𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐒

[saltburntmods]

MISFIRES

a rambunctious duo in salt has stuck their nose where they shouldn't and now you can all reap the rewards! this is a MISFIRES meme. post a header for your character, and receive accidental texts from your local saltburntian guests. nudes, nasties, confessions of a certain persuasion? things you'd otherwise never write or send? they're all on the table. (meme threads aren't game canon, but they're not not game canon either, right)

Comments

[diarists]

[oh. she hadn't -- she'd meant that for jackie, for her eyes, the pictures that tabloids would kill one another for, the wunderkind ceo's reason for living, soft and fragile and perfect. of all the plans she'd had for luring or threatening or blackmailing natalie back to her side, jack had never featured in them, too precious to be made a pawn.

and yet -- few know that as well as nat. she'd been the first to hold him, catch him as he entered the world, her hands slick with blood and fluid, her teary face as sweet as her (their) baby's had been. shauna will never escape that look, that hand clutching her own, the warmth of natalie's naked body beside her in bed, rising to cradle and rock the midnight whimpers away, backlit by firelight. she's tried. she's tried.]

He's walking now.

Started right before we left.

[before she can think better of it, another photo, another peelaway of her heart:]

[IMAGE ATTACHMENT]

[doped]

( walking. she tries to imagine his cute little waddle, probably unimaginably perfect, like everything else about him. now the son of a lifecoach and ceo, but when natalie knew her she was just a girl, pregnant and alone, unsure of how to make it in the world. nat knew she'd do anything for jack, for shauna — she'd work 18 hour days and sleep never, and do whatever it took to give them a life worth living. of course. of course — in the end, that desire didn't matter much. natalie left him as much as she left her, and they both turned out fine. natalie leaving was trimming the fat off her enterprise — in the end, she mattered even less to them than she did to the family she left in the first place.

still. she looks at the picture and tries to imagine what kind of mother she'd be, if she could be anything. teaching the kiddo how to do ollies on a skateboard, showing him how to roll his own cigarettes. yeah, right. family and domesticity was never meant for natalie — she knows without a question that even in the hands of a psychopathic cult leader, jackson is better off without her. )

has he started speaking yet?
the books all said 6ish months for sound words.

bet his first word was mama.

[diarists]

[they’d talked about it, back at the camp – nat’s arms around her under the blankets, hands cradling her stomach, mumbling about what color to paint the nursery, creating a world that neither of them had ever had. shauna had been soothed to sleep by it, by the idea of a normal, simple, ordinary life, where she’d pick up part-time work and drop jack off at daycare and pick him up in time to have dinner hot on the table when nat got home.

and when they’d returned, when things had finally started happening, when the money and the prestige and the power began to grow – that same dream dying, growing bitter and rotting on the vine, souring shauna’s perfect life. the gaps left by nat wrenching herself free, abandoning everything she’d claimed to love, unhealed and festering until now.

but shauna remembers the sleepy lullabies and the rasp in nat’s voice as she sang to the baby out in the wods. she remembers, and she metes out this little bit more, this sliver of the life nat gave up:]

He has. He knows a lot of words, some baby sign. Jackie was big on that, remember?

I’m Mama, Jackie’s Jayjay, but he says it like “dayday” and Mel’s Meemee.
You’re Nana. When he sees the photos, he points and goes “nana, nana”.
He misses you, I think.