"Satisfy a Woman" (PG-13) Sophia/Beatrice
Author: Tiamat’s Child
Title: Satisfy a Woman
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Amelia Peabody novels
Pairing: Dr. Sophia/Dr. Beatrice Ferguson
Summary: Beatrice needs, and wants, and loves.
Disclaimers: Sophia and Beatrice belong to Elizabeth Peters, not me, but as she’s not really doing anything with them at present I’m sure she won’t mind if I let them take a little comfort in each other.
Notes: Written in thirty minutes for the poetry challenge at Contralemontre. Sophia and Beatrice are extremely minor characters who run a woman’s hospital in the red light district of early 20th century Cairo.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Manifesto: Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front
Wendell Berry
Satisfy a Woman
Beatrice knows it isn’t selfish. There’s nothing selfish about this, about catching Sophia for a quick moment before a surgery, pressing lips together in a swift wish for care and good fortune. She knows it isn’t selfish to want what every human needs. There’s nothing selfish there.
But sometimes it hurts, to know that she has what so few of her patients can even hope of finding. Those times she has to turn away, and cannot allow herself to sleep curled close in the curve of Sophia’s body. She stays a step back, unable to touch, because she knows that what she has is something that the women she cares for cannot even seek, because they are bound as slaves to the thoughtless hunger of men.
Until Sophia reaches out, and buries herself against Beatrice, both of their bodies trembling. Until the blood of a hemorrhage spills across their hands together, and they work and work and work until they can barely breathe, and still the girl dies, trying to bear a baby she could not have fed. Until Beatrice loses herself in the constant wash of pain around her, and has to cling to Sophia to find something vaguely like solid ground again.
And then they fall together, blood smearing, though they pay it no mind, for there’s always blood, always, and they spend far too much time cleaning themselves of it to be afraid of it anymore, once the bleeding has stopped. And they are needy, and desperate, and hurting, but still there is nothing that they can speak that does not carry love, because they love each other with the endless love of women who have faced the long hours before dawn side by side. Both of them need to be loved so badly. Both of them need to love someone who won’t die.
It is beautiful, the silence, and whispers, and fear chilled hands on cold skin. Something for themselves, hidden from the rest of the world. And here, if Beatrice forgets to breathe, there is Sophia to startle breath back into her.
Beatrice knows she doesn’t need any more than this. She’s satisfied to be in this place the two of them have made for themselves. This is her haven.
Title: Satisfy a Woman
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Amelia Peabody novels
Pairing: Dr. Sophia/Dr. Beatrice Ferguson
Summary: Beatrice needs, and wants, and loves.
Disclaimers: Sophia and Beatrice belong to Elizabeth Peters, not me, but as she’s not really doing anything with them at present I’m sure she won’t mind if I let them take a little comfort in each other.
Notes: Written in thirty minutes for the poetry challenge at Contralemontre. Sophia and Beatrice are extremely minor characters who run a woman’s hospital in the red light district of early 20th century Cairo.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Manifesto: Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front
Wendell Berry
Satisfy a Woman
Beatrice knows it isn’t selfish. There’s nothing selfish about this, about catching Sophia for a quick moment before a surgery, pressing lips together in a swift wish for care and good fortune. She knows it isn’t selfish to want what every human needs. There’s nothing selfish there.
But sometimes it hurts, to know that she has what so few of her patients can even hope of finding. Those times she has to turn away, and cannot allow herself to sleep curled close in the curve of Sophia’s body. She stays a step back, unable to touch, because she knows that what she has is something that the women she cares for cannot even seek, because they are bound as slaves to the thoughtless hunger of men.
Until Sophia reaches out, and buries herself against Beatrice, both of their bodies trembling. Until the blood of a hemorrhage spills across their hands together, and they work and work and work until they can barely breathe, and still the girl dies, trying to bear a baby she could not have fed. Until Beatrice loses herself in the constant wash of pain around her, and has to cling to Sophia to find something vaguely like solid ground again.
And then they fall together, blood smearing, though they pay it no mind, for there’s always blood, always, and they spend far too much time cleaning themselves of it to be afraid of it anymore, once the bleeding has stopped. And they are needy, and desperate, and hurting, but still there is nothing that they can speak that does not carry love, because they love each other with the endless love of women who have faced the long hours before dawn side by side. Both of them need to be loved so badly. Both of them need to love someone who won’t die.
It is beautiful, the silence, and whispers, and fear chilled hands on cold skin. Something for themselves, hidden from the rest of the world. And here, if Beatrice forgets to breathe, there is Sophia to startle breath back into her.
Beatrice knows she doesn’t need any more than this. She’s satisfied to be in this place the two of them have made for themselves. This is her haven.