#i tried to express my feelings in analytical meta but feel more genuine being maudlin instead

[crimeronan]

i want mór to love declan. 

but it’s not because i want him to suddenly gain a loving parent, i’m not interested in that. declan suddenly adopted by some sunshine stranger would just be wary and irritable. there’s not a lot of potential there

but i want mór to love declan. because it would wreck him

mór being a vicious crime boss who didn’t feel like raising her kid and fucked off? that’s just another familiar sting in a bouquet of wasps. declan’s used to being unwanted, unworthy, expendable, forgettable. what’s one more adult who’s turned their back on him? the toddler was leftover luggage in a vicious custody dispute. it’s nothing. it doesn’t matter. it doesn’t touch him

what hurts declan - what really, really hurts him, poison in the marrow rather than an easily-compartmentalized thorn prick - is the feeling of loss. we see it briefly when he interacts with the new fenian. he’s touch-starved and desperate for someone to acknowledge his worth, yes, but more than that he’s looking at a father who could have loved him and seeing every neglected wound inside himself in unpleasantly graphic detail.

so i want mór to love him. i want her to have pulled one of those ‘i fled because it was safer since i have all my criminal ties etcetc’ deals. i want her to try to explain herself. i want her to reach out to him and try to touch his arm, his face, apologize, get him to look at her, and i want him to fucking recoil

i want him to look at his mother and laugh because of what a fucking waste it all is. i want him to laugh at the stupidity and the futility and the misplaced heroism until he’s on the verge of screaming. i want him to think about how he could have had an unsafe life where he was loved instead of an unsafe life where he was abhorred. i want him to throw it in her face. 

how did you think i’d grow up? happy fireplace story time and cow tipping with my adventuring father and dreamt-up replacement mother? what kind of idyllic fucking fantasy world did you think he’d build? oh, ronan and matthew were good enough to get it, don’t worry about them. just not me. fourteen years old handcuffed in the trunk of a car expecting to die, fifteen washing blood off my hands in a gas station bathroom, sixteen in tokyo shaking hands and exchanging thousands of dollars with traffickers. who the fuck do you think i am? what the fuck did you think would happen?

i want her to reach for him again, maybe, or say his name. declan— and it sounds like she’s saying something else, like please or i love you or i’m sorry.

he’s crying now, probably, choking on the last hiccuping sobs of laughter, shaking too hard and falling too fast to yell like he should. he puts distance between them. he takes a deep breath.

what can your life possibly do to me, he says, and it would be cold enough if his legs weren’t folding beneath him, that hasn’t already been done?