense]

The Rise of Skywalker + Some Spoiler-y Thoughts on Reylo

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)

The Rise of Skywalker is, it goes without saying, a deeply flawed film. I enjoy it while acknowledging said flaws and feeling frustration over how certain aspects and characters were mishandled. But with that said at the outset, I need to talk about Reylo.

I have many, many feelings about Rey and Ben Solo. So many it’s hard to know where to begin.

I’m seeing lots of pain and grief on my social media at the moment, and I honestly attribute a lot of that to how well (generally speaking) The Rise of Skywalker executed the love story of Rey and Ben. People are grief-stricken because they came within touching distance of seeing the characters they loved - characters the film made us fall for all over again - get a happy ending, only for that ending to be denied and replaced by a final scene that I can only describe as deeply melancholy. 

For the first half of The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren is depicted as harbouring an intensely obsessive love for Rey. Union with her is his ultimate goal throughout the movie, but his arc sees him progress from desiring a union that mires them both in the darkness of their legacies (I won’t be going into Rey Palpatine in this post - that’s for another time) to one that is unreservedly about them as individuals. 

The offers that Kylo makes to Rey in their first few encounters are grasping gestures of desperation - the proposals are childishly petulant and clumsy, predicated on the assumption that Rey is predisposed to the same weaknesses that he is. The form of love he offers is corrupted and malformed, a symptom of the damage he has suffered on account of his own seduction to the dark side.

While Rey is unmoved by invocations of her lineage, she still has to wrestle with her own desires. When she confides in Finn that she has seen a vision of her and Kylo Ren sharing the throne of the Sith, she is revealing why she feels she can never succumb to her own feelings. Later, when she heals Kylo on the wreckage of the Death Star, she admits that she had wanted to take his hand on The Supremacy - but she had wanted to take the hand of Ben Solo, not the hand of Kylo Ren. So when Rey flees to Ahch-To, she isn’t just fleeing her potential for darkness - she’s escaping her own desires, having seen the disaster they risk bringing about.

When Rey heals Kylo’s body, she is also symbolically healing his soul. His mother’s sacrificial gesture in sending him a vision of his father only consolidates what Rey’s confession had already made him realise - that he can only achieve wholeness by embracing who he is at his core, and resuming the mantle of Ben Solo. 

I’ve seen criticism of the fact that Ben doesn’t speak once he’s redeemed, but I honestly don’t know what words could add to what we do get from him. It’s obviously a credit to Adam Driver’s talent that he says more with a single gesture than many actors can achieve in a complete performance. His movements are looser and more relaxed. He’s playful in combat, demonstrating the same swagger and confidence of his father. All of this is possible because he has been released from the personal hell of hallowed isolation he had considered himself doomed to by his grand lineage. Now, he is free and motivated purely by selfless love. 

Just as Rey put everything on the line to go to Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi, Ben puts everything on the line to go to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker. And unlike in The Last Jedi, when Rey and Ben are reunited on Exogol they see each other as they truly are - there is no confusion or misinterpretation over the other person’s motivation or intent, and they truly see each other face to face for the first time. The looks Rey and Kylo give each other across the Force bond on Exogol are expressions of the purest kind of strength - they find courage and resolve in the knowledge that they are loved, supported and seen. When Rey looks at Ben, she is truly seeing the man she loves for the first time.

I’ll have more thoughts on the dyad concept and whatever the fuck is going on with Palpatine’s motivations in this movie (LOL) another time, but I just want to end this for now by making your heart break all over again about that kiss scene. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as moved by Star Wars as I was when Ben crawled out of the pit, and half-limped, half-staggered, across the room to find his beloved lying dead on the ground, her eyes staring at nothing. By the way he clumsily hauled her into his arms, feeling her dead weight, and knew exactly what he had to do. There was no hesitation, only resolve and complete clarity of purpose as he channelled his energy into healing her as she had healed him. 

Ben gets to experience the pure, ecstatic joy of feeling Rey’s hand squeeze his, experiencing her kiss and seeing her smile. He holds on just long enough to take in all the adored details of her face and return her smile, before slipping away in her arms. 

He gave himself for her gladly and with joy in his heart, accomplishing what his grandfather could not through the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. 

You see, guys? It only hurts so much because it’s so fucking powerful. You just feel devastated that their pure, joyous love was doomed to be so fleeting. 

This movie, man. It’s a lot. A whole damn lot.

[sadsapphicslut]

chapter one - original story (i havent come up with a title yet lol)

okay so here it is!! if anyone actually reads this i love u :) please leave feedback if u have any!! 

TWs:

death, drugs, medication, mental illness, references to sex, swearing, alcohol

wordcount: 8.2k

(also i dont think anyone will but im paranoid of people stealing my writing so obligatory dont copy/post to another site or steal my work in any other ways etc)

There were five of us; 4 boys and me. In hindsight I realize from the outside our group probably seemed a little predatory, but it was never really like that. For the most part they were like brothers to me. Of course, being the only girl in a small and isolated club of mainly older boys, things were bound to happen. We were in high school and it was summer, can you blame me? Regardless, however much I loved them, it was not quite in the way my father always assumed or my mother always warned (during our uncomfortable monthly visitations before I managed to get rid of her for good).

The months everything went down, which I often referred to only as ‘The Worst Summer of My Life’, (quite melodramatically but not without reason) were somehow still full of the best moments of my life. Moments I often find myself wishing I could repeat, as nothing has or will ever come close to the way I felt, sitting amongst my boys day after day, somehow light as the warm July breeze that blew past us. My entire body weightless, as non-existent as the time that passed us by. Despite the depression I’d found myself plunged into during the days after my only brother’s death, I truly believe I will never again be as happy as I was then. Laughter seemed to flow freely from our mouths, smiles plastered onto our faces no matter the circumstances, content to just exist. I don’t think I can ever forget the day it was raining so hard the entire city was flooded, but we walked around uptown well past the point of being absolutely drenched, our clothes dripping so heavily the security guard denied us entry into the public library. Something about that day made me feel so free, like we were invisible. Completely apathetic to the whims of the real world, somehow existing only in our twisted minds and intertwined fantasies.

Maybe if I’d had my head screwed on a little tighter, or if we’d met under different circumstances, it wouldn’t have ended the way it did. I used to go down that line of thought every night before succumbing to a fitful but heavy sleep (under the direct affect of 25mg of Quetiapine, working to counteract my Concerta and Lexapro). Those types of irrational thoughts were ones my therapist deemed as my habit for rumination. In regard to the death of my brother she called it ‘bargaining’, one of the stages of grief. I never liked it when she spoke about those stages as I’ve always felt them to be wrong. Maybe because I never quite moved on to the final one, no matter how many years pass. ‘Acceptance’, coined as the “Re-entrance to reality”. Maybe it’s different since I was never really grounded to reality in the first place. I still wake up some mornings, thinking I’ve heard his voice in the other room, ready to beguile me with tales from his day of retail work. Other times I swear I’ve walked past him on the street. Some people may relate to my experiences, with reasonings of ghosts, angels, apparitions, or insanity, among many other causes for the apparent viewing of a loved one long gone to the other side. I never shared these beliefs, but I am not one to deny. Rather, I always take these instances as an omen. A warning. I have come to this conclusion not without evidence, at least circumstantial, given the many occasions over the years – and especially that summer – where I found my hypothesis to be true. All I can say is that I am glad I’ve never been met with the same chimerical visions of my mother; one can only hope that is because she ended up where she belonged. Maybe I’ll see her there, though I hope at the very least they could keep us in separate rooms of Hell if the situation does arise.

From what I know of the others now, which is admittedly not much – majorly due to my own neglect, as opposed to theirs – they share the same prescription for rose-coloured glasses as I. We always were too engrossed with our own romanticization of nostalgia and sentiment that it clouded our view. I often think this was one of the reasons we seemed to fit so well together. Not quite like puzzle pieces, too self-absorbed to hold a candle to that analogy, more like complimentary colours. I wish it could’ve stayed the way it was. We did try, and I never found myself able to fully disentangle myself from James, nor he could to I, but for most of us we could recognize an ending when one arises. I used to find myself using the word tragedy a lot while reminiscing, but I no longer think that word is appropriate. Fate is a more fitting term in my opinion, regardless of if one believes in it or not. “(A)n inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end,” as reported by Merriam Webster. I don’t think there’s a word in the entire English language more accurate in describing how everything ended up; and if there is, I am yet to find it.

  Chapter One

A Dead Brother

          I have tried to erase the day my brother died from my memory so many times I lost count decades ago. I still find the image seeping into my unconsciousness quite dreadfully on the nights I neglect to take my pills and catch myself waking up with a steady flow of tears that dampen my pillow along with the drool that always seems to pour from my sleeping mouth. The dread that pools in my stomach sometimes being heavy enough for me to lose my lunch. I frequently wonder how people managed to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault; the most painful lie I’ve ever been told and one that seemed to stream from people’s mouths as easily as the mini sandwiches laid in the living room of my brother’s wake were stuffed in. The worst part about being told it wasn’t my fault was how obviously one could tell they didn’t believe what they were saying either. His death was my fault; a fact so uncontestable I wanted to kill myself every time I was reminded of it.

           My therapist often tried to remind me that even if his death was “partially” (she always used the word partially, refusing to acknowledge the truth that his death was entirely my fault) my fault, there was nothing I could’ve done to prevent it. This was another lie I despised being told. There were a million ways I could have prevented his death or saved his life and yet, here we are, with him dead and me wishing everyday that I won’t wake up tomorrow. “Begonia,” she’d tell me – she was the only person who called me by my full name, I usually went by Nia, but a nickname felt too personal and I didn’t like her very much – “You mustn’t keep torturing yourself with these scenarios. He’s dead, and there is nothing you can do to change that. I am starting to wonder if you are going to let yourself move on. This isn’t healthy.” That was a line she liked to use a lot, “this isn’t healthy”. As if anything I do is.

           Barb, my therapist that is, liked to go over the details of my brother’s death a lot. She often called it a ‘trigger’, which is why she always seemed to want me to talk about it. “Trauma is a horrible thing, Begonia, and you must learn to move past it, process it. I can see you still haven’t managed to do that on your own, and that’s what I’m here for, to help you move on.” Barb was big on the idea of  “moving past trauma” and “learning to cope”, she often sounded like a broken record of a motivational speech. I found myself comparing her to school guidance councillors without realizing it, they were about equally as helpful (read: not helpful) in my opinion.

           Sometimes I blame my inability to forget and “move past” my brother’s death on the way Barb constantly brought it up and made me go through it. I never quite understood how that part of my therapy was supposed to help me. I asked her once, what good was it doing rehashing the worst day of my life?

           “Well, Begonia,” I hated the way she said my name, always so condescending and sour, like even the idea of me questioning her in any way was as impolite as shitting on her desk.

“You have to understand that I only want to help you. You seem to be unable to process your traumas on your own, which is why we need to go through these things. As you are aware, this PTSD,” she always left strange pauses after each letter, her slow tone grinding on my ears, “you have acquired has left you unable to function normally in daily life. I want you to get to a place where you can have a normal life (Ha!) and cope without these meetings. It’s what your brother would’ve wanted.” Barb liked to tell me what my brother would have wanted at least once every session. Putting aside the fact she knew next to nothing about him aside from the intimate details on how he died, I always thought it was an inappropriate thing to say as a psychologist specializing in grief counselling. It never particularly bothered me, I was reasonable enough to realize she was just trying to comfort me, but I never liked the phrase. “What your brother would’ve wanted.” What he would’ve wanted was to not die but we’re past that, aren’t we Barb, as you so often enjoyed telling me.  

I have always been quite averse to my diagnoses, ADHD at 14, Persistent Depressive Disorder at 15, PTSD at 16, issues with alcohol and drugs that landed me in rehab more than once. I’ve been on a concoction of different medications since I was 13, even before I was diagnosed with anything officially. Sertraline, Lexapro, Prozac, Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, Quetiapine, Ambien, Zopiclone, a healthy mix of off brand and branded medications. Sleeping pills, antidepressants, stimulants. I can’t remember a time before monthly trips to the drug store and side effect surveys that I’m not sure if I ever told the truth on. It’s a wonder that people didn’t see a slew of addiction issues coming from a mile away.

I think I’ve always had the most contention with my PTSD diagnosis though, I hate it because I know it’s undeniably true. I wish it wasn’t because maybe that’d mean my brother was still alive, but he isn’t. And I’m left traumatized and bereaved. Sometimes it feels like it hurt me more than it ever did my mother or father. Maybe it did. I should feel selfish for saying that, but I can’t, because they didn’t have to look at him while the life left his body, praying to God for the ability to turn back time. See the moment his eyes glazed over, knowing I’d never get to hear his obnoxious laugh, or make fun of his dumb face ever again.

  ❈

             “Ray, hey listen I need you to come pick me up.”

It was a cool evening in May, the end of spring brought with it the promise of summer and the air had the familiar aroma of daffodils and petrichor. I had decided to go to a party with my friend Faun, my dad having been out at his girlfriend’s place for the weekend and me having nothing better to do. I wasn’t one for partying, but I did like to get high, so I usually just hung around with the rest of the potheads and pill junkies until someone dragged me home or I fell asleep. That night Don, a friend of a friend of a friend, had brought coke and E and we were all determined to get as fucked up as possible. Faun only ended up doing one line before running into a bedroom with some guy whose name started with an M – was it Martin or Marvin? Maybe it was Mickey – and left me sitting on the couch beside a girl who was about 1 more shot of vodka away from passing out.

I had fully intended on doing some coke, but the E seemed to be hitting harder than I was used to. I was sure my Ritalin had worn off by then but maybe I was wrong. As I stood up to get a glass of water I nearly fell over and decided to sit back down. Turning to face Don, I tapped him on the shoulder trying to get his attention.

“What was in that molly?” I was vaguely aware of the way my words were slurring, but I felt weirdly energized. I was aware my heart was beating a little too fast, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I knew what ecstasy felt like, this was not nearly my first time doing it, but I felt really wrong.

           “Don!” He turned to look at me and I felt uneasy. His eyes looked a little crazed – not that out of the ordinary but given the circumstances I was worried – “What the fuck did you give me?” It felt like I’d done 5 lines of coke in the last 2 minutes and I knew that E had been spiked.

           Don’s face had an unmistakable expression of guilt written on it as he leaned down and whispered in my ear, his voice shaking, “I think it was cut with meth.” Fuck. My stomach dropped. I have to get out of here. I quickly shot up from the musty couch I was sat on, carefully holding onto Don’s shoulder so I didn’t fall, my legs still feeling unsteady. I opened my phone; the screen was too bright, and I had a hard time maneuvering it as I attempted to exit the house. Clicking the green Messages icon, I sent a text to Faun – e ws cut w meth im lesving – with shaky hands and burst out the door into the fresh air. I clicked my brother’s contact and pressed call.

           It rang four times before he picked up.

           “Nia? Why are you calling me it’s like 1am?” I could tell from the smooth tone of his voice he’d been drinking. He didn’t very often but he had an appreciation for cocktails and enjoyed getting buzzed now and then. He still was a year from being legal to drink but his friends we’re all 19 and 20 and bought alcohol for him. I found him fun when he got drunk, becoming talkative and giggly, but right now I wished so badly for him to be sober.

           “Ray, hey listen I need you to come pick me up.” I was slurring, my voice a bit too pitchy to pass as anything but high. I knew he didn’t like it when I did this, but he never ratted me out. Sometimes I wish he did, maybe I never would’ve been able to go to that party in the first place.

           I could hear a door shutting on his end, I assumed he was going into a different room. “What’s wrong?” My skin was bubbling with anxiety at the prospect of having to tell him what I did.

           “Fuck, uh… I did something stupid. I’m at Emily Goguen’s, y’know up in Champlain Heights. Please pick me up.” I rarely used the word please.

“Nia, what the fuck did you do?” I almost started crying but I found my eyes to be bone dry.

“Please don’t yell.”

“Okay, really, tell me what is going on or I won’t come get you.”

“I accidentally took meth.”

“You what? What the fuck, Nia! Fuck this I’m on my way and I’m fucking telling Dad.” I cringed but I knew he was going to before I even called. The pit in my stomach grew deeper as the buzzing of my skin grew stronger. I could feel myself getting higher, everything was so clear and standing around was making me grow restless. Ray huffed on the phone and I heard him entering his car.

His tone was softer the next time he spoke. “I’ll be there in 5, just stay put, please. Do you want me to stay on the call or can I hang up?”

I felt like a child, which I was really, only 16 at the time, a whole life ahead of me. Still, I was grateful for the way he spoke to me, reminiscent of being 6 and getting a scrapped knee after falling off my pink Razor scooter. The high made me edgy, and my voice was sharp to my ears, “No, you can hang up.” I heard the click to indicate he’d done just that, and started pushing my cuticles as I waited, the task somehow greatly interesting me, and I did not realize until later I had managed to pick off all of the skin around my pointer and middle fingernails during the five-minute wait.

 Ray pulled up exactly five minutes later in his ugly, blue 2011 Ford Fiesta he’d gotten the year prior after passing his driving test. What I wouldn’t do now to smell the inside of that car once again, a distinct attar of pineapple car freshener and Old Spice deodorant mixed with stale black tea, faintly present due to his ever-growing collection of empty paper cups from various different fast foods and coffee shops.

I stumbled into the car, feeling the strong impulse to clean the space, but attempting to push it down. From the passenger side overhead mirror I could see my blown pupils and sweaty forehead, pieces of my copper red hair sticking to my face. My freckles were showing through my concealer that had mostly worn off and I wanted to cover them back up. My skin was pale from winter (and probably the drugs in my system) but my cheeks were flushed like I was drunk. My high cheekbones made my face look gaunt in the lighting, but my face was wide which balanced it out, so I didn’t look completely skeletal. Ray was looking at me, the worry apparent in his eyes, but his face was flushed as well, and I could tell he’d been drinking a bit too much to drive. I had my license as well, but it was clear I was in no condition to take over on that front, so I didn’t bother saying anything. I wish I had. There’s a lot of things I wish. I wish I hadn’t gone to that party; I wish I hadn’t taken that E; I wish I called someone else; I wish I waited it out at Emily’s; I wish I walked home; I wish I took a cab; I wish I waited for Faun; I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish.

“Are you okay?” He didn’t take his eyes off me as I shut the mirror in front of me.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll be fine. Please just take me home.”

“Is Dad there?”

“No.”

“Maybe I should take you to Mom’s.”

“No!” I’d moved out of my mom’s completely just over 6 months ago, barely seeing her once a month. It was one of the best decisions I’d ever made. She never liked me much anyways, the feeling was entirely mutual. Ray seemed to have a close bond with her for some reason despite how she treated him like shit. I never called him out though, he no longer lived with her, so I didn’t really care what their relationship was as long as she wasn’t hurting him. She did treat him significantly better than me, however, so I figured maybe he managed to forgive her the way I never could.

“Okay, but I’m staying with you until Dad gets home. I’m not gonna lie to him about this shit. Fucking meth, Nia? Seriously?”

“It was in the molly.” He sighed and started driving.

 My brain felt like it was filled with butterflies, or ants, some kind of movement that was itching at my skull. The paper cups scattered around were making me anxious and I needed to clean his car. I began picking at my nails again, but I needed to pick up those cups, you see. I turned around and started gathering the ones Ray had discarded in the back, filling up an empty plastic bag from Best Buy. I was fully switched around in my seat, nearly crawling into the backseat to reach the trash my brother had left. I felt him tap my side, I looked over at him and he started to scold me.

“Nia, stop that will you, you’re distracting me.” But I needed to finish gathering the cups. The car was dirty, and my skin was itching, the traffic lights burning my skin. I was elated and I didn’t want to listen to him, he was just trying to get in my way. I continued to lean over, not registering the swerve of the car as he looked over at me.

“Nia – ”

He turned over to push me back into my seat, his eyes leaving the road for no more than a few seconds. This time I felt the swerve as we broke into the next lane.

 This is where I have a hard time piecing together what happened. From what I was told, we ended up running directly into a 2015 Dodge Ram 2500. In case you understandably have a lack of knowledge when it comes to cars, that is a very large, sturdy, and expensive pickup truck which I would probably consider the last vehicle you’d want to charge headfirst into while going 70km per hour. I don’t recall the actual incident of hitting the truck, whether that be from the drugs, the position I was in, or hitting my head on the roof of the car, I don’t know. What I do know is that when I woke up, we were in a ditch on the side of the road, with the car flipped upside down, and my entire body was screaming at me to Get Out!

I felt blood oozing sluggishly from my head and noted some indistinct pain in my right wrist where it had scraped something pretty badly and gotten twisted, but I otherwise felt alright. I couldn’t tell if the cloudiness in my head was from a concussion or the earlier events of the night, but I figured it was probably good I was awake, regardless of how dazed I seemed.

I turned my head to the left and was greeted by a view I will never be able to forget, it having been branded to the insides of my eyelids, scorched in my mind. Ray, with his left arm twisted in spectacular fashion, reminding me of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, after Lockhart spells away Harry’s bones. My brother had always been squeamish with broken bones and I hoped he wasn’t aware of how his limb looked at the moment. His head was bleeding quite profusely, and I was alarmed despite how many times I’d heard in movies that headwounds bleed a lot. His eyelids were fluttering, irises appearing glassy and unfocussed. And then I saw it. A piece of glass was stuck in the left side of his neck. The windshield apparently had broken with the impact and my brother was lucky enough to get a piece lodged right in his trachea. It was thick, bright red blood –  that I could’ve sworn was sparkling in my current inebriated perspective – was gushing out the side, so heavy I could smell it, taste it, in the air. I was frozen once I realized.

Do something, do something! Put pressure on it! Call 9-1-1! My mind was screaming at me, but it was all I could do to sit and watch the blood stain his clothes. He was wearing the corduroy jacket I’d gotten him for his birthday and a white button up, the red seeped into them until it was as if they’d always been that colour. My voice was caught in my throat, but I managed to push some sound past.

“Ray?” It was weaker than a whisper but in the silence that seemed to envelope us in that car, completely independent of the outside world and sirens that could surely be heard from blocks away, I knew he would be able to hear me.

He looked up, eyes focussing slightly on me, and a tear slipped down his face, only it went the wrong way since we were still upside down. He mouthed the words “I love you”. We never said that to each other. As close as we were, our relationship had always been more comparable to that of a best friend than sibling. We weren’t overly affectionate, never hugged or said I love you, hung out for enjoyment rather than as a punishment. Most people didn’t know we were brother and sister until we pointed it out, we never really looked alike and were absent of the traditional distaste and rivalry usually present between siblings. I knew, as he looked me in the eyes and said those words, this would be the last time I’d ever see him outside of a morgue.

I sat in my seat next to him with dry eyes, wishing desperately I could cry, needing to express the feeling of utter horror and despondency that completely overtook my body and mind, but I couldn’t. Barb told me time and time again that I was in shock, there was nothing I could’ve done, but I will never be able to believe that. I still remember the moment the final tear slipped down his face. He smiled at me, pain evident in his eyes. His entire body was covered in the metallic smelling red, and I wanted to vomit. I wish I could say the crash had sobered me, but it didn’t, not really. I was still entirely in a daze as I saw his muscles relax, smiling falling from his face, eyes not quite rolling back all the way but enough to give me nightmares for the next 20 years. The life had been absorbed from his body, leaving a heavy shell. I was told afterwards this all happened within the span of 10 minutes, but it felt like years. By the time the first responders had appeared I was an old woman. Grayed hair, and arthritic bones. Mourning for the brother I’d lost oh so many years ago, when I was just a girl. I think in a way I died in that car with him, I never was really the same. But who would be? Best friend and confidant, older brother, idol, dying in front of your eyes as you do nothing, knowing for the rest of your life that his death is – was – your fault. Knowing you could’ve done something, anything really, to prevent his untimely loss of life before the paramedics arrived. If I’d been the same after that night I would have to be much more disturbed than I ever thought.

I sat in that car beside Ray’s corpse for 3 more minutes before I heard the sirens closing in around us – me. I thought I might pass out, either from the toll of what I’d just witnessed or from my concussion, but I remained upright, probably from the adrenaline. I couldn’t move so I just waited, and hoped I’d die too before anyone reached the scene. It would be much preferrable to any other outcome I could think of at the time. I could vaguely register the pain in my wrist, but I felt so numb I’m sure you could’ve shot me in the foot and I wouldn’t have blinked.

A young fireman named Walter ended up getting me out of the car. The door was smashed and stuck which meant I’d been trapped in there either way. I was happy I hadn’t bothered trying to escape as I'm terribly claustrophobic and finding out I couldn’t would have thrown me into a proper panic attack. The fireman was incredibly nice, saying reassuring things the entire time they were opening the door with the “Jaws of Life”. I ended up seeing him again in the hospital actually, or at least that’s what my father told me. He wanted to check in on me and left me some hydrangeas in a vase. I always preferred chrysanthemums but I'm not that picky when it comes to a floral arrangement.

After the door was busted open I was carried out by Walter. I was shaking and apparently babbling nonsense but in my head I was trying to tell them to save Ray. I wasn’t really aware of all that much, completely blind to the crowd of spectators that had rudely gathered to witness the violence – wasn’t it supposed to be taboo to stop at a car crash? Wondering vaguely about what happened and wishing you could get a better look as you drive past the scene.  My head wound had made me a bit incompetent and the meth in my system was really not helping the entire situation.

I was laid on a gurney and rolled onto an ambulance. I don’t remember much about the ride; the sirens, the bright lights, a paramedic named Alice who spoke softly, smoothing out my hair while the other put an oxygen mask on my face (which I wasn’t entirely cognizant enough to question though now I'm not really sure why they did it) and splinted my wrist. Alice asked me if I was on drugs and I nodded but was unable to speak when she asked me what ( I would find this a common occurrence after the accident, my voice seemingly stolen alongside Ray’s). She just nodded and said something to the other ME that I didn’t quite pick up. She asked if I could tell her my name and I shook my head. She must’ve noticed the iPhone in my pocket and grabbed it, turning to the medical ID page.

“Is your name Begonia?” I nodded, though the name sounded foreign on my ears. I liked the way Alice said it though, she had a light Spanish accent and a matronly tone that made me feel safe. I wondered if she had kids of her own; she looked young, but my own mother had me at 19 so who could say? She told me her name after complimenting mine. “Begonia is a beautiful name; I love the flowers. I’m Alice, okay? We’re gonna make sure you’re alright and take you to the hospital.” Her voice was sweet like syrup and I became sleepy as she spoke.

“No honey, you can’t fall asleep yet. Just stay awake a little bit longer and I promise you they’ll let you sleep at the hospital.”

  I don’t remember anything of the rest of the ride to the hospital. I was dropped off at the Emergency Room at the Regional, head still too foggy to allow me to recall anything before I was sitting in a white bed, in a white room, with white sheets and a light blue hospital gown on. It was morning and my father was sitting at the end of my bed in an uncomfortable plastic chair, his eyes bloodshot and moist. He’d very obviously been crying for a long time and my chest panged with guilt. I reached up to feel my head and realized there was a cast on my wrist. With my other hand I touched the cotton that covered my forehead, wincing when I felt the sting of what had to be stitches in a nasty gash. I would spend the next 5 years of my life with a variety of diverse haircuts that attempted to hide the ugly scar that served as a reminder of the worst night of my life. Even now it is still extremely obvious, but I can’t be bothered to try and hide it, I so rarely look in the mirror that it wouldn’t matter if my skin turned blue.

My dad hadn’t looked up, so I attempted to gain his attention but once again found my voice failing me. I tapped on the bed a few times before he seemed to realize and face me.

“Nia… how are you feeling?” His voice was raspy and thin. He reeked of cigarettes and stale coffee, though this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I remained silent as he looked at me, searching my face for something I'm not sure he found.

“Nia, I, I'm not sure how to say this to you.” Here it comes. Almost worse than watching my brother die, the confirmation. “Ray, he’s, well dead.” I saw my father’s eyes begin to tear up again as I stared straight ahead. I couldn’t feel the sobs that racked my body, nor the hot tears streaming from my eyes. I saw my dad start to move closer but sit back down when I flinched. Of course, I knew my brother was dead; I had front row seats to watching the event happen, but somehow I still didn’t believe it until the words left my father’s mouth. According to my dad, who many years later described to me how eery the whole event was, my sobs were completely silent, and I was entirely unaware of everything happening around me. This dissociation lasted the first few days after the accident, and the entirety of my hospital stay. Leaving the blissful gap in my memory I have now.

Barb told me this was my mind’s way of coping with the tragedy and stress of what happened. I was honestly just happy I had an excuse to skip some of the dreadful retelling she forced upon me.

 ❈

             The funeral was of course a depressing and solemn event. I was still yet to speak and found myself thankful for the way people gave up on trying to get me to communicate. I dressed in a black skirt with a black short sleeved button up. A dark coat thrown around my shoulders as the cast on my right hand was too big to fit through the sleeve. I looked terrible, barely a week out of hospital before I watched Ray sink into the ground. The wound on my forehead was still quite nasty, though it looked better than it did before. I tried to cover it up with my hair but was unsuccessful. I got bangs soon after.

           The matter was very traditional, taking place in a church even though none of our family was really religious. It was only the second time I'd ever been in a church, the first having been for my cousin Julie’s wedding when I was four years old. I don’t remember anything of it aside from the material of my dress itching at my neck and making me rather miserable. Of course, not nearly as miserable as I was the day of the funeral, sitting in a pew at the front of the church, listening to a priest claiming Ray would’ve wanted us to celebrate his life. I knew this not to be true; Ray was extremely dramatic and would’ve cherished the thought of everyone he’d ever spoken to moping around for weeks after his death, beside themselves with grief. He sometimes referred to himself as “Romeo” after having been broken up with by another girl he was supposedly in love with, stating he better just stab himself in the heart now if he couldn’t have her. On the rare occasion he broke up with a girlfriend, he’d lounge around, eating ice cream, pretending to not be upset and comparing his cold heart to that of Richard VIII. The concept of him being any different over his death was almost comical; Ray was nothing if not predictable.

           I sat beside my father, who sat beside my mother (it was an extremely awkward arrangement that neither I nor my father cared for) and seemed to have the idea that I could evaporate if I thought hard enough about it. Unfortunately, I did not evaporate, or even come close to it, instead finding myself exactly where I'd been the whole time. I mostly tuned out the service, only really paying attention when my father and Ray’s best friend, Jake spoke. I managed to escape the duty of having to speak that day thanks to my fragile mental state and mutism. Though I'm sure I would’ve been forced all the same if I had been able to talk in any capacity, regardless of where my head was at.

           Faun was sitting in the pew behind me, feeling quite guilty about the whole ordeal. Or friendship dissolved soon after, I think she blamed herself for taking me to the party. It didn’t bother me too much though; we were never the closest and I sometimes thought her to be extremely annoying. An endless stream of shitty boyfriends that she only acquired so she could further repress her sexuality. When we were 14 we kissed at a sleepover and she admitted she was in love with me. I felt bad for not returning the feeling and our relationship had been on rocky territory ever since. I don’t understand how she thought she was in love with me since she barely knew anything about me, but either way she never brought it up again and soon after the monsoon of boytoys had begun.

           My brother’s friends and ex-girlfriends also attended the event. I didn’t approach any of them, far too scared they’d blame me for the death of their friend. One of them, Alex, went up to me to say how sorry he was about everything that happened. He was crying quite heavily (I later found out he was the friend Ray had been drinking with and the second last person to see him alive) and I could smell alcohol on his breath. I stood there while he spoke, telling me about how great my brother was as if I was wholly unaware. Body waving side to side as he stood with his hand on the wall beside me. He offered me some bronze liquid in a flask, and I obliged, savouring the burning sensation that followed in my throat. Alex’s voice was steady and deep, reminding me of my father’s. I’m not sure how long we stood there, him spinning a fantastic web of anecdotes and stories about my brother, some entirely new to my ears. We passed the beverage back and fourth until it was empty. My head felt lighter and heavier somehow simultaneously, and I found it much easier to listen to Alex talk. Later he tried to kiss me in my bedroom during the wake. His mouth was sour, and his tongue seemed too big for his mouth. I wondered how he was able to talk so much without it getting in the way.

             We moved in procession to the cemetery after the service. The grass was a vibrant green colour, and I didn’t understand how the world kept turning after Ray’s death, for mine stopped the moment his heart failed to beat. The sky was a lovely shade of cyan-blue, with clouds so perfect they seemed animated. Pink carnations were planted near the outskirts of the yard and I could smell spring in the air; a heavy, floral aroma that never failed to comfort me. I thought it should be raining, it felt inappropriate that the weather refused to match my despair. My mind wandered as we approached the empty grave and I considered what it would be like if Ray was here beside me. He’d probably be making jokes, telling me to lighten up for a minute or my face would get stuck that way. He’d mock my silence, saying how I never managed to shut up for a minute before but suddenly I'm as proper as a nun. I'd smile, ruffling his hair to piss him off and try to refrain from laughing aloud. The absence of him only felt stronger as I imagined this scenario, so I shoved it out of my head.

           The casket was lowered into the ground, my father was a pallbearer and I often think about how he must’ve felt carrying his son’s body before watching him being buried. My mother sobbed loudly which annoyed me, it felt a bit exaggerated. I had a few tears falling from my eyes but mostly, I just felt numb. Incredibly and absolutely empty inside. To onlookers it may have seemed as though we weren’t very close, my reaction being similar to that of his ex-girlfriends’. However, this didn’t account for the loss of my voice, or the broken state I was in mentally. Maybe it was better that my reaction was rather dulled. It meant people didn’t feel the need to approach me as they did my mother. Less concerned given she was the one playing up her emotions to the point of embarrassment. My father cried, more than I but far less than my mother. He didn’t cry very often – I'd actually only seen it once prior to the whole event – and I figured he probably needed it. At this point I felt as though I'd shed enough tears to last a lifetime so Ray wouldn’t mind if I was a bit subdued in comparison. He never was a crier anyways.

           As I sprinkled soil onto his casket I imagined he was right beside me, watching, ready to criticize as usual. The dirt stained my hand, clutching the sweat and turning my skin a muddy brown colour. As I wiped the dirt on my jacket I could hear him nagging about how I better go wash my hands, what was I, a six-year-old? He was in denial about me growing up and took every chance to remind me I was still just a kid. Not that he had much on me, but I enjoyed it. I never was one to shy away from attention; at least not before. Little quirks and inside jokes between us were always some of my favourite things, the type of humour you could only get from living with someone your whole life. No matter how much his memory will fade there are some things I can’t let myself forget. His mocking tone when he’d make fun of me is one of those things. If I ever managed to let go of that sound then I must be dead as well.

           The sun beat down on my back, my skin burning in my black clothes. I wasn’t sweating yet, but most of the men around were – suit jackets aren’t exactly known for their breathability. My nose was dry and aching red, sore from how much I'd been wiping it the last couple days. Still the sweet seeping tinge of flowers and spring managed to crawl into my nose, settling underneath my skin, the buzzing from before had returned, I could feel my heartbeat loudly in my throat and had the desperate urge to just run. Instead, I just followed the rest of the party, sitting down in the passenger seat of my dad’s car. The silence that settled over us was uncomfortable and stale. He turned on the radio, Led Zeppelin filled the air around us, thankfully relieving some of the tension. I felt in my left pocket for one of the carnations I’d picked from a nearby grave earlier. The flower had begun to wilt, heat taking effect on its delicate composition. When I got home I put it in between the pages of my oldest copy of Romeo and Juliet. Ray would have found it funny if he was around to see.

The drive to my mother’s house was short and minimally awkward. We sat in silence – aside from the music – only because there was no alternative. My hand remained clutched around the dying flower in my pocket as we left the car and entered the home. Other people had already arrived, clustered in the living room, picking at tiny ham sandwiches and various desserts my mother had undoubtedly stress-baked the day before. I wasn’t hungry so I sat as far away from the food and people as humanely possible while staying in the living room, not wishing to hear my mother’s scolding about how I need to socialize more. Eventually I managed to slip away into my old bedroom, where Alex was sitting on my bed drinking a mickey of Smirnoff I assumed he swiped from my mother’s freezer. He offered it to me, and I accepted, the weird repetitive déjà vu like act, mirroring earlier and making the whole day feel like somewhat of a dream.

When I went over this part with Barb she always felt the need to emphasize that it wasn’t a dream. I knew this, obviously, which I told her every time, but she was inclined to disbelief when it came to my denial over my brother’s death. “Begonia, you must realize he’s gone. Dwelling is helping nobody, especially not you. This isn’t a healthy mindset for you to have. Always comparing living to your dreams. I want you to tell me you understand this isn’t just some dream you can wake up from.” The first time she said that to me I was thrust into a bout of wordlessness, as it struck a bit too close to home. The next time she brought it up I just told her of course, though even now I still cannot say I fully understand. How can I when all of my assumptions have been constantly disproven time and time again. How can I ever say this isn’t a dream when I'm not even sure I'm real? James always tries to reassure me, “Bee, I'm telling you, if you can feel this beat, the pulse in your wrist, your neck, your chest, you are alive,” he’ll say while pressing my hand to my wrist, but we both know it isn’t that simple.

Me and Alex made out for a few minutes until I managed to excuse myself. He was a bad kisser and tasted disgusting. I left him sitting on my old bed while I went downstairs to find my dad. He was sitting at the counter with a can of root beer, blank expression sat upon his face. When his eyes met mine he sighed, grabbing his keys out of his pocket. It was obvious neither of us wanted to be here, for numerous reasons, so we left. And if the radio stayed off as we drove home we didn’t acknowledge the silence that time. In my hand was the crumpled carnation, and for some reason it made my chest hurt. A deep ache of dread. I could feel my heartbeat, hear it over the drum of the car engine, and I crushed the flower further. I was careful not to rip it though, as if that was crossing some kind of invisible line my mind had set for me. My fingers felt waxy when I finally let go.

Back home, I opened the copy of Romeo and Juliet. I retrieved the deteriorating plant from my pocket and placed it in the center. Closing the book, I stacked it under a few dictionaries, a magazine under it so it was trapped on either side. I sat down in front of it and cried. Not the huge gasping sobs my mother seemed to fancy, nor the quiet weeping of my father. No, I cried the tears of a child who just found out their grandparents died, the soft uncomprehending grief that overcame them as they first learned what death really meant. How long forever was. My legs pulled up to my chest, hands loosely hung around knees, unable to clasp together because of my cast. I closed my eyes and I swear I could hear the sound of Ray sighing behind me, but when I opened my eyes I was alone. I went to bed, earlier than I ever had in my life, still believing it was a dream and I'd wake up like Alice after her adventures in Wonderland. But when I awoke, I was met with the slow, oozing perdure of my reality. The one which I could not wake up from, and the one where my brother was dead.

[livlepretre]

Awesome chapter of SWSB/SWBS bc I can never remember which way those words go lol

Good for Elena standing up to the Salvatore's and I can only imagine the possible ass kicking at least Damon might get from Klaus if he sees those bruises/smells him on her.

Speaking of Damon, I love how in character he is (technically I think they're all in character bc you're amazing), you don't tend to "woobify" him as we used to say in fandom lol

And oh yes the Jenna problem. I kind of never really see it as a huge problem where Elena and whomever she's with are concerned. I feel like bc of the nature of it being a supernatural show and what not, that it's sorta something all the characters have to go through anyway (loss, grief, etc) just bc the nature of their characters (becoming vampires, witches, etc). But at the same time I'm glad you do address it in your fics bc it is more realistic and I loved Jenna and wished she could have just became a vampire. Like I always wonder how that could have gone and if Elena would have made the same choices after the sacrifice had Jenna lived in some fashion.

The worst part being that Klaus basically did it out of spite, since she had already agreed to die for the sacrifice anyway, which honestly just makes him that much more of a deliciously evil sob. 😈 Oh the love to hate!

I haven't missed anything about Elena knowing it's Klaus's baby yet, right? I'm sorta blanking on if that came out yet haha

Can't wait for the next chapter! What do they say nowadays, *chefs kiss*

bahahaha that’s what I get for naming this fic after a line in a song (and screwing up the lyrics because I did it from memory LOL)

There are going to be fireworks, don’t you worry!

Woobification is such a great term. You’re right that it seems to have fallen out of vogue though. I think encountering woobification in tvd fic in particular was one of the frustrations that finally lit a fire under me to start writing my own fic. I’m all for people woobifying however they’d like and enjoying whatever they want, but it’s not my particular cup of tea-- I really enjoy digging into the really difficult parts of these characters-- the monstrous, the horrifying, the cruel, the selfish, the jealous... and thinking about which parts of those might actually be parts of their humanity. 

I’m incredibly thrilled that Damon is reading as “in character”-- if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times-- I find him incredibly difficult to write! After a decade of writing tvd fic I’m only just now gaining enough confidence with his character to have him actually stay in a scene rather than conveniently leave right away. 

Oh, I think Elena would have been soooo much better off if Jenna had lived! Her primary issue is that without a parent figure meaningfully in the picture-- in this case, that would mean a parent figure fully aware of the supernatural dangers and pressures Elena faces-- she ends up succumbing to the influence of the Salvatores, who are both such terrible influences on her and lead her further and further down this dark path to the point where they’ll eat someone in front of her, and she just doesn’t care so long as it’s not one of her friends. 

Part of this is that Elena has this remarkable capacity to forgive when she really shouldn’t. One of the most informative things to me about the incident where Damon breaks Jeremy’s neck and she ends up forgiving him, even after declaring that she never would, is that actually, Elena can forgive anything so long as it’s ultimately undoable. She can forgive Damon for murdering her brother, because her brother happens to come back to life. That shouldn’t in any way absolve Damon, who 1) didn’t know about the ring and 2) that’s really not an excuse at all, but for Elena, who is under those intense psychological pressures from her status in a supernatural setting, that’s sufficient. 

The Jenna thing becomes a huge issue then. It’s permanent. Jenna’s dead and that’s it. To me, this is actually the biggest impediment against Klaus/Elena in the show (unless we imagine a situation where Jenna lives, or remains a vampire, or there’s a canon divergence pre-sacrifice). I think her heart would want to forgive him, but she would keep coming up against the implacability of Jenna’s fate... so, that’s where one of the huge focuses of my fic writing and set up always comes in-- figuring out how Elena could possibly move past Jenna’s murder in order to fall for Klaus-- in SWBS, the answer turned out to be: make her so isolated and alienated and feel so broken and rejected that any company seemed like good company. 

I too think Klaus totally killed Jenna for spite. I have this head canon that he really does want Elena, but he’s angry that he has to kill her (and he’s wayyyyy too selfish to ever consider doing anything else) so he takes it out on her by killing Jenna. Because honestly? It’s such a weird choice for him to make! It’s so targeted and mean! Especially since Elena has always been loud and clear that she would go willingly with him! 

No one knows that the baby is Klaus’s, although, Elena almost put it together on the car drive to Whitmore... but she repressed repressed repressed rather than consciously figure that one out. But don’t you worry, there’s a clock counting down to when all will be revealed, and it’s getting very close to zero... Literally you can see me setting the stage for the end with the Salvatores coming back, plus a couple of other curve balls I have planned! 

Thanks so much for your comment, loved reading your thoughts!!! 

[decodamalion]

14 22 27 29 40 44 47 52 53 54 55 56

I hope this isnt too many

And if you cant tell, I like The Deep Lore 👉👈

14.  Can they cook? Can they bake?

Decoda can cook basic things like pasta and sauces. She likes to make mushroom stew herself because no one but her and her mom can get it just right.

22. Fave colour

Deffinetly green.

27. What's their family like? Who's in it? What's their relationship with them?

Dec's family is MESSED UP. Baron, her half brother, her aunt, mother and father. Everyone else is dead.

29. What was childhood like?

Childhood for decoda was peaceful for the most part, because she.was sheltered (for the most part) from her true origins.

40. What time do they go to bed usually?

Maybe an hour or.two after sunset. This also carries over to the different seasons.

44. What's their pokemon team? Try to pick all six

Don't come at me. I know near to nothing about Pokemon. Meganium, Oshawott, Gastly, Muk, pidove (because cute), jigglypuff. I have no idea weather or not these are from the same gen, nor if it matters or not. These are just my faves lol

47. What was this character’s biggest turning point in their life, something that changed them almost completely?

Killing two people in the same night.

52. How are you and your character the same? How are you different?

We have the same response to grief. She looks almost exactly like me. I try to make her as kind as I am, but with all the trauma, that's a little hard.

53. Expectations vs Reality: what did you expect and what did you get with this character?

I was expecting Decoda to be a completely seperate entity from myself, but in a way, she's become me.

54. What does your character want, and what do they need?

She wants to live a peaceful life with her friends. She needs a fucking hug. (She needs to fight to get to anything she could want.) Life is hard, man.

55. What’s your character’s core trait? What’s their best trait? What’s their worst trait? When happens when these all interact with each other?

Decoda's best trait is her kindness and her worst trait is her anger. This can ware down her patience and her social energy very quickly.

56. What’s your overall goal with this character? Will they get a happy ending or will they succumb to their faults?

I hate to spoil things, but Dec will have a happy ending. It's a metaphor for my own suffering which has also come to an end. It's also a message to others that they can get through the hardships in their lives.

[sclfmastery]

Have Thirteen and the Master ever discussed the Year That Never Was? Tbh out of all their New Who interactions, that one seems the least "friendly enemy" to me.

I’m actually gonna gently disagree with you on that one.  

A lot about The Year and Simm Master’s interactions with the Tenth Doctor not only seem Best Enemies to me (at least in the sense of mutual pining and “I know what you’re really thinking/feeling behind your mask because we’ve known each other since childhood”), it’s even one of the REASONS why I ship Thoschei. 

--The Master mistreating Jack and the Jones family was abysmal and awful and frankly uncomfortable, but it’s unfortunately not unique for the Master to hurt the Doctor’s loved ones in order to make the Doctor succumb.  Missy’s treatment of Clara and her s/o Danny, down to turning him into a cyberman and trying to get the Doctor to kill her while trapped inside a Dalek suit, is a good example of another incident unrelated to The Year.  Not to mention Dhawan trying to off Yaz, Ryan, and Graham in a blazing crashing airplane.  And frankly if we’re going to even say Simm is still the cruelest, it’s how he treated Bill Potts that, to me, was his coup de grace of horribleness: again, a different incident.  Moreover, the only person done any physical harm was Jack, and that was done in a separate location where the Doctor didn’t even see (I know, “congrats, less of an asshole that you could have been,” but this IS the Master, and if he WANTED, he could have acted even more abominably).  

--Simm took care to give the Doctor food, clothing, a working wheelchair, and later, rather absurdly amusing, a teensy outfit for his shrunken ancient form.  He not once tried to do him physical injury, in fact taking care that he stayed alive to bear witness to the Master’s “glorious” plan. 

--I think we often misapprehend The Year as less friendly because for once the Master SUCCEEDS.  For once the plan is airtight and there’s no nearsightedness.  And we’re, lol, not used to that Thoschei dynamic.  --All the confrontations between them once Ten was restored: A) “I forgive you,” B) “I know you,” C) the WHOLE “REGENERATE!” scene where Ten breaks down more than with ANY other loss in the whole of his run (and there are very few other times in NuWho the Doctor does show negative emotion that intense, even given differences in the ways different regenerations express grief).  To me they seem almost inappropriately intimate together in front of all the other characters, given what Simm just did to them for over a year.  You get the almost palpable feeling that if no one else were in the room they’d be crying and kissing and making tearful, suspicious, but semi-earnest reparations.  See End of Time for that. It’s like an extension of a conversation that the Master’s death only temporarily waylaid. 

--A lot of people like to say, speaking of that, that the Master’s choice to die rather than travel with the Doctor is the cruelest thing he’s ever done.  Now granted I’m a Simm stan: a stan not of who Simm is, but who Simm COULD be, with better writers than RTD and Moffat on board (sorry to their fans, they’re often very good writers too! just....not with the Master.)  But hear me out.  The Doctor has just treated his competent adult intellectual equal and oldest friend as a kind of sideshow zoo animal to be locked away against his will, to be forcefully “rehabilitated” with “good” acts ( *aggressively side eyes the Vault arc*). Nothing is more important to the Master than his intellectual, physical, and emotional autonomy. I mean look at his moniker for one.  (shout out btw to @rhythmofwar @followthedrums13 @drummingncise et al for all sharing this view about our boy Simm).  So to have the Doctor exercise his OWN issue with control, by controlling people to “save” them, is genuinely dehumanizing to the Master.  Maybe he might one day want to reconcile, but not on THOSE terms. 

So, to finally get around to answering your question, lol: they have topically, superficially, discussed the Year, in terms of that final point.  In a verse with @mostincrediblechange, they’ve paid heed to the hurt they both caused when so ensnared in each other that collateral occurred, by naming their own secondborn twin children “Jack” and “Martha.”  But I agree with you, if you’re making a request for this kind of rp thread, that it needs to be talked about A LOT more.

Unfortunately it’s difficult, because BOTH Thirteen and Simm are adept at raising emotional walls.  She’s happy and whimsically aloof and “fine,” he’s brassy and defiant and “fine.”  Since he’s as confrontational, however, as she is evasive, he’s approached the issue for a follow up conversation before, and he’s likely to do so again.

Her having the conversation with Dhawan seems less likely just because...lol...so many more mutual mistakes have been made that they gotta deal with the new Timeless Child baggage, and the “strand a brown Master in the hands of the Nazis without a perception filter” baggage, and the “hey I used your DNA to make a bunch of frankenstein cybermasters” baggage.  

[fakeyellow]

Never Let Me Go

MC undoes the wishes so everyone returns to their normal lives without ever Turning into vampires. Features closure scenes for all of the LI’s as MC learns what happened to them (Kamilah, Lily, Adrian, and Jax in that order)

Amanda wakes up and is faced with the aftermath of losing everyone she loves. 

She knows in her mind what has happened but it isn’t until she’s standing inside the Met’s Egyptian exhibit that she truly realises what it means.

She’s walking around in a daze when suddenly, she sees it.

Kamilah’s necklace.

The colors are faded, worn down by thousands of years, but it is undoubtedly hers.

How many times had she seen it gracing Kamilah’s long elegant neck, resting right on top of her immaculately pressed shirts?

She’d recognise that necklace anywhere and she recognises it here in this museum, sitting behind fortified glass walls.

And it hits her all at once.

She isn’t sure when the tears start dripping off her face but Amanda is suddenly drowning in the intensity of her emotions with no hope of salvation.

She falls to her knees in the middle of that exhibit, heaving sobs ripping out of her body as she cries for the woman that she loves so deeply but will never see again.

—

She’s numb with grief when she tries to enter her apartment but she’s stopped by security before she can even get into the building.

“You don’t understand, I live here-“ She exclaims frantically, trying to get past their burly frames, but it is futile.

Without another place to go, she goes back to her old apartment for the first time in a while since she had moved in with Kamilah.

“Hey roomie.”

The words take a while to register but then Amanda finds herself falling forward, flinging her arms around a very surprised Lily.

She’d thought her tears had been spent at that exhibit but apparently, she has an infinite supply of tears and she weeps them all into her friend’s solid embrace.

—

It hurts to be with Lily.

Amanda is grateful that she still has Lily in her life, but it hurts her more than she wants to admit to talk to a person who is at once the person she knew and not.

They have always been close friends but they’d gone through so much together after Lily’s Turning.

They had been through hell and back, sharing a verifiable lifetime’s worth of experiences together in the span of a year. Their relationship lacks that depth now, that intimacy, and Amanda feels the keen pain of loss with each interaction.

Years later, they’ve formed new inside jokes, made new memories, and their friendship grows stronger than ever.

And Amanda finally stops seeing the shadows of the past in Lily.

—

She doesn’t know what she expects to find when she goes to the location of Adrian’s old house, but she most definitely does not expect to see a museum.

A museum is a bit of a formal title to place upon the small cottage, but that is what the sign in front of the house says: “Robertson-Raines Historic House Museum.”

Amanda trepidatiously steps foot inside and can’t help but gasp at the insides that are almost identical to what she’d seen the last time they’d hidden here. Everything looks well-cared for and the only new additions are informational placards and “do not touch” signs.

There’s an old man at the desk who greets her warmly but she does not see him, so absorbed in her memories.

She comes to a stop in the bedroom where there is a locket on display and her heart catches to see the faces of Adrian’s wife and son. It feels like only yesterday that Adrian had shown her his past, bared his soul to her, and yet so much has changed.

“Ah yes, you’ve found the locket,” a voice interrupts and Amanda jumps in surprise.

“While we don’t know their names, they’re presumed to be the family of Adrian Raines, a soldier in the Revolutionary War who bought this land,” the old man says.

“Do you know what happened to them?” She dares to whisper, hoping against hope that Adrian had somehow found the peace he’d so wanted, in the absence of Gaius’s meddling. 

“Unfortunately, there are no official records until 1785, when the land was sold to the Robertson family. They were most likely casualties of the Revolutionary War,” he says.

Amanda’s face crumbles despite her best efforts, and noticing, the old man quickly adds, “But I myself was always partial to the idea that the family moved elsewhere after the war in search of more fertile lands.”

She knows there isn’t much factual basis to his words but they are comforting nonetheless and she latches onto that hope, nodding tearfully.

“Goodbye Adrian,” she whispers.

—

It is with shock that Amanda realises that Jax might be alive.

He’d been young in the 80’s when he’d been turned and barring some sort of illness or accident, there is no reason Jax should not be alive.

But as curious as she is, as much as she longs to see him, she knows that even if she searches for him, she will not be meeting the Jax she knows.

And for a long time, Amanda isn’t ready for that. She doesn’t want to forget the memories of the Jax she knows, she’s not ready to see a Jax who does not know her at all, who’s had a life of his own without her.

But one day, years later, she searches for him and knocks on a door.

It can’t be more than a couple of seconds before the door opens but in that brief moment, Amanda’s mind fills with fears that she’s gotten the wrong address and she half turns to go away.

And then the door opens and it is Jax. Although his hair has turned white and there are wrinkles in his forehead, he is undoubtedly Jax.

“Yes?” He asks expectantly and Amanda blushes when she realises she’s been staring at him this entire time. But she can’t take her eyes off of him.

There is so much of the Jax she knew in his face and yet he is different: his eyes have laugh lines, he has a small scar on his cheek that she’s never seen before, and there is a wise maturity in his eyes.

But most of all, he doesn’t have that cynical air around him. He looks curious as to who she might be but he’s not scowling like her Jax had so often done.

And Amanda realises: this is a Jax who’s had the freedom to live his life the way he wants. He’s faced difficulties of a different nature but they’ve been on his own terms and overall, he’s lived a good and happy life.

“Jax, who is it?” A voice calls out to him and Amanda can no longer hold back her tears.

“Wrong address, sorry” she manages to say in a choked voice before she runs away, leaving as the man looks bemusedly after her.

—

There is not a day that goes by that Amanda does not feel the absence of her friends in her life. There is not a single moment that Amanda stops missing Kamilah, longing for Kamilah, loving Kamilah.

But in the end, she learns to move on. She learns how to live with their absence, to live with her perpetual grief without succumbing to it.

And when Amanda closes her eyes for the last time, it is with a smile.  

—

A/N: The Kamilah scene is the shortest because I already wrote an angsty scene for her specifically lol. 

But after writing that dark scene, I really wanted to write a more hopeful story because the Bloodbound MC is resilient af. I hope you like it. I’ve not really written Adrian/Lily/Jax before but it was fun (and so sad) to write what happened to them if they weren’t vampires.

The title is taken after the amazing book “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is such a beautiful bildungsroman in a dystopian setting that I cannot recommend enough.

[whiskcrcd]

Fuck It, Cat Power Hours

÷\

I have no idea how to structure this, but I must write more about these girls being in their feline forms. While they behave in abnormal ways, there is a difference between their human forms and their cat forms beyond the physical sense. There is a reason why it explicitly says that they don’t favor that shape that they could take despite its advantages. 

First of all, what does it mean to become a cat, to them and in general, what I want to accomplish in writing it in my forms.

To become a cat is exactly that, those with the ability morph their own bodies to be one of a cat. One only acquires it if one is or is related to a cat being, whomst species will be discussed another time lol. However, it isn’t enough to inherit it, the first time one transforms is when they genuinely feel in danger. It’s a process that isn’t kind despite that, it’s painful to those not entirely experienced with using it or occupying the form for an extensive amount of time (Your body changes a lot,man), i.e Dmitri having bone hurty hours for using the form for a few minutes to an hour and Gwendoline experiencing no pain due to spending decades as a cat and spending her childhood regularly as a cat.

To Dmitri and Gwendoline, the form was used as a tool, not as an extension of oneself. They saw it as a means to an end, a means that is kinda shameful to use, for them.

Dmitri And The Quest For Knowledge

Dmitri grew up hardly remembering the unlucky accident that led to her transformation, however, she knew that she almost got hit by a car and after that, her parents became far more authoritative. Her childhood was normal, albeit, very strict. Despite of that, she became extremely enthusiastic about her powers after reading Warrior Cats, and hearing vague stories from her Grandma about their romance with a cat eldritch being. The kid felt like she was gaining true insight about her existence and embraced what she was told. The girl ate birds. Of course, that series isn’t a true representation of the cat experience and becoming aware of that in the beginning of middle school really was a hit on her self esteem.

   Her parents have already made it abundantly clear that she was under their scrutiny, that they expected her to become successful and knowing that although being in possession of an abnormal ability did not add to her worth in the future. This, however allowed her to become less blindly positive and begin to desire to learn more, get the real truth about herself along with others and open her mind, though this is the cause of most of her judgemental thoughts. However, while Dmitri receded inwards, biting her tongue, maintaining a passive presence and to make her parents proud, she’s still pursuing her own goal of always attaining and giving the truth. Her use of her ability which she does like cause she’s a furry has been only been limited to aid her quest for knowledge, a quest that she at times feels she’s got to work twice as hard at because she feels like that form isn’t allowing her to use her actually do it herself. This of course fuels her feelings of inadequacy. 

Gwendoline And The Winds Of Change

The life of Gwendoline’s is one that is constantly changing despite her desire for, although that is the case with most partially immortal cat beings. The duration of Gwen’s growth was one that greatly shows this. She was one who didn’t treasure her status of being a catgirl, it was a fact placidly known about herself, such as having two eyes. After all, surrounding her were others where were like her, in the inn she lived at, all giving their own stories about the ways of the cat. The first major change in Gwen’s life was when her mother died her last death when Gwen was only four, leaving her to be placed under the care of Vaska, whom was close to the family yet was grief stricken by the loss as well. However, he managed to be there for her as an older brother figure, caring for the child but not raising her, still she loved him all the same, clinging to him due to him being all that she has. 

So, the first world war start and he’s drafted because they’re French and live in France. This results in sweet Gwen, no stranger to loss but still all alone for the first time. This is the first time she understands the law of nature that she’s been told before: kill or be killed. No, she doesn’t kill, she isn’t that edgy but she learns to survive on her own after already dying twice. It’s a desperate time of hers where she resorts to becoming a cat constantly to feed herself, to survive. However, her humanity isn’t thrown away, most of this period of time is spent as a human, working at the inn to provide for herself. There is also the light at end of the of the tunnel, the hope of being with Vaska again. They reunite, tearfully so, after so long of correspondence via mail. The hard way that Gwen learns that she will never have that human family bond is the period of years of neglect that she has under Vaska’s roof. This time, Gwen is the one who leaves. Yet, she still yearns to be loved, held and to be cared for. After being sought after for not aging (lol saving that for a later post/ thread), Gwen officially abandons her life as a human, succumbing to living as an animal, amongst other felines. Decades are spent within this form until Gwen realizes another law of nature, that there are the weak and the strong and the low life as animal was pitiful. 

She never was a cat, to be one, it was simply a horrible way to cope, and from there she built herself up as an adult, creating her dressmaking business with confidence, treasuring her independence and freedom as a human. From then on, Gwendoline looks at her cat form with disdain due to associating it with those dark periods.

That’s basically it

[ooops-i-arted]

15 Day SWTOR OC Challenge

11. Canon divergence. Are there parts of their story that don’t line up with in-game information? Why? Where?

Definitely.  My opinion of KotFE/KotET and their bland, boring, pissy villains and their meandering plot and their gotsdamned railroading is barely above my opinion of Kyle Ron and the 3D Clone Wars, and y’all know how much I don’t like those lmao.

*cracks knuckles* I’m just gonna do Avei and Illi and everyone else together since it’s easier.  Let’s do this.  Under a cut because I know no one but me cares this much lol.  Another unnecessarily long post ahoy!

Skye Lir and her master, Derran Kanis, are asked to go on a joint Imp-Pub mission into Wild Space to hunt this ~mysterious threat ooooh~.  Skye asks her pal Avei along since she’s handy in a fight and has plenty of experience navigating galactic-level threats.  Avei is reluctant to leave her family, especially her three-year-old daughter, but agrees to just one more big-stakes mission.  The Jedi Knight crew goes along; the smuggler crew is off elsewhere in space.

Chapter 1 happens like in canon.  Derran, Skye, and Avei try to prevent the ship’s destruction but fail.  Skye instructs her crew to escape and warn the others and they do so.  Avei decides to buy time for the crew to escape, and they are all captured.

Right as the ship explodes, across the galaxy in Avei’s ship the whole smuggler crew is woken by Kiva screaming bloody murder.  They all come running; Kiva cries repeatedly for her mommy.  Corso finally gets out of her “Mommy’s ship blew up.”  He tells her it was just a bad dream and gets her back to sleep.

Chapter 1 continues.  Derran is the canon Outlander; Skye and Avei are treated as her accomplices.  Derran refuses Valkorion’s power but he still possesses her when she “kills” him.  Arcann has Derran, Skye, and Avei all carbonited.

Kiva is still upset and not herself the next day when the smuggler crew gets a call from Kira, who tells them what happened.  They book it to the site of the wreckage to help the Republic forces Kira also called comb the desert wreckage for survivors.  Kiva is distraught and keeps repeating that Mommy is gone.

At some point Kira and Corso talk and Kira mentions she can’t feel Skye or Derran in the Force anymore (I believe she mentions this in her letter to a romanced JK) and Corso mentions how weird Kiva was acting the night before they got the news.  They put their heads together and Kira tells him more about Force abilities and a whole puzzle Corso didn’t realize he was putting together falls into place - all the times Kiva nabbed a toy or treat supposed to be out of reach, her strange knack for getting through doors he could’ve sworn were locked, her uncanny ability to know which room he and Avei were in, and now her strange dream - and Kira confirms Kiva is very likely Force-sensitive.  She offers to bring Kiva to the Jedi Temple but Corso refuses; he’s lost enough family and he won’t send his daughter away.

The Republic and Empire go to war with the Eternal Empire, blah blah.  I refuse to believe they were instantly crushed by sooper speshul Zakuul so this goes on for a while, at least a year.

Risha leads smuggling jobs but Corso isn’t really involved with that, as his hands are full with a preschool child dealing with the loss of her mother with separation anxiety from hell, and also the fact that her now-frequent tantrums make things move around the room.

Kiva is three so her mindset is “Mommy left and didn’t come back, so if Daddy leaves he won’t come back either.”  Also one of her best skills with the Force is sensing emotions, so not only is she dealing with her own grief, she’s being bombarded by everyone else’s through the Force, and hasn’t learned to regulate any of her Force abilities yet.  (I majored in Early Childhood Education so the idea of how a Force-sensitive child would operate, so to speak, is endlessly fascinating to me.)

Corso reads everything he can on the Holonet about using the Force, and between him and Guss’s memories of his training, they are able to slowly teach Kiva how to at least not lose control during tantrums.

Over in the Empire Illivrin is having the time of her life.  Illi hates the Empire and her two goals as a Dark Council member were 1. self-preservation and 2. running the Empire into the ground.  She’s doing great at the second but not so much at the first, because her top subordinate Sali’ra is busy gathering every scrap of info she can to overthrow Illivrin before she gets them all killed.  Sali’ra is coordinating her efforts with her uncle, Av’en, and her cousin, Furi’sa, both who want Illivrin gone for the good of the Empire.  (My headcanon is that literally everyone else in the Empire looks at Illivrin as one of those crazy power-mad Sith who always die in a week from their own schemes, except she keeps not dying somehow.)

Vae’ra and Torian get married!  Yay!  It’s a Mandalorian ceremony.  Vae’ra bridesmaids or equivalent were Sali’ra, Mako, and Blizz.  Gault got ordained on the Holonet for the make-it-Empire-official part of the ceremony.

After the better part of a year Sali’ra has turned enough of Illivrin’s forces onto her side (and attending Dark Council meetings while Illi is off pointing the Silencer at everything she can, and showing the Council what a better option she would be) and is ready to make her move.  Furi’sa comes to the latest Dark Council meeting and accuses Illivrin of being an enemy of the Empire and not having the Empire’s interests in mind, etc.  When the Council backs Furi’sa, Illivrin - cornered, desperate, and dangerous - attacks Furi’sa.  Khem and Xalek back her while Sali’ra and Furi’sa’s father, Av’en, are on her team.  Team Illi vs Team Furi is brutal and vicious and very cinematic in my head.  Illivrin finally strikes Av’en a mortal blow with her lightning.  Enraged, Furi’sa beheads Xalek and tosses his head at Illivrin’s feet.  The two fight fiercely but they’re burned out after the fight already.  Illivrin tries to kill Furi’sa with lightning but is too tired to make it a death blow; Khem barely saves her from Furi’sa’s killing strike.  Khem tells his master to run; Illivrin doesn’t want to leave him but ultimately decides on self-preservation and runs while Khem mows down the Sith guards that swarm him.  Khem is finally subdued and while Furi’sa almost kills him, she instead has him imprisoned back in the tomb of Naga Sadow.  Sali‘ra takes Illivrin’s Council seat as Darth Colubra.  Furi’sa mourns her father and swears she will have revenge on Illivrin.

Illivrin successfully escapes Korriban and flees into exile in the Outer Rim.  For the next decade-ish she’s gonna wear rags and eat whatever she kills with her bare hands in some desolate Outer Rim jungle.  She snatched Xalek’s mask before she ran and keeps it close, swearing she will avenge her murder son and her murder bro.

Vae’ra alerts Corso that Furi’sa and Illivrin are loose and on the warpath.  Wanting to hide his Force-sensitive daughter from the Sith and also give her a stable, normal childhood, he takes the ship and moves out to Dantooine, where they will be anonymous and fairly hidden, and takes a job on a farm.  Kiva gets to go to school like a normal kid.  Corso forbids her from doing any Force stuff in public (she has better control nowadays) but she’s always curious and there’s a convenient abandoned Jedi Temple not too far away, so he occasionally goes and raids the databanks for anything that will help her learn, and lets her practice her Force abilities in the privacy of Avei’s ship.

The rest of the crew sticks with Risha, who works on reclaiming Dubrillion.  By the time the five years are up, she is Queen like she should’ve been.  Guss also gets some Jedi training.

Vae’ra and Torian adopt an orphaned Chiss girl, Iseli, and a Zabrak boy, Jerro.

Seren has been in contact with Theron.  Together they try to piece together what happened and track down Skye’s sister.  With Lana and Koth they start setting down the foundations of the Alliance.

Eternal Empire conquers a lot of stuff.  Illivrin stays hidden.  Furi’sa hunts her and any other threat to the Empire.  Corso and Kiva stay on Dantooine.

Picking up with our unfortunate carbonite blocks, Derran is the one forced to chat with the Lamest Villain.  Affected by his presence, Skye has dark visions of the Republic’s fall, while Avei has terrible dreams of her crew and family dead.

KotFE picks up from there.  Lana and Koth rescue the trio.  They are suffering from carbonite poison but Avei most of all, because she couldn’t use the Force to enter a meditative, preserving state and also because she was bashed over the head to get her in the carbonite mold and she had an open, bleeding wound when frozen.

Blah blah KotFE continues.  (I was much more interested in the implications of the five year skip, can you tell?)  They flee, they meet Senya, find the Gravestone, etc.  Avei hits it off with Koth and suffers increasing symptoms from her carbonite poisoning and does not give a shit about anything but locating her family.  Nobody likes or trusts Lana.  Skye and Derran don’t like Senya much but Avei understands her Mom Vibes and gets along with her okay.  They make it to Asylum.  Skye recognizes that psycho murderbot her sister picked up.  Arcann and his Kyle Ron Knockoff Sister show up.  Derran gets stabbity stabbed and Avei finally succumbs to her carbonite poisoning.  I can’t be assed to remember all that stuff, it was mostly boring.  HK-55 doesn’t die because I love him, and remains Derran’s loyal bodyguard and friend, although he has a rivalry with her other HK droid, HK-51.  (Derran loves HK droids.  The Jedi politely look away as long as she keeps them under control.)

They make it to Odessen, where Seren and Theron have been overseeing the start of a base.  Seren is overjoyed to see her baby sister; Skye cannot handle this level of emotion and is awkward but glad Seren cares this much somewhere deep inside.  Avei is dragged to the medcenter, still very sick, and refuses to get in a kolto tank until Skye swears she will call Avei’s family now that they have secured communications and it is safe to do so.  Derran is named Alliance Commander.  She probably develops a drinking problem.

Skye calls Avei’s ship and finds Corso and a (now eight-year-old) Kiva and tells them Avei’s not dead.  Corso immediately flies the ship straight to Odessen.  (I refuse to believe that Corso, whose chief character trait is loyalty, waited a whole nother year to be reunited with his wife.  I REFUSE.)  Avei is out of the kolto tank and doing much better by the time he arrives and SHE FINALLY GETS TO SEE HER FAMILY AGAIN AND THEY ALL HUG AND IT’S ADORABLE.

Then Kiva says “HEY MOM WATCH THIS” and throws a rock with her mind and that’s how Avei finds out her daughter is Force-sensitive.

Skye gives Kiva some formal training but is mostly busy with helping her former Master run the Alliance.

Avei sticks around the Alliance for a month but decides screw you all, my family is more important, and leaves.  She continues to suffer lasting sickness from the carbonite poison, and it takes at least a year for her to truly recover.

I haven’t decided for sure how to manage it but basically KotFE and KoTET are condensed into one without all the nonsense like Iokath or whatever.  (Also, obviously they can’t recruit say, Torian because he’s off with his wife.  Or Vette, because she’s off with Furi’sa.  etc.)  Skye sticks with Derran; Seren is also a major player in the Alliance.  Arcann and Vaylin are both killed and no one misses them.

Derran finally kills Valkorion in her head (without any part of being Valkorion, because screw you for making me play your pretentious crappy villain sue oc) but the mental toll of having a pretentious college philosophy major in her head makes her decide to use her Jedi Exile Retirement plan, and she peaces out to a nice beach planet with her HK droid pals.  She hangs out there until years later, Kiva comes to pester her for training.

Seren takes over as Alliance commander.  The Iokath stuff probably doesn’t even happen because I didn’t like it.  The Theron’s-a-traitor arc does, but I haven’t played it all yet so I haven’t decided how much I want to tweak.  All I know is Seren is pregnant but doesn’t know it til after Umbara, because I enjoy maximizing angst with basic tropes.  She and Theron do stay together and name their daughter Caeles, after Theron’s ancestor Revan/Caele.

Idk about the rest but the Alliance does disband and its resources go to strengthen the Republic, but while Seren stays a free agent because of all the issues the Agent storyline gave her, she’s basically Republic at this point.  Skye is very proud.

Years later Illivrin shows back up and Furi’sa discovers Kiva is Force-sensitive and lures her into her van shuttle with candy the promise of Force training; Kiva escapes Furi’sa and goes to train with the Jedi.

Over the course of a lot of years the Valaris Legacy gradually teams up to finally kick Illivrin’s ass.  Kiva is the only one strong enough in the Force to challenge her and seals Illivrin inside a tomb on Yavin 4, where she remains trapped for all time, eternally separated from Khem Val, the only being she ever cared about.  (This is how you treat a villain, Rian Johnson, just saying.)  (Also Furi’sa kills Khem Val and avenges her father, though she dies doing it.)

All the post-Theron-traitor stuff is all more loosely sketched out and also it’s midnight rn and I need to go to bed, so let’s leave it at that.

[gurguliare]

DVD: that one scene from your fic about Dirhaval, with the elf lady and the two of them being really intent with each other over the fire. "Do you love me" et cetera. I hope that makes sense I'm on mobile.

omg IT DOES although since that fic barely has scene divisions I’m going to take this excuse to do… a lot of it.

“I have remembered something,” she added, inconsequentially. “My aunt’s husband was Guilin’s steward. Everyone in my family hated him because he always making up to us with stories about the great princes. He said that Gwindor and Finduilas fought much over the Adanedhel’s love for her.”

I… I love this OC. She’s not even a box of rocks, she’s like, a box with one rock in it. Selectively dense; elsewhere, airheaded.

Dírhaval considered the fish with great interest. He had been told triumph lent him a fierce expression. He had no wish to scare his friend off now.

I can’t remember if @crocordile​ and I had a conversation before or after I wrote this about Dirhavel being like, not necessarily a big but an energetic guy who’s frequently seen around the camps doing SUPER WEIRD athletic shit to see if some of the feats he attributes to Turin were physically possible—anyway, whatever the timing, that concept was what I was psychically tuned into when I wrote this description. He has a beard and it bristles despite his best efforts to keep it trimmed.

“Raised voices—he overheard—Gwindor said, ‘Why does he seek you out, and sit long with you, and come ever more glad away?’ And that was true, I remember; they sat together in all kinds of places, on the terraces, in the treasury, and even by the earthworks for the bridge. No doubt he told her much you would be glad to know. But as for me, I think Gwindor a fool; few men would have loved her for listening. It reminds them what they hold dear in themselves.”

It was really hard for me to strike what seemed like a reasonable balance between hearsay and direct observation, but I leaned on the idea that Nargothrond, though huge, was not like, “modern city space” huge, more “sprawling overdeveloped apartment complex and you need a permit to go above ground”—so in five years and with perfect memory, everyone has a decent chance of stumbling on everyone else’s attempts at fresh air.

“That’s true,” he said. The first time he had interviewed her, she had spoken for an hour about the cavern of assembly, like an egg on its side—but so vast!—and with stalactites Finrod himself had sung down into pillars, or was it that he had worn holes in the walls parting small caves, she couldn’t decide; and the window on the river, whence a grey light came, like a shadow thrown on the gliding light of a thousand lamps and torches.

I think this description of the great hall is kind of cute but I have to acknowledge it was influenced, consciously or subconsciously, by the great hall in the Rats of Nimh.

And now when she spoke it was matter-of-fact and with hardly a jibe at her uncle. She was Túrin to him in that moment with her straight-sloping neck, the flushed skin of her neck and jaw with her face as fair as fair could stay at sunset, the cupful of shadow under her chin. He had burned the roof of his mouth. The fish was tender, almost flavorless, flaking between his teeth like a cake of river-flesh; a little muddy, even, as all water here was. He ate the crisped-black skin for a whiff of charcoal, which coated his mouth. “Don’t you love me, your loyal hearer?”

She gave him a startled wink; and smiled, and smiled.

Okay, so yes. I do love this moment, I hope it does a lot of things at once; basically I want 1) Dirhavel to be ironic in a nice way about his elf friend attempting to invent the term “emotional labor,” which reflects both a male impatience with this attempt to generalize everything to men talking women’s ears off, but also some vague species-based edginess about him trying to construct this human story out of testimony from elves, and like, navigating elves’ possessiveness of Turin but also the way they patronize him in the same breath, Adanedhel. And at the same time having to confront the fact that people are people and the elf-human boundary has gotten increasingly blurry with the end times, however much he might want to retain a sense of lofty apartness, whether as a human among elves, a writer among subjects, a man among women, whatever—that tension between observer distance and involuntary empathy is another big theme of this fic. And 2) I want the cook to catch it but not quite get it—like, she knows he’s making fun of her but she doesn’t necessarily interpret it in the same way he does, what she gets is that he’s talking about the limits of different kinds of love, that you can love someone and it can still go just so far: that’s why it triggers her next thought about Finduilas –> Turin.

“I do not think Finduilas loved the Mormegil either. Or, that is, I believe they loved one another as sister and brother.”

I said this in my commentary on an otherwise VERY different LOGH fic but I love when characters are wrong. Every time. Also, I love childish oversimplifications that have good reason for existing—that is, I like when you can really see why a character would with all their heart want to believe x, because the alternative is both messy and depressing.

Trying to lick his fingers clean just spread around the soot. Among the things she had told Dírhaval was that she was an only child. But he was inclined to believe her, almost. To Finduilas Túrin should have been a child. She must have wanted to love him like a brother—it would have been best, by far clearer and finer, to love him as a brother, even when her death walked near. The death he handed her down to; but if they were kin, it would have been her right to love him, blaming him.

“Do you not agree?”

Dirhavel takes this basically as like, confirmation for his thesis that all real love is irrational and unconditional (see also Gwindor wanting Finduilas and Túrin to be happy at his own expense, a few lines down) but only familial love has the “excuse” to be so. So the distinction is not, “would I love him whatever he did to me,” but rather, “do I feel fucked up and guilty about that fact or not.” In a vague way, this is supposed to set up the extremely bleak lines he gives Nienor after she gets her memory back: twice beloved.

“I can’t say.” Up again to pace. She followed him, basket on her arm, and settled onto her haunches when she saw he had no journey in mind. He stood when he performed, which was not hard, but it made him more restless when alone.

See above remarks about Dirhavel’s acrobatics, and also maaybe his ADHD

“I think—by the time—no, Túrin did not love her, and as for Finduilas, well, surely she cared for Gwindor? If they argued. Let’s see. And Túrin pursued her at last and fell in a swoon on her grave, we know that. And he loved Gwindor; how not, when Gwindor was with him at Ivrin? But Gwindor—I suppose—Gwindor must have hated him. No. He must have hoped Túrin loved Finduilas, and that was why he couldn’t be persuaded of the truth. For he would have wanted her to be happy, in the end.”

“Oh, no!”

His mood tipped down at once. “Oh no,” he agreed, and took his sandals off and stepped into the stream.

Again, I just think this interaction is fun. I mean I like the placement of his realization about Gwindor, but I LOVE the cook being like “oh no!! that’s so sad!” I hope other people enjoy “stories about the process of idiotic sadstuck brainstorming” as much as I do.

His mother had said once that both he and his father were happier than other men, but that they had no ballast, to keep steady the craft. If he took on an ounce of grief he’d sink, and yet he felt the flood almost as freedom. It made him more the master than had his dry, feckless race, his high-riding. As long as he struggled he had yet to succumb; that was the rule for a wasted night. He ought to go beg a bowl of sour milk from Linnor, or go and sing a service for the king. He could see as far as a night of stars.

I wanted to communicate a particular kind of mood downturn here where you can still clearly remember being happy, and the rising tide of discontent isn’t overwhelming on its own, it’s just depressing because you know where it leads—but for the same reason it’s also a relief, in that you know where it leads. Whereas joy is weird and easy to get lost in and you never know when the plug will be pulled. But I’m not sure the boat metaphor really works.

But it was day, it was red evening. It was his companion’s grief, filling his mind from above. She crouched and watched the far bank huge-eyed, not a tear in evidence, eyes opened but sealed, as it seemed, against sadness that strove for entry, not escape; she sat with wide mouth cracked, nostrils flared, sucking in great absent sniffs of sea-wind. She was besieged as an afterthought, safe and calm except besieged.

I also wanted to include some telepathy! As always! Dirhaval I imagine to be something of a natural, who probably has had some experience with elf mind-speech at this point—enough to recognize it but not really to manage it. I like this description of the cook in pain, I think it works well with her established personality and also evokes Nargothrond itself, which is of course the thing she’s actually grieving for. I mean, and she identifies it with Gwindor, reasonably enough, and takes unhappy pride in him as a lord of Nargothrond, and in this moment is kind of shot through herself not just with the fact of his defeat but the like, honorable necessity of his defeat, knowing that on some level he accepted it.   

(Gwindor surely wished Finduilas joy. Finduilas, dying, remembered Túrin, and told him where his quest should end. The feathered tops of the reeds glowed on dark stems, like a fire in a field of reeds—there before nightfall he planted for ever the standards of the Noldor and their unsheathed swords, kindling in the dawn.)

I’m so proud of this stupid line lol, it’s just the reverse of Tolkien’s—“The light of the drawing of the swords of the Noldor was like a fire in a field of reeds”—but I LOVE THAT LINE, it’s so perfect for Dirhaval as an author and Sirion as a place of memory/last battlefront/first battlefront for this long war. And its conclusion, still to come.

He washed his hands and greasy beard in the river. “Your fish will be cold,” he advised. He had abandoned hope of dinner until she brought it, but that was no reason to encourage bad habits in her.

Dumb friends. Dumb friends are great because they are attuned to the hazards of stupidity, and can help each other.

Then he had to pick some scales out of his teeth, and couldn’t elaborate, but he heard her uncover the basket, anyway.

He had met her before with a handful of salt, pressing a few grains to her mouth to check their purity. “Dírhaval,” she said wisely, mouth full. “Dírhaval, I have forgotten how to cook.” Meaning she had no spices, witched ovens, and trained assistants—maybe, with her, it really was as though she had forgotten; at least it was something else she had lost.

Yeah… the focus on memory in this is another unexpected link to the LOGH fic uh, an inevitable byproduct of writing about a historian, and it’s also supposed to reflect that loss of separation between elves and men, since so much of what distinguishes elves is… their wealth of resources, psychological and material. And the material resources are essential to and interwoven with the psychological resilience, as noted here, so I really wanted to capture that sense that *not having* all the wonderful things she used to have baffles her as much as a hole in her memory. Because the default is that you keep everything forever, right? Another feeling which is not unique to elves. God I love………………………… “people.”