three sentence fic thing for the premise "what if marisa and asriel had raised lyra" 👀
oh my beloveds, giving Lyra a whole different set of reasons to need therapy
She is thirteen months old, and has been back in her mother’s arms for longer than she was ever out of them - long enough that nobody asks questions any more, at least, not directly; there are whispers, still, of abandonment and a priory, but they are fading in the face of the here and now.
And history is written by the victors - Edward Coulter is not here any more, and cannot defend himself against the elaborate justifications given for his murder: he was a coward, he was cruel and callous, he had prevented the marriage that should have been all along and they are simply righting a wrong of long ago.
But the girl, not yet old enough to know any better, simply sees the home in which her parents are raising her, and hears their love and admonitions, with no inkling at all of what still lingers behind closed doors.
OKAY SO. apologies for structuring this poorly I'm racing my laptop battery at 2am.
first up a lantern slide from Philman himself:
"Mrs. Coulter selected her lovers for their power and influence, but it did no harm if they were good-looking. Did she ever become fond of a lover? Not once. She could not keep her servants, either."
and okay sure he probably means it as She's Just A Bitch but I'm doing what I want here so here we go
I think that lantern slide lends itself more to aro Marisa than it does ace Marisa but I find the idea so interesting of her not experiencing any sort of attraction, and so by the time she's in love with Asriel, it's too late, and she didn't see it coming. and if she never experienced romantic attraction and never expected to be in love, it makes it easier to marry for prestige and power, and worse when she does fall in love with Asriel. and they fell in love as soon as they met, this was fast.
(and, too, Asriel was a lord with lands and money. had they met before she met Edward, they might have been able to make something work, and a whole lot of scandal could have been avoided.)
so in terms of romance, it was never a factor until it was too late.
and sex? it's a tool. she knows full well how powerful of a tool it is. there's less lending itself to this argument but it's fun. she does not object to using sex, it'll do no harm if she enjoys it, but that's secondary to what this can do for her. and that's obviously something that a character does not need to be asexual to do. I just think it's fun if she is.
because asexuality and aromanticism are both a lack of attraction, not a lack of feeling it entirely, it does not rule out the plots as presented, but I think that if her feelings for Asriel are something unexpected because she hasn't felt any of that before and didn't expect that she would, it makes sense to me. and I just think aro and ace and aroace headcanons are neat.
It is rare that Marisa can escape to Asriel’s estates, but not entirely impossible, as long as she is careful, as long as she is quick.
It is almost a routine that they have, wherever they meet. Late nights and early mornings, separate doors and drivers paid extra to not listen closely to the lies they are told. Spring comes, and their time together is forced shorter by the sun; they flourish in winter, when darkness gives cover to their indiscretions.
She does not leave a trace. She never does. Just the scent of perfume that dissipates with an opened window, and footsteps in the grass that fade in the breeze.
song 42: The Hailene - Lorne Balfe (Wheel of Time season 2, volume 1)
Edward Coulter has little patience for being made a fool.
His wife - oh, his wife, sweet and demure as long as you don’t look at her for more than a breath - he should have expected this of her, and yet, he did not expect it so soon, dust yet to settle on marital gifts before whispers of her ways began.
He thinks he knows the man, the snow leopard by his side, but there’s nothing, no proof of it. Not that he has seen the man in weeks. Not that he would, housebound as he is, with a mourning wife and an empty nursery.
But proof is worth seeking to a man who wishes to play the fool no longer.
ficlet challenge, day one: details and/or scene in character’s own house (the decor speaks the loudest)
There is a gap on Mary’s nightstand, that could easily be awaiting a cup of tea, a cheap paperback from the charity shop around the corner; there was a Bible there, until two days ago, half a century of hands having softened the leather of its cover, but that Bible rests in the back of a cupboard now, waiting to be forgotten.
There is a jewellery box, a carved wooden box from her grandmother, filled with oddments rarely worn; there is a cross that once rested in there, now consigned to an underwater grave, irrevocably lost like the faith it once represented.
The same clothes hang in the closet – plain cuts, sombre colours, nothing truly amiss for an academic, but they are suddenly more constricting than they once were; a condemnation, not a symbol of dedication.
But it is the same mugs in the cupboard, the same tea by the kettle, the same home that she left a week ago.
It is the same as it was, unless you know what you are looking for, and although she sees the gaps, she feels that there is nothing missing within her. Something that was once core to her was as easily shed as the skin of a snake, as though it was always destined to be lost to her.
And time goes on.
The same nightstand, with an ever-rotating pile of books, a journal that she only keeps up for two months at a time, the light falling on it on a spring sunrise in the way it always did. There was barely a gap to be filled, only a habit to be broken.
(The Bible still rests where she first hid it out of sight. She cannot bear to be rid of it – it is no longer who she is, but it is still who she was, and even if nothing within it rings true to her any more, there’s a part of her that feels like she can’t part with it, not yet.)
The same jewellery box, the oddments inside it worn a little more often, joined by a few others picked up from Sunday markets, from boutique shops abroad. Her grandfather had always called her a little magpie, and she feels more like it now, as though there were tendencies she had spent years suppressing without ever quite realising. Her closet is the same – a few things shed, others picked up piece by piece over the years.
(The cross is still in its grave of sand and salt water, on a beach she hasn’t seen since that week. Two nights after that night, she’d stood in that same sand, and kissed a woman with dark eyes and a bright smile, and that seemed far more important, anyway.)
Light glints across the cupboard, the kettle, the collection of tea; the light is splintered shards of rainbow, caught in a stained glass windchime, picked up somewhere she can’t even recall. Light fills her home, as it always did, as it always will.
It is the same home, changing around her as everything changes within her, a sanctuary against the world. Mary cannot know, must not know, will not know, what is to change yet, until it is time for her to change with it.
[author's note: this could theoretically be a lantern slide to dust, dust, for all the days of your life, and is written in the same canon as it.]
