Challenge 100 - remainder (challenge 99 - kindness) ~ Green Wing
Title: Hand-in-Hand, Two Sentiments
Fandom: Green Wing
Pairing: Caroline/Sue White
Prompt: Challenge 100 - remainder, challenge 99 - kindness
Rating: PG13? Nothing too explicit.
Word Count: 271
A/N: (Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit for me.) This just popped into my head one day, and I thought 'hmm...that might work'. I'm also happily taking advantage of the higher word limit...although not by much.
Kindness is never simple. Kindness is never pure, never selfless, never truly 'kindness' as the word has come to be used.
It's also never the same, like snowflakes but darker, and paler than sin. Never golden, never cherished, but dazzling and blinding and important somehow, important enough.
Just enough.
Kindness leads to guilt if neglected, even when reason tries to turn her head away. Like Caroline, shivering under cheap-expensive sheets in a not-her bed, slowly sliding out from under pale limbs and gentle breathing, pretending she is fully clothed and doesn't have lipstick on her cheek. It would be kind to stay.
And guilt will catch up with her, later that day, as she stares blindly through menial routines, guilt will find her. She'll do something then, as should-she-shouldn't-she skip away, hand in hand.
She leaves a rose on an empty desk, buying it furtively and paying for it with all the little coins from the bottom of her purse. She doesn't leave a note.
Later, when Caroline is walking tall and less ashamed, Sue White leaps into her path, skirt shorter than usual and a rose clenched in her teeth.
She nods, and Caroline nods back, and the day goes on and keeps going on.
A week. Two.
Then Caroline is under the same sheets, gripping them into white-knuckled fists and whispering nothings and everythings and oblivion.
There's a rose, wilted now, in a vase across the room. She notices it as she shuts her eyes, shuts her eyes, soars.
It's important enough to last.
Just enough.