Paris Burning headcanon: Belfast
She is handsome; she is witty,
She’s the belle called Belfast City,
When we go dancing, one two three,
Please can you tell me whose is she?
No City in their right mind would willingly give up Capitalhood.
And yet… Belfast might, if it would make her people stop fighting.
She longs for the simple days thousands of years ago when the biggest problems were surviving and farming. When she was adored and worshipped and cared for. When she was young.
She doesn’t remember exactly when things changed, but she remembers a battle and she remembers the first priest to preside over her lowly ford. She wishes there was some way to undo the damage that he set in motion, but she didn’t notice it at the time. Her people still worshipped her and put flowers in her golden locks, and all was well. It was several centuries later, when the English men came and put up a stone castle that she realized something had changed for good. She was no longer a goddess, she was a City. Others had made the transition before. Some never recovered from it. (That was the last time she saw Tara.)
Nothing felt wrong, though, even then. That wasn’t until later.
The first time she felt it, she thought it was going to kill her. Sometimes she still thinks it’s going to kill her.
Because people remember the division of Berlin and the wall that came tumbling down, but Belfast has one of her own. And oh, it has cracks, and an outsider might miss it because it’s marked in murals and minds as much as physical walls, and she thanks the Lord in Heaven (Catholic or Protestant? she doesn’t know; she thinks maybe both) for that because it keeps her mostly sane.
They fight, each trying to claim her for their own side. They write songs for her, try to woo her. One side made her their Capital (and she can feel that, she is that, and yet…). Sometimes they take to explosions, taking out chunks of her streets and snuffing out lives with vicious force. Sometimes it’s gun shots, picking off innocents and fighters alike. Yet other times it is riots, reeking havoc in uneven lines across streets and neighbourhoods, people falling and fighting and just trying to stand upright, swept up in hysteria and momentum until all Belfast can do is scream as she fights herself.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Both sides are a part of her, have been for so long that she doesn’t know when the conflict began, and they will stay hers for centuries still to come.
Belfast can’t count her scars any more, though sometimes these days she has the time to try. She’s covered in them, speckles of burns, round holes where bullets or nails pierced her skin. It’s a pain in her heart that they’d no longer call her a belle to see her, but they sing about her the same way they always have. That’s one thing they all agree on, at least - Belfast is beautiful.
