#effily

““Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone…. I’ll keep the mythology alive,” Emily replies.

Effy’s eyes flicker. “Feels like I’ve been a myth my whole life.”

Emily doesn’t know what to say to that. The words hang between them, too big for the small hospital room, heavy with the weight of years.

She looks at Effy— really looks at her. In the harsh, unforgiving light of the ward, Effy looks plaintive. Small. A girl carved down to the marrow by her own history.

Emily catches herself looking back, flipping through the mental catalog of the Effy Stonem in Bristol that so many used to worship. The girl who had seemed so effortlessly young, so aggressively unbothered, so cool it felt like a temperature change when she walked into a room. Back then, Effy had been an eclipse. Everyone had stood in her shadow, blinded by the glare of her, completely missing the quiet, violent crumbling happening right beneath the surface.

They had all done it. The whole bloody lot of them. They had seen Effy not for who she was, but for what she could be. A prize, a muse, a sister to protect, a tragedy to fix—a beautifully painted backdrop for their own chaotic stories. They had built a cathedral around her name and never bothered to check if the girl underneath was suffocating under the stone.”

It’s about grief, about yearning, learning, and maturing whether you’d like to or not.

Emily makes a promise to Naomi to look after Effy and a whole new world of financial espionage, found family, and ghosts that cling opens up around her.

Effy deals with being used, abandoning Naomi, and turned into a mythic figure again; but what good is being a myth, anyway? When there’s something more real out there starting you right in the face.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/74742871/chapters/195221836

Title: Grace(Or Something Like It)

Rating: Teen and Up