Music-themed ficlet time!
Because I have often found the best way to get inspiration for something is to get an obligation to write something entirely different, and I have a challenge fic due on the 25th of April and no clue how to start
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Laurie didn't have friends, growing up. Even her mother wasn't quite on her wavelength. Of the two of them Jon had the more normal childhood by far, which is a source of considerable amusement to Laurie once she realizes it. But they're neither of them normal now. The world looks at both of them and isn't sure whether to fawn or fear, and if Laurie is more human, still her association with Jon is enough to cover her in his refelected blue glow. She's seen it. The military men look at both of them sideways and wary. Laurie diesn't give a shit, though.
Sandra Hollis's daughter has friends, although they're the oddball friends, the Out Crowd. That's okay. They come over to her house and her husband makes them nachos and they sprawl on the couch together and play video games and Sandra sometimes joins in their jokes.
Jon became Laurie's whole world, eventually. She made little spaces for her mother, for Dan, for Hollis, and that was it. Without Silk Spectre, she didn't know what else to do. They moved into Rockefeller Base, and she spent a few days sorting out her things - she didn't have many - and making hideous gory jokes until the guards were more scared of her than Jon. Then he went to a meeting, and she found herself sitting on their bed, staring at the light blue wall and the designer furniture, and wondering how much of this was really for her benefit. Jon didn't need a bed. Jon didn't feel heat or cold, or need to eat, or see the world as it was. He saw the past and future. Laurie saw one moment at a time and what she saw right now was a gilded cage, a cenotaph. "Jon," she whispered, and it came to her to wonder if she had ever known him. She remembered what he had said of Janey, how she had never adjusted. Laurie had never needed to adjust. But reflected blue glow or not, she was still human, she was still a thing of this world, and she wonders why he ever loved her or if he ever did.
This is her world, now. She cries for a bit, and then she cleans herself up and goes to play ping-pong against the wall until Jon gets back, and then she bitches about the stupid brass on his behalf and then they talk about quarks, which at least make some kind of sense. She lvoes him anyway, whatever he is, whatever they are to each other.
Sandra Hollis has dreams, all the time. Her nights are filled with might-have-beens. She can't help it. But she does her damndest not to have regrets.
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Heh! Entirely understandable, I feel. ;)
Seriously though, this is awesome. It's so understated, and I love Laurie freaking out the guards with sick jokes and kind of... trying to be human on Jon's behalf. Ouch.
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