(no subject)
So this is, uh, this is not the Ruby backstory I intended to write. The one I'm actually trying to write is turning out to be more difficult to put together than I originally thought it'd be because a) it's turning into an epic, b) I'm not even halfway done, c) I'm writing in bits and pieces with no connecting parts as of yet, and d) I'm stuck.
So I wrote this in about an hour, just experimenting with what else I could do with her past, and I actually like it, which is weird. Also, this one pretty much sticks to what we know of her canon past, so it goes way back. To when the plague was big.
She's sitting at the weathered kitchen table, bright December daylight shining through the large window opposite her, squinting as she stares out at the empty street. There's no snow on the ground or in the air, not yet, but anyone brave enough to venture outside could predict that, with the bitter chill and subzero winds, it's not very far away. To be honest, she's kind of disappointed. She loves the snow, but she won't be around much longer, probably won't last the few days until it arrives. Really, it'll be somewhat of a miracle if she survives the night.
Her time is running out, quickly, every grain of sand trickling to the bottom of her hourglass another wasted second of her youth. She's barely nineteen, and she'd never really given thought to how many winters she'd have until now. Until she's down to this last one.
But she can't consider it a tragedy, her death. Too many die young these days to call herself a tragedy. Because they're not tragedies, none of them, not anymore. They're commonplace, a fact of life in this sorry period of time, in these circumstances. And if she'd never accomplished anything worthwhile, well, it doesn't matter. It's too late. It's too late to right her wrongs, and she can't say that she necessarily wants to.
Every chant she'd ever uttered was another miracle for her young family, another penny to live off of, another meal for her baby, and she wouldn't regret any of it.
She'd made her baby's life the best she could before she'd had to let it go, before she'd had to wrap her baby girl in the prettiest flowered cloth she could find and bury her under the elm tree behind their little house, right next to her daddy.
There was nothing she could do, there was no spell to stop the plague from spreading through her baby's defenseless little body. There was nothing she could do for her husband, and there is nothing she can do for herself.
But even if she did find a way, right now, she wouldn't use it.
She has nothing to live for anymore.
She, with her blonde hair twisted back but falling out, falling around her face, unwashed and unkempt. She, with her hands folded in her lap and flowers stuffed into her pockets to mask the smell of decaying flesh. She, with posey petals caught in the folds of her moth-eaten dress and scattered on the floor around her, thinking of that flowered cloth. She, with bleeding bursting sores appearing everywhere on her body and fingertips turning black. She, flea bitten and dying. She is nothing.
Not anymore.
And she doesn't care, doesn't mourn her own life.
She welcomes death like she welcomed the snow every winter previous.
Yes, she thinks. For her, death cannot come quickly enough.
As the sun sets, the light through the window fades and darkens into night.
She looks down and away.
So I wrote this in about an hour, just experimenting with what else I could do with her past, and I actually like it, which is weird. Also, this one pretty much sticks to what we know of her canon past, so it goes way back. To when the plague was big.
She's sitting at the weathered kitchen table, bright December daylight shining through the large window opposite her, squinting as she stares out at the empty street. There's no snow on the ground or in the air, not yet, but anyone brave enough to venture outside could predict that, with the bitter chill and subzero winds, it's not very far away. To be honest, she's kind of disappointed. She loves the snow, but she won't be around much longer, probably won't last the few days until it arrives. Really, it'll be somewhat of a miracle if she survives the night.
Her time is running out, quickly, every grain of sand trickling to the bottom of her hourglass another wasted second of her youth. She's barely nineteen, and she'd never really given thought to how many winters she'd have until now. Until she's down to this last one.
But she can't consider it a tragedy, her death. Too many die young these days to call herself a tragedy. Because they're not tragedies, none of them, not anymore. They're commonplace, a fact of life in this sorry period of time, in these circumstances. And if she'd never accomplished anything worthwhile, well, it doesn't matter. It's too late. It's too late to right her wrongs, and she can't say that she necessarily wants to.
Every chant she'd ever uttered was another miracle for her young family, another penny to live off of, another meal for her baby, and she wouldn't regret any of it.
She'd made her baby's life the best she could before she'd had to let it go, before she'd had to wrap her baby girl in the prettiest flowered cloth she could find and bury her under the elm tree behind their little house, right next to her daddy.
There was nothing she could do, there was no spell to stop the plague from spreading through her baby's defenseless little body. There was nothing she could do for her husband, and there is nothing she can do for herself.
But even if she did find a way, right now, she wouldn't use it.
She has nothing to live for anymore.
She, with her blonde hair twisted back but falling out, falling around her face, unwashed and unkempt. She, with her hands folded in her lap and flowers stuffed into her pockets to mask the smell of decaying flesh. She, with posey petals caught in the folds of her moth-eaten dress and scattered on the floor around her, thinking of that flowered cloth. She, with bleeding bursting sores appearing everywhere on her body and fingertips turning black. She, flea bitten and dying. She is nothing.
Not anymore.
And she doesn't care, doesn't mourn her own life.
She welcomes death like she welcomed the snow every winter previous.
Yes, she thinks. For her, death cannot come quickly enough.
As the sun sets, the light through the window fades and darkens into night.
She looks down and away.