love you like i mean it (when i know i can't)
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“Ah, the new captain! Well as I live and breathe!” Vanellope keeps hold of her hand, grin not subsiding at all. “Call me Van, please.”
Scrapsylvania is a place of half-smiles. There is nothing halved about this: when Van fixes Marya with her full attention, her grin populates her entire face, contorting each of her features with the force of her joy. Her eyes crease so far they almost become invisible, her nose wrinkles, her cheeks dimple. Even her ears shift, her whole countenance transformed by her mirth. When she smiles, Van is radiant with it. Marya wishes, briefly, she could raise her hand and shield herself from this, too.
Marya's world changes once when she joins the Wind Riders. It changes again when she meets Vanellope Chapman.
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“I can’t just leave my ship,” she protests, though it sounds weak to her own ears.
Comfrey leans forward again in one sudden movement, gaze sharpening. “Hasn’t the ocean taken enough from you already?” Her voice is close, intimate like she’s confiding something of grave importance. “You don’t owe it anything, you know. Don’t you want to experience true freedom?”
Van thinks of the deep, and then, newly, of the stars. Across the pub, her mum’s worried eyes rove over her face. She takes a deep breath in, then lets it out.
“Tell me more,” she says.
Van's life changes when she meets Comfrey. Years later, it changes again when she meets Marya.
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Van watches Max strain against Marya’s grasp, his face turning red with effort, the tendons in his neck jumping out. “I will never. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” His pleas get increasingly frantic, sweat beading along his hairline, breath quickening. Van feels hers speed up along with it.
“Oh-kay, he really does refuse to submit,” Marya sing-songs, releasing him and standing up in one swift movement. Like it was never there, her manic grin vanishes, replaced by something much more approachable. Van feels the loss in her stomach. “I thought that might get him.”
The tonal whiplash is stunning. Van’s still reeling, images of Marya’s gloved hands in Gotch’s hair imprinted on the back of her eyelids every time she blinks. Her grip on Max’s ankles loosens just slightly, and he pulls them free.
answering the age-old question: fellas, is it gay to tackle a man at the exact same time as your captain?
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On her own, Van never would’ve gone down to bloody Katur. She would’ve spent a pleasant evening with Bert in the hot tub, maybe helped him whip up a flight or two of aioli, and watched the nut pigs roll ‘round on deck. Even with Wealwell and Freyja onboard, she thinks it wouldn’t’ve been a half-bad way to spend a night. Instead, she’s here dropping things ‘cross the floor ‘cause she’s lost five fingers in one go.
She doesn’t recognise her reflection anymore. It’s like every time she sees herself, something is different—her eyes are darker, she’s rimmed in shadow, her blummin’ arm is gone. Something is happening to her, something far beyond her grasp. Everything Van’s known about herself, her family, her curse—all of it’s out the window now. The worst part is how good it feels.
on the freedom of becoming something you don't recognise.
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