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#( ix. bash moran )
theasteriae-arc · 3 years
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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. 
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consultingsister-aa · 3 years
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this is a story all about how the “weekly moron lockdown pub quiz” only lasted one week  ft. @diabolicaltendencies @theasteriae @epiitaphs @gunmetalgrey
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dcsperados-a · 2 years
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" of course i don't hate you. that's the problem. " server main
a quiet love prompts / @consultingsister
It’s close enough to an I love you that, fifteen years ago, Sebastian would have chased her through an airport just to hear her say these words to him. Except, then, she’d left him sleeping without a word, and he’d been so hurt by this, he’d waited too long to go after her. Weeks later, at the arrivals gate at JFK, phone pressed to his ear, he’d begged her voicemail for another chance, but she’d never called him back. And now, it’s the night before her wedding to his brother, and he’s trying to apologise for all of it. Lying to her, leading her on, letting her down. Turns out, nostalgia and vodka, a bottle the good stuff, is a bad combination, because he feels like he’s drowning in them both. “I hated myself.” The fact he doesn’t so much anymore is progress, but largely a testament to how good Jim is for him.
Bash fumbles to light a cigarette, sticking it between his teeth and taking a long pull before holding it out, out of habit, to Cecelia. Tomorrow, he’ll stand at the altar next to August, turning over his shoulder when those doors open, and whisper to his brother, Wait till you see her. He’s got a whole speech prepared, flashcards covered in crossings out in his inside jacket pocket that say how perfect they are for each other. He’ll have a drink or three, and Kate will hold his hand, and when he thinks no one will miss him, they’ll leave without saying goodbye.
But for tonight, it’s just him and Celia, sitting shoulder to should on the back steps of the hotel, sharing one cigarette and a whole lot of what might have beens.
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consultingsister-aa · 3 years
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fuck family, right? ft. @diabolicaltendencies @epiitaphs @gunmetalgrey @theasteriae​
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consultingsister-aa · 3 years
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TABLOIDS!! ft. @epiitaphs + @theasteriae​ inside story: for years rumours have swarmed Bash and Cecelia Moran surrounding the parentage of their eldest son, Beau Moran. but as Beau grows up and begins to look more and more like his ‘uncle Seb’, is it time for the Prime Ministers family to come clean? sources claim Seb and Cecelia Moran are ‘still close’ after so many years and even ‘meet for lunch at least once a month’. the Prime Minister remains cool under questioning however, “I’ll tell you what I’ve always told you, Beau is named after his father, Sebastian Moran.” 
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consultingsister-aa · 3 years
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just sebastian moron shit ft. @theasteriae + @epiitaphs​
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consultingsister-aa · 3 years
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based on discord chats ft. @theasteriae @epiitaphs
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theasteriae-arc · 3 years
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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.”
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theasteriae-arc · 3 years
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* things said meme ( accepting! ) / @gunmetalgrey​ said:
❝ Things you said at my grave. ❞ ( for BASH & LEO )
“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t say what for, because he’s sorry for it all—sorry it’s taken him so long to come down here, sorry that he has to come down here at all, sorry that Leo spent all night crouching in a cupboard once because Bash skipped out on a game of hide and seek in the Embassy and forgot to tell him till the morning. “Hey.” He places his hand on the cold, smooth ridge of marble on top of the tombstone that’s stood here for almost ten years and crouches down to look at the words that are spelled out in gold lettering across the front.
IN 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 HIM
There’s a vase of fresh flowers, not yet wilting, sat near the base that tells him this, at least, is true. Bash is just thankful he didn’t decide to come the day they were placed; he’s here with August, who’s loitering in the background, but he couldn’t face running into his mother or either of his sister for the first time since Leo died here.
He glances over his shoulder. August’s making a big show of looking in the other direction, but Bash lowers his voice anyway when he says, “I brought you something,” because he doesn’t want to be overhead.
Out of his pocket, he takes three little tin soldiers. One for him, one for August, and one for Leo. The colour’s all but rubbed off them now, but he still knows which one is which because of the letters carved into their feet. He puts them down in order next to the flowers. “I got them back. Well, we did.” A small smile and a splash of salt water on marble; he’s crying already.
“You used to love these things. Carried them with you everywhere you went. Always used to line them up like this as well, on the windowsill in Seb and Sev’s room, and on your locker at school. You’d walk them up and down, make them go on missions under the bed. Didn’t seem right that you be without them now, so. There you go. Sleep tight, Leo. Sweet dreams.”
ft. @diabolicaltendencies​ 
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consultingsister-aa · 4 years
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our favourite morons ( possibly styled cecelia h. )  ft. @diabolicaltendencies @theasteriae @epiitaphs @gunmetclgrey @perdefinitio
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theasteriae-arc · 3 years
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being human s3 sentence starters ( accepting! ) / @diabolicaltendencies​​ said:
❝ You want every little corner of me. Maybe I just don’t want to give it. ❞ ( for JIM & AUGUST )
“Maybe, though, Moran, you don’t have a choice.” Jim doesn’t look up. His black eyes are fixed intently upon the toy soldier, Leo’s toy soldier, that he’s marching across the desk, but his eyebrows being that close to his hairline is never a good sign. There’s something very sinister about the lilt in his voice, too; it goes up and down, half speech and half song. The soldier gets closer and closer to the edge. “Remember, I lifted you up when you were down. I can just as easily let you FALL.”
The soldier, in his tin helmet, with his tiny gun, topples off the corner of the table and hits the carpet with barely a thud. “So, you might want to reconsider. With me, you’re either all in or you’re all out. And can you imagine what would happen to poor Sebastian if he had to bury another brother ...? If it makes it easier, do this for him, but I would give yourself up before I lose my patience. Time is ticking.” 
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consultingsister-aa · 4 years
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world war verse. and some things you just can't speak about ( ft. @theasteriae + @epiitaphs + @gunmetclgrey )
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consultingsister-aa · 4 years
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ft. @theasteriae + @diabolicaltendencies ( + @gunmetclgrey kind of )
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consultingsister-aa · 4 years
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the moran’s + viola moran // @theasteriae
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consultingsister-aa · 4 years
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Cecelia Violet Holmes ( b. 1983 ) married Sebastian Augustus Moran @theasteriae ( b. 1980 ) in 2016 and together they had two daughters, Ophelia Moran ( b. 2016 ) and Viola Imogen Moran ( b. 2020 ). 
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consultingsister-aa · 4 years
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john watson, mary morstan + sebastian moran 
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