how do your ocs feel about home? do they associate it with a person? with a place? with a feeling? or are they just not sure? what does their ideal living space look like, and who would they want to live with? (you can answer for anyone, btw, but sterling, dane, and danny are my favs.)
I like Sterling, Danny, and Dane a lot too.
Anyway, before he turned seventeen and jetted out, home was synonymous with oppression for Sterling, naturally, I mean, his parents were constantly trying to beat the witchcraft out of him. For years afterward, home was a crummy apartment and a twin mattress and hard apple cider in the frigidaire and some cheap art on the walls. He never minded working for shitty wages, but the loneliness did get to him. After he married Ilona and finally made it into a rewarding career, home was just warmth and comfort and a family. I like to imagine that they moved into a comfortable but not too snobby suburb and Sterling joined the PTA and you’d have to ask pottersgal71 but maybe ilona coaches kids’ martial arts classes or something.
Dane is comfortable anywhere where he’s with Kim and their children, they probably had a flat for a while before moving into a house but circa the second war they were definitely living well in an estate that could rival the one he grew up in, with enough stolen art on the walls to buy an island. Growing up, though, home was the underside of a downtown freeway overpass and he was a graffiti artist, to speak metaphorically. He wreaked so much havoc.
Danny never really had a sense of home, growing up. She was always shunted to the sidelines, hidden from the media, and treated like a nonentity. She found what she thought was her true home in Liesel’s entourage, because Lise treated her well, but that didn’t turn out too well, and by the time she realized she’d fallen in with the wrong side of the war, she’d already taken the Dark Mark.
Between the wars is when she really develops a sense of what home means. She has her wife and their adopted children and for the first time she feels loved unconditionally.
For Lise, home is a dirty secret. She doesn’t even let the House Elves in her room, and she’d rather come in through her friends’ windows in the middle of the night to meet them than have them in her own home. She likes all-inclusive suites at the hotels her friend Tara Clark owns. She likes sitting at the bar until close. Hell, at one point she sleeps in the snow because she doesn’t want to go home but there’s nowhere else to go. Even after she and Phillip have their own place with their family, she can’t sit still. She’s got that Sagittarius wanderlust. Rome. Munich. Puerto Vallarta and the random Canadian diner on the beach. Panama; paella. New Orleans and the Cafe du Monde. God, her favorite was New Orleans. (It was her honeymoon. Mardi Gras. It was her favorite city in the world, she wanted to die there.) She drags her family all around the world and she won’t stop buying timeshares. She always says, “I’m a Dolohov, and we’re not afraid of anything,” but to be honest, she doesn’t know how to stop running.
And for Belle, home is the open road. Has been since she was six. Give her cheap motels and continental breakfast. She’ll sleep in the car. She’ll sleep anywhere she can have Camren’s warm body pressed against her. She’s home every second of every day, even if she’s trying to cross the street in a four-way intersection, as long as she’s with him and their children.