ellie

𝙰𝙱𝙾𝚄𝚃 𝙼𝙴 જ⁀➴

hi, my name's ellie and welcome to my blog!

i just started writing on this platform last september 2023. i've been writing fics since i was twelve (yes, it was cringe) on wattpad. i would absolutely love to read your feedback on my work, or be friends!

my inbox is always open for anything 🫶🏻

masterlist + rules

anyway, here are some lil facts about me:

i'm 23 years old • she/her • filo-canadian • enfp • october libra, baby! • mother of a six year old girl • a gryffindor child of aphrodite • has adhd, mild dyslexia, and wears glasses • has photographic memory • loves writing (obvi), music, and reading

- i live in the philippines, so pls bear with me. i try to be awake the whole night so i can post when most of my followers are awake

- as i've mentioned, i am a mother to a five year old. so when i get delays in posting, blame her (lol pls don't blame my kid)

- pls don't be rude to me :( i cry at the simplest things :( so hate will definitely be deleted.

Here are my mutuals, btw <3

my somehow family:

my lovely wifey: @jennapancake

my lover: @ravenintraining

my other lover: @nonsense-exists

our child: @aelia-posts

my besties who i adore sm even tho we rarely talk:

@lilmaymayy @ma1dita @iliketopgun @mxtokko @scarlettbrielle <3

my co-yapper <3 @nightmarettd 🫶🏻

xoxo, el 🩷

TAGS

#ellie's works 📚 - my works, all them

#el's writing ✍🏻 - basically just the same thing as above

#ellie's fic recs 💘 - fic recs! my fave fics ever!

#ellie's random shit 🤪 - just me being me? idk. everything's random

#fic feedbacks <333 - feedback on my fics! my fave tag ever 🥰

#ellie's asks 💌 - ask answers! i love asks! send me a bunch!

#update ‼️- basically everything that's an update in my life

#yappin' with ellie ✨ - yapping!! talking to my moots and stuff!

#my lovers!! 🥰 - my lovely mutuals!!

#reblogs! 📌 - my reblogs, some are random, but yeah

#ellie speaks 🗣️ - me just ranting and shit

#mama talks! 🐣 - just me talking about my little girl!

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐇𝐘𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐅𝐈𝐗𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

╰┈➤ SEBASTIAN STAN

╰┈➤ BUCKY BARNES

╰┈➤ CHARLIE BUSHNELL

word count: 4,399

Five years earlier… 

The winter wind blowing off the Long Island Sound didn't feel anything like the winters back in Oakcliff. Dallas cold was sharp and dry, and it usually smelled like exhaust fumes, wet pavement, and the sweet, heavy scent of tamales from the corner stand down the street. This cold smelled like pine needles, saltwater, and a weird, buzzing energy that he couldn't explain. Magic, the older kids called it.

​Marco Alejandro Miguel Leon shoved his hands deeper into his grease-stained pockets, his shoulders hiked up to his ears, and glared at the snow-covered paths of Camp Half-Blood from the open doors of Cabin Nine.

He didn't belong here. 

He wasn't a warrior; he didn't know how to swing a sword or shoot a bow, and he definitely didn't want to learn how to fight. He had only been here a week, and he already hated it. He hated the biting cold, he hated the weird centaur guy and the pudgy drunk guy who ran the place, and he hated the woods, which everyone casually admitted were full of monsters that wanted to eat him.​

Monsters. Just thinking the word made his stomach twist into painful knots.

Most of all, he hated how he got here.

​Every time he closed his eyes, he was back in Oakcliff. He could smell the burning rubber and the thick, rotting stench of sulfur. He could hear the sickening crunch of metal as the massive, one-eyed freak of nature—a cyclops, the satyr had called it later—ripped the roof off his adoptive dad’s beloved '67 Chevy truck like it was a tin can.

​Two weeks ago, his biggest problem had been failing his pre-algebra test and trying to figure out how to properly gap a spark plug. He and his dad—his adoptive dad, Manuel Herrera—had been driving down the highway in Manuel’s beat-up Chevy truck, listening to old rock music and talking about what they were going to have for dinner. 

And then the truck just crumpled. 

It was like they had hit a solid brick wall, but the wall was moving.

​The thing that ripped the roof off their truck hadn't looked like the monsters in the comic books. It was a nine-foot-tall nightmare made of pure muscle and rage, with one massive eye taking up half its ugly face.

​Marco still had nightmares about the smell of burning rubber and gasoline. He still woke up in a cold sweat, hearing the awful sound of metal screeching as the monster peeled the truck open like a tin can. Manuel had been bleeding so badly, pinned behind the steering wheel, screaming at Marco to get out, to run.

The trauma was still raw, like an open wound. It dragged him back to another nightmare, the one that still jolted him awake in the middle of the night. 

He had been asleep in the backseat of his mom’s sedan. He woke up to the sound of shattering glass, blaring sirens, and the flashing red and blue lights painting the highway. His mother, Josephine Leon, didn't survive.

​Two car wrecks. Two parents, gone. One by death, one by distance.

Manuel had survived. He was tough, built from years of hard labor and stubborn Texas grit. 

But sitting in that sterile hospital room a few days later, covered in bandages and hooked up to machines, Manuel had looked at Marco with tears in his eyes. The older satyr named Ferdinand—who had managed to get Marco out of the wreckage and hide him until the monster lost their scent—had explained everything. About the Greek gods. About Marco's real father.

“Your mama, she told me this day might come,” Manuel had croaked, gripping Marco’s hand tightly. “She said you were special, mijo. She said it wouldn't be safe forever.”

​His mom had been a brilliant mechanic—a woman who could fix anything. But she couldn't fix this.

“You gotta go with him. Ferdinand... He's a good man. He promised me he’d look after you. You have to go to this camp. I can't protect you from those things, Marco.”

Marco had begged to stay. He had cried until he couldn't breathe, but Manuel made the heartbreaking decision to send him away. To keep him safe. 

Ferdinand had been steady the whole way to New York. The satyr kept a calm, watchful eye on Marco, trying to make the kid smile with terrible roadside diner jokes—even when they both knew a cyclops was hunting them across state lines.

At twelve years old, Marco felt like he was carrying a boulder on his back. He didn't want to be a demigod. He didn't want to be a son of Hephaestus. He just wanted to be back in the cramped, warm garage in Oakcliff, passing wrenches to Manuel and listening to old rock cassettes while they fixed up classic cars.

So here he was instead—a thousand miles away from home, dumped into a summer camp for demigods in the middle of winter. The campers called it Camp Half-Blood, but apparently monsters didn't care what season it was.

The forge at Camp Half-Blood was the only place that made any sense to him. It smelled like hot metal, motor oil, and smoke. Hammers rang against anvils all day, and the heat from the coals made the whole place feel like a Texas summer. It wasn't home, but it was the closest thing to it. 

It reminded him of weekends spent under classic cars with Manuel, passing wrenches and getting grease on his nose. 

It reminded him of his mom, Josephine, standing over a welding table with sparks flying everywhere, telling him to keep his hands clear.

Hephaestus was his real father—the god of fire and metal. Marco didn't really care about the god part, but he understood machines. If something was broken, you figured out what was wrong and fixed it. That made sense. Gods and monsters didn't.

​He spent his time hiding in the forge, avoiding the older kids who carried deadly weapons and talked about fighting monsters like it was a normal Tuesday. Marco felt like a freak—a clumsy, oversized twelve-year-old who already stood a head taller than most kids his age, constantly bumping his elbows into workbenches, jumping at every loud noise, and having entirely missed the memo on how to be a demigod.

Except when he found himself watching her.

Marco shifted his weight, his dark honey eyes peeking over a half-finished bronze shield. He caught himself looking out at the snow-covered path, searching for a flash of bright yellow.

​He remembered his very first day at camp. He had been standing near the edge of the forge, hugging his duffel bag to his chest, wanting to run back to New York City and hitchhike all the way back to Texas. The snow had been coming down hard, making the stone paths super slippery.

Then, from the direction of the big blue house on the hill, a girl came rushing down the path.

She looked about his age—twelve—but walked like she owned the place. She was wearing a yellow sweater that was a size too big, and her hair was tied up in a messy ponytail. She was balancing a ridiculously tall stack of clipboards, glass bottles, and rolled-up bandages in her arms, walking way too fast for the ice.

​Marco had watched her heel hit a patch of black ice.

​It was a total wipeout. The clipboards flew up into the air like frightened birds. The glass bottles went skittering across the frozen grass, and the girl landed flat on her back in a snowbank with a loud, surprised oof.

Marco froze. His heart jumped into his throat, and he was about to run over to see if she was hurt. But before he could even take a step, the girl just sat up in the snow. 

She didn't cry, and she definitely didn't look embarrassed. She just threw her head back and let out a bright, giggly laugh, wiping a clump of snow off her nose before she started scrambling around to pick up her stuff.

A fifteen-year-old girl with sharp gray eyes—an Athena kid named Sofia, he learned later—stopped dead in her tracks, looking horrified. “Y/n! Gods, are you okay?!”

​“I’m fine, Sof! Chill out; I just wanted to make snow angels on the way!” she had yelled back, totally unbothered, her smile wide and bright.

Marco just stared. She was so pretty. And she was laughing. In a camp full of kids carrying literal swords and looking like they knew exactly what they were doing, she looked like sunshine.

Y/n.

​Marco learned her name later that night at dinner. She was a daughter of Apollo, and even though she was only twelve, she had been at camp for three whole years. She was the head counselor for her cabin, and she basically ran the camp's infirmary. Compared to Marco, she might as well have lived here her whole life.

​Over the last week, Marco found himself looking for her. Not in a weird way, just... She was the only thing here that didn't scare him. She was always patching up the little kids when they scraped their knees, calling them sweetie and handing out stickers.

​She was just a nice, normal girl.

​He hadn't spoken a single word to her since he arrived. He was just the new kid from Texas with grease under his fingernails and a duffel bag that still smelled like home. Why would she ever notice him?

​Besides, Marco thought as his cheeks grew warm, she was really, really pretty.

​He wanted to talk to her, but what was he supposed to say? Hey, I'm Marco. A cyclops wrecked my dad's truck, and I'm really scared of everything here. 

Yeah, right.

He was too awkward. He always tripped over his own feet, and his hands were permanently stained with grease.

​Marco sighed, a puff of white breath rising in the cold air, and turned his attention back to the workbench.

​“Marco! Look!”

A high-pitched voice dragged Marco out of his thoughts. He blinked, looking down at a smaller workbench a few feet away.

Seven-year-old Charlie Beckendorf was bouncing excitedly on his stool. His dark curls stuck out from under a pair of oversized welding goggles that practically swallowed his face, and his nose was smudged with black soot.

​Marco couldn't help but smile. Over the past week, Charlie had become his shadow. Marco liked the kid. He reminded him of himself when he first started hanging around Manuel’s garage—curious, reckless, and obsessed with making things work.

​“What’ve you got, Charlie?” Marco asked, walking over and leaning his elbows on the wooden table.

​Charlie pointed proudly to a mess of copper tubing, tiny gears, and brass plating. “It’s a spider! I made the legs extra bendy so it could climb up the walls. I even put a little boiler in its tummy! But it’s making a funny hissing sound, and the legs won't kick.”

​Marco squinted at the contraption. It was pretty genius for a seven-year-old, but the kid hadn't grasped the concept of steam pressure yet. The tiny brass boiler was resting over a Bunsen burner, and steam was leaking out of a loose valve on the side.

​“The legs aren't kicking because the steam is escaping, buddy,” Marco explained gently, pointing to the hiss. “But that’s a good thing. If the steam gets trapped in there, the boiler gets too hot. You need an exhaust pipe so it doesn't build up.”

​Charlie frowned, his bottom lip sticking out in a stubborn pout. “No, I just want it to go super fast! If I trap the air inside, it’ll push the gears harder! Watch!”

​Before Marco could even process what the kid was doing, Charlie grabbed a heavy wrench. He clamped it over the pressure valve and cranked it hard to the right, sealing it completely shut.

​The hissing stopped instantly.

​For a split second, the forge was quiet.

Then Marco’s eyes locked onto the tiny glass pressure gauge on the side of the spider. The little red needle shot all the way to the right, trembling violently against the glass. The copper tubing began to squeal—a high-pitched, terrifying whine of metal stretching past its breaking point.

Marco's blood ran cold. The sharp smell of overheated metal and burning oil yanked him straight back to the highway. One second he was in the forge. The next, he was staring at the crumpled remains of Manuel's truck.

​It was a bomb.

​“¡Mierda, no!”

​Marco didn't think. He just lunged.

​He threw his entire body across the workbench, grabbing the thick collar of Charlie’s leather apron. He violently yanked the seven-year-old off the stool, throwing them both to the hard stone floor. Marco twisted in mid-air, wrapping his arms around Charlie’s head, curling his own body over the kid like a human shield. He hooked his right arm over the edge of the heavy wooden table to anchor them down.

The boiler exploded. Superheated steam and shattered brass blasted across the forge, the force of it knocking the air from Marco's lungs as the blast echoed off the stone walls.

​A piece of jagged, boiling-hot shrapnel tore through the sleeve of Marco’s denim jacket like it was paper. It sank deep into the muscle of his right forearm. At the exact same time, a geyser of scalding steam sprayed directly across his wrist.

Marco screamed, the explosion throwing him right back onto the highway. For one horrible second, all he could smell was burning metal and gasoline, and he couldn't tell if he was in the forge or trapped inside the wreck of Manuel's truck again. He couldn't hold it back. White-hot pain tore through his arm, stealing the air from his lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut as a choked, desperate sob tore from his throat.

​“¡Ah, duele! ¡Duele mucho!” Marco gasped, Spanish tumbling out of his mouth in a blind panic.

“Charlie,” Marco gasped, his voice sounding high and terrified as ​he rolled off Charlie, clutching his right arm to his chest. The denim was shredded, soaked in bright red blood. The jagged piece of metal was sticking out of his skin, and the flesh around it was already blistering an angry, sickening white and red. “Are you okay?”

​Charlie scrambled up, his tiny face pale and terrified under his goggles. “Marco! You're bleeding!” he cried, his voice cracking. “I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I'm sorry!”

The forge dissolved into chaos around him. Voices blurred together as older campers shouted orders, and someone dumped a bucket of sand over the smoking remains of the workbench.

​“Holy Hera,” someone swore, looking at Marco’s arm. “Mason!”

A burly sixteen-year-old Hephaestus counselor came barreling over, his face draining of color when he saw Marco's arm. “Gods, don't move the shrapnel! We have to get him to the infirmary right now. Come on, kid. Up on your feet.”

His knees threatened to buckle beneath him. Strong hands caught him before he could fall, half-carrying him out of the forge. The freezing winter air slapped his sweaty face, but it did nothing against the fire raging through his arm. He couldn't catch his breath. Every panicked gasp hitched in his chest as tears carved clean tracks through the soot on his cheeks. He tried to move his fingers. Nothing.

​I’m broken, his brain screamed. My hand is broken. I won't be able to hold a wrench. My dad… Manuel is gonna be so disappointed. I can't fix the cars.

​If he couldn't fix things, what good was he? 

​“Mi brazo… no siento mi brazo,” Marco cried out, stumbling over the snow as Mason half-carried him. “Please, I need my hand!”

​“Keep breathing, kid. We're almost there,” Mason grunted, kicking open the heavy wooden doors of the Big House.

They practically collapsed into the infirmary. The sharp scent of crushed mint drifted through the room, chased by something warmer: cinnamon and bright citrus. Marco didn't know whose scent it was yet, but somehow, it made the tight, painful knot in his chest loosen—just a little.

The infirmary was barely holding itself together.

​There were no adults. There were no older kids. Standing in the middle of the room was Dawn, an eight-year-old Apollo girl, openly sobbing over a roll of bandages because she had no idea what to do. Next to her, seven-year-old Lee clutched a bottle of nectar with both hands, looking like he was about to pass out from panic.

“We got a boiler explosion!” The Hephaestus counselor yelled, dumping Marco onto a cot in the corner. “Deep laceration and severe steam burns!”

​The two Apollo kids could only stare. Dawn wailed louder, dropping the bandages. Lee dropped the nectar bottle, covering his eyes.

Marco squeezed his eyes shut as pain made dark spots dance across his vision. This was it. He was going to bleed out—or worse, they were going to have to chop his arm off because a bunch of little kids didn't know how to do surgery. 

The panic he'd been trying so hard to bury ever since Dallas swallowed him whole came crashing back all at once.

“¡Ayúdame, por favor!” Marco sobbed, his left hand gripping the edge of the cot so hard his knuckles turned white. “¡Mi papá me va a matar! ¡No puedo estar roto!”

​“Dawn, Lee, go to the back room and count the ambrosia squares.”

​The voice was calm. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the screaming, the crying, and Marco’s panic like a sharp knife.

​Marco forced his tear-filled eyes open.

​Stepping out from behind a canvas divider was Y/n.

​She wore a bright yellow sweater, and her sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She didn't look scared. She didn't look overwhelmed. She certainly didn't look like she was only twelve years old.

She looked like a general walking onto a battlefield.

Dawn and Lee instantly stopped crying. They nodded frantically before scurrying to the back room, eager to escape the blood.

​Y/n walked over to the cot, her dark eyes scanning the shredded, bloody mess of Marco’s arm. She didn't flinch.

​“I’ll take it from here,” Y/n told the Hephaestus counselor. “Go back to the forge and make sure no one else blows themselves up today, please.”

Mason didn't argue. He gave one quick nod before hurrying back toward the cabin.

​Y/n pulled a small rolling stool over and sat down right in front of Marco. Even hunched over on the cot, he still towered over her, all long limbs and awkward elbows, feeling like he took up far too much space. She was so close he could smell the faint scent of cinnamon and bright citrus clinging to her yellow sweater. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped them onto her hands.

​Marco was shaking violently, his teeth chattering. “P-please,” he stammered, his voice cracking. “I’m Marco. Marco Alejandro Miguel Leon. I… My dad and me, we fix classic cars. Mustangs… I need my hand. Please don't cut it off, ma'am. I can't be broken.”

She looked up from his arm, meeting his frightened eyes. For a heartbeat, she simply looked at him.

Then, a soft, bubbly laugh escaped her. It wasn't mean—it was the exact same bright, giggly laugh he had heard when she fell in the snow. Her gaze was so incredibly soft, so grounding, that Marco actually stopped hyperventilating.

​“That is a very big name for a guy who fixes Mustangs,” Y/n teased, her smile wide and sunny. “Nice to meet you, Marco Alejandro Miguel Leon. I’m Y/n. I’m the head healer here. And I’m going to tell you a secret, okay?”

​Marco swallowed the lump in his throat and gave a tiny, jerky nod.

​Y/n reached out, gently laying her gloved hand over his uninjured left knee. “You aren't going to lose your hand. You aren't broken. I’m going to pull this nasty piece of metal out, and you’re going to be fixing Mustangs until you’re an old, wrinkly man. Do you trust me?”

Marco stared at her for a long moment. He'd known her for all of two minutes, but he would have trusted her with his life.

​“...Okay.”

​“Okay,” Y/n repeated softly, turning her attention back to his arm. “I’m going to clean the burn first and then pull the shrapnel out. It’s going to hurt really bad for about two seconds. But I know a trick to make it better. Just keep looking at me, yeah?”

​Marco braced himself. He gripped the metal rail of the cot, ready to scream.

​But then, she started to sing.

She didn't sing loudly. She simply hummed—soft and low, like she was trying not to disturb the room. The melody hit Marco like a punch to the chest.

​Blackbird singing in the dead of night…

Marco's breath caught.

He knew that song. It was the exact song Manuel used to play on the beat-up boombox in the Dallas garage. It was the song they listened to while changing oil filters and sanding down rusted fenders.

​Take these broken wings and learn to fly…

​Y/n’s voice wasn't just pretty. There was actual, literal magic in it.

The warm, golden resonance of Apollo's blessing poured from her voice and settled over him like sunlight. The panic clawing at his chest melted away. The knot that had lived in his stomach ever since the cyclops attack finally loosened. His shoulders sagged. He could breathe again.

​All your life…

​Y/n reached down. With a swift, incredibly precise motion, she pulled the jagged piece of brass from his arm. Marco flinched, bracing for agony. It never came. There was only a dull pressure, then relief.

​You were only waiting for this moment to arise…

​She didn't stop humming. Her free hand reached into her pocket, pulling out a tiny, golden square that looked like a piece of lemon cake. “Eat this,” she murmured, pressing it gently to his lips.

​Marco opened his mouth without thinking. The second the pastry hit his tongue, it melted. He didn't taste cake… he tasted home. The rich, cinnamon-laced warmth of Manuel's thick Mexican champurrado. Then the savory spices of his mom's kitchen—the perfect picadillo simmering on the stove, followed by a steaming bowl of harira that always seemed to appear whenever someone was sick.

As she pressed a nectar-soaked washcloth over the deep cut, the burning in his arm vanished completely. In its place came a deep, comforting warmth that settled all the way into his bones.

Marco just stared at her.

He forgot about the blood. He forgot about Charlie, the forge, and the snow piling up outside. All he could do was watch the way her eyelashes fluttered whenever she blinked. The way she bit the inside of her cheek when she was concentrating. The way her nose scrunched ever so slightly as she reached for a jar of salve.

She was only twelve, just like him.

But somehow, she carried herself like she'd been doing this forever.

Y/n spread a thick, cooling salve over the angry burns on his wrist, chasing away the last of the pain before wrapping his forearm in clean white gauze. Every movement was slow and careful, like she was afraid of hurting him.

Nobody had been that gentle with him since his mom died.

Manuel loved him. Marco never doubted that. But Manuel was a mechanic through and through—he showed love with shoulder claps, greasy hair ruffles, and teaching him how to rebuild an engine.

This was different.

This was what being taken care of felt like.

Y/n tied the bandage into a neat knot before peeling off her bloodstained gloves and tossing them into a nearby bin.

The humming faded, leaving the infirmary quiet again.

But it wasn't an empty silence.

It felt... safe.

“There,” Y/n said, leaning back on her stool with a bright smile. “All done! The nectar will heal the cut from the inside out. The burn's going to take a few days, so no forge fires until I say so. On the bright side, you'll have a pretty cool scar to show off.”

Marco slowly lifted his arm. He wiggled his fingers. They all moved perfectly. No stiffness. No numbness. Just a dull, tired ache.

He looked back at her. His chest felt so full it almost hurt. He was just a traumatized, grease-stained kid from Texas who didn't know the first thing about being a demigod. But somehow, looking at her made him feel like maybe everything was going to be okay.

“Thank you,” Marco whispered, his voice thick with emotion he didn't know what to do with.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Mechanic,” Y/n teased gently.

She reached into the pocket of her sweater and pulled out a crinkled, half-used sheet of stickers. Peeling off a bright yellow smiley face, she leaned forward and pressed it onto the fresh white bandage, smoothing the edges down with her thumb.

“You did really good today, Marco,” Y/n said softly. “You saved that little boy. You were really brave.”

Marco looked down at the tiny yellow sticker. His face felt hot, and his heart was beating so hard he was sure she could hear it.

He was twelve years old, and he didn't know much about anything. He didn't know how to fight monsters, and he didn't know how to survive Camp Half-Blood. But as he sat there looking at the girl who had hummed the fear right out of his chest, Marco Leon knew one thing for absolutely certain.

He had the biggest, most embarrassing crush on her.

🎬 LOVELORN: BONUS FEATURES

── A collection of canon one-shots, extended cuts, deleted moments, alternate perspectives, and companion pieces from the world of Lovelorn ⋆˚𖤓˖°

"I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." — Andy Bernard, The Office.

🎬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐭 𝟎𝟎𝟏 — ❝ started when we were younger, swear to god that i loved her. ❞ ft. marco leon

🎬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐭 𝟎𝟎𝟐 —

🎬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐭 𝟎𝟎𝟑 —

🎬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐭 𝟎𝟎𝟒 —

🎬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐭 𝟎𝟎𝟓 —

📼 additional reels are still being restored...

"Nothing has really happened until it has been remembered." — Virginia Woolf.

🎧 commentary track !

── okay, so, i've wanted to write these snippets from before and in between lovelorn ever since i posted chapter three!

a lot of these scenes have been sitting in my google docs for months because they didn't really quite fit into the main story, but i also couldn't bring myself to throw them away. some are deleted moments, some are extended scenes, some happen between chapters, and a few are just little pieces of the story that i think deserve to exist.

think of these as the movie's bonus features—extra footage that adds a little more context, a little more heartbreak, and a lot more yearning. none of them are required reading, but if you want to spend a little more time with these characters, this is where you'll find them.

i hope you guys enjoy them as much as i've enjoyed finally getting them out of my head.

xoxo, angelisse ❤️‍🩹

​luke castellan: excessive wrath, fueled by entitlement.

​- his canon flaw is definitely excessive wrath, which is fueled by his hatred of the gods. it's still here, but luke’s wrath in this story is triggered entirely by a loss of control.

he views melody not as a separate human being, but as an extension of his own mythological legacy—a "holy relic" that belongs on his altar. when she steps off that pedestal and exhibits agency (punching him, wearing Marco’s clothes, out-strategizing him during the capture-the-flag game), his wrath explodes because his reality is breaking. his fatal flaw is his inability to differentiate between "loving" someone and "owning" them. He will literally burn his own house down just to ensure no one else gets to live in it.

​lacy sophia matthews: intellectualized denial (weaponized insecurity)

- ​lacy's fatal flaw is more than just the common hubris all the children of athena have. hubris is simply thinking you are better than everyone else. lacy’s fatal flaw is her willful blindness to maintain her narrative.

she is terrifying because she uses her intellect not to seek the truth or glory, no. she uses it to construct a flawless, impenetrable lie to protect her own fragile ego. she is deeply insecure about her place in luke's life (hell, everyone's lives, since she had just arrived at camp in january of the same year. so she's been at camp for half a year, max) compared to melody's three-year history with him. so, instead of facing the ugly truth that she is the second choice, she uses her brain to edit reality in real time. she will psychologically destroy an innocent girl and enable an abuser simply because admitting she's in the wrong would destroy her carefully curated status.

​marco alejandro miguel leon: self-annihilation

​if luke destroys outward, marco destroys inward. marco’s fatal flaw is his absolute willingness to be consumed.

when he said, "I would let you use me for parts if it meant you could keep running," he laid his fatal flaw bare. he does not value his own emotional survival. he is so used to being the "builder" that he views himself purely as utility. he is willing to endure years of unrequited love, endless public humiliation, and extreme physical violence just to be the concrete melody lands on. his fatal flaw is that he will gladly let the love of his life use him as a temporary bandage, completely disregarding the fact that it will eventually bleed him dry.

​melody (y/n): self-erasure through empathy

​melody’s fatal flaw is the ultimate curse of a healer: she will heal everyone else until there is nothing left of herself.

her fatal flaw is her crippling, unyielding loyalty to the everyone, even the people who hurt her. even after luke assaulted her in the closet, she begged her kids, "No maiming." even after he cornered her and everything at the cave and the punch, she threw herself in front of marco in the infirmary to protect luke, begging marco to not do anything. she constantly shrinks herself, hides her pain, and accepts the role of the "villain" if it means keeping the peace or protecting her camp family from the fallout. she is so busy trying to keep the camp together that she willingly allows herself to be torn into a million pieces.

​and you know what's wild? every single one of them is operating on a flaw that perfectly feeds into the others' destruction.

melody’s self-erasure feeds luke’s entitlement. luke’s wrath feeds lacy’s denial. and marco’s martyrdom catches all the collateral damage.