PART TWO Tadhg Lynch is swarmed in the mess that came along with the girl he had fallen head-over-heels for, knowing he could never return from the intense commotion that her mother's health left in her wake. Trying to cling to the parts of the girl that was still alive, Tadhg is only losing himself in the desperation to win her. Ciara Bellemore was dead. Maybe not at heart, but deep in her broken soul. She trained herself to learn how to accept-to let the only person that loved her since birth go. The only person she cared for this deeply. Chasing the desire to feel again, she intertwined herself to the boy who had ever made her feel alive in her suffocating orbit and broke all the walls down for him. She was his destined half. He was hers. Together, they were forever.

Everyone remembers the Lynch fire. Everyone remembers the bodies carried out. But no one remembers the boy left standing in the middle of it all. Tadhg Lynch isn't the golden Lynch boy. He isn't the baby who got shielded from the worst, or the oldest who carved a new life with a family of his own. He's the one in between. The one who saw everything, took the blows meant for his younger brothers, and carried scars no one wanted to look too closely at. Brave. Bold. Mouthy. A joker when he can manage it. And broken enough that nothing ever really sticks. Bethany Gibson is the girl who shouldn't have lived. She was three when the water took her under, when her father gave his life to save hers. She grew up in the shadow of grief, wrapped in the protection of a brother who bled for her in ways she only half understands. Sweet, funny, too kind for her own good-Bethany knows what it is to survive, but not yet what it means to live. When Bethany collides with Tadhg at Tommen, it's fire meeting oxygen-sharp words, sharp looks, a pull neither of them can shake. He's crude, cruel with his jokes, too much for anyone to handle. She's soft where he's jagged, sunshine where he's ash. He calls her Barbie. She calls him an arsehole. And somewhere between the laughs and the fights, they start to see the cracks in each other. But fixing what's shattered isn't simple. Not when trauma festers. Not when grief never loosens its grip. Not when love means putting your hands into the fire all over again. Funny. Raw. Heartbreaking. Fixing 9 is a story about the girl who wouldn't stop caring, the boy who didn't know how to be cared for, and the brutal, beautiful mess of trying to save each other when the world already tried to burn or drown you alive.

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐃 He was so happy. How was he so happy all the time? Nobody is that happy. It's impossible. ____________________________________ 𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐄 𝐋𝐘𝐍𝐂𝐇 I hated everything about myself. The way my body matured differently than Shannon's. The way my body was curved and built for the eyes of man. I hated me. I hated everything. 𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐍 𝐆𝐈𝐁𝐒𝐎𝐍 I was funny. Not as funny as my brother. I had a nice smile, my mother told me so(but she wouldn't believe me if I had told her) I was good at smiling, it made me look happy and that made me feel happy. I wanted to wipe any unhappy memories out of my brain, I wanted to clean the dirt dug into my skin. But I can't. So I'm just happy. 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝟖 BOYS OF TOMMEN FANFIC #1 Shannonlynch (12/29/24 #1 chloewalsh (1/6/25