#joanwind

[overelegantstranger]

Joanwind (and Uskglass) & the color blue

Here you go!

angel, angel, whathave I done

I’ve faced the quakes,the wind, the fire

I’ve conquered countrycrown and throne

Why can’t I cross thisriver?

 Pay no mind to thebattles you’ve won

It’ll take a lot morethan rage and muscle

Open your heart andhands, my son,

Or you’ll never makeit o’er the river.

 He has been between them from the start. He was there inLost-hope’s raging winter, carrion-crow screaming from the towers – he wasthere in the swirling of her hair as she danced and in the sharpness of her tongue,and there in his endless, depthless eyes, in his grip on her hand as they ranbetween the blue-cast trees.

And he was there in his insistence on the old roads, in theburning whiskey of his grief, and he was there in her cold, hard anger, in hershouting and screaming and swearing. Innumerable ravens for innumerable towers asshe left him, as she let winter break her bones.

He runs like a river between them, hard and fast anduncrossed. Frothed with rapids and ready to drown.  

[overelegantstranger]

Fluffy Joanwind headcanons time: who steals all the blankets? Who cries at books/music/plays (and which ones)? Who remembers important dates and holidays? Who has an irrational fear and what is it? And lastly name a headcanon you have about them at random. <3

You realise that this is just going to make me go on about them even more?

i) Tom steals them, and Joan solves this problem by stealing him.

ii) Joan cried laughing at a Tom and David play, one of the very first, that she took John to when he turned eleven. If you’d told her she’d marry said Tom she’d have laughed in your face and stolen your pocket watch.

iii) Neither and both - they remember, but they see little point in acknowledging them (and then, six months down the line, yell at each other for it - wait these were supposed to be fluffy)

iv) Joan hates thunder. Hates it. She never used to, but it reminds her of gunshots now, and she can’t bear that.

v) Their wedding vows were medieval English ones, because these were the ones that had been around long enough to bleed into Faerie, and which means that Joan would have sworn to be bonoure and buxom, ie, meek and obedient.

[overelegantstranger]

black joan/tom brightwind: the good years

And love was a shape in the slippery light A flame on a moth at moonless night We were damn sure about it Caught in the arm of a blue-eyed storm Rain on cloth on muscle on bone We were damn sure about it And love was a half-blurred poem you wrote The creak in the moan of the hardwood floor Damn sure about it Well, I changed my name the day I left I cut my hair, I hemmed my dress I was damn sure about it You were playing piano in an empty room Ringless finger, a calloused thumb

[overelegantstranger]

graphic of simple harmonic motion for @bookhobbit​

They are the same, he thinks, underneath all the trappings. What she chooses to project is practicality, a sort of cutthroat indifference wrapped in plain black cloth. He's always been one for ostentatious. Perhaps that is an irreconcilable difference.

Well, he thinks, it's not like they'll see each other again

[overelegantstranger]

something dies when you fall in love: a mix for the hanged woman and the desperate prince

trøllabundin eivør // your rocky spine great lake swimmers // not harmless laura gibson // all the burning lovers isaac gracie // the vultures of cherry hill anna and the underbelly // used wyvern lingo // it can’t be you basia bulat // smother daughter // still trying nathaniel rateliff // take me down when you go smoke fairies // wicked game widowspeak // circles out of salt snow ghosts //

[overelegantstranger]

teeny joanwind thing

I found this in my drafts and I like it so there.

I blame people for this. They know who they are.

She wishes she could forget him. It isn’t as if he was the love of her life, or any such tripe. No.

But he was gentle when she needed gentleness, and jagged when she needed jaggedness, and kind when she never expected it. He was sharp and angry and hurt, just like she was, had an emptiness in him just like she did.

And perhaps she doesn’t miss his kiss, his touch, as much as she misses his warmth, and perhaps she doesn’t miss his voice as much as she misses the way he would hide smiles behind teacups or books in the midst of one of their quieter quarrels. Perhaps she feels his absence less at night and more in the morning, when she wakes up expecting the slow, tired blinking of his eyes and the mess of his hair.

They are small things to miss, she thinks. But for all their smallness they prove so terribly hard to forget.

[overelegantstranger]

leave the rest at arm's length

So I wasn’t intending to write a sequel to this but here I am.

Title from ‘Good Arms vs Bad Arms’ by Frightened Rabbit, approx 300 words.

leave the rest at arm’s length

She looks older when she sleeps, and he is sure that this is not the usual way of things. Of course she is not so young by Christian standards, not when her life and her age are taken together, but nevertheless he had always seen youth in her. But without the softness of her eyes to distract him he can see the tiredness in her face, the way the world has stretched her thin. He lifts one hand and brushes his fingertips lightly across her back. He can feel the rippling of old scars and something clenches in his stomach; yes, he has noticed them before and yes, with the way she is he is hardly surprised that someone took issue to that extent but still. Familiarity doesn’t make them less affecting and a mere sharp tongue could not justify that web of scars - he ignores the fact that he himself has killed for less.

She shifts, pressing herself tighter against his side, one arm stretched across his chest. He knows they cannot last much longer - not because of each other, no, her words do not cut him so deeply that they cannot heal and nor do his her, if the way she holds him now can be trusted. But they are both too far cracked for this to work, too hurt, so much so that neither are quite like themselves. But that is a problem for another day, he thinks, turning slightly into her embrace and just for a moment pressing his face into her neck and breathing.

She stirs and mumbles his name.

“Shh,” he whispers, and for once in her life she does, falling quickly back to sleep in his arms.

Yes. A problem for another day. Right now this is something close to enough, and it will do.

[overelegantstranger]

and i’d give you all my love but it's not enough

@bookhobbit prompted 21 and Joanwind from this prompt set and so here! Have fic.

G, 250-odd words, title a little paraphrased from Sayde Price’s Child.

She wakes up slowly, the room green-cast from the sun through the ivy-covered window, and it is a good few seconds before she realises he is still in bed beside her. His hair is all a mess across the pillows and the collar of his shirt is pulled down over his shoulder, revealing a patch of paler skin under his collarbone, and he is still fast asleep. His chest rises and falls slowly, ever so slightly slower than is natural, and he breathes almost silently. Every so often he mumbles something, so quietly that she can’t tell if he’s talking in his sleep or not.

Very carefully she raises one hand and trails her fingertips along his exposed collarbone with all the gentleness she can muster. It’s strange, she thinks, that someone who makes her so - so jagged, so barbed, so full of anger and bitterness and pure fight, can also make her so gentle.

She is not often a gentle woman, hadn’t even realised she’d had gentleness in her until Johnny was born, and yet she aches with gentleness now. He brings it out in her at unexpected moments and as much as she can tell they are headed towards a very messy end, well. It might not be that much of a stretch to say it gives her the faintest 0f hopes.

She swallows and reaches up, brushing his hair out of his face and tucking it behind his ear.

“Joan?” he whispers, blinking, his voice hoarse from sleep.

“Good morning, Tom.”