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#everything about Connor and Logan fascinates me

stinkybreath · 11 months

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thoughts about Succession characters as parahumans

(finally, a post I am qualified to make and not just have the impotent idea for)

Ignoring the fact that they’d all be Cauldron capes wait actually NOT ignoring that bc there are such delicious ways this could shake out wrt Logan and the siblings and I’ll probably ponder about that

First. Logan would be a natural trigger blaster. Something touch-based and difficult to control; think of the marks on his back for trigger event (pretend that it doesn’t matter that this would have been prior to the arrival of Scion lol). And the guilt over Rose complicating his feelings about a blaster power… his touch becoming undeniably deadly, which in turn reinforces how scared the siblings are of him and ALSO makes them crave his affection even more because he would have been even more sparing with it… and he’s so volatile that a power that requires rigorous self-control would be just chefs kiss perfect irony for him.

I don’t think Ewan triggers. I think Caroline spitefully gives millions to some anti-parahuman causes post divorce.

As soon as he gets rich and influential enough to know you can buy powers, his mind is on his empire, his descendants. He makes an offhand, absentminded promise to Connor to buy him a vial when he’s “old enough” that he immediately forgets and Con never forgets.

It would be funny to say Con gets a stranger power, but I don’t think he triggers despite everything he goes through. I do think Shiv gets a stranger power, though. From a vial, yes, but the misogynist dismissal from everyone around her no doubt influences her frame of mind when she takes it. I think she buys the vial “with her own money” to preempt whatever way Logan might make his offer hard to swallow. Undecided on the power specifics (chime in if you like. On any of this!)

Kendall is what got me to make this post in the first place. I was rotating him and his water motif in my mind and it struck me that ah, we could make this cruel in a parahumans way. Again, power from a vial. Gifted to him by Logan on his 18th birthday, the heir comes of age, so every time Ken gets any significant benefit using his power, he knows it wouldn’t have happened without his father. My first few ideas were too jokey or literal so what I’ve decided on is that he’s a shaker, the ability to project an aura that intensifies the feelings of anyone near him and also a very lightly toxic miasma. You’ll notice these are kind of weak and shitty and that’s because that’s exactly how it should go down for my number one boy. He feels guilty for being so ungrateful or useless with his shitty powers but he knows that there are thousands of parahumans out there with better ones. The aura can really help him in the boardroom but it can also screw him over and he is not good at predicting which way it leans. He can turn the aura on and off but the miasma is involuntary and so makes him a bad candidate when it comes to promotion time whenever Logan dangles that carrot in front of him.

Roman is the only sibling who triggers naturally. It happens when he’s a preteen and he gets in a bad fight at school, something bad enough it should’ve killed him. He gets a changer power, which resonates with how uncomfortable he is in his own skin. First idea that came to me is that in reaction to blows, his body creates new temporary orifices to absorb/avoid the damage. The way this interacts w his discomfort around sex and simultaneous neediness, not to mention his sexual identity, would be fascinating.

#I AM ROTATING ALL OF THEM SO FAST.#parahumans #wildbow #succession

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spoopydooblr · 10 months

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My King Will Be Kind Chapter 6 / Kendall Roy x OC

an: u ask i deliver. (spot the stella girl references) as always please let me know what you think and/or send in requests!

tw: death (logan), cursing, smut - pnv

It's after she has a mini-panic attack in the stall and has to wash the sweat off of her face without ruining her makeup that Stella left the bathroom. She took a deep breath, knowing she was weaving through crowds of the most powerful people in media and politics. It couldn't possibly get more stressful. Now she had to sit in a private lounge with the Roy's and pretend everything was okay. She really didn't know Kendall well enough to know if he was going to defend her from his siblings. "Ken!" She spotted him from behind, grabbing his shoulder.

He flinched and she immediately knows something's up. His eyes were red, like he was trying really hard not to cry.

"Are you okay?"

"Uh, I'm looking for Shiv, uh," he frantically grabbed her hands. "My dad..."

His eyes darted around and he winced when he talked like he was in pain.

"Stella girl, I'm sorry, I have to go."

"Oh?"

"My dad, he's uh, not fucking doing well."

Her heart dropped for him. She knew the feeling all too well. "Where is he?"

"On a plane over the Atlantic Ocean. With fucking Tom. He called Rome and he's on the line with him, but we need to find Shiv."

"Oh my God."

"I know, I know, it's bad."

"Go find her, I'll be okay."

"Are you sure? I'm sorry, I--"

"It's okay, just go."

Minutes later a smaller boat pulled up next to them and took the Roys and who Stella can only assume is their publicist. She watched them go.

Stella stayed for the wedding, being one of the only people in the seats. News got out about Logan and everyone left. He heart hurt for Connor.

Wind ripped through her hair as she watched the couple say their vows. It was a perfect night and she missed Kendall. They were going to have a fun time, despite what his siblings would say. She never even got to meet Shiv. Stella wondered if she even meet her at all now.

Though she didn't like to admit it, Stella was starting to want to settle down. She was going to be thirty soon and hadn't had a serious boyfriend in years. Kendall was the first man she had slept with in a long time. Weddings always fascinated her and she wanted a big one of her own.

She imagined Kendall micromanaging their wedding planner. He had already done it before, though, and that worried her. But even though they had just started dating, she could tell they were both serious about each other.

"And you may now kiss the bride!"

Connor kissed Willa, holding her tightly. Stella was sure he was hurting, too.

She left once they got back to the dock, declining Connor's invitation to an after-party for his campaign.

"You're like family now." He had said, hugging her. The couple had thanked her enormously for staying for the ceremony, something she thought was the obvious choice before she saw the attendance.

When she got home she immediately called Kendall, leaving a message that he would hopefully listen to soon.

"Hey, um, Ken, it's me. I just wanted to check up and make sure you're okay, um..." she paused, choosing her words carefully. "Call me if you need me. I'll be there, I promise. Any time, Ken, um, seriously." Stella stuttered through the receiver, knowing how fragile he was.

It was two days later at 4 am when he called. Stella never kept her ringer on at night, but ever since Logan died she didn't want to miss Kendall's call.

"Hi..." she whispered.

He was silent for a second, his voice cracking before he spoke. "Hey."

"How have you been?"

"Uh, it's been rough. I-I need to talk to you."

"Okay, Ken, let me get my shoes on and I'll be there." Stella shuffled around in bed, trying to get her bearings. She pulled the phone away from her face, revealing the time. "Oh shit." She whispered.

"No, I'm here."

"Where, baby?" She stumbled around her room, turning on the bathroom light. Her tiny dog squinted at her from his perch on the bed.

"I'm at your place."

Usually, Stella would be mortified that Kendall was going to see her apartment, but she knew he was hurting. That being said she remembered there were dishes in the sink and underwear on the bedroom floor.

"Oh, God, what?" She accidentally let her surprise out.

"Fuck, I'm sorry, I'm like, fucking, ambushing you at your home."

"No, no, Ken, it's okay." She heard him sniffle on the other side of the phone. "I'll be there in two seconds."

Stella threw on a sweatshirt and slippers and put her hair up.

"Kurt." She looked at her dog. "Please be normal with the nice man." The little dog could get a little too excited and wake up the entire apartment complex.

Taking long but anxious strides, Stella reached the door.

The man she saw before her wasn't the Kendall she was used to. This Kendall wore sweats and had stubble lining his cheeks. Even his short hair was a mess. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, a pink blush all over his face.

She studied him, unsure if he needed a hug or just wanted to walk in.

He moved closer to her, his breath becoming more uneven. His hand softly reached for hers and she took it, pulling him into her.

"It's okay, Ken. I got you."

She felt his fingers grasp her back as if she was going to break the hug.

"I'm not leaving you." Stella stated. He cried into her, sobs racking his body.

They moved to the bed where she sat, cradling his form. His head stayed in the crook of her neck, cold tears falling into her collarbone. Body partially on top of hers, Kendall pulled Stella in at the hip. The tips of his fingertips slid under her sweatshirt, but it wasn't sexual. It was like he needed to feel her skin, her pulse, just to make sure she was alive. And she felt so fucking alive when he touched her.

After his cries died down, Stella spoke, her voice a whisper in the early morning air.

"I lost my dad last year."

Kendall's head was now on her chest, relishing in the sound of her heartbeat. She was so vibrant and different than anyone he had been with. It was hard to imagine she had gone through what he was going through now and come out the other side.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It's not about me I just, I just wanted you to know that it gets better."

It was really what he needed to hear. The black hole of grief was swallowing him up. It was like she always knew what he was feeling and what to say.

"I know your relationship with Logan was...tough. But it doesn't make it hurt less."

"I know." He croaked out.

A hot tear soaked her sweatshirt. "Do you need anything?"

"Uh," he lifted his torso up, laying on his side next to her. She turned over too, their faces across from each other.

She gave him the most genuine smile and his heart hurt with too many emotions.

"We can go to bed, we can get up, we can get Chinese food..." her eyes lit up as she said the last suggestion. Stella knew Kendall probably hadn't eaten in a few days. She traced his bicep, "I could really go for some lo mein."

"Okay, fine, yeah." He sighed, knowing she was forcing him to get something in his stomach. "Pretty girl gets what pretty girl wants."

She blushed, pecking him on the lips. "Let me get my phone."

Stella ordered late-night takeout from a place down the block while Kendall laid next to her, staring at the ceiling.

—————————-

Kendall was able to get down some fried rice, which was surprisingly better than most of the high-scale restaurants he was used to.

"This is fucking delicious, Stell." He said, sitting at her tiny kitchen table. Stella had Kurt on her lap, as he was now up for the day. The dog looked at Kendall quizzically from across the table.

"Sorry." She said, petting the dog on her lap. "He'll bark if I don't hold him." She cringed. "He has attachment issues."

"Uh, don't we all." Kendall half-joked. Stella snorted, earning a small smile from him.

"You know you can stay here for as long as you want." She stared into his eyes. "You can avoid the craziness here, if you want."

He nodded. "I would. I would. I really fucking would, but...I can't." He rubbed his eyes. "I gotta be somewhere in like, five hours."

Her heart surprisingly sank. "Oh, okay."

"And it's not that I don't want to stay," he assured her. "It's not that at all. But the company doesn't take a day off when dad dies."

She nodded.

"I probably have like," he looked at his phone, which had been mostly untouched for the last few hours. "Thirty more minutes."

—————————

They decided on watching an episode of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which was Stella's favorite show despite being from Westchester.

She had planned to show him her favorite episode and cuddle, but their hands were all over each other the second their bodies hit the couch. It was different, though. They knew each other better now. Movements were slow and meaningful.

Stella gently pushed him down, lips still grazing over his neck. Her hands found his waistband, pulling down the sweats.

His cock pulsed, straining against her clothed core. She ground down on him, fingers tracing over the head of his penis in between them.

"So hard for me, already, baby?"

"I'm not that fucking old." He smirked, admiring her from below. Stella took of her sweatshirt and shirt, her breasts exposed.

Kendall took one in his mouth, tongue circling her nipple. A soft moan escaped her lips as he kneaded her other breast. She allowed him to give her some pleasure, but Stella made sure that Kendall was feeling the best he could. No teasing tonight, she was going to cater to him. He slipped on a condom, pumping himself off a few times.

"Let me ride you, Ken." She connected her lips to his, pulling down her shorts and underwear.

He was a stuttering mess underneath her as she lowered herself down onto his cock.

Her body seemed to remember him, as the stretch from his thickness wasn't as bad as last time. Kendall moaned, hands snaking around her hips, guiding her movements. Stella was secretly glad as she was still not the most experienced at being on top, even at almost-27.

Her hands fell to his chest, raking her fingers down his torso.

"God," he choked out. "I swear you...you have the tightest fucking pussy ever."

He's throbbing inside of her as she swivels her hips on him, his eyes moving back and forth from her face and the bounce of her tits.

Mouth open and head tilted backwards, Stella's lost in pleasure when Kendall flips them over, pushing into her slow and full. Her leg is wrapped around his hips, moaning every time he pushes into her.

"Gonna come for me, Stella girl?"

Her walls clench down on him and the stars in his vision explode. He bites her collarbone and they come together with a groan.

He's still inside of her when she speaks. "Don't try to fuck away the pain, though. Been there done that."

"I can try?" He chuckles. "Right?"

"I think," she kissed him slowly. "I think it's been way over thirty minutes and you have to go."

He looked at his phone on the bedside table. "Fuck."

#kendall roy #kendall roy x reader #kendall roy x oc #kendall succession #succession

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pynkhues · 2 years

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Tell me more about kenstewy and eye contact?

It's actually not even just a Kendall and Stewy thing to be honest, I'm broadly fascinated by the way Kendall avoids eye contact and the different ways people deal with that, because I think it says a lot about certain dynamics, and not even just necessarily dynamics with Kendall. This whole cast is made up of such incredible physical performers, so getting to see them bounce off each other and respond to a behaviour like this is just a lot of fun to unpack.

In particular at the moment, I've been a little obsesed with seeing the parallels between Roman and Logan's physicality, because on the one hand, they're super different – Roman can't sit still, he exudes this energy that somehow manages to be both anxious and overtly confident – but fascinatingly, he often is physical with Kendall in similar ways to Logan.

Everyone knows this one, I think:

But I'd add:

And in particular because it's when Kendall's avoiding eye contact:

I could ramble about this a lot, but I'll spare you, haha, and just say that I think it's this sort of fascinating embodiment of how Roman has learnt gesture and physicality from his father, and that I think it's especially pertinent that in all these examples, it's when Roman's feeling a sort of baser emotion – anger and self-righteousness, grief or frustration – where he pivots towards handling his brother in the way their father would.

(Shiv and Stewy beneath the cut)

Interestingly, I think Shiv adopts a part of their dad too in that sense, but I do think it's a pretty different for her. I think especially of that scene in 2.04 where she tells Kendall to look at her:

While I do imagine Logan's said that to Kendall over the years, likely particularly when he was young, I think it carries different weight for Shiv. I think for her, Kendall not looking at her during serious conversations ties deeply to her self-esteem which ultimately means that she associates him not looking at her as him not seeing her. I don't think that's what it is from Kendall's point of view at all, but I do think it kind of ties into that sense of Kendall and Shiv being two sides of the same coin.

Kendall desperately needs his siblings to like him, and Shiv desperately needs them to respect her, and the way that manifests in their particular push-pull is so ripe. I have a lot of thoughts on this more specifically too, haha, but I do think there's this particularly fascinating contrast in this sense where Kendall so desperately wants to see his siblings in s3, particularly at his birthday party, and they pollute that with the letter and the birthday party machinations, and Shiv so desperately wants to truly be seen by them in a way that makes her feel like their equal, and they pollute that through Kendall's insults in 3.02 and then hijacking her moment, through Connor telling her everyone at Waystar was just entertaining her, and through Roman - - well. Everything he did in s3 to her really.

Where Stewy's different again I think really speaks to his character too in the sense that he finds ways to get Kendall to look at him, but it's not through physically moving him like Roman and Logan, or demanding like Shiv, but he tends to chase his gaze. He pushes himself back into Kendall's line of vision.

He does it a few times throughout the seasons, but the most obvious example to me is really in 1.03:

He doesn't even just meet Kendall's gaze, he chases it down in a way that totally affects his posture and physical shape. I think it speaks a lot to Stewy's nature (and to the way Arian is such a brilliant physical performer too), but also his relationship and familiarity to Kendall.

He knows how to meet Kendall where he's at, even when Kendall doesn't really want to be met, and it shows how his charisma and ability to be what and who people need has gotten him to where he is.

It's a fascinating thing to unpack!

#sorry it took me so long to get to this one anon!#it got swallowed up in my inbox for a minute #a v fun one to think about though #this cast is sooo good #and they're all really responsive to each other #which adds so much texture #kendall + logan #kendall + roman #kendall + shiv #logan + roman #kendall x stewy #kendall roy #hbo succession #succession meta #welcome to my ama

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tomwambsmilk · 2 years

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Brenna you can’t just say Furry Logan Real on my post without telling me what his fursona would be. I expect it would be a major point of contention over what his kids’ fursonas would be too

Okay so that’s actually incredibly fair…… I’m afraid that my knowledge of fursonas and furry culture is far from exhaustive, but my gut instinct says that he would be a wolf. Symbol of sexual potency, origins of Remus and Romulus, “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” In fact I think everyone in the Wolf Pack was a furry with a wolfsona, and that’s where the nickname “wolf pack” came from.

Kendall would want to be a wolf; and would get a wolf fursuit and everything because he wants to be like Logan - but deep down he actually had a bunny fursona. This is why he was instinctively drawn to give his kids Megathump as a pet. He’s so deep in denial about this though that he doesn’t even fully realize it himself, although he does cry whenever he puts his wolf suit on.

Shiv’s fursona would be a dragon, no questions asked, specifically one of those dragons can alternately breathe ice and fire. The sense of superiority, territorial/defensive nature, jealously guards what’s important to her. Logan very much approves of this, it’s not a point of contention with him whatsoever. All of her brothers are jealous of this.

Roman has a cat fursona. Logan looks down on this with disdain. Roman has repeatedly considered announcing that actually he had a wolf fursona to please Logan, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to stick it out. It’s also very much rooted in the fact that he CANNOT have a dog or dog-related fursona (dog pound trauma). But the traits fit - solitary, lazy, kind of an asshole, but will be very affectionate if you earn his trust.

Connor has a horse fursona. (Well - if he had his way it’d be a unicorn fursona, but unfortunately he knows this would push Logan too far). Emotionally sensitive, views himself as the Special Boy, so fragile that if he breaks a leg Willa is going to have to shoot him. (Also this makes Willa the emotionally unstable 12yo who’s formed a bond with him).

Greg has a fox fursona, of course. Logan greatly approves of this. Wily, cunning, seductive vixen (which only works on Tom, but you win some you lose some I guess). Not quite a wolf but closely enough related that Logan can respect it.

And Tom? Dog fursona. Doesn’t have quite enough bite to be a wolf, but is in the same family. Loyal to a fault. Will accept any affection. Keeps crawling back even when he gets kicked. Shiv likes him because she has a fascination with her small eager dog companion; Greg likes him because he can run circles around him when he really wants to. (Tom could theoretically take Greg out if he wanted to, but he won’t).

#asks #Megan I know I brought this on myself #but this is maybe one of the most cringe things I’ve ever written #I did actual research for this #did you know wikifur is a thing? the furry encyclopedia?#well I do now

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thinkatoryprocess · 1 year

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I really want to hear your thoughts on the episode!

Well, I spent the first 20 minutes of the episode convinced that it was all a ploy by Logan and he was fine, which says a lot about Logan, IMHO.

Roman's EVERYTHING in this episode hurt me. Logan purposely using him to set him on Gerri after implying that he would be key to things going forward, knowing how much it would hurt him to face her and to be reminded of how Logan treated him after the dick pic event. The way he struggled with Gerri the whole episode, the way she was so hard with him, the way he freaked out in that voicemail practically made me cry, oh my god.

Rome is gonna worry his voicemail killed Logan and it makes me so so so sad to think about.

Uh, on non-Roman thoughts. Shiv broke my heart the entire episode. Kendall was honestly kind of bizarrely hot being as hardcore as he was, which may be fucked up for me to think, but that's more juice than he normally has. Connor was just pathetic and I can't get over his sad little wedding, what the fuck.

The old guard coming together to try to cut out the kids is not surprising really but it was fascinating how it unfolded.

I think Gerri is gonna get nuked by both sides and there will be a very large Roman vs Gerri reckoning.

It was fucking exquisitely written and acted even on Succession standards. Best Succession wedding episode to date? It's got competition, but...

#asks #succession hbo #roman roy #succession spoilers

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runcible-spoons · 2 years

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I know you’re on 1.08 but I’m so curious, what do you think of all the Succession characters so far? There’s so much shit that goes on yet none at all, and it’ll be interesting to hear if you’re on the money for later or not

aHA. I ended up losing this ask, but now that I've found it again!

where to start...

they're all so messed up. it's both lovely and entirely grueling.

Of all the characters, I'm actually really intrigued by Shiv because there's much less going on on the surface with her—but it's also kind of evident that she's basically white-knuckling sanity. There are ways that each of the Roy children "act out" (aside from Connor. ish. and I will definitely get to him later because I've got thoughts)—and I'm mesmerized by Shiv's impulses to create interpersonal turmoil (but also in a kind of "we're normal, we're mature, we can handle ourselves" way).

okay. Connor. Twice we see him be altogether too focused (to a comedic extent) on hospitality/event planning, which is like entirely spot on for what I imagine his whole story is. Becasue even though he's sort of removed from the shitshow that's the golden three (is that the fandom nomenclature?), you get the sense that he's spent so much of his life being peacekeeper/surrogate father. (I'll be performing the role of father!! my god.) So, there's this thing whereby if he's chill enough, if he just hosts well enough, then maybe everything will be okay. But any failure, of course, could lead to disastrous interpersonal consequences. His reaction dog cage thing was really interesting. I mean, they were all interesting, but the whole circle of "he enjoyed that, right? he must have enjoyed that?" is just... yeah.

You know that as much as Roman is in so many ways just slimy, and also that moment where we see how interpersonally messed up he is (when he asks the girl to marry him) is brilliant. I totally have youngest child headcanons for him (even if there's not a canon birth order between him and Shiv (?)), because of the way that much of his survival strategy is reliant on getting close to Logan. So like, if Shiv's is revolving around shutting emotions down, Connor's is about performing the role of mediator correctly, Roman's defense involves not doing anything to put him in danger (to the extent that he's so willing to throw anyone else under the bus. but let's face it, all the kids do that).

Ummm. I honestly don't actually have that much to say about Kendall. Even if he gets the most (so far) screentime, somehow his whole over-achiever, cut-throat thing just isn't tugging on my heartstrings in the same way. Jeremy Strong looks like a haunted doll though, which, I don't know how he does it, but it's brilliant.

I shall cut myself off here because otherwise this will keep growing exponentially longer and longer, but Tom fascinates me. The fact that he's not grown up in the family and the ways that he's both different and so similar. The fact that he seems to be haunted by the cruises. The oscillation between interpersonal violence and "obedience."

There's something to be said about the mechanics of 3 children (because connor's place is definitely different), but I think it deserves its own post so...

#christian's successionposting #ask #cauldronofmorning

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kimwexlers-brownhair · 2 years

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@pynkhues wonderful response to my ask has sent me on a tangent again.

There's something about Logan talking Willa through his medal collection I've always found fascinating and a little disturbing. It makes me wonder if like Roman with Tabitha and presumably Grace, part of why Connor was first drawn to Willa is because he thinks she's someone Logan would find attractive (blech). Maybe one thing Connor has in common with his old man is a shared juvenile taste in pretty ladies who are nice to them and appear to agree with them about everything.

Look at S1 Marcia always having Logan’s back no matter what shitty thing he does to the kids. Look at Rhea playing the role of helper and the acquiescing companion. Look at Kerry becoming his favorite when she echoes all his opinions. Then look at how sweet and defferential Willa is when she asks him about the medals, and how almost strangely gentle he is with her in return. That’s Logan Roy’s type: women who treat him like a Very Special Boy that must be Respected and Pampered. He would never admit it, and I’m sure he likes some surface feistiness like Rhea displays when they first meet, but at his core Logan is just as emotionally stunted as his children, moreso. Ultimately he wants someone to take care of him and soothe his ego. Caroline’s inability to do that probably played a not insubstantial part in their divorce.

So If Sally-Anne was the interviewer we see in Argestes, I wonder if Logan became infatuated with her when she flattered and cajoled him into a 60 Minutes-style interview -- only for him to watch the broadcast and discover he comes off as the demented little troll he is, with no softening or defending on Sally-Anne’s part. Hence the "black cloud after Sally-Anne" and his deep paranoia about a biographer "sniffing around his panties".

…However, if that were the case, I think Roman and co. would associate that with her instead of horses and harps. It's probably another woman coincidentally called Sally-Anne. Still, fascinating to think about.

Also, re: Willa: I recently re-watched Austerlitz with subtitles on. I never caught before that, after she tells Kendall to fuck off for his high-class call girl line, she quickly says, “That’s okay, I have an aunt who’s an addict. It was wonderful getting to know you all.” Willa is definitely using the Roys to her advantage when it comes to funding her plays, but I do think this scene is telling: she’s probably the nicest person in the show. Maybe not a great person, but the best among them. And it’s important to remember that even though she’s genuinely fond of Connor (I think she loves him, she’s just not in love with him), she has seen what this family is capable of. Can she really trust how this “nice man” Connor would react if she tried to leave him?

Ugh, I do hope she writes that hit tell-all play about the Roys and uses the profits to get the hell away from them all. Run, Willa, run!!

#succession #succession hbo #succession spoilers #logan roy #willa ferreyra #connor roy #i love willa #i am genuinely concerned about my fascination bordering on obsession with that rotten little man logan #pynkhues

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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Starlight & Strange Magic, Chapter 18: In Which Everyone Would Like To Know How This Happened

Rating: M Summary: Lucy Preston, a young American woman, arrives in England in 1887 to teach history at Somerville College, Oxford. London is the capital of the steam and aether and automatonic world, and new innovations are appearing every day. When she meets a mysterious, dangerous mercenary and underworld kingpin, Garcia Flynn, her life takes a turn for the decidedly too interesting. But Lucy has plenty of secrets of her own – not least that she’s from nowhere or nowhen nearby – and she is more than up for the challenge. Available: AO3 Previous: In Which It Snows In St. Petersburg

To say the least, there is not a lot that can prepare you for the sight of your best friend literally falling out of the blue, a hundred and thirty years and a parallel dimension away from where you left him, and his landing spot being a back alley in Steampunk St. Petersburg just yards from you and your – well, Lucy has given up on any easily definable term for Flynn, so never mind that. She remains kneeling next to Rufus, her mouth still open but no sound coming out, as he likewise tries to regather enough wind to speak. He lifts his head an inch, then gives up, falling back into the snow, and she briefly fears that he’s dead. “Rufus?” she says again. “Rufus?”

“Nnnrgh.” Rufus seems to be signaling that he in fact still operational, but it’s going to take a long time to get everything back online, and she shouldn’t panic in the interim. At least he can apparently tell that he ended up in the right place, so he takes several well-deserved moments to remain exactly where he goddamn is. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Lucy repeats. It’s not really worth asking him the obvious question at this point, but she slides a hand under his head. “Can you stand up?”

Rufus tries, legs twitching, but to no result. For his part, Flynn – after an understandable moment of total shock – has realized that Lucy knows the magical flying moron, and strides down the alley, boots crunching, to tower over him. “Who the hell is this? What just happened?”

“This is my – this is Rufus.” Lucy waves at him to back off with the looming, as Rufus has clearly had the hell of a day already and she doesn’t want his first impression of Westworld to be an upside-down, bad-tempered Flynn. “I have no idea what happened, but he – he may be hurt.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow, as if to say that if anyone wasn’t hurt after that swan dive from the sky, he would be very surprised. He considers Rufus balefully, as if to make sure he isn’t a cleverly disguised cruise missile (or whatever this world’s equivalent would be) and then realizes, as Lucy does, that this has put a crimp in the plan of packing her aboard the nearest airship back to England. She isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or not, but Rufus is here, needs help, and obviously has a whale of a tale as to how he is. And with Jiya supposedly held captive by Rittenhouse, that means all three of the team may be here, and while Lucy would of course gratefully welcome the presence of her friends again at long last, there is a fairly obvious logistical snafu. The Lifeboat, hidden back in New York, is only configured to take one of them home. And while further individual rocket-ship rides might not be totally out of the question, it is a stretch to expect to be normal after one of those, let alone survive two.

One problem at a time. Lucy pushes that out of her head, and turns to Flynn. “Can you – can you help me with him? We’ll have to go back to the hideout.”

Flynn considers, then shrugs. He leans down, hauls Rufus upright none too gently, and slings him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, as Rufus groans feebly but can’t really object to being tossed like a sack of beans. Lucy gives Flynn a be careful look, and goes to ensure that they can get out ahead of what must be a horde of incoming spectators. People must have seen that across St. Petersburg, and if the story spreads, that could also cause difficulties. It would be better to be away from here post-haste.

With Flynn lugging Rufus, Lucy wends her way back through the narrow alleys and stone quays that line the canal; the Neva is frozen solid, and won’t break up until March or April of next year, so the wintertime commerce is starting to set up camp on the river. At the moment, most of them are heading toward the site of the impact, speculating worriedly on what it could be, so Lucy and Flynn have to be careful about staying out of sight. They finally clamber over a low wall and hurry toward the warehouse, check once more that they haven’t been followed, and push through the door, as Lucy shuts and bars it behind them.

Flynn’s gang, who were expecting the boss back but not Lucy, jump to their feet in confusion, which is doubled at the sight of a semi-conscious man slung over his shoulder. The Sokolovs hurry to get some sacks to set Rufus down on, and as he recovers more of his battered higher faculties, Lucy can see him wondering just what kind of crowd she is running with these days. It’s finally Shitmouth who says, “Who’s the Negro, then?”

“Friend of hers.” Flynn glances at Lucy, with a hard-to-read expression. “At least, I take it from how she greeted him. If you recently heard a very large bang and saw a flash, that was him.”

“We thought an airship might have blown up,” says one of the Taylors. “Or someone had bombed the docks. How’s one man have that effect instead?”

“I sense it’s a fascinating story. But one not for you lot’s ears.” Flynn speaks brusquely, his manner once more that of the take-no-prisoners crime boss, as he turns his head at a sound from outside. “We’re still close to the scene. We should move again.”

“And what, that means I’m off to scout another hideout for us?” Karl has been standing with arms folded and chin outthrust. “We stay low and quiet, they’re not likely to come nosing around here again so soon. They just made an inspection yesterday, a few proper bribes should keep them out for months.”

Flynn looks at him as if to ask if Karl knew the correct St. Petersburg middle bureaucrats to pay off and did so, Karl looks back as if to say that of course he does and did, and interesting though this ongoing power struggle is, Lucy thinks they need to pay more attention to Rufus. She gets a cup of tea from the chipped porcelain samovar, warms it up, and hands it to Rufus, who is able to sip it with only minor assistance. Flynn waves away the gang to give her space, and once they have all withdrawn to the other side of the warehouse, Lucy and Rufus are left with a semblance of privacy. They look at each other, then blurt out at the same time, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Yeah.” Rufus grimaces. “It was not easy. I’ll see if I can explain it briefly. Basically, Jiya went missing thanks to some kind of artifact that took her and Wyatt Logan’s wife out of a room at Bethlem Royal Hospital. Mrs. Logan is there, it’s a long story, I don’t know it. I went to confront Connor about it, and – I can’t be sure, but I think he’s still actually on our side, has been tricking Rittenhouse and trying to delay them while pretending to be their fancy CEO. He gave me the equations for the Mothership’s modifications, and the schematics for whatever device he used to talk to Emma here, the Refractory-Glass. I put one together, which was how I communicated with you the other day. When is it, anyway? Date-wise?”

“November 1887,” Lucy says. “I’ve been here for just over a year. So what, you managed to build a working Refractory-Glass receptor from scratch?”

“Well, I had the plans,” Rufus points out. “And as I thought about it, and how Jiya vanished, I realized that I could possibly apply the principle to transmit myself along the same channels. After all, the human body is also essentially highly coded information packets, so if I could find the right frequency, I could basically email myself here. I took the Mothership modifications and meddled around with them so they applied to one person rather than a time machine, kind of like what I did to the Lifeboat the first time, but without the infrastructure. I realized that I already had a connection to wherever you were physically with the Refractory-Glass, so I set up the destination point to track with you.”

“So you were magnetically guided to wherever I was, and I’m supposed to be in Oxford, but instead, I’m in Russia – it’s a long story,” Lucy adds, seeing Rufus’s face. “That’s amazing, Rufus, that’s dazzling genius, but how did you know it was going to work?”

“I didn’t,” Rufus admits. “If I’d made a mistake in the math or the coding protocols, I would be disconnected wifi, times a thousand, and not exist in any of the branches of the multiverse ever again. But I couldn’t get here any other way, and I – ” He stops, then shrugs, glancing down. “For you and Jiya, I thought it was worth the risk.”

Lucy looks at him, realizes that in the haste and shock and disbelieving explanations, she has had no time to simply take in the fact that he’s here, he’s here, and reaches out to hug him desperately hard, fighting tears. Rufus does the same, they shake silently in each other’s arms, and then sniffle and try to pull themselves together. “Anyway,” he says. “I turned on my receptor to get a signal connected to Westworld, punched in all the information, crossed my fingers and toes and everything else, and stepped into the projector circle. The next thing I know, I’m dive-bombing out of the clear blue yonder, it’s really cold, I can’t breathe, and I see you and some cranky Russian giant staring at me. So I guess I didn’t screw it up.”

“That’s – that’s Flynn,” Lucy says. “He’s not actually Russian. He’s – as I said. Long story.”

“That’s Flynn?” Rufus looks startled. “Wait, the same one that Connor said was causing all the headaches for Rittenhouse here? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you two managed to meet up, but what’s with all the Newsies sidekicks?”

“He’s a crime boss in London. He runs a gang, that’s them, they’re here in Russia because Rittenhouse has an interest in the Trans-Siberian Railway. They’re having it built to provide themselves with a proprietary aether pipeline. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what they’re doing and how they want to harvest magic from this reality. I was actually on my way back to Oxford – I have a teaching post there – right before you made your dramatic entrance.”

“Have you heard anything about Jiya?” Rufus asks urgently. “Anything at all?”

Lucy hesitates. “Emma came to see me in Oxford last week,” she says at last. “She hinted that Rittenhouse had Jiya prisoner, and unless I cooperated, they’d – well. You know.”

“Rittenhouse has Jiya prisoner?” Rufus looks set to jump to his feet and swim to England himself. “I mean, I realize we can’t exactly work with them, but – what the hell did Emma even want? Just to be horrible and ruin more people’s lives?”

“She wanted help finding a lost magical library,” Lucy says. “The Bibliotheca Corviniana. It belonged to the Raven King, a famous fifteenth-century magician. She thinks it’ll tell her everything she needs to know to complete her world domination.”

“Yay. Emma.” Rufus rolls his eyes heavenward. “Still the worst in every universe, good to know. I feel like I’m probably missing half the story, but we can’t sit around shooting the shit all day. Are you and Flynn friends?”

“We…” Lucy doesn’t know how to answer that. “We’re colleagues, sort of. It’s been a very back-and-forth process. I think we’re working together now, but it could change again.”

Rufus eyes her shrewdly, as he knows her well enough to tell that she’s being purposefully evasive on this front. Still, this is not the opportune moment to press for details, so he doesn’t. “So, Jiya – did Emma say where she was supposed to be? Anything?”

“No. I was going to try to find her, but then I got – ” Lucy considers that. “Inadvertently brought over here, by Karl. He’s Flynn’s right-hand man. I think.”

“Which one’s Karl? The sandy weasel with the pornstache?” Rufus glances at the far side of the warehouse, where the gang appears to be a little too intently absorbed in conversation. “Or one of the other Scorsese rejects? Lucy, obviously, I’m the newcomer here, I don’t know what’s going on or what you’ve been up to, but do you really trust these guys?”

“I trust Flynn,” Lucy says. “And the Sokolovs – those two, the large blond Russian brothers. I think the others like me, or are at least certainly aren’t going to do anything to me. They’re the closest thing I’ve got to allies.”

Rufus continues to look extremely skeptical, but at last, he blows out a breath and nods. “Okay, if you say so. So what’s the plan? Can we get out of here and go save Jiya?”

“I want to,” Lucy promises him. “But after your entrance, we have to see if the airships are even still running. The Russian authorities may have closed down the port, and Rittenhouse definitely has people here as well. Can you even walk yet?”

Rufus makes a valiant attempt to get up, then reels, and Lucy has to catch his arm before he falls. Rufus breathes hard as the world apparently somersaults, and sits down again heavily. “Jiya’s hella resourceful,” he says, as if in an attempt to convince himself that any delay whatsoever in the rescue mission is acceptable. “She’s pulled the wool over Rittenhouse’s eyes and gotten away from them before, she could have done it again.”

“Yes, but we can’t count on that, and we can’t kill you too trying to get to her.” Lucy notices that Rufus’ color is still off, and drains the dregs of the samovar for another cup of tea. Violent interdimensional self-translocation is definitely not flying in business class, which her trip in the Lifeboat was by comparison. “Actually, I’m going to send a telegram to Ada Lovelace. Tell her to tell Oxford that I’ll be back soon, and see if she can get her butler on the case. Woolsey found Flynn’s hideout in like one morning, he could possibly find Jiya too.”

“Ada Lovelace?” Rufus goggles. “You know Ada Lovelace? Didn’t she die in like, the 1850s?”

“Not in this universe, apparently. She’s a grand old dame and very gleefully eccentric.” Lucy smiles at the thought. “We met when I came to London, and we hit it off.”

Rufus looks suitably impressed at the idea, and after a few more minutes, Lucy leaves him to continue his recuperation, heading over to the gang and explaining what she needs to do. It is agreed that Anton and Gennady will escort her to the telegraph office and take stock of the airship situation, and she can feel Flynn’s eyes on their backs as they leave. She’s tempted to glance over her shoulder and see what expression it is, but she isn’t going to be caught mooning after him. She screwed up her courage and asked for what she wanted, and he said no. She doesn’t know why, she’s going to respect his refusal because that’s what decent people do, take her lumps and get on with things, but it still hurts in an entirely different way than before. See. This is exactly why she didn’t want to make a move and muddy the waters with unrequited heartbreak. Should have contented herself that they finally seemed to be on the same page and actually ready to work together, and nothing else.

Sensing her melancholy, Gennady clears his throat awkwardly. “Are sad, Lucy?” he asks. “Later, I JUGGLE for you? Is VERY FUNNY when I juggle. I often DROP BALLS.”

“That – what, oh, no, that’s very sweet of you, but no.” Lucy glances at the Sokolovs, striding to each side of her like twin towers of six-foot-three Bolshevik brawler with perfect manners, and wonders if she could convince them to come back to England with her. After all, they technically aren’t part of Flynn’s gang; they work on the docks in London, and they don’t seem terribly impressed by his shortcomings in the etiquette department. Rescuing Jiya, if necessary, would take a lot more muscle than she and Rufus have alone, and they clearly like her. Maybe she can start up her own gang. There’s not a whole lot more scandalized that Somerville can be, right?

The streets are crowded, the alley where Rufus crashed in is cordoned off, and police inspectors in high-collared overcoats and fur hats are blowing whistles and barking at the gawking onlookers to back off. It definitely looks like all incoming and outgoing airships and steamships have been halted while they search for the source of the incident, which doesn’t help. The crush slows almost to a standstill at points, so Anton picks Lucy up under his arm like a football and sends Gennady in front of them to bowl open a path. This is very effective, and they finally fight clear of the throng and make it to the port telegraph office. It occurs to Lucy just before they go in that Rittenhouse might be monitoring communications in and out of St. Petersburg, and she stalls. “Wait, what if they’re reporting to someone?”

“Eh?” Anton frowns at her, and Lucy explains that she’s worried they’ll pass her telegram on to some sort of secret listening service. The Sokolovs look at her, then at each other, crack their knuckles, and inform her to wait where she is and to maybe turn her back. They then proceed menacingly inside the telegraph office. Five minutes of muffled banging, thumps, shouts, and crashes later, Anton re-emerges, only slightly out of breath. “All right,” he announces. “Telegraph operator is ready to talk now.”

Lucy raises both eyebrows at him as he offers a hand to help her over the threshold, then over the numerous items of furniture that seem to have become unaccountably dislodged. A very cowed-looking clerk in a cockeyed green visor is sitting by the machine, with Gennady standing guard, and after some fits and starts, since Lucy doesn’t speak Russian and the clerk doesn’t speak English, Anton serves as translator and she composes a brief message to Ada. There’s also the possibility of it being read on the other end, so Lucy can’t go into much detail. She manages to convey that she has accidentally wound up in Russia, she would appreciate Ada informing Oxford that she’s not dead, and apologizing profusely for the inconvenience. As well, if Mr. Woolsey can possibly make a few enquiries about a young female friend of hers? Jiya?

When this is finished and dispatched, Gennady asks if he should take the telegraph operator by his heels and shake him several times to ensure he does not retain any copies for anyone else. It as he is prepared to do this that something falls out of the operator’s pocket, some kind of special cancellation stamp. When Lucy picks it up and turns it over, she can see the name SIBLEY in the grilling. Flynn said that Hiram Sibley Junior is running the railway project for Rittenhouse, and his father, Hiram Sibley Senior, was one of the main pioneers of the telegraph in America. Sibley senior worked with Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse code, and was the first president of Western Union, as well as being very interested in Russian-American telegraphic links. Lucy thought of him back when Flynn mentioned Rittenhouse’s Siberian interests at tea with Ada, and this appears to be proof positive that Sibley junior has in fact seeded St. Petersburg telegraph offices with his spies.

“What?” Anton asks, seeing her face. “What is?”

Lucy shows him the stamp – she doesn’t know exactly what it’s for, but most likely to highlight messages that might warrant Sibley’s personal inspection. Once she has conveyed this to the Sokolovs, they assume thunderous frowns and turn back to the clerk. They interrogate him in rapid-fire Russian, which Lucy of course can’t follow, and when the clerk seems to shirk on offering answers, Anton plucks him out of his chair and holds him up like a punching bag in front of Gennady. This sufficiently alarms the clerk into squawking something, which they make him write down. Anton holds it out to Lucy. “Is address. He says for office of Sibley.”

Lucy’s stomach lurches. This, obviously, would be a major breakthrough, and after a moment of consideration, she decides that they have accomplished enough for now. She jerks her head at the Sokolovs, they smartly step after her, and the clerk has a look of both terror and awe on his face at seeing a tiny woman command this pair of behemoths. They take a back route to the Ditch to avoid the police and the crowds, and hurry into the warehouse, where Flynn jumps away from the door as if to prove that he wasn’t standing there and waiting for them to return. “There you are,” he says. “Took long enough.”

“Is obviously some problems.” Anton eyes Flynn up and down. “You have not let Lucy’s friend die, we hope?”

“No, he’s over there.” Flynn jerks his head at Rufus, who does not look to be particularly enjoying his hospital bed of burlap sacks in a drafty Russian warehouse, surrounded by heavily armed criminals wanted in at least two countries. Shocking, that. “Did you get the message off?”

“Yes. And there’s this.” Lucy hands him the slip of paper. “The Sokolovs got it out of the telegraph clerk that that’s Hiram Sibley’s office. The family is in the business, he’s probably been helping Rittenhouse tap all the wires in and out of St. Petersburg.”

Flynn scans it quickly, scowling. “Sibley’s been at the Winter Palace most days to meet with the tsar and his engineering advisors. I did think he had to have a base somewhere nearby, but… are you sure about this?”

“I was about to punch clerk VERY HARD,” Gennady puts in. “In UNPLEASANT region for gentleman. Not sure if that make him more truthful, but I HOPE SO.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow at the younger Sokolov, but obviously does not dispute this bare-knuckled method of problem-solving. Finally he says, “Very well, we should check it out. If Sibley’s not there, we might also be able to steal his files or information. I’ll take the Taylors, Gennady, and Karl. The rest of you go and keep out of trouble, except for Anton. You stay here.”

Anton blinks. “I stay here? Why?”

“Because,” Flynn says, “you’re the only one I trust to keep a proper eye on Lucy and her vagabond friend. As soon as he can stand up straight and the heat’s died down, you can take care of getting them aboard an airship back to England.”

“Wait,” Lucy says. “I did send a telegram, I – Rufus just – ” She isn’t sure how much to say in front of Flynn’s gang, since he clearly has not widely shared the truth of her origins, and thus does not need to go blurting out that she and Rufus are from the next universe over. “He just fell out of the sky, I don’t think he’s going to be able to immediately travel – ”

“Airship to England,” Flynn says to Anton, ignoring her. “Yes?”

Anton pauses, then nods. “Yes.”

“Good.” Flynn strides away, opens a crate, and begins strapping on several extra guns, evidently in case Hiram Sibley is indeed there and objects to having his office robbed. Lucy stands there furiously, then runs after him, grabbing his arm. He looks up at her with his customary sardonic-dick expression. “Yes, Lucy?”

“You can’t just banish me,” Lucy says angrily. “You can’t just return to treating me like a piece of cargo, throwing me on board an airship again, like I have no thoughts or volition of my – ”

“Banish you?” Flynn arches the other eyebrow to its utmost potential. “You remember how you got here in the first place? I’m trying to help you out. I thought you wanted to go back to England.”

“I do.” Lucy’s voice sounds weak, and she tries again. “I do, but with Rufus – ”

“Nobody asked him to crash the party. Literally.” Flynn shrugs, thumbing open the chamber of a revolver, checking that it’s loaded, and slinging it into the holster. “Is that the only thing you want, Lucy? Because if not, you should say so.”

Lucy almost screams at him that she said so, she said so as clearly she could stand to do last night, and he already told her what his answer was. How dare he act as if it is her responsibility to fess up and bare her soul to him, when he stopped it, when he said no, and she has been chasing her head in circles and viciously second-guessing herself for risking it at all? The need is still present, it hasn’t gone away. If anything, infuriatingly, it’s gotten even stronger, the realization that while she is presently very angry at him and would happily slap that idiot look off his handsome asshole face, she would just as happily snap and kiss him, and possibly something else, if his entire gang was not standing right here and not even pretending they aren’t hanging onto this for dear life. Lucy’s fists clench. To stop herself from which of the options, she has no idea. Probably both.

After a pause, Flynn gets to his feet, straightening to his full height above her, which puts her nose somewhere in the region of his solar plexus. “You’ll stay here,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument, “until it’s safe. Then you’re going to leave.”

Somewhere in the confused jumble of lust, wrath, and other deadly sins currently fighting for mastery of Lucy’s brain, it occurs to her to wonder if Flynn has been low-key panicking since she got here. If she’s likewise dropped out of the clear blue sky, not quite as spectacularly as Rufus but to basically the same effect, and he’s been scrambling ever since to accommodate her presence in the middle of his gritty, very-low-class, dangerous, anonymous existence as a spy and saboteur in the streets of St. Petersburg, running from his criminal record and Rittenhouse in one country and trying to blow up their operations in another. He’s had to devote time and effort to keeping her safe, fed, away from the police inspectors, un-frozen during the snowstorm, and otherwise in a functional state long enough to package her back to England in the first place, which by every respect, should be what she wants to do. What more does she want from him, his expression seems to say? When he’s gone to this much damn trouble to get her out of the frying pan, and she obstinately insists on sitting right in the middle of the fire?

They continue to eye each other for another extremely fraught few moments, Flynn staring down his nose at her as Lucy glares at him right back. Then he steps back. “I won’t hear anything more about this,” he says, “or I will have Anton throw you in the cargo hold.”

“Excuse me?” Anton looks mortally affronted. “You throw her in cargo hold yourself! Though if you try, I break your nose. Ignore him, Lucy. You know I never do such thing.”

“I know,” Lucy assures him. She’s tempted to tell him to break Flynn’s nose anyway, because it appears to be the only satisfaction she is going to get out of this, but she also just doesn’t want to have to look at him anymore. “Go on,” she snaps at Flynn. “Run out of here and leave your mess behind. Just like you always do, remember?”

He takes that in, and nods. Then he has the audacity, the sheer, ridiculous, unmitigated gall to grasp her shoulders in both hands, lean down, and kiss her patronizingly on the forehead. “Don’t worry,” he snarks. “We’ll be careful.”

“Right now, I honestly could not care less if you got yourself killed.” Lucy shoves him away from her with both hands. “So don’t strain yourself on my account.”

With a final evil look exchanged between them, Flynn stomps off, slings one last gun into his jacket, and jerks his head at his strike team. The Taylors, Gennady (with an apologetic glance at Lucy), and Karl form up behind him, Karl’s face also something that deserves to be in a museum, and they depart at speed. Once they’re gone, and the other gang members have scuttled out on their orders to make themselves discreet, Lucy’s strength abruptly runs out of her, and she sits down on one of the crates. She leans forward and puts her face in her hands.

“Lucy?” Anton hovers awkwardly at her shoulder. “I make you some tea?”

“No. I just…” Lucy remains where she is. “I’m done. I give up. Just take me back to England whenever the port reopens. I don’t know why I keep deluding myself, over and over, into thinking this has any chance of actually working.”

Anton pauses. Then he pulls up a crate next to her and pats her on the arm with a hand the size of a ham hock, in a clumsy but comforting gesture. “Flynn is horrible garbage goblin,” he says. “As I call him before. When he get back, I take him out and shake him very hard. You are very good lady, Lucy. Very strong. You give people chances when they not deserve. I am sorry how it is.”

“Thanks.” Lucy glances up at him. “I was thinking. Do you and Gennady want to come back to England with me? We’ll probably need to rescue our other friend, her name is Jiya. Rufus and I can’t pull it off by ourselves.”

“Lady needs rescue?” All of Anton’s Prince Charming sensibilities appear to have been activated on the instant. “Yes, of course we go. Flynn can think about poor life choices alone.”

Lucy snorts, feeling a little better. For his part, Anton does not juggle, but he offers to sing her a long Russian folk song, which Lucy graciously allows to hear a few stanzas of. He can’t really sing, but it’s sweet, and when he admits that he can’t remember any more of it, she thanks him and goes over to see how Rufus is doing. He has been watching the entire thing with the expression of an audience member at a blockbuster film, and glances up at Lucy with a look wondering if she’ll explain or he has to ask. Finally he says, “So, that whole married-for-ten-years argument, that was interesting.”

“That’s not what happened there.” Lucy feels her cheeks starting to heat. “And it seems to be how most of our meetings end up. With the arguing, that is.”

“Yeah, I see what you were saying about it going back and forth. Flynn seems like a real winner. I mean, it’s not like you got to pick who else in this world was going to be fighting Rittenhouse, but are you sure he’s worth the hassle?”

Lucy doesn’t answer, fussing unnecessarily with the burlap sacks that are serving Rufus in poor stead as blankets. Then she says, “Whenever the St. Petersburg port opens, we’ll get out of here. I’ll take you to London, I’m pretty sure Ada would be happy to put you up in her house. I’m not sure what I’ll do about Oxford. Maybe finish the rest of the semester, then leave.”

Rufus glances up at the tone in her voice. “Doesn’t sound like you really want to.”

“No,” Lucy says quietly. “No, I don’t want to. I’ve loved it more than anything. The city is magical and beautiful, my students are such interesting and passionate young women and I’ve been able to teach them things that nobody else has even thought about. I’ve gotten to have something like a normal life again, not just endlessly fighting and jumping through time. I’ve gotten to have roots again. A place to stay. Yes, well, I’ve inadvertently scandalized most of the faculty and students, but they got used even to that. But it would be beyond selfish for me to keep doing that, and leave you and Jiya and Ada and Wyatt and Flynn and everyone else to fight Rittenhouse, when what they’re doing here could change all of reality. I can’t sit out.”

Rufus looks at her with hesitant, uncertain sympathy, before he reaches out to take her hand, and they hold tightly. Lucy wonders if she should tell him about the revenant and the possibility of it being Amy, but decides that can come later. They have enough to deal with at present, and she doesn’t feel like Rufus would be all that enthused at the news of a murderous shadow monster stalking her heels. Instead they wait. And wait.

As the rest of the morning drains by and the afternoon goes equally slowly, Lucy – despite her resolve to stay mad at Flynn at least until he gets back – starts to worry. She paces and stares at the door, listening hard every time there are footsteps passing outside, fighting a swoop in her stomach every time they continue on without stopping. The distant sound of wailing klaxons aren’t helping her nerves either, and she isn’t sure if that’s related to the Rufus investigation or some entirely new calamity. Finally she says to Anton, “How long do you think it would take? Just to raid Sibley’s office, and leave?”

“If it was only that, not so long. But if they are caught, have to run for it, shoot way out, maybe longer.” Anton looks anxious as well, though he is clearly trying to keep his chin up for her sake. “Maybe clerk hurry and tell someone that he had to give up address, they have people waiting in case of attack.”

Lucy feels suddenly and unforgivably naïve that she didn’t think of that possibility. After all, she is the one who sent Flynn there, the one who gave him the information and told him that she didn’t give a rat’s ass if he got killed or not. A thick, sludgy feeling of horrible guilt crawls through her gut, making her swallow hard and stop in her tracks. “Oh God, is he – is he going to think I set him up or something? Led him purposefully into a trap?”

“Don’t know that is what happened,” Anton points out. “They could just have to take very long way back. Or hide out. Or – ”

At that moment, he is interrupted by the sound of footsteps that are very definitely coming this way, and he snaps into action. He shoves Lucy down on the sacks next to Rufus, heaves several fully loaded crates in front of them as a makeshift barricade, and draws his gun, pointing it warily at the door. Trying to peer out around the crates, Lucy waits, heart in her mouth, as the bar rattles and it swings open. If it’s the police, if it’s Rittenhouse – if it’s somehow worse, if it’s the gang with Flynn or without him and he’s not –

“Down!” a familiar voice says, sounding alarmed. “Bloody hell!”

“Karl?” Anton (and Lucy) stares at the bedraggled remnants of the strike team: Karl himself, the younger Taylor, and Gennady, all of them looking extremely bloody and dirty and grim. The older Taylor and Flynn aren’t there. “What in fucking hellfire – excuse my very bad language, Lucy, please excuse – just happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened.” Karl wipes his filthy face on his arm, throwing down his spent revolver. “It was a trap from the start, that’s what it was. Guess the telegraph clerk ran off pronto to tell his Rittenhouse bosses to expect company, so that’s what they did. We got to Sibley’s office, went inside, and five minutes later, full house assault. John Taylor’s dead, they had to shoot him six times before they finished him off. We managed to hold our position inside the office for hours, but they called in more reinforcements. They got the boss, they dragged him away. Still alive the last time we saw him, they’ll want to grill him for information. The three of us barely made it out of there with our skins.”

A ghastly, stomach-churning silence falls in the wake of those words. It’s about as bad as it possibly can be – in fact, it’s worse. Rittenhouse has Flynn, they took Flynn prisoner, they’re definitely going to torture him in hopes of making him talk. Even if (as seems likely) he won’t, there is no scenario whatsoever in which they let him go alive. He has caused them too much trouble, and they have been hunting him for too long. If they chose to sell him back to the British government, they could ask for whatever political concessions or special powers they wanted in exchange, when he is the most wanted criminal in the entire United Kingdom and the egg has progressively accrued on the face of Gladstone’s government and the Metropolitan Police as they failed to catch him. Rittenhouse can do anything they want with Flynn, and get everything they want in return. Catastrophe barely does this justice. And Lucy – inadvertently, but still – sent him straight into the jaws of the trap.

“Oh my God,” Lucy says at last, which is impossibly inadequate, but is the only thing she can think of. There’s no choice, there’s no alternate option. “We have to save him.”

As far as predicaments go, Garcia Flynn has been in – he is sure – worse ones than this. But admittedly, just at present, they are not coming to mind.

He has taken a serious pounding, he’s fairly sure he’s been shot at least once by the stabbing pain in his leg, and he is well aware that he is, to put it gently, fucked. He was dragged off by the police and whatever local rented thugs Rittenhouse has acquired, hit a few more times when he kept fighting, and his ear is ringing in a way that means it might have taken considerable damage. Now he is crammed into some tiny, bleak holding cell, and his odds of getting out are very bad. He has a confused impression of seeing at least one member of the gang down – he thinks it was a Taylor – and the rest scattered. He doesn’t know if they got away. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, if they made it back to Lucy or not, if she –

Lucy. That thought hurts the most of all, and given his present dismal state of repairs, both mental and physical, that is saying a lot. He tries to roll onto his back, grunts as his back registers its extreme objections, and remains where he is, half-sprawled on his side in the darkness, like a dangerous animal thrown in a cage. His cheek is sticky with blood where it presses to the metal, and there’s a rattling sound in his chest where he breathes. Rittenhouse isn’t going to get much sport out of hurting him, at this rate. Well, he’s sure they will anyway, because they’re the worst and they’ve been waiting long enough that they’ll take full advantage. But –

Did Lucy know? Did she send him there on purpose? I honestly could not care less if you got yourself killed. Was that the warning, and he missed it? Flynn is well aware that his behavior, over the general span of their acquaintance and then again today, has been far from exemplary, and perhaps she finally axed the entire ill-fated experiment of their collaboration for good. But why after it was almost working, and why especially after last night? Was it a vindictively cold-blooded move to get revenge on him for turning her down? That would be callous beyond belief, something that Lucy, for all her fierceness, doesn’t seem to intrinsically possess. And it wasn’t – that wasn’t what he – he knows and he doesn’t, it is tangled and twisted and raw, wrapping around him like a strangler snake, and he can’t breathe as it tightens.

Last night, lying next to her in bed, with her soft and warm and nuzzled into his side, looking at him with those big dark eyes as he told her about the Raven King… even now, Flynn’s stomach turns over at the memory. It took every inch of his self-control not to grab her, to roll her over beneath him and bear her down into the mattress, take her until there was no space or separation left, but he has never in his life touched a woman like that and there is no way he is going to start now. Not with her, not in the least. She deserves someone who would come to her with gentleness and care, someone younger and less shop-worn, who could devote himself to nothing but making her happy. Self-evidently, a widowed forty-three-year-old ex-monster hunter crime boss, international fugitive, and ruthless anarchist is not that man. Not with the ghost of a murdered daughter that shrieks in his nightmares, and a quest for vengeance that – well. Was probably always fated to end up like this. So he sabotaged himself, he pushed her away, he set out to viciously prove to himself that she would never want him. In that, at least, he has spectacularly succeeded. This is what he wanted, isn’t it? Burning it all down?

Flynn works his tongue gingerly around his mouth, testing for broken or missing teeth. They seem to be still in place, though they ache like pieces of red-hot iron in his jaw, and this is not an unqualified blessing. He doesn’t see much point in struggling to get out of here. He can’t, clearly, and there will just be more of them on the other side. He has never cared about the odds or the number of enemies before, but now, he is finally too tired to keep fighting. He’s old enough to know that he can’t take an unlimited pummeling, and he needs to save what strength he does have. For what, he doesn’t know. Dying with dignity?

Some indeterminate time passes. Flynn wanders in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he thinks he sees shadows bending over him, once he swears he feels the brush of Lorena’s hand on his face, the distant echo of Iris’ laugh, and wonders if this is some new torment the revenant has cooked up, if it’s drawing closer in the dark, come to feed on him by insidiously making him forget, in fits and starts, that they were ever gone. To believe, to hope, to want, and then wake up, and relive the loss all over again.

(Lucy. He feels horribly guilty, and he doesn’t think he should want it, given as there is still the possibility that she deliberately betrayed him, but he keeps looking for her among the phantoms, and she isn’t even there.)

After some while, Flynn is aware of the cage being lifted, moved, loaded onto something and wheeled along with bumping jolts. His captors appear to be taking him somewhere. He can hear them talking in an indistinct blend of Russian and English, but his bruised, feverish brain is not up to the task of interpreting both at once. The walls of his prison are solid steel, so he can’t see out, and they are clearly taking no chances with his escape. He has to remain curled up in more or less a ball, since he is a big man and it is a small box. There is a large barred slit overhead for ventilation, and also presumably for them to toss food in from time to time. He wonders if they’re going to do that, or make him beg. They are in for an unhappy surprise if so. If this is the end, he’d rather just get it over with.

Flynn can smell coal smoke, and what sounds like the hiss and click of iron wheels on track. At that, he blurrily realizes where they must in fact be taking him. Whether if it’s a more convenient interrogation point away from prying eyes in the city, or they have something more spectacular planned for him, or want to demonstrate their success in building his railway to the tsar – why not? Out in the winter wilds, out in the depths of nowhere, no one will ever see him again.

“Matija.” The word is a hushed croak, all Flynn can get through his aching throat. He has a sudden memory of when he was a boy – he doesn’t remember exactly how old, seven or eight – passing a fence post with a raven painted on it, GK scratched beneath. The way he had a sense that as long as he stood on that exact spot, the boundaries between the worlds were thin as silk, clear as glass, and he might take another step on the path he had walked a thousand times and find himself lost in Faerie. The way a cloud passed over the sun, and he looked up and saw a flock of ravens winging on the wind. A meaningless coincidence, his father would have insisted. Asher Flynn, born Aleksandr Kovačić, a young idealist who changed his name and moved to the West in hope of making a fortune, then returned home to Šibenik as an angry, disillusioned atheist with a young American wife, a drinking problem, and eyes that always burned like dark coals. Flynn doesn’t remember being so scared of anything in his life as he was of his father’s eyes when they were angry. Not even the grimmest monsters (small wonder he ran away to join the hunters at age fifteen) of the darkest woods could compare.

“Matija,” Flynn whispers again. “Matija Korvin. The woods are yours. The sky is yours. The night is yours, and so too the morning. The hedges are your gateways, the stones your servants. In the earth you plant your staff, in the green you spread your roots. You are the branches upon which your children rest, and the wings on which they fly. I am only a servant, kneeling before the King. I call you from the dark, and I offer you my fealty.”

It’s a very old prayer, and he’s said most of it in Croatian because that’s how he learned it from his grandmother Katja, a formidable and bitter old crone who scared the children away from her house in the village and was constantly suspected (not without reason, Flynn thinks, Iris had to get it from somewhere) of being a witch. She was never impressed with Aleksandr for moving to the West, nor for bringing home Maria Thompkins, and spent most of her time making her daughter-in-law’s life miserable for not knowing how to cook and speak the language and otherwise instantly absorb the habits of their ancient town on the Adriatic coast. Flynn has complicated memories of her, to say the least. But Katja Kovačić was not about to let her grandson grow up without knowing his culture and his heritage, and the proper prayers to the King, the one he was never supposed to tell the priest about. She gave him that, at least.

“Matija… Korvin.” You’re supposed to call him three times by his full name for the proper effect, Flynn remembers. There is another bump and jolt, and it feels as if his cage has been loaded onto the train. He hears a piercing whistle, feels a gust of frigid air, and knows it is only going to get colder. He is actively struggling to maintain consciousness, and feels the dark tugging at him with alluring, relentless hands. “Matija… Korvin…”

Not a damn thing, so far as he can tell, happens as a result. He feels ludicrous, trusting in old wives’ tales and children’s stories for his deliverance, when he might as well have asked the cage to spring open of its own accord, for all the locks to unbind and the train’s engine to spit bolts and shut down. Technology does not tend to work in the places where you find the marks of the raven. Flynn closes his blood-crusted eyes and lets his head drop onto the floor. He cannot remember a time, recently or perhaps ever, when he has felt so utterly, desolately empty.

Once more, the whistle sounds. The train starts to move. The wheels click on the track, he can sense St. Petersburg dwindling behind them like a dream lost on waking, and so, Garcia Flynn begins the long, last journey to Siberia.

#timeless #timeless ff #lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #starlight & strange magic #steampunk au #garcia flynn human disaster #(who is surprised not me)

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cinelitchick · 6 years

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Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: Timeless (TV 2016) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston Characters: Lucy Preston, Garcia Flynn, Denise Christopher, Jiya (Timeless), Rufus Carlin, Wyatt Logan, Connor Mason Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, Romance, Humor, Action Summary:

A trip to New York City with the team may be just what Lucy and Flynn need to kickstart their nascent relationship. But can two people as "broken" as them have a shot a true love?

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Darkness engulfed him. The music faded to a dull roar. It was welcome this feeling of nothingness.

He was getting better at this; at letting the world evaporate. It took some practice. He had been honing his skills for a few months now. No sensory deprivation tank meant he had to get creative. It was fun. This he enjoyed. The solitude was nice.

It was nice because he knew it wouldn’t last. It never did.

She wouldn’t let it.

As if on cue, he feels her skin touch his; her hand close around his own.

“Lucy,” he breathed.

Lucy Preston always brought him back. No matter where or when he was located, she guided him away from everything else and toward her. She was his lifeline. She had been even before she was aware of it. Or maybe a part of her always had been aware. He couldn’t be sure.

“Garcia,” she said softly. “Don’t leave me here with these people. They’re insane. They think mixing Pepsi and Pop Rocks is a joke.”

A loud laugh emanated from deep within him. He opened his eyes to see hers boring into him with an intensity and sweetness only she could manage. “I would never leave you, Lucy. I would sooner take you with me.”

She didn’t take her eyes off him. Garcia Flynn was a puzzle she had mostly figured out, but there were pieces she couldn’t quite work out where they fit. Not that she cared. It’s what made him fascinating and unique. Maybe other people felt this way about those they had deep feelings for or whatever.

#Timeless #Garcy #Lucy Preston #Garcia Flynn #Clockblockers #my fic

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elcorhamletlive · 2 years

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Love that you're a Succession person now! And I adore that you're Kendall girl, please if you want to, share your thoughts on the series and the Roys (Tom and Greg included) P.S- love your blog. 🤗

Aw thanks anon!

I'm at the begginning of season 2, so obviously there's still a lot ahead that I don't know about, but generally I've been enjoying it tremendously. It's fun and hilarious at certain points while also making me want to crawl out of my skin with cringe, but the thing that truly surprised me is how much I've come to care for most characters, especially the four Roy sibilings. "It's a satirical comedy about millionaires" is not a wrong description of the show on itself, but it feels incomplete, because it's that and also very much a show that manages to get you emotionally invested in these fucked up people and their damaged relationships and feelings.

At times it feels like watching a greek tragedy, especially with Kendall's arc in season 1, which made me extremely sad. I found myself rooting for him even though it wouldn't really be an objectively good thing for him to win. In realistic terms the only true freedom for Kendall would be walking away like Stewy told him to, because none of them can beat Logan, because at the end of the day they're all aiming for some kind of ending to the dispute - the defeat of their father but also the end of this lifelong game they're playing, and the thing is that it can't end because this is being Logan's child, there's no endgame where the dynamics change, this is it. Like... Even Kendall's desire to destroy his dad is rooted in a desperate wish to win his dad's approval. He wants to beat Logan not because he has a better idea for the future of the company or whatever he tries to tell everyone else, but because beating Logan is, in Kendall's mind, the only way to win his respect. And so his decisiveness is always tinged by a touch of misery that continues to take over, all growing and growing and coming to a halt in the finale when, instead of finally breaking free, he ends up even more trapped by Logan, maybe more than he's ever been. The continuation of that in season 2 has been excruciating to watch because he's so completely broken and he has no one that could help him because he can't even acknowledge his trauma to anyone else.

As far as the other Roys go, I really like Roman and Shiv (I like Connor too, but he's obviously the most underdeveloped). I found myself getting annoyed at Roman at times during season 1 because I was, at the end of the day, rooting for Kendall despite everything I said above (lol), but at the end of the day I couldn't stay angry at him because in many ways he seems like the saddest of them all? He can't even try to defy Logan. All he can do is attempt to fight Kendall for scraps of whatever their dad can offer them that remotely resembles love. He's also the only one of them who has been confirmed to have been physically abused by Logan, and I wonder if he was truly the only one who was on the receiving end of it, because it would explain why he's more submissive than all the others. I'm curious to see if this is expanded in the future. I'm also really curious to know what is the deal with his sexual issues, but this part I'm sure will be discussed at one point, as it's a plot beat that keeps coming up.

Then there's Shiv, who... Oof. I find her so fascinating, because I think she's the closest of all siblings to have some self-awareness of their situation, and her actions pre-events of the show demonstrate that. She was trying to do her own thing! She was actually good at it! Even her marrying Tom is, in my opinion, not the demonstration of fear Logan claimed it was, but a desperate attempt to have some amount of solid love and support. But then Logan pulls her in, and again, it's tragic because on some level she is aware of the trap to hesitate, but ultimately she isn't aware enough to escape. She, too, is tempted by the promise to be the big winner at their father's game, to put her hands on the power he's wielded over them their entire lives, and I'm pretty sure it's all gonna blow up on her face like it did with Kendall's. And I think this season will only make her more interesting to watch.

As for Tom and Greg... This is seems to be a super unpopular opinion on this site but to be completely honest, I'm not as invested in either of them as I am in the siblings! I enjoy their scenes and their bizarre dynamic but their characters don't appeal to me in the same way the Roys do. I've stopped to think about it and, as far as dynamics go, I'm way more interested in seeing Tom interacting with Shiv (I'm fascinated by this mess in particular, and I'd need an entire new post to explain why because this one is already too long and confusing lol) and Greg interacting with Kendall than what they have going on between them. But I think Tom is the most hilarious character in the show by far and I always lose my mind at a random line of his everytime he's on screen. His scenes are already funny and bizarre enough on paper, but something about Matthew Macfadyen's performance takes them to a whole other level. I'm aware his role in the series only grows in the following episodes and, despite him not being one of my favorites, I'm here for it.

#i'm sorry for this wall of confusing text i apparently have a lot of thoughts on this show #but THANK YOU FOR ASKING anon i love rambling

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pynkhues · 1 year

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hi!! i love your succession meta/discussions and I just rewatched 3.02 where all four Roy siblings talk about what was happening with the migrants/dancers/cruise ships etc. and how Connor and Kendall wholly admitted to knowing, but Roman and Shiv didn’t … or didn’t actually know. I’m so interested in seeing more of these kinds of things in s4, like warped versions of their experiences, completely different perspectives depending on the sibling. Also, in 3.08 Caroline corrects Shiv that she was 13 when Caroline and Logan divorced, and not 10 like Shiv says… like these details are super intriguing to me! i hope to see more of their childhoods unpacked (especially Connor)! take care by the way!! <3

Hi! Thank you so much, anon! This was a really lovely ask to get. <3

I totally agree about being fascinated by the distinctions the show makes and what that means in terms of memory, ignorance, accountability and complicity, and luckily for both of us, I think the show is too, haha. It circles around a lot - in the examples you gave, but also in Kendall, Roman and Connor's different understanding of the dog pound game, Roman repurposing memories of Connor to use for Logan and in - - well. Pretty much everything in the fallout of Shiv's wedding.

Hell, even in today's episode, memory is weaponised twice over - first with Logan choosing to use the past against Greg ("Where's your old man, huh? Still sucking cock at the county fair?") when Greg tries to use the present against Logan ("Where are your kids?") and then, in a much more complicated scene, with Tom and Shiv at the end of the episode, where Tom wanted to talk about the past while Shiv couldn't allow herself that vulnerability.

If we're the sum of the things we've done, what does that mean when we and the people we love have done terrible things? When do these things become memory, and what power do we have to re-write our stories? How can we protect ourselves from what we've done, and others from what we've done to them? How do we hold them accountable for what they've done to us? Who does a truth belong to? And why is it that sometimes it can heal, as it does for Kendall in 3.09, cut, as it's done to Shiv and Tom now, and lock us down, as it's done to many of the people on the periphery of the Roy's lives?

It's complicated! And man, am I just glad this show is back.

#i've already watched the episode twice #i hadn't even realised how much i missed it #perfect!#and yes!#defs hope we learn more about everyone's history #succession meta #hbo succession #succession spoilers

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pynkhues · 2 years

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Top 5 succession characters!

Oh man, I feel like this will be so obvious, anon, haha, but:

5. Logan Roy - yes, he's evil, but he's also absolutely fascinating to me and he's actually probably one of my favourite characters to explore from a meta-standpoint? The ruthless survivor in him being tangled up with the greedy capitalist and the father-who-loves-his-children and the powerful bully and the traumatised little boy is such a rich blend of characteristics, and I don't know how he does it, but Brian Cox is insane in his ability to portray all of that at once.

4. Connor Roy - against my better judgement, I am, in fact, a ConHead.

3. Roman Roy - okay, the Golden Trio are basically tied because I am obsessed with all of them and find them so messy and complicated and compelling and so unlovable they circle back around to being lovable, but if I had to rank them, this is the order they'd be in. Roman is mean and acerbic and insecure and a nightmare, but he's also funny and loving and arguably one of the best characters at reading other people on the show, and personally I love that about him. He's my favourite little gremlin, a last-born prince in every sense of the phrase, and that's just everything to me.

2. Shiv Roy - there's pretty much nothing I don't adore about Shiv. I love that she's competitive and ruthless and resilient and strategic, but also insecure and needy and not as competent or as hard as she thinks she is, and the way all of that's wrapped up in the expectations from being an only daughter in a family of men just really, really resonates. Women on these shows so rarely get to be as complicated as Shiv, and I honestly can't think of another woman character on TV like her. She's perfect in all her dire imperfections, and she'd be my favourite fail child forever if it wasn't for my #1 boy.

1 Kendall Roy - truly hard to articulate how much Kendall Roy's cringe disaster self has wormed his way into my heart. The show does such an incredible job of articulating the different ways familial trauma has shaped the four Roy siblings, but there's a certain something in the make-up of Kendall - someone so desperately fragile but committed to performing otherwise - that wrecks me. He's mortifying in every way, but there's an emotional honesty to his character too that just always hits me where it hurts.

Ask me about my top fives!

#thank you anon!#this is making me want to rewatch succession #my fail children #i love them allllll #logan roy #connor roy #roman roy #shiv roy #kendall roy #hbo succession #top five meme #welcome to my ama

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pynkhues · 2 years

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hi hey hello would you please write me a miniature essay on why you think kendall tried to tell caroline the truth (of all people) and whether you think—had caroline listened, even inattentively—he would've actually been able to get the words out?

Hi hey hello, sorry it’s taken me twelve million years to answer this, it got swallowed up by my inbox, but YES, I am absolutely fascinated by all the kids’ relationship with Caroline, and in particular that choice to have Caroline be – maybe – the first person Kendall ever actually told.

How members of the family found out, or almost found out, about what happened at Shiv’s wedding, feels really symbolic of the deeper relationships beyond the discovery. From Logan knowing before Kendall could ever tell him, and using that to not only strongarm his son professionally but to re-create a half-real-half-manufactured intimacy in order to control him (and I would argue protect him as well), to Shiv almost finding out in 2.04 out of her own sense of vulnerability and insecurity, to Kendall finally, cathartically actually caving and telling Shiv and Roman in Italy in a way that didn’t so much heal a break but maybe reset a dislocation between the three of them.

Kendall almost telling Caroline in England is that in spades too, and I think a lot about how the title of that episode, The Return, is so apt because it’s more than just a return to the UK. It’s a return to childhood for the Golden Trio in revisiting their mother, but it’s also a return to trauma in so many ways – most literally, of course, for Kendall, who ends up at the family home of the boy he killed, but also for Shiv who’s been forced back into the role of capital-d Daughter, ergo outsider to the machismo-soaked inner circle of her own family, for Tom who’s reconfronted with the cruise ship documents Greg salvaged, and I think for Caroline too, who’s sort of re-faced with the fact that her children chose their father and shunted her to the outside of the family.

(This isn’t really here nor there for this particular post, but I’m always fascinated that this ‘return’ pre-empts a larger one for Logan in the next episode as he returns to Scotland and is seemingly confronted with the memory of his sister).

I think in that sense, Caroline’s a sort of outsider to the inside, or an insider on the outside, depending on how you want to look at it, and that positions her pretty uniquely in the family itself. There’s a space to that, room, which given how tightly entangled everything and everyone else is, I think Kendall felt maybe there was a way out through.

An exit from his father, from the man he himself has become, through his mother. Like a choice he could retrospectively re-make - he always picked his dad, what would life have been if he'd picked his mother?

He knows deep down that she isn’t capable of this sort of emotional intimacy, but Kendall was drowning and I do think his hug and brief flicker of closeness with Shiv in 2.04 pmade him seek out the perceived open-embrace of the women in his family versus the perceived close-fist of the men. Kendall canonically is pretty sexist anyway, and I do think he expects more emotional labour from Shiv and Caroline than he does from, say, Roman, Connor and his dad, but at that point in s2, I do think it makes sense given how his interactions with the family had gone overall.

But yeah, more to the point of your ask, I think Kendall was thrust back into two pasts – one where he’d done something awful, and the other a childhood marked simply by before (before he’d done what he’d done, before the whole mess with his dad, god, even before the drugs) – and together that formed a complicated, twisting cocktail which meant seeking comfort in his mother was something romanticised. He wanted someone to shoulder some of the emotional labour, wanted relief, and he wanted looking after - he wanted a return to childhood - and for a minute, in his mother’s country, in the motherland, he could pretend she was capable of giving him any of that.

#it's interesting particularly to view it in context with his birthday ep i think #s1 was really marked by kendall looking forwards #i think s2 mostly by him being made to eat the present #and i think s3 by him pretending he was going forwards while really clawing his way backwards #through holing up in rava's apartment #through his childhood-themed birthday party #through seeking out abuse and re-writing it as love #he's a pendulum in a lot of ways #while the rest of his siblings circle the track #as for whether or not he would've told caroline #no i don't think so #i think in some ways too he approached caroline BECAUSE he knew deep down she wasn't capable of it #even subconsciously #mess i love them all #kendall roy #caroline + kendall #caroline collingwood #hbo succession #succession 2.07 #succession meta #welcome to my ama

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pynkhues · 2 years

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anything about caroline collingwood honestly... i want to hear it all

This is a slight tangent to your ask, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately (again, haha) about how Logan typically seems to be attracted to women who he sees either himself or his needs in, especially this late in his life. His relationships with Marcia, Rhea and Kerry all seem steeped in the way that those women demonstrate something of his own survivalism and ruthlessness, and it’s fascinating to me in the sense that they each seem like a shallower version of, and are a more superficial relationship to the one that preceded them.

Marcia was a true partner to Logan in s1, and while she was self-serving, she also did protect him, support him, care for his health and seem to have genuine love for him. Rhea in s2 was more transparent about her self-interest and her maneuvering, but she also became something of a companion to him before everything blew up, whereas Kerry in s3 seems so far to pretty clearly be posturing and using Logan for her own professional and social gain – gosh, she doesn’t even manage his medications well which contributes to his psychosis with the UTI. You know Marcia never would’ve let that happen.

I think all three women though speak to Logan’s current and present desires for partnership, legacy and control, and it makes for an interesting reflection of where he’s at in his life.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m fascinated by Caroline and Logan’s relationship generally, and in particular what the relationships we’ve seen play out on screen tell us about Logan’s first two marriages, and maybe even who those two women were as people.

In some ways, they are hard to compare, especially Logan's first marriage. He would've been very young when he married Connor's mother, likely in his early twenties, and I tend to think their marriage was one built on a foundation of trauma. We know Connor's mother had mental health issues and was institutionalised, but the timing too would've roughly coincided with either Noah's death or him handing the reins of the company over to Logan (either of which would've had huge implications for a 20-25 year old Logan who'd experienced serious physical abuse by him), Ewan enlisting (bearing in mind their father died at war), and, I suspect, the death of their sister.

Caroline too is different to Marcia, Rhea and Kerry, in no small part because Caroline had independent wealth and a sealed legacy that Logan wanted for himself. In many ways, they were more equal than any of Logan's other relationships, but all of that sort of does beg the question of what, exactly, Caroline saw in him.

She was the one with generational power, she was the one with embedded social status and secure wealth, whereas Logan’s empire would’ve really still been in the process of growing. The major expansion of Waystar Royco into theme parks and cruises is said to have been in the early-to-mid-80s after all, and Kendall would’ve been born in 1979, which tells us that when they got together, Logan was a divorcee with a son and a likely robust-but-still growing news business and a degree of political power in another country.

On top of that, they weren’t old when they met, but they weren’t especially young either. I tend to think there’s more or less the same age gap between Caroline and Logan as there is between Harriet and Brian, which is four years, and would put Logan at 40 and Caroline at 36 when they had Kendall (maybe a year or two younger), and so if we estimate they were together a couple of years before that, Caroline would’ve been in her early thirties when she started dating Logan.

Caroline isn’t a social climber in the way Marcia, Rhea and Kerry all are, and she has nothing to secure. She has everything she wants, and yet she chose Logan, and Logan chose her, and I do think they’re both still wounded and bitter enough about each other that they were genuinely in love.

It kind of comes back to my original point about the survivalism and the ruthlessness of the women Logan’s interested in, and how we see that materialise in Caroline as a character. She’s a stone wall a lot of the times, acerbic and often cruel, and there’s something to that that makes me think she’s a survivor too. Something both raw and slick – barbed wire wrapped in silk – that Logan maybe saw himself in too.

In particular, I really loved what Harriet Walter said about Caroline in her interview with The AV Club:

I have to say that I’ve created a backstory that [Succession creator] Jesse [Armstrong] approves of because I had to fill in the dots. He has to look over everything, though, and I only have my character to look after. So I created a sort of backstory where she’s certainly no saint, but you do understand that she was badly parented and she has no clue about being a mother, really. She handed everything off to nannies, but she thinks she loves her kids and she has her cozy moments with them. When anything gets profound and real and they really need her, a kind of shutter goes down because that’s what she knows, because that’s what happened to her when she was a kid’

I think that’s probably the survivor that Logan connected to, and to me, that speaks to Caroline’s upbringing. That she wasn’t shown love or affection as a child, that her parents were distant and neglectful, if not abusive, that that made her sharp, but not cold, defensive but not necessarily offensive. Technically, she wanted for nothing in life, but there’s the same rejection of real emotion in her that there is in Logan, because neither of them were shown how to love, how to give, how to do anything but manage the hand you’re dealt, and that festered inside both of them until it fundamentally broke them.

Ultimately, I think Logan projected that into his social climbing (he'd be happier if he had more, was more, did more), but Caroline already knew that wasn't the answer.

In some ways, it leaves her aimless, but in others, she has a clearer purpose than Logan too. Her life is about preserving her family history, most notably with the castles and estates, while Logan’s is about trying to create his, and I think that builds in them both this really interesting, bristling root conflict, and testifies to the way he was able to take sole custody of their children.

He feels a family beside and ahead of him, whereas Caroline feels a family behind her, and I think Caroline knows nothing can fill her, whereas Logan doesn’t. He still thinks his story has a happy ending, while Caroline knows hers doesn’t, so she’s getting her kicks in where she can, and Logan’s constantly looking on to the next best thing.

They're tragedies out of step with one another, and I think it meant that when they were happy together, they were probably really happy, and when they weren't - -

Well.

They really, really weren't.

#sorry this ended up being more about logan and caroline haha #i just find them such an interesting juxtaposition #i'd both love and hate a flashback ep #like i love that we get thrown into these relationships where they're at right now #but sometimes i'd really love to see them when they were at different stages too #caroline's awful but i love her as a character #and i think harriet walter brings so much to her #brb going to look at that photo again of brian and harriet in three sisters together #caroline collingwood #logan roy #caroline x logan #marcia roy #rhea jarrell #kerry #hbo succession #welcome to my ama

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pynkhues · 2 years

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the new episode and your young roys fic really has me thinking abt how much kendall probably loved his birthdays as a kid? like i don’t see logan or caroline taking time off but connor would come home for the weekend and stewy is always over anyways and it sorta just becomes a thing every year. maybe roman blows out the candles on kendall’s cake but it’s fine bc he’s the one who knew what bakery to order from and maybe stewy pushes roman into the pool right after bc its ken’s day, jesus ro-ro, and maybe shiv crosses her arms and comments that kendall is getting a bit too old for this but smiles to herself when he picks her present first to open

Oh god, yes, anon!! I love your headcanons so much! The idea of it being this kind of awkward, kind of quiet thing really underpinned by the siblings doing what they do best - being awful, but being there - and Stewy being a true BFF by taking out Kendall's baby siblings is seriously too much for me to bear (which might be why it took me so long to answer this ask – I'm so sorry! It got swallowed up in my inbox somehow).

I'm kind of fascinated by the concept of the Roy kids' birthdays generally, because I think growing up, it would've been the sort of event that was always preceded by so much hype and excitement (after all – being one of four kids, a day just for you is always going to be pretty special, even for kids like the Roy's who want for nothing materially). I agree with you too that Logan wouldn't take time off for it, but I feel like he'd be stoking the excitement in the lead up – this sort of performative fatherhood which was mostly about him being the man Noah wasn't, and a way of showcasing his own success, maybe even to Ewan, who would never let his daughter, Marion have lavish birthday parties of her own.

And you know that the spotlight on it from him would be enough to build up false expectations in all of the kids, but especially the golden trio. They'd be so sure that this year, this birthday would be different, that Dad would be there and everything would be perfect and Connor would keep reminding Kendall and Roman and Shiv that Dad was a busy guy, but they wouldn't hear him until their birthdays rolled around and they were surrounded by presents and staff and no Dad which their mother couldn't stop making snide comments about if she was even there at all.

But still, they were there – the four of them – and they wouldn't be kind about it, wouldn't comfort each other so much as make fun of the other for thinking Dad would ever show up at all, but underneath it all is a sort of relief and solidarity, because god, at least here, again, they're the same. Dad doesn't love any of them as much as he loves work, and weirdly, it puts them on this equal footing, so even if every birthday ends in tears, it's also often the closest they ever are. A day when none of them are golden enough for their father, and they get to be the unfavourite together, ripping into each other's presents and smushing cake in each other's faces, and though none of them will ever have the words to say it, they'll all love their birthdays because it reminds them that whatever they are, wherever they are, they're there together.

#will i ever stop daydreaming about baby roy sibs?#popular opinion says no #i love them a lot okay #absolute nightmare babies #never forgotten but never remembered either #roy siblings #kendall roy #roman roy #shiv roy #connor roy #logan roy #succession 3.07 #hbo succession #succession headcanons #welcome to my ama

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