#like the boy was twelve edmund!!!! HE WAS A BABY

[dollypopup]

that 'have you ever been punished as a child?' line Pen drops hits different when you realize that in the books, Colin was horsewhipped by his father the morning before he died and then went to Eton where they literally had something called 'flogging Fridays' during the time he attended

like Julia, Miss. Quinn, what do you mean you just threw that information in as a random throwaway line that is never mentioned again? do you not realize how WILD that makes Colin's background?

He was twelve years old??? His dad saw him hitting Eloise and then horsewhipped him, and after horsewhipping his twelve. year. old. son. he then goes to comfort Eloise by taking a walk with her and the bee stings him and he fucking dies

Colin would be out here blaming himself for that death forever are you kidding me???? Wondering if he didn't hit his sister (when they're children playing together), would his Dad still be alive? Would he still have gone on that walk? Would he still have passed away as Colin sat sobbing in the stables, hurt by his hand?

And then he goes to Eton where the only time he had off was 3 weeks around Christmas, but still has to stay there, and 3 weeks in the summer when he can finally go home to Aubrey Hall?

This timeline is BONKERS. Like. . .we know Edmund dies not too long before Hyacinth is born, and she's born May/June. Colin's birthday? Yeah, it's in March. So you mean to tell me, the order of events of all this mess could be as followed: Edmund horsewhips Colin when he's 12 years old (sometime before March), he DIES that same day, Colin turns 13 (in March), Hyacinth is born (in June), and not a few months later Colin has to go to Eton (after the summer break. Social season is Spring and Summer, and ends either July or August, so let's be merciful here and say he leaves in August) and doesn't come back for an entire year?

You mean to tell me this boy has had what? Half a year to get over his father's death after he whipped him for a minor infraction and then he's waltzing into an institution where canings and whippings and floggings and bullying are the norm when he's a teeny tiny little boy?

How is this man not filled to the GILLS with trauma???? No wonder he's so close to his mum and listens to the women around him more than the men and never talks about his dad. And he still turns out so nice and empathetic and kindhearted? He still listens so much to Pen and is so gentle with her and has a good sense of humor and cares so deeply?

That man is never raising a hand to their children. He probably won't even raise his voice at their children. Oh my god.

[bridgertonbabe]

In Take My Hand - since Charlie was an oopsie baby, how would Benedict and Sophie announce that baby Alexander was on his way?

Benedict and Sophie would have discussed wanting more children together and for Charlie to be surrounded with siblings just like Benedict had (though not to the eight-child extent). Sophie loved seeing how close Edmund and Miles were, not to mention hearing from Violet how much Kate and Anthony's boys reminded her so much of Anthony and Benedict as children, and so she and Benedict decided that once Charlie had turned one that they'd begin trying for another baby; only to end up conceiving Alexander right away on Charlie's birthday. The early stages of her pregnancy were a lot kinder to Sophie this time around and so there were no obvious signs to the rest of the family that she was expecting again. When they reached the twelve week mark, they decided that the first person they wanted to tell was Violet and so on Valentines Day they paid her a visit and encouraged Charlie to hand his grandma a card. With Charlie on her lap, Violet opened the red envelope she had been given by her grandson and cooed over the heart-shaped photo of her and a chubby six month old Charlie beaming at each other, which had been pasted on top of a flurry of red and pink little handprints covering the front of the card. When Violet then opened the card she gasped as an ultrasound slipped out and revealed love from Charlie and Grandbaby #9, and her eyes filled up with happy tears before she embraced her son and daughter-in-law. They had then planned to tell the rest of the family after Colin's birthday (so as to not overshadow him) but during his uncle's celebrations, little Charlie sat next to his mother on the sofa and began kissing her stomach as he chirped "I love you, baby" in a perfect imitation of his father, who he had seen kissing Sophie's stomach and professing the sentiment everyday since they found out they were expecting. The rest of the family were ecstatic that Benedict and Sophie were expanding their happy little family and for the rest of the party all of Charlie's cousins talked to Sophie's barely-there bump in eager anticipation of a new baby (even though Alex was still six months away from being born).

[newtonsheffield]

Molly really badly like desperately hoping you’d reply to this pleaseeeee

Would you please write Kate passing out from Violet’s POV and how she tells Anthony and how he reacts to it cause my god I can’t imagine him hearing it on the phone - I don’t think he’d be able to breathe himself

Are you sure you want to see this?

Violet had meant to talk to her daughter in law when she'd arrived at their house in Kensington, and yes maybe she'd intended to smother her beautiful grandson in a hug or twelve.

The minute she'd seen Kate, laying on the sofa, anxiety had started swirling in her stomach. Anthony had said, Kate's struggling a little right now Mum but she hadn't thought he meant this. She looked pale, a little drawn, dark circles under her eyes, and she kept getting paler and paler, her eyes drifting around the room until-

"Kate?" She'd started to sway in her seat, Violet's panic rising in her throat, "Kate?!"

She started falling, forward, her eyes rolling back in her head, as Violet leapt forward, her arms catching kate just before she touched the ground.

"Edmund! Edmund!" Violet could hear the panic in her voice as sh called for her grandson, whose feet were thundering on the stairs, "Edmund, call an ambulance."

He was standing in the living doorway his head shaking, so much like Anthony the day his father had died, and Violet's entire body was aching for him, for the memory.

"I don't understand, she was okay, she was okay, I was supposed to look after her."

"Sweetheart, she's going to be okay, I know she is, but I need you to be brave now, can you do that?"

She saw the shift in him immediately, his shoulders squaring, his jaw set.

"Good boy, now get the phone and hold it up to my ear."

And she had to believe what she'd told Edmund, because if Anthony had Kate back now, and lost her again, she'd never see the real Anthony ever again, she knew she wouldn't.

They were in the ambulance before Violet had a chance to call Anthony, the paramedics having assured them, her vital signs were normal, tears running down Edmund's cheeks, his hands gripping Kate's with white knuckles, Violet's arm around his shoulders.

"Hey Mum, what's up?"

God he even sounder so much happier on the phone these days, like he was just overflowing with it, all because of Kate, and she was going to ruin it all.

"Anthony, what I'm going to tell you is going to be scary but I need you to take two deep breaths for me."

"Okay?" He was already panicking he could tell.

"I went to see Kate and Neddy, and sweetheart, she collapsed."

She could feel Anthony's panic through the phone. "She- she what?"

"The paramedics think it was low blood sugar, she's going to be fine, but we're on our way to hospital."

His breath was coming in sharp gasps, tears in his voice, talking to someone else in his office, "Debbie, I have to go, um-my- my Kate she's um-"

Debbie's voice saying, "Go, go, I'll handle everything here."

"I'm um- I'm coming, is Neddy okay?"

"He's a bit scared, but he's alright." She pulled her grandson tighter against her.

"I'll be right there, just tell him I'm coming, tell him I'll be there soon."

"Your Dad's meeting us there." Violet murmured as she hung up the phone, and inexplicably Edmund stilled under her hands.

"Did he sound mad at me?"

Violet felt her mouth drop open, "Neddy, no, why would you think that?"

He took a shuddering breath, "He really loves Mum, and I should have been looking after her, and he's gonna be mad that I didn't."

Violet's chest was aching, as her lips brushed the top of his head. "Your Dad really loves your Mum. That's true."

Edmund nodded, deflating a little, squeezing his Mum's hand tight.

"But here's something you might not know about your Dad. For as long as I can remember he wanted to be a Dad so much, he was eight years old and he'd hold your Aunt Daphne and he'd say Mum, one day I'm going to be a Papa, And I'll be so good at it. I'll have a wife, and we'll have a baby and I'll love it so much I promise."

She could remember it so clearly, tiny little Anthony, already so determined, so full of love, so ready to give it that it had hardly been a surprise when he'd come in that day his arm around a startlingly beautiful girl he'd apparently conjured up from nowhere his voice shining with happiness when he'd said Mum, this is my wife.

Edmund was staring intently at her, his eyes curiously begging her to go on.

"So I don't want you to doubt even for a second, that your Dad loves you any less than he does your mum, okay?"

He still looked so nervous, even as he nodded.

And 20 minutes later when she heard Anthony's panicked footsteps echoing through the hospital, his hair a mess his ties askew, waistcoat rumpled she couldn't have been any more glad when the very first thing he did after he burst into the room was say

"Edmund! Come here Sprout, Mum's going to be fine, I promise." Wrapping his son tightly in his arms, "Are you okay as well?"

[erazonpo3]

Lost Legends

Okay so I read Lost Legends: The Rise of Flynn Rider and general thoughts? It was cute and fun, and I have gripes here and there but I can still recommend it. I don't want to compare it to WOWM because it's like apples and oranges but Lost Legends wins points for me by actually acknowledging the TTS storyline and characters, even though it's kinda brief and not quite as... entertaining.

And before I go into the in-depth spoiler review I'll jot down a few thoughts here: there's a lot to be said about tie-in media and 'canon', but where I think it becomes contentious is where two pieces contradict each other, and whether those contradictions necessitate a canonical hierarchy or cancel something out completely. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because while LL borrows TTS lore it also contradicts it? which is. ironic.

but i'll get into that. Spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of The Plot

Our story starts at the Dark Kingdom, with a short prologue. It's all stuff we already know from the series: King Edmund tries to grab the moonstone, his wife dies, Eugene gets sent away for his own safety. What's funny is that Ms Queen still doesn't get a name, but her Lady in Waiting/Handmaiden gets a name (Maeve), and it's Maeve who really drops the ball on dropping Eugene off at an orphanage instead of raising him as Prince Horace. Go girl give us nothing

And from here the LL timeline begins, as Eugene and Arnie are now twelve year olds (I think?) in an orphanage in Corona. Which is the first contradiction to 'canon' but shelve that thought for now. Eugene and Arnie are good little boys but they're getting too old to keep hanging around and the orphanage needs money for the evil Tax Man, so they decide they'll go off into the world and send some money back when they're rich off their famous adventuring. What happens instead is that The Baron's circus rolls into town (yes that Baron) and Eugene and Arnie decide to try their luck signing up for that gig.

To prove themselves to the Baron, Flynn and Lance have to perform a hazing ritual a heist. The heist is literally just to buy a key from the Weasel but it plays out as this huge dramatic thing with a guard chase which is eternally funny to me because two kids walk into a bar, buy a key and then leave, and it's treated like fucking ocean's eleven. The Stabbingtons try to betray them (those guys are here too) but Flynn and Lance outsmart them, beginning a rivalry for the ages. Also, the pub thugs are all part of the Baron's circus crew. Don't think about it too much.

Anyway, as this has all been going down, Eugene is really interested in getting to talk to this guy with a tattoo of (what we as the audience know is) the brotherhood symbol, which Eugene recognises from the note left with him as a baby. He wants to talk to this dude in the hopes he'll get a clue about who his parents are, but this dude keeps eluding him. He also hasn't had a chance to tell Lance about this yet, so when Lance finds out about it he assumes Eugene only tried to rope him into the circus so he could find his parents and ditch him. Cue an ongoing silent treatment.

Eugene eventually does talk to this guy and he learns that the Brotherhood symbol is from the Dark Kingdom but the Dark Kingdom is gone so he shouldn't bother looking for it. Bummer. And now the Baron is planning a huge heist of the reward money for the Lost Princess' return, and Eugene is getting cold feet. He's been okay with a little bit of thievery so far but this feels like too much for him, and he's not okay with pulling it off but Lance still won't talk to him.

As the plan unfolds, Lance and Eugene reconcile and then they work together to betray the Baron and return the stolen treasure that they stole back to the King and Queen. They get caught by the Baron, escape, then get caught by the guards, but it's okay because they're presented to the King and Queen and when Eugene explains that they felt really sorry about it and promise not to do it again they're let go. And so the story ends on a high note.

My Thots™

Okay so here are the thoughts

Canon Compliance?

The obvious takeaway here is that this story offers you a beautiful pie in the form of the characters you know and love and the established lore, then shoves the pie in your face with things like "Eugene already knows the Dark Kingdom and the Moonstone exist but he never brings this up" and "Eugene betrays the Baron in a very significant way but somehow they'll make up and he and Stalyan will get engaged". Which means that if the integrity of the series is important to you, you'll probably just mentally cross out Eugene knowing about the Brohood/DK/Moonstone.

And imo that's fine! My own approach to this story is a kind of general 'if it works it works, if it doesn't I'll leave it' thing to work my own headcanons around. Because there's a lot of fun things to pluck from, like a new ex-Brotherhood member and other characters that could pop up from Eugene's past and other worldbuilding details.

The Story

The story was pretty short and obviously very tailored towards a younger audience, but it still felt kind of... slow? Mostly because nothing particularly exciting is happening until the big heist and even that feels pretty underwhelming. And of course I don't expect a story like this to be particularly complex and can appreciate its simplicity, but I felt like if it had been longer there could have been more twists to keep things interesting.

For example, the Baron is set up as a character not unlike Gothel, who lavishes praise upon the boys and goes on about how they're 'family' but is obviously just manipulating them and would throw them to the wolves in a heartbeat. Eugene underestimates just how criminal the Baron is, but at no point in the story does the doubt we have in the Baron's sincerity ever amount to anything- Eugene only turns against him because he has a morality crisis, which I'll get to in a minute.

Misc. Thoughts

Okay so one thing I thought was really cute was that each chapter has a little 'quote' from a Flynnigan Rider book, and I wrote them all down so if you've read this far and want me to post those separately lemme know. Anyway I just thought it was a very cute touch.

An honourable mention goes to every time Stalyan shows up, she doesn't really do anything in the story yet still is somehow the only character holding the brain cell. Rapunzel gets an indirect cameo by Lance and Eugene stumbling upon her tower and going "Whoa that's Crazy. Anyway. " which is amazing, and Cassandra even gets a little mention by the Captain! And to answer the question nobody asked, there's a chameleon running around Corona because she's an escapee from the circus, and Pascal's mom's name is Amélie!

Characters - okay really just Eugene

Eugene/Flynn is the title character of the book and we get the story exclusively from his POV, so there isn't a lot to say about Lance. On the one hand while I can acknowledge that this is a story about Flynn, not Lance, there's a few choices that feel like a missed opportunity at best given that this book really was an opportunity to explore Lance's character in a way the series never really does.

And it feels extra egregious when the plot demands conflict between Eugene and Lance, because while the emotion between them is engaging when it's happening, at other times it just feels like a convenient way to shove Lance offscreen again. (As a side note, as contrived as the conflict is these are also two twelve year old boys so. Can't blame em too much).

Also, Eugene coming up with the name "Lance Strongbow" on Lance's behalf while he's unconscious is one of those backstory things I'm not going to be acknowledging, thank you.

The Robin Hood Dilemma

Something I touched on after reading What Once Was Mine is that Eugene's characterisation prior to the movie isn't something writers seem to really like... dealing with. And it kind of makes sense that the author received a lot of characterisation notes from Chris Sonnenburg, because little Flynn does feel very similar to the Eugene we know; only the Eugene we know is an adult man who has since grown out of his Flynn Rider persona. But the Flynn Rider persona he needed to grow out of isn't something that ought to be cast aside entirely!! Stop being cowards!!

Taking a step back, the whole premise of the book is kind of a paradox- because Eugene needs to become Flynn Rider before he can learn to embrace his authentic self, but Flynn Rider isn't hero material, he isn't a good guy, he's not the right protagonist for a story for kids. So what we get isn't Flynn Rider, it's really just Eugene trying on a new name. That works for the beginning of the story, because he is just Eugene trying on a new name, but he doesn't grow into it.

At the beginning of the story, Eugene is an orphan in a poor but still functional orphanage run by a kind old lady, and he is surrounded by nice little boys. Eugene is motivated to leave and get a job by a desire to send funds back to the orphanage, and when he joins the Baron's circus he's taken aback to learn he's among thieves. Here's where I thought: okay, this might get interesting. We might be getting a G-rated 'angel falls from heaven' story about Eugene being morally corrupted by the Baron, of learning that the world outside is tough and he needs to look out for himself first and foremost-

but no. The Baron shares his plan to steal the reward money for the Lost Princess, because all the people he's surrounded himself with are already criminals who don't give a shit, but Eugene thinks that this is going too far! What about that poor lost princess who people need an incentive to search for? (he's like, projecting about his own parent issues which is fair, but still). And so the story ends with Eugene turning on the Baron to return the money to the "right" people (aka the king and queen of a kingdom?? okay) but he takes a single golden egg for himself so he can send it to the orphanage.

Which is all sweet and nice but. He still has to become Flynn Rider, asshole extraordinaire. He still has to lose his morals to the point where he'd take an inexperienced young woman to a pub that he, in this book, recognises is a dangerous place in the hopes that he can ditch her. He still has to go and become a wanted thief and rejoin the Baron and then ditch Stalyan on their wedding night.

The reason I'm going on about this so much is that the appeal of Eugene to me is that he is this good guy who wants to be a better person for the people he loves, but that means recognising that he has behaviour he needs to change, and his development is meaningful for that. Watering him down to a righteous Robin Hood hero does him a disservice.

The Real Villain Was Capitalism All Along

I will not elaborate nor should I

[yetanotheremptypage]

no escaping your love #41: the dots

(Read 1-40 here.)

TW: Postpartum depression. THIS IS NOT A FLUFFY ONE KIDS.

Kate had been behaving very strangely in the weeks since Miles was born. Everything had seemed fine, at first. It had been a long, hard birth; her cries had become so broken and desperate that Anthony had flung Colin and Simon off and joined the chaos of the birthing suite; it’s not like it was his first time, after all. Naturally, after that, she would be exhausted, though she put up a good front for Edmund, for their mothers and their siblings. Only Anthony seemed to notice the strain to her smile and how her eyelashes sometimes fluttered while someone else was speaking, like she was fighting to stay awake.

She’d been up and about rather quickly after Edmund was born, so he expected that within two weeks maximum, she would be chomping at the bit to leave their room, if not the house all together.

But when they hit two weeks, she was barely even venturing to the nursery to see the boys. He knew their nurse, Jane, brought Edmund and particularly Miles to see her, in the viscount’s rooms, quite frequently; Kate was nursing him herself, after all. Jane had expressed some concern over the distance to Anthony, and he, like an idiot, brushed it off.

And then suddenly, he saw it everywhere. Even with him. They could not return to their typical nighttime activities for several more weeks, but even his good night kisses were shunned with no explanation. When he tried to engage her in conversation, it was like she wasn’t even there, barely listening and replying in short, airy answers. Any mention of the children at all seemed to make her withdraw even deeper into herself.

It came to a head one day about six weeks after his birth. Jane had been forced to return home for her mother’s funeral. Anthony never could’ve not granted her the leave, but he knew, deep down, he’d done it as a bit of a test, too. Kate was an involved mother, informal. She would run the grounds of Aubrey Hall and sit on the floor in her best ball gown just for Edmund. She would, she should, leap for the chance to spend the days Jane was gone with their boys. They would never leave her sight.

He returned home from Parliament to find half of his household staff huddled in the entryway and the faint strains of a crying infant coming from upstairs. The staff turned when he entered, and the looks of relief on their faces did nothing to calm his now racing nerves.

“Milord, he’s been crying for nearly ten minutes,” his housekeeper informed him. Panic seized his veins. Where was Kate? And Edmund?

He took the stairs two at a time and burst right into the nursery. Miles was in his crib, crying and red faced. Anthony picked him up, doing his best to soothe him. Mary had showed him a trick when Edmund was born of giving him a finger to suck on to gauge if he was hungry; Miles latched right on to Anthony’s finger.

With Miles’s cries now somewhat quieted, it became easy to hear a rather panicked ‘Mama!’ coming from Edmund, in the direction of his and Kate’s bedroom. He couldn’t run and hold Miles, but he’d never made the distance from one room to the next quite so quickly.

Kate was laying on the bed staring at the wall. Her eyes were open, but only the rise and fall of her chest gave any indication she was alive. Edmund had crawled up onto the bed and was poking her, but nothing happened. Anthony swore under his breath.

“Kate,” he said, shaking her with one hand. She blinked, slowly, and looked up at him. Miles chose that moment to spit out Anthony’s finger and resume his crying. Kate tensed. “Darling, he’s hungry and I can’t do anything. Just stay with me for a few minutes, okay?”

She nodded, slowly, and he adjusted Miles into her arms and helped her latch him onto her breast. Edmund crawled over towards him, looking up at him in confusion.

“Mama?”

“She’s alright, love,” he said, scooping Edmund up into his arms. To Kate, he said, “I’ll be right back,” and then he took Edmund downstairs and asked one of the maids to watch over him.

When he re-entered their bedchamber, Kate was crying.

“Oh, darling,” he said, coming to join her on the bed. It was hard to wrap his arm around her without disturbing Miles, but he did it, needing to feel her and ground her. “It’s alright. Take a deep breath.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, through big, gasping sobs; truly, it was a miracle she wasn’t disturbing Miles, “I’m such a horrible mother.”

“Why on Earth would you think that?”

“Because I don’t think I love him.”

Anthony swallowed, even as memories came rushing back of his mother in the weeks after Hyacinth was born. For him, his youngest sister had been a balm, a reason to keep living; his mother had struggled, both in the month and a half prior to her birth and in the weeks after. Anthony had gone onto Oxford and Benedict and Colin were still at Eton, but Daphne’s carefully written letters made it clear that even after the baby was born, Violet had not fully adjusted. Daphne had been barely twelve, she wouldn’t have ever used that sentence to describe it, but he could read between the lines then, just as he could connect the dots now. Perhaps Violet’s reaction had not been all grief; maybe this was a part of the feminine experience Anthony could never understand or control.

“You will. I know you will.” He kissed her head. “What can I do? What do you need?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s not like the storms; I don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know if there’s a cause, but I feel so empty.”

So he did the only thing he could think of: he went to his mother.

It was not an easy fix. Kate struggled for nearly a year. Her smiles, her laughter, her energy, it all returned, slowly. There were Good Days and Bad Days. Days he wanted to bang his head against the wall in frustration, days he wanted to cry with her, days he felt he might burst because he was so proud of her. He was truly in awe of her and her strength.

The night of Miles’s first birthday, they stood together in the nursery and watched him sleep.

“Thank you,” she whispered in Anthony’s ear. “For bringing me back.”

“Thank you for coming back.”

And if this, Kate, their two boys, was to be the rest of his life, he would die a happy man.

[sweeethinny]

The First Time of Three

I know I have a one shot of Ginny saying she’s pregnant for the first time, but I think this one is much better and I don’t know why I didn’t put it here

maybe I'll do two more chapters, where they find out about Albus and Lily, if you like it and want :) but if you don’t want to, maybe I’ll do it anyway :))))

part 2 | part 3 | ao3

Harry and Ginny had been married for three years - they lived together for five - so he knew very well when something was wrong. And at that moment, something was off the rails at the Potter house. It was a typical Friday, their apartment was the same way he turned when he left for work around five in the morning, and as a reward for going to train idiotic Aurors so early, Harry won the weekend off, as well as leaving long before nine. Ginny wasn't there yet, her training was over at seven, and the clock announced that had barely reached 6PM,  which gave him an hour to get the house in order and prepare a special dinner. The apartment wasn't too big, they had trouble finding one that could put a fireplace and chimney without looking crazy - the neighbors used the electric ones, but the Flu still needed the fire - and there, away from the Muggle center, near an old library and a Dutch bakery, they succeeded. They lived on the top floor, didn't worry about breaking the Secrecy Act (it was an almost empty neighborhood) and the neighbors were lovely. The lady in front thought Teddy was simply one of the most behaved and kind boys she'll ever meet in her 70s, and she always tried to give him cookies and other when Harry's godson went to the godfather's house. And the downstairs neighbor, a man not much older than him, clearly had a thing for Ginny, but Harry didn't blame him, who wouldn't? Moreover, he had never done anything but seem shy as she passed, or gave them good morning and good night politely - when only Harry passed by, Edmund made a point of also saying hello to him, sometimes bringing up subject matter about Muggle football, and the man thought it was a way to hide his platonic love. The décor of the house was also not bad, had a bit of both in each room, and Ginny even found beautiful cutlery that he had bought to display on one of the kitchen shelves - he didn't even use all the knives, however. There was a picture of the two in some picture frames, memories of their travels together, gifts that ended up winning at the wedding.. Harry considered it a beautiful and cozy house. Obviously, when they were going to have a child, there might not be the safest place, Ginny always reminded him; It was very tall, and the windows were absurdly large, there were many corners, the stairs were slippery and short, and a child, even more witch, needed considerable space to live, mainly not to explode in magic in front of muggles. That's why they programmed to try to get pregnant in two years. And Harry was happy about it. After finally putting the house in order - with the help of magic - and putting dinner on fire, Harry noticed what was wrong in that whole situation. Living with Ginny for four years made him know her in ways he wouldn't, unless he saw her on a day-to-day life. The way she tends to tidy things up too much when she's sad, or how she makes everything messy when she's nervous and angry. Not silly things like the sofa blanket or the shoes on the door, but personal objects that are usually organized so that they are easily accessible. And it's when he finds her quidditch kit all messed up, that he knows something's wrong. Harry doesn't remember doing anything to cause anger, it wasn't the last week of the month, when everything got a little rough and she tended to get tearful and implying, and there wasn't a big game for the next two months. His brothers-in-law haven't been breaking scary news or anything, he'd spent the last few hours with Ron, knew if it was something like that, and Hermione didn't seem to be in trouble either, and that had left him on alert. He didn't know what to expect. There was a noise in their living room, feet stumbling against the carpet and a bunch of 'forbidden' words being exalted by his beloved wife, that way that would make a sailor ashamed. ‘’God, Merlim, Harry!. You're here --’’ It was the first thing she said as soon as she saw him, her brown eyes tinned and looking a little pale, still half-soiled from flu dust ‘’Robards..He let me go earlier, maybe he had a little pity in his heart. If he has one’’ Harry came up and kissed her on the lips, still a little tense ‘’Alright?’’ He stroked her freckled cheek, trying to find out where the problem was ‘’Yeah, I was just surprised’‘ Looking over her husband's shoulder, toward the kitchen that was separated by a workbench in the living room '’Making dinner, Mr. Potter? Uh, what did your wife do to deserve this?’’ He went back to the other environment, taking another look at the chicken ‘’She kissed me this morning, when I accidentally woke her up at 4:30, instead of simply kicking my balls’’ The redhead laughed behind him, still looking a little pale and too dodging, sitting at the table and dropping her suitcase anyway (Which was another sign of trouble) ‘’She's really adorable’’ Harry nodded, picking up the wine and the glasses ‘’Ah... I.. erm, I don't want’‘ ‘’It's Friday. Do you want a beer?’’ Ginny denied it again ‘‘I don't think I'm going to take anything like that’‘ She made a grimace ‘’Stomach upset?’’ She complained about some heartburn last week, maybe that's it, wasn't it? ‘’Something like.. Well, actually’’ Ginny didn't look at him at first, analyzed her nails and sanded their wedding ring on her finger, seeming to think. For a moment, Harry thought she'd leave him ‘’I'm pregnant’‘ Harry sat down, taking time to put the glasses and wine on the table rather than simply drop them on the floor ‘’Oh, no wine for you then’’ It was the dumbest thing, but he could only say that. He'd be... Father? And as if it finally came into his mind, he embraced her. Harry had a few moments of epiphany where he understood that it was all over and he could move on with his life normally; when he asked Ginny to marry him, and consequently when they married. And now this. Talking about the desire to be a father was like when he wanted to kiss her as a teenager, a distant dream with stones on the way; his work, that of Ginny.. ‘’And your games?’’ They parted, she seemed a little less frightened ‘’I've been estranged, it's dangerous and it goes against the rules. I didn't even train today, I just signed the papers’’ Her glowing brown eyes made him fall to his knees in front of her, intertwining her fingers in his ‘’It's not fair. I'll ask to be away too’’ Ginny laughed, kissing the knots from her husband's hand ‘’Don't do that, Harry. It's your career’‘ ‘’It's yours too!’’ Argh, he wanted to do something about it, she'd be carrying his offspring for nine months... ‘‘I'd take my chances too... the baby can't live without a father’’ Harry didn't notice the gravity of what he had spoken, until Ginny fixed the look above his head, the tears pinioning there ‘’Sorry, I didn't want to...’‘ ‘’.. I can barely find out That I'm pregnant, and I'm already a weeping woman’’ And as only your wife would, Ginny complained, turning her eyes and looking angry ‘’I don't want you to walk away, really, it won't make me happy to see you stay at home. I forbid you..Besides, it's only nine months, and I ... Gwenog said I can always come back after the baby is born. She said that I will not lose my place.’’ Harry swallowed the laugh, his heart beating furious in his chest ‘’We scheduled for two years from now, Harry...’‘ ‘’I know, but. we're still going to love him, and figure it out in organizing everything’‘ ‘’The windows.. heavens, they are so big and do not have the sinst protection. And the stairs!’’ The two remained silent, swallowing dry ‘’We're going to figure it out, Gin.. Are you happy?’‘ ‘’For Merlim's sake, Harry! Of course I'm.. When I saw the result... We were such irresponsible teenagers’’ So they laughed, because for some reason, it was funny to think that they would have to face the problems Molly went through ‘’Ron and I drove a car to Hogwarts! Twelve years old!’’ Ginny nodded, messing with her love's hair, wondering if the baby would come the same. ‘’You're going to be daddy’’ And without much control of his emotions, Harry felt his eyes pinioning in tears too. Father. He had survived to that point where he would become someone's father. If for Teddy he was already an irresponsible godfather most of the time, being a father... ‘’Since when do you know?’‘ ‘’This morning. After you left I felt that heartburn again and when I complained to Mrs. MacLean, she told me it could be pregnancy, so I looked for a healer who wasn't going to spread the seven winds, and.. I was pregnant. A month and a half. On your vacation’’ Of course, after spending time away from home, that week they spent at home, enjoying every room in the house, they would have to result in something. ‘’I love you’’ Harry kissed her again, this time with all his being ‘’I love you too. Promise me you'll continue to love me, even if I get tearful and ugly’’ The man laughed, trying to imagine a world where he didn't love her ‘’I promise’’ But instead of a kiss, he got a slap on the shoulder ‘’Can you imagine me getting ugly?!’’ The two laughed, again, while she passed her hand on her belly still straight ‘’We will be parents’’. ‘’Yes, Mom’’ Harry smiled, happier than ever, feeling almost his skin tear.

When that he would imagine feeling.. This? ‘’The stairs and the windows...’‘ ‘’.. We'll figure it out, Gin’’ Guaranteed, the heart galloping in the chest ‘’I promise’’ And then, as if to do it millions of times, kissed her belly. Once again, he would appreciate it to be alive

[quecksilvereyes]

Putting the Gentle Queen Back Into Her Own Narrative: A Suggestion in Ten Parts

                                                                                 I. I survived.

I survived Narnia, I survived the war, I survived being twelve and twenty-seven all at once. I survived. I didn’t mount a train I knew was never going to take me back home.

I said good-bye to my siblings, who, by then, hated me.

Or maybe didn’t hate me, maybe they were just annoyed with me, maybe – maybe I’d just lied to them too much.

Maybe I just told them that our memories weren’t real one too many times. Maybe I looked at Lucy and couldn’t see anything but a lion in the way she looked at me, maybe I looked at Edmund and couldn’t distinguish his eyes from the eyes I remember.

Maybe I looked at Peter.

At his trembling hands. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to hug any of them.

Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye.

                                                                                  II. Maybe – maybe, sometimes, I didn’t recognise my parents the way I should have. Maybe sometimes, I woke up in this damp, cold, sunless world, and couldn’t remember who I was. Maybe sometimes: I looked at my baby sister, and I looked at my baby brother and I saw; nothing. Maybe sometimes they fled into a world I couldn’t follow them into, maybe sometimes I couldn’t remember it at all.

Maybe sometimes I did, truly, forget.

                                                                                  III. Maybe: I remembered. Maybe I remembered a lion and I remembered the sun and I remembered the winter and I remembered the Talking Beasts and I remembered Tumnus and I remembered everything. Maybe sometimes I thought they were only dreams. Maybe sometimes I thought they work the way memories do; where, if you just tell yourself something long enough, your brain will create a memory for you. Did you notice? Tell a story often enough and it will change, and your memory will change to accommodate it. Or maybe that’s just me.

Maybe I just talked myself into it long enough. Maybe, when I was twelve, or twenty-seven, or maybe really just twelve years old, I looked into the mirror, at my curled hair, at the gap between my teeth; I looked at myself, and I saw: nothing. I couldn’t see the woman I thought – I knew – I’d grown into. I couldn’t see the way my hair curls naturally, couldn’t watch the way my eyes would glow. Maybe I didn’t see myself or even a girl, maybe I just saw a child; starving.

                                                                                  III. a) Maybe sometimes I had phantom pains in limbs that I suddenly could feel again. Maybe sometimes I imagined I’d lost them – and, conversely, imagined I never did.

                                                                                   IV. I survived.

I am the only one of us still standing, I am the only one of us who sits on this bench, who watches as they are all lowered into the ground in their best Sunday dress. Maybe I’m the only one who can see that none of them would have wanted to be buried like this. Maybe I look at my baby sister, the way she’s crammed into a dress with that collar she’d pull from her throat, groaning. And I see a lion cub curled up in the coffin, pressed against the satin, against the blood-red of it all. Maybe I wish there was a cherry tree to bury her under.

Maybe I look at my baby brother and miss the way his eyes would look, his suit is crinkled, his legs – his arms – all gangly things he’d not yet grown into. Maybe I wish there was a forest to carry him into, dryads in whose care to let him be buried.

Maybe I look at my eldest brother. Maybe I look at this boy I’d known all my life, with his blond hair and his hands; still. Still and unmoving, not a wrinkle in his suit, not a smile on his face. Maybe I look at this boy and I see; a beard, and I see; a tremor and I see; a smile and I see; a crown.

Maybe I just wanted to see them. Maybe I just wish that I had had a say in any of this, maybe I just wish that I could have picked the coffins, that I could have picked the clothes, that I could have picked the burial.

But I am twenty-one, see (or, perhaps, thirty-six, heaving). I am grieving.

                                                                                  V. There wasn’t a day I didn’t cry. There wasn’t a moment I didn’t hear the phantom memories of my siblings tumbling across the floor.

So Aunt Alberta did everything.

She wouldn’t let my cousin be buried with all the rest of them, see, and I wondered if she looked at her sister and felt the way I did when I looked at mine.

But the burial was the first time I didn’t cry since the telegram told me of bodies dispersed along train tracks. I put on lipstick, and nylons, and dresses, and petticoats, and a girdle and I smiled.

                                                                                  VI. My life is built on the back of survival. I went overseas because I couldn’t stand the dampness anymore. Perhaps that makes me a coward. Perhaps it makes me not a friend, perhaps it makes me unworthy in the lion’s eyes, perhaps it makes me a traitor the way my nine year old baby brother was when a woman fed him sweets and enchantments.

Maybe I betrayed them all by living; by surviving. Maybe, when I die, I won’t see them again. Maybe when I die I will – and the lion will stand there, and it will tell me to turn around, will tell me that there is no place in this country for Queens who grew up, for Queens who adapted, for Queens who survived.

                                                                                  VII. Perhaps then, finally, I can look at the lion and tell it what I think of its inaction in the face of genocide, its inaction in the face of its people starving and dying away. Maybe then I can tell it that a nine year old boy who misses his parents like the food he’s starving for, who hasn’t had sweets in a year didn’t deserve to be called a traitor because he was upset and hurt and a Witch spelled him.

                                                                                  VIII. Perhaps I will not say anything at all. Perhaps I will look at this lion and I will not recognise it, the way I go to the zoo and every time I see a lion I feel the urge to bow.

Perhaps my siblings will still hate me, will still be annoyed, will still be upset. Perhaps I’ve lied to them one too many times.

                                                                                  IX. I exist in this world. I have a life and I refuse to end it after fifteen years in another world, after nine years in this one. I’ve not lived yet.

                                                                                  X. I will live.

I just wish I’d hugged my siblings good-bye.

for @lucypcvensie bc it’s your birthday!

[agentaace]

artemis fowl liveblog, if anyones interested (disclaimers: i was a HUGE fan of the books when i was younger but i barely remember anything, and i am pretty high right now)

its gonna be long folks! like..... really long

okay. news reporters. is that.... the digging guy??

YEAH ITS MULCH!! is he.... the narrator??? why is he the narrator???

who is this surfing child. the artemis i know has never stepped foot outside. i dont think he ever went to school either "an unusual kid" NOT UNUSUAL ENOUGH.... this kid looks to much like a cinnamon roll..... WHY IS HIS MOM DEAD

a hoverboard? a fucking hoverboard???

humans shouldnt know about the faeries

this bitch wearing jeans? also the dad looks like david from schitts creek but older

i should mention that the first time i heard this movie was approaching i looked up who was cast for Holly Short, bc i DISTINCTLY remember her explicetly canonically having brown skin bc i used to draw her!!! also butler's name wasnt revealed until like the third book and it was a BIG DEAL, youre just gonna drop it just like that?

whys artemis dressed like edmund pevensie...... fucking knock off version. edmund had more evil in his body than this wannabe supervillain and edmund was a GOOD BOY

hate this version of butler. hes too nice. hes helpful and kind. why has disney spat in my face

OH SHIT FAIRYWORLD LOOKS DOPE AF, somehow almost exactly like inused to picture it!! one good detail!! and if holly wasnt whitewashed she'd be kinda cute,,,,

this is not a compliment to the movie at all but i still absolutely love the faeries being super sci fi and tech oriented, thats incredible.... scifi fantasy DREAM HYBRID

oh god last time i saw judy dench was in the cats movie,,, she stared into my soul,,,, i cannot forget. though yeah she is a good commander root actually from what little i remember, the vibes are right

pleasebejuliapleasebejulia.... oh its juliet but SHE IS HERE!!!!!!!!!! h his twelve year old neice??? no??? she is his like 17 year old sister

oh my god foaly..... ok he looks cool as hell actually.... too bad his legs are animated weird!!! i would die for him

the l.e.p.recon suit and the wings actually look pretty close to whay i pictured too.... and the troll scene!!! holy shit i remember this!!! and thats how artemis finds her..... yess.... god those books were good.... time-freeze bubble foreshadowing omg i REMEMBER THAT and artemis figures out a way to avoid it..... holy shit im having so many flashbacks

OPAL KOBOI OH MY GOD wasnt she not until the third book??? and the dad and the aculos stuff too???? why are they mixing them up like this

okay kidnapping scene and where holly and artemis meet is sorta exactly what i remember, like i feel like its almost line for line tbh

pacing is wack, i feel like the time freeze was much later in the book and holly was captive for like, a majority.... also, now that artemis is playing villain to holly it feels a lot more natural, he is SUPPOSED to be snarky and rude and mean

"top o' the morning" very funny judy dench line, but i dont think its funny for the reasons disney intended

ARTEMIS IN A SUIT, FINALLY!!! also, Take The Shot! lmao. and see... this little good artemis doesnt make sense to have this extremely thorough and detailed and villainous plan, why couldnt disney just make him evil

HEY I REMEMBER THE GOBLIN FIRE THING IN PRISON W MULCH ACTUALLY..... NICE

"youre enjoying all this, you think it's a game!" YES! wht couldnt disney just lean into this and commit!!! i just wish this child looked like more of a bastard!!

hehehe david bowie is a faerie (though i'm.... not really liking josh gad's comedic relief role here.... thats nothing new) FUCK ME I FORGOT ABOUT THE JAW THING I AM TOO HIGH FOR THAT SHIT THIS IS HORRIFYING

iris cam!!! vividly remember that!!! and the finger gun thing, did they use that too?? loved that, will be disapointed if its not here

eeeughfjhf i forgot about the dwarf beard hair thing too oh GOD

the aculos looks good according to my awful memory!!! nice

the cudgeon storyline was NOT in the first book, not that i can remember, amd its not even interesting?? it just clutters up this movie with some nonsense. i dont like it.

that troll fucking YEETED butler eeeeeigufjkd the jaw thing again noooooo

like okay i like that artemis looks Baby, i like that he looks 12, i just wanted a shittier twelve year old. this ones too nice!! toss him out!!!

this butler is also too cute. i needed him to be way intimidating. but this one is wholesome. fuck this

and the relationship between holly and artemis. its too good, too pure. they are so cute. in the books they were friends completely against their will.

yeah i am totally mad that they are combining the first book and the third (?) book. not everything has to be some End Of The World shit. sometimes a kid just ransoms a fairy because he wants gold and he's evil. this disney version is much more boring. like if this movie had leaned into the wholesome stuff while keeping a lower stakes plot, thatd be okay. if artemis was super evil and cool as fuck and they made the stakes a little higher.... that might have been okay? but Good People Fighting The End Of The World is every movie and it is very boring!!!!! oh my god!!!!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? THE DAD'S NOT EVEN EVIL???? NOOOOO

holly and commander root were not close. seriously cut the wholesome shit. these were the LEAST wholesome books i read as a child. the faeries have swear words and they arent afraid to use them.

ugh the weird "we're probably not going to get a sequel but we're going to imply one anyways" thing that bad book adaptations do.... like miss peregrine's, remember that?

"i'm artemis fowl. i'm a criminal mastermind." FUCK YEAH YOU ARE GO OFF KING actually a little hyped over that line. maybe twelve is too young to be fully evil. he still has time to become Bastard.

fuck the mulch narrator bullshit. hate that. "i hope you don't get squeamish" I DO PLEASE DO NOT DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING shut the fuck up. all of you shut the fuck up you are so ANNOYING

okay its over and i am free

[maaaddiexo]

Chapter Twelve | Peter Pevensie

[Red Series Book Two: Ribbons]

Rosemary returned to England to find things just how she left them - her father and brother missing and her mother drinking in her bedroom. But Rosemary wasn't going to give up this time. She took charge of her family as the Pevensies took charge of a country. 

But it's been a year since all five of them returned to England, and when they are called back by Susan's magic horn, they return to a completely different Narnia. Magic has been dormant for centuries and men now rule Narnia but with brute force and terror. 

The Pevensies know why they've been called back to Narnia but Rosemary is once again left in the dark. And with Aslan making himself sparse, the five kids are left to their own devices to answer their own questions.

Do they trust the exiled prince? Can they save Narnia again, and this time without Aslan swooping in to save them? And in Rosemary's case, why was she called back?

[Chapter Thirteen] [Series Masterlist] [Masterlist]

As Rosemary helped Peter suit up, doing up the buckles he couldn't reach, Caspian helped Lucy and Susan. "Destrier has always served me well. You are in good hands. Good luck."

Susan looked ahead, steeling her facial expressions. "Thanks." She couldn't let herself have feelings for someone who would either die on the field or stay in Narnia while she went back to England.

"Look...maybe it's time you had this back."

Susan looked down at her horn in Caspian's hands and then over at her brother, who was gently brushing the hair out of Rosemary's eyes as he whispered something to her. Oh, how she wanted to be loved by someone like Rosemary was by Peter. At least they were from the same world. "Why don't you hold on to it. You might need to call me again."

Destrier's hooves echoed through the dim tunnels as they headed to the back of the How, hoping to head into the woods without being seen by Miraz's scouts.

"'You might need to call me again'?"

"Oh, shut up." Susan rolled her eyes though nobody could see her. Rosemary's laugh echoed through the tunnels from back in the chamber and she smiled. She loved them both.

•

After Susan and Lucy had taken off, Caspian had given the room to Peter and Rosemary. He stared down at her as she double checked his armor, making sure it was all in place.

"I'll be okay, Rosemary."

"The fight is to the death, Peter. I can't watch you die."

"I won't. Not with you watching my back again." It seemed Peter was reassuring Rosemary when she should have been reassuring him. He was the one about to fight to the death.

"Promise me that no matter how beat up you are, you won't stop fighting."

Peter smiled. "I promise. Have any more words of encouragement? Rosie."

The clanking of metal interrupted the moment as Edmund approached, dressed in full chainmail and armor. Everybody knew war would happen as revenge for the death of their King, whichever King fell. "Sorry to interrupt. Peter, it's time."

"We'll be right there." Edmund nodded and walked away, and Peter looked back at Rosemary. "So?"

Up on her tiptoes, Rosemary could press her lips to Peter's. His helmet bumped her forehead and she laughed. "I love you, Peter Pevensie. Live through this and you'll hear me say it for the rest of our lives." Peter smiled and leaned down for another kiss but Edmund's yelling had Rosemary cutting it short and pushing him to the How entrance. She'd be watching from the top of the temple with the other archers. "Go get 'em, tiger."

•

In front of the stone ramp down to the How was a square slab of stone with broke pillars and a crumbling arch. That was where the duel would take place. Narnians cheered as Peter and Edmund made their appearance, marching forward where Miraz and a few of his men were waiting.

Miraz watched as Peter walked forward with so much confidence, wondering where it came from. He was a boy - half his age at least. He was desperate to save his people for proposing such a proposterious idea. But the Narnians would fall today.

Miraz pretended to adjust his armor and looked up at Glozelle on his right. "If it should appear to be going poorly..."

Glozelle understood the implication and looked at the crossbow in his hands. "Understood, Your Majesty."

Miraz nodded and stood up. For a moment, he stared at the Kings' suits of armor - chainmail in perfect condition, velvet jersey over top. He wondered where they got such pristine armor but then remembered the legends. No matter, Miraz thought. They're just boys. "I hope you won't be too disappointed when I survive."

From up above, Rosemary watched as they both walked under their respective arches and began to circle. She could see Miraz move is sword expressively as he spoke but couldn't tell what either of them were saying.

"I don't know if I can watch," she whispered to Trumpkin. When Peter lowered his visor and charged forward, Rosemary brought a hand up to her cheek, ready to cover her eyes. She had faith in Peter but that didn't mean he wouldn't walk away scott-free.

"He's good, right?" Rosemary looked down at Trumpkin. "You said he was in Narnia for fifteen years. Is he good?"

"I'm sure he is, but he doesn't have to be good. He just has to be better than Miraz."

•

Peter wasn't sure how long he and Miraz had been fighting. With the strong sun and a heavy suit, he was sweating buckets.

Block.

Stab.

Pivot.

Duck.

Peter commanded himself as he fought, ducking to avoid having his head cut off only for Miraz to slam him in the face with his shield. Peter's helmet fell off, revealing the purplish bruise blossoming on his cheek. When Miraz tried again, he dropped to his knees and sliced at his thigh, cutting through the fabric of his pants. Miraz's pained gasp told Peter he'd caused injury.

Pays to have a full suit of armor. Unlike Peter, Miraz didn't have chainmail pants, him vulnerable below the belt. All Peter had to do was get in a good slice. But that was difficult when there was a vengeful man holding a sword in your face.

They charged again and Miraz tripped Peter, throwing him headfirst to the ground. He saved himself by turning the fall into a somersault and stood up only to be sent back to the stone once again. Miraz stepped on his shield, the metal digging into his shoulder socket and dislocating it from his shoulder. Peter screamed.

Even though his shoulder was screaming, Peter still fought, keeping his promise to Rosemary. He rolled right under Miraz, knocking him down. When he stood up, he momentarily had to fight the black dots in his vision before realizing it was actually Caspian and Susan returning from the woods.

"Does his Highness need a respite?"

Peter wouldn't say no. It would do him good and he could get some questions answered. Like where the hell his baby sister was. "Five minutes?"

"Three?"

Peter took it and they both limped back to their respective sides. Caspian and Susan were already at his seat and Rosemary was rushing forward. He looked at Susan first, "Lucy?"

"She got through. With a little help."

Peter looked at Caspian. Their differences were behind them now. "Thanks."

"Well, you were busy."

"You two should get up there," Peter struggled to pull off his glove. "I don't expect the Telmarines will keep their word."

"Nobody does. The others are in place for Plan B," Rosemary informed Peter. "Susan, I'll be up in a second."

Susan stepped forward and hugged her brother. "Be careful." As Caspian and Edmund helped take care of Peter as best they could in the two minutes they had left, Rosemary fed Peter some water.

"Drink. It'll help you feel better. You're disgustingly sweaty. You are definitely taking a bath after this."

Peter laughed and looked up at Rosemary. "Say it again."

"You're taking a bath."

Peter rolled his eyes. Even in the middle of a duel, Rosemary made things better. "Not that. The other thing."

"Oh," Rosemary smirked. "That."

"Yeah. That."

Rosemary smiled and leaned down, placing the canister of water in Peter's hand as she pressed her lips to his temple. "I love you, Peter Pevensie."

Peter smiled. "I love you too, Rosemary Bennett."

By the time Rosemary found her spot back beside Trumpkin, the fight had already begun and neither were holding back. Peter was fighting with more vigor than ever and Miraz was fighting desperately. Both had foregone their helmets this time.

Peter was the first to be knocked down to his feet but used it to his advantage, swiping his feet under Miraz's and bringing him down hard. In seconds it seemed Peter had disarmed Miraz from his sword. He brought the sword down on Miraz's shield with all his strength but Miraz was able to disarm Peter too, leaving him completely defenseless. Somewhere in the fight, Peter had lost his sword. With one arm injured, Peter struggled to defend himself and Rosemary found herself clutching hands with Susan and watching with bated breath.

Miraz had Peter pinned with his shield but Peter turned the tables - literally. Peter spun with the shield, forcing Miraz's arm behind his back because it was still attached to his shield. But with a free hand, Miraz elbowed Peter in the cheek before shoving him into a large block of sculpted stone. Peter grunted. When Miraz came swinging, Peter swung low, punching downward into Miraz's wound and had him on his knees and calling for a respite.

"Now isn't the time for chivalry, Peter!" Edmund shouted. Peter looked around. At Edmund. At the Narnians. At Rosemary. At Caspian. Everybody was waiting to see what he would do next. When he began to walk away, Miraz stood up with his sword in hand.

"Peter, look out!" The High King spun and grabbed the blade, spinning it around and driving it into Miraz's side. The man gasped and fell down to his knees. He stayed there on his knees while Peter stood above, his sword raised.

"What's the matter, boy? Too cowardly to take a life?"

"I ruled for fifteen years and took no more than I had to take, but it was still too many. Your life, however, is not mine to take." He held the sword out for Caspian who walked forward. There was anger on his face as he took the sword, but Peter saw something beyond that. He saw disappointment.

Caspian raised the sword with shaking hands. Miraz stared him in the eye as he spoke, "Maybe you do have the makings of a Telmarine king after all."

Caspian screamed and drove his sword into the ground before his feet. He stared Miraz down. "Not one like you."

[Chapter Thirteen] [Series Masterlist] [Masterlist]

[chiseler]

A Smelling Salts Tigress: Laura Hope Crews

When Laura Hope Crews first appears in The Silver Cord (1933), she seizes the space like the experienced theater star she was, arms and furs flying, crying for her son: “Dave boy!” It’s the kind of entrance that seems meant for entrance applause, and Crews earns that courtesy from the moment she arrives, or even before that, when we hear her off-screen (or off-stage) voice. As Mrs. Phelps, a smother mother of monstrous proportions, Crews acts at the highest possible level of intensity.

It’s hard to keep track of Mrs. Phelps’s passive aggressive and sometimes just aggressive aggressive tactics to sever the marital engagements of her two sons David and Robert (Joel McCrea and Eric Linden). Mother Phelps descends, sometimes, to outright cattiness: “That dress needs distinction…and a figure,” she says to David’s fiancée (Irene Dunne). She’s fond of crying, “I haven’t a selfish hair on my head!” but she’s so obvious a manipulator that her sons seem a little dim to be taken in by her incessant posing at motherly self-sacrifice. Crews plays her like a drawing room wild animal who must always keep up the most furiously gripping kind of playacting if she is to keep her sons, and her audience, in her thrall.

“I nearly died when Dave was born!” she cries, then reminds her victims, in a quieter voice, “He was a twelve-pound baby, you know.” When Crews gets her claws into Linden, it feels like Mrs. Phelps has an almost hypnotic effect on her son; one silent look from her and he is practically her slave. When the chips are really down, when her sons are on the verge of seeing through her, Mrs. Phelps complains of heart trouble. She is a virtuoso of the guilt trip, and she can be outright comic, like Barry Humphries’s drag character Dame Edna Everage insulting a member of her audience “for their own good.”

“Isn’t your mother your best friend?” she asks Linden’s Robert, who keeps retreating into her lap and bosom and letting himself be kissed lingeringly on the mouth. Crews’s grand, raspy voice is full-throated and almost unvaryingly passionate here, but she’s scariest when she speaks in a more normal tone of voice, as when she pulls a phone out of a wall socket and quietly tells Robert’s fiancée Hester (Frances Dee), “You are the only person in the world who has ever forced me to do an undignified thing.” For most of its short running time, The Silver Cord is the record of a performance by Crews that has the force of a natural disaster, a purely destructive hurricane gale, something and somebody that cannot be explained away, even when playwright Sidney Howard has her try to justify her incestuous “romance” with her sons in the final scene.

The Silver Cord had been a success for Crews on stage, too, in the 1920s. She was born in 1879, the daughter of a stage actress, Angelena Lockwood, and Crews went on the stage herself at the age of four. She was Beatrice to John Drew’s Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, and played Judith Bliss in the original Broadway run of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever. As a young woman, she had a major hit in A.A. Milne’s Mr. Pim Passes By, and she was still reviving it in the late 1920s when she engaged Bette Davis to play an ingénue role. Davis was filled with nervous energy already, and she tended to circle her arms around, which stirred Crews’s ire.

“Miss Crews, famous for the use of her lovely hands, made it very clear from the start that no good ingénue waved her hands about,” Davis wrote in her autobiography, The Lonely Life. Davis tried to keep her hands at her sides, but at one point during the dress rehearsal she moved them to emphasize a line and felt a slap on her wrist from behind, delivered by a furious Crews, who was not only starring in this old-time vehicle but directing it herself. Davis counted to fifty, held her temper in, and kept her job.

Gloria Swanson called Crews to Hollywood to work with her as a vocal coach for her first talking film, The Trespasser (1929) at the suggestion of director Edmund Goulding, who told Swanson that there was “no one in the world with a better ear for the spoken word.” Crews repeated her Silver Cord triumph on film and made a few more movies in small roles before coming to her second major film performance, Prudence in George Cukor’s superlative version of Camille (1936) with Greta Garbo.

Marguerite Gautier, the extravagant courtesan played by Garbo in Camille, orders her dresses from Prudence, who lives off her shop but also off spare money from her various strumpet friends. She’s always giving Marguerite “motherly” advice, but if Mrs. Phelps is the worst mother imaginable, then Prudence has all the motherly instinct of a barracuda. Crews wears rather low-cut dresses here that barely cover her bosom, and she goes all-out with Prudence’s vulgarity and ill-temper. At a rowdy dinner party at Marguerite’s apartment, Prudence uninhibitedly takes off her shoes and sticks her feet up. A dirty story is told round the table, and it is said that the story is as old as Prudence, to which she replies, “I’m 36!” This gets met with a shriek of incredulous laughter (Crews was 56 at this point), and to Prudence’s credit, she joins in the laughter wholeheartedly.

As Marguerite retires into her room with her younger lover Armand (Robert Taylor), Cukor shows Prudence smoking a cigar in close-up, and in this close-up, Crews is as lively and convincing a picture of worldly, hedonistic corruption as has ever been offered in movies. When Marguerite drops Prudence’s purse out a window to get rid of her in a later scene, Crews gives an invigoratingly theatrical line reading as she cries, “What a girl! What a te-ease!” at the top of her vocal register. There is always, with Crews, a hysteria running underneath her vocal attack that she can barely suppress, and this accounts for her rare excitement as an actress. Somehow it never gets monotonous because she is able to work a lot of variations into what is, at best, the ultimate in theatrical authority, in keeping an audience, and often the other characters, in her grip.

“Wine used to go to my head and make me gay!” Prudence says, after a boozy wedding. “Now it goes to my legs and makes me old!” This is a magnetic woman, and it’s easy to want her to reveal a good-hearted impulse or two as Marguerite suffers and dies, but no, Cukor and Crews end their portrait of Prudence on a pitiless note. In her last scene, she not only takes the last of dying Marguerite’s money, but she also cruelly mentions that Armand is back in town and hasn’t tried to see Marguerite. As has been said before, Prudence is a “vulture” and “a dreadful old woman,” and some people just don’t have good hearts or good impulses, in fact, quite the opposite. Prudence administers a kick when Marguerite is on her deathbed just for the pleasure of it, the same pleasure she takes in cigars and brandy and weddings. This is a thoroughly loathsome woman, as bad or even worse than Mrs. Phelps, and Crews plays her unsparingly.

Crews entered folklore as Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind (1939), an Atlanta lady with horns of curls always quivering on her head as she shakes with genteel anxiety and asks for her smelling salts, and after that she played a few more bits before coming to work with Bette Davis again in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), after Davis had become the biggest female movie star in the world. Crews played a bit role that was later cut. In her behavior on the set, she proved that she herself was more generous than the roles she often played.

“Past all power and desire to slap ingénues, she was now coaching them in speech and accepting small parts in films,” Davis wrote of Crews. “I think she fully expected anything from me. I had dreamed of a reversal of position for many years.” But Davis decided against outright revenge. “I welcomed Miss Crews warmly and with great deference,” she wrote. “No doubt she would have preferred not being robbed of an ex post facto justification of her high-handedness…When the picture was over, Miss Crews came to my dressing room. She handed me a box—and was gone. I opened it and inside was the most beautiful watch—pearls and diamonds on the back—that I had ever seen. This was her belated apology. She died six months later. It is one of my truly cherished possessions.”

by Dan Callahan

[agirlinhell]

Clem and Mitch for the ship meme.

send me a ship and i’ll answer || ( ACCEPTING. ) || @twdgdeadmanwalking &&. @backwardstars

who is more likely to hurt the other?: Although they don’t want to hurt the other, they’re also not afraid to hurt each other’s feelings because they’re both honest with each other, but I think Mitch, actually. Clementine’s a lot more composed, calm and collected than Mitch is.who is emotionally stronger?: Clementine, definitely, mostly due to the fact that she’s been exposed to the outside orld in the apocalypse and the hell that came with it.who is physically stronger?: That’s… hard to say, honestly. They’re both really good at hand-to-hand combat, although Clementine was trained by both David Garcia and Ava, two former soldiers in the military before the outbreak, so in terms of sheer strength and skill, I’d have to say Clementine, because of her training and the fact she was able to defeat and fatally wound Abel, a man several times her age and size, and Marlon, a very physically strong boy, but Mitch packs quite the punch, too.who is more likely to break a bone?: Clementine can’t fight as well as she used to, but she can still defend herself, so Mitch, considering he’s a lot more physically active and has stronger muscle mass than she has.who knows best what to say to upset the other?: Honestly? Both. Mitch is more fiery and explosive but Clementine is seething, calm and icy, rarely ever raising her voice, but knowing exactly where to hit.who is most likely to apologize first after an argument?: It depends on what the argument is about and the severity of it, but I’d like to think they’d apologize around the same time.who treats who’s wounds more often?: Clementine, she has homemade remedies and draws sigils on his skin in the hopes of protecting him from excessive danger. She often patches up his hands if he ever hurts himself.who is in constant need of comfort?: Clementine, she’s a very sad and depressed girl.who gets more jealous?: Clementine, though she knows that Mitch loves her.who’s most likely to walk out on the other?:  AAAAA uh.. that’s hard to say? I don’t think they would “walk out” on the other like a breakup or anything because they love each other too much to do that, so I think that the end of their relationship would have either Mitch or Clementine dying and leaving the other widowed - most likely Mitch.who will propose?: Mitch, Clementine will be absolutely astonished.who has the most difficult parents?: If we’re talking in a Modern AU scenario, then probably Mitch? Although Edmund, Clementine’s father, doesn’t take too kindly to him due to his recklessness, much to Clem’s dismay.who initiates hand-holding when they’re out in public?: Clementine.who comes up for the other all the time?: Mitch, he’s a loyal baby.who hogs the blankets?: Clementine, Mitch lets her take them, she deserves itwho gets more sad?: Clementine’s definitely a lot more melancholic than Mitch is.who is better at cheering the other up?: Mitch, that boy knows exactly how to make her laugh.who’s the one that playfully slaps the other all the time after they make silly jokes?: Clementine.who is more streetwise?: I’d originally say both but Clementine has actually lived in the streets of Prescott at twelve years old, so she knows how the lingo is and she knows how the streets work.who is more wise?: Clementine, considering just how many things she’s experienced in the outside world.who’s the shyest?: Clementine, she’s very introverted, though Mitch definitely has his moments.who boasts about the other more?: Mitch! He’s very proud of his girl but Clem will always admire his fireworks.who sits on who’s lap?: Clementine… she’s a giant sucker and a flirt, though this never happens in public. Mostly does it to get his attention and to ask for cuddles and smooches.

[thenameofaslan]

Hey, The Name of Aslan followers! 

Currently we stand at 7 members, and to keep things unique, instead of using existing character names, we will be going by Narnia-inspired names we created ourselves! Our names are Veriele, Ailora, Gianah, Astriella, Haaven, Lailenah, and Elledia. Allow us to introduce ourselves! Below we will be sharing some facts about ourselves & our interest in Narnia. 

Hello! I’m Veriele!

Favourite book:

My favourite book tends to change a lot. Of course The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a classic, and in and of itself it’s possibly the most magical story of the 7. However, I also love The Magician’s Nephew for the beautiful creation of Narnia it shows us. Then The Horse and His Boy really stands out from the other books, and I love the characters and their growth so much. But I think when it comes down to it, The Last Battle holds the most special place in my heart. The ending chapters are so full of life and beauty. The parade of returning characters in Aslan’s Country is stunning and hits my nostalgic heart hard. And those final lines just fill my heart with joy! It’s a hard choice, as the entire series is absolutely lovely, but I do think The Last Battle stands out to me most of all.

Favourite Aslan quote:

I love a lot of Aslan’s lines, but I think my top 3 are “Courage, dear heart,” “Do not dare not to dare,” and “Now you are a lioness.”

Favourite Bible verse:

In the entire Bible it’s hard to choose just one, but Revelation 21:5a fills me with a special kind of joy. “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”

Songs that remind me of Narnia:

A lot of songs remind me of Narnia, but to name a few: Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World, North by Sleeping At Last, and Long Live by Taylor Swift.

What kind of content or art I make/enjoy:

I make edits, analytical posts, and I write the occasional fic!

Hi everyone, I’m Ailora!

Favorite book:

For the Christian themes, my favorite will always be The Last Battle. The ending few chapters make me cry. I also love the atmosphere of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, especially the ending.

Favorite Aslan scene:

It’s so hard to choose just one. I guess I’d have to say the scene where Aslan appears and walks beside Cor on the mountain pass in HAHB. I love Aslan’s gentleness with Cor, but also the sense of wonder when he starts to reveal himself and how he’s been acting in Cor’s story. I love that during the entire scene, Aslan is walking beside Cor to protect him from falling off the mountain, and also that he is guiding Cor to exactly the place he needs to be. I love Cor’s response to seeing Aslan, and I love that Aslan leaves him a footprint-full of cold water at the end. It’s just a beautiful picture of God’s provision and love and kindness and knowledge of us.

Favorite Bible verse:

Again, hard to choose. But for now I’ll say Ephesians 3:17-19: “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Hi, I’m Gianah.

How I got interested in Narnia:

I got interested in Narnia when my friend forced me to watch The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I immediately bought the collection of all seven books, joined tumblr and then got even more obsessed with it. Once I found out other people actually really liked the series, I started to be more invested. The rest is history.

Favourite Bible Verse:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” ‭‭Jeremiah‬ 29:11

Kinds of art or content I enjoy/make:

I love both writing and painting/ drawing. I love making analysis texts so much, and also narrative texts.

Hey everyone! I'm Astriella :)

How I got into Narnia:

I've loved Narnia since I was about twelve, when I was first allowed to read the books (I think I burned through all 7 in about a month!). Even then I loved finding “hidden meanings” in stuff and Narnia is a treasure trove of allegory and allusion!

My favourite non-human character:

My favorite has to be Jewel the Unicorn.  Both because unicorns are amazing and majestic and all, but because of his loyalty for Tirian, his sacrificial love, and his gentle gentility.

My favorite Aslan moment: 

It has to be from VotDT, from the Dark Island where nightmares come true.  Lucy, up in the crow’s-nest, looks down on the havoc and chaos on deck as the sailors panic in terror, and whispers to Aslan, begging for help. And help comes in the form of an albatross, which circles the crow’s-nest before leading the ship to safety; but in that moment Lucy hears Aslan’s voice whisper to her, “Courage, dear heart.” That scene means a lot to me because anxiety always provides plenty of possible nightmares, but I know my God will lead me to safety and He gives me courage.

Hello! I’m Haaven!

How I got interested in Narnia:

 I literally cannot remember a time when I wasn’t. I grew up on the series. My true obsession with it, however, would have begun in about 4th grade when I found the entire series in the school library and read them all for the first time.

When/how I became a Christian?

 I could talk for a very long time on this, but I’ll try to keep in short(ish). I grew up in a Christian home so I always kind of knew  that I needed Jesus, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I was also the most shy person you would ever meet, so I wasn’t about to ask anyone how, either. But then when I was ten, I went to church camp for one week during the summer for the first time. (I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go, but my mom convinced me with, “Well, your sister will be there, so you’ll be fine!” haha.) And, I guess you could say, the rest is history (since this is the short version, haha). :P

Favorite Narnia-esque songs:

 I have so many, but I will limit myself to three: All the King’s Horses by Karmina (totally an Edmund/ movie!PC!Peter/ Eustace song!), Up All Night by David Archuleta (okay, yes, I know this is a love song, but if you think about it as Lucy and Aslan especially in LWW… It’s adorable, okay?!?), and Beautifully Broken by Plumb (sort of a post-Last Battle Susan song).

Hi! My name is Lailenah.

Favorite non-human Narnia character:

This is a tough question, because the majority of my faves aren’t human! Hwin and Bree, Mr. Tumnus, Reepicheep, the centaurs, and then of course Aslan in his completely own category...But I’m going to have to go with Puddleglum because I LOVE him. Many heroes tend to be optimistic, hopeful, and outgoing people, but Puddleglum’s the opposite. And yet he’s still a very caring, courageous, and loyal individual; he stays true to his faith and encourages the others to do the same, especially in the scene where the Green Witch tries to enchant them so they deny that the world above and Aslan exist. And when everything is at its most hopeless point, he’s the one to offer hope in the form of, “We’re just four babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play world that licks your world hollow. That’s why I’m on Aslan’s side, even if there’s no Aslan to lead it.” He’s not a ray of sunshine, but he can be a gleam in the darkest places, when it’s most needed. And sometimes I feel like as a Christian, some people expect that you must always be “joyful” (aka wear a cheerful smile, be optimistic, and act outgoing) to be a good witness and influential for Christ. But Puddleglum reminds me that I can be real, I can be honest, and I can be an encouragement to others even when I am at a low point (in fact, being with others during their low points because I understand how it feels might be when I am most needed!). My faith and my effectiveness to others as a Christian is not less because I am not an extrovert. It is not less because I struggle mentally and feel exhausted because of anxious or depressed thoughts. No. I was created the way I am for a reason. I have the challenges I have for a reason. We all do, and that’s okay. No matter our differences, we’re not less than anyone else in God’s loving eyes, and He has a unique time and place for each of us to serve as His light as Puddleglum did.

Favorite Narnia book:

It’s always been the Last Battle. I love how intense it gets in this book, how the evil is overwhelming, the stakes are high, and the battle between right and wrong is at its climax. It feels like the good guys are losing as their already sparse armies dwindle, and the main characters are being forced into the stable. Sometimes that sense of being overwhelmed mirrors how I feel when I look at all the scary, sad, and bad things happening in the world today, but I’m encouraged by the characters who still are soldiers for Aslan’s cause, who keep going and trusting in what’s right in spite of that and in spite of the fact that can’t see what’s coming next. And then, of course, Aslan’s country. I love seeing all the familiar faces from throughout the series and the joy and rest they find in eternity with Aslan and their loved one. It shows that it truly is worth it all.

What kind of content or art I make/enjoy:

I have always loved to write!  So fanfiction and meta are definitely my favorite ways to participate. Bet you couldn’t tell that I tend to drone on. ;)  (I also make mood boards on occasion.)

Hi, Elledia here!

Favourite book: 

A Horse and His Boy or Silver Chair

What age we got interested in Narnia: 

I SAY 7, but I grew up watching the BBC miniseries, so I don’t know for sure.

Favourite Aslan quote:

 “And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

When/how I became a Christian:

 Raised in the church/missionary brat. I decided when I was around eight that I wanted to be baptized and though there’ve been some bumps along the way, I’m growing in Christ as best as I can.

Narnia-esque songs: 

“If You Want Me To” by Ginny Owens reminds me a lot of Narnia, for some reason.

Kinds of art or content I enjoy/make:

 I write, so fanfic and metas are my thing, but I enjoy all kinds of art.

Anyways, it’s great to meet you all! We hope to interact with you all more in the future, and as we begin creating original posts for this blog. Our ask box is open, should you have any questions! Thanks for following us! <3

[dumbledearme]

~ read The Bridgerton Eight here ~~

The Modern Bridgertons:

Violet Bridgerton (1965—)

married her high school sweetheart at 18;

loves blackberry pie;

is a fancy ass woman but always acts with humility;

is known and respected by everyone in Great Hamptons;

always remembers everybody’s names;

is the queen of charity events;

has an intense flare for the dramatic;

lighted a candle for her husband everyday he was at war;

was strong for her children when he died and never cried in front of them;

cried a lot, alone, at night, in her room;

always supports her children in all their endeavors;

is obsessed with marrying all of them because she doesn’t want them to waste the little time they might have with their loved ones;

Edmund Bridgerton (1965—2009)

his favorite pie is blackberry pie because that’s what Violet likes;

his grandfather turned BCorp into a corporate company;

under his charge, BCorp became a “green company”;

was an eleven as a dad;

whenever his children were upset, he’d take his hands and put them on both sides of their head and they would just breathe together;

he was called to war world II when he was 34;

he was discharged with honor two years later for saving a fellow soldier;

he was stung by bees and died of anaphylactic shock;

Anthony Bridgerton (1991—)

1,84 cm/ 6′0″;

all he ever wanted was to be half the man his dad was;

he had to step up as the man of the family at just 18 years old;

he has been running BCorp and supporting his family ever since;

doesn’t have time for a good time; 

probably has forgotten what that is;

still, he’s been known to dally...

has a reputation as a player;

is afraid of intimacy;

work, work, work, work;

worries and protects every single one of his siblings because that’s what Dad would’ve wanted;

is always extra nice to his mother;

is dead scared of bees;

has hella good hair;

always dresses impeccably;

can be quite an ass.

Benedict Bridgerton (1993—)

1,87 cm; 6'2";

the artist of the family;

mostly paints landscapes;

doodles a lot;

often has paint on his hair and on his face and on his clothes;

is the only one who still goes to the family cabin by the beach;

graduated in fine arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome;

his paintings are sad and beautifully haunting;

believes in love at first sight;

is the tallest;the sweet Bridgerton;

is very protective of his sisters (that is the only thing that can prone him to violence, although in reality he wouldn’t hurt a fly);

very good with his hands;

a total and utter fool.

Colin Bridgerton (1997—)

1,75 cm; 5'9";

definitely the funny one;

the only one who has green eyes like Dad;

he's convinced that Holly Macclesfield is the love of his life, even after she cheated on him and got engaged to Nigel Berbrooke;

he travelled through Europe and Africa just to get away from the pain of it all;

he wrote a book about the things he's seen;

and the cultures he's experienced;

he majored in Greek and Roman architecture;

everybody likes him;

so charming, so handsome, so easy going;

the king of the easy smile;

he is never, ever, ever, ever sad;

he is never, ever, ever, ever mad;

what a dreamboat honestly.

Daphne Bridgerton (1998—)

1,68 cm;

slept with Eric Macclesfield and he broke up with her the following morning;

created a self-made business, the clothesline Daffiness;

is a fashion icon;

has a dying love for hats;

got a degree from the Université de Paris;

classy and edgy;

is the fun Bridgerton, always coming up with fun things to do;

wears a lot of sunglasses;

super independent woman who needs no man;

never, ever cries;

Eloise Bridgerton (2000—)

1,69 cm;

is a med-student in Sagaponak;

lively, talkative and genuinely fun;

sees the bright side in everything;

likes writing letters;

has zero time for men;

her favorite color was purple and she detested blood pudding;

the smart Bridgerton;

likes working with elders and children;

is very organized;

Francesca Bridgerton (2000—)

1,66 cm;

loves all things pretty;

is very feminine;

is very sensual;

always in perfect behavior;

the picture of sophisticated grace;

cares a lot about appearances;

a perfectionist;

is a seasoned liar;

had no filter;

spends most of her time at Flo’s Diner;

the love guru; she always knows when people have a thing for each other;

loves John *her boyfriend* in a platonic way;

has slept with a lot of boys; that is her way to hide what she really wants;

Gregory Bridgerton (2003—)

1,79 cm; 5'10";

he's favorite person in the world is Emma, the lunch lady;

he doesn't have a lot of friends, but he's friendly with a lot of people;

he notices the little people;

he's hungry ALL THE TIME; 

he's secretly a fantastic cook;

he likes picnics;

outside, not inside;

he's tall and lanky;

the awkward Bridgerton;

he's a hopeless romantic and then just hopeless.

Hyacinth Bridgerton (2005—)

1,73 cm; 5'8";

she's one tough cookie;

she will kick your ass;

she likes solving mysteries;

she's very competitive and a sour loser;

her best friend is Lady Danbury for some reason;

she has boxing classes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday;

she's not very patient but extremely tenacious;

she's opinionated;

she will fight you;

the scary Bridgerton;

the tallest of her sisters.

Katharine Sheffield (1994—)

1,68 cm; 5'6";

she majored in politics with a master in women’s studies;

she lives in the wealthy manor of the mayor, who just happens to be her stepmother;

she's a pescetarian Monday through Wednesday, fruitarian Thursday through Sunday, and a vegetarian ALWAYS;

she volunteers for Greenpeace;

she's an atheist, or she tries to be;

clumsy as hell;has a great sense of humor;

has a corgi named Newton;

‘not the easy way but the right way’;

she hates when it rains because she's terrified of thunder;

her fiancé, Mason, dumped her on his surprise birthday party while the guests were hiding in the dark.

Edwina Sheffield (1998—)

1,52 cm;

the ‘Incomparable’ of 1953;

has buttery-colored hair and startling blue eyes;

likes reading and silent films;

petite and delicate;

Mayor Mary Sheffield (1976—)

has always been relatively wealthy;

married a very poor man;

Sophie Beckett (1996—)

1,57 cm; 5'2";

her father owned the Marvelous Penwood Hotel where she grew up;

her father was her best friend when he was alive;

her mother left them right after Sophie was born;

when Sophie was six, her father married the New York socialite Araminta Gunningworth;

he died soon after;

and because he didn’t leave a will, Araminta got everything—the hotel, the money and Sophie;

her best friends now are Mrs. Gibbons, the housekeeping supervisor, and Miss Timmons, the cook;

she is a fan of What everybody sees but nobody talks about;

because she needs to live vicariously through other people;

she works as a housemaid at Penwood Hotel;

she never gets a day off.

Araminta Gunningworth (1973—)

fabulously evil;

evil incarnated;

Rosamund Gunningworth (1996—)

1,57 cm;

has an interest in art;

works in a gallery;

helped curate the exhibition: What’s in a name?;

her real goal is to impress Benedict Bridgerton and then marry him;

over her rich, hot, dead body!

spoiled and fabulous;

Posy Gunningworth (1998—)

1,55 cm;

a Shakespeare fan, she was the one who came up with the idea for the What’s in a name?

never really lost her baby fat;

tries her best to be like her mother and sister;

isn’t very good at being mean;

likes food, especially cookies;

Penelope Featherington (2000—)

1,55 cm;

lives next door to Bridgerton Manor and often comes over for brunch;

is best friends with Eloise Bridgerton;

is the youngest of three sisters: Prudence, Philippa and Phoebe;

has flat chest and nose freckles;  

bald head, flat chest, nose freckles and a dying sentence.  

was just twelve and finishing 6th grade when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia which gives her shortness of breath and terrible headaches;

was bald during the entire time she was doing chemo; she hated the way she looked without hair and was always avoiding mirrors;

is the Hampton Girl;

started what everyone sees but nobody talks about when she was seventeen;

fell in love with Colin Bridgerton, her best friend’s brother, when she was fifteen;

studies journalism;

has a secret account currently filled with money;

Phoebe Featherington (1998—)

1,57 cm;

the second youngest Featherington;

is nicer than her older sisters;

doesn’t treat Penelope like she’s going to break at the slightest touch;

is actually pretty normal for a Featherington;

Philippa Featherington (1995—)

1,65 cm;

waaay to loud all the time;

you know when she’s in the room;

never stops talking;

never talks about anything interesting;

gossips 24/7;

Prudence Farber (1993—)

1,65 cm;

thinks she’s better than her sisters because she’s married, y’all;

has a son called Preston;

she married Penelope’s oncologist;

she can’t stop bringing up the fact that she married a doctor;

Portia Featherington (1969—)

Simon Basset  (1991—)

1,85 cm;

has a stutter but hides like a pro;

was raised by Eva St. Clair;

is the sole heir of Global Hastings;

went to Harvard with Anthony Bridgerton;

lived abroad for most of his life;

is considered proud and above the company;

is actually just shy;

but also an arrogant little shit;

looks like he has no feelings whatsoever;

is in fact a very emotion person;

Philip Crane (1990—)

1,77 cm;

is one of the very few inhabitants of Sagaponack;

is a biology teacher with a PhD in botanic;

is not comfortable around people; prefers plants;

owns a greenhouse where he spends most of his time;

is unbelievably unaware of how good looking he is;

his wife suffered from deep depression which culminated in an attempted suicide, which he prevented, but resulted in her death anyway;

has twin children: Oliver and Amanda;

he likes the rain and his favorite color is green;

always looks morose;

hasn’t smiled in years;

Michaela Stirling (2000—)

1,65 cm; 5'5";

she believes that she and Francesca are soul mates;

she has a step brother called John who is currently dating Francesca;

she belongs to an old and important family of the tons;

she is as gay as they come;

her hobbies include music and Francesca;

she's taking art classes but what she's really passionate about it photography;

oh and Francesca.

John Stirling (2000—)

1,78 cm;

Lucinda Abernathy (2002—)

1,70 cm; 5'6";

she's a ballerina;

she's 100% invisible when she’s around her best friend Hermione;

which is all the time;

she still has both her parents;

she's very practical and honest;

a very grounded sort of girl;

she fake-dates Haselby.

Richard Abernathy (2000—)

Hermione Watson (2003—)

1,62 cm;

her family left town six years ago, but now they’ve returned;

lives next door to Lucy and they’ve been best friends since childhood;

is the most beautiful girl in town, taking the crowd from Francesca;

every boy wants her;

every girl wants to be her;

is surprisingly sweet and nice to everyone;

is secretly engaged to Lucy’s older brother;

Gareth St. Clair (2002—)

1,85 cm; 6'1";

his mother died in a car crash when he was five;

he used to disappear from school with his friends to party;

has a very difficult relationship with his father;

he's devastated when his brother George dies;

he becomes the partial owner of St. Clair Enterprises;

both he and his brother were registered with their mother's surname;

he's the only grandson of Lady Danbury;

he wears a lot of leather;

he rides a motorcycle;

he chainsmokes;

has a lot of anxiety.

George St. Clair (2000—2020)

1,78 cm;

the prodigal son;

smart, good-looking and well behaved;

got into Harvard;

got along with everyone;

was heir to half of half of St. Clair Enterprises;

died of pneumonia at the age of twenty-one;

Angelo Guido (1975—)

mean and violent;

nobody likes him;

doesn’t like anybody;

is in charge of the half of the half of St. Clair Enterprises which used to be belong to his wife and their son after her;

wants Gareth to sign the company over to him;

absolutely loathes Gareth;

Lady Emerauld St. Clair Danbury (1950—)

1,65 cm;

co-owner of St. Clair Enterprises;

the company was founded by her grandfather;

she gave half of half the company’s shares to each of her daughters, Isabella and Evanora;

after Isabella’s sudden death, her share was kept in the hands of her husband, Angelo Guido, until their eldest son was of age;

her husband was an oaf, but she was genuinely fond of him and had difficulty accepting his death;

has a sharp tongue;

walks with a cane she sometimes uses to hit people with;

Isabella St. Clair (1978—2007)

she married a man thirteen years her senior;

barely a year into the marriage, he grew mean and violent until their love died away;

a few years later, when Angelo was on a working trip, she fell in love with someone else and got pregnant;

was a great mother and spent a lot of times with her sons;

used to call them bambinos;

kept a diary in Italian;

she died in a car with her supposed lover;

Evanora St. Clair (1972—)

got a job as a nanny when she was fifteen;

it was supposed to be a temporary job, but Eva ended up staying for eighteen years;

still works with children at a helping center for children with learning and speaking disabilities;

never married or had children of her own;

Nigel Berbrooke (1995—)

Holly Macclesfield (1998—)

Colin’s high school sweetheart;

they were together for years until she dumped him to be with Nigel;

is a bimbo ass girl;

loves unitards;

Eric Macclesfield (1996—)

Daphne’s ex boyfriend;

broke up with her soon after she gave him her virginity;

total douchebag;

thinks no means yes;

deserves some good punches in that pretty face;

works for Global Hastings;

Mason (1990—)

the unfunny comedian;

he and Kate were engaged for three years;

broke up with her in his surprise birthday party unaware that the guests were hiding and listening;

stupid;

[marie-dufresne]

This Isn’t a Beach Episode

🧬 Main Verse Page 🧬 

This isn’t a Beach Episode: After Marie oversteps, Hojo takes it upon himself to remind her of the place she holds in Sephiroth’s life.

Marie was enjoying a weekend with both her boys at home. Gideon, at seventeen, was studying for final exams and Sephiroth, at twelve, had been given the weekend off from the training and testing he was undergoing at the lab. Edmund hadn’t showed his face much, buried in his work as always, but it was his voice that took her attention from her embroidery that Sunday evening.

“What is this I hear about a trip to Costa?”

He didn’t seem pleased about it, so she lowered her handiwork to the table, smiling brightly.

“Has Sephiroth brought it up to you? He’s so excited. I don’t think we’ve ever brought him to the beach, have we?”

With his hands in his pockets, Hojo shuffled over to her, brows pulled down over his eyes.

“And you thought to plan this without consulting me?”

He reached out, catching her chin between his thumb and forefinger. To a passerby it might have seemed like an act of affection, a tender moment between husband and wife, but Marie saw the glint in his eyes and felt the slight pressure of the pad of his thumb.

Angry was too mild a word to describe the emotion she was bracing herself for. She had only been the victim of it a few times, but she’d seen him demonstrate it in his lab. Dr. Crescent had been on the receiving end of it once and it was the only time Marie had seen the other woman cry.

Taking a deep breath, she shrunk back just enough for him to notice, never breaking her smile.

“It’s just the beach, darling.”

A flash of light and she found herself on the floor. It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her, but it was the first time she’d been hit so hard she hadn’t registered it happening. Her ears were ringing, head throbbing with the onslaught of a headache and now, on the side of her face, a thud, pressure.

His boot.

“How many years of my research were you planning on destroying with your little trip out of town?” he sneered, “do you have any idea how crucial timing can be?”

Of course she knew. She’d worked for him up until Gideon had been born. She’d never been a scientist, never would be, never pretended to be. She was fully intending on checking his schedule, of being sure he was on board. He might have become engrossed in his work over the years, a bit too obsessive even, but he was still her husband. He was still Sephiroth’s father. Marie was not the sort of wife or mother to overstep the boundaries of teamwork.

But now it seemed, since he’d gotten what he wanted from her, Edmund was no longer interested in being a team player.

Mr. Henry in marketing would disapprove.

Neither Gideon nor Sephiroth would approve of this scene, and Marie’s heart was racing not for herself, but the thought of how bad things might get if she didn’t put the room back in order. She could see her supplies scattered across the ground.

“Darling please,” she gasped, her little hand coming up to push his shoe away, rolling into all fours as he complied, stepping away.

She should have stayed quiet after that. Apologized and offered him a cup of coffee and a massage. Revisited it another day. But she didn’t. Instead, her manicured fingers dug into the plush carpet and her lip curled.

“He’s just a child!” she snarled, “he is a child who needs to play like all the others!”

Her legs were shaking as she stood and she felt her stockings rip. She’d never snapped at him like that before and if she wasn’t fast enough, she’d be picking herself up off the floor again.

“He is…a child,” she repeated, standing up straight, pleading in her eyes, “he is our child. Don’t you want him to be happy?”

Hojo’s upper lip twitched once and he stood in silence, watching as she awaited another blow.

“Happy? No one is truly happy, my dear wife. Don’t mistake occasional laughter and cordial smiles for happiness.”

“He could be,” she argued, “if you’d stop poking and prodding him for three seconds! Allow him some friends. He’s twelve years old.”

Another twitch. This time accompanied with a glint from his glasses. A wicked look.

“I gave you the first one to play with, aren’t you satisfied?”

Marie gasped, her hands brushing the string of pearls he’d bought her the day after Gideon had come home from the intensive care unit, born five weeks too early. He’d been such a different man then. His obsession with his work had been endearing, admirable even. Now it was heartbreaking.

“To play with? Edmund—“

She remembered a time when he loved his family. When Gideon was up at night, he held him, pouring over his notebooks until they both fell asleep. Sometimes she heard him proposing theories, talking to himself, working over problems aloud to his infant son. He took him to work, explained to him how things worked, fostered a love of science in Gideon’s heart.

When Sephiroth was born, Gideon had been tossed aside. Once their silver haired child began to walk and talk, so had she. Gideon had accepted it, focusing instead on his studies and the gratitude and love he had for his mother, his pseudo uncle Vincent, and younger brother.

Marie was living in denial.

“They are our babies. They aren’t dolls to dress up or test subjects to study! They’re human beings who need a well rounded upbringing. I am his mother. I won’t let you continue this—”

She didn’t hit the floor this time. She hit the wall. The chair rail of the parlor cut against her spine and she felt her breath lose its way in her lungs, her husband’s forearm pressed up against her chest.

“Edmund—“

“Do not.”

The air she couldn’t control came back to her in heavy inhales, but she didn’t fight his hold. He wasn’t particularly strong. It was likely that she could have gotten away, cried to Vincent about it and earned him a solid Turk beating in his own lab and perhaps she should have, but Marie Hojo was living in denial. To her, this was no more than an overdue spat.

She didn’t fight, but she was tense, the fire of challenge in her eyes. Hojo was prepared to douse it.

“Do not speak to me about being his mother,” he hissed, leaning in to whisper against her cheek, as if a secret just between the two of them, “you gave away that right every time you let me stick you with my needles.”

Just as he knew she would, he felt her relax in his hold. The tears wouldn’t be far off; she was in the exact position he needed her.

It had been his own error to conduct the Jenova Project on his own offspring. His wife was too emotional, too attached to the children. His second error had been allowing her the first three years of the child’s life to be lived at home, fundamental developmental milestones reached in the comforting arms of a loving mother. Key memories that would shape him and she was embedded in so many of them.

Now he had to tread carefully, particularly as his son was on the cusp of puberty. He wasn’t nearly as emotional as his mother, but feelings were becoming difficult for him to regulate. Combined with the strength he hadn’t yet mastered, Hojo was in no way willing to experiment with grief as intense as losing a mother.

He might…later.

For now, it was too dangerous. He had to keep Sephiroth content. To do that, he had to keep his wife stable. It was an irritating game.

Marie’s breath shuddered and she went even further lax, the guilt of being called out on her participation of human experimentation bubbling up to the surface. “I just…wanted a healthy baby…”

Yes. He had her. Perfect.

Pulling his arm from her chest, Hojo took her face in his hands, wiping away the tears that started to fall.

“And that’s what you got, isn’t it? He’s healthy and he’s strong, hm?”

She nodded, chin wobbling. His eyes softened and he shifted his gaze slightly.

“But he isn’t a baby anymore, is he Marie?”

“No,” she breathed, “no he isn’t.”

The scientist hummed, pulling her closer and giving her hair a gentle stroke, playing the part of a doting husband, as if he wasn’t the cause of her despair.

“You know Sephiroth is special, my love. He’s always been special.”

Against his chest, Marie nodded. While she hadn’t been told outright it had been Jenova cells she was accepting into her body (a liability to anyone else, but Hojo was well aware his beautiful wife was too blinded by the fantasy version of family she’d created to take legal action against him), she had accepted the consequences. A child that looked nothing like her, that harbored super strength and an (almost) unflappable constitution.

A child that was property of ShinRa Electric Power Company.

“I can’t concede to a beach vacation,” he murmured into her hair, “but…I don’t see why we can’t find something fun for him to do here in Midgar. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

A kiss to the top of her head, a light squeeze. Tonight he’d nurse the injuries he caused. Tomorrow he’d send Vince for a gift and buy tickets to the theatre or something or other to make their son happy.

Then he could be left alone to work.  

[themalhambird]

Richard woke with a pounding headache and every inch of his body feeling stiff and sore. His mouth was dry. He wasn't dressed. Last night was a blur, but he vaguely remembered a nightclub, and then-

Oh, fuck. 

He sat up, pressing the palm of his hand to his forehead. The movement made his head spin and he groaned, feeling nauseous. 

“Um- hey. I thought you might want coffee”

He twisted around to look at the door way, where some guy who’s name he couldn’t remember was hovering with a mug. He was cute. Blonde. Richard gave the best attempt at a friendly smile he could when hung over and regretting all his life decisions up to and including being born. “Um. Thanks...?”

“Bushy.”

“Bushy, right, thanks. Um...”

“I’ll- bring it over.”

“Right.” They avoided eye contact as Richard took the mug and wrapped his hands around it. 

“Weren’t there other people?” Richard blurted out. “I mean-,”

“Yeah, they uh. They left- went home. I, uh, I thought I’d stay. I hope that’s alright, I just wanted...I don’t know, I wasn’t sure that you’d be okay. If you woke up by yourself.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a while,” Richard said, raising the mug to his lips and downing the hot coffee in a series of large gulps. Bushy smiled sympathetically.

“Bad break up or something?”

“Can I get you breakfast?” Richard said, ignoring the question.

“No,uh, I raided your cupboards already. I should be off. I have to get home. I’ve got to get on with some work.”

Work. Richard frowned. “What time is it?”

“Uh...10.30.

“Oh, fuck.” Richard scrambled out of bed, lunging for his towel and wrapping it around himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck-”

“You okay?”

“I’m late for work by three and a half- my Uncle’s going to string me up from the-” 

“I’ll get out of your way. Um- would you mind, if I left my phone number on your kitchen table? In case you fancy coffee or something. Last night was fun, I’d  like to get to know you better. If you, know, you were interested in being friends.”

Richard hesitated. His instinct was to brush the man off- he was in the middle of wallowing in misery and self pity and getting drunk and getting fucked by strangers and then moving on- he wasn’t in the mood for making new friends and doing something positive with his time right now. On the other hand, Bushy had made him coffee. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, alright. That would be good, thanks.”

“Good luck with your uncle.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna need it. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you.”

Richard flashed a brief smile and vanished in to his bathroom, switching on the shower. He’d intended to be quick, but the warm water hit his head and decided to hell with it. Uncle John was going to kill him anyway, he might as well have a nice shower. If he was going to die, he’d damn well do it with clean hair.

It was gone twelve by the time he made it in to the office; he had three missed calls from Uncle Edmund, ten from Henry, and forty seven from Uncle John, who followed him in to his office and slammed the door. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No. Sorry doesn’t cut it, this time. You missed the meeting with Valois.”

Richard froze. “That was this morning?” 

His uncle shook his head in disgust “I don’t understand you,” John said. “You’re twenty one, and you have a position men twice your age would kill for. You are the C.E.O of one of wealthiest, most influential businesses in the country; all you have to do is show up and at least feign an interest, and you can’t even be bothered to do that! More than  a year of work to even get the French to talk to us and you forget the meeting- you’re a spoilt, selfish brat and I’m ashamed of you!” 

“Yeah well, maybe you and Uncle Thomas should start a club.” Richard muttered, wincing as he moved to sit down. “Give me the minuets of the thing with Valois and I’ll look over it. I assume you told them I was ill, I’ll call in a few days and give my apologies in person and-”

“What does Thomas have to do with anything?”

Richard looked up at him. “I’ll give you three guesses,” he said sardonically; John folded his arms. 

“You might give me a clue, first. If the two of you have quarrelled, this is the first I’m hearing about it, and if it’s bad enough to make you this crap at a job you were showing some not inconsiderable promise at up until a few weeks back then I want it sorted.”

“You don’t know.”

“Know what?” John took the seat opposite his nephew’s desk, honestly concerned now. His nephew was looking very young, suddenly, and staring at him with a faint look of guilt in his countenance. “Richard,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can fix it.”

“You don’t understand, you can’t fix it, it’s not something anyone can fix.”

John hesitated. “Richard, um. If this is about your, um, your- ah, your predilection for the, er- the company of other men so to speak- that is, I am aware that you’re-”

“An ‘unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort’?” 

“Gay,” John said firmly. “You don’t hide it nearly as well as you think you do, and while I will admit to not being the most liberal minded individual on the planet you are my nephew and I love you, and I promise that I will do my best to support you. You and your friend Robert are a couple, I think? He seems a nice young man, and if the time ever comes that you feel ready and able to make your relationship public-”

“It’s never going to happen.”

John frowned. “Why?”

“Why? Because Uncle Thomas offered him a quarter of a million to disappear and he took it. About a month ago. I haven’t seen him, or heard from him since and- my uncle has made it very clear that any future relationship of a similar nature will not be tolerated while I am still connected with this family so please, take your loving and supportive bullshit and shove it up your -”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Richard, I'm not too old to put you over my knee and learn you some manners.” John rose, exhaling with a cold, quiet fury as he ran a hand through his greying hair. Thomas had had no right- no right whatsoever- whatever his personal feelings-

A month. That tallied with the beginning of the sudden decline in Richard’s attitude. H was hurting, and Richard dealt with pain badly. When his mother died- 

He wheeled around sharply. “You haven’t taken any-”

“No, uncle, Uncle Edmund’s lecture did it’s job. Scarred me for life. I hadn’t even thought about...” he trailed off. “I’ve been going out drinking,” he admitted, and John nodded. 

“I’m sending Harry home with you tonight, he’s going to keep an eye on you for the next few days.”

“What-uncle, that isn’t-”

“I know it’s not necessary. It’s going to happen anyway. You can have a nice few quiet days at home while I deal with Thomas.” He shook his head. “It shouldn’t have happened, Richard, and I’m sorry it did, truly. I hope you can believe that. You always seemed very happy with Robert.” He sat back down. Richard stared at the desk. 

“I was,” he said. “How did you-?”

“Oh. Edmund went down to Oxford to pay you a surprise visit and saw the two of you kissing outside the Radcliffe Camera, he left you to it. Didn’t tell me until you asked to bring  him home at Christmas as a friend, and only admitted it because I got suspicious when he kept asking me how I liked him. We assumed you’d tell us when you were ready, maybe it would have been better to have had it all out in the open sooner and none of this would have happened. On the other hand-”

“If Robert cared more about having 250,000 in cash than he did about me then maybe it’ s best he’s out of my life?” Richard asked. “I tried telling myself that. It made me feel worse.”

“Go home,” John said gently. “Take the week off and come back in next Wednesday ready to get back down to business. You’ve the potential to make a fine C.E.O Richard, don’t waste it.”

“I thought I was a spoilt, selfish brat.”

“You are a spoilt, selfish brat. And the original Henry Plantagenet-” 

Richard groaned. “Oh God, here we go-”

“The original Henry Plantagenet was a spoilt, selfish brat who thought he was entitled to take possession of a small little trading company just because his granddaddy had said it ought to go to his mother when he was old and senile and do you know what-?”

“He won the case against his uncle Stephen, took control of small little trading company, expanded it and turned it in to the Plantagenet Group, condemning his descendants to hear you repeat the story on a loop over and over. Here's hoping I take more after him than I do after great-grandfather Edward, even if I do have more in common with him- I’d hate to end up getting shot by my wife’ s lover after stumbling across them doing it in my bed because my bed was where I’d been planning to take my boyfriend, who was shot seconds after me. No, a wife who ends up staying in a different house entirely, a bunch of children who hate my guts and the only one who doesn’t nearly destroying this company over shareholders’ rights would be much more preferable.”

“Manners, Richard, learn them- don’t cheek your elders.” he smiled despite himself. Richard smiled back, though it was more just a movement of facial muscles. Now he thought about it, it had been an age since he saw Richard properly smile- he should have realised something was wrong sooner. He supposed he’d just chalked it up to teenage rebellion, like the history of art degree he’d insisted on doing. 

He’d have to watch that. Richard wasn’t a child any longer, he was an adult, albeit a young one. He found the same with Henry- he expected both boys to still be thirteen, fourteen, and they weren’t.

“When can I expect my baby sitter?” Richard asked. 

“Around seven,” John told him. Henry wouldn’t object, when he explained. Richard and nightclubs was a bad combination, and if Henry’s company kept Richard out of them, so much the better for everyone. “Go on, off with you.”

“Thanks.” Richard stood. “I really am sorry about the meeting. Honestly I am. If I’d remembered...”

“It’s done,” John said. In all honesty, it had gone about as well as he’d expected- which was nowhere- but Richard’s absence actually gave them an opening to try again, if he called to apologize for his absence, as he’d suggested. They could discuss it when he got back. Richard slipped out of the office; John exhaled before walking around his desk, picking up the phone and punching in the number for PR. 

“Thomas?” he said, as his brother picked up. “Get up here, right now!”

[little-narnian-notes]

Endlessly

Request: Hello there! Could I have a (Narnia) Edmund x Wife where he returns from a trip and his wife if there to greet him back, they hug and lots of kisses xD then she tells him she's pregnant and Ed gets super excited then worries he won't be a good Father.. you can time skip to when the baby is born if you'd like :D (boy? girl? twins? Idc your choice!) Thanks in advance . . .

(P.s make sure that they don't know it's twins until the birth so they are a surprise until they are born and Edmund gets super happy and cute when he finds out!)

To say you were nervous was an understatement. Edmund and his siblings had gone to Calormen to strength foreign relations with the rulers there. Prince Rabadash was not a particularly agreeable person, much less alright with maintaining an alliance with Narnian.

Mr. Tumnus was still here in the castle at Cair Paravel. That was lucky, as he was one of your closest friends. The Pevensies tended to take a small guard for each King and Queen, but the fawn had chosen to remain behind this time around.

“Remind me again why you’re not at Calormen,” you yawned. You had spent all day dozing and sewing. Tumnus didn’t care much for either past-time; he gravitated towards action. Currently, however, he was preparing a lot of lotion, hand soap, and tea leaves to sell at the next monthly Market Day in Narnia.

“Because you’re pregnant,” he said wryly. “Besides . . . King Edmund doesn’t know. No one knows but Lucy. I’d rather you not lose the child.”

You pouted a bit. “Still. You always - ”

Tumnus cut you off before you could finish. “Baby, Y/N. You won’t take any ladies in waiting to help you, and you do happen to need help in staying healthy and stable. Not all women survive the birthing process.”

“Don’t remind me,” you muttered, wincing. It was not something you’d been looking forward to. But could you really be blamed? Of course you wanted children. Ever since you’d married Edmund, you’d wanted a few small humans. It had caused a bit of conflict between the two of you. He still carried guilt over what happened with the White Witch . . . he had fears he would be an incompetent father or wouldn’t be taken seriously if you ever announced being pregnant. “Do you think Ed will be okay with it?”

“With what?” Tumnus wasn’t looking at you; he was busy sorting tea leaves into pouches. He tied the pouches together when filled and carefully marked on them what kind of tea was in it.

“With me being pregnant, Tumnus.” You were crocheting baby boots. It would be a cute way to tell Ed you were going to give birth to a son or daughter. “He freezes up at just the idea of being a father.” You didn’t have to explain why. Mr. Tumnus understand your unsaid reason.

Tumnus looked up. Startled, he said, “Of course he will. Look, just because - well, you never did see him when he was younger. I know the White Witch had a less then desirable effect on him. But King Edmund did change. For the better. I don’t think it’s being a parent that scares him. It’s messing up. It’s seeing his child turn out the same way he did at twelve and them never redeeming themselves. But that’s not going to happen.” Tumnus paused, lips pursed. “Well, maybe that’s not why. It’s only a guess at any real insecurities he has concerning Jadis. If I were your husband, that would be my chief insecurity - history repeating itself with the next generation.”

You shrugged half-heartedly. “You’ll have to be there when I tell him, Tumnus. I’m not quite sure he’ll want to have a panic attack in front of me.”

The conversation changed to other topics, though your mind was still somewhat stuck on your husband’s reaction. You were a natural optimist; by normal standards a baby was a big deal. In your case, it was even bigger. Peter might have been the eldest Pevensie, but he had not taken a Queen. Susan was decidedly disinterested in marrying at the moment. Lucy was, according to them, too young to think about marriage or childbearing. They did seem determined to give her as much of a childhood as they could.

However, it meant that your son or daughter would be the first royal baby in Narnia. The line of succession was about to start with your son or daughter.

“What’s this small boot for?” Edmund asked. He held the knitted gray-blue boot up in front of you. The Kings and Queens had arrived back in Narnia a week ago. This was the first morning you’d gotten to have any time alone with your husband.

You forced an air of casualness into your voice. Hoped it didn’t show you were nervous. “Well, I just thought our child might need something to wear when she’s born,” you answered serenely, puttering around your shared room. The two of you had finished breakfast. Edmund was dressed casually and back in bed, holding a book on his lap. You were putting the breakfast plates and unfinished food back on the tray they’d come in.

Edmund snorted, then spewed out the rest of his drink a moment later. “What?” he said, sitting up straight. He looked at you with wild eyes. “You’re pregnant, Y/N? With a child?”

“Well, technically it’s our child.” You looked at him, back straight, trying to gauge his reaction.

Ed’s full lips quirked into a small smile. “You’re serious? We’re going to be parents?” The sunlight was still watery, hitting his dark hair in a way that highlighted it, turning it to a more chocolate color.

You nodded. Your fingers were nervous, knuckles white. The tray hid the fact that you were clutching the edge of the table rather hard. “Of course I’m serious, Edmund.”

Edmund moved off the bed and practically bounded over to you, smiling and a little more alive then he’d seemed recently. His fingers found their way around your face, into your hair, and then he was kissing you like he was desperate for air.

Love squeezed around and into your heart like a fist.  

“You don’t think this maybe a bit excessive?” You quietly asked Lucy. There was a huge celebration being planned around the fact that you were with child.

Lucy just shook her head. “Of course not! Y/N, you might be from our world, but - we’re not there anymore. We’re in Narnia now.” She held your hand tightly for a minute. “You’ll have to get used to it. We’re all royal now. This is what happens when a prince or princess is about to be born.”

Of course, to you, this still felt so . . . uncharacteristic. You’d been pulled into Narnia during 2015. Between being the president of your sorority, an actress in the theater department at your college, and having three thousand listeners to the weekly radio show you hosted, the spotlight wasn’t exactly something new to you.

All those combined, though, had been on an incredibly small scale compared to being a Queen. There weren’t some three thousand ears listening to you every week or two hundred people watching you three times a semester. Suddenly there was a council of twenty important Narnians to contend with and a country with a population of some twenty-thousand to rule over. The change was jarring, and now there was a stupidly big celebration to worry about.

There was so much at the celebration. Food, entertainers, musicians, little games to play . . . when there wasn’t a ball being put on or foreign guests to host, things were far more normal.

You’d been here in Narnia for a year and a half and still weren’t used to how excessive things could get. Maybe it was because generations separated you and the Pevensies. Hadn’t they grown up around one of the two World Wars? They’d gone from having little to being Kings and Queens. Maybe it was the security of them thinking they would always have access to things like health care (such as it was in a magical country), food and a nice home.

Maybe that’s my problem, you thought to yourself. I know how all this is going to end; I know that Edmund, Lucy, Susan, and Peter won’t be here forever and they think they will be. I wonder if that’s why I can’t accept the way things are right now. Ignorance might have actually been bliss in a situation like this. The happiness and fixation on being a parent with Ed had worn off some now that you’d told him. Reality had crept back in. You wondered - how much time did the five of you have left in Narnia?

How much time would you have with your child?

That night, when Edmund fell asleep after a heated couple hours with you, you slipped out of the spacious room. You had put on a simple black dress, thin cloak, and shoes, and wandered down to Tumnus’s quarters.

Worry kept gnawing at you about your child and you wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t terribly late - it must have been around midnight - but it was late enough that you felt guilty when you knocked at his door.

“Queen Y/N,” Tumnus said, voice tired. It was lacking any annoyance, though. “ Come in. Is there something I can do for you?”

You nodded, feeling guilt twist around in your stomach for delaying him his sleep even more. You slipped inside and looked at Tumnus. His hair was messy but his sheets on the bed were still clean. Maybe he hadn’t been sleeping. He must have been busy doing something else if he’d not gone to bed after the celebration.

“Listen, Tumnus . . . if something ever happened to me, or Edmund - and everybody else, you’d look after our child, wouldn’t you?” You didn’t know how to properly phrase your request, but bluntly and plainly usually did the trick around friends.

The faun looked startled. “Of course I would, Y/N. You know I feel for you like I would a sister.”

You nodded, smiled wearily. Exhaustion was hitting you hard and quick, sooner then you’d anticipated. “Thank you, Tumnus. It’s all I wanted to ask of you.”

During the next weeks, you largely forced yourself to forget your worries about the future. There wasn’t much of a point in stressing out about what would happen if you didn’t spend your whole life with your child. After all, the way you saw it, things might actually be different.

Technically, I shouldn’t even be here, you thought to yourself one morning. You were perched in a chair on the balcony attached to the room you and Ed shared. A warm, soft pink shawl was around your shoulders. The air was cool, your tea was warm. The colors were more radiant then you remembered them being; you could hear laughing chatter from the ground below. There should really only be four kings and queens of Narnia, not five. But I was allowed here anyway, though for what purpose . . . well, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it just means none of us will be forced to leave Narnia. We won’t abandon her. Aslan must have decided to not force the Pevensies back to England . . . things will actually work out. And you smiled.

Maybe it wasn’t set in stone, and maybe it wasn’t certain. But you had seen the brilliant white clouds sailing across the sky, and one of them looked like a contented, magnanimous lion. So you were taking that as a good sign.

Edmund came out to join you. “Do you feel ready to face more wretched disputes about goats and opening up woodland roads?” His hands swooped around you, pulling you in for a tight hug, even though he was still standing up.

You laughed. “Never. They’re terrible. I don’t know how we’ll manage.”

“Well . . .” Edmund looked at you seriously, as he helped you stand up. His dark eyes looked more alive then usual.

“Edmund,” you groaned, swatting away at his hand. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about antagonizing any of the council lords again.”

He chuckled. “I would never do such a thing.” But he didn’t lose his grin. It made you wonder exactly what little prank he had planned and how many feathers you would have to smooth over after laughing privately.

“Raising this child is going to be a walk in the park. At least he won’t disrupt council meetings once a month,” you grumbled. It was in good-nature, though, and Ed knew it.