🤭 Tickle my muse | Joji to Abigail!!

{ Nonverbal Starters }

Though she had seen his hands coming for her, she had not thought to defend herself from them – thinking, erroneously it appeared, that he had been about to adjust her stance again. She was having some dreadful trouble getting this one just right – and perhaps she had been focusing too hard, or maybe he was just in a mood to keep her on her toes, but when those skillful fingers of his danced along her sides it was all she could do not to buckle in shock!

“Joji!” It was partly a cry of indignation, as much as it was a yelp of surprise, laughter bubbling up in it’s wake as she bowed forward and tried to escape him. To her dismay, he was of course much quicker, and only too easily maneuvered her close, fingers moving dexterously across her in ways that made her wriggle like a worm on a hook – and were she not so busy laughing at the sensations, she’d surely have been utterly mortified!

By the end of it, she was half bowed over his arm, clutching to him for support as she caught her breath. Whatever it was that had been bothering her before, she’d certainly forgotten about it now!

Huffing, she papped his arm, and when his grip loosened she turned about so she could give his chest a smack for good measure. “That was a dirty trick!” Though her tone was scolding, it was rather undermined by the fact she was grinning almost as broadly as he was.

@tidefated

[intolerablexsacrifice, for Abigail] 🥣 Bring my muse soup/medicine when they are sick [ listen let her be thomas & james’ neighbour or some shit ]

{ Nonverbal Starters }

The sound of his boots could have been likened to thunder against the crashing ache inside her head, and it was all she could do not to bury herself under the covers like a child to escape being seen in so pitiful a manner as this. Still, in the end, she did sit herself up – pressing her back against the wall so as not to lose all sense of equilibrium in so doing – and found that in the time it took her to adjust comfortably, he had already set something down on the bedside table.

Silence reigned a moment as she observed the hot soup, something strange twisting up inside of her that she could not place. It had been years – years now since Charlestown, and all that she had lost. She had learned to manage for herself, had learned to keep going even when she was absolutely miserable with a cold, and she knew she could have managed this one just as well.

Gazing up at him, she found she couldn’t quite speak past the lump in her throat as she realized that this was the first time someone had cared for her, completely without prompting, since Miss Barlow had encouraged her through a letter to follow Eleanor. Her time with the woman had been short, but unfailingly kind – and of course, before then, she’d had her father, and her handmaiden –

Forcing herself to breathe, finding the ache in her head and chest only made worse with emotions could both be eased by focusing on her lungs for a time, she offered a smile as she reached out, gripping the bowl with care and finding at last, something to say as the heat brought reality to her palm, and woke her back to the present.

“You didn’t have to do this,” She drew the bowl into her lap, curious to why he had, or if perhaps it had been Thomas who had set him to it, “Thank you – it’s very kind.”

@intolerablexsacrifice

[intolerablexsacrifice, for Abigail] 💥 Try to calm my muse during an overwhelming emotional moment

{ Nonverbal Starters }

“Stop,” She could not bear yelling, even now after so long and far away from how she was raised, it rankled against everything that felt proper to raise her voice any higher than it was now – and maybe that was the problem. Maybe if she did let herself yell – maybe if she did opt to exorcise her demons in some unholy scream of fury she might feel better.

But the last woman to do that had ended up dead on a dining room floor, so maybe it wasn’t propriety that chained her voice after all.

Taking a shaking breath, she eased herself farther away from him – needing space, needing to breathe without feeling as though each fill of her lungs was taking in more poison than clarity. “I don’t need you to tell me how to feel.”

Was she really addressing him? Or the ghost inside her mind that still sounded ever like her father? Opening her eyes, she made herself take in the man before her. A wide, mismatched gaze that did not beseech as much as it insisted, an abortive motion of a calloused hand that sated itself by furling and unfurling it’s fingers at a side that was too still by contrast. A beard that did nothing to hide the twisting twitch of his lips, but rather framed them in a way that made each flicker all the more notable. He was nothing like her father – and that alone was enough to banish the last lingering whisper of the man’s ghost, for now.

“There is nothing that I can say right now that won’t be hurtful in some way. You understand that, don’t you? That you’re the last person I can talk to about this? About missing him? Regardless – regardless of everything he did to you – he was still my father.” And there were days when she hated admitting it. Hated that such a man had raised her – and how much she still loved him.

Worse – there were days when she hated the felt like she felt she should have to hate him. Days when she wished she had never gone with Eleanor Guthrie, and had just waited for her ransom to be paid, because then she could have gone on seeing pirates as blackguards with no interests beyond their own personal gains, rather than human beings as flawed as any other – and more willing to show the truth of their ugliness. She would never know the kind of man her father truly was – and it would be terrible, but blissful, in a manner only ignorance could provide.

“Please – just. Go.” She just needed some time today. It would pass. It always did. Birthdays only came once a year, and all the memories and regrets that came with them would fade in the light of tomorrow.

@intolerablexsacrifice

‘so many dreams were broken and so much was sacrificed.’ [ @ author!abigail! ]

{ The Heart Of Everything }

Her heart is still racing in her chest, the violence of the moment rendering her immobile in all but the pounding behind her breast, as if her heart were a bird trapped in a cage, desperate to escape the cat perched upon the sofa. Red stains the pages of her work, bleeding the ink and drowning demons in it’s wake, an eerie and poetic sight in the face of the one her words had summoned.

She hadn’t heard him coming up the stairs – hadn’t heard the door open, either. When the ink fell from her quill so readily, the words forming faster than she could pen them down, the whole world shut itself off. She lost track of where she was, of who she was with – and today, she lost track of reality itself.

It hadn’t been Captain Flint that entered her room – nor had it been James McGraw. When she heard his voice, she’d gotten up so fast she’d knocked over the wine – forgotten from dinner – and contronted Redbeard without thought. He was so alive in her mind, in that moment, that who else could it have possibly been?

Now, as the world came back to her, she found herself at a loss. His words were profoundly painful, in the light of her story – but in the shadows of the day they held deeper and more personal meaning. She took a shuddering breath, and after a moment of regaining herself, she thought back on what she had asked her character.

“What would you say to her if you could?”

She took another breath, closing her eyes and willing her heart to slow down, to beat in silence rather than raise all this painful noise in her chest. Opening them, she faced him again – all of him. The man who lost her – the demon who walked beside her – the character who lived with her only in the stories fashioned by a young woman who had barely known any of them. The man, the demon, or the woman.

Lifting her chin, she addressed them all, on behalf of herself only for the fact she could not bring voice to a dead woman without a pen, and would not dare to try even if she could.

“How long will you focus on what you lost, in pursuit of what you now have?” She stepped forward, beseeching his pain, and bidding him to let it go before it consumed him in ways not even Thomas could heal. “When will you say, I won’t lose what I have, instead of, look what I lost to get it?”

🤧 – comforting them when crying [ @ abigail because LISTEN, HE CARES, ]

{ Nonverbal Starters }

Sometimes people could say the most insensitive things, thinking that it was meaningless, or that it was acceptable because they were friends with whomever they said it to. As though by being friends with someone, you no longer needed to respect their feelings – because surely, they would understand your intent was not to be harmful and therefore you could be as dismissive and unkind as you pleased and it wouldn’t change anything.

It wasn’t meant to hurt and so, to claim that it did was to be oversensitive. Or worse, to be seen as angry with a friend who had said cruel things because they were troubled by their own demons. There was no scenario that Abigail knew of where it was permissible to tell someone dear that they were being unkind – it was only to be done when one did not care if they were seen as too sensitive, or when one did not care if that confrontation would cause the instigator pain in return.

Although Abigail knew Georgina had been jesting, that she had only said those words because she’d been fending off advances from drunken sailors for hours with little assistance from the men who were meant to be buffering such situations due to the fact two of them had been drawn off to assist some men to the town’s surgeon after that awful brawl that had broken out – they still resonated so deeply in Abigail’s chest she thought they might well shred her throat to pieces and leave her worthless on the floor, barely able to breathe but too stupid to die from the pain.

She had not meant to start crying as soon as she walked through the door – in fact she had only meant to be there for a few minutes, to deliver a book she had seen that she thought the two men living here would enjoy. No sooner had she stepped in, did the familiar scent of her father’s favorite tea hit her, and the next thing she knew she’d pressed her back to the door and placed a hand over her mouth to stifle any sound.

She was so blinded by the heat of her tears she hadn’t even seen him until she was gathered up in his arms, and some part of her wanted to scream at him. Some wild, dark, horrible part of her wanted someone else to hurt just as badly as she did – and who better than the man who had torn everything familiar from her? But it was no good. She hated that part of herself – hated the idea she was capable of being so cruel – and just as she couldn’t tell Georgina she had been awful tonight, she could not bring herself to tell James how horrible it was to walk into his house and have it smell like the home he had razed to the ground.

So she stood there, weeping impotently against the frustrations raging on inside of her, until her body was too tired to carry on, and the hurts were numbed by the energy they had stolen from her. She had a headache from the pressure of it all, and she wanted nothing more than to run away somewhere and hide, to sleep until it all fell away, and she could wake up feeling like she could face the day again.

Instead, she took in a shaky breath, and stepped back – holding up the book by way of explanation for her presence, and gently pushing it toward him, at once unable, and unwilling, to make herself speak as to what had happened to make her break down in such a disgusting manner as she had. She hated it with every fibre of her being, but as there was nothing to do about it unless she wanted to make herself vomit from the sheer disastrous disarray that her humors had aligned themselves into by pushing them further into chaos, she saw no point in thinking too much on the crime she had just committed.

Embracing The Dragon

@intolerablexsacrifice continued from [x]

Demons had haunted her steps for so long, she had learned to find friends in the shadows. She held her hands out to them, welcomed them at her side and gave them voices through her pages – but there were some that wanted more from her. Some that wanted her voice, and left scouring wounds wherever they touched. There were some she simply could not control, and last night she had been visited by the worst kind – a demon who had stepped off the pages and back into the world itself. It had only been a moment, but she could have sworn that she saw Ned Low at the back of the pub. The man had looked right at her, and the whole world had come to a screeching halt.

When the cacophony finally quieted, Abigail had found herself blinking toward the ceiling in the cellar – she had jumped to her feet so fast, she didn’t even see Georgina as she ran for the door, yanking on it with the expectation of entrapment. The door swung open even as her friend grabbed her shoulder and hauled her back, closing the door against her cry of terror. She had spent the remainder of the hour in her friend’s arms, soothed without question as the world righted itself and at last, Abigail had been able to step back into the pub, if only to cross it so that she could leave early for the night.

Against her will, her eyes had turned back to that corner – the man sitting there looked vaguely like Low – but was by no means an exact likeness. Shame had gripped her as she was escorted home, and her sleep had been restless the whole night through. The shadows under her eyes could have passed for the effects of a broken nose by the time she got into work, and it was three hours before Georgina started her shift and immediately hauled her aside to conceal them better.

Everything seemed out of order, and her world still hadn’t felt right by the time Flint arrived, nearer to the end of a shift that had gone by on sheer muscle memory alone it seemed. It had felt, for one wild and incomprehensible moment, as though her muted terror had summoned him from the ashes of Hell itself to banish the last lingering traces of Low’s visage in her mind.

Propriety had been little more than a distant memory for long enough now that she did not hesitate to turn to him, and rely on his solid strength against unwelcome phantoms. He had played a role in freeing her from Low, even if it had just been in liberating her from the man who had stopped Low and his crew entirely. It stood to reason then, that he might be what she needed to liberate herself of the memories.

He seemed to understand, to some extent, and for a time she simply afforded herself the comfort of knowing he was there. Eventually though, she did step back and force herself to breathe, to focus beyond the hollow inside of herself that echoed with her despair and to instead frame the words necessary to describe her plight. He alone would know, with the least amount of words, what had caused her so much distress. She wondered if perhaps he had been summoned by Georgina, rather than by some otherworldy sense of wrongness – strange as it might be to think, Abigail could find truth in either possibility.

“I thought I saw Captain Low yesterday.” She took a slow breath, then, “But while I know that to be impossible – I wonder if what Captain Vane assured me was true.” Her gaze hesitantly sought out the strange mixture of his own – another call toward the fae and fell stories that surrounded him. Needing to know, to hear from someone she had no reason to doubt, that all of her demons existed only in her mind. “Captain Low – and his crew – they are dead, aren’t they?”

‘it seems she lost her way.’ [ @ abigail, perhaps talking about one of her stories ;v; ]

{ Elixir For Existence }

The observation draws Abigail into a momentary reverie, recalling for herself the demons exorcised into the book he had chosen to discuss. There was no denying that

Jeanne was a troubled woman – her methods of dealing with the demons that haunted her were violent and angry, the sort of things that people attributed more to pirates than to gentile women.

“She finds her path,” Abigail’s assurance is quiet, thoughtful. “It is perhaps not the right one – but then, even good people can make terrible choices. What defines them is not the fact that they got lost but rather – I think – what they do once they realize they have allowed themselves to get tangled in the dark. That is the mark of what makes a person good or bad – we are all capable of great acts in either direction, but the moment we choose deliberately to take a side – that is the moment that truly shapes us.”

😶 | TF’s Joji to Abigail when she seems to be feeling down or upset

{ Touch Starved Meme }

The warm sensation of his presence has kept her steady for long enough now that she doesn’t stiffen anymore when he gets close. Between how often he has helped her weather storms, to the way he has maneuvered her in their training together, she has grown familiar with the touch of his hands and the feel of his side pressing against her. She has even come to know the feel of his arms when they enfold her for additional security when the world gets to be too much, and she has never known a hug more gentle and kind than his.

Her mother had feather light touches that were more performance than embrace, and her father had a way of gathering her up so tight and so close she thought she’d stop breathing and yet, she never failed to feel safe in his arms. With Joji, it was as if the best of both their hugs and something a bit more came into play – all the security of her father, all the gentleness of her mother, and all the great and unwavering kindness that was Joji himself.

Perhaps it was thoughts like these that made her an odd girl, but it was also thoughts like these that made her accomplished in her craft so she couldn’t really decry them. Sighing slightly, she shifted so that she could rest more securely against her friend, wishing these days of melancholia would leave her. She knew it was all about time – about patience – but it bothered her to feel so strong one day, and so weak the next with only the strangest thing to set her off.

“I don’t know what I would have done, if you hadn’t found me when you did,” She confessed softly, “You’ve made life infinitely more bearable – and I really don’t think I thank you enough for it.”

💪 – Pick my muse up [ for abigail, jazzhands, it’s Probably Out Of Necessity ]

{ Touch Starved Meme }

Abigail saw him coming, and hadn’t thought to be concerned until his large form bent over her, and she found herself caught up in a firm grip. Before she could even think, she was hauled up to her feet sharply and half-guided, half-dragged toward the treeline.

Understanding the need for stealth and swiftness from little more than his brisk attitude, Abigail bunched up what of her skirt she could manage around the journal in her hand and picked up the pace to better keep up with him. Once they were securely out of sight and he’d slowed down, she peered forward, all but peeking around his shoulder as she asked quietly, “Who are we hiding from?”

🤧 – comforting them when crying | TF’s Joji to Abigail

{ Nonverbal Starters }

His presence so often calmed her that his arrival now did little to bring shame into her heart. He had seen her crumble before and never once had he offered judgement. Today was no different as he came and crouched before her, holding her hands until she gathered herself. So often this was all it took – a gentle touch and a sense that it would be alright, over time.

Her hands tightened in his, for today was her father’s seventh birthday in the afterlife – and his first where she had completely forgotten her tradition to visit the sea and speak with him. Her days were so filled with wonderful routines now – meditation, work, writing, her calligraphy practice and of course, the hand to hand training Joji had walked her through today.

It was more of the same motions she was growing ever more used to, but there had been a new form incorporated today and she’d become so consumed with memorizing it and working it into her present forms at practice, before heading to work, that somehow today had become – just another day. It had not been until she had gone to cross off her calendar at work that it had struck her, and surely seven years was hardly enough time for a daughter to forget her father! Let alone all else that had been lost in the fires that had consumed Charlestown.

She had tried to tell herself then – so as not to break apart at work – that it was understandable. She was allowed to move on, to acknowledge the past and the dead when it suited her and to live her life without being consumed by her ghosts. And it was enough, to get her outside and to the table where Joji would meet her to take her home – but business with Mr. Gallenger must have run late, for he was not there.

She had sat, and acknowledged the true reason she was upset wasn’t that she didn’t believe those things. It was that she hadn’t made the choice on purpose. There was a difference between deliberately moving past her father’s birthday and somehow – somehow forgetting it entirely. Even just this once.

She had not meant to cry, and she hated feeling guilty over something so arbitrary as respecting a day that had always been so selfish in life. Her father’s birthdays were always cordial affairs, with business partners and their wives coming to call for entertainment and discussion, often bringing new connections for him to meet on his special day as though these people were, in and of themselves, a gift just to talk to the once.

And her father never hesitated to treat them that way, so she learned the importance and value of networking would always outweigh whatever small thing Abigail managed to purchase or make for him – but she never found melancholy, for when the guests had taken their leave and the hour was late, her father would always find her in the garden or the library, wherever she had sequestered herself away from the din, and gather her into his arms as if she were his greatest gift. It was her favorite part of the day, and had been all of her life.

Perhaps that was why she was so keen to remember it – when she had been so wounded by his wrong doings she had forgotten so much of his goodness. Missing his goodness that first year had made her feel guilty for all his wrongs, and she’d had quite the bitter things to say to the sea that day. But the second year, she had missed him in all his faults and goodness, and she had wept by the sea for hours, mourning him – and mourning for herself, as well, for all she had lost and all that she feared. Being alone had been so very terrible, that second year.

It had been a different emotional journey every time she had gone to the sea to talk to him. On his birthday, and on two Christmases when she could bear the loneliness of them no longer, and even once on an Easter because she had been so boggled by the fact she was excited to work that day – and it was because she wouldn’t have to be alone.

This was the first time she had not felt any compulsion to honor him or talk to him, and it had caught her by complete surprise. Holding on to Joji’s hands, she supposed it was the surprise that shocked her most – it made sense, in a way, that she no longer felt so obliged. It was very much due to this man, who had done so much to make sure she wasn’t alone, that she was perhaps finally moving beyond the past.

“Sorry,” She couldn’t help but excuse herself, even though she knew he didn’t mind her tears like others did. They didn’t offend him, not in the least, and there were no true words for how much that meant to her. “I just had a bit of a shock – but I’m alright,” She promised, smiling for him and knowing deep down that her words were true. She was alright – and she would continue to be so.

She considered going down to the beach after all, but in the end she shook her head. It was time to make the choice – and she rather liked the notion that this year could mark the start of moving on. Squeezing his hands, she let out a breath before slowly rising to her feet. “I’d best get home – I’d hate to miss my evening meditations.” She could start them late, but then she’d get to sleep late, and she’d hate herself in the morning for it.