#nora b

[coopraptorofthesky]

Hi There : -)

Ah, lads. We're making music now

[flannelshirtandjeans]

Local women fall into the drink in the post-apocalypse and stop to dry in the sunshine because who likes walking in wet shoes. @losebetter‘s Bee is like a second sun shining next to Norma, bright and beautiful. (I love her, and so does Norma.)

[flannelshirtandjeans]

a real quick smooch from my Nor(m)a to @losebetter‘s Nora B (Bee!) for OCkiss18!

[losebetter]

something:

rook and nora would’ve been 110% happy adopting a child instead of having one biologically. they’d discussed it at length actually - when they made their decision to leave the city and move out to the suburbs and ~start a family, there was actually a stretch of somewhat tense time because they still hadn’t decided. 

nora at the time was just squeaking out her law degree, working on her masters in psych via rigorous online classes, and bartending - she and rook had only just cut directing the RHPS out of her schedule with the move. this meant that rook did most of the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively) for their move to sanctuary hills, but it also meant the idea of going and adopting a child so soon didn’t seem totally viable. there was nothing stopping them from having a biological child, of course, but both of them (especially with rook’s experience as an older kid in the foster care system who essentially got scooted out into the military) had reason to seriously consider adopting instead. in the end, they did decide to try for a biological child, largely because the timeframe would just work out better for them.

anyway. it’s why, later on (much later on), rook has zero qualms at all that neither of his children are related to him by blood. shaun & duncan are his sons, and he is still as fiercely loyal to and protective of his family as he would be if they were in any other configuration. he considers himself very lucky, actually, to have the kids he does and the husband he does - he wouldn’t have one without the other, and he’s in such a happy, fulfilled position in his own life that he can’t help but be grateful, and inspired to keep working his hardest. ‘~’

[losebetter]

various other cintiq scribbles - trying to learn and get better so i can possibly get my commissions done on there ;v;

[losebetter]

something i want to draw a comic about but probably never will: i’ve mentioned before that rook & nora have something of a diverging timeline thing going - where rook’s PT is unquestionably canon but i decided to take the reverse for a spin, too. and i’ve had this idea in my head of both of them resting with their respective LIs and having mirroring conversations about their previous spouse - i.e. “tell me about her/him.” 

this has stuck out in my mind for a bit because i think the first thing rook and nora say about the other says a lot about both characters in both universes - and uh. i’d really love to draw something for this but i just kinda did it headcanon style instead, so here’s that???? 1,200 words and irrelevant to most things, whoops.

(these sections might seem a bit disjointed - only because i’ve been developing rook for more than ten months and beat his PT long ago, and nora’s still very much in development. sorry!)

“tell me about her,” he says, and rook is maybe a little surprised - but maccready means what he says, especially when it’s just them like this, strength in vulnerability in numbers, the gentle bumps of his bare back under rook’s fingers.

it’s rook’s instinct to spare a thought for lucy - but he knows what maccready asked, and knows that if he’d wanted to talk about her just then he would’ve said so, so he says, “she was a force of nature.”

maccready is quiet (because he knows rook by now) and sure enough, rook has barely scratched the surface. “she was the most incredible person i’d ever met, she was my hero - she could do anything.”

and that’s what gets him about this, what always pulls on him, insistent where it hurts the most - because nora could’ve done this. if it had been him instead - she could’ve figured it out, she always had a plan, she was a quick thinker and an incredible leader with depths of knowledge behind her that rook could never even imagine, had always respected like holy ground. 

it was her, her power and her steady presence and her work ethic and her unfathomable determination that allowed him to heal from so much (how he grew up, his time in foster care, the military - during and especially, especially after - his grappling with addiction, on and on, there’s no part of his life she didn’t touch, like a guardian angel, like fate) and it eats at him every time he makes a mistake out here, in this wasteland so far from home. she could’ve saved them (any of them, anyone rook couldn’t), she could’ve made this work better, faster, she could’ve done it, she could do anything. she would’ve been the perfect general, the perfect railroad agent, she would’ve been unstoppable and she never would have lost as many people as rook did, she would’ve known, she would’ve seen the holes in any plans he made that he couldn’t see until it was far too late. she wouldn’t hesitate the way he has, she would know what to do not just through instinct, through the burn in rook’s gut that makes him get up and keep going no matter how many times he gets trampled on - she would’ve not only survived, but thrived, excelled, and been an incredible asset to everyone rook has met in his travels. she would’ve changed the world for the better the way she had before, he knows it.

and he cries about this - for her loss and for everyone’s, for the life he feels as though he has stolen from everyone else by being “the backup,” by letting her hold shaun so, so long ago, by being the one kellogg needed less, somehow - but he tells her stories too, carries her strength with him everywhere and tries to live up to it, to be good enough.

“tell me about him,” she says, the lilt of her voice almost inaudible with how softly she’s speaking, stepping so carefully even though nora is always happy to talk to her, is always honest with her.

and it takes nora a bit of thought (because that’s who she is, she thinks first, she always has), a few seconds of thumbing over curie’s side and searching for the most true answer she can give.

and what she manages is only three words - “he was kind.”

and she has more to say, of course she does, losing him was empty and cold but remembering him makes her feel so overwhelmed, so full of love for the most incredible, resilient, generous, caring person she’d ever met, that she can’t speak. nora is a quiet crier (she and rook had that in common) and she can’t keep from crying about this - not because of the loss, not exclusively, but because -

he was kind. he was kind. he was kind. she needs someone else to know that, someone other than the ghosts of all the lives he’d touched, she needs someone to understand, he was kind when it mattered, he was kind when it didn’t matter at all, nora knows she’s amicable, sweet and giving and understanding and a good friend, but rook was kind from somewhere else, somewhere bone-deep, somewhere she wouldn’t read about no matter how many psych texts she studied. he was good, he was gentle, he cared, and she knows in the blackest storm of her soul that he died without ever believing it, that he died before she could tell him, convince him (she was so busy, so focused, and she thought they’d have more time, they were supposed to have more time, they were going to grow old together, she worked herself to the bone for that and now -) and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to forgive herself for that.

(because rook and nora had so many friends!!! people that nora KNEW rook touched, who would've dropped everything to help him if he'd only ever asked, and sometimes he did but so many of his fights were lonely ones, were ones she could only support him through - but he DID it. he won, he did it and didn't even get cocky about it, just kept giving and giving to others - and they're all gone, too. everyone who knew him is gone and she has nothing to measure that by, she has no words in this whole new place to describe the incredible thing rook did for her and for all of them. all she has is "he was kind." because when it comes down to it, that really is all it was - but it was so much more than that and she's so full of grief that she can't explain how, or why, that anyone who could vouch for her is just as gone as rook himself)

nora is smart, and because she’s smart she understands with perfect clarity that rook was unbelievable, was everything he always said she was, was determined and strong - and that with his loss, an unspeakably gentle, soft light with a fire inside of it has been snuffed out forever in the cruelest possible way. and she’s pissed - everything about surviving in the wasteland pisses her off, that anything could dare steal from her what she fought for tooth and nail. she doesn’t mourn, not at first, refuses to let herself, refuses to let this barren desert win, refuses to let something so dead and decayed steal rook from her, not when rook had survived so much already and been so, so heartbreakingly alive despite it all. 

but it’s rook’s gentleness that sticks with her, his gratitude, his kindness, and even when he’s gone he’s still able to heal, still influencing her own actions toward everyone she meets, he’s still tempering her anger with understanding and comfort the way he always did.

[losebetter]

maybe someday i’ll actually finish something, haha. anyway: i’m still thinkin about that inquisitor rook AU and it’s gotten Out Of Hand

[sometimesfrancis]

Looking stun.