#but there is a difference between gingerly untying and tearing threads apart

[tapestryundone]

quiet is right handed and always holds the blade in his right hand as a result. he is tied to the narrative that the narrator constructed through the blade and no matter what happens in any runthrough the knife will always end up in his hand at least once no matter what he does or what he truly wants

the princess is always chained by her right hand. no matter what, she is always bound to the cabin and the narrative that the narrator constructs. tsm is represented through countless arms and yet the princes is always placed in a basement with her right hand shackled

both quiet and the princess are trapped in the construct, parallel to one another. the knife is to the long quiet as the chain is to the shifting mound

in the prisoner chapter, if quiet becomes chained then he must lose the knife. there is no purpose to overlapping ones shackles, he just trades one for another

anytime that the princes recieves the knife, she becomes free of her chain. there is no purpose to overlapping ones shackles, she just trades one for another

the knife and shackles are equivalent, and both must be shed in some way for the shifting mound and the long quiet, or the princess and quiet/hero

at the heart of the shifting mound, the princess will always be free. the shifting mound is free to choose anything she wants. shes waiting for you to choose. the apotheosis establishes that she could destroy the construct if she so chose, but if the long quiet doesnt break free with her, destroying the construct will destroy him, too. she is free of her shackle but she has a choice between leaving with the long quiet or killing him- mirroring that the long quiet has a choice between leaving with the shifting mound or killing her. only that the shifting mound made her choice, and that is that no matter what happens, she will not destroy the long quiet

at the heart of the shifting mound, quiet has the choice to take the knife and give into the narrators script- to abide by it or return to its beginning and reread the story all over again- or to abandon his own shackles and free himself from the story the narrator wove

effectively, the chain and the blade must be abadoned in some way for the two to be free. with or without reaching the heart of the shifting mound, neither can be free until the remnants of the construct are abandoned, until their unique tether to the construct is left behind

and if the two are a palindrome, then the letter in the center is the cabin- a structure that exists for both of them and is a construction of the narrator that they both influence differently but in equal amounts. they both have been built around it and feom it, very literally, and the chain and blade are both offshoots of it that the narrator uses to control them

[aquawolfgirl]

55 and 92 pleaseeeeee❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

55. “I fell in love with my best friend.”92. “Let’s move in together.”

All right, so I admittedly had a bit of trouble with this one, because the first thought is modern au cuteness. But I’m trying to experiment a little more, and so here, have a sickeningly sweet, pretty damn long Hogwarts AU. (I know McGonagall probably wouldn’t make the exception for the Hogsmeade slip in canon but let’s just say Leia’s damn good at negotiating)

-

She’s a scrappy little thing, that’s for sure. 

Her robe no doubt came from some second-hand store, too big for her frame and patched in a few places with black cloth that’s just a little too blue, or a little too brown, or a little too grey. There are those whose families are friends, those who know each other, who hold each other’s hands and whisper about being in the same house. She is not whispering. She has no one’s hand to hold. 

She looks absolutely terrified. 

“Slytherin!” 

He can see the tears in her eyes and her lip wobble from his table at Hufflepuff, but she braves it and goes to sit at her table. There is no one to hug her, to comfort her, to reassure her. The boy next to her looks at her robes, sees the patches, and scoots a good few centimeters away from her. 

His heart aches for her. 

-

He’s not entirely sure how she got in. Hogsmeade is for the third years, those who have permission slips. But she’s wandering about as a second year, in a holey jumper, leggings thin in some places. 

“How did you get here?”

He doesn’t mean for it to come off as rude as it does. She startles, before she narrows her amber eyes at him, looking back to the window of Honeydukes.

“I’m not telling you,” she says simply. 

All right, Slytherin it is.

“You should be wearing more than a jumper.”

“I don’t have a coat,” she says. With that tone, she could have very well said that the sky is blue, or that it’s cold out. It’s a fact, that’s all it is. 

“You’re going to get sick,” Ben insists, frowning. 

“I don’t have a coat, and I don’t have the money to buy one, what else am I supposed to do?” the little second year demands, spinning and glaring at him with her arms wrapped around herself. “Excuse me.”

She pushes by him, and he watches her shiver in the early December air. 

-

He’s watched her over the two years, watched her across the hall. Other kids receive packages, and letters from home, the occasional entertaining Howler or two. But she’s never gotten anything. He’s grateful he remembers her name from the Sorting Hat, otherwise he’d have no idea how to find it out. 

Rey Jackson’s eyes widen as a tawny owl lands at her place, bearing a package wrapped in brown paper. She shakes her head at the owl at first, and Ben reads her lips. Not me, she says, before she takes the package to read the name. And then she stops, before she gingerly unties the package from the owl, who then promptly flies out the window. 

It’s not the most expensive coat, no. He couldn’t afford anything with any fur, and besides, he doesn’t know her stance on it, anyway. But he could afford a beautiful dark brown wool, with a cream lining, and he watches as she stares at the coat in awe, her fingers stroking the fabric. 

He’ll have to find his Gryffindor Head of House mother, and thank her for his generous allowance.

-

“You didn’t need to buy me a coat.”

She’s in third year, now, he’s in fifth. Her hands are stuffed inside of the coat. He’s glad he had the sense to buy too big, because it fits her well, now. 

“Finally obeying the rules?” Ben asks, raising a brow at her. 

“No,” she says simply. “My foster father won’t sign the permission form. He’s usually to drunk to write anything, or he’s out at his shop. I doubt he’d sign it anyway.”

He wants to ask how she got there, how she keeps managing to sneak in despite the lack of a permission form, but he doesn’t. Instead, he asks her if she wants some tea, and she agrees. 

And that’s how Rey Jackson attaches herself to Ben Organa Solo.

-

She comes home with him for the summer. She stares in awe at Organa Manor, with its cream brick walls and sprawling gardens. Later, he’ll find her watering the flowers, despite his mother’s insistence that they have magic to do that for them. 

“But isn’t it nicer knowing you grew it yourself? Without your wand?” Rey insists, covered with dirt and sprinkled with sweet-smelling hose water from a hose Ben didn’t even know existed. 

His mother grows a little rosebush in a pot just for her, miniature in size and in blossoms, but every day Rey comes down with a tiny rose tucked into her hair, and Ben can’t help but grin. 

His father teases him as she turns 14, July bright and warm like she is. “Not as much of an age difference as your mother and I,” Han tells him, but he can’t see her that way, not now. 

She gets new robes that don’t end at her shins, and new sweaters, new shirts and new books, new quills and new ink. He can tell she puts up a good front, smiling and thanking his mother politely, but when he comes to check on her that night, he sees her in her ratty pajamas, standing in front of the mirror in her new robes with tears in her eyes. 

By September, Rey is more Organa Solo than she is Jackson, and so McGonagall, after hearing of Rey’s foster father and his unavailability, bends just a little and allows his mother’s signature on the permission slip.

-

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

The question comes out of fucking nowhere as they’re sitting beside each other by the lake, a large tree offering shade. Ben looks up from his potions homework, his best subject, and looks over at Rey, who’s picking at a loose thread on her robe. 

“Yes,” Ben says simply. “Why?”

Rey says nothing for a moment, and he can see her cheeks are pinking, almost red enough to disguise her freckles. “Because I’m thinking of asking Cian Donoghue to Hogsmeade. Do you think he’d say yes?”

He knows of Cian. The Seeker for the Gryffindor team. Rey’s the Seeker for Slytherin, winning every game so far thanks to the Firebolt his mother surprised her with for her birthday. It would be a forbidden match made in heaven. Despite their rivalry, Cian is a good kid, one year older than Rey and one year younger than Ben, with auburn hair and slightly crooked teeth. Ben doesn’t know much more aside from he’s apparently nice.

“He would, yeah, I think,” Ben replies. 

Han was right. He didn’t realize how much he liked Rey until he sees her walking through Hogsmeade on Cian’s arm, both of them laughing as he hiccups feathers from the after-effects of a Canary Cream.

-

They’re sweet together, they really are. The whole school is atwitter with the news that the Seekers of rival teams are dating. Valentine’s Day comes and goes with flowers and chocolates and a pretty public declaration of adoration, before it fizzles out right before summer. 

“His dreams weren’t in line with mine,” she says as they sit on the train back to King’s Cross. “He wants to play for a team. I want to settle down somewhere. If I wanted to see him, I would have to follow him.”

Ben wants to tell her she’s too young to know what her dreams are yet, but how can he say that to here when he has dreams, too? Even worse, they involve being close to her.

-

As a Hufflepuff, he never expected to be good at potions, but he likes it. He likes it a lot. He likes it enough to rent space in Diagon Alley, and while he does stock other potions, for the most part he makes his own. His apartment above the shop is homey, but it isn’t the manor he grew up in. Still, he enjoys his job, likes his shop, likes greeting the Muggle parents and Muggle-born kids who come in on their first school supplies trip. (The nervousness of some of the parents prompts him to always keep nerve potions in stock, as well as little under-bed potion kits for every sort of sickness their child could get, approved by Madame Pomfrey herself.)

“Ben!”

She’s a 7th year, now, 18 years old and more beautiful than ever. She runs into his arms and he refrains from swinging her around as he usually does, because swinging her around in a shop full of glass bottles, some with a price tag of several dozen Galleons, is probably not the best idea. 

He can see his mother and father over her shoulder, buying her final books, her final parchment rolls, her final bottles of ink. 

It’s a heavy reminder that this is it, this is the last.

-

“Let’s move in together.”

The shop in Diagon Alley’s going well, but he’s considering moving somewhere to the countryside where he can grow his own ingredients. That must be why she brings it up, Ben thinks, as he looks up from cooking dinner and looks to where Rey’s sitting on the counter. 

“I thought you wanted to play for a team?” he asks. 

“No. I said I wanted to settle down somewhere, with someone,” she replies. 

He’s damned glad that the magic is doing most of the work, otherwise he would have cut himself. “What?”

“You’re really that dense, aren’t you?”

She tastes like the strawberries she’s been snacking on while he made the strawberry tarts. She guides him to step between her knees, her hands on his shoulder and in his hair as she tells him, “You’re my best friend, have been for years. I broke up with Cian after I realized I loved you. I fell in love my best friend.”

Most wizards and witches from Hogwards have dreams of Quidditch, of being Aurors, of having important and well-paying jobs in the government. His dream was to own a potion shop. Her dream was to settle down with someone, and to own a garden. 

He never thought her dream included him.