#im satisfied with paff's story in the books

[lindalofbroome]

06 - Layered

Lief went on. 'Raising hatred of my heir is the perfect way to make me fear risking my life by attacking the Sister of the South.The guardian is a dangerous enemy—subtle, quick-thinking, and very clever.’

‘It is someone we all know and trust,’ Barda muttered.

The Sister of the South // Ch 9 The Yellow Notice

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh boy

paff ;-;

i think she’s such an interesting character with a complex story and i wish we got to have more of her

first off, sister of the south has the highest stakes out of all the books. it’s so tense and you can feel the weight on lief’s shoulders. and part of that is that we don’t know who the guardian is until the sister is destroyed. the distrust,,, the looking behind your shoulder wondering who will stab you in the back,,, would it be your friend who you’ve known for a long time?

and then we find out that it was paff. the little young girl who worked in the library. the girl who lost everything during the shadow occupation and was just gathering the pieces of her life and trying to build it back up again. little did anyone know that she had shook on a deal to betray her country, for she played her part well. 

the black beast wasn’t the only one who was two-faced.

it literally did not occur to me until i was sketching this piece that paff summoned the two-faced beast, but as an enemy disguised as friend,, she was also quite literally the two-faced one. it is easy to picture her going from a dull, nervous, clumsy youth in front of doom and josef and lief to a haunted, cold, brilliant schemer sitting in her room, thinking of new ways to outwit them. her act was like a fog of protection that even doom could not pierce, even doom did not suspect until it was too late.

but i don’t think she was evil. not specifically. she did evil things, yes, but she wasn’t evil in the way laughing jack was for example. he is unforgivable. but paff was like many others enlisted under the shadow lord. it came in when they were vulnerable, whispered in their ears, offered them power and offered them hope. 

paff had lost everything. she would’ve been numb from the pain of loss and filled with a helpless apathy to the world. she wouldn’t have cared what happened to her and she wouldn’t have cared what happened to anyone else. maybe she sat in the presence of the sister and felt what lief felt, that promise of freedom from the pain of loss. so when the shadow lord found her and offered her a purpose, it is little wonder that she accepted it. what did she have left to lose?

‘I wanted to spare her the horror of awakening,’ Doom said. ‘She had become a monster of wickedness, yet still I—I felt I understood how she had come to take the wrong path. She had lost everything. She was loved by no-one. Her misery had made her easy prey for the Shadow Lord.

The Sister of the South // Ch 16 Shocks

but like i said, she was a brilliant person. she was incredibly intelligent. she could adapt quickly and could plan very far ahead. and upon a reread i did a month or two ago, i started to wonder if she was self-aware of her situation. whether it be too her brilliance or simply that she was so detached from the world in a personal sense that she gained a clarity on her situation. i wonder that after the pain, and after the instant gratification of signing herself over to the enemy had faded,,, did she see how she was exploited? did she see that the enemy had taken advantage of her when she was vulnerable, and now she was too deep in to escape?

it makes the scene where doom confronts josef during lief’s dream feel different.

‘Josef is the one who should be ashamed!’ barked Doom. ‘Let him do his own dirty work in future!’

Paff looked up. Suddenly her tear-filled eyes were angry.

‘Josef can hardly walk!’ she cried. ‘He cannot go up to Sharn’s bed chamber without guards to carry him, you know that! How can you taunt him with his weakness!’

‘I did not mean—’ Doom began impatiently. But now that Paff had begun speaking, it seemed she could not stop.

The Sister of the South // Ch 2 The Dream

i wonder if this was a rare moment where paff let her mask drop. she shed the air of the ditsy girl who constantly made mistakes into a force of passionate rage. i wonder if she knew that the enemy whispered and comforted and taunted her in order to exploit her services to its greedy plans. i wonder if she knew that when she was fighting for josef, she was also fighting for herself.