Dollhouse Fic: A Past Best Laid to Rest
Written for dollhouseflash Challenge #007 - Past
Title: A Past Best Laid to Rest
Pairing/Characters: November
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Man on the Street, Needs
Summary: In the back of the car November remembers
Notes/Warnings: Read the disclaimer on my LJ
It's fleeting familiar: street names, landmarks, the hint of salt air beneath the exhaust, the lavender litter of jacaranda trees dotting the sidewalks and anonymous lawns.
Her past is a balloon floating just beyond her fingertips. Her daughter's name rests on her lips; she feels the phantom shape of her in her arms. The ache of mother love is a weight in her chest, heavy and as real to her as the car she's riding in. She has given birth: no woman's body can forget this.
Her need is like a beacon, stretching out in welcome to the lost parts of her life, beckoning them home. Memories flit at the edges of her consciousness: fingers grazing the balloon, but pushing it away in the trying.
So close... Like a swimmer surfacing she can see where the water meets the sky, she can almost feel how close she is, reaching... She gazes out the car window, searching for some semblance of a sign. Then it comes: a woman lifting her young daughter out of a stroller.
The balloon pops. The past rushes back in a flood of images, panic-fueled adrenaline and gut-wrenching pain: Katie still, too still, in her crib; the EMTs doing CPR on her little chest; a paramedic pulling a sheet over her baby girl's head. Suddenly there's no air: this was her old life - drowning, never surfacing, no respite from the crushing loss of her child, from the emptiness of existence without that part of herself stolen from her, ever missing.
She fought so hard to remember and now? She wishes she hadn't. Ever.
Only now that her baby girl is calling out to her, she can't ignore her cries, can't help but go to her even if it's just to lay her body on the cold ground - to be as close to her as she can, even in death.
"Stop the car. I know where Katie is."
*****
Title: A Past Best Laid to Rest
Pairing/Characters: November
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Man on the Street, Needs
Summary: In the back of the car November remembers
Notes/Warnings: Read the disclaimer on my LJ
It's fleeting familiar: street names, landmarks, the hint of salt air beneath the exhaust, the lavender litter of jacaranda trees dotting the sidewalks and anonymous lawns.
Her past is a balloon floating just beyond her fingertips. Her daughter's name rests on her lips; she feels the phantom shape of her in her arms. The ache of mother love is a weight in her chest, heavy and as real to her as the car she's riding in. She has given birth: no woman's body can forget this.
Her need is like a beacon, stretching out in welcome to the lost parts of her life, beckoning them home. Memories flit at the edges of her consciousness: fingers grazing the balloon, but pushing it away in the trying.
So close... Like a swimmer surfacing she can see where the water meets the sky, she can almost feel how close she is, reaching... She gazes out the car window, searching for some semblance of a sign. Then it comes: a woman lifting her young daughter out of a stroller.
The balloon pops. The past rushes back in a flood of images, panic-fueled adrenaline and gut-wrenching pain: Katie still, too still, in her crib; the EMTs doing CPR on her little chest; a paramedic pulling a sheet over her baby girl's head. Suddenly there's no air: this was her old life - drowning, never surfacing, no respite from the crushing loss of her child, from the emptiness of existence without that part of herself stolen from her, ever missing.
She fought so hard to remember and now? She wishes she hadn't. Ever.
Only now that her baby girl is calling out to her, she can't ignore her cries, can't help but go to her even if it's just to lay her body on the cold ground - to be as close to her as she can, even in death.
"Stop the car. I know where Katie is."
*****