Chapter Text
Ewen Montagu had always hated girls.
Not all of them of course.
He liked his sister, Joyce.
He liked his mother when she was still a part of his life
He liked Jean Leslie a good, reasonable amount.
He liked Hester Leggatt, who was more of a mother than his own had ever been.
He also liked his cat Iris, who kept him company.
You see, Ewen Montagu didn’t exactly hate girls. He liked girls in fact, he wouldn’t mind kissing one, or ending up with one for the rest of his life.
He just hated the idea of girls.
He hated their dresses, and their long hair, and their high pitched voices, and their dolls, and their pretty faces, and their mannerisms, and their giggles, and the expectations of them, and their role in society, and how they were expected to marry a man and spend the rest of their life as a housewife, and how they had to bear children or they were useless, and how Ewen Montagu could never be the girl that society had wanted him to be.
In short, Ewen Montagu doesn’t hate girls. He doesn’t hate them at all.
The only girl he truly hated was a small, blond, Jewish girl by the name of Elise Montagu.
Ewen Montagu hated everything about that girl.
If he had a choice, he would erase her existence, even if that meant erasing everything that came after her.
If erasing Elise Montagu meant erasing Ewen Montagu, then so be it.
Ewen Montagu hated the girl he had been. He hated the girl he was expected to be. He hated the girl that his parents wanted him so desperately to grow into. He hated the girl who still lived deep inside of him, terrified of being discovered.
Being discovered meant losing everything.
Losing his job, his pride, his work, his friends, his life.
He couldn’t risk that.
So he created a person who no one would ever suspect of the treason he’d committed.
Elise Montagu created Ewen Montagu in the darkest corner of her childhood home. She melded him from the screams bottled in her chest and the tears that stained her entire room.
She created the man she wanted to be.