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reviewdiaries · 1 year

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Nancy x Ace and the case of miscommunication in 4x07

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of their actions and a butt ton of miscommunication coming back to bite my poor idiots in the butt.

Just when Ace thought they’d had a moment and could go back to what they had been to each other, he’s finally started to realise that isn’t possible. Thanks Tristan, I may not trust you in the slightest, but at least you’ve given both Nancy and Ace a wake up call that action (or inaction) has consequences and you can never go back to how things were no matter how much you may want to. And on that depressing life lesson, let’s dive straight into this episode.

Every episode offers a new snapshot into Ace and Nancy trying to find out how they fit together. In 4x04 they had no contact at all (and they were both miserable). In 4x05 Nancy enforced a colleagues space boundary (and they were both miserable). In 4x06 Ace tried to fall back into his acts of service love language by catching Chunky, and Nancy tried to explore other feelings that were heartbreak and misery, and lo, they were both miserable.

Suddenly we’re back to gravitating towards each other like magnets. For all Nancy’s declarations later in the episode that she needs space, she needs Ace to let her move on, she’s orbiting him like he’s her own personal sun again. On finding that Ace is at Nick’s she barges straight in and doesn’t shy away from talking to him, making eye contact with him, drinking in the sight of him as though she’s parched by the lack of him for a night.

GIF Credit @loveyazy

Throughout the game they move to be next to each other, Ace moves to help protect her. They are constantly in each other’s spaces, sniping at each other, caring for each other - back on the same team. Just look at how they riff off each other getting Nick on board at the start. This is them finally meeting each other in the same place again and it is beautiful to watch.

The whole episode is absolute gold, up there with 2x11 The Scourge of the Forgotten Rune for me (Nancy Drew is at its best when it embraces the insanity and has the whole crew together doing crazy things), but I want to focus on that moment when Ace comes back to The Claw to see Nancy again. Sure he maintains that he’s there to pick up the silver, but he knew she would be there on her own and he is so desperate to try and talk to her without the others present and get them back on the same page again that he returns long after everyone else has gone.

And Nancy knows who it is the moment she hears his footsteps. These are two people so attuned to the other that they don’t even need to see. She knows from the way he opens the door, from the tread of his boots, from the scent of his shampoo, from the stuttered breath when he catches sight of her, from the way her heartbeat trips over itself.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

She’s been having the arguments she wants to have with him over and over and over in her head the entire time she’s been cleaning, and finally he’s here so she doesn’t wait, doesn’t ease into it, just throws them headfirst into confronting it. It had felt like maybe things would be ok, even though she was feeling messy and confused about that dance with Tristan, and for a lot of the game night it had been. But then Chunky and she’s been angry and spoiling for this fight ever since.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

Because she wants Ace, she wants to be with him, to love him freely and without judgement. And not only does she still feel like he’s abandoned her, abandoned them. But she doesn’t know how to unpack what happened with Chunky. Ace was cornered when she pieced it together, flustered and unsure and George and Nick were there and he didn’t know how to explain all of it. That he was trying to do something for her, for them, that Chunky was a metaphor and he knew he had to let her go even though it’s killing him. Splits him clean in two every time she looks at him like that. And he was embarrassed, that he couldn’t bear the idea that she’d know - that he’d seen her with Tristan, that he’d done this for her, that his heart was stitched so messily to his sleeve when it comes to her.

He wasn’t able to tell her any of that - can barely express it to himself. Tongue tied up when it matters the most. He’s always been able to talk to Nancy, but now - now it’s like he can’t unpick the words from his throat, his chest. Push them out beyond his teeth, caught up behind the boulder of the I love you that’s jamming his throat.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

So she doesn’t understand - how could she? And she’s furious and spent the last hours arguing in her head so she’s spoiling for this fight, desperate to provoke something after so much uncertainty. She’s tried pleading, tried telling him how she feels, tried giving him space, and for so much of this day it’s felt almost normal between them. Except for wanting to touch him, wanting to kiss him, wanting to take him by the shoulders and shake him into understanding how much she needs him. But it’s no longer her curse, it’s our curse, the last shared connection between them.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

And it’s his words back in his face - wanting to go back as they were, as friends. And hearing them back hurts harder than it should, a punch to the solar plexus as he clenches his jaw against the pain. She’s not wrong, she’s not hurling accusations, not telling him anything new. But when they’ve been close, so close, so close to touching, to what they had before, suddenly it’s like ripping his chest open and handing her his still beating heart.

GIF credit @nancy-drew

She’s calling him out, direct eye contact, she’s not shying away from him, from this conversation. From everything painful they’ve been burying and pretending was fine. And he knows he deserves it, still can’t find the words to untangle it so she understands exactly why they can’t try again to break the curse. To make her understand that he cannot lose her, the world cannot lose her, their friends and her dads cannot lose her. But he will put himself in harm's way a hundred times, a thousand, to protect her. If it’s just his life on the line he will throw himself on it just to see her smile, to touch her face, kiss her lips again. But he can’t tell her, can’t formulate the sounds, so he just keeps messing up and lying and hurting her with how much he’s caught in a net of his own fear and pain.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

And he’s so close at this moment. This moment of acknowledging finally that he was wrong, that they can’t go back. He never truly wanted to, his heart was never in it. Nick was right, there was too much tangled up in their friendship - that was never all there was.

They can’t go back, but he’s so damn afraid of forward, of what it means, of the risks they would take. But it’s there, poised on the tip of his tongue, the set of his shoulders, the tightness of his jaw.

GIF credit @nancy-drew

He is so close to saying they should try. That he can’t bear not being with her, that seeing her dancing with another man was like ripping out his heart, plucking out his ribs one by one. But he’s so afraid that she doesn’t want that anymore, that it was just a passing interest (that he isn’t worth it, never worth it, will never be worth it) that he can’t put the words in her mouth, can’t suggest it, has to hear it from her. He sets her up for her to tell him she wants to be with him, wants to try again. Is poised on the precipice with his agreement to try again caught on his lips.

GIF credit @nancy-drew

But Nancy is so battered and bruised and afraid that he’ll just leave again if she opens herself up that when he doesn’t say he wants to try again, when he doesn’t take the opportunity that she left dangling like a promise, she shuts down. And despite what she just said, that they never lied to each other, she leaves that firmly in the past and lies now. Gaze moving away from Ace - she can’t look him in the eye and say this. She lies. Tells him that she wants him to let her move on.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

Her body can’t carry on the deceit, moves towards him even as she’s telling him to let her go. Catches herself at the last moment and pulls back. Only looks at him again when she’s sure she’s steady, pulled herself back, won’t reach for him, leaves her hands fisted on empty air at her sides.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

Ace was so braced for her saying they should try again, you can see the shock, the desperate fear as his stomach plummets at her words. He thought they were moving towards trying again, and she’s pushing him further away, feeding back into his fear that’s not enough.

And for a moment they are honest. A beautiful sweeping breath of air, a last salvation moment for both of each giving the opportunity to the other to break the stalemate they’ve reached.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

They are both in so much pain, both so desperate to protect the other that they’re twisting the knives in harder. Showing a soft spot to drive in the next. And Nancy thinks that maybe, maybe by clearing the air, by acknowledging how heartbroken she is, how hurt and desperate he is, that Ace will finally step up, undo the damage before it’s too late and tell her they’ll keep trying.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

Clean the wound before it festers and turns septic. She needs Ace like breathing, can’t lose him but can’t stand the constant battle of yes and no, heartbreak and love, touching and not. It’s too much, layered one of the other over the other until she feels like she might crack beneath the weight of it all.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

But Ace has misread it. Thinks she truly just wants him to leave, to let her be, let her move on and be with Tristan. And even though it hurts, kills him, like swallowing glass every time he looks at them, he can understand exactly why she would want that and not him, Why would she ever want him? If she wanted him she would have said, she would have told him she wanted to try again. If you love something set it free - that’s all he can give her now.

GIF credit @nancy-drew

They’ve always been so good at communicating with each other, but somewhere in these last days and weeks they’ve fallen out of step. Stopped trusting their instincts, no longer believing what their guts are screaming is true. Nancy was so sure that Ace would understand - he’s always understood, even when she herself has barely been able to fit the jigsaw pieces of her feelings together. So him agreeing, saying they’ll take space is like a final brutal blow when she’s already been beaten bloody. She sways towards him again, unintentional, she can’t help it, moving closer to him is an instinct, he’s her home. But she can’t look at him, has to look away to hide the raw devastation in her eyes.

GIF credit @nancy-drew

He takes her silence, her refusal to look at him as agreement - of course she would agree, it’s what she’s said she wants. She’d tell him if it weren’t true, she’s just called him out for lying so everything now must be the truth. He turns to go, hesitates, waits for a beat expecting her to say something (anything). As he moves away she moves to occupy the space he’s just left. Even as she’s turning away from him she’s still subconsciously trying to move closer.

GIF credit @nancy-drew

She can’t bear to watch him leave, still half convinced he’ll say something, stop, turn around, grab her and kiss her and to hell with the curse. And he hesitates once, twice, three times. So sure she’ll stop him, say something. Not trusting that tug in his gut that’s telling him to stop, turn around, take her in his arms and tell her how much he loves her, that they’ll fight, they’ll fight until they’re free, and he’ll be there by her side every step of the way.

GIF Credit @nancy-drew

Nancy was frozen in that state of waiting, couldn’t move, could barely breathe, sure that at any moment the nightmare would end, that he’d understand, that he’d come back. But Florence starts up and drives away and then she breathes. Then she moves. Then she lets the tears fall. Because he left, just like so many others, even though she thought he was different, that he understood. He left her all alone, just like they always do.

#nancy drew #cw nancy drew #nancy drew cw #ndcw #naceedit #nancy drew meta #nancy drew analysis #nancy x ace #ace [redacted]#nancy drew spoilers #nace #the reaping of hollow oak #nancy drew 4x07 #nancy drew 4.07 #i love them your honour #but they're idiots #who need to move past breaking up #and back onto making up

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torchickentacos · 2 months

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Save me, May to December by Megan Fernandes. Save me

#but goddd. also shoutout to The Woman Who Turned Down A Date with a Cherry Farmer by Aimee Nezhukumatathil #idk. something about summer nights turn me into someone who yearns for people who i haven't spoken to in a long time.#when I was fourteen in the summer I remember running around the yard and having dried-out bamboo sword fights like children would #and a decade later I still have the skeletons of bamboo everywhere back in the woods because it's impossible to fully get rid of.#and every summer I step over the brittle bamboo corpses on my way to the blackberries #and I remember the hollow thunks that the bamboo logs made when my friend and I smacked them against the old oak trees.#how apt to remember someone by the one plant that's impossible to kill. you think you've got it down and every year without fail it returns #even when it's gone it's never really gone. What do you do with a fuckton of dry 17-foot-tall bamboo logs once you chop them?#dead corpses that won't decompose. they just haunt the forest floor and crack underfoot to remind you of their presence.#dry and brittle and sunbleached and splintering in the july heat.#we used to burn them but they'd pop and crack and remind me of bonfires and the smell of smoke in his sibling's car instead.#I think the only route is acceptance and maintenance. it'll never go away. you just keep it at bay until you move away from it entirely #you can't uproot it but you can run from it I guess #but what use is that when it even grows along the interstate because people plant it without knowing how determined it is?#anyways. tentative plan is to find something even more invasive to choke it out /j

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bemyvillain · 3 months

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Nothing like a lanky blond disaster that really sets my heart alight

#laurent of vere #oak greenbriar #fenrys moonbeam #wendell bambleby #jacks of the hollow

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urproblematicfav-arsonk · 9 months

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Currently thinking about Sparrow dooming an entire world to suffer and die to "protect his family". ya know, the family where he forced his daughter when she was very young to murder animals with her bare hands, his son who was a unwanted pregnancy and ended up hating because he was too unapologetically himself/not easy to control and his brother who fucked his wife for years and knowingly hurt him. And finally his father who he has never respected or liked and has felt neglected and made helpless by.

What happened with the flesh monster Normal released was obviously incredibly bad. But considering that it was in containment already, they clearly have beaten it before already. This wasn't some hopeless fight where Sparrow had no choice by to enact Code Purple. He just didn't want to have to put the hard and painful work of fixing his and brother's mistake.

It's why Lark never told anyone what The Doodler really was, it's why Hero was born, it's why they betrayed Nicky and it's why Sparrow committed genocide. Because it's easy. If they knew that The Doodler was just a scared child that desperately needed help then that means We Have To Help It and that's more complicated then killing it. Hero was born as a copout so the twins wouldn't have to fix this themselves and could just sacrifice their daughter instead. Nicky and Code Purple was just their way of shoving all this responsibility under the rug and getting to pretend that if they can't see it then it's not real anymore.

None of this was ever about Family or protection. It was always Lark and Sparrow trying to find a way to make this no longer their problem. The twins have always been selfish and violent. At at the end of they day they were both adults when they made all these choices and as painful and unfair as it is when you've been through trauma, you have to fix that shit yourself. You can't keep blaming your childhood or parents, you can't keep the cycle going and going on forever just because you're family didn't break it first.

#im willing to hear lark out cuz he literally seems nicer and more reasonable #but the twins are awful #i love them the way i love glenn which is u suck but god are u interesting #shoutout to the twins for going out of their way to hang out with Willy and Glenn on the Worst Dad Ever throne #maybe its my own trauma speaking but like sparrow's whole thing rings so hollow #he was protecting his family?? he just wanted normal to be normal and okay???#i don't believe that at all #he wanted to control and use his kids and Normal didn't fit into that #sparrow showing off his severely traumatized daughter as the golden child but tries to hide his developmentally appropriate weird kid #all because that kid wasn't a good shot or couldn't murder on command #dungeons and daddies s2 #dnddads s2 spoilers #dnddads s2 #sparrow oak #hero oak #normal oak

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brooklynislandgirl · 7 months

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@honorhearted {{xx}}

By the time Beth reached her fifteenth winter, she'd been married a countless number of times. Beneath the rose-bower her father had planted for her mother when the Boston house was still only it's foundations and her parents were a little younger than she is now, solemn in her best dress and her caplet for Mass. Under the graceful and slender arms of the willow trees just on the outskirts of the Setauket farm, where she pretended the well mannered old hunting dog was her dear groomsman. A full five years younger than Andrew and his friends, she was sometimes left out of their games and their education, thus making it necessary for her to play on her own. These weddings were sometimes rushed and sometimes languished until she was called in by her governess, Hannah, to take tea and some light meal. Not one of those nuptials lasted past an afternoon, and none were so much her favourite as the ones where she closed her eyes tightly and imagined Ben taking her trembling hand. Perhaps that was the truth of the tears and inconsolable grief that fell over her as a bitter pall when he went away to school and the family in turn moved inward to their fine new house in Pennsylvania. She could not know then that her father grieved the loss of her mother in child-bed, that their home had become a crypt to her memory, and that the new house was some salve for his spirit. He had never not doted on her, but perhaps that was how she had been forged…wrong, given more latitude than any could imagine. She should have been an excellent prospect for a happy future but in her heart of hearts, she has more in common with a younger son than all the society maidens of her acquaint. Each year that passes she is those twelve months closer to spinsterhood. The stirrings of war were perhaps a blessing as much as it is a curse, delaying the inevitable. She will at it's end ~and of course it must come to a conclusion, either in much hoped for victory or the purgatory of defeat~ be given to someone of her father's choosing. But here? Here is her heart's yearning. With straying lock eloped from its queue, with a body like mountain stones, with a countenance of brooding night, he is set over his papers. He hardly stirs, seems more effigy than living man. Then towers over her when he gets to his feet before her trembling fingers fully affix the token and she does not know what else she should have expected. They certainly have had no sweetness between them in these last days. She is as doomed now as she was all those years ago. He says nothing when she speaks and she steels herself to take her leave once the offering is given only to find herself caught within his grasp. Watches his mouth work for a moment and cannot look away from him. She half expects him to push her away but instead Ben chooses to caress himself against her palm. His gaze swims in the light of his candles, reflecting their glimmering light. Hannah is not here to herd her back to the house, nor is there a holy father in his black robes to rescue her soul from its imperilment. She is not so sure she would heed either one well with the way he is gazing at her, and with how her heart leaps in her breast as if to throw itself at his feet. His voice surrounds her like night and shadow when he asks the ribbon's purpose. But before she can answer, he takes hold of her face and kisses her forehead, ever so chastely. So close is he that she wonders if he can hear her heart beginning to crack. If only he could know what it feels to have him so close and yet unable to do anything about it. She is his friend, yes, but not as she should be.

He torments her with another peppering of kisses, his lips soft and tender as she dreamed they might be. Kisses that half cage her breath in her throat so that it staggers forth drunkenly and comes to a crashing halt against him. His fingers abandon her wrists in favour of her waist, a touch that holds a heavy sort of intimacy and her knees become as water. She melts just as easily as the wax being consumed by its flame on his desk. His next question, the caress of his mouth against the shell of her ear, turns that flicker to conflagration and were she a house, she would be only ashes. Pity then that she is only human and her own hands move from his chest. One rises to his shoulders and take perch there while inching its way toward his hair, while the other settles near his hip and fingers tighten. This purchase on him is all that keeps her upright, when all of her wants to simply sink against Ben. All of her turns to molten fire as his teeth graze against her skin. All the air in her lungs seems to dissipate in that moment as her heart sets a thunderous pace. As every last inch of her strives to be that much closer to him she rises upward, pressing her modest curves against him despite the fact that some parts of her are now painfully taut. She starts to nuzzle him in return before he catches her and draws her gaze upward ~she doesn't hear the little wordless sound that ekes out of her throat~ and he pours himself into her gaze. Hers is hazy with a certain sort of madness, half lidded in the dim light. Her throat rises and falls beneath that second caress as she manages a shuddering whisper. "Is ceol mo chroí thú, Benjamin." Thick dark lashes settle against her otherwise pale skin and her eyes close and her lips part. The time of her tongue slinks across them in an invitation to kiss her proper. She feels her belly tighten and it feels like a flock of birds startled from their brush take wing within her. Lost in the moment she is left standing there unsteady and bereft when Ben pulls away from her and she momentarily recoils. What has she said? What has she done that he would retreat from her? She takes a needed half step back to steady herself and above her gaze her brows knit marking her confusion when she opens her eyes and tilts her head. On his knees he looks anguished, not a thought of prayer or God anywhere to be found in his visage.

Something inside of her breaks. Neither anger nor despair, not quite hurt. She has no word for it but it puts mettle in her spine. Now empty hands smooth her skirts and she takes a sobering breath, blinking back the moisture suddenly gathered there. For a split second her lips purse closed and the corners of them tremble as she tries desperately to gather wisps of thought into something more substantial. When she does? She takes the few steps that kill the space between them. It feels strange to be able to gaze down into his face though she isn't much taller than he is this way. "I know," she begins slowly though there is kindness laced through her words. "Caleb let slip, why do you think I came? Do you honestly believe I could watch you ride into hell's embrace and not...not wish to have spent these last moments? I don't know where you will go. What you will encounter with your dragoons. But I do know that when you go, you will take all of me with you. Saints preserve, because...because I love you, Ben Tallmadge. That is all the truth that need live in my heart." She cradles his face between her small, trembling hands and this time she tilts his face upward. Every word she spoke is etched in the lines of her face, in the way her eyes darken before she lowers her face to his and presses her lips against his own.

#honorhearted #Your Ornament Tree|Ben Tallmadge #The Oak and the Ash|Ben and Beth #Blood on the Vine|Turn au #Jockey Hollow|Morristown 1779 #Winter Camp #terminally long post is terminally long #{{I say I am sorry but...we both know I absolutely am not.}}

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