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

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.”

🤧 – 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.

Nothing Left To Lose

@intolerablexsacrifice continued from [x]

Her words had been deliberate – conversation was too difficult for her now, not to choose exactly the right things to say in the hopes of concluding it quickly. All she truly desired was some means of silencing the thoughts in her mind, and though a part of her thought perhaps talking to someone might help exorcise them as surely as writing did, in the end those words would die on her throat and fill her mouth with ash.

So when he asked her where her certainty came from, she did not wish to answer. She feared the truth would die on her tongue, but looking at him – knowing the danger in him was still as real as the violence inside her mind – she found she was not afraid to air the shadows between them.

“Because it wouldn’t gain you anything. There’s no purpose – no vengeance to be found in hurting me. Even if you were to do it – all you could do, would be to assault me physically. I have nothing that you could burn or destroy that has any value to me any longer. Everything that used to matter, you either exposed or ruined. All that’s left is my body, and my life. And they don’t mean enough to you, or England, or anyone, for you to bother breaking.”

“I’m still struggling to believe any of this is real.” [ for author abigail! ]

{ Profound & Emotional | Always Accepting }

The book beneath his hand was of course familiar to her – she had an intimate awareness of the covers designed to house her writings, having such a defining role in their production as she did. The moment she had seen it laid upon the table, Abigail had known there would be questions – curiosities – from the man who starred so prominently in that particular tale.

She had never considered the possibility that he might read them – not because she considered him an unlearned man, for she had seen the books that had lined his cabin with her own eyes and known many of them to be of academic importance to a more philosophical crowd of men – but because she had not considered stories such as these to hold any interest to a man who lived them, and whose taste in literature seemed so advanced beyond what she would ever be capable of producing.

What was more, she had never believed they would meet again, least of all under these circumstances. She didn’t fully know the truth of his retirement, only that it was clear to her that it had done something to bring a softness out in him she had never seen before. It left her in a strange position, for though she knew he was bound to start asking these questions – she still had no easy answers to offer.

“What is real about it?” Turning this around was perhaps the only hope she had of explaining anything to one of the few people alive in this world, who would know that her tales were not woven from imagination – not entirely. “All stories are just that, are they not? Embellishments and lies – even when they tell an honest truth, they must be made dishonest to tell it.”

Indeed – that particular book was the most honest retelling of the events of Charlestown she had ever written. Even now, the demons exorcised onto those pages left her raw. They still screamed inside of her, but their power had waned since she had granted them voices upon those pages.

The names were all different. Of the people and the ships, of the town and even of smaller things, like the streets. Yet it was the same story as her own – a girl stolen away by monsters, who later discovers the monster had been the one beside her all her life. Whose whispers had made her afraid, and whose crimes cost a town everything. It was one of the very, very few stories where the character most resembling Barlow died, and the only time – in any of her stories – that character died in so haunting and tragic a manner as the truthful one.

The tale built a sympathy for pirates that made it one of her less popular works. She was glad of it, for it meant few people sent letters to her pseudonym inquiring of it. Few people shining light on the demons that bled through those pages, strongest when they rose unexpectedly back to the ink in her well, demanding she bleed them out again, to poison another story.

“If that story bothers you, I’ve written others that tell different truths.” She offered quietly, thinking of one of her more popular works, which had become a short series about a mercenary who could not forgive the death of a mother any more than she could forgive the destruction of a town. Or perhaps the tales in which a woman holds her temper and metes out justice against all who had done her wrong.

Both of those stories were lies formed of wishful thinking, and the demons in them were mere shades of what came out in stories that held closer to the truth – but those demons were just as real. For there was a part of her that wished for the strength of the mercenary who breathed out her anger and loss in every violent action – a part of her that dreamed of a world where Barlow was alive and those who spread their lies were punished for it.

But neither world or woman was real. Neither of those stories would ever be as compelling as the ones about Captain Redbeard, nor any as haunting and painful as the time he tried to stop being a pirate, only to remember why he became one in the first place. He was a man of truth – a man who accepted there was darkness in the world and chose to face it, to defeat it where he could – but never lie about where it came from, or who spread it.

He had turned to liars in the hopes of becoming one himself – a man claiming to repent so that he may know peace – and that betrayal of himself was what cost him so dearly, even as it woke other characters to the reality he so often told them was there. Those who speak the most loudly, the most angrily of monsters – tend to be shrouding the fact that they, themselves, are the beasts one should fear above all others.

“It is but one truth as I see it. That doesn’t make it real to anyone but me.” She concluded softly, folding her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting with them. “I am – sorry,” She added, feeling compelled to acknowledge the one demon they both shared, a woman whose kindness had been an impossible strength. A woman who, when finally pushed beyond the edge of her patience, was so cruelly and abruptly silenced by her own death, in a house where civilization dictated she ought to have been safe from such awful violence. “If the echoes of it are too true for you, as well. I cannot promise not to write of it again, if that is – why you are here.”

It burned inside of her, the need to keep that woman’s story alive even if all she knew of her was the last. There were times when Abigail felt as though she could not breathe for the sounds of the monsters inside of her were so cacophonous a riot, and if she did not let them scream, then surely the one who would start would be she. And she knew – she knew what happened to people who screamed at their demons no one else could see – so when those days hit, she would pick up her quill, and pour them into the ink. Until the day those demons were finally quiet, she could not promise anyone, not even him that she would, or even could, stop telling their stories.

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” [ for author!Abigail B) ]

{ Hamilton Starters | Accepting }

The rhythmic scratching of her quill came to a halt, the ink drying in the wake of her consideration toward his words. It was always this way now, feeling as though conversation was trapped somewhere inside of her, locked beneath the screams that still bubbled inside of her throat. As though if she were to risk parting her lips and let any sound escape at all, she must be certain to have the right words and only them – for to linger, to let noise froth itself forward she risked the wave of raw horror breaking past behind each syllable.

It was an unbearable existence at times like these, when an answer was expected and the art of conversation was believed to be something one did not forget after learning it the once. With care, she set her pen into its hold, fingers reaching for dust to aid the ink in drying as though these meticulous and methodical actions could bring to bear a storm too great for one soul alone to carry.

“It is where I feel safe,” She offered him the truth, though there were more things she could say, to clarify it. Simplicity in times of great internal chaos was, perhaps, the mortar upon which the dam within her was built. “The more that I write, the quieter it gets inside of me.”

Finally, she looked over at him, once more allowing herself to see the man the pirate had become. It was strange – unnerving, even – to see in him the return of a softness she could feel slipping from her own grasp with every passing day. The good of the world was returning for him – and she hoped it would continue to treat him kindly. She did not begrudge him, though she did hope she could learn from him some means of strength, some capacity to hold on to the light that seemed to be growing dimmer with every nightmarish memory.

“It is too loud, still, for me to stop.” That she feared it may never again grow quiet, she had not the power or will to admit.

This is a permanent starter call for Abigail Ashe, of Starz’ Black Sails explicitly.

These calls give me a heads up on who is open to interacting with whom ( which is handy for those who have exclusives among my crew! ) and gives me an excuse to kick you starters whenever something crosses the mind, or blow up your inbox knowing who would be most wanted.

These calls also serve as a final tag dump – when this call is posted it indicates a character has been fully moved into the blog and is ready for action!

For other starter calls, check the tag HERE.