FIC: Prisons (RENT, Angel/Collins, Collins gen)
Title: Prisons
Author: Kayla
Feedback: Please!!!!
Pairing: Angel/Collins, Collins gen
Word Count: 762
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst, Gen
Summary: Collins looks at all of the prisons he had known in one lifetime.
Spoilers: If you’ve never seen the movie/play then I’d suggest not reading.
Warnings: Angst
Disclaimer: RENT is not mine and I own no rights to it. I am just doing this for fun.
Convention was a prison. The way the world worked was all wrong, yet people were too stupid to do anything to fix it. Tom Collins had learned at a young age that the way things were done in the world was wrong.
The government controlled the people, the people controlled each other. Everyone needed control, when control was the last thing they needed. They needed freedom.
Freedom to act as they wished, love as they wished, and at the least live as they wished. What was the point of living if a person could not do it their own way? It was like they wasted their lives on other people. It was all wrong, and so imprisoning.
He would never learn why people could not fix the world. That was why he always spoke up, always attempted, always challenged. People were so imprisoned in tradition, and the way the world was. Nobody felt it could be changed.
He did.
Work was a prison. As much as it paid the bills, a teaching job was the last thing in the world he wanted. To be one of those imposing convention on young minds seemed to be the most evil, exhausting work possible.
Of course, encouraging thinking was wrong.
Yet he was trapped. Money ruled society, money ruled the world. Without money, he simply would stop living. No money meant no food or medication, things he needed to live.
AIDS was a prison. It was a prison acquired by a mistake. A rash and exciting encounter with a close friend turned into a lifelong prison.
Some people called having HIV virus a death sentence. He preferred a life sentence, because what was more painful than having death hanging right over his head? For the rest of his life he would feel like he was on an express track to death.
It was not that there was much to live for. While the thought of death scared him, it did not cause much problem anymore. It was going to happen, sooner than later.
Still he was trapped. He couldn’t get rid of it, yet he couldn’t make it destroy him any faster.
New York City was a prison, a prison he returned to after granting himself freedom. He had returned, and where had he ended up? Lying in an alleyway fighting to maintain consciousness.
The prison of the city had dragged him back, and look where it led him. To a pathetic point where he was slumping against an alley wall, trying to get up.
Love was a prison. The city he had always hated dragged him back for a reason, it appeared, as his return to New York was marked with not only a surprise mugging, but with true love, the first time he had ever felt such a thing.
“You okay honey?”
To think something so simple could have changed his life forever. Love was one of those other things you just couldn’t escape, as hard as you tried.
He loved Angel. He didn’t doubt it for an instance, even though before that meeting, he was quite convinced that love didn’t exist.
She turned that around in an instant with her smile.
The way it felt to have her in his arms was one of the most amazing things life ever gave him. The way she looked always made him smile. It made him smile now, just to think of her brilliance. She was larger than life.
They had both known that their lives would never be perfect, but with love, they were full of happiness. Two people with AIDS knew that horror loomed all around them, but it stopped mattering after a time. Love had to be, whether it could last or not.
AIDS had been a prison for himself, but watching his precious Angel die of it, that was the most entrapping.
She looked confident through the entire time she was sick, even though she could see as well as Collins could that she was a prisoner of the virus inside her.
She was gone as quickly as she came to him, or so it seemed.
Now Tom Collins, standing among his friends, by his lover’s grave, he knew the true prison. For a man so aware of his own imprisonment, he never realized the most imprisoning thing of all. Surviving was a prison.
Author: Kayla
Feedback: Please!!!!
Pairing: Angel/Collins, Collins gen
Word Count: 762
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst, Gen
Summary: Collins looks at all of the prisons he had known in one lifetime.
Spoilers: If you’ve never seen the movie/play then I’d suggest not reading.
Warnings: Angst
Disclaimer: RENT is not mine and I own no rights to it. I am just doing this for fun.
Convention was a prison. The way the world worked was all wrong, yet people were too stupid to do anything to fix it. Tom Collins had learned at a young age that the way things were done in the world was wrong.
The government controlled the people, the people controlled each other. Everyone needed control, when control was the last thing they needed. They needed freedom.
Freedom to act as they wished, love as they wished, and at the least live as they wished. What was the point of living if a person could not do it their own way? It was like they wasted their lives on other people. It was all wrong, and so imprisoning.
He would never learn why people could not fix the world. That was why he always spoke up, always attempted, always challenged. People were so imprisoned in tradition, and the way the world was. Nobody felt it could be changed.
He did.
Work was a prison. As much as it paid the bills, a teaching job was the last thing in the world he wanted. To be one of those imposing convention on young minds seemed to be the most evil, exhausting work possible.
Of course, encouraging thinking was wrong.
Yet he was trapped. Money ruled society, money ruled the world. Without money, he simply would stop living. No money meant no food or medication, things he needed to live.
AIDS was a prison. It was a prison acquired by a mistake. A rash and exciting encounter with a close friend turned into a lifelong prison.
Some people called having HIV virus a death sentence. He preferred a life sentence, because what was more painful than having death hanging right over his head? For the rest of his life he would feel like he was on an express track to death.
It was not that there was much to live for. While the thought of death scared him, it did not cause much problem anymore. It was going to happen, sooner than later.
Still he was trapped. He couldn’t get rid of it, yet he couldn’t make it destroy him any faster.
New York City was a prison, a prison he returned to after granting himself freedom. He had returned, and where had he ended up? Lying in an alleyway fighting to maintain consciousness.
The prison of the city had dragged him back, and look where it led him. To a pathetic point where he was slumping against an alley wall, trying to get up.
Love was a prison. The city he had always hated dragged him back for a reason, it appeared, as his return to New York was marked with not only a surprise mugging, but with true love, the first time he had ever felt such a thing.
“You okay honey?”
To think something so simple could have changed his life forever. Love was one of those other things you just couldn’t escape, as hard as you tried.
He loved Angel. He didn’t doubt it for an instance, even though before that meeting, he was quite convinced that love didn’t exist.
She turned that around in an instant with her smile.
The way it felt to have her in his arms was one of the most amazing things life ever gave him. The way she looked always made him smile. It made him smile now, just to think of her brilliance. She was larger than life.
They had both known that their lives would never be perfect, but with love, they were full of happiness. Two people with AIDS knew that horror loomed all around them, but it stopped mattering after a time. Love had to be, whether it could last or not.
AIDS had been a prison for himself, but watching his precious Angel die of it, that was the most entrapping.
She looked confident through the entire time she was sick, even though she could see as well as Collins could that she was a prisoner of the virus inside her.
She was gone as quickly as she came to him, or so it seemed.
Now Tom Collins, standing among his friends, by his lover’s grave, he knew the true prison. For a man so aware of his own imprisonment, he never realized the most imprisoning thing of all. Surviving was a prison.