Page 93 of Fate Fiction

I would procure my drink and breakfast sandwich and walk back to my apartment, fingers twitching with the need to write. I would stare at my shut laptop on the table and think about the stories that lurked inside.

At first, these weekend mornings were marked by slinking around with unwashed hair haphazardly tossed into a clip, old T-shirts grazing over my body and workout shorts. Something shifted over time. One day I decided that I wouldn’t allow any more third-day hair wrangled into a claw clip or sloppy mascara swipes across the lashes. The world wouldn’t see the person I was at camp, or the slovenly shell of a person I’d been as of late. I would become the best version of me, not someone else.

If this were a romcom I’d leap into my makeover montage backed by a peppy pop hit by a one-hit wonder. Instead I woke up earlier, went for runs that weren’t attempting to escape anything, and actually showered before leaving the house.

I began dressing a little better and doing the things someone might do if they were expecting to see someone. The healed version of me was a role I was training to play, and I had to dress the part.

Maybe somewhere, deep down, I hoped—a hope smaller than the spark of a flint strike—that the real Evan would show up and the ghosts of him would dissolve into nothingness.

There were only so many runs I could go on and loads of laundry I could do as I attempted to scrape my life back into something I recognized. There was also a heavy cloud hanging over my head, a horrible chore needing to be completed that I’d been putting off.

Every day I’d add it to my mental to-do list and always find a reason to neglect it. Now it was gnawing at me, and I had no other menial task to put before it. It was for the best that I’d committed to it now, it was a quiet Saturday and I was practically clawing at the walls wanting to get out of the apartment.

This was a job meant for some secondary location, far from the asylum of my familiar walls. I slid my laptop into a tote bag and walked to MokaMolé, still in the safety net of my neighborhood, but away from anywhere I could truly wallow.

It was a deliciously warm morning, humidity had been plaguing the city for weeks and it had finally broken. A breeze from the harbor snaked its way over to my street.

Every classic animated movie or showstopper musical has its pinnacle “I want” song. The protagonist tosses their arms to the wind and sings about seeking greatness and adventure and all the things her small life has kept from them. You’re inspired, you cheer for them and wish them well on their journey. They deserve a happy ending freed from their tragic circumstance.

I could spin on a hilltop for hours without a single dream coming to mind.

There was one thing, one person, that deserved to be at the receiving end of the passion and care I’d given Thorndown all these years. Me.

I needed to belt out my “I want” song, I needed to finally be a protagonist with a story worth telling. I’d followed along and become the most consumable version of myself my entire life. I’d stuff my body into an ill-fitting mold to satisfy the wants of my mother, Nick, my work, and even Evan.

I’d spent twenty eight years following some semblance of a plan. Get good grades, go to college, get a good job, move in with a partner. I’d checked all the boxes. But never once did I pause and ask myself what I’d wanted from this life. I didn’t have passions that fell into easily commodified after school activities. I tripped around a soccer field because I was told I would be playing soccer. I squeaked notes from a clarinet because I was told that would be my instrument of choice.

Boxes were checked, decisions were made for me. No sense in trying to let Dani figure herself out, she was moldable. I’d be shuffled to practice and games and rehearsals wearing clothes that were hand picked for me. I’d follow along, playing the role of the agreeable daughter.

In the few hours between practices and homework I’d hover over a notebook and scribble out characters and give them stories. If I couldn’t decide my own destiny then I’d decide it for the characters of every movie I’d ever loved. I’d imagine that these protagonists needed a friend to tag along on their adventures, and I’d sit in the computer room with my notebook to my right and a blinking Google image search to my left.

Their stories went beyond the neatly packaged ninety minutes on my screen, I was sure of it. What happened after Mulan saved China or after the Beast turned back into a prince? They’d all wished for something more in this life and yet their stories were condensed into hardly a blip. I wanted to tell those stories, I wanted to give them more than their few hours on the screen.

The internet became a wonderful place for a mind like mine.

There were others who thought like I had, who expanded on these universes I cared so deeply about. They got illustrated art of moments that were left on cutting room floors, they got hundreds of thousands of words expanding or retelling their stories.

This passion of mine had once been something scribbled in notebooks and doodles in the margins of my school notes. Now, it was something more. It was a community. It was a way to keep these stories fresh and alive, years after they’d officially had ended. Fandom felt natural, and fanfiction was merely an extension of what I’d spent my entire life doing.

The Thorndown fandom was a secondary home. How wonderful it was to be virtually surrounded by people who cared as much as you did about something you loved. Other people who would get excited about subtle callbacks to old stories or notice slight changes in the costuming.

And now, it was gone.

Ceremoniously stripped away piece by piece, bit by bit. It was a fact I’d grown to accept, as painful as it was. There was no way I could return to that place without it being twisted and stained, even before the end of things between Evan and I. My heart was crawling around on the ground like a hermit crab seeking a new shell. I needed somewhere to redirect all this excitement and passion for…something.

Other shows and movies and books existed, I could just as easily dive headfirst into something new to fill the Thorndown shaped hole in my chest. What would that give me other than a temporary salve to this ache?

Explaining the loss of fandom to someone who could never understand is challenging at best. It’s a show, something entirely intangible that would live on in some way long after I was gone. I could revisit old episodes whenever I wished, I could reread my favorite fics, rewatch my favorite edits. It wasn’t actually gone, but I had still lost something massive. What I was experiencing was the death of a massive part of my being, which in turn resulted in a weird emptiness that was inexplicable to most.

Loving someone and losing them was one thing, and truthfully I didn’t love Evan. I was maybe about to, but the sparks hadn’t grown to roaring flames.

Not yet at least.

Somehow, as badly as losing Evan hurt, especially right now, he’d eventually become someone that haunted me from time to time. Even ghosts would move on at one point or another.

On the other hand, loving an entire universe and the characters that occupied it, only for the world to crumble before me was something that I was still wrapping my head around. Once the initial gashes had begun to scab over, I took inventory of what exactly I’d need to shed to maintain a healthy distance from Evan, Sir Erwyn, and anything under the Thorndown umbrella. There was the camaraderie of the fandom, despite its excessive toxicity. There were the fanfictions, all of them, not just “Ice on the Turret” or others that I wrote, but the ones that I saved, for better or worse. There was the general buzzing excitement one has when you love a piece of media and get to enjoy the newness of released episodes.

Popular TV shows and movies were a dime a dozen. Anything could have piqued my interest at a formative age, for some reason it had to be Sword of Thorndown. If I could talk to my nineteen year old self pressing play on the first episode on a particularly quiet Friday night, would I tell her to stop? Would I truly have wanted to give up all that I’d gained over the past decade to avoid this temporary hurt? What is the true cost of lost romance when it also strips away one of your most prized passions?