As a gift to @littlecrittereli, may I present Diego and his crime family from the WK Reprogrammed AU!
Theirs is a terrible and cruel life. Full of broken hearts, sorrow, grief, and so much death. To lose someone you love — to see them slowly die and be replaced by a monster you can't even recognize — is the greatest tragedy.
No, I will not shut up about this series :) (Critter, you will be paying for my therapy)
I fear @littlecrittereli 's WK Reprogrammed AU has completely changed my brainchemistry and left me staring at a wall for the past 2 weeks.
My childhood hyperfixation has been revived. I may or may not recover...
ANYWAYS, I simply had to pull together some moodboards for the brothers and their story.
Also this song has been on absolute repeat ever since it was recommended in one of the chapters. Truly fulfilled my reading experience and left me borderline sobbing.
The brothers, they are my children, the precious human beings, they deserve the world.
#this is about a certain thing happening on a certain streaming service#its like. actually important that they get sent to the countryside specifically bc of the war????? it informs literally all of their#decisions and values and hangups#also dont you dare take digory and polly out of the edwardian period#how dare you#man im trying to be positive for this but its harddddd via @quecksilvereyes
Magic has been with you your whole life, Lucy Pevensie.
Magic as your father carried you for the first time, as the honey slipped through your mother's lips the first time she said your name, tired, breathless, soaking you in her love.
Magic in your big brother's smile as he carried you in his shoulders, magic in your sister's hands as she helped you get dress.
Magic in the letter your little brother hurriedly scribbled when he broke your favorite toy, even if he didn't want to write it.
Magic in your smile, your voice, the wonder in your eyes as you learned about the world. Magic in the twirls of your skirt as you dance around the living room, some old song playing in the background while you play.
Still, you never realize it's there. You fantasize about it, thinking it to be impossible, but holding at the same time that childlish hope that, one day, you will prove to everyone that magic is real.
And, one day, magic finds you. It calls you and you answer, and it hugs you, and it pulls at your clothes and pushes you until it completely surroinds you.
Magic holds you as it enters through your skin, your eyes, it makes it's way though your veins, your lungs, and it welcomes you home, as if it's your mother, as if you had always belonged to it.
Magic holds you close as you call for your siblings, and it holds them too as you rejoice in the feeling. You are loved. You are brave. You are home.
Magic gives you a name, a body. It forges your bones and tints your smile. It grows in you as years go by, just to spit you at the beginning one more time. It abandons you, forcing you back into a body that doesn't belong to you anymore.
At first, you feel helpless. You feel weak, and small. You feel broken. Then, you start seeing the magic, still around, still with you.
There's magic in your parent's eyes as the six of you finally reunite again. There's magic in your brother's voice as he reminds you that not everything is lost, that you're still Kings and Queens, even away from home.
There's magic in the way the rest of the kids at school look at you four, when you walk by. Magic in the gentleness that stayed with your sister, in the way your brother is now able to solve almost every conflict. Magic in that language that you still can speak, unknown to everyone else. There's magic in you.
When magic calls you again, you already know what to expect. How to act. What to do. And you know when it ends that i hasn't really ended. You learn to wait for it. To embrace it the third time it calls you.
When magic calls you again, you know it's the end. You know that, finally, it won't spit you out again. As you step on that train, surrounded by those who love you, you know what to expect. And, as a sharp pain breaks your body, while your blood splashes over the floor and your clothes and your big brother reaches to protect you and your brother with his body, magic heals your wounds, calling you into it's arms one last time, begging for your help, and you answer.
Louis Leopold Boilly, Two Sisters / The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) / Krystal Sutherland House of Hollow / Cover of C.S Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Pauline Baynes / Unknown / Little Women / Chen Chen, 'when i grow up i want to be a list of further possibilities' / Louise Glück, Descending Figure / Prince Caspian (2008) / C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian / Florence and the Machine, Grace / C.S Lewis, Till we have faces / Hunger Games: Mockingjay / unpublished poem by me (@folktail) /Jessica Goodman / just like falling snow by @zannolin / C.S Lewis, Till we have faces / unknown / unpublished by me (@folktail) / poem by @inkskinned
This quite literally made me rethink my entire Instagram because yes I want my feed to look like it belongs to a Narnian royal living in the modern world displaced from their magical kingdom 😭
You've been ripped away from your kingdom. Your body split in half. Forcing calloused fingers stained with blood into the hands of childhood again. The weight of the world no longer a burden you could carry with a birdlike frame. Your brow naked without heavy gold biting into its skin. Your side weak without a shield bearing red.
How far do you go, fallen warrior?
Your presence no longer brought trembling. Men turned towards you in disdain with half-smirked lips, looking down instead of above. They tossed their daggers -- Boy, Student, Child -- and you learned to wield them. The air crackled as you felt the wind of another world come upon you and suddenly they were scrambling away with broken mouths and bloody noses as your hands became weapons oozing scarlet. Once again you grinned like a lion.
How far do you go, crimson king?
You've become your own sword in a land without. Sharpened every edge until glancing your way felt like slicing one's heart on a blade. But you found your own battlefield. A reckless domain of flying metal beasts that spit fire and destruction. No longer were you tied to the earth. You grew razor wings that gleamed like death in the glare of the sun. A silver dagger slicing through the perfect blue until your eyes and the Northern Sky became one and the same. Whooping loudly, howling madly as you dived down to hell. A king once again.
When she looked into the mirror, she expected to see Lucy.
Lucy the gay and golden-haired. The one with the wind in her hair and the earth at her feet. Eyes of the Eastern Sea glistening in the light. Friend to any Narnian.
Lucy the brave. The valiant. The lionhearted.
Instead, she saw Susan.
Susan the beautiful. The gentle. The logical.
Mother queen of Narnia. Eldest daughter of her name. Mother-away-from-home of the four Pevensie siblings. The radiant Southern Sun. The crown jewel of Cair Paravel.
How she hated it.
Hated the reflection that stared back at her every day.
Yet no one ever seemed to realize why.
She had once heard her sister asking some nymphs and dryads in that lilting voice of hers whether there was some form of enchantment or potion one could take to change the colors of one’s eyes or hair. They had laughed politely in their soft, sighing way and replied that they were unskilled in such arts. One replied rather darkly, “Such tricks were only practiced by the Great Witch. You would be wise, my Queen, to avoid it.”
The room had fallen silent at that, and her sister never asked again. But she still often caught her in front of a mirror, sighing over wild hair or her smattering of freckles. Pulling her cheekbones tighter and wishing for a lovelier nose.
And it was in those moments that Susan wanted to scream.
How could her sister not see her blessings? To be the queen of hope and light and future. First into battle with nothing more than a dagger and a heart as loud and fierce as the Great Lion’s. Last to leave as she tended to the wounded with nothing more than love and fire-flower. The Queen of tales and magic and song, weaving stories from the air that kept the oldest and youngest completely entranced and captured by her wonder.
Susan ran her fingers through her hair, the color of raven’s wings, gleaming in the moonlight. How she itched for a knife to cut it all off in one fell swing and feel the sudden lightness overwhelm her with new life.
But she couldn’t.
That wasn’t logical.
Wasn’t Susan.
She was supposed to be calm. Level-headed. The voice of reason. Keeping her siblings from broken bones over childish antics. Saving them from severed heads from foreign dignitaries because of foolish, sharp-tongued words spoken without thought.
She was supposed to be the steady-hearted. Because while Peter was the head, she was the rock they all stood on. Leaned on for comfort. Counted on. The mediator of every argument. The olive branch of peace in every battle. The last one to pick up a blade.
Because she never stared death in the face. She created it from afar with a bow in her hands and an arrow that struck true. She took lives without blood soiling her pretty little hands. Getting stuck under her nails. How irrational that would be.
She glared into the mirror as she ran a finger across her scarlet lips. Grazed a hand across her crystalline blue eyes.
“Such beautiful eyes I have never seen before. Are you certain they are not the Northern Sky’s as well?”
She remembered his height. The smell of his breath hot against her neck. All she’d wanted to do was scream. But instead she had smiled like the sun. Tried to step away.
But it hadn’t worked this time. He had gotten too close. And as she’d grabbed for a knife that wasn’t there, Edmund had appeared from the shadows. The King of the Western Woods — where a body can be buried and never found — had stared daggers into his soul and with his silver tongue spat out threats that’d sent the man running.
She had been nineteen. Protected by a brother two years her junior.
That same night, she had locked herself in her room, grabbed a dagger with her favorite daffodils encrusted in the handle, and held it up to her gaze. She’d let it touch her cheek and imagined trailing it across her face, slow and gentle as a kiss, leaving behind a scarlet path of misery. Cutting up her lips and gouging out her eyes until she was no longer a beauty, but a monster.
To be feared, rather than loved.
The blade had been tempting. She’d loved the cool feel of it against her skin and had been about to let it bleed red when a knock had come from the door. A frantic whisper.
“Su! Help me out of this ridiculous thing, would you?”
And so she’d dropped the knife, tucked it back into its box, and pulled her role of eldest sister on like a coat. She’d opened the door with her typical frown and let the barest hint of an amused smile creep into the corner of the lips she had almost carved off as she’d let Peter — the Magnificent — stumble into her room, clawing at his impossibly tight collar with a sheepish look on his face. The only solid remnant of the timid school boy he had been when they first arrived years ago.
Because that was expected of her. To always be there for her siblings. The mother in their new life, replacing the one left behind. The one slowly forgotten until the three couldn’t remember an older woman in their life like Susan at all. One with a soft and crisp accent that sang lullabies in their ears while buried beneath the earth, listening to the world above crumble in fires of rain. Brushed their hair and scolded them for the twigs found within. Kissed their battle wounds with gentle lips as she spoke words lathered in love.
No. There was never another woman.
But Susan remembered. And every day she longed for her touch.
That’s why, when she’d been undoing Peter’s collar and he had asked what happened, she’d dismissed it. Just another suitor pining for her affection. Even as she’d seen the fire rise in her brother’s eyes, she’d laid a gentle hand (always gentle) on his shoulder and insisted. With that soft smile of hers. And he had dropped it. Both with knowing looks in their eyes.
They couldn’t risk a war.
It was only logical.
Logical.
Logical.
Slash logical!
She was so tired of being logical.
How many times had she watched her siblings be loud and strong and reckless and wished she were one of them? And to be so natural in doing it. To throw a rock or start a fight or dive off a cliff into the warm waters below without a care in the world.
Lucy was the greatest of them all. Always singing and dancing to the rhythm of the trees. Making friends everywhere she went. A smile always on her face - if it wasn’t on her lips, it was in her eyes.
Those beautiful, glistening Eastern Sea eyes.
Always at home. Always bordering Aslan’s Country. Always seeing a Lion that wasn’t there, even if he was. Always whispering to him under her breath. Always knowing they would reach his ears.
Susan couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to Aslan. Felt his golden mane under her fingers. Yet he seemed a constant presence to Lucy. She could never understand why.
And how.
How could she be so free? Let the wind toss her hair in a frenzy as she scaled the nearest wall. Balanced barefoot along its edge with the recklessness of a young faun. Never slowing. Never stumbling. And even if she did, she was fine. Getting into scraps was just Lucy being Lucy. A young girl turned queen who was only expected to laugh and smile and bring joy to the people.
To be a beacon of light in the darkness. To just be herself because that was enough.
Susan dug nails into her skin, imprinting crescent moons that — this time — might never fade away. She bit her tongue. Raked hands through her hair, searing her scalp, as her chest began to shake violently. As her mouth tasted of iron and pure scarlet dribbled down her lip. The perfect shade.
Her lungs heaved, gasping for air. Her body quaking impossibly fast. Pale fingers trembling.
Turning. From delicate, to monstrous.
She scrambled through her vanity. Tossed aside silver and pearls with a horrible clattering until her hands found the edge of it, hidden at the very back.
She snatched it, tore off the lid, and grabbed the blade from its bed of silk. Daffodils bit into her palm, scarring themselves like the moons, and Susan held the dagger to her gaze once again.
Except this time, she didn’t wait.
She slashed it across her face, carving every fine feature into ruin — into misery — letting out a blood-curdling scream. She cut off her hair, ignoring the pain — for it was glorious — that was seeping from her snow white skin a bright shade of red. Forced the edge against the curtain of black until the raven’s wings were nothing more than jagged ends.
Then she stared into the mirror. At the new creature she had become. At the beautiful, glorious, disgusting hell she had made of herself. And with one final scream, she sliced off her eyes.
Susan blinked. And there she found herself.
Beautiful.
Stunning.
Whole.
There was no mess. No blade. No scarred skin or stubby hair.
No scarlet.
Other than the shade of her lips.
Because that would be illogical.
Irrational.
Imperfect.
She stared at her reflection and watched the mirror crack of its own accord, shattering and smashing to pieces at her feet.
2087
romaincrisis
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