OF: Orchestrated Sound
Title: Orchestrated Sound
Author: sidhefaer
Original Fiction: A sort of... practice AU, let's say.
Pairing: Jack/Wolf.
Rating: R.
Length: 971 words.
Summary: Maybe he's hallucinating. Maybe not.
Notes: I wanted to do more character exploration, and not being able to sleep really helps with that, apparently. Sense may or may not apply.
Most people try to wake up at the table in the mornings, after they make their coffee, but he goes back upstairs to sit up against the headboard and warms himself with stale sheets.
"Coffee?" he asks the room, fingers curled against the skin of the cup for warmth, and something to hold. The room doesn't answer him, but after so many years of waiting, he doesn't expect it to. Instead he finishes his half of the coffee and pours the rest on her side of the bed. The stain spreads into the pillow. He watches it. There's really nothing else for him to do.
---
Some nights, he likes to stare at the ceiling, out the window, at his hands, which are so white and veined that he's surprised the blood's stayed on the inside, instead of the outside, where it should be. Sometimes he turns on music. Brahms, Mahler. Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Lizst. Tchaikovsky. He knows them. After a lifetime of hearing them buzz in the background, it feels odd to finally listen, now that he has nothing to distract him.
Or maybe he tells himself this so that he can ignore the shadow in the corner of his room, and ignore how it doesn't breathe, when he so obviously does, breaths that tear through the silence like screams. It's so irritating to hear proof of himself living, so irritating that it makes him shake sometimes, so irritating that he turns on music to drown the feeling out, that maybe the orchestrated sound can make oxygen forget itself and leave him the fuck alone.
He hates the reminder of life.
He hates that the shadow watches him suffer.
---
They are all dead.
They weren't human. They were made to live forever. Forever, and forever. Wolf had been forever.
They were made human. So were you. Nobody lives forever.
"Why?"
He knows the answer. He is reminded, every single day, when the shadow in the corner of his room sometimes lifts the suggestion of eyelids that are not there and reveals a hint that he's sure is supposed to mean something; he's sure of it, he's sure that the shadow in the corner of his bedroom is trying to tell him what it is, but he can't grasp at it long enough to swallow it. It flows from his mind like water through cracks, though ideas to him are mostly like water to him now, and his mind never had the structural integrity to hold all of that in to begin with. She's telling him what's already there.
Punishment.
---
"Hello," she says. "Do you remember me?"
How could he not.
She moves through the living room, unlit, shadows of low evening casting everything in a subtle, carnivorous, hollow glow. Every bit of dust is lit. Every dull candelabra, the dinner table, the chairs. He hasn't touched the furniture downstairs. He will never touch it.
The woman, who is more than woman and less than human, streaks a red fingernail through the dead skin particles and leftover pieces of insect and blows it away, leaving the pad of her finger with balmy residue. The line on the cabinet is brown, oak. Her smile is disarming, and she seems less real to him than his hallucinations, which is something.
"You are quite depressing," she admits, finally. "I do not see the need to torture yourself when happiness can be so easily attained. It's why I made you human, you know. So you would enjoy it."
They are all dead.
"I enjoy it," he says, because that will make her go away.
The shadow hangs above the chandelier, silently. Staring at him. The woman in his living room can see many things, but she cannot see the shadow.
It is probably because it's not really there.
---
When he was made human, he was given once again to dreams, but he never remembers them upon waking. This is probably for the best, because he meets many strange men, all with the same yellow hair and odd smile and European face, who regale him with memories of an existence without a countdown.
Sometimes he reaches out, in his sleep, as if to grab hold of some slumbering body beside him, as if to hold it near and close and to reassure him that he is not really alone after all. But his hands find nothing.
He wakes to silence, and his infuriating breathing, and sometimes the shadow in the corner isn't there. But sometimes it is. And it always watches him, watching, and watching, and watching.
Puccini this time. And coffee.
---
"Say something!" he barks, one morning. His voice tears itself from his throat because he hasn't shouted, or barely spoken, in six years. He yells this to the dark corner of his room.
Wolf is far too beautiful to be enshrouded, but the shadow does not even look like her. It's just a shadow, a void in reality, a hallucination, beauty his brain even thought he didn't deserve to see. Sometimes she flickers. In and out. There, or not.
"I don't know why I'm imagining you," he says. "I don't know why it has to be you."
Wolf doesn't answer. The shadow stays there.
He spills the second half of his coffee on the already half-brown bedspread. "You never liked coffee," he says. "But you drank it, because I did."
He leans down to sniff the stench of black, Cuban plant. Like he can smell her though the liquid.
"I killed you," he whispers, wrenching the words from deep down. Tearing them. "I killed you all."
The shadows move. Then they disperse, and only the one remains, like she always has, like she always will.
"I'm not sorry," Jack chokes.
Wolf goes to her side of the bed, smelling of salt and coffee, sheets rumpled, aligns herself with his spine, holds his shoulders with hands that cannot touch, tells him that she's sorry she couldn't come back for him this time.
But of course, he never remembers his dreams.
Author: sidhefaer
Original Fiction: A sort of... practice AU, let's say.
Pairing: Jack/Wolf.
Rating: R.
Length: 971 words.
Summary: Maybe he's hallucinating. Maybe not.
Notes: I wanted to do more character exploration, and not being able to sleep really helps with that, apparently. Sense may or may not apply.
Most people try to wake up at the table in the mornings, after they make their coffee, but he goes back upstairs to sit up against the headboard and warms himself with stale sheets.
"Coffee?" he asks the room, fingers curled against the skin of the cup for warmth, and something to hold. The room doesn't answer him, but after so many years of waiting, he doesn't expect it to. Instead he finishes his half of the coffee and pours the rest on her side of the bed. The stain spreads into the pillow. He watches it. There's really nothing else for him to do.
---
Some nights, he likes to stare at the ceiling, out the window, at his hands, which are so white and veined that he's surprised the blood's stayed on the inside, instead of the outside, where it should be. Sometimes he turns on music. Brahms, Mahler. Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Lizst. Tchaikovsky. He knows them. After a lifetime of hearing them buzz in the background, it feels odd to finally listen, now that he has nothing to distract him.
Or maybe he tells himself this so that he can ignore the shadow in the corner of his room, and ignore how it doesn't breathe, when he so obviously does, breaths that tear through the silence like screams. It's so irritating to hear proof of himself living, so irritating that it makes him shake sometimes, so irritating that he turns on music to drown the feeling out, that maybe the orchestrated sound can make oxygen forget itself and leave him the fuck alone.
He hates the reminder of life.
He hates that the shadow watches him suffer.
---
They are all dead.
They weren't human. They were made to live forever. Forever, and forever. Wolf had been forever.
They were made human. So were you. Nobody lives forever.
"Why?"
He knows the answer. He is reminded, every single day, when the shadow in the corner of his room sometimes lifts the suggestion of eyelids that are not there and reveals a hint that he's sure is supposed to mean something; he's sure of it, he's sure that the shadow in the corner of his bedroom is trying to tell him what it is, but he can't grasp at it long enough to swallow it. It flows from his mind like water through cracks, though ideas to him are mostly like water to him now, and his mind never had the structural integrity to hold all of that in to begin with. She's telling him what's already there.
Punishment.
---
"Hello," she says. "Do you remember me?"
How could he not.
She moves through the living room, unlit, shadows of low evening casting everything in a subtle, carnivorous, hollow glow. Every bit of dust is lit. Every dull candelabra, the dinner table, the chairs. He hasn't touched the furniture downstairs. He will never touch it.
The woman, who is more than woman and less than human, streaks a red fingernail through the dead skin particles and leftover pieces of insect and blows it away, leaving the pad of her finger with balmy residue. The line on the cabinet is brown, oak. Her smile is disarming, and she seems less real to him than his hallucinations, which is something.
"You are quite depressing," she admits, finally. "I do not see the need to torture yourself when happiness can be so easily attained. It's why I made you human, you know. So you would enjoy it."
They are all dead.
"I enjoy it," he says, because that will make her go away.
The shadow hangs above the chandelier, silently. Staring at him. The woman in his living room can see many things, but she cannot see the shadow.
It is probably because it's not really there.
---
When he was made human, he was given once again to dreams, but he never remembers them upon waking. This is probably for the best, because he meets many strange men, all with the same yellow hair and odd smile and European face, who regale him with memories of an existence without a countdown.
Sometimes he reaches out, in his sleep, as if to grab hold of some slumbering body beside him, as if to hold it near and close and to reassure him that he is not really alone after all. But his hands find nothing.
He wakes to silence, and his infuriating breathing, and sometimes the shadow in the corner isn't there. But sometimes it is. And it always watches him, watching, and watching, and watching.
Puccini this time. And coffee.
---
"Say something!" he barks, one morning. His voice tears itself from his throat because he hasn't shouted, or barely spoken, in six years. He yells this to the dark corner of his room.
Wolf is far too beautiful to be enshrouded, but the shadow does not even look like her. It's just a shadow, a void in reality, a hallucination, beauty his brain even thought he didn't deserve to see. Sometimes she flickers. In and out. There, or not.
"I don't know why I'm imagining you," he says. "I don't know why it has to be you."
Wolf doesn't answer. The shadow stays there.
He spills the second half of his coffee on the already half-brown bedspread. "You never liked coffee," he says. "But you drank it, because I did."
He leans down to sniff the stench of black, Cuban plant. Like he can smell her though the liquid.
"I killed you," he whispers, wrenching the words from deep down. Tearing them. "I killed you all."
The shadows move. Then they disperse, and only the one remains, like she always has, like she always will.
"I'm not sorry," Jack chokes.
Wolf goes to her side of the bed, smelling of salt and coffee, sheets rumpled, aligns herself with his spine, holds his shoulders with hands that cannot touch, tells him that she's sorry she couldn't come back for him this time.
But of course, he never remembers his dreams.