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When Briar looks in the mirror, she sees coal. She sees flames and heat, a mixture of orange and red and yellow all smoked together into one. She sees smoke billowing from the hills in the distance and the sound of crackling and burning and melting. She sees steam and fray and destruction, a combination of misery and chaos all put together in one. She smells smoke and rust, the smell of iron and burnt ash all seething together into her senses, travelling through her body the same way blood does — through her heart and her lungs, through veins and down her arms and legs, singing her skin just enough to make a mark, just enough for her to feel the fire collapse around her system, but not enough for it to hurt. Never enough for the fire to hurt.
Instead, Briar turns away from the mirror — if she cannot see it, it cannot hurt her.
Keenan is a simple man. He goes to work and makes an honest living, he comes home and tries to spend time with his daughter (albeit she ignores him more often than not). He runs errands on weekends, and attempts to visit his frail father in law at least once a week, if not more. Keenan is not fire or flame, there is no pain or clawing or death or destruction. Keenan does not weep for his dead wife — only twenty one years old and killed in a war that she played no part in creating. He does not weep for his daughter, eight days old and snatched from the arms of her mother as she was killed before her sight. He does not weep for the father that lost both his daughters and wife in the same span of a year, now living his life void less in all eternity, just waiting for the end to come. He does not weep for himself — alone, orphaned at twenty four and holding onto an empire he did not create, made a single father at twenty three trying to keep peace between a world in which he is hated and a world in which he knows nothing about.
Then — then, Briar decided to join a fight in which she has no part, a play in which she has no role. Then...then, Briar joins a fight that killed her mother, that killed his wife.
Then...then, Keenan is no longer a simple man.
It's one thing to rise from the ashes, but it's a whole other to claw your way back from hell.
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briar barlow madden ( 1980 )
al pacino ——— nathaniel valencia ( 1930 ) henry cavill ——— keenan barlow madden ( 1958 ) elizabeth lail ——— vienna lestrange ( 1960 ) arden cho ——— fay dunbar ( 1981 )
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and ...
madelyn cline ———holly valencia ( 1961 ) sofia carson ——— sterling valencia ( 1961 ) wolfgang novogratz ——— regulus black ( 1961 )
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soundtrack ( and the air was electric )
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I. Chemtrails Over The Country Club, Lana Del Ray II. Can't Catch Me Now, Olivia Rodrigo III. Remember That Night, Sarah Kays IV. Dear Arkansas Daughter, Lady Lamb V. I'm Here, Sweet Talk Radio VI. Hard Feelings, Loveless, Lorde VII. Camden, Gracie Abrams VII. Listen To Your Heart, Roxette VIII. Black Out Days, Phantogram IX. Glimpse of Us, Joji X. Fire, PVRIS
