#susannah sonn

"we aren't from the future. we are the future"

susannah sonn, love in hate nation

Send me a number 1 thru 50 for a word that I’ll use to write either a headcanon, drabble, or starter. Send 🔄 for a random number instead.

15 — storm

It’s just their luck that after twenty-two years and a hundred thousand lifetimes with half of them missing spent apart, Susannah and Sheila get rained out on date night.

Neither thought to bring an umbrella; clear skies were promised the entire day, which is why they had the hubris to book a terrace spot – shit, Sheila had even brought roses for the occasion, like a properly gallant butch.

And now they were running through the rain-soaked streets of Greenwich village, the bouquet haphazardly stuffed into Susannah’s jacket, squealing and laughing like they were sixteen again and ducking under the stairwells to evade Asp’s eagle-eye, Buzz’s furtive hands, and Judith’s terrible sneers.

“Hey, partner! Think fast!” Sheila calls, and suddenly, a heavy mass of leather smacks Susannah right in the face. The prized leather jacket muffles her grunt, but she still manages to inhale deeply before setting it to rights as a makeshift umbrella.

“What about you?” Susannah demands, breathless and giggling – for a prison escapee, she’s short and stocky as ever, and as such, running’s never been her strong suit.

“I’m a big guy,” Sheila proudly proclaims, “I can take it.”

And with a swiftness and suave maneuvering that would surely be the envy of Zorro, Sheila grabs Susannah’s hand, sending sparks up her arm that put the lightning strikes around them to shame, and yanks her under the canopy of the first deli they find.

Susannah lands somewhat gracefully in the doorway, caught in a pair of wiry arms strengthened by years of proper nutrition and toning muscle.

“So much for a picnic under the stars, huh?” She huffs.

Sheila raises her eyebrows, thick eyeliner running down her cheeks in clumps. Susannah wants to reach up and trace every path over the age lines written into those strong features, but she settles for offering the jacket back.

“I guess this is why they call it a rain check,” Sheila shrugs, taking back her prized possession and sliding it back on. Susannah rolls her eyes.

“God, you’ve gotten cornier than I ever was.”

“Well, that’s ’cause I missed you so much, chum,” Sheila says, tapping her nose playfully. “Bad sense of humour was my best bet to keeping a part of you with me.”

Something in Susannah melts at this. Something else possesses her to playfully shove Sheila, moving that strong body with surprising strength. Sheila shoves her in kind, then audaciously reaches to grab a handful of her hip.

Out in the open like this, on a street where anyone could see – things definitely have changed, Susannah decides, since they last saw each other. But then again, Sheila’s not dumb; this is Greenwich village after all, and besides which everyone’s running around to not be caught dead in this downpour. Still a catch, still an asterisk, still so much work to do; it makes her sigh.

But it also makes her bolder.

“Y’know,” she says, pulling the battered-but-still-blooming roses from under her jacket, “These should really go in some kind of vase. I have one back at my place…” Her eyes rise from the bouquet and the petals that have fallen loose to coyly meet Sheila’s.

“Gift from a secret admirer?” Sheila asks, the husk of her voice making the subsequent thunder claps dull by comparison.

“None of them were you, baby.”

Sheila cups her face. “S’pose getting you home safe would be the gentlemanly thing to do, weather being what it is. And you haven’t invited me back to your place yet.”

“Consider yourself invited.”

A shadow passes over Sheila's eyes, and she is seventeen and hungry once more, thirty-nine and starved. "Anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are, firebug?"

Sheila makes sure to tell her that often – first at the record store, then at the coffee that followed, the lunch that elapsed, the tearful plea to not leave the city turned into the night at Sheila's apartment, when they danced under dim lights and she got a good look at Susannah in custom clothes – and when she got her out of them, of course. She told her she was beautiful between laughter and tears, mid-gasp and mid-kiss, when she was wide awake and when she was fast asleep.

She'll tell her again now, over and over, with a storm going on around them, and a storm sweeping the nation, though the latter's nothing new, both of them have enough blood on their knuckles and battle scars on their body to attest.

She'll tell her this all the way back to Susannah's place, military-neat, practical and utilitarian, so entirely unlike the storm-aftermath that's at Sheila's.

And Susannah will grin, and give her the same answer every time: "Nobody sings it like you can."

The storms continue to plague New York for days to come, but this will suit the both of them just fine.

Thank you so much for this!!!

Angst/Fluff Prompts: 4. “I thought things were going great.”

“Oh, they were - still are,” Susannah’s all too quick to reply, all haste and heartiness and very, very little conviction. Coward, she scolds herself, her hand curling so tight around the hem of the plaid skirt it’s a wonder she doesn’t rend fabric. “It’s just. Well, I’m sure you know how they are. Boys.” 

Sheila doesn’t meet her eyes. Still remembers to pull a face, but avoids eye contact - and of course, Susannah notices. Just as she notices the pregnant pause, counts eight whole rest beats across two measures, before she answers: “Oh, yeah. They’re great for some things - well, y’know, the obvious -” All haste and heartiness and very little conviction, Susannah thinks, “But the next second, you just need to breathe. The fact that he’s apparently been pitching fits -”

“I didn’t say that,” Susannah protests a little too loudly. 

This time, Sheila does roll her eyes. “Fine, the fact he’s been shedding delicate tears into all five of his monogrammed handkerchiefs because you two haven’t gone all the way yet, can’t be making it any easier.” 

Despite the tightness of the air between them a moment prior, the image Sheila conjures of Francis, gone full Hollywood glory as he removes his fogged spectacles and wails into some fancy hankies (which he does, in fact, actually happen to possess) sends them both into stitches. Susannah can’t even genuinely say she feels guilty about it, although she knows she ought to. 

Then again, there’s plenty she ought be that she just simply isn’t. It occurs for her with some annoyance, and not for the first time, that perhaps the real question is who it is that’s deciding the ought-to-be’s in the first place, only for once, the answer that comes to mind isn’t a simple ‘everyone’. And she’s looking directly at the reason why that is, her jetty hair whipping in every direction as she laughs, as insistent on getting free of the ponytail as she is - once was - of getting free of this joint. 

She doesn’t buy for a minute the assertions that she ‘doesn’t go in for that kinda flowery stuff’; Sheila’s no poet, but she can still spin a yarn in such vivid detail that it becomes a wide web. The other girls, Susannah included, are so eager to see where it goes, test its geometries, that they don’t even realize until much later they’re the flies entangled.  It’s a nice sort of unaware tangling, though - a peaceful unconsciousness preceding the rush of panic accompanying the realization Sheila’s ankle is wrapped about hers where they perch on the unused game table. 

Because she feels she must - again, says who? - Susannah forces a nervous laugh, a world of difference from the genuine mirth of moments ago, and dislodges herself. If she wasn’t so preoccupied with averting her eyes again, she’d swear the tips of Sheila’s ears looked pink.  “I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to be, right? With, with boys. You accept the bad with the good, and some things you’re just meant to be different about, but that’s what having girlfriends - you know, girls who are friends, close friends - are for.” 

Not that Susannah has any such experience with close female companionship. With school out of the question and what few opportunities for socializing with other youngsters going south more often than not (her fault, she was convinced) he was relegated to books and TV shows, prior to coming to Nation, to eke out the vague impressions of female companionship. Maybe that’s always been an additional draw to girl groups - they’re always sisters and cousins and dear friends, always laughing and making music, always together. 

And when it comes to romance, well, muddled as she is, she has to work backwards, understanding through its blank spaces, through its absence. Her folks sleep in separate beds, a proper military family, but also sit on opposite ends of the table, want to watch the opposite sorts of things on television (Mom always yields before there’s even a discussion), demand opposite things of her that she doesn’t know how to give. Any disagreement is largely omitted, or smothered, and all in all, they seem to avoid each other - the ‘after’ that logically follows the ‘Happily Ever After’ scrawled in cursive over the wedding or kiss at the end of the movie. 

While she and Francis talk much more, which at first had been a colossal improvement, Susannah understands her relationship through absences, too. The absence of interest in his face when she’s talking, the absence of joy or excitement pounding in her chest when they kiss. 

Love just isn’t like it sounds in songs - more than once, she’s wondered if that’s why they’re written that way, to forever have a small pocket of the magic you were promised preserved in the music. No, for women, and especially for her, it’s a lot more about compromise. Things are going great. 

Ahhh, thank you hon!! 

GIVE ME A CHARACTER and I’ll break their ass down:

How I feel about this character: Kitty took me completely by surprise getting into Love in Hate Nation. I adored her almost instantly; Emerson Mae Smith has such a stage presence and charisma it’s impossible not to, and I swear Joe gave her every single iconic, hilarious line both the book and the show have to offer. If I think too much about her I actually get extremely emotional. The fact that aside from Sheila, she’s easily the kindest of the girls to Susannah immediately tugged at my heart; as outrageous as she is, even her pushier behaviours, such as surprise-announcing her and pressuring her to sing for the girls is wildly important to who she is, who’s someone who not only lives her truth, but wants others to let go of their repression as well. It was her way of being warm and encouraging. She’s the Cool Big Sis trope incarnate, endlessly patient with the other girls’ antics while also taking no shit from them, and coping with the horrid conditions in Nation with a sly sense of humour and a fashionable flair I admire so, so much. Then comes Act 2 and I really can’t think of Masochist without crying -- her sense of justice and her ability to quickly forgive speaks to how intelligent she is, recognizing, even as she’s mistreated by the other girls, that they’re all striking out at each other because the system relies on it to keep them powerless and to keep them from rising up. She’s hilarious, she’s admirable, and from what little we know of her, she’s been through absolute and total hell and manages to not only keep her head up, but to use what she’s learned to deal with her pain to inspire others. To me, Kitty really is the heart of the solidarity narrative;  beyond that, she’s hilarious and fierce and owns every inch of herself. However, the brilliance in her is that she’s not just a cardboard cutout fairy godmother character to guide Susannah in embracing her identity; she’s flawed, she’s angry, she’s uncertain, and she’s above all still a teen. As a cis person, it’s not for me to say whether or not she’s good trans rep, but she’s a fantastic character overall and I would fight for her. 

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Dorothy and Rat, most probably! Especially because of their cute little interactions in the backgrounds of scenes and their playful roughhousing during Masochist. I think that while it’s important she and Judith reconcile, I can’t really be down with them ever getting together (especially because of the deadnaming during Solitary), and her dynamic with Ya-Ya, who comes off as the baby of the group (see my headcanons doc, lol), seems more like a sisterly thing  than anything else. 

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Susannah, Susannah, Susannah, Susannah, Susannah. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and actually say that Susannah and Kitty’s relationship is second only to the Susannah/Sheila relationship as by far the most important one in the show in how it drives both the plot and the character growth. I can’t begin to describe how important and healing it was to watch Kitty playfully try to draw Susannah from her shell; how meeting another LGBT+ person was so instrumental to Susannah’s shift as a person. Every time Kitty goes out of her way to be nice to Susannah or tries to make her feel included where the other girls tend to pick on her (even if it’s meant in good fun, it’s still clearly hurtful), my heart just soars. The two clearly admire and appreciate one another, and inspire the best out of each other. The fact that after Susannah’s mistake she shows her the kind of healing forgiveness a person needs is incredible; that she uses her experience as a trans girl to get Susannah to embrace her black lesbian identity is pretty much life-changing. Like, when Susannah calls the girls “her family” in Revolution Song, of any two people, I absolutely believe it of her and Kitty. Their bond represents the found family dynamic so many people find within the LGBT+ community through shared experiences and struggles, and it’s one of the most beautiful friendships I’ve ever seen in a musical.   

My unpopular opinion about this character: Are there any LIHN unpopular opinions??? There’s like twelve of us here, six of whom make content lmao. I can’t really think of one to date; everyone seems to love Kitty across the board, and rightfully so.