#vs who they were at home and who they were really - mara remembers them well yeah but she was pretty young -

[titanicfreija]

Funny enough, the thing I feel like might not be acceptable is the bullshit politics on the Reef. It fits with the schism (those who wanted to stay vs go, those who felt they needed to meddle and others who decided that didn't need to be how they did it) that at some points, some born from the Distributary would be prejudiced against Earthborn. 'cos people are assholes and it's not like there's not several canon assassinations and attempted assassinations and massacres over shit like this.

Since Reeflings only rarely went to Earth, and Earthlings (except Guardians, which didn't start until shortly before Freija Arose ) don't go to the Reef this really isn't a problem and doesn't come up outside of "politics" circles.

So I invented a family that welcomed all Earthlings and guardians if they thought they might be descendent, including rides home and connections and shit; and a militant group that was horrified and disgusted by this idea. I let the militant group kill a bunch of people on the night of the big reunion event 'cos I'm an asshole.

Which is, of course, fucked up, but yanno. Politics.

I considered killing her with the Reef Wars but I wanted certain details in, so I made stuff up.

Sarah (pre-Freija) was Earthborn, one of only a few at the time. Her parents were a cartographer and her husband who decided there wasn't enough being done for Earth and therefore took their skills and a ship and a few material goods to help.

This was during the Reef Wars, after Mara had announced their presence, and considered a bad move if not outright desertion by pretty much everyone, including her parents, who wrote them off.

Sarah's parents dropped by the Vanguard, which was still fairly young at the time and were more or less told that the City couldn't help them, but were grateful. So they traded her ship for supplies and stuff, a sparrow and the like, and they took off to find survivors on the road and help them along with food and weapons and skills and maps.

I let them be pretty good at this and they led several people to the City with only a few incidents and losses. Sarah's father was exceptional on a sparrow and could divert and distract while her mother was an excellent marksman and held ground while hiding. I've named them but I can't remember what right now. The family name was Pojin.

Sarah was an accident. They pushed as long as they could before she had to take the maternity "leave", and got back on the road as soon as they could. Sarah was a face of hope to the travelling humans, and her parents taught her well, making sure she could take care of herself in the wild.

Two more daughters were born over the next thirty years.

About fifty years after they left, the Pojins were invited back to the Reef by a new family head, one interested in gathering the bloodline and seeing their progeny, regardless of who was happy about it. (They actually didn't know about the degree of hostility--it had been brewing quietly with little outlet and little reason to raise its head)

So the five went to the Reef and were welcomed warmly. Even the cold grandparents eventually calmed down and were happy to see the new faces. A couple were kinda jerks about the Earthborn and a couple were kinda jerks about the guardian, who had the family tattoo of dots over her face and didn't remember anyone, and only a few remembered.

Sarah picked up the name Saris to try and blend in, and she genuinely became interested in the corsairs during her stay.

A family gathering, the biggest in over a century, was planned once the furthest reaches had been stretched to. The grand introduction in the den was a little late to start, which was why about eighty of the hundred and fifty survived the initial attack. Sarah's mother and sisters weren't among them.

Sarah's father was shot as he was throwing people out the windows to get them away. Sarah was one he threw like that, giving her the chance to flee from the manor to the cliffside shore below.

(I did give her a heroic death ish initially here by having her attract attention away from other people who were running but I decided I didn't like it.)

She was pursued by two assassins for ten kilometers, narrowly escaping bullets for half of it. They only hit her a couple of times, struggling to aim with the mists and cliffs like they were, but that would have been enough.

Once weakened by the gunshots, she slowed down until they eventually caught up to her and beat her to death.

All eleven perpetrators were caught and brought to trial and imprisoned, but it's not like that unkilled anyone.

Thirteen people did survive, eleven of them changed their names and all of them left the Reef.

Due to the extremes cancelling each other out, and the hellacious fallout, no one has been particularly interested in either end of that political opinion. Hardly a tiff in terms of disputes, but not one worth fighting.

Sarah's body was not discovered in the few years between the massacre and the ghost happening upon her

[childactress-a]

thinking about people flaking out on mara and she’s stuck at her place and she gets high and/or drunk and spends all night doing nothing and seeing if anyone wants to come over and chill (nobody does) and by 4 am she’s fucked up and sad and reruns of arthur’s cowboy show start showing on a local cable channel and she lays on her couch watching every episode for a few hours trying not to cry the whole time :)

#so so so surreal for mara she feels like she's watching a ghost #when she rewatches arthur and donna's stuff she feels like she's consuming the content like any other viewer #seeing not her parents but arthur and donna - with them gone it slowly gets harder and harder to pick out their real selves #vs who they were at home and who they were really - mara remembers them well yeah but she was pretty young - #- when they died and her memory gets worse every year #she's always had to share them w the rest of the world but now it's like. really setting in #it feels like she's forced to view her parents through the same lenses as the rest of the world #she's not a fan