Sandy

So I have this new headcanon about Mustang in Golden Son. While she obviously didn’t know Darrow was a Red until he told her, I think at some point between Red Rising and Golden Son she probably guessed that he had been in love with a lowColor before meeting her.

In Red Rising, she mentions to him that he was saying Eo’s name in his sleep, and remarks that it’s an “offColor name.” In Golden Son, when she and Darrow talk after the mayhem at the Gala, she brings up the cases she studied of people of different Colors falling in love and getting carved to have children together, even going so far as to call the act of rebellion “beautiful.” She brings this up pretty much out of nowhere, making a seemingly offhand comment about Obsidians and whether they cuddle and then steering the conversation to the topic of inter-Color relationships.

Later, during the dueling-in-Darrow’s-suite scene, she brings up her research again, trying to get Darrow to tell her the truth about his motivations; this is a theme throughout the entire book, Mustang trying to get Darrow to open up. During this scene, she also asks him specifically if what he’s keeping from her has to do with “the girl he lost.” She knows he was in love with a lowColor and is trying to get him to admit it, partly by implying to him that she is not disgusted by this the way Society expects people to be.

Basically, she’s just way too smart and cares about Darrow too much to not have put any thought into who Eo was, and this conclusion probably would have made sense to her based on her name, his unwillingness to broach the subject, his treatment of lowColors (earliest example would be his comment to her in Red Rising, asking her how she would react if Titus raped a Red girl. She also knew that Darrow didn’t use Pinks), and the fact that there would have been no record of a Gold named Eo (Reds don’t legally have names, and you fuckin’ know homegirl did research).

Sees the first post is a pregnancy announcement…. 

I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.

He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.

“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”

His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”

I thought,  You have got to be kidding.

Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.

But then my shift ends and I have to go out into a world where Trump is president and it’s like…