#also jurtwen made me do it to em :) i will hold on to this concept forever

[the-warmesthello]

owen's family/siblings hcs

a couple of hcs about owen's family bc im sick and need to write these down before the delirium fades and i completely forget all of this.

PRE-POSTING EDIT: i'm better now. i did, in fact, forget all of this and am piecing it back together. this isn't fully sick me's vision, but it is what i think.

PRE-POSTING EDIT EDIT: wow this is so fucking long why am i incapable of being normal about this. btw just realised that these r ocs. im making ocs. i didn't think of them as ocs up until now, just as literally what his family's like the same way canon is what his adult life's like, but i made spies are forever ocs and you will hear about them. this message brought to you by me a week after i started making this post.

this is the springboard for all my stuff about owen's family. in this post i'm only focussing on childhood except where i think i might forget. my barb-owen lavender marriage au is based on inheritance fraud regarding these specific people. i might contradict myself later, but probably not.

trigger warnings: emotionally abusive family, ableism, parent death, traumatic/accidental death, trauma and its aftermath, child labour exploitation i think?, war undertones, abusive school experiences, one mention of anti-welsh sentiment, implied antisemitism. if you want to skip the worst of the death bit, skip the 3rd point under C.

very long also putting in bigger tags so don't want to force people to see triggering stuff, so it's under a read more.

parents

father's (b. 1895) side of the family is old money. very proudly welsh in the way of language and history, but they're politically aligned with the crown. all tories, except for a cousin that started voting plaid cymru in 1927 and was disowned. father has a strong desire for a well-rounded, educated, "manly gentleman" for a son, the same as what his father wanted. lineage is everything for the carvours. that's how it's always been.

mother (1904-1942) was jewish. her family immigrated to swansea when her parents were both children ('they met on the boat over, and it was love at first sight', mother would tell them). they integrated and became comfortably wealthy, though by what means mother never told. when she told her parents she wanted to marry a goy who wouldn't consider conversion, they fought, and even though they made up, the relationship stayed stunted.

sibling intro

owen had 3 siblings growing up: an older brother (by 6 years, A), a younger sister (by 4 years, B), and a younger brother (by 10 years, C).

someone help me with their names i'm tired. some ideas i have: - A (edit: alan reese carvour) i want to be a name that i would associate with an older guy, with fewer spelling-related ties to welsh than his younger siblings. alan, reese, trevor/trev, gavin, brian, edwin/ed - B (edit: catrin avalon carvour) i want to be similar to the name owen, one that's clearly welsh/a welsh variant if you think about it but enough of a common name that it's not super obvious to foreigners. gwen, catrin/cadi, megan, nia, enid, avalon/ava, rhiannon (cant use gwen unless owen's trans and he chose a name similar to his sister's on purpose) - C (edit: dafydd arthur carvour) i want to have a welsh spelling of a name that could be anglicised easily, should he wish. dafydd/dai, gwilym, arthur, daryn, harri

A

A was born in the may of 1924 while the carvours were still living in london. mother and father had recently married, and mother was young and didn't have very much support outside of her in-laws, who resented her for reasons A will never understand.

he'd always been kind of a troublemaker, throwing things and screaming and colouring all over the nursery wall, but his father didn't bother trying to fix any of it because 'boys will be boys', and his mother used to try but gave up easily when he preferred his father to her because 'forcing someone to like you better never works'.

due to this, he never really learned how to cope with emotions in a healthy way and often "embarrassed" his parents with his public emotional outbursts. only then did his father care how he acted, but the sudden rule change didn't make sense. he picked up on that shame and internalised it deeply, becoming defensive whenever someone suggested another idea to him.

probably has some kind of undiagnosed thing, but nobody ever took him to be tested when he was young, by the time he was old enough to communicate that it was a problem he didn't like either, everyone had already written him off as manipulative and beyond saving.

so he stopped caring. if he did something wrong, he was a horrible little brat. if he tried to do what people asked, they said he was trying to get something out of them.

eventually, his parents (or at least his mother) improved somewhat, but at that point he wanted nothing to do with them and was grateful that he only had to see them on school holidays. their attempts were too little, too late.

resents owen for being the 'better son', but very protective of his other siblings.

found a healthy coping mechanism in lifting heavy things when he was tasked with digging anderson shelters for everyone and felt the weight of his frustration being thrown away behind him with the soil.

this became his go-to calming method, even if it meant father screamed at him.

after 1942, he didn't dig any more holes. it was too much to bear.

so he turned his escapism into perfectionism and channelled his athleticism into boxing. he dropped out of college, got a promoter, and spent every waking moment counting out money, considering the odds of each fight, and training.

it was overwhelming, but that's what he wanted it to be.

eventually got disowned for leftism crimes. (good for him)

owen

yes i'm gonna make one of these for him too.

born in november 1930 in aberystwyth. parents' marriage more established, but not strictly happy. owen picked up on clear ideological differences between his parents at a young age, but both were raising their children under their model of success.

an 'odd' child, but in a way that was less of an inconvenience to adults so was never reprimanded for it.

he didn't really understand why people liked some behaviours better than others, but knew that when he did the right things, people were nicer to him, and sometimes even gave him things, so he learned to play the game.

honestly, as an adult he finds it funny that A was always seen as manipulative when really out of anyone in the family it was himself. i mean, like, he knew that sucked for A, but he wasn't gonna say anything about it.

since he was the "smart one", he became the de facto eldest son, and was given a much more thorough education in languages, music, and science.

played the cello, first because father told him to, then because he liked it. he liked the way it could sway with him and how deep it sounded.

father liked how there were no frets forcing one in line, like a guitar, but one still had to follow the rules or it would sound bad.

when war broke out, owen was introduced to a family that had recently moved in. his father said that he should get to know the children, they were his age. they could be friends.

after dinner that evening, his father invited him to his office, a rare honour. a machine was already set up, and owen watched the wheels rotate as he answered question after question about the neighbours' children's lives.

where are they from? have you been able to see anything in that room no child is allowed into? what did that note slipped under the front door say? can you draw it? what have they overheard about the move? what did they say their parents' jobs were? what is... who did... where... thank you, owen, that's all. you may go to your room now, there's something there for you. think of it as a token of gratitude for your trouble.

this continued for a few months, all the way up until the family disappeared. owen thought it was odd that they hadn't brought their things.

either way, the conversations stopped after that, until the next time. and the next.

when he decided to join mi6's training program, he couldn't help but notice that his file was already several pages thick on his first day.

way back in 1942, he was the first to hear the siren. the sound made him feel sick for the rest of his life.

B

born in july 1934. with the 'heir and a spare' out of the way, the pressure on mother to produce another son was gone, and both parents welcomed a baby girl.

spoiled by her father with material goods, but she could sense that it was to set her up for something, and there was less emotion behind it than a plan, though for what she couldn't know.

had a knack for cheering people up, even father. she could sing, and dance around a room, and perform a smile to make it all better for a moment.

she loved her siblings. if father was treating A unfairly, she would mediate. if owen was cracking under the weight of his schoolwork, languages, music lessons, the now mandatory play sessions with the neighbours, readings, and shooting practice, she would sneak into his room and offer to help cover for him.

great tree-climber. sometimes would go up and wouldn't get down unless there was food waiting for her.

some days, mother would take her into a secret room off one of the corridors nobody went through, and in there were candlesticks, both straight and tree shaped, and a cup that looked older than even mother, and a cloth that mother taught her to put on her head with a song in a language she didn't understand. there was a little metal canister on the doorframe, and when she was very little mother would lift her up so she could touch it whenever she went in or out.

mother used to say, 'this is where we come from. remember that.' and 'this is precious, and secret, and only for us to know. we can't tell father.' and it was only when B was grown, and had her own husband, and her own children, that she understood.

loved painting. mostly her dreams, which she could remember as vividly as any other memory.

what happened that night in 1942 was only 4 hours after she blew her eight birthday candles out. every year hearing the birthday song would bring it back.

talking about mother hurt after that, so she didn't.

her paintings became more focused, more like the dreams she had in the few years after that night, even when her dreams moved on somewhat. the current dream paintings were private, only shared with her family and close friends.

the ones she shared were precipices, a candle being snatched by the darkness of a tunnel, mother telling her that she was sorry for leaving while sitting with B in a sunny field, on a train, in the secret room.

after her death, the moderate number of people in the art world who know her work will wonder who the woman in her work is.

some say a reflection of herself, some a recurring character living a full life, some later on suggest a lover. the truth was that B never fully moved on from what happened, even though her life did.

C

born during the war in january of 1941. both mother and he had almost died, and he was sick for a month following his birth.

has no memories of mother, but always thought that she looked very pretty in pictures.

C was only 18 months old when the siren went off. mother had lifted him out of his cot while the whole family and staff filed out of their rooms to the shelters. it had been dark, and mother was shaking so much, the way she always did when this happened, and she must have missed a step on the way down. she had twisted backwards to protect him the only way she could.

father never let him forget that it was his fault.

growing up, owen and B were the only people in the house who wanted to take care of him, and they tried their best.

but C was... different. more delicate. he seemed to get sick if someone across the house shut a door too loudly. he had no interest in climbing trees or playing the cello. he seemed almost like a rabbit, always looking around, scared that something was going to get him at any moment.

the only thing he seemed to like doing was reading. he learned at what might've been a remarkably young age, but must not have been, because father never said anything. owen told him later that they'd learned to read at the same age, and he was told that it was early, so C must also have been a quick learner.

owen helped with his learning as much as he could, but support from father was impossible and textbooks were so much more difficult than fiction. in fiction he could go wherever he wanted.

his favourites were a little princess, the naughtiest girl in the school, and trixie belden mysteries.

father tried to take them away, said they were too girly, but B always managed to sneak them back. she recommended more grown up mysteries, like poirot and father brown, for when he needed a 'boyish enough' story. but it was always the boarding school stories he liked best.

so he was excited to see what adventures would await him when he finally got to go himself.

it didn't go well.

(he'd one day find that most things never do go the way they are in stories.)

the school he went to was english, and the boys all made fun of his name and how his chin jutted out when he was nervous and the way he talked, as well as everything his father had.

he spelled his name differently when they said it made him look stupid for 'spelling it wrong'.

the teachers criticised his posture and his handwriting and how he undermined their authority, though he didn't mean to, really he didn't, it was an accident.

the teachers said that if it happened this many times it couldn't have been an accident.

when he turned 21, he changed his uni major (then dropped out altogether), changed his attitude, changed his clothes. became a writer/producer as part of a travelling theatre company. all for the sake of being free.

some would say he went too far in that.