#bbc the fall

[ngalitzine]

GILLIAN ANDERSON as Stella Gibson The Fall | 1.02

[h0lywaters]

everyone moved on from Stella Gibson too quickly

[fayetheskeptic]

- the fall - 2.01 These Troublesome Disguises

[aloysiavirgata]

How does Stella move on after the events of the Fall (all seasons)?

A houseful, a holeful

And yet you cannot

Gather a bowlful

What am I?

***

Burning in this cold fire, in this devouring frost. Turning into air, into incorporeal nothing. But still, still, she breathes.

Oxygen is so corrosive, even as we require it. In the end it always destroys. It’s the final electron acceptor; it’s why cyanide kills.

In the end, we slowly combust.

In the end only ashes rise.

***

She finishes the bottle of wine that night, carefully wobbling upstairs into the stale air of her bedroom. Stella turns all the lights on and strips her clothing off. She gathers her hair back into a ponytail so that she cannot hide behind it.

She stares at herself in the full length mirror and even in the warm glow of flattering bulbs, even with her fine swimmer’s body and her spun-sunshine hair, she looks ghoulish. Obscene.

Stella has delicate hellebore bruises on her face and throat still, petals of lavender and celadon in this thawing winter of her life. But she is good enough with subtle makeup to hide the worst of what Paul did to her face. She is a beautiful tragic Hitchcock heroine from the nipples up. Stella is neither cursed nor blessed with false modesty. She throws her shoulders back, takes a deep breath.

It’s her lower body that kept the real score.

Stella, bared, is violet and indigo and amethyst and aubergine. She has three broken ribs. The doctor said she’s lucky her liver wasn’t damaged. Said she’s lucky to have her spleen.

She’d smiled when he’d told her, like it was a good joke, a bit of lymphatic system humor among friends.

Stella leans into the pain now, in the bath of honest light. She splays her fingers, rests her hand against the battered skin and fractured bones. Presses harder, presses until-

“Christ,” she gasps, squeezing her eyes closed. The pain is so good and so cleansing, she -

Paul won and she must suffer for it, she-

Stars begin to fall across her vision and Stella moves her pale starfish hand away, sagging a little with the relief. With the endorphin rush. Hates herself for these weaknesses of her body. Of spirit.

Stella drops her eyes to her thighs, to the horizontal ghosts of loss and unhealed trauma. It’s the sharp pains that soothe her, the pure localized focus and the way the blood rises and beads and gathers into a thin line, into the shortest distance between two points.

Between then and now. It’s the fine dance of endocannabinoids, of endogenous opioids.

There are Wartenberg rollers in a velveteen box in her closet. She’s used them in bed with certain partners, but never beyond the light kinkiness of foreplay. She’s never sat alone and done herself real injury with them the way she sometimes aches to. Like a baker, like a sculptor, Stella knows the exact pressure her medium requires.

She had purchased them to tempt herself, to prove she was stronger than the hot honey sting that makes the hairs rise on the backs of her arms. She wants the pain badly now, the sweet bite of it, but resists.

She’ll take three fingers of Laphroaig later, neat. Feel it scald her from the inside, feel it kiss and burn. It’s not as good, but it helps and she already anticipates it.

Stella turns away from the mirror. She turns away from herself. She wants to call someone to come over, someone reliable she can trust not to make anything awkward in the morning. Rebecca, with her good hard runner’s thighs or Patrick with a cock you could raise a flag on.

Both.

She wants to let a stranger buy her a drink and take her to bed.

Take her up against a brick wall.

But it is not fair to make other people endure the shock of her battered torso. To make them choose between her injuries and her scars and her eyes and nothing at all.

She longs to swim naked and there are two pools she could go to alone, even at this hour, but she doesn’t trust herself alone in the deep, silent water. She is muscular; it takes work not to sink down and down and down.

In the end, in the inevitable dark, she lights a dozen candles around her deep soaking tub. Cedar and jasmine and frangipani and vetiver. Sets the bamboo bath tray with tea (Earl Grey) and lotion (Chantecaille) and her current book (Wolf Hall).

The water is atramentous and fragrant and fathomless as a night pool where selkies would bathe. Stella longs to cast off her human skin, to slip sleek and dark as a seal-maiden into the waves and into nothing.

She lets out a gasping sob as she sinks into the scalding murk, into volcanic salts and green oils.

The moon curls into herself outside the window. The light that falls onto Stella’s heaving shoulders is silver-white. Lonely.

The ghosts of stars who are also fire.

[samanthamulder]

GILLIAN ANDERSON as DSI STELLA GIBSON in every episode of The Fall [16/17] 3.05 Wounds of Deadly Hate (2016)

[arcadiabay]

FAVOURITE STELLA GIBSON QUOTES: 1 / ?

“I know that everything feels tainted, polluted. But it's not. We all have those voices in our heads, that tell us we're a disappointment, that tell us our work is insignificant. That it's not good enough, it takes too long, it's too hard. But when times are tough, we need tough dreams. But real dreams, not lies. Not an unreality like Paul. You need to fight for yourself, Katie, because right now... ..you're in danger.”

THE FALL ( 2013 - 2016 ) S3, E6 | “Their Solitary Way”

[i--am-the--one]

“Your presumption of innocence of women is even starting to amuse me.”

“In this case, it is quite justified by statistics.”

“What evidence in the case can confirm the sex of the killer?”

“There are none, but a woman is physically incapable ...”

“An ordinary woman may not be able to. But the one who is familiar with forensic medicine and criminology is capable. The one that's in contact with the crime scene and the evidence. The one that can manipulate the course of the investigation and the opinion of the police.”

“Miss Gibson… You do realize that we both fit into that category, don't you? A cop by day, a vicious vigilante by night... Just imagine: a murderous profiler and a lovesick police inspector covering up the tracks of crimes. What would be the headlines! Folie a deux. Madness shared by two. Let's drink to that. For insanity.”

[kory-anderss]

38 jamie dornan icons

under the cut is 38 100x100 icons of jamie dornan as paul spector in episode 1 of bbc’s the fall. screencaps were taken and edited by me. please like or reblog this post if you use them.