“How did you get those scars?” he asks, green eyes narrowing as he runs his fingers all over you, as if mesmerised by the traces he left on his skin.
He may not remember, but you will never forget.
“Car accident,” you lie, but he doesn’t seem to believe you.
“Do you have more?” he asks, hands fumbling with your belt, trying to sneak into your trousers.
“The Healers said it’s a bad idea,” you remind him, gently pushing him away. The hurt in his eyes stings more than the dittany did on your wounds.
You know he’s been rejected most of his life. You promised him it would never happen again, not with you. You swore when you married him, and yet you’re hurting him.
“Right…” he mumbles, but you take his hands in yours and kiss them tenderly.
“We’ll get your memories back,” you whisper, trying to blink away the tears. “I promise, my love.”
You take him to Godric’s Hollow, but he stares at the graves as if they belonged to strangers.
You hold his hand as you walk down the Hogwarts corridors, hoping he will remember something, even the ugly sides of you.
You run down the hill where you got married, the wind in your hair as he looks so alive and laughs when you both stumble and end up in a tangle of limbs among the wildflowers and the grass. You kiss his lips, and they taste like lemonade and sunshine. You let him take you there, slow and feverish, his lips parted on a gasp as he sinks inside you, and he still doesn’t remember.
You take him to Tromso to see the Northern Lights, and he stares at the sky with the same awe and wonder as the first time.
You take him to Marrakech to get lost in the souk with him again.
“We used to travel a lot,” he notices as he hugs a koala in Australia, a delighted expression on his face.
“You’d never been anywhere,” you explain, “so I took you wherever you wanted.”
You scream as you zoom along the zipwire to see the gibbons in Thailand, and he turns to smile at you, so full of life and yet empty of memories of you.
“Want you,” he whispers against your skin in a Venetian calle, his hand sneaking under your t-shirt, thumbing at your scars. He loves them because he can’t remember he put them there, and you won’t tell him.
“I love you,” you confess, as if the matching rings on your fingers were not enough. “Always, even if you can’t remember me.”
He doesn’t say it back.
You take him everywhere. Machu Picchu, Grand Canyon, Paris.
He’s eating a cherry blossom ice-cream in Kyoto when it happens, and his green eyes widen.
The ice-cream lands on the floor with a splat, and his hands shake as they grab the front of your shirt, pulling you closer.
The memories come back, one by one, your awful past and his mingling together, finding a reason to belong.
“I love you,” he says, and you smile through the tears.
Guys…. I JUST started travel at night. AND THIS IS THE FIRST THING I SEE. I WANT TO PROTECT THIS LITTLE CHILD AND MAKE HIM HAPLY AND GIVE HIM THE WORLD. Muriel deserves so much better than the hand he was dealt. It hurts so much just to read that sentence. ;-;
Done! I’m so proud of this piece and I hope y’all like it too!
I wanna thank @utterlyinevitable for letting me use part of their fic ‘Leakage’! It honestly inspired me to draw this in the first place! Though it’s been a long time since chapter 11, I poured my soul into this and honestly I’m really happy with it! Thanks to everyone that kept me motivated through this journey, I couldn’t have do it without y’all!
Can’t stop thinking about Chetney’s gift to Orym. Three moons. His quiet, “Big moon… little moon… and whatever comes next.”
Permission. We don’t know if Orym has granted it to himself yet. Permission to move on from grief, permission to love again. But there it was, said out loud for maybe the first time.
Chetney’s quiet gift telling Orym that he deserves it, when he’s ready. That there is life and love after death. And it doesn’t mean the ones we loved are forgotten or dwindle in importance. The mark they carve is right there with us forever, carried into the next chapter. And that’s perfectly okay.
The difference between Luke Skywalker single-handedly freeing his friends from Jabba the Hutt’s palace and Luke Skywalker standing on top of the stairs and whispering “I will not fight you, Father” is already a story about how “heroes are actually just people”, we never needed that to be deconstructed further.
I think a lot of people forget that Darth Vader being Luke’s father wasn’t just added for a twist, but as a deconstruction of revenge. It’s so easy to want to kill this monstrous cyborg but what if he was related to you? What then? It doesn’t change anything he’s done but it does sure change your perspective. Star Wars has always been subversive. Luke doesn’t get the girl, he doesn’t defeat the Empire, he doesn’t win against Darth Vader. It wasn’t the Jedi who triumphed in the end. It was the little farmboy who just wanted his father to come home.
Contrary to fandom belief, the Jedi didn’t just pluck children from loving families and take them to be trained–they were only taken in situations of extreme danger, or when the parents knew that they would live a better life at the Temple than they could provide on their own (and I’m sure the Jedi provided for families who refused to send their children for training, also if they did, again, Shmi was freed by the Lars family by the time that the Jedi checked back in on her, but that’s not relevant here).
Luke was being raised properly on the Lars Homestead, and Owen was never willing to send Luke to Obi-Wan. And Obi-Wan knew that Luke was growing into the Jedi he needed to be, even without his training: the boy learned responsibility, compassion, hope, and honesty. He was hardened by the desert, living in poverty and humility, growing strong and determined and skilled. His training was already happening under the tutelage of Owen and Beru…Obi-Wan was just there to bail him out when he got in over his head (which he did, because he’s a Skywalker).
Eventually, though, Artoo-Freaking-Detoo showed up and Obi-Wan realized “Well. Anakin’s droid is here. Padme’s droid is here. I guess it’s time to talk about the heritage…do we tell him that he’s a secret prince or a secret warrior? Which one’s more believable…*sigh*…the warrior” and so he hauled out the lightsaber.
But the important thing from Obi-Wan’s point of view is that Anakin Skywalker was already dead. And I think that he believed that Anakin’s pride and goodness meant that Darth Vader could only exist if Vader himself refused to admit that he had ever been Anakin Skywalker: in other words, Vader would neveradmit to having a relation to Luke. No matter what. And when that happened, when Luke killed the monster that had replaced Anakin, Anakin Skywalker’s spirit would be free.
So, yes, Luke was being trained to kill Vader…but none of them expected that Anakin still existed, or that he would connect the dots and realize that he had a son, and especiallynot that he would come out and say it. But he also needed to embarrk on the path all on his own–he needed to identify Vader as the head of the evil Empire he would stand against. Obi-Wan was never going to drag Luke from his home to go fight his father: Luke had to take those steps himself.
Thankfully, he did so right when his sister’s fight was finally about to end.
X for Edward Teach. X for treasure. X for the treasure Stede was searching for all along. X for a kiss. X to indicate choice. X for an unknown quantity or variable. X to mark something as wrong.
Bahorel dies first because there is no place for rashness in war; it is a calculated act. Or at least it ought to be.
Prouvaire dies second because there is no place for romanticism in war; on a battlefield, there is only blood and smoke and pain.
Éponine dies third because there should be no place for love in war. There should not be. And yet.
Gavroche dies fourth because war has no mercy. She cares not for the lives she takes.
Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly, and Courfeyrac die fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth because one cannot fight against war for she walks hand in hand with death.
Combeferre dies ninth because there is no place for gentleness in war; it is every man for himself.
Enjolras and Grantaire die tenth and eleventh because, even so, despite it all, hope persists and so does love. From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth.
The story of Birb: Birb came to us because of Lauren’s unapologetic compassion for helping an animal in need. Birb fell out of her nest in the AC Moore sign in Waldorf. We think she laid on the sidewalk for about a day before Lauren found her. We spent a day brainstorming and calling around to various places and no one would take her, they would only offer help. So, we had a Birb. We watched her grow up - begin to grow feathers, graduating from formula to seed, trying to fly and then flying, pooping everywhere possible, and after two close calls with the cats, she learned about predators. I’ve never been much of a bird guy but Birb was a special little fighter. She wanted to live so bad. It was inspiring. When she was ready, we let her go in the woods by a little creek, far enough away from people and cats. We watched her for a little bit, checking out all the new sights and sounds before we left her to it. We know she will do great.
