Work Text:
A rose, Shakespeare wrote, by any other name would smell as sweet.
That, Nolan thought, was wishful thinking. Who would buy a perfume called Manure Under Summer's Sun? No matter how fragrant the scent or beautiful the models who wore it in the television adverts.
Names had significance. In fairy tales, to know one's true name (Rumpelstiltskin, anyone?) was to have power over them.
Case in point: Amanda Clarke was David Clarke's daughter until her name had passed to another and the girl born Amanda became Emily Thorne.
Nolan had liked Amanda. He wanted to help her. He tried to assist her. She'd gone from child to traumatised teen to haunted adult. Amanda took the money, disappeared, and, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, Emily Thorne walked into his life.
Emily was rich, charismatic, and powerful. She was outwardly the perfect socialite, dropping money and platitudes at charity dinners, skirting with enough scandal to keep herself interesting, wearing the finest clothes and jewellery and, yes, perfume.
Nolan swore he could tell she walked into a room from the delicate scent that seemed to seek him out.
Underneath that veneer was a ruthless, ambitious woman. One with an agenda, who was determined to serve vengeance upon those who had destroyed her family.
Beneath that was the softer core that very few people were allowed to see. Nolan treasured every moment that Emily dropped her guard and opened up to him. When she let him see her weaknesses, her grief, her fears.
Nolan knew that Emily Thorne thought Amanda Clarke was still within her, the focussed avenger, or at least the damaged but beautiful soul beneath that. He didn't believe it himself.
Amanda Clarke was gone for good, and while Emily Thorne was biologically David's daughter, was emotionally driven to clear his name, would always be a product of her past, she could never go back to being Amanda.
Too much had changed. She was a different person now.
Nolan didn't care.
Whatever he'd felt for Amanda, he was in love with Emily Thorne.