(if you prefer Ao3)
They learn about it in the slowly bubbling, uncertain high of victory.
She died a hero, Clarisse says, repeats, convinces, closing Drew’s hands around a bracelet far too innocent to make everyone’s hearts sink with just a glance. Its silver colour is barely visible beneath the blood. Drew’s hands were already long slick with crimson. She doesn’t say anything.
(The daughter of Ares tells them the story as they pick up their other fallen siblings. Nobody responds)
Fuchsia with an apple for Anders, seventeen and the loveliest relationship advisor. Lacy only manages a few words through her sobs and tears, her hair still in the intricate but effective braid he had put it in before battle.
Coral with a conch shell for Khalid, twelve with a love for anything one could find at the bottom of the ocean. Valentina grips his stuffed anglerfish so tightly that she almost tears it while making her speech about him.
Salmon with a thorned rose for Ina, fifteen and the best fighter in the cabin. Mitchell can barely stand while talking, choked by having been unable to retrieve more of her than a gnarled arm, recognizable only through the heart-shaped birthmark spanning the back of her hand.
Magenta with a dove for Sawyer, fourteen with the kindest eyes in the world. Drew lays the sword they had never wanted in the fire and watches it melt into perfumed smoke without a word.
Cerise with flowering myrtle for Jasmin, sixteen and the craftiest painter around. Aminah bites her knuckles to the blood in a failed attempt not to cry when the burning paints colour the fire in impossible hues.
… Hot pink with an electric spear for Silena. Clarisse sets the fire with a blank face, dried tear tracks gouging grooves down her cheeks.
(A grief-stained title of cabin counsellor for Drew, fifteen with the weight of her world suddenly on her shoulders. Cabin Ten cannot keep her from turning her head high, eyeliner sharper than it’s been in years.)
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It’s not Drew who orders all signs of Silena Beauregard to be scrubbed from the insides of Cabin Ten.
Instead, Mitchell passes through the cabin while the others haunt around Camp like the ghosts they had avoided becoming. Carefully, carefully, he folds up Silena’s fashionista posters, picks pictures of her off the clothing clips on the strings strung up throughout the cabin, strips her bed of the flower pillows they’d all collaborated to get for her last (final) birthday, collects clothes from her section of shelves and drawers, and packs everything with even a trace of her into the suitcase under his bed. Grief echoes off the bare spaces, sandalwood perfume soaking into the walls, a vestige of one of the many lives struck short these past several days.
His siblings don’t say anything when they finally come and find him curled up on Ina’s bed, clutching her morning star plush like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to his body, the entire cabin missing key elements. Drew starts to get ready for bed, Aminah throws herself onto Jasmin’s bed and shatters, Lacy tears her hair free of Anders’s braid with a wail, and Valentina screams into Khalid’s pillows until her voice is hoarse. Mitchell swears he hears similar sounds from the other cabins.
(Rory comes the next day, backpack full of clothing designs he hadn’t bothered to unpack in his rush upon hearing about the strange happenings in New York. He takes one look at his siblings’ hollowed faces, at the bare beds, at the empty spaces, and breaks, begging for forgiveness for not being there to fight along their sides, for not protecting them like an older brother should, for working on his college projects while they fought and died for the world. Drew scoffs, lips perfectly painted, and says there’s a reason they didn’t tell him war was brewing over their last Iris Message. The others pile onto him, cursing and crying and trying to keep themselves from falling into pieces.)
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Officially, Silena Beauregard is a hero. She had been burned with laurel wreaths, and offerings were tossed into the fire to aid her journey to Elysium. Her photo has been put up in the Big House alongside many others, and even Mr D managed not to butcher “Silena Beauregard” for once, prompted by a centaur kick. Her name is whispered under the topic of the ultimate sacrifice, of the power of love, of the bravery of unexpected leaders.
Unofficially, the only one who speaks her name with pure reverence is Clarisse La Rue, and no one says it with such vitriol as Drew Tanaka. Her spy bracelet, still drenched in blood, has been hurled against a wall and remains hidden and gathering dust under her bed. Her cabin has been scrubbed clean of any mentions of her, her name unspoken in fear of Drew’s newfound cruelty.
(Drew builds back up the walls her siblings had dismantled with so much care, taller and thicker than ever before.)
(Mitchell retreats back into himself, the skittishness he had worked so hard to shed shrouding him in full force once again.)
(Lacy melts into the crowd like never before, burying her voice beneath a blanket of sorrow.)
(Valentina ditches her soft colours and loose wardrobe, forcing attention onto her new tastefully torn jeans and bold shades and away from her wail-wrecked throat.)
(Aminah tugs her grief tight around herself and leaves with the summer, her goodbye lacking a definitive “see you later”.)
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Two boys, adorned in pearls and guided by geese, arrive in a cabin full but hollow, plagued by dead siblings and a traitorous hero. Twins, they are, nine years old and unknowing of the carnage of war, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Drew scoffs and scolds but leaves them to her remaining siblings, for her sharp tongue has never been suited for introductions, and even in the wake of her death-stained rule, she will not dare shut children down so soon after arrival.
Names of all the ghosts haunting the cabin become unspoken, none willing to explain them and blemish the twins’ innocence.
It does not work.
Not when Lev walks in on Lacy sorting and resorting dozens of vials of perfumes with shaking hands and trembling breaths. Not when Ren asks Valentina about the night sky painted on the wall over an empty bed and she shuts down entirely for the rest of the day. Not when Lev holds up a mirror to help Mitchel neaten up the impulsive haircut he had given himself after a game of Capture the Flag. Not when Ren catches Drew in a screaming match with another camper over a girl he had never heard about.
Not when something weighs heavily over the empty spaces in the cabin, over the necks of their newfound siblings.
So they ask someone else.
Clarisse La Rue. Will Solace. Connor Stoll. Nyssa Barrera. Malcolm Pace.
Slowly, slowly, they collect pieces, find ways to fit them together, compare conflicting accounts. They get the story of clashing metal, raging fire, slithering scales. A frightful fairytale, starring their fellow campers as the main characters. The missing limbs, the overabundance of scars, the paranoid glances — it all clicks together, and the uncomfortable hollowness of Camp Half-Blood is suddenly apparent.
(Eventually, they ask about their own Cabin’s side of the story.)
(They receive no answer beyond solemn looks and half-hearted shrugs.)
----------
Piper McLean falls from the sky, crashing straight through the fragile roof of the system Cabin Ten has established for itself the moment she bursts with pink light.
She is… argumentative. Unwilling to cram herself into the tattered tapestry of their Cabin the war had left behind. Determined to be different, to stand out, to raise her hackles at those around her. Filled with an anger towards the paints and ruffles her siblings wrap themselves in, and unconcerned with not letting it spill over and burn them.
She challenges Drew, and they cheer.
(Will the sister-that-never-left finally come back to them?)
Drew scoffs and huffs, sharpens her nails on the sound of Piper’s voice, but does not fight.
(They have fought for so long, and she is tired, and maybe an older kid with none of the wounds that mar the rest of them is needed in Cabin Ten.)
(Within a month, Drew wrenches permission for them to leave Camp for a shopping trip out of Chiron, and they know she is coming back.)
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There needs to be more disabled shadowhunters.
So one of the things i like about tsc is that it's quite diverse, especially for fantasy, but there should be more disabled people.
In TID, Jem was an incredibly written disabled character, and there's also Henry, but he was able-bodied when he was a major character.
And in TDA, there was Arthur and Ty.
Also there were two characters that were born "weak", but both of them died as children, so we didn't see how that would play out.
But on one note for it being a military society, there are way too little disability. there sould be a lot more shadowhunters that have missing limbs, never fully healed right after battle, blinded by ichor, and so on and so on.
As for the other note, i would like to see a character that was born disabled how would that play out in society. How would a deaf/diabetic/blind/physically disabled/atc/ character interact with the world that they live in? How would they deal with getting mundane medicine to live? What would their role be? If they couldn't fight what job they would take up?
In conclusion, i really feel like this book series has a lot more potential to include a lot more bad ass disabled characters .
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Hi can we talk about how James Herondale is a jealous bitch (much like his mama mind you) but he handles it so gracefully that this trait of his personality goes pretty much unnoticed?
Modern society sees jealously as inherently toxic, but honestly, to me, it's a normal, healthy emotion, and what matters and defines whether or not a relationship is healthy is how a person deals with it, and James aces it with flying colours (and so does "young" tessa by the way)
It's actually comical cause Cordelia, who is fully aware of her feelings for him, isn't jealous herself.She knows a shit ton of girls swoon over James herondale and it is what it is, to the point of actually finding it funny when filomena says she wants to bite him.James on the other hand is like those fuckers are ogling my wife? I want to kick them on the kneecaps. Cordelia will have another husband, who will touch her and expect things from her? HATE THIS BITCH ALREADY AND HOPE HE DIES. Even Matthew's interactions with Cordelia made him unconfortable to the point of "oh yeah I'm going there" even before he knew matt had feelings for her.Like when they arrive together at curzon after seeing "wayland the smith", or when they are dancing together at James and Cordelia's engagement party. I'm actually 99% sure he cuts in in Choi and asks Cordelia to waltz with him after she dances with Matthew bc he was jealous
But he never makes it Cordelia's or anyone else's problem, so Cordelia (or anyone really) has absolutely no idea that he feels like this. I think from a narrative point this, along with horny JamesTM, was a great call on CCs part, bc Jordelia is the " fake couple" and she had to convince us of his feelings specifically.And anyway this is comedic gold and I've never seen anyone talk about it
@faithfromanewperspective I think you would like this discussion
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