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jsmn_kinkmeme2015-08-30 12:20 pm
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☆ Round Two!
Welcome to the second round of the Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Kink Meme at jsmn_kinkmeme!
Below are some basic guidelines, but please make sure you also check out our complete Rules & Guidelines.
Guidelines:
■ Anonymously comment with your request – a character/pairing/nthsome, and a kink or prompt.
■ Only one prompt per post.
■ Fillers please link your fills in the Fills Post!
■ Have fun! :)
Keep in mind:
■ Any kinks welcomed!
■ The fill/request does not need to be sexual or porny.
■ Multiple fills are allowed.
■ Fills can be any sort of creative work: fic, art, song, photomanip, etc.
■ Beware of spoilers! Prompters and requesters are encouraged to warn for spoilers, but this rule is not enforced.
■ Warning for non-con, dub-con, abuse, slurs/language, and other potentially disturbing subjects is encouraged but be aware we do not enforce this.
■ Would fillers please make sure when posting a fill in multiple parts that they thread their comments by replying to previous parts.
Links:
☆ Mod Post
☆ Fills Post
☆ Discussion Post
☆ Misfire deletion requests
☆ Previous Rounds: Round One
jsmn_kinkmeme!Below are some basic guidelines, but please make sure you also check out our complete Rules & Guidelines.
Guidelines:
■ Anonymously comment with your request – a character/pairing/nthsome, and a kink or prompt.
■ Only one prompt per post.
■ Fillers please link your fills in the Fills Post!
■ Have fun! :)
Keep in mind:
■ Any kinks welcomed!
■ The fill/request does not need to be sexual or porny.
■ Multiple fills are allowed.
■ Fills can be any sort of creative work: fic, art, song, photomanip, etc.
■ Beware of spoilers! Prompters and requesters are encouraged to warn for spoilers, but this rule is not enforced.
■ Warning for non-con, dub-con, abuse, slurs/language, and other potentially disturbing subjects is encouraged but be aware we do not enforce this.
■ Would fillers please make sure when posting a fill in multiple parts that they thread their comments by replying to previous parts.
Links:
☆ Mod Post
☆ Fills Post
☆ Discussion Post
☆ Misfire deletion requests
☆ Previous Rounds: Round One
Strange/Norrell (or Strange & Norrell) - the vanishing portrait
(Anonymous) 2017-02-27 10:53 pm (UTC)(link)And the most important question - where did it end up? Thrown straight on the fire, collecting dust in some obscure collection - or was it simply moved to a more private location in Hanover-square (or even Hurtfew Abbey)?
I'm a big fan of the Strange/Norrell pairing, so if you can work it in somehow that'd be awesome, but I'll quite happily take gen, too. I'd just love to see someone's take on this particular little mystery!
Re: Strange/Norrell (or Strange & Norrell) - the vanishing portrait
(Anonymous) 2017-02-27 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)Fill: The Mystery of the Vanishing Portrait 1/1 Gen
(Anonymous) 2017-03-08 06:18 pm (UTC)(link)The Mystery of the Vanishing Portrait
“This portrait, now lost, hung in Mr Norrell’s library from November 1814 until the summer of the following year when it was removed. It has not been seen since.” JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, Chapter 35
March 4, 1817 (The seventeenth day after the Disenchantment)
After lunch, Mr Strange decided to embark upon a project to inventory all the basic household items that he could find in the disused rooms of Hurtfew Abbey. He and Mr Norrell hoped to make their first small test of trying to move the Abbey via the Darkness as soon as they could finish the elaborate spell to do so. They had no idea how long that would take—a few days, perhaps a week, and he wanted to find out what sorts of things they might need to purchase before departing from Yorkshire on their travels.
It was a tedious task, and yet he set out upon it cheerfully. That morning the two had received their first visits from tradesmen, a tailor, shoemaker and barber who had been assured concerning the safety of entering the Darkenss. Given his period of madness in Venice, his hair had grown long and shaggy. Now, with it clean and shorter, he felt far more comfortable, and he was also wearing new clothes and shoes.
Mr Strange started in the guest bedrooms, few of which had been used since the death of Mr Norrell’s uncle, three decades earlier. Mr Norrell had told him that the maids cleaned and aired the rooms once a year, but otherwise they were untouched. Mr Strange found that some of the beds were made up as if for company, while others had no sheets, covers or pillows. He made a careful count of all the bedclothes in the rooms and in the large linen closet that he had discovered back in the days before he and Mr Norrell were able to hire back some of the servants. He also noted a few lamps, basins and other necessary items that were still present in a few of the rooms.
Eventually Mr Strange reached the last door along the corridor, opening it and holding up his bright lamp to assess the room. At once he started, for facing him across the room was what appeared to be himself and Mr Norrell. Quickly, however, he realized that it was the double portrait of the pair that had caused its artist, Sir Thomas Lawrence, such troubles and which had hung in the library at Hannover-square. Indeed, it had looked down upon him and Mr Norrell’s conversation almost exactly two years earlier, when he had told his master that he would no longer be his pupil. He had never visited Hannover-square there again and had largely forgotten about the portrait. Certainly Mr Norrell had every right to keep it, since he had paid to have it done. It currently stood upon the floor, leaning back against the wall in a casual fashion.
Coincidentally Mr Norrell has reminded him of the portrait that very morning. Mr Strange remembered his words with a fond smile: “Mr Strange, you look just as you did when we had our joint portrait painted!” and “You are still as handsome and dashing as ever.” In fact, he was struck by how much he had changed since the portrait was painted in November of 1814. His sojourn in Venice had left him haggard and with more grey hair than before. He was startled to see how young he had looked then. Even now, with his new clothes and haircut, he was not back to his old appearance. But Mr Norrell saw him through the eyes of love, he reflected, his smile broadening. Mr Norrell looked the same in the portrait as he did in the present. “Or am I also looking at it through the eyes of love?” he wondered.
The bedroom was relatively small, and its bed had not been made up. Nevertheless, a comfortable-looking armchair and a small side table sat facing the portrait, and the room had several lamps placed on the mantelpiece and bedside tables. It occurred to him that Mr Norrell might have visited the room to gaze at it in the days before the Darkness arrived at Hurtfew. Perhaps even when still at Hannover-square he had looked at it in his loneliness after their parting. His smile faded.
His stomach told him that it was approaching the hour when he and Mr Norrell habitually had tea, and he returned to the library. He found the other magician just coming toward the door and saw that there a full tray had been placed on the low table near the fireplace.
“Oh, I was just coming to find you!” Mr Norrell said with a delighted smile. Mr Strange thought, as he so often did, of how marvelously that smile transformed the man’s face from its accustomed plainness and made him adorable and, yes, cute.
They sat down together on the sopha and poured out their tea. Mr Strange helped himself to some small sandwiches and Mr Norrell to some sweet biscuits.
Once they were comfortably settled into their meal, Mr Strange said, “Earlier today you spoke of the portrait of the two of us. I was rather startled when I walked into one of the bedrooms and found it there. I suppose after our falling-out two years ago you decided you would rather not have it in your London library to remind you of your errant pupil.”
Mr Norrell looked sadly into the fire. “No, not immediately. Of course, I was in love with you and felt devastated when you parted with me. In some ways the portrait was a reminder of that last meeting, and I considered having it taken down right away and sent here to Hurtfew. Still, I could not bear to be without it. It was all of you that I had left! And I must admit, I still had some hope that some day we might be reconciled and recommence working together as I had offered—as equal partners. I told myself that I was just being foolish, but in fact it has happened!” He again smiled at Mr Strange. “So I wasn’t being so foolish after all. I used to sit in my library of an evening and stare at it. That made me all the more miserable, but I simply could not stop myself from doing so.”
Mr Strange had tears standing in his eyes by this point. “Oh, Gilbert, I made you so miserable, and myself as well, leaving you as I did. But how did the portrait get here? Did you manage to bring it with you when you returned to Hurtfew last month?”
Mr Norrell hesitated. “No. It was in June, a few months after our parting. Mr Lascelles told me that you were writing a book on English magic. I was terribly angry. I saw it as an attack on me and my way of doing magic. Of course, I have always planned to write a book of my own, but I have never managed to do it. It always seems that there is more to learn, and I could not bring out a book that was not complete. Wrong-headed, I know, since I could always write a second book. Still, I simply could not get started, and that failing made me all the more terrified that you would sway the public to your way of thinking about the subject.
“From that point on, I could not bear to look at the portrait. It reminded me of what I viewed as your perfidy. Obviously I still loved you, but I was so angry that I had it taken down and removed to Hurtfew. I directed that it be closed away in that small bedroom. I have to admit that when I returned here, I went to that room and arranged it so that I could once again sit and look at your image.”
Mr Strange frowned in puzzlement. “But we had not yet reconciled, and you feared that I was about to appear and attack you in some fashion. Why would you wish to look at my image under those circumstances?”
Mr Norrell thought for a moment. “Well, for one thing, it had been so long since I had seen it—more than a year and a half—and I did still love you. And remember, by that point I had had a chance to read your book, and I realized how wonderful it was. It was maddening in some ways, to be sure, but so much of it was extraordinary, and despite being jealous of your accomplishment, I was also to recognize a great deal of what I had taught you. Moreover, I had lost the favour of the public by destroying your book, so it no longer mattered so much that the public might admire you. I was still miserable looking at the portrait, but I was also desperate for the memory of how things were before … before that time when we sat, much as we are now, and had tea together and you left me.”
Mr Strange put down his empty teacup and embraced Mr Norrell, kissing him on the cheek.
They sat with their arms around each other for a while in silence. Finally Mr Strange said, “June of 1815. The Battle of Waterloo. Yes, I went straight to Shropshire to have some peace and quiet with Arabella, and I dove straight into writing the book. I was so obsessed with it that I am afraid I paid less attention to her than I should have. I have since wondered whether that neglect helped make her vulnerable to being kidnapped by the Fairy.”
“If he was determined to spirit her away to Lost-hope, then surely he would have found a way, however attentive you might have been to her.”
“Perhaps. You are kind to say so. Oh! and I remember that during this time you spent a few hours one day trying to spy upon me through your bowl. I remember being a little impertinent in letting your know that you would not learn anything about my book in that way.”
“Yes, it was a most frustrating attempt. It seems so long ago now. I suppose the two years of our estrangement made me so wretched that the time seemed to drag past. Now that we are doing magic together again, it flies by.”
Re: Fill: The Mystery of the Vanishing Portrait 1/1 Gen
(Anonymous) 2017-03-09 12:45 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: The Mystery of the Vanishing Portrait 1/1 Gen
(Anonymous) 2017-03-14 01:00 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: The Mystery of the Vanishing Portrait 1/1 Gen
(Anonymous) 2017-03-17 11:33 pm (UTC)(link)