#sybelle.

[foretales]

❛ i said it before, didn’t i? it’s my duty to protect you. ❜ ( kinda feels like a @ sybelle & benji collectively/same room/moment kinda vibe idk?? )

the two are sitting on the couch in front of the vampire. the younger of the two , benjamin , has his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. he's eight to sybelle's , the girl with noise-canceling headphones who gazes at him with wondrous big eyes , almost eleven. her brother -- his stepfather -- is nothing short of a rotting corpse in the next room , but neither he nor sybelle is upset about that. no , fox deserved what he got.

 ❛ ❛    are you an angel?       ❜ ❜

benji grumbled something along the lines of , more like a djinn , but sybelle removes her headphones and does something she doesn't even do with him -- the girl throws her arms around this armand-that-isn't-an-angel-and-totally-a-djinn's waist in a very tight hug. she hates physical contact almost as much as she hates her hair touching her face , or how the way cotton feels on her skin , or most foods at the restaurant because it could taste different.

it almost makes benji want to trust this man. ( he hates the fact he hasn't been able to trust anyone , save sybelle , since he could remember. can't even remember his father's face or his brother. he hates that fox took that from him , just like fox took sybelle's eomma and their father from her. ) he wishes he could trust him. trusting got everyone he loved killed. trusting meant leaving palestine -- while amma often claimed that mumbai was her original home , that she only moved to palestine for his baba -- and leaving anything he knew of safety.

sybelle continues to embrace him. he will be wary , on alert for both of their sakes , but he can lend an olive branch to this supposed protector.

 ❛ ❛     -- fine , but only if i can play minecraft and sybelle can play her piano.       ❜ ❜

[sonataforsybelle]

//25 year old teenage girl voice : Gabrielle thinks I'm interesting ???

[supyrnatural]

sybelle has a scar on her left temple, usually covered by her hair but visible if she’s wearing headphones or a headband, etc. she got it during she and benji’s time alone with fox. he cracked her head on the side of the piano during one fit, and she was in and out of consciousness for nearly a week afterward. she doesn’t mind it so much, but people do tend to look at it funny.

[supyrnatural]

forgot to mention it in this, but all of it also relates to sybelle - according to armand in the book- disliking having someone in her head. her sinful, unkind thoughts shouldn’t be anyone’s burden, etc. they’re hers.

there’s also a layer of privacy, of course, given in my canon her exploitation by her brother is a lot more explicit: instagram stories, social media followings, etc. just her whole life, or at least a large chunk of it, online and controlled.

[supyrnatural]

     sybelle has struggled with what she will call "unkind thoughts" since she was a little girl. of course, most people will, but she took the lessons she learned in church to heart - very literally. love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. it was hard. she would imagine, sometimes, when fox would grab her arm too hard or pinch her or say something disparaging, she would not first think that she ought to love him - instead, she imagined hitting him, or pinching him, or shouting at him. sometimes she would wish something bad would happen to him, like stubbing his toe or burning his hand. these are, of course, natural thoughts for a kid to have in that situation . . . but sybelle would immediately feel overwhelming guilt. she wasn't following the rules. she'd pray, or play hymns, or sometimes not play piano at all as a penance ( but that was only for the worst of the offenses, like wishing he'd step into traffic or imagining herself with a knife, and then of course when she did play she'd feel guilty because she'd not waited the right amount of time ). when she did once tell someone about her more dire thoughts, her dad, he immediately chastised her. pulled out the bible. they prayed together, that she'd be delivered from sinning in thought and word and deed, etc.

     it didn't really help. they got worse, at least to her. she couldn't stop them. and then she'd worry, sometimes, that because she thought the bad things they'd happen. she'd play a hymn and that would stop it. she'd say a prayer, or read this verse, et cetera, and that would let god know that actually she knew it was wrong, she didn't really want it.

     the day her parents died, they were all of them crammed into the car because sybelle had wanted so much to go to church. it was near christmas, and it was snowing, but not yet a blizzard. earlier that week she'd gotten annoyed at her father and mother, she can't really remember why, but she'd had another unkind thought. that something would happen to them and make them sorry, sorry they agreed with fox so much or sorry for shouting at benji, something. she hadn't yet performed her act of penance - that's what the church was for. but her father hit a patch of ice and it didn't really matter after that, because the something had happened, and "it was my doing."

[supyrnatural]

the appassionata fixation really began at her parents’ funeral. everyone thought she should play. that it would be a sweet send off. she pleaded with fox not to make her, she couldn’t, please. and he got angry and said well it’s the least you could do after killing them. and he did, later, come back with some little cake to apologize but it was all she could think about. she agreed to play. her head still rung from her own injuries, but her hands were ( mercifully, fox said, luckily, he said ) completely fine. she was meant to play hymns. her father liked it when she played hymns. everyone did. but what came out was a very . . . frenzied ( mad, her brother said, crazy bitch, he’d later say ) rendition of the appassionata her mother adored. they had to take her out of the church to get her to stop.

[supyrnatural]

swift to its close ebbs out life's little day earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away change and decay in all around i see o thou who changest not, abide with me

[supyrnatural]

     ❝ i didn't like it, ❞ they're the first words she's said all night. that's alright. it isn't like with fox, who would shout at her for not speaking. don't you say anything? don't you do anything? she can be silent and no one will press her for more. sybelle glances behind her, as though checking if someone had heard. she didn't want to be rude. the show had been something . . . experimental. too noisy, everything happened too quick and all at once. ❝ the music was all wrong. and the piano was out of tune. ❞

@maiitre liked for sybelle!