No problem! Isabelle definitely does not find her chronic pain sexy. For her it's very much about context, although it doesn't necessarily need to be from a kink scene.

Isabelle and Cy's sex life kind of changes with the seasons due to both the academic schedule and Isabelle's physical responses to the weather changing. Because school is busier before winter break and because the cold really exacerbates the pain she experiences from old injuries, she and Cy tend to taper off during finals season, and then the sex they have over Christmas break is more plentiful but more vanilla. It's not until the weather warms up and school eases that Cy finally starts delivering on all of Isabelle's begging for pain. They get the majority of their hardcore kinky fucking done over summer break and are more laidback the rest of the time. Of course, Lynn is always and forever Cy's main squeeze, so Isabelle has to get her fuck appointments in around Lynn's schedule.

As for aftercare, Isabelle is a cuddler! Cy typically holds her until she comes down emotionally, then gives her a shower and bundles her up for Yet More Cuddling and restorative things like water, juice, snacks, etc. Isabelle likes being sort of littlespace-adjacent for aftercare sometimes, so Cy has learned to indulge her with particular childhood movies and stuffed animals. Isabelle craves affection after sex, and he doesn't mind offering that.

Lots of recipes (primarily baking), lots of arts and crafts projects, TONS of music (classical, jazz/blues, rock/metal), porn and things that are not porn that she masturbates to anyway like horror movie scenes and disaster footage, apps for helping manage her memory issues. Oh, and animal/nature stuff. She loves both cute and weird things in nature.

I've talked a bit here (https://neospring.org/+r/0e43226377) about Isabelle learning about Cy's past actions, and how she weighs it morally, but since you compare it to Alec's actions I'm going to talk about how she feels about that!

For Isabelle, a large part of the horror of Alec's actions came from the violence, the way he robbed her of control and agency, the brainwashing, the cruelty to others...all this extreme, intensive, horrific stuff that Cy just never enacted on his students. Isabelle doesn't think that what he did to his students was okay, but because it wasn't violent, she can't really bring herself to care (love reminding people that Isabelle is not really a good person) especially because it was in the past, so while she finds it upsetting at first she ultimately lets it go.

I'm guessing that because this is CyLynn you're not so much talking about a pre-negotiated CNC scene and more about how Cy is with Lynn, where it's more like actual rape. In that case Isabelle would be...devastated, to say the absolute fucking least. The sense of total betrayal and violation would activate a lot of her old thought patterns and in the ensuing meltdown she'd blame herself for it and hate herself for repeatedly attracting predators, which flows into even more self destructive behavior. I do think she would distance herself from Cy completely, but that would probably only lead to her looking for another sadist...preferably a more blatantly abusive one so at least this time she'll see it coming.

He didn't, and it almost became a domestic violence situation, but Alec realized as he was about to hit Viola that escalating it like that right on the heels of Viola having learned that he sexually abused their daughter was a Very Bad Idea so he didn't follow through. He took out most of his anger on Isabelle instead because, of course, she's the one less likely to make him suffer consequences.

Direly fucked up story, naturally, but here goes.

The April after Isabelle turned fourteen, Alec had a business trip that would take him away from the house for about eight or nine days. The day before he was set to leave, he and Isabelle went out together and had a great time, and then came home and went to bed together as usual. Isabelle was in the process of dozing off when she realized that Alec was touching her in a way she wasn't used to, and when she opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing, he just pressed his hand over it and kept going.

He didn't say a word. No reassurance, no praise, no explanation, nothing. The only thing Isabelle could think, based on the way Alec had talked about his other rape victims previously and her own awareness that this was rape and several mortal sins stacked on top of each other, was that she'd done something wrong and that he didn't love her anymore. The trauma of what was happening and of losing Alec's love sent her into dissociation, and by the time she came to in the morning, Alec was gone.

Isabelle spent the next few days alone, trying to cope on her own, but eventually emerged to tell Viola what had happened. Viola screamed accusations and blame at her, shoved her into a rosebush, and had her locked in her bedroom and starved until Alec returned. When Alec did come home and found Isabelle starving and dirty he force-fed her, showered her, and then explained to her that what he did to her was an act of love. Isabelle embraced this as the truth rather than go on thinking that Alec didn't love her, because as long as he loved her, she could believe her life still had meaning.

From then on Isabelle clung to the belief that Alec loved her no matter what he did and that his abuse of her was just an expression of that, which Alec used to manipulate her into accepting continual rape for the next few years. I feel like this probably explains a lot of her psychology, and I hope you find it so too. :]

That particular incident becoming a fic isn't likely any time soon, because the emotional weight of that night from Isabelle's perspective is more than I feel capable of writing yet and Alec's perspective would just be truly nauseating in a way I'm not sure I want to tackle yet either. But down the road, who knows? If there's interest in just hearing the story of how it happened though, I'd be happy to put it in an ask reply here. It will also be referenced in fics as appropriate

Thank you very much! And yes, it's....very, very on brand, unfortunately. Good thing it's not canon! Although I did build a son/brother character for Isabelle for an AU where Alec doesn't make her get an abortion the first time he gets her pregnant. (Distinct from nullverse.)

No worries! Yes, their relationship improves, but doesn't start seeing major progress until Isabelle is somewhere in her thirties; Yes! Viola gets THERAPY, even. What a concept! She comes to realize that Alec was nothing but an abusive manipulator, and how very badly she fucked up with Isabelle; Isabelle was in agreement that she needed to leave, because she knew that there was no end to the ways Alec would subject her body to his whims and that he would inevitably end up abusing any child she had with him as well. She grieved it and remains fucked up about losing him for a very long time, but gradually comes to understand how deeply wrong their dynamic was. Thank you very much for the questions!

Isabelle got pregnant with Alec's child, and Alec decided he wanted her to carry the baby to term and that they would raise it as if it was Viola's. This was too far for Viola, both because it was close to home with her own pregnancy trauma and because of how directly it involved her and how much it would demand her covering for Alec, so Viola took her money and Isabelle and dipped for the US, where she got Isabelle an abortion and some temporary housing. From there she got her into the uni where Cy teaches, and here we are!

Sure! So the main difference is that the nullverse version is designed to sort of pipeline Isabelle over to the Foresters, so she leaves Alec younger and goes to the US instead of staying in England. In canon she doesn't leave until her early twenties on her own and goes to London; in nullverse she leaves at eighteen with Viola's help and goes to the Midwest, where Viola pays for her education. Nullverse canon also has a version of Alec who, while still English aristocracy, is not a crime lord, just to make the escape easier.

This is going in a story but it's such a long time down the road I'll answer it anyway! And thank you very much for your interest. Alec realized he wanted Isabelle when she was about five or six (ambiguous because the feelings were ambiguous at first) which was kind of alarming for him because before that point he'd never felt desire for anyone younger than about eleven. Alec was very disconcerted by how she was an exception for him, and the degree of "power" she had over him, in his own view. Isabelle meanwhile didn't have a clue and wouldn't catch on for years.

Under Alec's instructions: torture and murder of victims he's decided he's had enough of. On her own: intentionally baiting household staff into situations where she knows Alec will act violently towards them, although she didn't expect the worst instance of that to go as far as it did.

That's more of a grey area, I'd say. Isabelle has done some very bad things, but the worst of them have been under Alec's direct instruction and supervision, with threat of violence if she doesn't follow through. Other bad things she's done without him making her do them are of course more clearly wrong, but then there's the environment she's in to consider. I don't have a clear-cut answer myself, and I would say that if Isabelle is a bad person, she's one with significant hope for redemption.

Twentyish! Probably just turned twenty. She's a few semesters into college when she meets him, and she started that at nineteen.

They grow apart somewhat with time not because of any bad blood or inherent differences but because Isabelle comes into her own as a grown woman and doesn't need to rely on Cy as heavily as she used to, but they remain good friends until Cy dies. I've always imagined they're the kind of friends where no matter how long it's been Isabelle is always welcome to call him and it will be like no time passed at all.

As for Isabelle's future, while I'm not sure she would ever get married and I haven't definitively built that far ahead for her in this AU, she has plenty of romantic relationships other than Cy—more romantic, probably, since those two were never in love with each other. I could see her settling down with a woman sometime in her thirties or forties.

Would and did. It was a fairly common feature of that kind of "punishment", and because Isabelle mostly associated someone getting hit in the crotch with jokes, slapstick, etc, she didn't put it together and was mostly just bewildered. It helped that of course the incidents were traumatic and she didn't want to think about them, much less contemplate whether they meant she was being molested by her own dad.

Cy being a college student was so long ago by the time Isabelle shows up that she never finds out what he did back then, especially because it wasn't really known.

However, about two years into their relationship she hears through a "friend of a friend of a friend" situation that Cy used to screw his students back when he taught at Trinity, and she does ask him about it. He tells her the truth, which Isabelle more or less confirms by talking to Lynn about it, and Lynn's openly critical way of discussing it helps reassure Isabelle that Cy isn't downplaying.

After a period of freaking out about it, Isabelle comes to the conclusion that because Cy wasn't violent with his students and because he doesn't do it anymore it isn't worth ending the relationship over—an example of Isabelle's very pragmatic, somewhat dingy sense of morality. She thinks the good Cy does her is more important than the moral gesture she would be making by dropping him, especially since the latter would be kind of hollow. Her lingering concerns fade with time.

Oh, things would be very different if Isabelle was assigned male at birth. Isabelle was born in the midst of Alec's turmoil over his twin brother, Bertrand, and Alec projected a lot of those feelings onto her even with her being seen as a girl. If she'd been a cis boy instead, Alec probably would've been even more repressive, fearing that Isabelle would ultimately kill him the way he killed Bertrand when she was a few months old. I'm genuinely not sure that Isabelle would've survived as a cis boy.

The good news is that if boy!Isabelle did live, Viola wouldn't be so harsh or cruel to him, because he would trigger her trauma less. She would probably still be very distant, but not as hostile. Still, though, overall I think Isabelle would be worse off as Alec's son. As it stands her being genderfluid adds enough complications.

Two people have asked this question! To answer you both: yes, but the details I have are still kinda fuzzy so I'm working out exactly how it goes. I do plan on her leaving him, and she moves to London where she sort of disappears.

So many great questions! No worries about your initial wariness of her; I totally get it. The more minor ones first, in order: Her love language is quality time; I can't really think of any kinds of play off the top of my head that are "absolute no" rather than just "extremely bad idea but she could be talked into it"; in the Nullverse she's majoring in music; she doesn't cut Cy off so much as she just grows as a person and her life becomes fuller and takes up more of her time, as opposed to when they first got together and she was very isolated and didn't have much going on besides school and him. They definitely remain friends :)

As for how Isabelle came into my brain, of course given how dark many central aspects of her character are I'm sure you can extrapolate that there are some personal subjects involved I'd rather not get deep into. I will say that I mostly made her out of a desire to make some sense of things, to explore fear, desire, love, guilt, agency...all these things that her history and her relationship to her own trauma make her a very useful vector for delving into. At first, though, she was a much more shallow character and honestly kind of a twit! She was more Draco Malfoy-esque, very bratty and snobby and domineering. Then I realized what being the child of Alec and Viola Underwood would actually be like, and suddenly this whole well opened up for me to draw from. And now here we are!

Isabelle was pretty intimidated at first on both counts. She was a little bit scared of what might be expected of her as Cy's sub if he and Lynn went that extreme in their own dynamic, but as she came to understand that that's just a Cy/Lynn thing and not anything she'd be asked to do, she found it more impressive as a sign of the bond between them. With her concerns out of the way, she's also more free to find Lynn's dedication, denial, and surgery scar hot as fuck.

Alec started being physically abusive with Isabelle when she was young, so later on he can enact sadomasochistic kink in the guise of just being punishment. Isabelle doesn't inherently know that there's a difference between Alec beating her with his fists in the spur of the moment and Alec beating her with a riding crop in a more ritualized, intimate way. In her view, at that age anyway, it's all just pain that results from her being bad. She doesn't come to understand that Alec gets off on it until she's older.

Many questions! I don't know what you mean by "how did she come to be" so I'm going to put a pin in that one for now (sorry, feel free to clarify in another ask!) but for the other ones: Isabelle likes punk/goth, pastel, and academia type fashion styles; Isabelle and Cy meet weekly at a cafe to hang out, and if they're in the MoodTM they head back to his uni apartment for kink, but they see each other outside of that weekly thing pretty often; and Lynn....

Isabelle has a tendency to expect every woman she meets, especially older women and especially women whose men she's sexually involved with, to loathe her like her mother did. So Lynn's acceptance of her into the dynamic between her and Cy is wonderful for Isabelle, and starts the process of Isabelle like...relaxing into the fact that she can be liked by and have a meaningful (non-romantic in this case) relationship with another woman. She admires the confidence Lynn has come to have by the time she's in her 60s, and often wishes she could be as unashamed of her own scars. She really respects Lynn's wisdom, resilience, and of course her dedication as a submissive to Cy. Lynn is kinda a mother figure to her in a lot of ways.