(no subject)
Title: Still-Life.
Author: Becky_H
Character: Johnny McHale
Rating: PG
Word Count: 300ish
Prompter/Prompt: Moon_Blit
I'm a fighter fighting for control
I'm a fighter fighting for my soul
Everything inside of me surrenders
You can't silence my love
You can't silence my love, yeah
Eventually Vicki’s cellphone goes dead.
At first, without the ‘distraction’ of her phone, he just draws her more. Sketches and sketches of the way she looked before she died, one after another and he can’t draw her fast enough, or enough at all. His mind, and what he can get out of it onto paper, are all he has left of her. He can’t -won’t- stop.
Gradually those sketches change - very gradually. He stops sketching her face, her body, the way she was, and what he can remember. He starts to draw the life she should have had. Her with a baby in her arms, in a house with a white picket fence. Sometimes there’s a dog, sometimes there’s a cat.
As time goes by - years, and years and years - the baby in her arms becomes a toddler, then a kid, then a teenager and finally a man. Her hair changes, he adds streaks of white to frame her face, and lines to her face at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. Supermarkets and garages, minivans and soccer games, turning to doctors appointments, grand-kids and then great grand-kids.
The feverish need to draw her life - draw her to life, give her life through drawing it- never leaves him. When he’s in the hospital, waiting for death, he’s still drawing, only instead of drawing the life she should have had -the one he gave her in light gray lines on cheap, too white paper - he draws the death she should have had.
It’s the only time he draws himself in. His hand holding hers in one frame, two graves, side by-side, in the last.
Author: Becky_H
Character: Johnny McHale
Rating: PG
Word Count: 300ish
Prompter/Prompt: Moon_Blit
I'm a fighter fighting for control
I'm a fighter fighting for my soul
Everything inside of me surrenders
You can't silence my love
You can't silence my love, yeah
Eventually Vicki’s cellphone goes dead.
At first, without the ‘distraction’ of her phone, he just draws her more. Sketches and sketches of the way she looked before she died, one after another and he can’t draw her fast enough, or enough at all. His mind, and what he can get out of it onto paper, are all he has left of her. He can’t -won’t- stop.
Gradually those sketches change - very gradually. He stops sketching her face, her body, the way she was, and what he can remember. He starts to draw the life she should have had. Her with a baby in her arms, in a house with a white picket fence. Sometimes there’s a dog, sometimes there’s a cat.
As time goes by - years, and years and years - the baby in her arms becomes a toddler, then a kid, then a teenager and finally a man. Her hair changes, he adds streaks of white to frame her face, and lines to her face at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. Supermarkets and garages, minivans and soccer games, turning to doctors appointments, grand-kids and then great grand-kids.
The feverish need to draw her life - draw her to life, give her life through drawing it- never leaves him. When he’s in the hospital, waiting for death, he’s still drawing, only instead of drawing the life she should have had -the one he gave her in light gray lines on cheap, too white paper - he draws the death she should have had.
It’s the only time he draws himself in. His hand holding hers in one frame, two graves, side by-side, in the last.