Relationship: The Bell Keeper & Meiri (OC) Category: Gen Word count: 5k Chapters: 1/1 Tags: Adoption, Family bonding, fic where nothing happens for a change
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Preview:
Meiri’s full name, though only a few select people in this world knew it, was Meiri Smith.
And she hated it.
Logically, she knew she shouldn’t really complain about a surname. Nobody had a choice in theirs, as far as she was concerned. Even Ed, who had changed his own first name to one he liked better, hadn’t altered his last one. And from what she knew of him, he’d probably really like to.
Surnames weren’t something you were supposed to agree with, just something passed down from kid to kid like a mandatory inheritance, no more special than a torn recipe book or a shitty painting nobody was brave enough to throw away.
Yet, she hated hers. Because anyone who so much as looked at her documents could tell it didn't really belong to her.
Meiri didn’t resent her biological parents for much. If for whatever reason they hadn’t wanted her, or simply couldn’t look after her, there were no hard feelings on her part. They might have been the first ones to, but they certainly weren’t the last. However, she held this one grudge against them – that when they dropped her off at Saint Anne’s during times immemorial to her, they only gave her one name. Their one claim to her, which meant as much as much to her as it probably did to them.
Which is to say, it didn’t matter at all, but she liked to think that whatever blood relative had given it to her liked the way it sounded as much as she did. Meiri liked her first name. She liked being almost perfectly in the middle of the list when her teachers took attendance. She liked correcting people with a glare when they pronounced it wrong and watching them trip over themselves to correct their mistake. She liked how it fit her, how you could read the name and look at her face and think ”yep, that’s a ‘Meiri’ alright”.
Which couldn’t be said for flipping Smith. Her baby self hadn’t been able to convince her parents to drop her off with their surname as well, hadn’t been old enough to understand what was happening and tell them to wait, to give her their name, she promised she wouldn’t go looking after them – she’d never had any desire to remain anywhere she was unwanted – but please, guys, please don’t let these stupid white people name me.
Or at least not this specific stupid white person. The orphanage assigned randomised surnames to every kid that arrived there without one, presumably so that the teenagers had a full name to give the cops when they arrived at their rebellious phase (most of them did, eventually), and of course, of course, she’d have to be given something as stupid as Smith.
Thanks, Terry.
At least Ed had laughed when he found out. She didn’t quite think he had a lot of room to speak, seeing as he’d named himself after that stupid statue in front of her school, but she’d been trying to find out the things that made him smile lately. It would make the rest of their lives easier, she figured, if she knew how to make him happy like he inexplicably knew how to make her.
(continue on ao3)
