#I wanna write a lil something about Simon’s mother what an enigma

[losersimonriley]

Simon Riley and his mother + headcanons:

Before becoming Anna Riley her maiden name was Jones

She was Welsh

Which is how Ghost’s middle name came to be Rhys. Simon Rhys Riley, a pretty name for a pretty boy

She married that wild Riley boy after only a few months of dating, despite her parents protests and warnings. They quickly found out it was because she got pregnant. They told her never to come back. She didn’t. Riley drug her to Manchester for the music scene and there she stayed until she died. Simon never met his grandparents on either side.

He never learned his mother’s maiden name until filling out applications for the army. Not for the first time, he considered ditching the Riley name—Simon Jones didn’t sound terrible. But maybe those people weren’t much better than his Riley side. He ended up keeping his own out of spite.

He hangs on to a worn out copy of The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh his mum used to read to him (his brother never cared for escaping off to the Hundred Acre Wood,) along with a tiny, raggedy Pooh Bear stuffed animal. Two of the only sentimental things he saved before setting fire to the house.

Her pet name for Simon was honeypot. He was the sweetest little lad. Whose honeypot are you, Simon? She’d ask with a grin. Mummy’s, he’d grin back

Simon never forgave her for staying with their dad. Even after she got clean, even after she died, he could never find it in his heart to be okay with her choosing her husband over the wellbeing of her children. He and his brother went through hell in that house, all because of one sadistic man that their mother couldn’t let go of. He empathises with the troubled life she was cornered into, he really does. But he will never forgive it.

She didn’t have a favourite flower, could never get the damned things to grow in the pots outside the front door. Livening the place up never really worked out. Simon leaves a tiny succulent at her grave each year as an inside joke, a memorial, a gift of enduring love, and maybe a little bit as a fuck you