#Muriel Fairfield

[kes-au]

To Fairfield Manor

Great Aunt Muriel's Bequest - To Fairfield Manor

The following morning, Eva returned from the buffet table to find a man sitting in her seat and laughing a bit too heartily at something her mother had just said. Her father looked up. “And here she is now. Evangelina, do you remember your Uncle Dominic?” Her full name only got used when her father was deeply irritated. She’d just been asked to remove the irritant. “I’m afraid not. Is he going…

[ziracona]

Okay I saw that ask about Dwight and it kindled a desire to know more about Dwight's mom in me. Whats her opinion on all this? With ILM does she have an idea on how many ways Dwight got Fucked Over (God. Dwight's head wound would be visible on an MRI because quentin didn't heal him. Doctors really would have 2 be like YES this man got hit by a sledgehammer). I absolutely adore her and in short just wanna know more about mama fairfield.

Awwww I’m glad someone else loves Muriel Fairfield too she does her best TuT Mama Fairfield has a lot of love.

When she first hears the story, it’s kinda a lot and difficult to really accept and overwhelming and horrifying and she has no real idea what she thinks she’s just in shock, but Jane Romero and David Tapp were there & man that adds a lot of credibility, and they’re so sure, and Dwight is her baby boy and he’s so sincere and they all remember it the exact same, and then a few days in Adam’s samples register as looking and feeling exactly like a rock and a bottle of glasses but under a microscope are living tissue of no known origin and the bottom kind of drops out because there’s no other explanation, is there? And she’s so horrified and overwhelmed and heartbroken for her son, and these other kids and poor people, and so glad they’re out and thankful and happy and sorrowful and guilt-ridden it happened at all all at once. Throws herself into trying to be there for them—especially the ones with shitty families who didn’t come for them and need an extra mom figure, and the ones her baby is super close to. Coddles the hell out of Dwight stiflingly but tbh he at this point is just happy about it like what the hell, he’s been through it, mom giving him hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows all the time and hanging off him crying about his life is more than welcome. He missed her. TuT

And yeah, to lend credibility to the story (and check for safety), Dwight does get an MRI done, and it’s horrifying. Everyone really is like “Holy shit your skull got crushed with a sledgehammer how the fuck did you survive that with no hospital care?” And Claudette & Quentin get big eyed stares by everyone at that hospital & their friends all buy her & Quentin dinner. Murial is horrified. She’s a big cryer and just feels things very deeply. Just sits alone looking at the MRI scan printout a long time. Asks Dwight about stuff but tries not to push. Apologizes a lot for stuff she couldn’t possibly have controlled. Writes him notes all the time about how much she loves him and how proud she is of what he’s done and who he grew up to be, always long and rambly and sappy and very heartfelt. He loves them and keeps them in a little folder. Dwight tells her a lot of the things he went through, but he doesn’t tell her about Freddy for a long, long time. Because he sees how hurt and sorry she is every time she hears something someone did to him or something hard he had to do, and he doesn’t want to hurt her. But eventually he, Meg, and Claudette have a talk about families and some of that, and Meg tries to convince them both to talk to their parents, and Dwight reconsiders and talks to Ace & Quentin a little, then does finally. This is several years in though—maybe four, five? She is absolutely devastated, but it’s really good for Dwight, because he kind of needed to talk to a parent about that, and she’s so proud of how strong he was and how hard he worked and suffered trying to protect his friends. It gives him a lot of closure, and I think it helps her too, to know how trusted she is and that she was able to help him get a little closure and peace and healing.

Overall, Muriel believes what happened even if it’s a little hard for her to fully visualize or grasp, and she works very hard to help the survivors with whatever outreach they do, and just is constantly there as like self appointed bonus mom who will cry & give you cookies and socks with cute foxes on them. An extremely welcome and very present figure in their lives. It’s hard and god it’s a lot, and she has some really bad nights drowning in that alone that no one ever sees, but it gets better, and mostly she’s just so thankful her baby is home and things have miraculously ended so well. She was in a world she didn’t think could ever get better, trying to find a kid who had probably been dead for years and was rotting in a shallow grave in an abandoned lot where she’d never even be able to find him and lay him to rest or bring flowers and sit and talk to his headstone on weekends, and now he’s alive again and has an even bigger family and he’s happy and proud of who he is and getting married to a young man she couldn’t be more impressed with too, and it’s kind of a sweet miracle somehow amidst all the horror.

[ziracona]

Dwight/Jake wedding headcanons maybe? They deserve it.

For sure!

It’s a couple years down the road. They’ve been living in the Indiana house with Adam, while the others orbit in and out from Springwood and Lockport and Haddonfield and Indianapolis and Bloomington and New Jersey and Missouri and New York and such every few days. It’s peaceful and fun there for them. Woods, big house, familiar smells and people and memorobelia and Ron’s grave and markers added nearby for Vigo and Alex and Lisa and Sujan and the person from the lab with no name and the survivors who came before them and never got to be buried. It’s home. They’re just chilling, Dwight and Jake talking with intent but also very relaxed about something while Adam edits a sequel in his easy chair, deep in edit mode, when Jake calls over, “Hey Adam, do you want to be a best man, or do you want to marry us?”

Which Adam hears the wrong homophone for for a second and almost takes him out before he realizes they meant the other version of ‘marry’ and remembers how to breathe again.

He stutters out a, “Well, I, uh—I mean, I can do whichever you’d prefer, but I’m not ordained. In. Anything. I know I did Min and Nea’s, but—”

“—Yeah, we know, but we just need it to be legal,” Jake shrugs, “and we don’t want a stranger at the wedding period, so someone’s getting ordained.”

“I think you can get ordained online in like an hour,” adds Dwight helpfully, “and we’re not religious either, but—and now that I’m saying this it was Meg so that means I should make sure becuase sometimes her memory for numbers is uhhh bad, but she told me like a week ago you only need ten people to officially get your new religion recognized. And we could be ‘the survivors’ or something. I don’t know I believe in much, but I believe in that.”

Jake nods. “Whatever is true, this group of people can rip a hole in the fabric of the universe for each other. I’d ascribe to that.”

“I kind of like that,” says Adam, “I would too. But if we have a spiritual ‘leader’, wouldn’t Ace be a better choice than me? Or Jane?”

This is considered a good point and they debate between Adam, Jeff, Tapp, Jane, and Ace for a bit, [Philip is also briefly considered, but they realize just as fast he’d be overwhelmed and stressed by having to do it & mercifully swap him to another role], then decide on Ace, who’s always been the kind of...not exactly dad, not exactly uncle, but not not those things, and certainly some kind of an early spiritual or morale core for them, parentish figure, and a comfort and hope leader for them all. Also, they know he’ll get a fkn kick out of being ordained for this.

Dwight takes Quentin as his Best Man, Claudette his Maid of Honor, and Jake takes Nea as Matron of Honor, Andrew as Best Man, and Meg as Maid of Honor. They decide fuck it, and it’s kinda Parks & Rec (an argument used by and against Jake many times the next few weeks) anyway, and also both take Adam and Philip as Best Men because fuck it, it’s too hard and also wedding rules are arbitrary and made to be broken, and so then Jake adds Kate as a bridesmaid, Dwight adds Laurie, they realize the number of survivors is dwindling dangerously and decide fuck it, our wedding is for us might as well be fkn weird and cool, and add David, Min, Tapp, Jane, Jeff, and Laurie as groomsmen and bridesmaids too. This still leaves Michael, Anna, Sally, Benedict, Susie, Jeff’s three Legion kids, and everyone’s families which is like fkn a lot of people, to be audience party (sans Nancy, who is pleaded with to be wedding party and run the music pre-reception because the number of people that they want involved /and/ who won’t give in to or be tricked by Meg into some kind of terrible flash mob stunt is very small, and in fact, basically is just Nancy. She is happy to do it and thinks their desperate reasoning is hilarious).

They break the news to Meg and Claudette and Ace first (after Adam), ask Ace to marry them, and tell Meg she can run post-weddding/reception music however she wants, except the songs for a couples dance & parent dances. She is /thrilled/. Claudette is very happy and cries. They call up Quentin & Nea to add to the conversation and Jake says Nea and Meg and Susie are in charge of setting up the wedding because he knows they’re gonna fight him for the role anyway, but they have to throw whatever they can together with only the stuff they own already and $50, they want only family & the other survivors/their families at the wedding, the service short and sweet, and to have it at the cabin, by the river. Meg loses her mind with indignance and joy together, and goes buckwild. They hit thrift shops for fairy lights and streamers and more.

Everyone is thrilled to be asked, Jane says “about time,” and Philip can’t think of anything to say and gets overwhelmed emotionally and taken off guard to be asked to be a groomsman. It’s sweet. Everyone with fashion sense takes everyone else shopping or through their wardrobes for fun wedding clothes and to at least have accent pieces that match a color theme. (Complimentary blues, yellow/gold, and pinks to the grooms’. More on that). It’s super fun & they make a fashion show of it. There’s no matching in form, just color, which is just the best version anyway there’s really no goddamn reason to spend thousands of bucks on a wedding when you could just have a funky cute good time with the people who love you & no stress.

Jake picks a deep blue hanbok (bc the hottest Jake I’ve ever seen is the one @eggchef did for lunar new year & the note in the tags about an actual hanbok has been banging around in my head ever since), and when they’re going through stuff for Dwight, he comments a pink one is surprisingly nice because it’s not the color he’d expected to think about, and Jake remarks offhand that if they do deep blue and pink they’ll be stealing their girls’ looks, and the second he says that, they both know there’s no other choice now. Dwight gets a light pink suit and a tie that matches Jake’s blue. They’re adorable and both look exceedingly handsome.

The wedding is short and perfect. Ace does a great job, it’s a nice day, and Meg works wonders with her $50 budget and (notably obscenely large) preexisting store of party supplies, + help from her mom who is passing down the legacy of being the best tiny budget party planner on earth. It’s very open, but with near arches and dangling glass and prisims that cast rainbows everywhere, lots of meaningfully chosen for their blessings and symbolism flowers and flower chains from Claudette. It’s a little reminiscent of the birthday decorations Min and Nea did plus the prisims, and that accidentally makes all the survivors super emotional like 1 minute in.

Only the moms get to speak in the wedding (besides Ace and the grooms), and Andrew and Meg and Nea and Quentin and such all gotta save their roasts for the reception. It’s sweet. Ace knows them super well and it shows in the best way. The grooms write their own vows, and both echo their statements in the hatch tunnel without knowing the other was going to do so too. Jake starts with an “I am deeply, unendingly, ridiculously in love with you,” and Dwight brings in a, “I wouldn’t be who I am without you.” They end it with Dwight saying, “Will you still stay with me, now that it’s all over? Through whatever we’re thrown to next?” And Jake replying, “Wherever you go, I’ll always follow.”

I cry.

The reception is a party by the house. It’s just a huge prepared buffet made by the family who can cook, so no one has to sit and wait. Meg starts the music with Cascada’s Evacuate the Dance Floor because she doesn’t “want to see people dragging their feet like a bunch of fuckin weenies, I want asses on that dance floor!” There’s a lot of 90s and early 2000s pop, but also many many classic dance songs. Lots of ABBA. Lots of it. Everyone has great fun. Min, Nea, Susie, and Meg made the playlist, except for a few of the specific dances. Muriel Fairfield’s mother-son dance with Dwight is to Song For Ten by Neil Hannon because he knows she’s a sweet big emotional nerd and it’s the song she wants, and he’s willing to do it, and she sobs and is a mess but also the happiest she’s been since the day she got the call he was alive.

They have literally zero idea where they’re going when they drive off for a honeymoon. They’re like “Uhh so I’ve been looking at our complete and utter lack of wedding structure and planning as a good thing? But we might have overstepped that a little here....”

Dwight drives while Jake searches the web for LGBT safe honeymoon locations because there’s nothing that would ruin a trip more than that not working out, and reads off a list and Dwight is like, “Wait wait holy fuck, I though you meant what US cities or maybe Canada. Switzerland? Do we even have cash for the plane fare somewhere like that?” And Jake just looks at the page silently for a few seconds, shuts the laptop, and without expression says, “...I really hate this, but I’m gonna let myself be a rich boy, just once.”

They take Andrew’s jet to New Zealand (Jake calls him and listens for 2 minutes then just monotone goes “Okay but you owe me for being a dipshit for fifteen years,” and they get the ride). Jake picks a relaxed pace and some scuba diving, some hikes, but no overnight camping. Lots of just seeing the world and holding hands and grinning at how absolutely breathless and shocked Dwight is at every chunk of nature like nothing he’s seen before. They are disgustingly, blissfully happy.

[ziracona]

I remember Tapp saying to his son that they wanted to explain what happened to them whevn everyone's parents and relatives arrived. How did that ended up going, who were the first ones to believe in everything right away and who took a bit more time to understand everything?

Uhhh, it was kind of a train wreck, but it kind of had to be. They organized everyone in a private location and sat down, and Jane, Tapp, Ace, Dwight, and Meg took the helm explaining the whole story. It’s uh—it’s a lot to ask someone to believe, but they went through it carefully and sincerely and with detail, bringing up scars or items when relevant to back things up. The parents have a hard ass time believing or even understanding it all. And some of them (I love you Murial but looking at you—lots of “You were murdered”? Type horrified ask comments and confused requests for more explanations and repeats and crying) had a hard time just listening without interjecting.

The first people to believe were Rachel Thomas, who had already heard some of it from Meg and absolutely and wholly would believe any fantastical story her daughter told her, Alan Smith, who would believe anything Quentin said after the proof he’s already seen of the supernatural (Nancy too ofc but she’s not a parent/sibling), Jane’s father, who knows nothing is more important to her than the truth and doing the right thing, Tapp’s son, Michael, who grew up wishing a lot of fantastical or supernatural stuff was true and is open minded and also know his dad would be about the last person on earth to lie about this or to have been fooled into thinking it happened.

A lot of people—Muriel Fairfield, Martha and Andrew Park, Claudette’s and David’s parents, and Kate’s family were a lot more confused and overwhelmed, but tried to believe it. But also just had a really really hard time understanding or truly grasping what all this meant or how it could be real. Did their best, though. Of those, Kate’s little brother and Andrew probably came around first, then Muriel, then most of the other parents, although even while they believe their kids as much as they can, I think it’s still /reall/ hard for them to truly wrap their heads around—oh, Dwight’s dad falls into this category too. David’s parents believed fast, but also I don’t think exactly understood any of it. But uh, it turned out okay, and David was happy, and he got what he needed from them when he saw them in person, and I think they got a better grasp on it then.

There were some others who weren’t there and heard later—Philip’s family, Adam’s uncle, Min’s family, Nea’s, Ace’s parents, and Joey’s family. Of them, Min and Nea’s parents heard the more full story on the news like everyone else because they were too shitty to be real parents to the children they raised who had just endured years of torture and suffering, and I have no idea what their thoughts are for sure, but suspect they try to be disbelieving, because that sits more proudly on a conscience. Adam’s uncle thought Adam thought it was true but there was no way it could be, until the Rin videos and science evidence came to light, then started believing. Philip’s family and Ace’s parents believed them immediately (both spiritual families already—supernatural stuff wasn’t too big a step to take). And then Joey’s family did not believe him about any of it at all when he finally got the nerve to go home and try to see his parents and brother again, and it fell apart, and then they did but were mad about what he’d done, except his brother, who’s as the first to believe/recognize him for sure as Joey, and was just happy to see him. His mom eventually forgave him though and they mended their relationship, and she did believe him in the end. Oh! And Tapp’s ex-wife, Kara, I think at first was super confused, but then did believe it after seeing the evidence. She tries not to think about it as much as possible though.

[ziracona]

I forgot Dwight’s mom hand made him an Ellie badge when he was 16 because she loved Up & wanted him to know she was proud of him how is Muriel Fairfield so good 😭😭😭