extraordinarily difficult to stage effectively.

FIC: Sinking Like Stones (Redux)

2013-10-25T01:28:52Z

Star Trek: Enterprise; Jonathan Archer; 760 words / 854 words

I had the idea it would be fun to dig up one of my earliest fics and rewrite it, so, uh, I did.

SINKING LIKE STONES
(written sometime in 2003/4)

"A hundred years from now, when they write about him, what will they say?" asked the man in the drab black suit.

I would say he was a dreamer. I would say he was a good man. I would say he reached for the stars, and couldn't care less about what anyone said. I would say I loved him.

"They'll say he was a scientist," I replied.

"A very good one," the man pointed out, scribbling something onto a tattered notepad.

"Yeah."

"Okay," said the man. He sighed and shoved the pad into a pocket of his overcoat. "Sorry about your loss, kid."

"Thanks," I told him. I watched him walk away, leaving me behind. Alone with a dead man's ghost. I turned back to the tombstone, watched shadows flicker across its grainy texture. I ran my fingers over the stone. It was cold. Cold and lifeless, without passion or feeling.

That was wrong. It didn't fit. This slab of rock was the last earthly piece of my dad and it was meaningless. It was dust.

I turned away, walked back through the smog and damp of San Francisco, never to return. Wet blades of grass slashed my polished black shoes, shinning faint reflections on the toes. They were like dark little mirrors. A way into another world; a world that could never be reached.

Somewhere someone disagreed. Someone thought the impossible could be done. They would find a way. Dad would have found a way. What would I do?

Would I walk away like I was right now? Would I try to find the way?

Dad used to tell me to never give up. "Reach for the starts, Jon," he'd say "because the sky just isn't high enough."

But the sky seemed plenty high from my vantage. Too high.

It struck me then that I didn't know who I was. My whole life I'd been my father's son, living my father's dream. And now he was gone. So were did that leave me? A blank page. A blank page sitting next to an inked pen, ready to be written on but with nothing to write.

A hundred years from now, when they wrote about me, what would they say? Would I be just another footnote in my father's legacy?

I didn't believe in destiny. I didn't believe people were chosen or not chosen. I believed you made your own way.

I stopped walking and turned around, went back to the tombstone.

It was as cold and grey as when I'd left it. I didn't know what to do; I didn't know where to go. I didn't want to think any more.

All I wanted was my dad back. But that was something no one could give me. I sat down on the grass and faced the rain. It was picking up, lashing my face, beating tears out of my eyes.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to end this way.

I looked back at the headstone, ran my fingers over it again. Felt the cold. The mirror in my shoes was shinning against the rain, glimmering like a sparkle at the end of time. It was subtle. It was a little thing. But that was all life was: a series of little things.

I smile cracked my face, pushing through hot tears that ran down, cooled by the rain. I watched the way the water bounced off leaves, springing back to life after falling and shattering: Silver daggers ricocheting across an impossible impasse.

"I'll see you later, Dad."

I stood and walked back the way I'd come. I wasn't going to be a footnote.

SINKING LIKE STONES REDUX

Jon Archer found the photo at the bottom of a drawer in his mom’s house. In it he was twelve years old, standing next to her in a crumpled suit. She had tried to iron it, tried desperately to clean the ambiguous stain on the dark cotton tie, but Jon refused to let her. Refused to let anyone near him or near the suit or in his room for days. He sat alone on the hardwood floor dragging his hands across the grain, imagining slivers cutting through his fingers and slicing apart his hands.

And he polished his shoes. Polished them until they shone, until he could imagine stars and planets orbiting their blank black surface.

Under his bed was the wreckage of his ship, the one his father had taught him to fly. It was smashed to pieces. Grey and yellow paint flecks were smudged across the floor, demarking the craters and gouges were the ship had been driven into the wood again and again and again until it was just a useless carcass. Something broken; something dead.

It was two days after the toy’s fatal crash when his mom barged into the room and demanded he have something for dinner. When she left she took the the remains of his ship and the plate still covered in crumbs and half-eaten food with her.

That night, with his lights off and the house quiet, he laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling. The air around him hardly moved at all and it smelled stale and fetid. He reached toward the window and found it too far to touch. He jerked in a halting, spastic way until he was almost sitting, but the air was heavy and his arms were rocks, boulders cut from jagged mountains. They dragged him downward and he sank slowly into his mattress.

Down the hall, he could hear crying.

The next morning he started polishing his shoes, scrubbing and rubbing and chafing at the leather until they gleamed like all the Academy cadets’.

In the photo, his twelve-year-old reflection had hollow eyes with red rims and his hands and cheeks were smeared with saltwater. His mom was standing too straight and her face was too blank. She had her arm around him, her knuckles white but her fingers barely brushing the fabric of his jacket.

Rain was falling around them and the field where they stood had turned to marshland and each footstep squelched like suction cups being torn off metal. He had polished his shoes until they were clear as glass. He stood still and watched the sheets of water bounce off them.

To his left a man with a deep voice and a wrinkled suite asked, “In the future, when they write about him, what do you think they’ll say?”

The woman next to him said, “They’ll say he was a revolutionary.”

Someone else said, “He’ll be remembered as a scientist.”

Everyone standing around, they were all wearing black and none of them had umbrellas. Their hair was lank and sodden and their shoes were sloshed in mud. But not his--he had polished his until they shone, rubbed at the dark leather until it gleamed like all the Academy cadets’.

The man with the rumpled suit said, “He may have changed everything.”

An old, crackly voice said, “He was so young. It’s a shame. A damn shame. Imagine what else he could have done?”

“He was a great man,” the woman said.

They were talking about his father, all these people in their dark suits, but the worlds they used didn’t fit. They were too big and too vague and too indistinct. They felt bloated in Jon’s mouth when he tried to repeat them. They felt loose and rubbery and when he tried to fit them onto his father they fell right off like they were made of nothing at all.

The words kept telling stories about something else. Someone else. They didn’t have anything to say about his dad.

Jon nodded and he said, “Yeah.”

He said, “His engine is going to really make a difference.”

The rain pouring down like a flooding culvert, no one could tell he was crying if he didn’t reach up to wipe his eyes.

Jon turned the picture over in his hands and ran his thumbs along the edges. It had been taken at the funeral by some journalist or another and in the photo it was was sunny. Behind him and his mom Henry Archer’s grave was a dark hole cut in a bright, trim lawn. There were creases in the celluloid when it had been folded, lines of tatty white paper jutting across the graveyard, cleaving it into quarters.

He found the box with the broken ship his dad had taught him to fly in the back of a closet. The pieces inside were untouched, the plastic faded. When he carried it into the hall, he left greasy handprints in the dust.

He took them both when he left and he stopped on his way back to Starfleet to pick up a tube of yellow paint.

(end)

FIC: The Frozen

2012-08-07T22:34:52Z

( originally published february 12, 2012 )

Game of Thrones / ASOIAF [AU]; Eddard Stark; 514 words

When the rebellion ended, Tywin seized control of earth's fleet and what remained of the ruined planet. He declared Robert's death a soldier's death: told all the citizens, each and every one, that the bold Baratheon had been slain in battle. And so it was.

When Ned Stark refused to accept Tywin's rule, he declared Stark a traitor and exiled him to a derelict vessel, there to orbit the worlds until the end of his days.

And so it was.

THE FROZEN

I saw her again last night, the same as I see her every night.

Floating. Hovering.

Shimmering.

Just there, her bare feet pale as china barely brushing the deck, her long hair darker than the space outside twisting and writhing like dying sinews. She sways ever so slightly, her solemn black dress--always the black, always--shifting and sighing; she’s caught in the memory of a breeze, gentle and warm. Or she’s drowning under an invisible sea, trapped and helpless and alone.

I blink, and she’s gone. Nothing more than the fading memory of a passing dream.

The ship--my ship--is lit up on the inside like an air-raid: lights in red and orange and green and blue are flashing, blinking, sparking. The little electric bulbs on the ancient circuitry are exploding off and on, off and on and I’m thinking, bombs, bombs, boom.

They’ve been at it for days. Nothing I do makes a difference.

Years I’ve spent out here drifting in this vast black nothingness, three days ago--a Sunday, if the chronometer around my wrist is still accurate--is the first I’ve seen anything other than a dull, green glow from the hibernating ship systems.

I snort.

Those systems aren’t hibernating anymore, are they?

There’s something out there, hidden in the shadows of burning stars and fading nebulae. I can feel it and so can Winterfell. It’s acute and it’s bright but it’s empty inside, the feeling, and it’s woken us both up: neither of us are sure what to do with it, though.

The lights continue to flicker and flash, blinking a parade of colours across the cold metal sheeting of my ship’s walls. For a prison, Winterfell hasn’t been so bad. Her guts have all been torn out, her propulsion systems and her navigation, but she’s still here.

She’s kept going, spinning through the void.

I lean back in my chair and the hinges scream and I close my eyes. Winterfell fades to black--her hull of shrieking joints and battered doors and creaking, damaged walls welded together like popping stone knuckles--all gone, all nothing.

Drifting off to sleep I see Ashara again, the same as I see her every night and every day and every moment I close my eyes and some moments when I don’t.

She opens her mouth and says, “Ned.”

She opens her mouth, her lips painted darkest dusk, and says, “Why?”

She opens her mouth and a stream of crimson boils down her chin, down her gown.

Her blood, it’s redder than the reddest red I can imagine and it’s pooling below her feet, trailing between her toes. She gurgles. She downs.

Her skin is like how I remember snow and her blood is flowing over it and across it and covering it in a sea of red, red, red--

I open my eyes and everything is black.

I open my eyes and it’s cold and the warning lights on the ancient circuitry are lighting up the ship--my ship--like an air-raid.

I saw her again last night, the same as I see her every night.

Floating. Hovering.

Shimmering.

(end)

FIC: Static on a Broken Wire

2012-08-07T22:26:38Z

( originally published november 15, 2011 )

Game of Thrones / ASOIAF [AU]; Ashara Dayne (Eddard Stark); 771 words

She reappeared just as she had vanished: in a wave of swirling, churning rumour and restless whispering. Those who'd seen Ashara Dayne called her reborn, remade; they called her untouched and unchanged and unaged. Or they called her haggard--a mere shadow of the beauty she'd been.

The nameless mouths, they spouted tale after tale, weaving stories into intricate patterns; sometimes she was a victim, sometimes a villain, yet always she was unnatural and the names spy and cyborg followed her like the shadow of a vulture across desert sands.

STATIC ON A BROKEN WIRE

you remember it a time it wasnt so long ago you think and you used to be a girl then

young

you used to be

then back then back in that time that distant past you were young and you were and you knew you knew you knew who you were and what

why

things

these things all of them they had meaning and they fit together and they made and they werent just things werent just stuff wasnt just stuck together like this in this way in this

mess

running together and running around and

and

and

zeros and ones its all just

zeros and

ones

Are you alive?

he asks the question so easily words slipping from his

lips

mouth

and what a stupid idiotic kind of question because of course youre alive youre here right here right in front of him

him

standing there and you standing here and

you think you may not be a girl not anymore but you cant have changed so much because he hasnt changed at all except his face is older and carved with cracks and lines you dont recall and his hair his beard not quite a beard its greying at the edges and its ragged around the corners but those arent changes arent real changes because he still stands the same and still speaks the same and still smells the same and his

words

his words are still soft but rough still measured out carefully like hes worried maybe if he uses too many at once hell one day run out and his words theyre still

abrupt

they snap through the air

crash through the air

his words

like waves against rock

violent

and some things never change because his voice was always soft but the words hurt they hurt they

but his eyes

his eyes dont look the same they used to shine you remember from back then back when you where a girl his eyes they were cold they were they were grey but they were alive so alive and they would dance like a winter wind they would sing songs like gales and gleam and you would you remember back then you would look in his eyes in his cold grey eyes and you would see the jagged peaks of mountains far far away and he would say home and you would laugh you knew then you used to know how to laugh and you would laugh because his voice was soft it was it was soft and it didnt crash didnt shatter but sighed and drifted and you would laugh and imagine precipices he called home but his eyes now his eyes now they just look

dead

and you say, Are you?

and you see in his eyes in his cold grey eyes his eyes that dont sparkle not anymore not like they did like before like you remember from back then back when you were a girl and you

you see

you see in his eyes a thing like a shadow

a shade

a flicker of darkness and you think what it wants to say is sadness you remember sadness oh yes you remember well sorrow your sweet friend you live with her she fills you up

some days you think shell eat you up

burn you up

but she is cold so cold and she makes you feel old so old and everything is nothing its all just zeros and

ones

all just

zeros and ones

and nothing means anything and nothing means dead and are you alive no he asked that are you

are you

of course you are because here you are

arent you

and you look back in his eyes at the shadow spread across his eyes the shadow that wants to be melancholy wants to be sadness but what youre reading printed across the darkness across the grey rolling grey like storm clouds darkness is danger

danger

storm is coming

wolves are coming

howling

howling holwing howling like a gale

he was a wolf

you remember

tear you up

they called him

rip you up

quiet wolf

teeth and claws

they called him

He says, Of course I am.

cold

like winter like wind like jagged peaks and frozen frozen frozen and you remember now what they said then you remember what they said the word they said it was

ice

and you say, How can you be, with ice in your veins?

and you say, Isn’t it cold? Don’t you feel cold?

but he says nothing at all and its all just zeros and ones

just zeroes and

ones

(end)

FIC: Hollow

2012-08-07T21:53:46Z

( originally published october 29, 2011 )

Game of Thrones / ASOIAF [AU]; Eddard Stark (Cersei Lannister, Catelyn Stark); 939 words

He left King's Landing and went north. Death followed behind him and death loomed ahead.

Written for Lorr's brilliant post-apocalyptic AU, State of Flux.

HOLLOW

I cant say it’s even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothing but you do. If you aint they’ll know it. They’ll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willing to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I won’t do that. I think now that maybe I never would.

no country for old men, cormac mccarthy

The country was open for miles and completely deserted. If anyone had lived here before, they didn’t anymore and it hadn’t been that long ago, but already the road beneath Ned Stark’s feat was cracking apart. Already the blackened cement was fissuring and in the jagged, empty spaces, wild grass crawled across the loose pieces of tarmac. The grass looked papery and dead and it was black like the road. Black and black and black and they sky was grey.

A hunched and crumbling form shuffled against the horizon. It was far away, but even as a silhouette against the clouds Ned could tell it was a broken thing that hobbled towards him. A victim maybe, or a scavenger. It didn’t matter: anymore, all the others were enemies and all the sickly dangers.

When you take the job you tell yourself it’s because you were ordered to and soldiers follow orders. When you go to work with them you tell yourself it’s because you were ordered to and soldiers follow orders. Soldiers follow orders and you’re a soldier and soldiers protect and you protect. When you lie with her you tell yourself it’s because you were ordered to and soldiers follow orders and you’re a soldier and you never say her name because names have meanings and names mean real but this means nothing at all. This means protection for your daughter and a quicker way to answers. This is following orders and you’re a soldier and soldiers follow orders.

His boots on the road made a terrible crunching sound. The broken thing shuffled closer to Ned and Ned strode closer to it, and they were near enough now Ned wasn’t guessing it was sick.

Infected.

It was dying because they had killed it and if it was a man or a woman or a friend or a foe all that mattered anymore was it had become a thing rank with disease and it was shuffling closer to Ned and Ned was striding closer to it and soon they would meet in the middle of the empty, blasted country on the broken, jagged road.

The time it takes for you to decide how to react to the news, you end up not reacting at all. You tell yourself it’s because you are a soldier and soldiers are strong and soldiers do not buckle and soldiers do not show fear and soldiers do not show weakness and if you’re writing a list in your mind of all the names of all the people you plan to kill you never say because a soldier doesn’t murder; a soldier follows orders and you are a soldier. You tell them you’re going home and they tell you have no home left to go to. They tell you even if you make it that far north, you’ll die like they did. There are no people left there anymore. Only sickness. But we did this. We have to fix this. You tell them you’ll do what you have to do and you steal their research and you leave in the day not in the night because you are a soldier and soldiers are not cowards and if they want to stop you they can try. But they don’t. And they don’t say anything as you leave and neither do you and she is there but you don’t say anything to her, not even this last time, not even her name, because you never say her name because names mean real and she means nothing at all and you’re going home and home is where your wife is. You haven’t seen your wife in a long time. When you left you told yourself it was because you were ordered to and you are a soldier and soldiers follow orders. And if you wanted to or not it doesn’t matter because you are a soldier and soldiers follow orders and soldiers act for the good of others and soldiers fight and soldiers protect and soldiers endure and soldiers don’t feel; soldiers follow orders and you are a soldier.

You wife, her name is Cat.

The smell of the thing was wafting across the space between it and Ned. He wondered how anything could waft on air so flat and still and dry. He supposed decay had a way of permeating on its own accord.

Behind the shuffling mutation, the road stretched on until the horizon blurred into a grey smudge.

You wonder what it will look like if everyone there is sick and dying and infected. You wonder what home will mean if anymore there is no home. You remember what everyone looked like before you left, but that was a long time ago. You tell yourself it wouldn’t have made a difference if you stayed and you didn’t have a choice because you are a soldier and soldiers follow orders. You tell yourself

Your wife, her name is

When the shuffling thing met Ned in the middle of the cracked road in the empty, grey country, Ned stopped. He thought the thing might have been a woman once, but anymore, it didn’t matter: now it was infected. Now it was just a thing that was dying.

Ned reached into the waistband of his trousers and he pulled out a gun and he shot the thing in the head. A hole appeared in its charred and mottled skin and blood boiled down its face. Its legs shuddered. It collapsed in the road, on the cracking pavement, bleeding into weeds like faded, crinkled paper and Ned stepped over it and continued striding north towards the grey smudge horizon.

(end)

FIC: Schisms

2012-08-07T21:50:35Z

( originally published august 25, 2011 )

Game of Thrones / ASOIAF [AU]; Eddard Stark (Cersei Lannister, Catelyn Stark); 445 words

He tells himself that he can't see any of Cersei's beauty. He tells himself that, these days, all he can see is the stain of deceit casting ugly shadows across her pale face and wicked eyes.

SCHISMS

By limning a world so subtly transformed, so barely nudged into the ideal, the Dire One’s fictions cast a shadow back onto the everyday. They induced a despair of inadequacy in the real. Turning the last page of the Dire Utopianist’s stories, the reader felt a mortal pang at slipping back into his own daily life, which had been proved morbid, crushed, unfair.
"the distopianist, thinking of his rival, is interrupted by a knock on the door." -- jonathan lethem

He’d told himself, been telling himself for years, that he couldn’t see any of Cersei’s beauty. He knows what she is: what she is inside. Knows what her father and her brother are, too.

When she turned up on his doorstep, shivering from the cold and shrouded in furs, he told himself he could see only the ruinous stain spread across her pale features. Lies, deceit, corruption, lust. A twisted veneer, power-mongering and ravenous and ruthless.

That’s what he told himself. But he didn’t let his gaze linger.

Instead he looked to his friend Robert and tried not to see the age that clutched at him, dragging down the shadows under his eyes and hanging about his great guts the way death clings to carcasses. He tried to make himself believe it must have been her that affected the change. Robert’s damn awful wife.

He thought about asking Robert why he’d ever married such a creature.

He didn’t.

He’s never asked.

He probably never will, he thinks, standing naked on his balcony. Beyond the cover of the roof, snow is falling. At night, the snow looks like ash. Everything is grey and dark and cold.

At night, he remembers the day. He’d told himself he couldn’t see Cersei’s beauty, but he was lying. He knew that then. He knows it now.

In the pale curtain of falling snow, he sees her face. Her blond, blond hair and her fierce green eyes. Her furs, so ridiculous and opulent and obscenely out of place in this country of all countries, yet, somehow, on her, they fit well. Seem regal where they should seem garish.

How is that, he wonders.

“Ned?”

He turns to see his wife, sitting in their bed, wrapped in more blankets than he knew they had.

She says, “Come back to bed.”

She says, “It’s frigid out there.”

His smile feels like a grimace as it tugs across his face, but for Cat he’ll wear it.

For Cat, he turns from the cold, grey night and he shuts the sliding glass door with a quiet snap and he settles into their bed. It’s too warm under all the blankets. It’s always too warm. He can feel sweat start to prickle at the small of his back and he tries to remember the chilling night air.

He puts his arms around his wife and he whispers love songs into her red hair. She smells like spring. He thinks of winter.

He imagines cold and holds her closer still.

Under a dozen blankets, with his arms wrapped around his wife and his eyes pressed closed, Ned Stark tells himself he can’t see any of Cersei’s beauty.

(end)

FIC: For the Birds

2012-08-07T21:43:25Z

( originally published august 6, 2011 )

Game of Thrones / ASOIAF; Eddard Stark (Cersei Lannister); 1624 words

The first time he sees her, like the last, her eyes are unreadable and she turns away before he can even think to.

It's entirely possible this is based on something that happened only in a hallucination. It's also pretty fair to say this has very little--if anything--to do with the lyrics that were very kindly left for me. Well. I never have claimed to know what I'm doing here. And having only just started ACoK, I'm not claiming to know much about canon, either. So anyway.

FOR THE BIRDS

the birds are the keepers of our secret as they saw us where we lay
in the deepest grass of springtime in a reckless guilty haze
and they wove a sweet indifference and it settled on our skin
till the eyes that i remembered for the last time drew me in
"the birds" -- elbow

He’s trying to recall a story his father used to tell him. It’s about birds, he thinks. Ravens. Ravens carrying messages through winter storms, snow melting in their feathers.

Or is it hawks?

At the end of the corridor, the sky is blue. Everything out there is so damn bright. When he looks ahead, the world glitters back at him: staggering rays of white, white light that burns his eyes. When he looks ahead, he feels more blind than he had trapped in the endless night of the Red Keep’s dungeons. And his head is throbbing.

He lowers his gaze to the ground. The stones he stands on here have been worn smooth by ages of use; they gleam under the shadow of his scuffed, mud crusted boot and rotted cast.

Perhaps the story was about gulls.

The guards’ grips on his arms tighten, thick fingers digging into his flesh, and a gruff voice says, “Come on, Stark.”

Ned raises his head, glaring through a curtain of lank, stinking hair at the sunlit sept. The world out there is shining, shimmering, dancing before his eyes. The world out there is a sheet of pale light, piercing his eyes and his mind and his head and it feels like a thousand sharpened daggers cleaving his skull in two, but he doesn’t look away.

He grits his teeth and he sets his jaw and he doesn’t look away.

The hands wrapped around his arms drag him foreword, one guard on either side, each tugging in a different rhythm. Ned’s gait, already a shuffling hobble, is pitched back and forth and he feels like a piece of driftwood, splintering under the break of waves on the surf.

He straightens his shoulders and he juts out his chin. He faces the sun and the sept and the burning bright light.

He feels like a shipwreck.

Each step is long and slow and loud, echoing across ancient stones; when he finally staggers out from the shadow of the corridor, the sickly summer air strangles him and waves of heat scald the back of his neck.

The air is stifling. It’s warm and damp and smells of hazy summer things: blossoms lying limp in still meadows and flowers that are rotting. The scents catch in the back of Ned’s throat, thick and heavy and--and--what?

He tries to wipe off the pool of sweat at the base of his neck, runs his hands through his hair, slicking it back against his skull.

He frowns.

On the field, Prince Rhaegar and Ser Barristan are preparing themselves for the final round of jousting. Next to him his sister sits, immobile as stone, her gaze fixed on the prince.

Putrid, he finally decides. The air has a rancid twang, sickly and sweet, like fruit that’s been left out in the sun for too long. Like blood. He wonders how much has been spilled for this Tourney? How much lies scabbed, cracking and baking on the hot earth?

Vultures, he thinks. It could have been a story about vultures.

After so many long minutes deprived of the shadowy corridor, his vision is blurred from staring into glaring sunlight. He no longer feels pain in his shattered leg, only the sharp, piercing agony tearing apart his skull.

The heat on the back of his neck is searing his flesh, cooking his pale skin. He can feel it smoldering, reddening. Feel his whole body drenched in sweat and pulling the rough fabric of his clothes tight, so tight, it scratches when he moves.

Ned raises his head to Cersei. He wants to look her in the eye, wants to make her see him, here, in this place so far from his home. He wants to stare her down and force her, in front of all these gathering people, to finally understand what it means to pass a sentence. But her gaze is elsewhere, so he waits; she’ll seek him out eventually.

Her hair is a shining golden main speckled with darkly winking gems, her gown resplendent, brilliant black. As stunning and imposing a figure as any he’s beheld: every inch a queen.

And when she finally does turn to face him, Cersei’s eyes are cold and veiled. They sparkle in the bright summer sun of the sept, a pair of immaculately cut emeralds, green and glittering and impenetrable.

He wonders if maybe it was story about a nightingale.

Her eyes are frightening. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so green before. Certainly he’s never seen eyes like hers before. His hands still and drop to his sides and he stares into the icy, chilling depths of her green, green eyes.

“There’s still blood on your hands, Lord Stark,” she tells him, “or had you not noticed?”

Her lips are painted red and her golden braid shines--gleams--sparkles. Cersei Lannister. He thinks she looks like a queen; her hair the colour of crowns--though he doubts any trinkets won by men could shine half so bright--and her gown stained crimson so dark and deep he fears he’ll drown if looks at the folds too long.

“Or do you Starks simply prefer it that way?”

He glances back at her eyes. She’s staring straight at him and behind the placid green he’d been so taken with a storm of rage has darkened her features. He doesn’t know why.

He realizes he doesn’t know what she has been saying to him, and he certainly doesn’t know why she has come back here. Had she been seeking him at all, or was it a mistake that led her into the quiet meadow?

Is it he who’s interrupted her?

“What?” he asks, and he feels a fool.

Her eyes are what he’s always remembered most about her. He’s never been able to fathom them, never been able to forget them. He’s not sure what he’d hoped to find there--pity? understanding? anger?--whatever it was, it isn’t there. He searches ceaselessly, but they’re shuttered. If she feels anything about this pantomime at all, it’s locked up tighter than he’ll ever uncover.

He wonders what Cersei finds when she meets his gaze. Does she see into him? Does she see past the wall of cold grey that so frustrates his wife, see into his thoughts? His fears? Or does she, like him, see only a mask, a steely curtain pulled closed over hidden truths?

Overhead, in the clear, cloudless sky, the dark shapes of birds wheel, distant and free.

Ned feels his shoulders collapse as his head drops. The sun on his neck is so hot, burning hot, and the hands clasping his arms tighten and tighten and tighten, flesh shackles binding him to this damned, desolate place.

A bell begins to toll.

He knows she’s mocking him. He knows she’s angry. And he knows--he’s certain--he should say something, anything, but he doesn’t have even the vaguest notion how to appease her, so he keeps his silence.

Better a silent fool, he thinks, than an impetuous one.

Somehow, even in this shady patch of nearly-empty land behind the crowds, the day is scorching and the air suffocating. Ned blinks the sweat out of his eyes. He wants to wipe his brow, but Cersei’s right, of course: there is still blood on his hands.

He starts to clean them again, bends and runs his torn palm over the grass at his feet, but it does little; the ground is dry, and now his blood runs in a smear across the lawn, too.

From above him she says, “Do you need help?”

It doesn’t sound like a question.

Ned doesn’t know why she’s been watching. He doesn’t want to know. He wants cold, clean air and an escape from her caustic, ensnaring gaze.

He grounds his molars, tightens his jaw.

He says, “No, Lady Lannister, I’m fine.”

Looking up to meet her stare, he says, “Thank you.”

She says nothing. A fly swoops down, landing on the swath of blood at Ned’s feet.

Another follows, and another, until a dull buzz fills his ears.

Her eyes are greener than anything he’s ever seen.

“Fine,” she says, and she turns away from him. Her crimson gown swishes behind her, parting the still, dead air, and Ned watches her go until he she’s lost behind a corner.

The thorns hidden in the crown of winter roses cut Ned deeper than he’d first thought.

The ringing in the courtyard is a ringing in his head is a throbbing, pulsing pain behind his eyes that clangs and jangles and crashes, bang, bang, bang.

His hair is hanging down in front of his eyes, limp and lifeless, reeking and greasy and dripping with sweat. Looking through it, he can see the queen. She’s turned her back to him.

The bells jeer, boom, boom, boom, and his vision swims out of focus.

His daughter, his Sansa, is standing there, too. He’s sure it’s her--auburn hair aglow, slight figure held so properly, so prettily--but her face is blurring.

Everything is blurring, running together, bright, too bright, but still so dark at the edges.

Thud, thud, thud.

Owls, he realizes, and wonders how he had ever forgotten. The story was about owls and winter and things that lived forever ago when the world was quiet and all was black, cold night.

Ned remembers how his father used to recount the tale, in the evening by a fire, his voice sounding impossibly deep and old and wise. Ned remembers shadows flicking across his father’s face, remembers his older brother flapping his arms like wings. Ned remembers his home, remembers himself a child, and he waits for the bell to toll another vicious blow, counting down another agony and another age, but everything, everyone is silent.

It’s time.

(end)

FIC: The Warmth

2012-08-02T22:48:26Z

( originally published october 3, 2008 )

Firefly/Serenity ; Inara Serra, Malcolm Reynolds (Mal/Inara); 976 words

(continuation of "the cold"); Why would I carry such a weight on my shoulders? / Why do I always help you carry your boulders?

THE WARMTH

He couldn’t walk, not really. Every step Mal took was awkward, shuffled. His usually precise movements, his rhythmic footfalls, clank, clank, clank, like the hands of a clock, where inconsistent and powerless—his boots skidded across the metal floor, crooked and slipping. It was getting harder and harder to manoeuver him to his bunk, only a few metres away.

Inara tightened her grip around him, pulled him up against her. “Mal,” she said, her voice soft, barely above a whisper. “Mal,” she said, her voice louder, hoarser.

His eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks then closed. He was going to pass out. He was going to pass out in the hallway and there was no way she could move him—not on her own. But no one else was awake at this hour, or, at least, no one else was prowling the ship. No, the crew was tucked away, snug in their bunks and in their beds. Where she should be.

She sucked a breath in through her teeth. It made a hissing noise, like a snake. “Mal.”

His head lolled a bit and he sank into her a little more. He was too heavy to carry, but she couldn’t leave him. If he fell he could crack his skull or twist an ankle or who knew what. Again, Inara dragged him higher. His head sank onto her shoulder.

She said, “Mal,” and took a few halting steps forward. His feet barely moved at all.

She said, “Mal,” and waited for some indication he’d heard her.

She said, “Malcolm,” and pushed a sharper edge into her voice.

“Sergeant!”

Mal blinked at her. His eyes were blurry, reddish and faraway. He said, “Huh?”

“Stand up, okay? It’s just a few more steps. Just take one at a time. One...two...three...four. Good. Now again, one....”

Inara held him around his waist, kept him upright and slowly, with her counting, he stumbled up to the door of his bunk. Each step his head bobbed—sagged and drooped and snapped up again. Each step his breathing sounded harsh, horse.

She almost carried him down the ladder, worried every step that his foot would slip off the rung, that he’d fall on top of her. But he didn’t. She’d gotten him down to his bunk—now she had to get him into his bed.

Mal was slumped against the ladder. His face was all in shadow and he was wheezing and coughing. His head pressed against the cold metal rungs, his arms weaved through them to keep himself from collapsing, Mal said, “My...uh...my head feels weird. Fuzzy.”

Inara said, “I know,” and she gasped a few times, gulped down some air before she tried to move him again. When she stood next to him, Inara could see the sheen of sweat on Mal’s pale, pale face. The way the week blue light from his Cortex screen caught his profile, she thought he looked like a ghost.

She put one arm around his waist and with the other slowly untangled his hands from the ladder. They were clammy—cold and shaking. “Come here,” she said, and he followed her to his bed: shuffled and stumbled across the room, barely looking to see where she led him. When his knees crashed into the metal bed frame, Mal collapsed onto his mattress; his limbs were askew, pointing in all directions, making him look like a tangle of weeds in the dark.

Inara sighed and rubbed her throbbing arms. She was warm, sweating a little, but the air down there was cool. She could feel goose bumps beginning to rise on her exposed flesh. Mal’s breathing was coming in heavy, ragged gasps, his chest shuddering with every slowly drawn breath; he was starting to snore softly, a wheezy whining sound, muffled and moaned as the air rattled around in his lungs.

She stepped closer silently and tugged the creased blanket from underneath him. Gently, she placed all his limbs about him and settled him on his back. She pulled down his suspenders and unbuttoned his shirt, then she untucked it and slid it off his torso. His chest heaved up, down, up, down, and he made indistinct sounds: mumbled queries and fractured snorts. Inara moved to the end of his bed and removed his boots and socks. It was like undressing a doll, a mannequin; something dead and emotionless. She bit down on her bottom lip as she stowed Mal’s garments in a neat pile near his desk; it was nothing like taking care of a sick man. Inara took a deep breath, held it and closed her eyes. It was nothing at all like looking after Malcolm Reynolds. Nothing like that at all. It was a favour. A professional courtesy—he was sick and—

“Nara?” His voice was horse, barely audible, but his eyes—his blue, blue eyes—were open and trained on her.

She said, “Yes?”

“’S cold,” he said, blinking rapidly. Then slowly. Then not at all. His eyes stayed closed and his ragged breathing rattled around the small, chill cabin once more.

Inara picked up the discarded blanket and placed it over him. She ran the coarse fabric through her fingers as she draped it over his toes, across his shoulders. He made a noise like a moan then curled into a ball on his side.

His face was still so pale, chiselled in shadows and shimmering with sweat. Standing over him, she ran a hand through his damp hair, dishevelling it like a gentle breeze, back and forth, back and forth. His breathing steadied, in and out, in and out.

After a time, she drew her hand away from his pale face and dark, damp hair.

“Stay,” he said, his eyes cracked open but only barely.

She hesitated, startled. She said, “Mal—”

He said, “Please,” and let his eyes drift closed.

(end)

FIC: The Cold

2012-08-02T22:43:47Z

( originally published september 26, 2008 )

Firefly/Serenity ; Malcolm Reynolds, Inara Serra (Mal/Inara); 503 words

I don't know who else to ask / Sitting in the dark, holding an empty glass.

THE COLD

“Kaylee said you weren’t feeling so well,” Inara said as she glided into the kitchen. Her silk gown swished about in that way it did—shh, hush, like wind through autumn trees—and her footfalls were so soft they didn’t echo.

Mal was sitting at the table, hunched over in the dim, dim light. His silhouette was awkward and bulky: a mound of gravel pebbles slowly rolling to the ground in uneven lines. In his hands, an empty metal mug gaped in front of his face like the maw of an abyss.

His face covered in shadow, Mal said, “Likely that’s ’cause I’m sick.”

He turned around to look at her and she smiled, just a little. An upward quirk of her painted lips—amusement and pity and just a hint of something else. He thought maybe sympathy, but it was hard to be sure; the darkness kept her eyes veiled more than normal.

Inara moved closer, leaned against the table so she was facing him. Her dress sighed as it was pressed into the unfinished wood.

Mal was looking down again, trying to ignore the shimmery reflections in his periphery. Holding the mug kept his hands from shaking with cold, but on his forehead he could feel prickles of sweat slowly rolling into his eyes. He blinked and looked back up, hoping maybe the sidelights would catch in her eyes and he’d be able to discern what Inara was thinking. He wasn’t expecting to see the edge of her palm resting above his brow: hadn’t seen her arm move or felt her touch.

He said, “Uh....”

She pressed her hand against his skin a bit more forcefully and said, “Shh.”

Mal stuck his tongue out, slid it over his bottom lip, then closed his mouth and shut his eyes.

After a moment, he leaned back in the chair. Somewhere below him, he could here Serenity humming as she passed through the Black, gently cutting through the emptiness of space. Empty. Cold. It was so cold out there...in here....

Inara said, “Give me this,” and reached for the empty mug.

He opened his eyes, but his lids wouldn’t lift all the way until he fluttered them against his cheeks one, two, three times. The room was still dark and Inara had wandered over to the sink. His mug was gone.

Mal blinked once, then twice, then said, “Huh?”

Inara smiled that same smile she’d smiled before—how long ago had that been? How long had he been sitting here? Cold. Why was it so cold?

“’S cold,” he muttered.

“I know,” said Inara. She put her arms around him pulled him to his feet. The chair scraped across the floor with a screech like a dying owl. “I’m going to take you down to your bunk now, okay?”

“Mmmhmm.”

Inara’s gown swished around them as she led him out of the kitchen. The soft sound reminded him of rain in the grass and wind in the trees and his home from long ago.

(end)

FIC: Came the Sound of Thunder

2012-08-02T22:37:41Z

( originally published july 9, 2008 )

Firefly/Serenity ; Malcolm Reynolds (Inara Serra); 1,141 words

And time won't stop when the land is torn apart / If you wanna run, it's too late; and with the guns came the sound of thunder.

CAME THE SOUND OF THUNDER

The sun was setting. Its dying rays, slipping beyond the distant horizon, set the vast empty land on fire. The barren earth sprawled on, flat, until the end of time. Nothing but dried dirt, cracked and fissured and painted with the reflections of flames, stretching on for miles and miles and miles.

There was no life. No struggling greenery, strangled weeds, or stunted trees. Nothing.

Nothing but dirt and dust and a setting sun.

Nothing but a dead, shrivelled world.

Nothing but ashes. Cold and grey, they lay scattered everywhere. They wheeled around in the air, tumbling like the memory of autumn leaves. Dancing silhouettes like small colourless ghosts. The more he looked, the more he realized they were everywhere, on everything. Drifting pieces of ash were the haze in the air and the gentle hush underfoot. On his boots, ashes blotted out the worn brown leather.

The man was tall, his shadow long. It fell across the ground, casting a pall of darkness for miles behind him. In its shade, little pieces of ash hung. The tarnished metal of his pistol was dotted with flecks of grey; rising from its muzzle, a cloud of ash floated on the billowing wave of heat.

His hands were sweating. The insides of his leather gloves were wet and sticky. Surrounded by a cage of damp lining, his hands felt claustrophobic. Felt restless. With his left, he brushed the ashes from his pistol; with his right, he clutched the grip like a lifeline. Inside his gloves, slick with sweat, his knuckles turned white. The blood seeped away from them: drained back into his fingers and down his arm.

With his right hand, he slid his pistol back into the holster on his hip. He felt it pull, the worn leather sagging against his thigh under the weight of the pistol and the bullets still remaining inside.

With his left hand, the man shielded his eyes from the sun and looked. He looked across a wasteland to the edge of the world, and still he saw nothing.

Breathing in, he could smell the dirt and the ash: musty, like something left for ages, untouched and forgotten.

He let his hand drop to his side, still sweating, swelling in discomfort, and he gazed back down at the ground. A great lake of crimson was creeping closer to his boots, spreading like spilled wine across the parched earth. The blood crept on, picking up little pieces of ash and sucking them inside, slowly turning grey.

The man moved back a few paces, and looked at the body lying in a heap at the center of the blood. It was male. Young. Brown hair, buried in ash. Tall and strong. Stronger, by a long way, than himself, though not much taller. His forearms were exposed, tan and muscular. On them, the hairs were bleached blond by the sun, turned nearly white by the ash.

His eyes were open, cold and blue and dead.

In his chest, in the center of his worn brown shirt, was a hole. Not a very large hole, just large enough. It was a gateway to the inside; an exit ramp for an outpouring of blood. And poor out it did. Across the fabric of his shirt, into the dirt, and on and on, until it was nearly lapping at the living man’s boots once more.

The woman standing behind him said, “Who was he?”

He shook his head, “I don’t know.”

Looking at her, he could see little specs of grey ash resting in her long dark hair. It made it seem dull and lacklustre. Her face looked paler, like maybe watching the blood drain out of the corpse had made it drain out of her, too. He hoped not. He wished she hadn’t been here; hadn’t seen this.

He wished her dress, scarlet weaved with golden threads to make it shimmer, wasn’t hosting hundreds of flecks of clinging ashes. He didn’t like the way they sapped out all the colours, left everything looking flat and mirthless.

He didn’t like the way all the tiny ashes all around choked and exsanguinated and robbed the planet of vibrancy and life.

The sun was almost gone now. The darkling sky was cloudless and bare. The fire painted on the dirt was gone, leaving only a flat purple land drenched in ashes.

The moisture in his gloves chilled in the twilight and made his hands feel clammy. Made his hands feel cold. He flexed his fingers and folded them into his palms, making fists. He looked again at the dead man, but he couldn’t see his face clearly anymore: it was wreathed in shadow, his eyes turned to black.

The woman reached out and brushed his arm. She wore no gloves. On the sleeve of his coat, a trail of clear brown cut through the dusting of ashes where her hand had passed. She was looking at him. She wanted something, but he couldn’t tell what. He could never tell what.

Her voice was a whisper, and she said, “Mal.”

He pulled off his gloves and shoved them into his coat pockets. The air, so dry and still, stole away the moisture from his hands. Took away the chill and the damp and in their place left ashes.

He looked down at his hands. They were gnarled and worn, calloused and rough. The hairs that ran along their backs, brushing his knuckles, were dark. He remembered once they had been blond, bleached by the sun. Bleached by this sun. Not anymore. Now they were dark, his skin pale. Sailing for years in the Black, sometimes he thought maybe it left everything as grey as the ash.

He looked down at his hands, and into his left he saw her slide one of her own. Small and dainty. Against his cracked skin, hers felt so smooth and soft. He squeezed the soft, smooth hand, and she squeezed back. Resting in his dirty, sweaty hand, hers felt clean.

She turned to go, and he let her hand drop. It fell in a smooth arc, coming to rest at her side. She turned to look at him. She wanted something, but he couldn’t tell what. He thought maybe it was him.

As the dark swallowed it up, limb by limb, Mal looked down one last time at the body resting in the sea of blackened blood. He glanced back up. Inara had already started back without him.

He followed. Long strides, thudding on the dirt and stirring up clouds of ashes. They swirled like whirlwinds about his boots. His arms swayed from side to side like the pendulums in ancient clocks.

When he was next to her, she reached out and clasped his left arm. It stopped swinging.

She said, “Why here?”

“Maybe it was his home once, too.”

(end)

FIC: Cracks like Hairline Fractures

2012-08-02T22:17:10Z

( originally published april 26, 2007 )

Drive ; Alex Tully; 1,355 words

I have experience sitting in a car, outside the bank, watching the street and waiting for everything to go wrong.

CRACKS LIKE HAIRLINE FRACTURES

Hanging Rock, Ohio
July 17, 2003

The light is dim, stained ochre by dust moats as it glares off chipped mahogany tables and puddles of amber liquid. It's only half full, but the silhouetted figures shuffling across the bar kick up a din nonetheless: drunken conversations rising and falling in pitch and coherency. Over the unintelligible mockery of language, a voice asks, "Rough day, Soldier?"

Alex Tully looks up from the murky depths of ice cubes melting in a neglected Jack Daniel's sea and into a pair of wide green eyes. She's pale, and freckled. Her tits are small. The shirt covering them is flimsy, unstructured; it flutters about her thin frame, lifting here and there, showing patches of skin, jeans worn low on hips. Under the gossamer sheen of pink fabric, the black bra draws his gaze like a smoldering beacon on a snow-capped mountain.

Alex looks back up at her face.

He says, "Sure."

She smiles, a little. Lips painted red plastic spread over white enamel like chipped china.

"S'always the way," she says, sitting herself down on the barstool next to him. It's an easy line, broken in, given often, perfected: a mix of a sorrow, of compassion, understanding. Just enough promise. Her eyes aren't smiling.

"Yeah," says Alex, "sure it is."

Gunshots.

Loud.

Cracking the air like lighting in the dessert, like his mother's favourite mug shattering on tile.

She's pretty. But not really. There's something about the way the light dances on her exposed flesh that entices, excites. There's something about it that is becoming of death. It mesmerizes. Hypnotizes. Disgusts and enthralls.

Her eyes are cold.

"So. What aren't you drinking?" she asks.

Alex looks down. His glass is still half empty. He looks at it for a moment, the way the whisky, diluted by now, swills against the glass, rocks the small remaining shards of ice together with dull little clicks. It smells sweet, but not like chocolate. Not like strawberries. He lifts the glass to his lips and finishes it, one sip. He pulls a face, hides it in a grin.

He says, "JD."

Running. Scraping. Screaming. Crying.

Cacophony. Pandemonium. Violence. Catastrophe.

Crime. Horror.

Life.

She says, "Let me get you another," and signals the bartender for two more, not waiting for Alex's nod of acquiescence. The hand she holds out to him is delicate. Long fingers and long nails, manicured and painted, but not gaudy. Tended to, but not obsessed over.

She says, "My name is Jemma."

The glass is shattered, shards spilling across the rigidly placed concrete slabs of empty sidewalk. In the mid-afternoon sun they shimmer like pixies, glow like polished skulls. Some are stained crimson.

The hand Alex holds out to her is beaten and callused, rubbed raw from clutching a steering wheel and gleaming faintly red where the skin's been torn away by a vicious onslaught of soap, facecloths, and water. It's clean, but it feels filthy.

He says, "Duncan."

Blurs of motion, shadow. Black and red and back and red and black and red all over. The glass is shining brighter. Brighter. So bright. Too bright. Blinding. Blinding. White like death.

Doors click open. Doors slam closed.

Screaming. Screaming. Screaming.

Pain.

Go.

Go! Go!

Gogogogogogogo.

Drive.

The bartender places the two drinks before them, and the glasses thump on the slick wood of the bar. The ice cubes clack together like teeth jarred by a punch or a fall. Jemma's eyes are painted black with kohl, but not too black. Her green irises glint in twilight sockets. The contrast is stunning. It's magnetic and seductive. It's morose.

Alex takes a sip of his drink, and he pulls the muscles in his face into a slender grin, more smirk than smile.

She pouts a little, but it's melodramatic and fake. "No toast?" she asks.

"I don't like to toast," says Alex.

Jemma says, "Because it's too grandiose? Too full of empty gesticulation and meaningless ceremony?"

She says, "Is it because talking in a bar is too base, too commonplace to warrant all that...glamour?"

In the motel parking lot, walking corpses flecked with blood roll out of the car, stumbling, sauntering across the pavement, looking to hide behind cheep doors.

Park.

Park the car.

There's blood on his hands, he just can't see it. The sun's too bright.

It'll be there when he gets inside.

"No," says Alex. "I just think it's dumb."

She smiles at that, and this time her eyes seem to smile, too, if only a little. "I'll drink to that," she says, and takes a delicate sip. When she puts her drink down, her lips are red smudges on the glass, and red smudges on her pale, freckled face.

Alex takes another drink, and watches her do the same.

He takes another. She's a mirror.

"So," she says, "what great tragedy has you drinking alone on a Wednesday night?"

He says, "I'm not drinking alone," and takes another sip.

Jemma say, "You were, I seem to recall."

Alex smiles and finishes his whiskey. "Well, that was a long time ago."

"Was it?"

"Mm."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. Ages."

"And what, all those ages ago, had you drinking alone, Duncan?"

"You know, I don't think I remember."

"'Cause it was so very long ago?"

"No," says Alex, "'cause I got distracted."

Jemma finishes her drink and says, "Is that so?"

Alex grins, slightly and nods, slowly. His eyes are darker blue than normal, cloudier than they should be, but the gleam of mischief masks the distant shadow that's settled behind them.

Jemma says, "You got a car?"

Alex's grin widens, spreading across his jaw like water seeps through cracks.

He pulls off his shirt. It's clean. He looks at himself and sees dried blood clinging to his skin, to the thin hairs dotting his chest. He looks at the wall and it's covered in stains and chipped paint. He looks back at his chest and it's clean. He peels off his pants because he can hear gunshots in his head, see death behind his eyes.

She leads him outside and into the parking lot, but he isn't exactly making it a chore. She looks at him expectantly, pausing amongst the shadows of cars, waiting, and he realizes he hasn't shaved since he left Kentucky.

Five days.

It's been five days.

He points to a 1972 Dodge Challenger. Black, single blue racing stripe cutting a swath down the middle. She's sleek. Beautiful.

"Yours?" she asks. He can't see her eyes anymore. They're hidden under black makeup and black shadows and the black of night.

Empty sockets.

He nods, keeping the grin on his face, sauntering toward his baby.

He's showered. Used up almost all the motel's stale hot water, he's been in there so long. But he can still feel it, the blood. Clinging. To everything. But he's naked, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, glaring through the ragged path he's cut across the steam at himself, and he's clean. There's no blood. There never was.

No blood no blood no blood.

But he can feel it, so he washes his hands, and then he washes them again.

Fuck.

Pressed against the door of his car, Alex can feel the cold seeping through his leather jacket. Through his black button-down. He can feel the cold spread across his back and through his chest.

He can feel Jemma's small tits as she leans against him, slowly pushing him harder against the frigid metal.

She says, "In or out?"

Her face looks like a skull, painted and wigged. Her pallor is beautiful. Her pallor is ghastly. She looks like the death that's stalking him, clean and bloodless and white. She looks enchanting.

Alex reaches for the door handle. "In," he says. He opens the door and falls into the driver's seat, pulling Jemma down with him.

She brushes one hand across his face, stroking the stubble that runs along his jaw. With her other, she pulls open the buttons on his shirt.

He can feel dried blood crusted and caked all over. Clinging. Suffocating.

He can feel her weight on top of him.

He closes the door.

Fuck.

(end)

FIC: Pretend, in Shadow

2012-08-02T21:49:42Z

( originally published october 13, 2006 )

Firefly/Serenity ; Malcolm Reynolds (Mal/Inara); 309 words

It's an old cliché, misery loves company.

PRETEND, IN SHADOW

Against the silence of an artificial night, his boots scrape loudly across the metal stairs and over the polished floor. The wooden chair screeches and whines as it's pulled from under the table, and he looks about to be sure nobody's been roused by the sound.

It's a soft noise, and he knows that. But amidst the fabricated quiet of people hidden away in their bunks, pretending to be asleep because the clock tells them they should be, the chair moving is an invading army.

It's the Alliance storming in to rural lands: boot and ship a cacophony of impending doom.

He drops himself into the chair, a dull thump of skin and bone falling without a savior through dead air. And he sits, and stares, because sleeping is something he can no longer do.

There are dreams and there are nightmares and there are images and sounds that play again and again and again against the lids of his eyes. He can't lie down; resting on the ground, on his bunk, is where he is most vulnerable. Most open to attack. So he doesn't lie down. He never lies down. Not to sleep, not to die, and certainly not dream.

Awake, sitting at the table in the galley, he stares at the space in front of his face and wills himself not to see. Not to see the shadow of her ghost as it walks towards him, veiled in darkness. Not to see the startled jump and rueful smile painted across the pallor of her features as she notices him.

He pretends he doesn't hear the figment say, "Would you like some tea?"

He pretends he can force himself not to nod, slowly, grin, slightly.

He pretends he knows this isn't real, and never was, and never will be.

Alone, at night, he pretends a lot of things.

(end)

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2012-08-02T19:14:45Z

locked.
comment to be added.