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sprnklersplashes · 6 months ago

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fic commissioned by @andforthecoating thank you for your donation to Operation Olive Branch

"gabe & natalie. prompt: gabe as a ghost (ambigious if he is or just a hallucination, like maybe he can move things but it might be her doing it idk) that Natalie starts to see/hear at some point in the show and some form of sibling bonding (he takes care of her/they have a talk/her emotions around what he means for the family)."

(ao3) fanfic fundraiser

The house is quiet.

It’s to be expected; it’s close to 2am when Henry drops her home. Every house in the street has lights switched off and curtains drawn. But her house has always felt different, right from when she learned how to recognise it. The rest of the street is quiet, but the silence in her house feels heavier.

Henry says goodnight with a kiss on her forehead. She doesn’t need to turn around to know that he’s lingering there as she opens the door, headlights on and engine softly running.

So stupid, she thinks, as a faint blush creeps across her cheeks. So ridiculously stupid, she thinks as the smile on her face grows.

Boots in her hand, Natalie creeps through the hall and up the stairs. She’s still relatively new to this whole sneaking-back-after-curfew thing; before now, her late-night study sessions were confined to her bedroom. Still, she’s nothing if not a good student. Quiet on the balls of her feet, quick past her parents’ bedroom, opening her door carefully so it doesn’t creak.

Prom night begins to wear off as soon as she reaches her bed. It fades from her like rain running off a rooftop and she lets out a mighty yawn, limbs already sinking into the mattress. Her boots were tossed on the floor as she came in. Vaguely, she’s aware that she should take off her dress and probably her make-up too, but as her eyes fall closed she’s content with it being tomorrow’s problem. Half-wrapped in her duvet, she presses her face into the mattress, just inches away from sleep when-

“And what sort of time is this?”

Her eyes open.

Natalie bolts up, her thumping heart matched only by the echo in her head. Chest heaving, she scans her room as a small, hopeful voice asks if she imagined it. But she heard it, crystal clear. She couldn’t make that up.

As she reaches for the bedside lamp, the hair on her neck rises, the distinct feeling of being watched washes all over her. Her free hand grabs her purse and reaches for the pepper spray inside.

As soon as the light is on, she sees him. A figure stands against her closet. The scream is wrenched from her throat, and in her haste she forgets all about the pepper spray and chucks a pillow at him.

Her aim is off. It lands sadly just beside him. He looks down at it, bemused.

“Nice shot.”

“Who the fuck are you?�� she hisses. “And how the hell did you get in my room?”

“Oh, you love the descriptors don’t you?” he asks wryly. “The fuck. The hell.” Natalie is sitting straight up, pepper spray hot in her hand, plans forming in her mind. She could blind him with the spray, then grab the alarm clock and bludgeon him with it. She could grab a belt or the cord for the curtain and tie his legs together. Yet as the plans pull together, he just looks at her, and in his gaze there’s a familiarity that holds her back. A small, adamant whisper of you know him.

He crosses the room, his gait brimming with false confidence. In the lamplight, she can see the deep brown eyes, dark hair sticking up in every direction. She sees that he can’t be much older than she is.

Then, he’s in front of her. She holds the pepper spray up, eyes bright and hand steady. He blinks, then reaches out. His hand slips through her hair, so light she doesn’t feel a thing. When he smiles, there’s a sadness in it.

“You look so like Mom,” he mumbles. She isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or himself.

Natalie’s breath hitches, and all at once the realisation crashes over her, a tsunami wave against a tiny coastal town. Her head shakes because no, this is not-

She’s lost it. She has really, truly lost it.

“Gabriel.” The syllables tremble on her tongue, as if they don’t want to come together. Gabriel smirks, then bows like he’s on stage. Natalie’s mouth hangs open, the sour aftertaste of his name lingering there. Carefully, the pepper spray lowers.

They stand there, the silence so full that Natalie fears it will shatter. Gabriel rocks on his heels, his hands in his back pockets.

He’s beautiful, Natalie can’t deny that. Long lashes and big doe eyes that would drive anyone wild. Dimples when he smiles and a face that’s almost angelic. There’s nothing of her in him; his skin is peachy where hers is pale, his eyes sparkle with no red anywhere. He’s handsome, just as mom always said he was.

“You don’t look like your baby pictures.”

“Probably because I was a baby,” he says jovially. He speaks like it’s all one big game, which maybe it is to him. She doesn’t know how ghosts operate-if he is actually a ghost and not something conjured by her fucked-up mind.

“You have questions.”

“Not really,” she says. It’s false. Sure she has questions, the main one being ‘what the fuck’. She also has several things she would like to say to him and the list grows longer by the second. She clears her throat, pushes her hair off her shoulder, and settles for the most obvious one. “Why are you here?”

Gabe folds his arms, his shoulders wriggle. He smiles so innocently, so easily. Like it means nothing to him. Like it’s obvious.

“Is it so wrong to want to see you?” he asks. “I kept trying to talk to you but I just couldn’t. You’re my sister after all. I want to talk to you.” The word sister feels more akin to a slap in the face. She flinches and Gabriel’s eyes widen.

“You’re a pretty lousy brother,” she tells him. He scowls at that, like a kid being put in the corner.

“I mean… it was not my fault that I died, was it?” He gives a half-hearted shrug, face half-turned away. “Believe me, I was not planning on it.”

Everything hits her at once. Sixteen long, lonely years of living in this house, constantly cold in his shadow. Sixteen years of sitting like a forgotten book on a shelf and counting up every achievement and trophy in the hopes that they’d make her mother see her. Wandering the world like a ghost, like someone who was never fully born. Pausing her movie or closing her book because her mom was screaming downstairs.

It rumbles, a thunderstorm in her chest, until her fingers shake and her heart is pounding and Gabe is looking at her with concern all over his perfect, lovely face.

She grabs the alarm clock from her dresser and chucks it.

Gabe gasps and he ducks just a second before it hits him. The clock smacks into the wardrobe, the door shudders with the impact, then hits the floor. The back falls off, batteries roll out. The hands fall limply to one side.

And then she’s crying. She’s crying because her alarm clock is broken.

“Natalie?” There’s a knock at her door. Gabe freezes, his expression like a deer in headlights and at once, he dives to the floor and presses against the closet. Covered in shadows, Natalie can barely see him. All there is is the faint notion of him pleading with her. When she looks again, she sees him press a finger to his lips.

“Nat?” her dad asks again. She hastily wipes her face and rushes to the door, positioning herself so none of her room is visible. A voice whispers that she’s ridiculous, because if he looked in he’d find no-one there. But… look there’s only so much she can risk right now.

“You okay hon?” he asks. “I heard-I thought I heard you shouting.”

“I’m fine,” she replies. This part is easy. She’s become something of an expert at lying. “I-I saw a spider.”

“A spider?”

“Yeah.” She nods, taps her nails against the wood. “Really big one. I killed it though so it’s-it’s fine.” Her dad nods once, slowly, skepticism plain as day on his face. He studies her, sleep-heavy eyes drilling into her face. Natalie wonders what he sees when he looks at her. Gabe had said she looks like Mom. Does he see that too? The ghost of the woman he sacrificed everything to save? The ghost of Gabe? Did he ever look at her and see her?

“Well, good night then.”

“Good night Dad.”

She closes the door gently, with a soft and quick exhale.

Then she storms over to her bed, throws herself on it, and cries into her pillow.

Fuck, she was meant to be done with this.

It’s not long before Gabe sits down beside her. She doesn’t exactly feel it, not in the normal way. The bed doesn’t sink under his extra weight. Instead she senses him, like a small pull in her chest. When she turns over, she finds him cross-legged atop the covers, elbows resting on his knees and picking at a loose nail. His head is slightly bowed, eyes half-obscured by his hair. He looks normal. He looks sad.

“I hate you,” she mumbles. “I fucking hate you.”

“I know,” Gabe sighs. He pulls his knees to his chest and rests his chin on top of them. Guilt prickles against her skin and Natalie wants to scream because why should she feel bad?

They sit there for a long time. It’s quiet enough that Natalie could fall asleep if she wanted to. She has a feeling Gabe wouldn’t stop her and that’s what keeps her awake. Whether he’s real or a dream or she’s just straight up crazy, she wants to see this to the end.

“I was six when I found out about you,” Natalie croaks. “Because Mom forgot my birthday and then two months later she threw a party for you. I thought it was a make-up party for me but it-it was for you.” She sniffles. “Then when I was seven, I cut my hair real short. I figured since Mom had lost you I’d just look like you and give her you back.” She chokes, a ragged sob tears from her. “Mom took one look at me and ran out of the room crying.”

“I remember,” Gabe says weakly. She looks up at him, eyes blazing. Her hurt is a tangible thing; it hangs in the air like fog. “You wore hats for the rest of the year until it grew back.”

“What did you think?”

“I think you looked ridiculous with it,” he offers. And for some fucking reason, Natalie laughs. It’s a short-lived little thing, but it was there. Gabe pulls himself inward, his thumb rubs circles against his leg.

“I won’t lie to you,” he tells her. He curls in on himself, traces patterns on his jeans. “A lot of the time, I liked it. I liked when Mom looked at me instead of you. Hell, I pushed for it. Because if Mom was looking at me-it meant I was still alive.” He closes his eyes and breathes out. “It felt like I never died.”

“You did though,” she says. It’s so blunt and so cruel that she can’t quite believe she said it. “You died, Gabriel. And you were meant to stay dead.” She gasps, her chest and cheeks burning. The worst taste bitter and she spits them out. “It would’ve been better for everyone.” Hot tears roll down her face. “You ruined my fucking life and you want my sympathy?”

“I don’t want your sympathy,” he sighs. His head falls back, and the light catches the matching tears on his face. Natalie blinks. She didn’t know ghosts could cry. She doesn’t want him to cry.

“I never meant for any of this to happen.” His voice is hollow. “For this whole time, I never thought about what was happening to you. I just-” He swallows, shudders, looks down at his hands. “I was lonely. And I was angry.”

“Join the club.” It doesn’t come out quite as angrily as she meant it. Gabe looks at her, brown eyes so wide that she can’t breathe. At this moment, he doesn’t look like a monster or a ghost or a phantom; he looks seventeen. He looks like her brother. Natalie reaches for the hatred and the anger that she knows and it slips through her fingers.

Maybe she’s growing. Maybe she’s just tired.

“I’m so sorry, Natalie,” he says. And that squeezes her heart like a vice. It squeezes until the edges crack and the pain comes spilling out until it’s all over her and her bedsheets and it’s all over Gabe too, because he’s crawled over to her and his hand is on her shoulder and he’s sobbing with her. And she doesn’t want to push him away. She wants him to hold all over shattered pieces with her.

(How many times can a person be broken and rebuilt in one night?)

For a long, long moment, they’re silent. All they can hear is her beating heart and the catch in her breath and a car passing outside.

“I think in another life we were friends,” she says. Her voice breaks. She feels, rather than sees, Gabe’s smile. His shoulders sag, as if she took some weight from him.

“I hope so,” he mutters against her hair. It sounds real. He sighs, presses his weightless body into hers. Atop her covers, his fingers brush hers and while the physical sensation isn’t there, something else is. Something soft, warm, tickling her skin.

It feels like forgiveness.

“Get some sleep, kiddo,” he tells her. “I’ll watch over you.”

“Creepy,” she mutters. Gabe averts his eyes as she steps out of her dress and dumps it on the chair. She pulls on a t-shirt and Gabe sits quietly as she scrubs off her make-up. He shuffles aside as she flips over the covers, her eyes half-closed. She’s almost certain that he won’t be there when she wakes up.

“Hey,” she says. “One more question.”

“Of course.”

“Are you real?” She lifts her heavy head, forcing her eyes open. With tiredness blurring her vision, helooks more hazy. He could fade away in one blink. “Or am I actually crazy.”

Gabe chuckles, a warm, throaty sound. His fingers brush her hairline.

“Would you believe me if I said I don’t know?”

“Yeah,” mumbles. Her eyes fall closed. “Yeah I would.”

Isn’t it a classic Goodman trait, to not know if you’re real or not?

She wakes late the next morning, when the sun is already blaring through her window. Her room is aglow, painted in yellows and oranges.

The alarm clock is back on her table. The hands tick steadily. The closet door is solid, intact.

Her blue dress is hanging against it, carefully pressed and her boots laid underneath.

She smiles.

#next to normal #natalie goodman #gabe goodman #next to normal fanfic #next to normal ff #natalie my beloved #goodman siblings my beloved

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espumado · 4 months ago

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Guys, you don't know what just happened to me!! I love soundtracks so I stopped to listen to The Bear's, i found the official FX playlist on Spotify and was listening to it when suddenly a podcast starts and I was like???? So i looked and it was about a horror film??? I, tring to understanding, went to the FX site to see the playlist and the episodes and saw that it was the song from the beginning of the ep5- Children (the lullaby) with our beloved Natalie💖...So what happened was that the music is from a horror film and instead of putting the soundtrack they put on this podcast!!! And I don't know if it was on purpose or just a mistake!!! (And all this reminded me of the people here who started a tag, I don't know who, about The Bear being a haunted/ghost story💀)

It's this scene, with this song:

And the Playlist has this podcast:

But i was like Nat why you have a horror movie song playing in your head??? And cause I'm curious, I went to find out more about the film, cause I didn't know the movie (horror isn't really my thing) and I discovered that:

The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American film noir thriller directed by Charles Laughton. Despite receiving negative reviews upon its original release, it has been positively re-evaluated in later decades and is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. “The movie is best known for Robert Mitchum's extraordinary performance as serial-killer-posing-as-priest Harry Powell, a menacing religious misogynist who marries widows for their money and kills them off in the name of the Lord. Having been jailed for stealing a car, he shares a cell with father-of-two Ben Harper, soon to be hanged for murder and the theft of $10,000. Before his arrest Harper hides the money in a rag doll belonging to his little daughter Pearl, making her and his 10-year-old son John swear never to tell where the money is hidden. The plot hinges on Powell's pursuit of the money and John's determination to protect his sister and escape from a psychopath whom others assume is virtuous. Hiding his past, Powell woos, then marries Harper's widow Willa (Shelley Winters). When she discovers his motives he murders her, and the children escape on a boat down the river. A tense chase ensues. The film exists in that cinematic no-man's-land of fairy tales for adults, is a children's fairytale – strange and idiosyncratic – but also a noir thriller, laced with the darkest elements of both genres: death, guilt, greed, poverty, cruelty, biblical references and a terrifying pursuit by the scariest of bogeymen. Laughton described it as "a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale". John, played superbly by the steely eyed Billy Chapin, is pivotal as the boy who is alone in perceiving Powell's true motives. In a tale of innocence and experience, he must quickly grow up in the most sinister of circumstances; he must resist adult hypocrisy and stupidity, and a new "father" who pretends to be loving, but is secretly abusive. Gripping in its narrative, the film is also frequently and darkly humorous.”

“Thinking of The Night of the Hunter in terms of its visual impact on other filmmakers, there’s a striking echo to be observed between its unseen presence in films by Scorsese, Spielberg, the Coens, even Ari Aster, and the influence of silent cinema on Laughton’s own filmmaking choices.”

“We can notice the importance of one particular scene: the escape of the children in a boat (they are running away from the killer). This scene, being so important, is also one of the most memorable of the entire film. The components that make it so memorable are: setting, lighting, framing, blocking and music. In the river sequence, the usual realistic environment of the film disappears, giving place to such an artificial setting that it seems that we are watching a whole new film.[...] Again, we feel that the children are safe again in the boat, as they run away from their hunter.

“The river symbolise safety – it is what separates (even temporarily) John and Pearl from Powell. In a way, it is a metaphor for the transformation of a past full of terror into a brighter future¹ with Rachel.”

About the music: “Composer Walter Schumann called the heavy four brass chords that often accompany Preacher a “‘pagan motif, consisting of clashing fifths in the lower register,’” which cede to the lullaby “Dream, Little One, Dream” with a shot of Gish. This celestial lullaby foreshadows her adoption of the children after they escape downriver. In the opening and river sequences especially, audio-visions juxtapose fantasy and reality, and good and evil, to propel the children to safety.[...] In these sequences, Laughton’s visual constructions and Schumann’s score establish abstract contours that take root in spectatorial memory. When the overture transitions from Preacher’s pagan motif to a tranquil lullaby, celestial sounds and Gish’s presence seem to safeguard the children from Preacher’s tyranny.[...] Schumann’s pagan motif, Miz Cooper’s lullaby, and the sounds of the children’s river journey mix realistic tropes and emotional flourishes in the manner of 1950s melodrama films, which especially employed music to articulate these opposing poles. For Peter Brooks, music punctuates the wordless gestures of the melodramatic “text of muteness”: its sweeping rhythmic motions render space and time tangible to imbue characters—especially muted victims—with emotional depth².[...] Analyzed through a motivic model that binds characters to themes, Hunter’s river lullabies foreshadow the children’s eventual safety with Miz Cooper even though maternal figures are not visible.”

So there is this important and well-known scene in the film when the song plays. When the kids are finaly safe in a boat on the river (the part of the song they use in the series starts at around 3:55):

youtube

So basically: there's a father who hid some money in the kid's toy (which reminded me of the money in the cans of tomatoes- KBL); an orphaned brother and sister; children looking for shelter; during the escape they are they feel safe in a boat on a river (when the lullaby plays) and in the end they are adopted and everything is fine.

I wanted to understand what this means for Nat, what it has to do with her. When the scene starts the song says "fear is just a dream…" then she thinks about her fears: her brother, mother and a mom's funeral (Marcus), then the song continues "so dream, little one, dream", like, it's not real, no need to fear it!

So…this is ep5 called Children, where: 1-Syd and Marcus take his mother's stuff out of the house and talk about their family 2-we find out that Ever is going to close (a funeral will happen) 3-Marcus and Nat talk about his mother and to start a new project to honor her while Nat is resting from pregnancy discomfort 4- it's the ep The Computer appears and Nat defends Marcus 5- there are the Faks, including John Cena, talking about their family and the hauntings 6- Syd and Uncle Jimmy talk and he says he wishes he had done more for the kids (she reminds him that he is there for them) and finally 7- Carmy goes to the basement and finds a box with photos of the family (Donna and Mike and himself too and a baby that could be Nat?!!!) then some riffs of the song Mixed Emotions by Rolling Stones start and it cuts to the credits with the lyrics right in the part: You're not the only one, You're not the only ship, Adrift on this ocean. And that's it! Just these lyrics and then just instrumentals. They cut the song to fit the scene and without any other part of the lyrics!!!

Carmy my man, Nat needs you! And she was the one who reminded him in the first season: "did you know i recently had a brother die too?" She's trying. She wants help, she already told him, "the thing that pisses me of is that you never ask her how i am doing!!!" but he can't ask her that "because he feels trapped, because he can't describe how he feels, so asking someone else how they're feeling seems crazy to him" (like, he literally told her that in S1). They need to talk, they need each other, they need family (a new one probably...the restaurant...uncle Jimmy too?? She talked with him about be a parent last season and he is always there for them, saving them). Nat managed to talk to her mother, even asked for help (it’s not a solution for everything, but it was a start)...but Carmy...there's still a long way to go, a next season thing. But I think it may be a thing they need to do together somehow, i dont know...

Nat is afraid of her past, motherhood and knows family is complicated, she is looking for a brighter future¹. She and Carmy (and Mike) are children of a abusive/alcoholic parent and live with the consequences of that (some people here have already talked better about the subject). So they are like the kids from the movie, who are muted victims—with emotional depth², in a complicated family, going throught the river until they reach a safer place with better people.

And also, last seasons they showed the "pyromaniac tendencies" of the Berzatto brothers, there were these references to setting the restaurant on fire as if that was the solution to their problems...and now in season 3 I thought that had been forgotten...instead, the ep1 already starts with (first a train, and then) a lake, which appears other times throughout the season... Copenhagen Carmy living in a boat on a river!!!, and all happy and safe, drawing on a bridge over a river!!!

We also had a scene with water being thrown on the kitchen countertop and "flooding" the space (with a song by Trent Reznor and Atticus for a war doc! that the director describes as profound, haunting, unsettling and deeply moving!!!) in a moment that the crew is cleaning the kitchen and everyone is tired and overwhelmed; there is Donna talking about the fish tank that breaks in a dream that takes place in a place she doesn't know that looks gray except for the tank (surreal, like a noir thriller maybe). These don't seem so safe, but they seem to be about the past, something to be overcome... And there's even a scene of Syd reflecting in front of a lake... Several water references...and I have no idea if that really means anything...or if i am going to deeper into this?😅

...but Nat, dear, are you okay?!...you feel like in a horror movie with your remaining brother seeking safety together somewhere or with someone, running away from a curse, a haunting in your family??? (in S1 Carmy talks about how she blames the restaurant, not her mother or Mike, she says the place sucks up all the work, money and time and all they get back is chaos and resentment) But seriously, someone help her!!!...and Carmy...She must have felt very lonely this season with Carmy like that...But I guess this all means that everything will be fine in the end, like in the movie!

Seriously, I couldn't come to a better conclusion about this but it left me curious and confused... And of course, it might mean nothing and just be an interesting song from an amazing movie that director Chris Storer likes because he likes great movies and that's all 🙃 But with all the movie references, great directors and hauntings...maybe I'm not so crazy😅 <<<I tell myself to feel better🫠

#natalie berzatto #my beloved🥰💞#it could be just a song and this was unnecessary #if you guys think of something better let me know please #im dying to know if this means so #the bear #this show makes me insane obviously as you can see #berzatto siblings #carmy berzatto #marcus brooks #syd adamu #the bear is a ghost story #the bear is hauted house #The Night of the Hunter

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