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quarantined-with-bucky · 4 years ago

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Dichotomy

Bucky x Reader

Words: ~ 3,500

Summary: Bucky’s in the poetry feels. And his own feels.

Warnings: Mentions of abuse

Dedication: I’ve had a couple readers express their interest in mythology and the like, either in reblogs, replies, or private messages, so this is dedicated to them (you know who you are) Thanks! :)

A/N: This was taken from my mythology cultivation (I mentioned it in Poetry (this is kinda a part II to that?)), so I have no author credits to the poem :( please let me know if anyone does! This one is also more of Bucky’s view on his relationship with the reader. Sorry it took me so long to write, I wasn’t sure where to take this for a while!

...

You were a myth.

You had to be. Bucky was convinced.

You were beautiful. But he would never mistake your beauty for stupidity – not for naivety, vulnerability, or even weakness.

And They Said Aphrodite Was Soft: Smear your lips in blood, dust your eyelids with stars. Hang rubies around your neck, wear a nude leather dress. Kiss him hard, make him groan. Rip him apart, muscle from bone. Breath in, breath out. Begin step one.

Such a beautiful creature could never be so cruel. He saw the way you moved so gracefully on the battlefield and the way just a single touch from you could melt the heart of any man. You had no tolerance for the men that talked down to you and, sure, you were an exquisite creature, but your prowess that lied beneath the surface – that could tear any unassuming man limb from limb – was what drew him to you.

You were resilient. Despite what anyone may think, you were one of the strongest on the team.

I have wondered what it was like for Aphrodite. For Hera, Medusa, Artemis, Athena. For them to be worshiped, feared, sung of and powerful. What did it feel like to fall into myth and legend? To be remembered mostly for the men they loved, or the ones who fought for them when they didn’t need it, didn’t ask. To be pushed into the corner of the bar, to only be talked about when someone else decided, and to watch their daughters, their children of the earth, fall to the same fate.

Despite your effort to write your own story, to be the best damn Avenger you could be, there would always be hurtles in your way, whether that be the media shoving you into the shadows of Captain America and Iron Man, your inherent lack of any sort of super-ability, or you almost too innocent-looking appearance: how could you hold your own when you look like you can’t even open a jar by yourself? It was the same for those before you, women being washed away in history as lab assistants or had their valor just plain stolen from them. It couldn’t be you and you wouldn’t let it.

You were hurt. Years of physical pain, emotional torment, and past abuse took its toll on you. After all, you were only human.

Dearest Medusa I am so sorry no one told you that the Gods could be so cruel. You had beauty so unlike the rest. Your mother deemed it a blessing. A blessing that would one day deal your curse. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that no one told you the love of a god is as good as the hatred from a god. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that he pillaged your body in the temple of goddess meant to shelter you. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that Athena in all of her wisdom turned blind eye to your pain. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that no one ever told you the gods could be so cruel.

You’d known what it’s like to have been cast away in your time of need. Your strength somehow came around to backfire on you. You’d been so strong your whole life, there’s no way you could be upset – especially about something so small. You’d been discredited to your own feelings. When you cried out for help, you never received, instead met with neglect and following misfortune. And that’s what built you, but that’s also what broke you.

It was only through poetry that Bucky realized there were two sides to your story – every story, he’d supposed.

And goddamn, there were two sides to his story.

He’d wondered if one day, such myths will be written about him. Would he be seen as the monster: a harsh, unforgiving, unrelenting man – whose true tragedy is unbeknownst to most? Only after years of examination and internal debate could change anyone’s perspective on him.

But he knew they’d be writing about you someday. Hell, it seems like they already had been. The most celestial being in the universe and he just happens to be lucky enough to share a bed with you. He’s the one who knows your backstory, knows your own tragedy, knows the strength that its built. It’s almost like he’s been studying you – and he would if he could. He applies every beautiful book or poem he’s read to you: to your grace, your poise, your struggles.

You meant more to him than words could describe; not the likes of Homer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, nor even Jane Austen could even capture half your complexity. He didn’t think there were so many layers to life. There was only one way he could see himself: damaged. But from the day he met you, you’d proven quite the opposite. He had depth, substance, an intricacy that only you could unravel. You’d welcomed him into your open arms, taking him under your wing as you showed him the ropes of the twenty-first century. That’s how it started, anyway. You’d shown him the internet, the DVR, how his phone works, plastic Tupperware. The world had become quite a different place, but it wasn’t just the material objects that shifted either.

People seemed to be a bit more complex than Bucky remembered – and he didn’t know whether it was a twenty-first century thing or if he just hadn’t been around people in such a long time. It took a lot of questions, a lot of research, and a lot of late-night discussions before Bucky finally grasped the concept you’d been trying to instill in him. And one night it just made so much sense. It was in everything you read – every novel and poem – everything you wrote, and everything you’d been teaching him.

Bucky’s night of clarity consisted of a nightmare, two giant mugs filled to the brim with hot chocolate, and some frighteningly serious pillowtalk. “You don’t have to let your past define you, Bucky,” you whispered, before taking a sip of your drink. Bucky’s head rested on your chest, the two of you laying in bed, wide awake after having been woken up by Bucky screaming in the middle of the night. Your hand ran through his hair, strands stuck together and tangled up, tacky with sweat. His eyes were shut, his focus being the vibrations of your chest as you spoke. “You aren’t what they made you.”

You’d seen the side of him that nobody else saw; the soft side of him. It was the half of him that the media would never portray, that his closest peers – his housemates, his team members – would never see, the part that even he forgot existed.

Hell, it was hard for him to remember how to be kind – how to be vulnerable. It took years of physical torture and mental torment for Hydra to beat it out of him. The majority of his life, he’d gone without physical affection, a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, any kind of touch that didn’t result in a bloody nose.

That wasn’t the only issue. He had to overcome his own bravado. It took him years of solitude and half-assed coping mechanisms for Bucky to come to terms with it himself. Even after jumping over the first hurdle of undoing Hydra’s psychological damage, he had to rewrite his own programming. He never confided in anyone in the Avengers; not the therapist and psychologist Tony brought in, not Clint – a college familiar with being a victim of mind-control, not Natasha – someone who had understood similar hardships, not even Steve – his childhood best friend. He’d come from a time where you would simply grin and bear it.

Sounds cliché, sure, but he couldn’t help it. It was hard not to act this way when even those closest to him – those who shared similar trauma – acted in the same manner. He’d never seen Clint bring it up. Natasha never spoke of her past, or let it affect her work or well-being – in fact, she made jokes about it. And Steve? Forget it. He was one of those who used his past as motivation and to share to kids for “life lessons” (Bucky could gag just thinking about it). Anyway, where did that leave Bucky? With no options but to suck it up and not let it bother him.

When you started spending multiple nights in a row with him, he knew you’d get him to confess about his past, his feelings. Bucky hated feelings. In the thirties, the only feeling he liked was to have a woman wrapped around his finger. He supposed that’s all he had to worry about, back then, anyway.

Now, he was the one wrapped around his finger. So much so, in fact, that he let you twirl his hair around in your hand, stroke his stubble with the backs of your knuckles, and press your cold feet against his legs while the two of you were sleeping (supposed to be sleeping, at least). “Remember what I told you?” You murmured, pulling him out of his thoughts. He opened his eyes to meet yours peering down over him, as you now sat propped on one elbow to lean your head over his. “About it being okay for you to be upset?”

He rolled his eyes and then quickly shot you a soft apology. Don’t dismiss your emotions, it was what you’d told him numerous times before. He wasn’t supposed to be acting like nothing was bothering him; he promised you that he’d tell you anything on his mind. It was easy when the only thing that was on his mind was you naked in his mind. This was way harder, he mentally groaned.

It was hard for him to come to terms with his past. With all of the terrible things he’d done? There was no way he’d ever be able to accept it, to forget about it, forgive himself for it. There are two sides to every story, you’d reminded him once.

Bucky’s two sides: assassin, murderer, beast; victim, vulnerable, manipulated.

He couldn’t even come to terms with that. He wasn’t manipulated. Manipulation carries the connotation that he still had control. Bucky wasn’t manipulated into doing any of the things he did – into committing those atrocities. Nobody used their cunning wit and skills to get him to willingly commit such crimes; Bucky wasn’t convinced by someone to go against his free will and better judgement. No, that right was stolen from him – his free will.

He didn’t even have an adjective to describe himself.

But he had others who could describe him on his behalf.

Name one hero who was happy. Was Heracles, remembered in the stars, satisfied with his life? Risen to glory and fame, but at what cost? The memory of his wife and child’s blood on his hands, their cries etched in his head. Ask Daedalus, whose cleverness was no match for his love for Icarus, if he was happy to escape confinement. To soar amongst the heavens only to watch his son plummet to his death, perished by his own creation. And Achilles, what of him, was he happy? The boy with the golden feet and lion-heart, who upheld battle for a decade, to watch his beloved slain? To live out the end of his days grieving, yearning for death, was he truly happy? Once again, I must ask: Name one hero who was happy.

It validated his thoughts, at lease. No matter how much people could grow to love him, how accepted he’d be into society, how much he’d be celebrated, he’d still never forget – never be happy, haunted forever by his past barbarity, the lives he took, his loved ones gone. His own life and power ripped away from him, missing from his life for so long that he didn’t know how to live anymore.

He’d found you, at least. You gave him some semblance of his life and freedom back. But he couldn’t help but think, deep down, so low that he’d never be able to muster up the words to say it aloud, that one day you’d be taken away from him. He didn’t know if it would be on the battlefield or if it would be karma finally coming around – but he was scared.

But, despite you being totally oblivious to Bucky’s deepest thoughts (although, you were fairly intuitive. He assumed you’d already known this was his greatest fear), you’d taught him that it was okay to be scared. It was okay to be scared, vulnerable, and hurting. That must have been more accepted these days. While Bucky was never able to marry back in his original time, he wasn’t even sure if this was something husband and wife talked about. He’d remembered hearing stories of his war-buddies back in the trenches. They wrote home to their wives, telling them everything was okay, nobody was hurting, all was as well as could be a – when the opposite couldn’t be truer. It was his job to make sure everything was okay in the home, and part of that required staying strong; being the immovable force that held the family steady. And he looked up to those men more than anything. Fighting a goddamn war, writing their wives in a matter that wouldn’t make them worry.

Now that wasn’t necessary. Women had embraced their strength and independence. He was relieved, to be honest, he knew he’d never compare to his own father – not after everything he’d endured. But maybe twenty-first century life was where he belonged, anyway. So that he could have you next to him. Outspoken, rowdy, cutthroat, bold, passionate you.

You understood Bucky’s hesitation to open up to you. It took him a long time to get acclimated to his new environment, to people, to having emotions – let alone expressing them. That was okay with you. You had nothing but time. You’d tried early on to express to him the fact that his past is what gave him his strength today. He’s been through so much during the past one hundred years of his life that it would be easy for him to just quit, throw in the towel of life, give up and spend the rest of his days spending his days in Wakanda raising goats. But every day, he found the strength to get up, return to the clutches of Hydra and fight them one by one with the promise of the world one day being free from their grasp.

That resonated with him a bit. To come to terms with his struggles because they made him who he is. Not necessarily in a bad way: in the way that he could realize how much he overcame in his long life. He was a survivor.

“Yes,” he whispered, turning his head to press a kiss to your palm.

He wasn’t sure how you were able to resonate with him on such a level. It was probably the way you talked to him. You treated him like a human. Not that the others didn’t necessarily, but they just treated him differently – like they were afraid of him. Like anything they said might trigger him, they cowered in fear when he walked into a room, they avoided him at all costs. But you, you treated him like he was fragile – like if you held him, he’d crack.

He smiled at the thought, holding back a laugh. That’s the exact same way he held you.

Like you were made of porcelain. And that mutual consideration just drew him to you in awe. There was something so inherently soft about you. You were so genuinely kind to everyone, always lending a helping hand, putting everyone else’s needs above yours. He hadn’t known somebody like that for a long time; since he was a young kid in Brooklyn.

No Mortal Words Describe Her: Mortal, on the ground, drenched in sweat and tears: Are you a dream? Are you a nightmare? Aphrodite, baring her teeth, drenched in blood and ash: I am everything in between.

You were a dichotomy. He didn’t understand it. He met you on the battlefield, killing Hydra agents. Your hair was pulled up tight, eyes wide but eyebrows narrowed. You threw your punches with such force; you were kicking men through walls and windows. You’d looked as if you were born and bred to kill – which, in all truth, you were. You’d accepted that fact and you held your head high. He was intimidated by you, and he loved that fact that everyone else was, too. And you were proud of it. There was nothing you cared about in those moments more than making the scum of the earth pay for the atrocities they had committed, for all the years they had Bucky Barnes locked up.

But then it was him laying on your bedroom floor, reading poetry you had scribbled on scraps of paper, littered around the room; some laid out neatly beside you, others crumpled up and tossed in the corner. Bucky liked those ones best – the ones you’d discarded in a frantic, haphazard manner, too busy to even aim for the garbage can. He’d felt that those were the ones that described you best: they were raw, real, undeniable; they came from the deepest depths of your mind, the part that took you hours of searching to even skim the surface. It was the truest form of yourself, and Bucky was lucky enough to have been granted permission to read.

All Antigone wanted was to bury her dead. How many times do women hang themselves in the shadow of their fathers’ sins? I am no exception, I flinch at comparisons, the easiest way to unmake me is to throw his name over me like an old mantle of anger and hate: I’ve worked too hard to be broken down by a story I had no hand in, braced my arms against flood and falling sky and sometimes I get so tired. But I am more than my father’s venom tongue. I am my grandmother’s eyes, my grandfather’s bleeding heart, I am the daughter of women stronger than any Greek playwright could forgive.

Just as it did for Bucky, it took you time to open up. To delve into your past was a process in and of its own. It was when he found this poem crinkled beside your bookshelf that he finally asked about it. This one felt a little too personal to just ignore. He recrumpled the piece of paper and tossed it towards you, landing in your lap. Unfolding it, you skim the words, tossing it beside you once finished, continuing your current work. “Do you want to talk about it?” Bucky asked, breaking the silence that surrounded the two of you.

At first, you’d said no and simply continued writing. How were you supposed to tell him the stories of your so-called family? The pains you’d suffered as a child. You’d continued on your poem about Achilles: the strong, brave, invincible, soldier; the broken, touch starved, damaged man. You huffed to yourself and threw your pen down. What kind of girlfriend would you be to make Bucky relive his own terror without at least reciprocating – especially when you knew it took so much for him to let you in in the first place.

It was a long night after that, setting up the timeline of your life. And everyone had their own right to deal with their past in their own way; each memory hurts in its own particular way, and it is up to you with how to deal with it. But your past is what makes you, and that’s what you’d told Bucky days before. It doesn’t define you, but it gives you something to fight for, something to live for.

It took years of explaining it to him for you to finally find it true for yourself.

…

But he was pulled back into the present once your hands pulled apart an exceptionally tight knot from his hair. He brought his eyes back to meet yours, your face illuminated by the now rising sun shining behind the white shades. Your eyes were half lidded, face completely relaxed, gazing down at Bucky with a sleepy lust. You’d been sitting in silence for hours. It was fine, you had nothing else to do. It was better that Bucky worked it out on his own anyway; you knew how he could get lost in his own thoughts.

All you’d hoped was that he wasn’t beating himself up about it anymore.

“Hey, doll,” he murmured, grabbing your hand in his, turning up to lean against the headboard next to you. And, god, the way you looked at him could make his heart stop; nothing but admiration and affection in those eyes. Your eyebrows were slightly raised, corners of your mouth pulling up slightly.

“Hey, Buck.” You fully smiled at him, offering him a soft, sleepy grin.

“I love you.”

You slid down on the bed, this time resting your head on his chest, wrapping your arms around his large torso, snuggling up into him as the sun rose behind you. “I love you, too.”

#Daedalus giving me Steve vibes in this poem tbh #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #fanfiction #captain america #angst #poetry #bucky x you #bucky barnes angst #bucky fic #bucky fanfic

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fortunatelylori · 5 years ago

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Sandtion: The Sense and sensibility connection - a meta collab with @and-holly-goes-lightly

As some of you may have gathered, @and-holly-goes-lightly and I are salt mates (this is a tumblr term I have learned only recently and am planning to run into the ground. You have been forwarned. I don’t want any complaints down the line!)

It all started about a year ago, with this:

And progressed steadily until we ended up here:

Occasionally, between ogling pictures of naked men, we discuss serious issues as well. Those end up as metas for your consumption, most of the time.

It’s a colaboration that works well. I write long metas, she writes really good ones. We enjoy. We have fun.

Given that we both obssesively analyze tv content and that we tend to reach about the same conclusions, we have been planning on doing some project together for a while now.

I think if 2 months ago someone had told us that Sanditon would be the tv show that would see us join writing forces, we would have been more than a little shocked.

But here we are … hoplessly obssessed with Austen’s unfinished novel and ITV’s unfinished tv show (get the hint, ITV?!?! I hope you do. Chop, chop! You can’t live on Downton Abbey reruns for the rest of time, you know)

So on this most special of days, @and-holly-goes-lightly and I bring you the motherload of Sandtion metas. Two crazy writers, one tv show, one simple title:

Sandtion: The Sense and Sensibility connection

It’s no surprise to anyone, at this point, that Andrew Davies wears his Austen influences on his sleeve in Sanditon. You can find easter eggs for most of Austen’s work, from the famous Pride and Prejudice to the obscure Lady Susan.

However, Sense and Sensibility seems to be one work that hasn’t insipired much comparison from the fandom. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Sandion’s last two episodes were so hard to digest and why so many question marks were raised in regards to Charlotte’s characterization.

In this project we aim to dispel some of that confusion and attempt to put into prespective the character arcs of both Sidney and Charlotte in:

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility by @fortunatelylori

As well as delve deeper into Charlotte’s POV through out the season finale in:

Charlotte Heywood - From Sensibility to Sense by @and-holly-goes-lightly

We hope you enjoy our take. Please don’t forget to leave us your comments in the reply section. This is a new format for us and we’d love to hear from you on how you like this kind of collaborative work.

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility

As I was reading the now infamous Theo James interview, I was reminded of the “unusual” visual representation of Sanditon. It really does look quite different to most Austen adaptations which are defined by the sunny, sanitized domesticity of the English garden.

Sanditon doesn’t look like that. It’s rough and a little wild. It presents a world in the throes of change, with gales, nudity and darkness lurking around the corners. I think it’s those visual cues that made Theo link it to Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire gloomy moors and harsh winds.

But that just goes to show you Mr. James has not done his proper Andrew Davies research (Tsk, tsk, me thinks he will need to do a few more nude scenes to atone for it) because the wind swept beaches, the wilderness of the English countryside, the cowboy motif? They all go back to this:

I imagine the visual style of Sense and Sensibility 2008 was in part generated by an attempt to separate it from the very famous 1995 version (the quintessential sunny English countryside film) and in part as a response to the earthier approach Joe Wright took for his now very influential version of Pride and Prejudice (2005).

But I do think Sanditon owes more to S&S 2008 than just its visuals. I’ve talked about this in the past but Sanditon, to me, is really Davies’ homage to Austen’s entire body of work so the more you dig and analyze, the more similarities and parallels you are going to find between Sanditon, its characters and the rest of the Austenverse (I really hope this is just a thing I say in a sarcastic way on tumblr. Not everything needs to be a –verse, people!).

Episode 8 really brought this theory into focus for me. In my review I said that the finale marked the tonal shift of the story from the naïve, hopeful and mostly comedic territory of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice towards the darker, more reflective tone of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.

Of course, comedy and witticisms are a core trait of all of Austen’s work. Her voice is so powerful that she is always an extra character in her own stories. However, Persuasion and S&S are also permeated with a sense of loss and angst that her other works don’t really have.

They’re more mature I suppose one could say. And it’s that maturity that plays a role in the shift that occurred in the season finale of Sanditon. Because Sanditon is really all about Charlotte Heywood. We enter this world with her and we follow her coming of age story throughout the season. And that story is marked by a pretty steep transition from the romantic, hopeful heroine represented by Marianne Dashwood to her restrained, sensible sister, Eleanor.

One of the things I liked the most about S&S 2008 was how much more balanced its view on Marianne and Eleanor was. In the 1995 film, it always felt as if Marianne was presented as a cautionary tale while Eleanor was the heroic nurturing woman who endures everything stoically and is rewarded for her restraint in the end.

But that’s not really, to my mind, the message Jane Austen would like us to get out of S&S. Just like with Pride and Prejudice, Austen is shining a light on the folly of both extreme sense and as well as extreme sensibility. It is not wise to jump head first into situations having only Lord Byron’s poems as your guide but it’s also equally unwise to constrain yourself to the point where you are unable to confide in anyone, to the point where you deny your feelings and end up a passive participant to your own life.

With Charlotte Heywood, we get to explore both those behavioral patterns.

The change from Marianne to Eleanor doesn’t occur in episode 8, by the way. It occurs at the end of episode 6 and carries through to the finale. That’s why people, including myself, were taken aback by Charlotte’s apparent change in demeanor in episode 7, from the girl who always spoke her mind (even when she shouldn’t) and wore her heart on her sleeve to the outwardly detached, apprehensive young woman who was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as the man she loved was about to propose to her.

It would be easy to blame this transition on poor execution and I do believe the shift was too sudden and it was a mistake to have it start off screen (in between episode 6 and episode 7). However, the arc itself is not a mistake and it’s actually very clever.

For one because it allows us to explore this story both from the naïve, romantic perspective as well as the angst filled one.

Secondly, and most importantly, because it works in tandem with Sidney’s arc, who is going through the exact opposite journey from the emotionally repressed outlier to the open hearted tormented hero, representative of the Byronic romantic ideal.

What was supposed to happen is that by the end of episode 8, Sidney and Charlotte would meet in the middle, she as a more controlled romantic, he as a warmhearted stoic. What Davies gave us instead is two ships that passed each other in the night and have, by their last scene in episode 8, completely exchanged places.

So I think it’s important to go back to the beginning and analyze how the meeting between the naïve romantic Charlotte and the world weary Sidney ended up altering them forever and how, while deeply painful for both of them at the moment, their separation and behavior shift will end up benefiting them when their eventual reunion occurs (whether or not ITV decides to renew this series, Charlotte and Sidney WILL get married and have 2 to 3 adorable children because this is an Austen story and I will accept nothing less, damn it!)

One of the most important scenes in the whole season for me was the carriage scene in episode 6. I wrote a whole meta on it that you can find here and I have to go back to it in order to reference this extremely important exchange that sits as the lynchpin of this meta:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing this scene and how pivotal it is in the story of Sidney as the motivator behind his lowering of his emotional guard. But I don’t think we’ve spent nearly enough time asking ourselves what this exchange tells us about Charlotte.

Because this doesn’t just announce a change in Sidney, it also foreshadows one for her. Sidney is correct in implying she doesn’t really understand love because she’s never experienced it. She is, however, about to realize that she’s in love with him and thus her assertion that she’d rather be naïve than insensible of feeling is just about to be tested.

And the surprising result is … Charlotte fails at her own paradigm. For the rest of the season, she will never be as emotionally open as she is in episode 6.

Charlotte is unable to remain the open book, expansive girl in the face of first supposed unrequited love and then as she experiences loss. She, instead, withdraws inward and begins building up her walls just as Sidney did after Eliza left him.

I think Davies understands Austen’s ultimate message that you fall into the extreme of sense or sensibility at your own peril, which is why he chooses to have his main two characters traverse opposite journeys so they can be brought closer by the end of the story (in season 2 of course).

That’s because at the core of all of the fights and misunderstandings between Charlotte and Sidney sit two problems:

Sidney Parker does not believe in the good intentions of other people. He is operating from a place of hurt and feeling under attack. He is essentially under the impression that the people he comes into contact with have ulterior motives, and none of them are good. And you can’t really blame him for that distorted image of reality when you consider what the two most meaningful relationships in his life have been up until this point.

On the one hand you have Tom who weaponizes even the most benign of compliments:

Tom: At least I have your prowess on the cricket field to be thankful for.

Sidney: Well in truth you have Lord Babington to thank for that. I am here at his behest to give him support in his time of romantic need. God knows he shall need it.

Tom: You’re a good friend, Sidney … I don’t suppose you could try just one last time… [to go ask for money]

On the other hand, you have Eliza Campion who says stuff like this with a straight face:

Sidney: You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.

Eliza: I’ve waited for 10 years. What’s another quarter of an hour?

While researching this meta and also trying to figure out my Christmas fic, I’ve come to realize that both Tom and Eliza are using a victim narrative to get what they want from the people around them. What Sidney has learned from these relationships is that nothing in life comes for free. Any compliment, any sign of affection comes with a price tag or an eventual let down.

For her part, Charlotte Heywood is suspicious of Sidney because he doesn’t make himself easy to understand.

Charlotte thrives on communication and she tends to empathize and like people who share, or overshare, information with her. Her opinion on Tom shifts the moment he starts including her in his Sanditon projects. She is apprehensive of Otis for quite a bit of episode 4 but ends up completely on his side the moment he talks about his past as a slave and making innuendos about Sidney, despite neither one of those things really resolving her initial reasons for being apprehensive.

This behavior is really down to Charlotte’s upbringing in a very large but very happy family. Or as Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey would put it:

Eleanor: I think you have had a quite dangerous upbringing. You’ve been brought up to believe that everyone is as pure in heart as you are.

Incidentally another Andrew Davies adaptation …

In Charlotte’s mind, people who are open emotionally and speak their mind must be good people. After all, she is this way and she certainly always has the best of intentions. When someone doesn’t do that, or worse they evade and try to manipulate, she distances herself from them, as is the case with Edward and Clara.

And since Charlotte views meaningful communication as the ultimate sign of trust, it’s this withholding of information, this emotional barrier she can sense in Sidney, that makes her mistrustful of him. She can’t understand his emotional withdrawal for what it is – a response to trauma - because she’s never experienced it. And as such she will always fundamentally misunderstand him.

We see these two character hang ups rearing their ugly heads again and again in their conflicts:

Episode 1

Sidney: And what have you observed about me upon our small acquaintance?

Charlotte: I think you must be the sensible brother of the three. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that your younger brother, Arthur, is a very … contrary nature. Alternately over lethargic and over energetic. While your elder brother, Tom, could be called over enthusiastic. I’m afraid that despite his good nature, he neglects his own happiness and his family’s in his passionate devotion to Sanditon. Don’t you agree?

Sidney: Upon my word, Miss Heywood, you are very free with your opinions. And upon what experience of the world do you form your judgments? Where have you been? Nowhere. What have you learnt? Nothing it would seem. And yet you take it upon yourself to criticize. Let me put it to you, Miss Heywood: which is the better way to live? To sit in your father’s home, with your piano and your embroidery, waiting for someone to come and take you off your parents’ hands? Or to expend your energy in trying to make a difference? To leave your mark. To leave the world in a better place than you found it. That is what my brother, Tom, is trying to do. At the expense of a great deal of effort and anxiety, in a good cause in which I do my best to help and support him. And you see fit to … to criticize him … to amuse yourself at his expense.

Fortunatelylori: … I have a theory that the reason why Sidney’s been forced into prostitution by the end of season 1 is because he used the argument of the fucking patriarchy to defend Tom The Worst Parker. Gee, Sidney, us women would love to go out there and change the world but your male friends are forcing us to stay home with our pianos and embroideries to make sure they take full advantage of our ovaries. Please take several seats!

Fortunatelylori: Also … fyi … Tom isn’t protecting England from the French or helping Warren de La Rue develop the freaking light bulb. He is trying to run a dime a dozen seaside resort and failing miserably at it so spare us the change the world one naked ass at a time speeches.

Charlotte is baited by Sidney, the emotional recluse, into oversharing which she can’t help herself from doing because even at this early stage she has a crush on him and wants to impress him with her insight. He takes that rather kind take on his brother Tom and spins it into a narrative of inexperienced superficiality and mockery because that’s what he’s conditioned himself to think about people.

Episode 2

Charlotte: Our conversation at the party … I expressed myself badly and I fear you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to disparage your brother or to offend you. Indeed I have the greatest admiration for what you and he are doing here in Sanditon. You were right to rebuke me and indeed I am sorry. I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood. I have no interest in your approval or disapproval. Quite simply, I don’t care what you think or how you feel. I’m sorry if that disappoints you but there it is. Have I made myself clear?

Fortunatelylori: Badly done, Sidney! Badly done indeed!

Not much to say about Charlotte in this one as this argument is ALL on Sidney and his trust issues. In his world, this kind of earnest apology and brave taking of responsibility is always a precursor to a guilt trip or a victimization episode. So he has become very adept at shooting down any such attempt forcefully.

It’s only in episode 3, when he sees Charlotte helping Mr. Stringer without any expectations of reward and her accepting his apology without any hint of emotional blackmail that Sidney is able to lower his guard and begin to see Charlotte for the honest, kind and generous human being that she is:

Fortunatelylori: Awwww! This is Sidney essentially seeing his unborn children in Charlotte’s eyes. (that is the most romantic lyric in the English language and no one will convince me otherwise)

However, what ends up happening? Sidney lowers his guard just in time for Charlotte to reactivate her suspicions which leads to their most explosive fight to date:

Episode 4

Sidney: Did we not agree that you would look out for Georgiana? Keep her out of trouble? I should have known you weren’t to be trusted.

Charlotte: And I should have known, despite your professed concern, you care nothing for her happiness.

Sidney: I would ask you to refrain from making judgments about a situation you don’t understand.

Charlotte: I understand perfectly well!

Sidney: Of course you do! Even though you’ve known Georgiana but a handful of weeks and him but a matter of hours.

Charlotte: That was time enough to learn that Mr. Molyneux is as respectable a gentleman as I have ever had cause to meet.

Sidney: You seem to find it impossible to distinguish between the truth and your own opinion!

Charlotte: The truth? You wish to speak of the truth, Mr. Parker? The truth is you are so blinded by prejudice that you would judge a man by the color of his skin alone.

Sidney: You speak out of turn.

Charlotte: Why should I expect any better from a man whose fortune is so tainted with the stain of slavery!

Sidney: That is enough! … I do not need to justify myself to you.

They essentially spiral out of control in this scene. Sidney’s trust issues come back and his lack of feed-back to Charlotte’s accusations make her provide increasingly horrible explanations to fill in the blanks.

Because their fights tend to be very intense (they are both people with very strong personalities), it’s easy to think of the two of them as simply not being compatible.

But their issues aren’t a matter of compatibility but rather an inability to find the right channels on which to communicate with each other, despite both wanting to.

Which brings us to episode 5

I love these little acting choices Theo James makes. This sigh is so evocative because it’s pretty clear it’s not frustration or boredom, but rather Sidney still reeling from her accusations in episode 4.

On the other side, Charlotte looks at him and thinks he is distant and non-affected and because, despite being angry, she still wants to connect with him, she tries so hard to use Sidney’s acerbic wit against him and keeps attempting to poke the big grizzly bear:

Charlotte: I assume you are here for the cricket.

Sidney: Never short of assumptions, Miss Heywood.

Unable to find a chink in his cold shoulder, Charlotte tries again at the cricket match:

Charlotte: Good luck to you too, Mr. Parker. Although I imagine you don’t think you’ll need it.

Sidney: Yes more assumptions, Miss Heywood?

Sidney is so pissed at her in this episode, not even her low key flirting with James Stringer galvanizes him.

But then something quite unexpected happens … Without actually realizing it, Charlotte manages to find the right channel to communicate on:

Stringer: You haven’t got another player to replace him. We win.

Charlotte: I’ll play.

With the wide eyed enthusiasm of a true romantic, Charlotte taps into the core of what Sidney desperately needs in his life. She doesn’t just help and support him when he needs her to but crucially she doesn’t put a price tag on it.

Charlotte: Is that a smile I detected?

Sidney: Oh, I doubt it …

Charlotte doesn’t enter the cricket match because she wants to use that gesture to ask Sidney for money for her pyramid scheme or gaslight him into thinking her betrayal was actually her “waiting” for him. Charlotte does it because she wants to see him smile. And just look at him …

Unfortunately that momentary progress is derailed again when Georgiana is kidnapped which will eventually lead to the carriage scene in episode 6 where Charlotte’s need for feed-back clashes with Sidney’s trust issues in their most revealing conversation.

It’s tempting to look at this argument and think Sidney is the only one who is in the wrong and who needs to change. But that would be missing a few important aspects of the story.

Charlotte: Otis never meant to place Georgiana in harm’s way. Any more than I did.

Sidney: And yet you both did.

I think a lot of people, Charlotte included, fall into the trap of believing that if someone didn’t intend to harm someone else that means they haven’t actually done something wrong. Which is why there are still people in the Sanditon tag that are resisting the idea that Tom Parker is a villain. Surely he never meant to hurt his brother and he didn’t force him to propose to Eliza, so why is everyone so hard on him?

But like Charlotte had to learn with Otis, just because Tom didn’t intend to cause Sidney harm doesn’t change the fact that he very much did.

In this case, Charlotte’s major mistake was not that she helped Georgiana stay in touch with Otis. Charlotte’s mistake was in assuming she had the whole 1000 piece puzzle completed when she only had about 200 pieces in place.

Charlotte: All I ever cared about was Georgiana’s happiness.

Sidney: What did you think I cared about?

Charlotte: That is anyone’s guess!

Sidney: I’ve done the best I can by Georgiana.

Charlotte: No! At every turn you have abdicated responsibility. If you truly cared for her welfare, you would have watched over her yourself.

Sidney: It is a role I neither sought or asked for.

Charlotte: Of course not! Because you are determined to remain an outlier. God forbid you give something of yourself!

Sidney: Please do not presume to know my mind, Miss Heywood.

Charlotte: How could anyone know your mind? You take pains to be unknowable. All I know is that you cannot bear the idea of two people being in love.

Despite admitting she doesn’t know his mind, Charlotte can’t help herself from filling in the blanks with what she assumes is a conscious desire to be uncaring. Because she doesn’t have the life experience to come up with another answer.

For his part, Sidney is hurt by her lack of trust in him but unwilling to trust her enough in return to tell her the whole story. Still her words do affect him enough to make him begin to lower his barrier and give Theo James one of his best acting moments:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

Sidney: Is that really what you think of me? I’m sorry that you think that. How much easier my life would have been if I were …

Fortunatelylori: I just … he’s very good … that is all

It would be very tempting to assume that since Charlotte admits to being naïve once the whole Otis and Georgiana’s situation is revealed:

Charlotte: It’s all so overwhelming! I hardly know what to think anymore. (beat) About anything! I’ve always felt so certain of my judgment. But now I see that I have been blinded by sentiment and naivety. How could I have gotten it all so wrong? No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me …

and Sidney begins to show more outward concern for the people around him and validate Charlotte in ever increasingly romantic ways:

Charlotte: I know … I’m too headstrong. I’m too opinionated. I’m too …

Sidney: No. You are not too anything. Don’t doubt yourself. You’re more than equal to any woman here.

That their clashing world views are now aligned. But the truth is, Sidney isn’t the one to explain to Charlotte how it was that he became “insensible of feeling”. It’s Tom that tells her that story (and then promptly bungles whatever help he might have provided his brother). Sidney’s trust issues remain which is evident even as late as episode 8:

Babbington: I believe she’s tamed me.

Sidney: Yes … I just imagine how that might feel.

And

Sidney: I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before.

Don’t get me wrong, I melt every time I hear that second line but it is indicative of the fact that love still feels like an inherently risky and dangerous thing for Sidney where he is obliged to hand over his power to someone else and pray that person doesn’t abuse it the way Eliza did.

For Charlotte’s part, Sidney beginning to reveal more of himself and show her the true man underneath the armor, makes her fall more and more in love with him. And the more she loves him, the more afraid she is of outwardly showing it. His confusion over his feelings for her and Eliza’s reappearance in his life, cause her to attempt to fill in the blanks again in episode 7. First by proxy, while talking to James Stringer:

Charlotte: You are far too sensible to form such a misguided and futile attachment.

Stringer: Why should it be futile, Miss Heywood? For all you know your feelings are repaid 5 times over.

Charlotte: I allowed myself to believe so for the briefest of moments. But I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes.

And then directly:

Sidney: I hope you weren’t too offended by Mrs. Campion. It was only meant in jest.

Charlotte: Is that all I am to you? A source of amusement?

Sidney: No. Of course not! You’re … Forgive me.

Charlotte: On the contrary, you’ve done me a great service. I am no longer in any doubt as to how you regard me.

So what happens in episode 8? Well, they essentially trade places, going from this:

Charlotte: I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood.

To this:

Sidney: Tell me you don’t think too badly of me.

Charlotte: I don’t think badly of you.

In one of my metas I made the point that Sidney Parker IS Charlotte Heywood’s coming of age story: he is her first love, the first man she is sexually attracted to, her first kiss and well … unfortunately also her first (and hopefully only) heartbreak.

By being forced to deal with her own sense of loss and the pain of being separated from the person she loves, Charlotte will finally be able to understand the true nature of Sidney’s insensitivity of feeling. Instead of causing her suspicion or apprehension, she will be able to connect with it because she’s lived through it herself.

As for Sidney … I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the end he is forced to do to Charlotte what Eliza did to him all those years ago. He chooses to marry a wealthy woman he does not love and disappoint a poor woman whom he does love.

I think given that his motives are obviously altruistic while Eliza’s were not (both per Tom’s story as well as her general character as revealed in the show so far), the point of the similarity is not to bring him closer to Eliza. Certainly not when he’s looking at Charlotte like this:

Which means that him being forced to contend with what happened 10 years ago by reliving the incident, this time in the role of the aggressor, is there to increase his level of vulnerability and put him in the place of the earnest person trying to reach out for emotional connection and having to fight to pull down the walls he himself helped put up in Charlotte.

You know what they say … If you really want to know someone, walk a mile in their shoes. No one ever said those shoes would be comfortable.

#sanditon #sanditon meta #sidlotte #sidlotte meta #jane austen adaptations #sidney parker #charlotte heywood #sense and sensibility #sanditonmetacollab

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laventadorn · 5 years ago

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Part 1/2 I was wondering if you had any ideas/headcanons wrt Eileen/Tobias? JK doesn't really go into how they met, but given the little info he gives us its pretty clear the type of marriage they had. But, I was wondering why Tobias acted the way he did. Not that he needs a reason, but I love backstories. Do u have one for the Snapes? Personally, I sawa bit of parallel with how Seamus described how his muggle dad didn't know his mom was a which until after the wedding. I can sort of see...

I wrote one for my first HP fic, in fact! Heavily influenced by Jane Austen lmao

I would change some aspects of this now, but this was the version I dug up from my Ancient Writings:

(readmore, y u no work)

Eileen’s parents’ marriage was arranged, as many pure-blood marriages are. The Princes were a very old, distinguished line, but impoverished, while her mother’s family was relatively new, in a pure-blood sense, but wealthy. Her parents set up the marriage with Mr. Prince, who was rather older than their daughter, but she agreed to it. However, within a short time she was unhappy, since her husband, raised to frugality, was rather miserly and she was spendthrift; and being younger, she wanted to do a great many things that it was not in his temperament to agree to. When Eileen was about five or six, her mother ran away, abandoning her child and her marriage, eloping to Europe with a lover. Her husband was so humiliated and enraged that he forbade anyone in the household to speak her name ever again. He destroyed all evidence of her existence in the house—the possessions she had left behind, the paintings they’d had commissioned, even renouncing her personal house-elf. Even when he learned, three years later, that she’d died in conditions of poverty and hardship, it didn’t soften him toward her; instead, he only believed she had got what she deserved.

When Eileen was seven, he remarried, this time to a widow, one of the Blacks, who had endured a childless marriage of some fifteen years until her husband was killed rather stupidly trying to learn how to ride a dragon. She had no wealth, but Mr. Prince still had his wife’s fortune, and Mrs. Black’s impeccable bloodline meant more to him in any case. She and Mr. Prince were rather meant for each other, however: both were nip-farthings, both joyless and cruel, and both rigidly traditional. They believed in duty, propriety, and unstinting obedience from their children.

Mrs. Black, now Mrs. Prince, thought worse of the former Mrs. Prince than even her husband did. To her, a woman’s infidelity was the worst of vile sins, and she pitied her new husband for having married such a filthy whore. She was sorry that the former Mrs. Prince had left behind a little girl, since naturally the daughter of such a whore would turn out just like her.

But Mrs. Prince was determined to do her duty by Eileen. She raised her to be a proper pure-blood wife—dutiful, obedient, graceful and silent. She beat into her the importance of propriety, telling Eileen how vital it was that she give no one any cause to say how like her mother she was, however much she would surely have the same sort of base, wicked urges as that slut. She also impressed upon Eileen the necessity of marrying into a pure-blood family of stature, since her mother was a fine example of the rubbish that rose to the surface of bad blood.

Within a few short years, the new Mrs. Prince had rewarded her second husband with twin sons. These boys had the benefit firstly of being boys, always a plus in pure-blood families, as well as the added bonus of not having a piece of trash for a mother. The practice of favoring the sons over the daughters was standard in pure-blood families, but the sins of Eileen’s mother worsened her lot. Nothing Eileen ever did was right enough or good enough or proper enough in the eyes of her family; and at school she had no friends, since the pure-blood daughters of Slytherin were fully aware of her mother’s story and had been forbidden from associating with her. Eileen was not pretty, and her home life was too miserable to make her good enough company to compensate for her other defects. Her father pretended she did not exist, her brothers teased and tormented her, and her stepmother ruled her whole life with a fist of iron.

Eileen retreated into her schoolwork, into books and knowledge. In second year she did make one friend, a Ravenclaw named Constance Marlowe. Constance was a very tranquil person. Her mother was Muggle-born, and she would tell Eileen about her Muggle grandparents. Eileen had never met Muggles. Her father and stepfather loathed them, but they loathed Eileen, too, and loved her brothers and the pure-blood families who treated Eileen as if their cruelty was simply preempting every nasty thing they suspected she would ever do.

Then in fifth year, while visiting the sea shore on summer holiday, Constance drowned. Eileen went to her funeral, to which many of Constance’s Muggle relatives had come. They looked like regular people, although they dressed funny. After that, Eileen hated the ocean, but realized that Muggles were capable of human thought and speech, which her family had always led her to believe they weren’t.

When school ended, she returned to live at her father’s house, since pure-blood women of her family’s stature did not get jobs; they got married. But with Eileen’s reputation, her looks, and her father’s desire to spend as little money on her dowry as possible, she received no offers. Her blood was not even decent enough, balanced as it was by her mother’s betrayal. So for more than ten years, Eileen lived in her father’s home, a companion to her stepmother, an object of mockery to her brothers and the children they went on to have.

By the time she was thirty, everyone, even she, was certain she would never marry. Her stepmother even came to relax her restrictions, since she had kept Eileen wrapped so tightly out of a duty to maidenly propriety. A thin, unattractive thirty-year-old witch was not likely to be prey to any lascivious attentions or whims. Uncaring now of the reputation she had so viciously guarded, Mrs. Prince let Eileen out of the house for longer periods of time … although she might not have, had she known Eileen was visiting Muggle haunts.

On one of these jaunts, when she was about thirty-one, Eileen met Tobias. She had gone, in fact, to the seaside town where Constance drowned, perhaps out of a morbid desire to torture herself. He was there, too, trying to get away from his life for a bit, since he’d just gotten divorced.

He had married young when his girlfriend got pregnant unexpectedly. He’d done his duty by her, quitting school and going to work at the mill, but a few months before the day he met Eileen, his wife had sat him down and said she’d fallen in love with some other bloke, but she wanted to do right by Tobias because he’d always done right by her. She and he weren’t in love, hadn’t been since the very early days, even if they’d rubbed along together easily enough, and he said as long as he could keep seeing his girl, they’d be all right. So they divorced amicably, and she married the other bloke, who was a bit older and balding and sort of fat, but a jolly sort, which Tobias had to admit he was not. Lorraine’s new husband looked a bit like Santa Claus to Tobias, and he knew his daughter would like her step-father, if she didn’t already. And although as a young man he’d agreed to the marriage of necessity and had never really been bitter about it, happy enough with his wife and daughter for company, he had wanted more from his life than he’d wound up with at thirty-five: divorced, uneducated, in a dreary, pointless job.

As she was talking with him, Eileen realized she wanted more than anything to get away from her family. She realized how purely she hated them, as if the hatred ran through her blood. She decided to scandalize them utterly: packed up her marriage chest and ran away, to live with Tobias without marrying him, hoping to drive her father and step-mother both to an apoplectic fit, but at least one or the other if she could manage it.

So she and Tobias simply lived together for a while, until Eileen got pregnant. She had been guarding against this, but the magical world had an old wives’ tale that wizarding babies wanted to be born so badly that sometimes, you couldn’t stop them. When she told Tobias, he wanted to get married, and although she didn’t really, she didn’t want her child to suffer the ignominy of being the bastard of a whore. So they were married, very quietly, only Tobias’ ex-wife in attendance with her family. Not wanting to give birth to a daughter that would live the life she’d had, Eileen mixed a very Dark potion to ensure the birth of a son.

So Severus was born. She put an ad in the Daily Prophet, hoping her family would see it, in case it would give them an aneurism.

Before Severus was born, but when she was close to due, Tobias asked her if the baby would have magic. Eileen said, “It is likely, but he may not.”

“What happens if he doesn’t?” Tobias asked.

Eileen shrugged. “Then he doesn’t.” She wanted her son to be a wizard, but she was no longer in the magical world; a Squib child would not matter to her now. She had brothers; she was not even the end of the line.

It was impossible to tell if babies had magic, so for several years after Severus’ birth it was a moot issue. Eileen continued to work spells, because Tobias said he didn’t mind, he actually thought it was pretty interesting. And then one day when Severus was about four or five, he worked magic, and out of nowhere Tobias blew up at the pair of them. Eileen was so shocked she actually flinched away, because although she knew Tobias had a temper, he’d never turned it on her. Severus burst into tears. And then Eileen pulled herself together and reacted, rage and hatred boiling up out of her through her wand, and she turned it on her husband, the way she’d always wanted to do to her brothers, her father, her step-mother, the children at school, and she blasted him across the room and into the bookshelf.

Severus screamed. Eileen stood frozen, looking at Tobias’ unconscious body slumped under an array of books. She blasted them off him and found he was bleeding from cuts all over his front. She hastily flooed them all to St. Mungo’s, where he was swiftly patched up. Although the Healers gave her funny looks, they did nothing to her because she was a witch and he was only a Muggle, and there weren’t legal protections in those days for the Muggle spouses of wizards and witches.

Tobias wasn’t the same after that. Eileen didn’t know whether it was the shock of her turning her magic on him, or Severus’ own magic manifesting, or even the trip to St. Mungo’s, because his face as he looked around the hospital as they left had been haunted. After that, he began to drink more. Although he’d always had a few on the weekends and even more on holidays, he was soon never seen without a drink in his hand or the scent of alcohol on his breath. He wouldn’t tell Eileen what was wrong, and it was impossible to get anything from the mind of a drunk person; even trying it made one disoriented.

She expected him to leave them; expected to wake up one morning and find him gone, but for some reason he never did. They settled into a life where Tobias would go for days avoiding her and Severus, hardly speaking to them when sober, muttering when inebriated, with occasional outbursts of temper that Eileen would sometimes curtail, but at others simply weather out. As a young child Severus was at first frightened, then hurt, and once he grew older, resentful.

Once, when Severus was about seven, she did wake up in the middle of the night and find Tobias in Severus’ room, watching him sleep. Tobias was just drunk enough to be honest. He looked up at her with haunted eyes and said, “Do you hate that I can’t do it?”

“Do what?” she asked, bewildered.

“What you can do. What he can do. Do you hate me because I can’t?”

Eileen just stared at him. “Is that why you act like this?” He didn’t say anything, just looked back at Severus. “No, I don’t hate you. That would be like hating the sky because it’s blue.”

When he spoke, she almost didn’t hear him. “Sometimes I hate you, though. Both of you.”

It took Eileen much longer than it should have to understand what Tobias was really telling her: that he hated them for being able to do something he never would. He hated them for having the power of magic when he was only a Muggle. That look on his face in St. Mungo’s had been shock at an entire world he’d never guessed existed; and now that he knew of it, he also knew he would only ever be on the outside looking in.

But she had not understood this in time. She resented his drinking; he resented her powers; they resented each other’s resentment. And at the heart of it, they came to hate the other for a second chance that had turned to ash, just as the first chance had.

Eventually Eileen realized that the same barrier that stood between her and Tobias had blocked him off from Severus, and she simply quit trying to bridge it. She drew Severus into the circle of her magic, eschewing any acknowledgment of the non-magical world he was half a part of. She had always meant Tobias to show him that part, and now Tobias would not. She taught Severus about his magical bloodline, the House of their family’s allegiance, the world he would enter once he was old enough, the powers he would wield. Although she punished him if he looked in her books without her permission, she taught him hexes and curses and spells that would get him respected among his Slytherin peers, that would receive him the notice of families he would need to impress in order to gain entrance into the society that should have been his—both of theirs, had her life gone much differently. She raised him more as she had been raised, in a manner typical for pure-blood daughters: with strictness and not much indulgence, because she’d loathed the men her brothers had become, alternately indulged and ruthlessly punished as they had been, as the beloved sons of two cruel, cold-hearted people.

In teaching Severus about the world she had left, sending him off into the future he ought to have, Eileen realized she had never been happy in the world of magic. She had known the truth of that, lived it all her life, but never articulated it to herself. But she was not happy in the Muggle world, either; she did not understand it, couldn’t navigate it. It was too vast and unfamiliar for her even to know where to start. As she prepared Severus for Hogwarts, Eileen realized the only time she had been anything close to happy was in that seaside town when she had met Tobias, and she had believed, for a handful of days, that the future would be different from the past.

But it hadn’t been. Now Tobias was gone, and only Severus was left. And even though she had tried her hardest to make it otherwise, she realized that Severus was just as out-of-place as she had ever been; she, the daughter of a whore, the pure-blood wife of a Muggle with a wizard for a son. Severus was the child of two people whose lives had been wasted for them by others; sent as hardly more than a baby into the world of pure-blood politics with such a tiny arsenal of anything they would see as promise, in love with a naïve Muggle-born Gryffindor. If Severus wanted the Muggle-born, he would cut all his chances of entering good society; and if he got the Muggle-born, he would find himself in the midst of people who regarded his magic with jealousy and suspicion.

That was the true curse of the half-blood, she thought. You were always trapped between worlds that didn’t know how to claim you.

*Snape doesn’t have those uncles anymore cuz they died off somehow, and he doesn’t have contact with his dad’s first family. He doesn’t strike me as someone who has a large extended family he pals around with, although I’m sure they exist. I have 1 jillion cousins I know absolutely nothing about, not even their names.

#laventadorn's adventures in writing stuff

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pride-prejudice-and-vampires · 6 years ago

Text

Half in Anguish/Half in Hope || Jane & Will

Wind whipped her hair stinging her eyes as the ends lashed against them. Her scarf threatened to blow away in the sea breeze. There was no avoiding the sun, though it was starting to go down so it had less power over her. The shadows from the buildings allowed her to walk with almost complete confidence that the sun would barely touch her. This made her evening very nice the temperature was still nice enough to get away with walking along. The great redwoods in the distance shook their green foliage. Her scarf whipped up and about against her and lightly blowing billowing. Her eyes looking from person to person. She would need blood soon, already the darker part of herself was aching in her mind and belly.

Will walked along the street Max beside him who was engrossed in his pokemon go. Will had needed to go out for a breath of fresh air, be among the public. The wind had tousled his dark locks in a beautiful manner the cowlicks and curls framing him well. Occasionally he would have to reach out and move Max out of the way of a pole. They stopped when a poke stop was near allowing for Max to refill his items for free. It was at a stop that a familiar heartbeat stood out above all the rest. The cadence was a drumbeat that once learned one could dance too. His eyes closed as the familiar scent filled him in mind and heart, lavender. The pain and peace of... Jane. His eyes opened and a large gust of wind blew his coat open and his letter away! His eyes widened as he darted out after it grasping and clutching ever missing its swirling, whirling dodge. Hand grasping desperation edging him on.

Evelyn was a name she had chosen, having seen it on a gravestone some time ago. It was a pretty name but, there had been a time where the name Jane had caught the shell of her ear, saying hear me, and know me. A scent drew her in, a scent of cloves the sweet-spice filling the air like a balm drawing her into the past a beat of a drum echoing in her ears, not a drum, a heartbeat. Walking almost in a daze she smiled as a wind gust spun her about as her foot came down her eyes followed a motion catching her something very off white and aged with time. The paper crinkled in her hand as she held it in hand taking the words upon in.

Dear Mister “Darcy”

I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry. You must understand this, that my love cannot be so easily as given, I am not like the heroines of my books, nor you the heroes. Indeed how far you have allowed me to be blinded to yourself and your true nature has now caused me to leave you. I wish never for my eyes to be set upon you, my heart is ever closed from your love if that is what you call it. Know that I have taken to leaving by the time you read this my ship will have already sailed for the Americas. I bid you good health.

Carpe Noctem

Jane Austen

Her lip tightened as her jaw trembled, those words that haunted her every night, the ones she had written in a moment of desperation. But how? Was the Demon here? Had he brought these to torment her? To bring her further pain? Was it not enough that she had left Will? It had all been to protect him. She had no choice! Looking up her dark eyes met a familiar pair.

Will had run as fast as his feet could carry without revealing his true nature. He had been about to catch it when a final gust had taken the letter to a young woman. Slowing down his eyes trailed up over her, he knew her canvas well, no matter the time. The peach blossom of her lips that had always been curved in a smile as he had known her. The apple of her cheeks were flush. Tracing to those eyes that had always held such a warmth, a kindness, the last thing he saw when he drifted off was her face full of laughter such a laugh! One that made you feel safe, giddy, and loved. So here stood his beloved lost Jane. Not his, in possession long ago they had tethered their souls to each other, all they had needed was say the words without the words there was nothing to keep them together. How he had wept. The loss of her had brought about the man who stood before her now.

So he stood, her Will, with his dark cowlicks asway in the breeze, that face that had always held a smile hidden in the corner of his mouth how she longed to kiss that mouth. To bring his head into her hands and be with him. The shell of his ears the curve of his brow ever arched in a handsome manner. How his words had captured her he would murmur poetry into every crook and cranny with his mouth against her skin. It had been poems all for her and her alone. His mind had been the whetstone of her sword keeping her sharp. He had been the soul she had needed in her life and even in their darkest moments he had never forsaken her. Never questioned her, not when it mattered, trusting and sweet, funny and kind. She had betrayed him the proof betwixt her fingers that the wind threatened to blow away. She almost wanted to let it go, and with it the past perhaps they could forge a new future? No the demon had been very specific, to leave Will alone. Her eyes welled with tears even more. How she longed to be wrapped in those arms. Had he still not spoken? Had his anger risen so high he could not muster a word? He had never been good at anger, it was not a mask he wore. He wrote it wonderfully well and understood it, but anger was not a trait he kept for himself. Or sorrow? That was the one he wore too well, tragedy his ever constant mark of his trade. What could she say?

Her eyes had studied him, behind them a mind that had known his own, they had been so very deep in love once, he still felt for her now as he did then. How her novels had delighted him, her ferocity in battle at his back and side, they had slew many a creature of the night bringing peace to those who had been ravaged by their kind. Will’s mouth for once could not speak. How could he speak to her? She had asked he keep his distance and he had, by God he had, to be truthful he had no idea that she would be here. Will had done all he could be respectful of her words contained in the letter she still held in her hand. What would happen now? Would the sun find it’s way through? Destroying them both? Just him? Her? That would be how one of his tragedies would end. He was done with tragedy. Comedy, truth, that was what he craved, love above all he coveted most of all. Too long had this life denied him. If she asked him to leave he would, with only an apology for breaching the very request penned down. Those tears? Were they rage? Fear? Or did she long form him as achingly as he for her? This pining it was all too familiar. He wanted to speak, but his words still failed him what did one say after a hundred years? Well over in fact. The times had changed, how much had they?

“I believe this is yours.” She rasped out her voice twisting in pain. She forced herself to fold it her hands shaking. She tried to hold it out in a matter-of-fact manner. “Isn’t it?” She felt her lip tremble again as the question left her mouth giving her a sharpness to her heart. How she longed to burrow into his arms to beg him for forgiveness tell him everything, most of all tell him she loved him! She had never stopped loving him, but he had written it all so long ago, how these things turned out. In the end it was always another god damned tragedy.

Will felt his lips purse with the threat of tears sadness gripping them. His hand moved up careful precise. Taking hold of the paper, waiting for her to let go. He had held onto it so long he would wait forever if it meant her holding it here with him. “Yes.” His voice hoarse as a whisper usually it was so smooth and silky and deep, rippling with his accent. Yet here his voice had cracked like his heart had then.

She couldn’t let go, her eyes looked around, the demon could be anywhere, and yet? Yet there was no fire coming to claim Will. Their meeting had been and remained hidden. Jane took a step closer to him standing less than an arms length in her direction. Her movement had caused their hands to brush. How he had held her hand at every opportunity. He would brush his lips to it and offer up words only for her ears to hear. His eyes speaking the words not yet created to further add upon his devotion to her. Devotion she had been careless with in the past, she would no longer be careless with it. “And yet I should never have given it. I am not speaking to renew the sentiments contained within the letter, callous and cruel as they are. But to address the lies contained within. You are the only man I could ever have wished to and still wish to marry. My love and heart are not so easily given because to you they have always been true. Your true nature has always been good, kind and I have always loved you, it has made you a target for those that would wish you dead, Thus my love endangered you it would seem. I do so want to keep my eyes drinking in the sight of you. My heart could never be closed from yours it is yours and if yours is still mine then I consent to be yours until the end of our time. I hope this does in short explain and perhaps it may even mitigate my actions that have so thoroughly estranged us.” During this she had come closer and closer to him till she was now before him imploring him with more than her words but her eyes. Her words echoing the very letter he had written her the one she had transposed to her story about a headstrong prideful couple who had to over come their prejudice to find love. This was a different story now, but would they still find their love?

Will could still say nothing but his hand had let go of the letter, it was of little importance to him now, there was only one thing he wished to hold. His arms cautiously silently asking if it was alright to hold her. She was the only person who could silence him like this. That rendered him inert forever caught up in the reverie that was her.

As he held his arms out to her she walked into them soft sobs as she let herself be vulnerable with him she could be. He was vulnerable too together they could watch each other’s backs, just as they had done so long ago.

Will held her tightly his love was here and she was in his arms again. Will leaned down and kissed her softly. “You need not trouble yourself over the pain of it all my love, it is forgotten.” Immortality had a way of shaping one’s perspectives. Love didn’t make one desire to lash out to feel the pain, that was anger. He had never been good at anger. Love wanted only the same love in return. He held her tears streaming down his face. “My Dearest one.”

Jane stood there with him crumpling the letter, it was only now a piece of paper the writing on it no longer held meaning for either of them. Now only life and love would hold meaning she leaned up looking at him through teary lashes.

Will looked down with tears in his eyes. “Jane?”

“Will?” She answered back.

“I love you most ardently,” Will whispered. “Love is a weapon a dangerous one as you have so written as have I. Forget the mortal wound for it has healed with your love brought back. I am deeply under thy spell, bewitched and brought tightly around your finger. I am yours still even now the hour the moment that made me know that my soul and yours could never be truly separated.”

It was her turn for silence the words he spoke stilling her and instilling in her a beacon of hope as she grasped his head in her hands and planted a kiss firmly on his mouth. She whispered before she went back in for a kiss. “You are the love of my life.”

“Then allow me to once again to ask,” He knelt down taking her hand in his. “Once more with both a deep anguish and ever rising hope, that I may be your husband and love you with all that I am.”

“Yes,” She nodded. “Yes my Darcy-Darling-Will.” She stuttered out. “Yes the answer is yes. My answer is yes.”

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