The Path Week 2023

The Path Week 2023

Day 5: Wolf Swap

Ever since I saw a photoshop of Robin and Fey Wolf together I knew he would fucking hate her with a BURNING passion. Though Robin being Robin she'd love him and the piano.

Posting a little late bc today has been… a trial, but here! A while ago I was doing “Self Indulgent Queer Headcanon Circles” for various things, so it felt appropriate to do this~

Rose and Robin aren’t thinking about any of that stuff yet but they’re here to support their sisters! Also I didn’t know the GNC flag off hand and had to look it up so pls forgive me if I drew it wrong 

Day Two: Favorite Interpretation

Death takes a while.

The body doesn't surrender easily. It labors and struggles through blood spilling from wounds in rivulets; through age and infection and mutation; through ischemic cell damage and faltering brain tissue and the insurmountable armory of death—the body endures, until it can't anymore.

The mind endures as well. Or it tries.

People are stubborn. Bullheaded. Stupidly convinced that eventually, they'll push past the wall and find themselves in some transcendent tomorrow. She's stubborn too, she supposes. Clinging to false hope of some grand, sweeping change that will give her the life she wants, some karmic reward for—what exactly? Doing what was asked of her? Not throwing her own family to the wolves? Does she really think she deserves some splendid future of music and passion for doing the bare minimum?

A stupid hope. She clings to it still.

Her dreams of ancient concert halls, reverberating with symphonic majesty, have not yet been snuffed out. Not for lack of trying. She throws herself into her work, tries to make housework her art, redirect her passions to something sensible. Nevertheless, her mind always wanders, caught up in fantasies of keys beneath her fingers, handwritten sheet music before her, and a gentle hand upon her shoulder. A voice in her ear saying “look, dear, at what we have created together”.

When she crawls into bed after a long night of hand-scraping dishes and frowning over bills, her brain betrays her, casting her in the role of a talented up-and-coming musician, respected and liked by her peers. Living in a modest but cozy apartment, composing by day and playing to hushed crowds by night. She imagines herself in a larger, nicer bed than this one, still replaying the sonata she played that night, safe in the arms of a kindred spirit.

She tries to kill these dreams, but deep down she wonders if they're not, in turn, killing her.

Death takes a while.

Morning comes. She rises. Cooks. Drives her siblings to school. Works. Picks up her siblings. Comes home. Cleans. Cooks. Helps with homework. Works through the family's finances after the others have gone to bed (they don't need to worry, they don't need to know). Sleeps.

Rises.

Cooks.

Cleans.

Sleeps.

Rises.

Cooks.

Cleans.

Sleeps.

Rises.

Cooks—

A theater hidden away from the world, decked in red and black and green. Secluded and splendid. A place no one knows. No one but you. You could stay there, for a while. For as long as you wish. Stay, and create, alone in this perfect refuge. Stay, and retreat from the endless procession of identical days. Stay. Stay. Stay.

“Scarlet?”

She pulls herself free from the fantasy. In her distraction, she’d minced the vegetables they were supposed to have for dinner into an inedible dust. The knife, clean and sharp, gleams in the flickering fluorescence of the kitchen.

She turns away from the counter and looks down at her sister. Rose’s brow is furrowed. She hugs herself and grimaces as she looks up at her de-facto (distant, foolish, absent-minded, poor-excuse-for-a) guardian.

“What’s the matter, Rose?”

“Is everything okay? You seem a little…” Rose gestures absently, fumbling for the right word. “…Troubled.”

She considers, for a single insane moment, telling her the truth.

No, Rose, everything isn’t okay. Your siblings are acting out, I'm having to choose between rent and Ruby's medicine, and your grandmother is probably dying. Everything’s falling apart and I can’t even bring myself to care because the only thing that feels real anymore is the fantasy I can’t kill.

But she stops herself, and forces her face into a convincing smile.

“Everything’s fine. I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.”

Rose looks as unconvinced as Scarlet feels.

That night, she dreams of a duet. Of a lilting dance of harmonies so perfect, so sublime, that she wakes up in tears. It’s an odd sensation. She hasn’t properly cried since she was ten. Feeling childish, she goes to the bathroom to splash some water on her face and school her expression into its usual placid mask. As she’s heading into the kitchen and start breakfast, the phone rings.

Mother.

Someone needs to bring food and wine to their grandmother. She’s not feeling well, you see, and she would just be over the moon to get a visit from one of her lovely grandchildren.

Well.

She could use the exercise.

The drive to the path is uneventful. The soft morning sun and the cries of countless birds don’t even register as she walks the familiar path without straying.

Until.

Until, a stone’s throw away from her grandmother’s house.

She hears the music.

The duet from her dream.

In the woods. Close enough to taste.

Before she knows it, her feet are off the path, and her mind is a thousand miles away, wrapped up in sonatas and symphonies that promise to silence her every agony.

Into the forest she walks.

To a theater hidden away from the world, decked in red and black and green.

all the ways I'd keep you safe, I keep you safe from me

I love how we apparently all saw this prompt and went “okay, ten year old Scarlet with infant Robin”

the path week 2023

day 5 • wolf swap - BONUS

just for funsies