#( ix. augustus moran )

[theasteriae-arc]

HOW DO YOU MEASURE A LIFE?

IN LOVING MEMORY OF LEOPOLD CONSTANTINE MORAN 7 AUG 1984 – 12 MAY 2004 1ST BATTALION, B COMPANY, ROYAL ANGLICANS 18 SEP 2002 – 12 MAY 2004 WE WILL REMEMBER HIIM

May 12th, 1984 The shades are closed. The city on the other side of the windows is greener than she ever expected it could be, but the sunlight hurts her eyes, gives her such headaches that she can’t even open them. She spends a lot of time in bed. There’s three months to go, still, till the baby is due, but she feels sick and tired all the time, just wants to lie here in the quiet, dim, coolness of the room with the fans humming, undisturbed.  

She’s almost asleep when noise erupts in the corridor outside. Running feet, shouts, laughter. Sebastian is almost four, August a little over a year younger and probably a couple of paces behind, determined to catch up. There’s a bit of a scuffle outside the door, then a flurry of knocks that feel like something sharp being driven into Vivienne’s skull. She groans and puts a hand over her eyes.  

Sebastian is loud and restless, likes to bounce on the foot of the mattress. It’s too much for her to handle on a good day, and she’s not had one of those in months. Thank God for Nanny, who shepherds both boys away, insisting, “We don’t want to disturb Mother now, do we?”  

Vivienne sighs, relieved, and hopes the new baby is a girl.  

May 12th, 1989  

“… Ready or not, here I come.” Sebastian is seven years old and clumsy with numbers. He starts counting on his fingers but loses track somewhere after twenty and skips a couple. He repeats a few more and finally gives up, calling to his brothers who are hiding elsewhere inside the residence.  

Leopold, the youngest ( and their mother’s favourite, despite the fact he’s another boy ), is hiding inside a wardrobe in one of the empty state bedrooms. He’s not scared of the dark like Sebastian is.  

The British High Commission is not a cosy building—a lot of the furniture is antique, breakable, and there are many rooms the boys are not supposed to go into—but if they ignore that, which they often do, it’s a great place to play hide and seek. So many rooms and cupboards and corners to squeeze yourself into.

He waits for what feels like hours, but really, is only fifteen or twenty minutes, hands over his mouth when Sebastian thunders into the room, but after ducking to look under the bed and yanking back the curtains, he wrenches the wardrobe door open, and for a second, the two brothers just stare at each other, identical blue eyes, before Bash grins and holds out his hand. “Help me come and find August?”

May 12th, 1994

August seems like a long time away. Leopold’s not sure whether he wants it to come quicker or slower. He’s looking forward to seeing his brothers again, though they seem like very distant figures now, voices on the other end of a telephone every two weeks or so. But when they left to go to school, they didn’t come back, and that’s what’s making him nervous. Torn between staying close to his mother’s side and spending every minute he can out of doors, playing cricket with the friends he might never see again.  

It’s very hot out today, and Vivienne’s taken to bed with another of her headaches. Leopold doesn’t need to pack yet, but he’s trying to decide what he wants to take with him when he goes to England in a couple of months’ time. These, definitely. His father’s always telling him he’s far too old for toys now, but Leopold still loves the collection of little tin soldiers he was given one Christmas when he was younger. They go with him everywhere.  

Once upon a time, he’d had a whole platoon of them, but now there are only three left. He makes them parachute into the open suitcase one at a time. Sebastian. August. Leopold. Then they crawl on their bellies under the mesh that he thinks he’s supposed to put his socks in or something, climbing up and out the other side.  

Absorbed by this game, he forgets about his upcoming trip again until bedtime. 

May 12th, 2000

Bash and August look very grown up in their parade dress uniforms. Dark blue jackets and trousers with a red stripe up the leg, gold braid on the shoulder, and a crimson band around their caps. Leo scans the rows of cadets, more than two hundred of them saluting the General as they pass by the stand, for their faces. Shoulder to shoulder, though one slightly taller than the other, both with their chins up and their chests puffed out. They have every right to be proud.  

Neither of their parents thought it worth flying out for, and Leo, sitting next to his uncle and his aunt, looking very smart himself in a navy-blue suit and a blue and red striped tie, is privately relieved. No doubt his father would have found some fault somewhere and ruined the day for them, whereas Uncle Thomas realises how important this is for them both.

“Will you come to my passing out parade too?” Leo asks him, while they wait for the ranks to be dismissed so they can go and offer their congratulations to the two brand-new 2nd Lieutenants. He’s already decided he’s going to be one too, when he’s older. “Only two years, then it’ll be my turn.”  

May 12th, 2004

Bash’s hand is outstretched again. Leo thinks back to that afternoon at the Embassy, fifteen years ago. “Help me come and find August?” Then, he’d let go of Bash’s hand as soon as he could and gone tearing off down the corridor ahead of him, little legs flying as he was determined to find their brother first. Now, he holds on tightly for as long as he can.

He thought it would hurt more, dying, but mostly, he’s just cold. Even with the fiery, Afghani sun beating down on the back of his neck, he’s shivering. Must be the shock. His fingers contract around Sebastian’s, nails digging into the back of his hand, but Bash does not react. Not at all. “Don’t let go!” he calls, but it’s his fingers that are slipping out of Leo’s grip. “Helicopter will be here, help’s coming, you just have to hold on.”

“So do you.” Leo grits his teeth and tries to pull Bash’s hand back. He can taste sand and iron when he coughs, chest spasming. “You can’t—” It’s getting harder for him to talk in between coughs. “—You can’t give up; do you hear me? No matter what happens, you can’t—fucking—” Another cough, longer this time. When the fit’s passed, he’s so tired, he can hardly keep his eyes open. He screws them up against all the grit and the dirt and sand and fixes them on his brother, two pairs of identical blue eyes.  

“—I love you, brother.” A red-toothed smile, then his eyelashes flutter, and he can hear Bash calling to him from the other end of a very long tunnel, but when he tries to turn back, the blackness is too much. It swallows him up whole. 

#pregnancy / tw #injury / tw #death / tw #& long post alert #but i had feelings #( i. drabble ) #leo. | muse #main tbt. #( ix. vivienne moran ) #( ix. bash moran ) #( ix. august moran ) #( ix. augustus moran ) #( ix. thomas moran ) #( ix. kaitya moran )

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family members ( still accepting! ) / @consultingsister​ said:

❝ ♡ ❞ for BASH to talk about his siblings. 

“August is my brother twice over. Our childhood, despite all appearances, was neither an easy nor a pleasant one, and we relied on each other to get us through it. Me rather more than him, I should think. He covered for me when I needed it, and in return, I told him stories in different languages. Like I said, he did more for me than I did for him. At school, we swapped homework. He would do maths for me, and I would do French for him. Mine was always turned in on time, all neat and correct, and his verb tables were sloppy, half-finished at best. But I did try.

“He had an offer from Oxford to study Military History when he was eighteen, but he gave it up to come to Sandhurst with me when I got kicked out of university for failing my exams. We trained side by side, graduated side by side, and he had my back, and I had his, when we shipped out for the first time a year later.

“I wish we had that same kind of relationship with him now. I was promoted a year ahead of him, and since then, things have been different, strained, between us. I couldn’t talk to him like I used to, joke and jostle around, go to him for advice without running the risk of getting him written up. I always thought he’d make a better captain than me, he was more level-headed, but it wasn’t my choice to make. Again, I did my best, but after the ambush, things only got worse.

“Speaking of which. Leo. Christ. When we were younger, he was the happiest fucking kid you could ever meet. A bit- out of it, maybe—not naïve, just in his own little world. But maybe that’s what protected him. And he was like that even when he came out to the base. Laces trailing. I had to reprimand him. I didn’t want to, but I’d just been made captain and I couldn’t be seen to be favouring him or August or anybody that I’d been close to before. 

“When we lost him- When I lost him- Fuck. Somehow, they knew we were moving that day. I remember people were singing, laughing, joking. Someone was eating chocolate out of their rat pack, right? And I— Let me tell you one thing that always used to piss me off about Leo. For six years, he was the baby, which meant he could do no wrong. My father didn’t change much, wasn’t any more tolerant, but my mother- She doted on him. I was born in Surrey, but I grew up in Lahore and New Delhi. My father wanted me to return to England for school, so I did, alone, when I was ten years old. August came the following year. But when it was Leo’s turn, Mother came with him. Bella had been born by then, but she still loved him the best. Her last son.

“She came to visit us in Southwold. Brought Leo, like she hadn’t brought either of us over, and the baby, too. August wouldn’t come down from his room. I got told off for hiding behind Aunt Kat. I hadn’t seen Leo in four years. He looked different. He looked the same on that day, though; round-faced and scared. I held his hand and promised him everything would be okay. I didn’t tell him the feeling was gone from my fingers. He didn’t tell me it was my fault, even though I felt it was. I couldn’t go to his funeral. August went, and Alex came and sat by my bedside and we watched shitty telly till the whole thing was over.

“My sisters never visited me when I was in the hospital, or after. I know what they are up to, more or less—they make the society papers when they get married or divorced or dump a prince—but we aren’t close. Bella ( Christabel ) is almost eleven years younger than me; she was born the spring before I left for school. She looks the most like me, we both have red hair, but that’s about as far as it goes. Sometimes, she’ll send postcards, but I think she gets on better with August than she gets on with me. Augustine, my youngest sister ( yes, really, my father wasn’t very imaginative when it came to naming his children ), came with Mother and Leo when they came to Southwold. That is the only time I have ever met her, and she cried almost the entire time.

“Still, I believe she has two children of her own now. And she’s on fiancé number four.”

ft. @diabolicaltendencies​, @epiitaphs & @gunmetalgrey​

#death / tw #consultingsister #( i. message ) #sebastian. | muse #my story's seldom told. | main #( ix. august moran ) #( ix. leo moran ) #( ix. christabel moran ) #( ix. augustine moran ) #( ix. augustus moran ) #( ix. vivienne moran ) #( ix. the moran fam ) #( ix. alex moran ) #( ix. kaitya moran )

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mother’s day meme ( accepting! ) / @consultingsister​ said:

❝ ! ❞ ( for LEO to talk about VIVIENNE )

“He doesn’t talk about her much, does he? No. That’s what I thought. Well, I can tell you a little bit, but what I have to say probably won’t be the same as what Bash would say, just so you know. She doesn’t have the same relationship with him or August that she does with me, and she’s different again with the girls. I think that’s a gender thing, though. She has no bloody idea what to do with Bella, but that’s another story.

“I don’t know what changed, is the simple answer. We don’t talk about that kind of thing. We don’t talk about a lot of things, actually. If you’re wondering where Bash gets it from… It’s a family trait. Dad because he’s, you know, stiff upper lip, no sex please we’re British ( Dad, you’ve got five kids, we all know what you’ve been up to ), but Mum, I think it’s because she just can’t face it.

“She won’t speak about my face, for a start. Even when she came to visit me in the hospital, all she said was, ‘You used to be so handsome’. It’s all right, Mum, I’ve still got it. But anyway, yeah, she’s very delicate, Dad completely overpowers her, and I don’t know, it’s not his fault, but I can’t help but wonder if she’d have been better with Bash if she hadn’t had August so soon after him.

“Mum gets tired and sick really easily. I don’t know what she was like when it was just Bash, obviously, but he was born here, and when it was just him, it’d have been less work. But they moved out to Islamabad pretty soon after that, and with the change and the heat and the second pregnancy … Well, who knows, I guess? Because I was born out there too.

“She’s as good with me as I think she’s capable of, for whatever reason, and our relationship is—it’s fine. But is she particularly maternal? No. And she does play favourites. Which he’s taken particularly hard.”

#mother's day / tw #mothers day cw #consultingsister #( i. message ) #leo. | muse #the sun will come shining through. | happy verse ( musicians ) #( ix. bash moran ) #( ix. august moran ) #( ix. christabel moran ) #( ix. augustus moran ) #( ix. vivienne moran )

[theasteriae-arc]

talk about your muse ( always accepting! ) / @diabolicaltendencies said:

❝ 🏡 ❞  for a HOME HEADCANON about BASH. 

Bash is a ‘diplobrat’, the son of the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, and then, later, to India. He spent a couple of years in Islamabad as a child, but really, he grew up in New Delhi. He lived there for five years before returning to the UK, aged 10, to continue his education at two elite British institutions. He boarded during term time, and during the holidays, stayed with his paternal uncle, Thomas, his aunt, Kaitya, and all his cousins ( written by the delightful @gunmetalgrey​ and @epiitaphs​ ). New Delhi, not the Embassy but the city itself, was his first home. Nettle Cottage, Thomas Moran’s Suffolk house, was his second. The last time he stayed there was the summer of 1998, before he started his first semester at Oxford University. 

As an adult, he tends to find his home in people rather than places. Between the ages of 19-26, he was in the army, and as such, was on the move all the time. This was followed by a stint in prison. When he gets out of prison, he doesn’t really settle anywhere until he meets someone he can settle with, and even then, that’s a process; he will usually leave when things feel like they’re getting too serious, and then, realising he’s missing out on a good thing, come back and beg for his partner’s forgiveness a couple of weeks later.

Bash is at his happiest when he gets to retire to a house by the sea ( like Nettle Cottage was ). The water helps soothe him when he’s had a nightmare, and he likes to keep horses and chickens and grow vegetables, but without the person doing it with him, it would be entirely empty, and Sebastian would lack all motivation—he would most likely quit the country, and the garden would grow over before the end of the season. 

#diabolicaltendencies #the only person getting replies today is gold #sorry not sorry #thanks so much for sending this in <3 #( i. message ) #( ii. sebastian | hc ) #( ix. augustus moran ) #( ix. thomas moran ) #( ix. kaitya moran ) #( ix. the moran fam )