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idolbound · 2 months ago

Text

Modern Verse Timeline

1967:

Meredith is born in London, England, to Bernard and Maighread Stannard, 7 years after her older sister Amelia.

1972:

The Stannard family is murdered by one of Amelia's school teachers. He fostered a relationship with the vulnerable 12 year old Amelia by manipulating her into believing he could be trusted; he gained access to the home by asking her to let him in. During this incident, their next door neighbour, Officer Wentworth Kell heard the disturbance and entered the Stannard residence. Unfortunately, he was too late to save Amelia (who had tried to stop the assailant), but he was able to apprehend the man before he found Meredith. Subsequently, after making a call to the police and handling the aftermath, wee Meredith refused to leave Wentworth's side; with no other family on record, he decided to pursue the adoption process, officially becoming her adoptive father only weeks after the murders.

1973-1985:

For the next 12 years, young Meredith harbors the trauma of what she witnessed as a girl. Wentworth does his best to raise her to be well-adjusted, given the circumstances. He gets her involved in extracurricular activities like rugby (which, women's clubs were just beginning to form at this time in the U.K.), and by the time she's ready to take her final exams at high school, she had already decided to pursue a military career much like Wentworth did before 'retiring' into policing.

1986:

However, in this time frame, Wentworth's years-long symptoms of forgetfulness and cognitive impairment (which had led to his early retirement from policing) ramp up quite quickly, and he becomes diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Meredith manages to finish school and graduate with high grades, but she does not yet pursue her enlistment in order to take care of her adoptive father.

1987:

Wentworth eventually passes a year later; fortunately, with changes in U.K. police legislation, officers both active and retired who passed away could leave their pensions to their surviving loved ones. As a young 20 year old with no family left in her life, she enlists with the British Armed Forces, beginning her military career with the intention to rise through the ranks, despite being at a disadvantage in such a male-dominated field.

1990-1991:

With rising tensions abroad, Meredith is deployed in one of the first units to have women in active combat roles, seeing live combat in the Gulf War.

1995:

After 2 consecutive terms, Meredith retires from the military, deciding to take up a career in law enforcement in London like Wentworth did. She starts off as a beat cop but desires to become a detective eventually.

2002:

After 30 years, the Stannard Family killer is released on 'good' behaviour; it makes the news, and it sends Meredith spiraling. She believes there had to have been corruption behind bars that led to a deal being made. This eventually leads her to being put on "leave" from active duty, but in the meantime, she decides to quit the police force, sell Wentworth's house, and moves to Scotland. She does this in order to pursue a career in Corrections, seeking to climb the career ladder to one day become the Prison Warden of Kirkwall Penitentiary, with the intention of both implementing strict regulatory policies and harsh punishments within the prison, as well as using her access to the judicial system in order to keep tabs on the status of her family's killer. She holds this desire because she wishes that no one else should experience seeing their loved ones' murderers/rapists/etc. be set free on "good" behaviour. She is a staunch believer in corporal punishment.

2004:

After a couple years as a corrections officer, the board sends Meredith along with a few others to attend a Prison Security conference in New York City, USA. It is the first time she has left the U.K., and their hotel rooms and meals are all paid for through their work, allowing her to learn American methods and to socialize with others there. However, on the first night, Meredith decides to go out to a local club and it is here that she first meets Amelia Comstock ( @sanctamater ). They two very much hit it off and return to Meredith's hotel room to hook up. It goes so well that they call each other the next day and decide, after the conference concludes, to go out to dinner, and spend the night together again, as well as Sunday, ordering in room service for all their meals, having gratuitous sex in between. Meredith's flight leaves the following Monday night, but within the week, they are calling each other, and desire to see one another again. This continues for weeks into months, with Amelia being able to easily afford the time and trips to visit Meredith. In the time in between visits, Meredith falls into an old habit, getting with a friend with benefits (Constable Anne S. Jackson, a police colleague of Meredith's and resident corrupt cop), only to realize she has deep feelings for Amelia, and that even this casual endeavor did nothing for her, deciding that she wants to make it work with Amelia, whatever it may look like as a distanced couple.

2008:

4 years into their relationship of going back and forth (including a time when Amelia and her young daughter Liz came to live in Kirkwall on her own for a few months to be near Meredith), Amelia prompts a streak of jealousy which finally pushes Meredith to purchase a ring and propose, (pushing past her repressed Catholic ideology). Amelia accepts.

2009:

A year later in the winter time, Meredith and Amelia legally enter a Civil Partnership in Scotland, as gay marriage did not become legal until 2014. For them, it was not so much about the law as it was the symbolism of recognizing their relationship as legally binding. In this time, Amelia expresses the desire to have another child, and they agree to have children through IVF using donor sperm and fertilized eggs from Meredith, implanted in Amelia to be the childbearing parent. The timing of this process works well as it just became legal for lesbian couples to get access to IVF treatments via the NHS by November of '09.

2011:

By early 2011, Meredith and Amelia give birth to fraternal twin daughters. Margaret Isobel Stannard and Johanna Siobhan Stannard are born, healthy and well. Meredith takes maternity leave for the first year of her daughters' lives. When she returns to work, she receives a promotion to Prison Warden, invoking new responsibilities at the Penitentiary and a much bigger paycheque. She runs the prison much like the military, following strict regulations and laws, and cracking down on contraband and illicit dealings within its walls. The prison soon earns the nickname The Gallows, as often, many prisoners feel that their time there is so horrific and cruel, that they would rather take their own lives rather than continue to live under the same conditions for the rest of their sentences. This repeated problem begins to arouse the interest of a few detectives back at the Scotland Yard who knew Meredith when she was an officer, wondering if they have a case to investigate for cruel and unjust punishment. The Penitentiary goes under a few inquiries and investigations with Meredith at the helm, but each time they try to find evidence of her practices (e.g., violent interrogations, undue punishments for bad behaviour, corruption at the administrative level, etc.), they seem to come up shorthanded with nothing really to persecute her without the case being thrown out by the judge.

2015:

It is at this time that Meredith and Amelia begin the process of moving to the United States permanently. It is not a decision that comes easily, but one Meredith is willing to do now that Maggie and Anna are nearing school age, and she herself has saved up a lot of funds. Throughout the year, Amelia has most of their things sent stateside, and starts adjusting the twins to attend school by September in the U.S. With this in mind, Meredith tenders her resignation to complete by the end of the year, December 31st. In the meanwhile, Meredith plans to to visit Amelia, Liz, Maggie, and Anna during holidays. However, news breaks that a local London family has been murdered, and while full case details are not provided to the general public, Meredith's friend Anne feeds her information because the killer appears to have the same M.O. as the man who killed the Stannard family (grooming one of the teenagers, gaining access, killing all of them using that trust). This sets Meredith on an spiral once again, fueling an unhealthy obsession trying to link her family's killer to the case. With Anne, they begin to look through the details and piece it together in their off duty time. At this time, Meredith isn't sleeping well, and she picks up her old cocaine habit out of stress. She is distracted and doing poorly at work. Her mind is obsessed with this new case. She also ends up using the resources available to her as the Warden to get a most recent known location of the man that killed her family through the parole system, and with the acquired insider details from Anne, gets confirmation that police suspect it is the same killer responsible for both families' deaths. In the interim, she visits Amelia and the children for American Thanksgiving, but it is noticeable that something isn't quite right with her. Amelia does not say anything, and Meredith returns to Kirkwall after a 5 day trip. It is in this time, that she creates a meticulous plan of operation for premeditated murder; she intends to go to London in advance to lure the man into a false sense of safety to then kill him in time to leave the country on her already-booked one-way flight to the United States. However, after locating the man and instigating a fake flirtation at a local pub to convince him to take her home, Meredith's confidence wavers; it ends up going a lot messier than she’d planned - both out of a revenge-filled rage and being high on a lot of cocaine. She does her best to clean and remove any trace of blood, and in her panic calls Anne to help her. Together, they end up ditching the weighted body in the river before Anne drives Meredith straight to Heathrow to board her scheduled flight In this time, however, she has had her phone turned off for the past 72 hours, leaving Amelia to be calling and texting with no answer. She calls to put out a wellness check on Meredith at their home in Kirkwall. However, when Meredith lands stateside on New Year's Eve, she turns on her phone and receives all these messages, but does not answer them. Instead, she takes the next cab to their NYC brownstone home, finally meeting an exasperated Amelia, asking to put their daughters to bed because they need to talk. Much of the conversation is hushed, spoken out on the balcony in the snow. Immediately, Amelia asks who knows, and Meredith confides that her old friend Anne is in on it. Creatively, Amelia plans a strong alibi, provided that Anne will cover her -- she suggests that Meredith was having a 3-day long affair with Anne, for old time's sake before moving away to the US permanently. They get Anne to agree to testify to that story, but still invest in hiring a powerful lawyer to handle the eventual case. Meredith ends up being cleared as a potential suspect as there isn't enough evidence to convict, and her alibi with Anne is firm, given their past relationship.

2016 to Present:

After settling in New York, Meredith and Amelia focus on raising their daughters together, while maintaining their long-term relationship. When gay marriage becomes legal in the U.S., they officially get 'married', and both women hold dual US/UK citizenships. While with Amelia's money, they do not have to work, but Meredith chooses to, pursuing her corrections career in an American setting, getting into the management of a high security prison. Amelia eventually expresses interest in pursuing politics and Meredith quits to support her wife.

Some headcanons of note:

As a young girl, Wentworth brings Meredith into the Catholic church with him (especially as her mother Maighread was an Irish Catholic as well) - which, of course, at the time in England, still had a bit of lingering anti-Catholic sentiments in its own context as well as in the context of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland. However, this had Wentworth instilling a strong sense of faith in Meredith at a young, impressionable age, which she still very much carries with her to this day, going to church every Sunday.

In her teens, Meredith became well aware of her attraction to other girls. While her friends were busy being 'boy crazy' and dating, she had no interest. In this way, she used her faith as a cover (she was just a good Catholic, and would be saving herself for marriage as an adult). That said, she did have a very homoerotic relationship with a close friend that, unfortunately, never came to fruition and Meredith was preoccupied with Wentworth's declining health, and then enlisted in the military. Which, eventually, she met another lesbian who wasn't exactly out when in the military (especially since the U.K. military had anti-homosexuality laws in place for its army until 2000), but had a first relationship with this woman when they were off duty and keeping it a secret for the many months they were together.

Meredith has dealt with a lot of repression and Catholic guilt about her sexuality, but given that she has no family or ties to anyone important, she also has no one to judge what she does behind closed doors, eventually coming to accept herself but keeping her personal life extremely private.

With the money she inherited from Wentworth's account and his pension, along with her own income, Meredith was able to sell the house and put a payment down on a secluded home in the rural area outside of Kirkwall, commuting to work as the Prison Warden. She prefers to drive a 4 door Mercedes-Benz sedan with tinted windows and drives it standard/manual.

Meredith's house is a fair size, with dark colour themes and wood furniture and hardwood flooring, with marble tiles in bathrooms and the kitchen. She collects classic literature and history texts, and spends much of her time in her office when she is not working. There are lots of trees around her property, and the house is almost a quarter mile back from the road.

Meredith boards her grey mare at a local stable and rides her a few times a week. She once thought of competing in hunter-jumper events, but with previous injuries and an ageing body, she prefers to go for solo trail rides for a couple hours on weekends, and otherwise working her horse to keep her in shape during the week.

Meredith has PTSD from both her childhood trauma as well as her stint in the military; she is not in therapy (and she should be).

Meredith is also addicted to cocaine, using frequently throughout the workday when stressed and dealing with a lot of problems. (She can often be found doing a line off the counter in her personal office bathroom). This is mainly the cause of her erratic behaviour as of late, though stress and paranoia are additional factors.

She keeps a childhood picture of herself and her sister Amelia on her desk; it is one of her most prized possessions.

Cullen is her second-in-command at work, but they also have a more personal relationship outside of it (well it started when she asked for his help outside of work hours and then they've become weirdly friends but also he's like a pseudo-son and she invites him along to events sometimes).

Orsino is a social worker with the NHS who stands to help and represent the prisoners and is a constant thorn in Meredith's side.

Meredith tends to dress in classy business wear, preferring pantsuits and jackets with heels most days, though sometimes a blouse and pencil skirt. She seldom wears jeans or casual clothing outside of the house.

#HEADCANON.#TIMELINE.#r: Meredith x Lady Amelia #v: MODERN #[ i'm making Meremelia part of my canon version of this verse ]#[ i'm open to writing her outside of it of course! But to me the crash out is so deeply connected to what Claire and I have plotted so ]#[ also her murdering a man fits better than her just having a cocaine crashout ]#drugs tw #murder tw #VERSES

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