[fic] Salvage
Title: Salvage
Author: light__of__day
Rating: G
Wordcount: 372
Pairing: Ed/Riza
Fandom: Nexus (FMA)
Disclaimers: Author does not play superman_dead, the pup from which the POV of the story's told; however the player of aforementioned pup has approved of the fic.
Notes: Just a little heavily symbolic flashfic that suddenly popped into my head one morning, fully fleshed out, out of nowhere, due to something Ed-mun said about the relationship. Better stop, the intro's getting longer than the story.
Salvage
He didn't look it, he knew. Too young, too clean. No one turned away from him on the street, averting the eyes, but he waited for them to. Everyone looked away from vagabonds, adrift and homeless. No one wanted to see the nightmares that could be them.
It was the new dress that caught his eye, brilliant blue beside the dumpster, unstained and untattered, the lace still white. But the doll wearing it was like him - clad in an outward appearance of fresh and clean, but underneath it was decay from a life lived too hard. On a whim, a flight of fancy, he picked it up - there. He wasn't alone anymore. Two broken down remnants of an era slipping into forgetfulness to the rest of the world, wearing their disguises of something wholesome and unbent.
Later, pieces started to fall away, the china face and arms laced with spidery cracks, and the paint was faded, flaked off, leaving a ghost trace over the blankness. He tried to keep the pieces together, but he hadn't realized how deep the fissures in the china ran. His broken, quiet companion fell to pieces in his hands, and there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable.
Glue didn't seem to work, not at first. He'd put the broken pieces back together, but they'd fall apart again before it would have a chance to set. Again and again, until they were both a mess, he tried.
In his attempts, he saw what the doll had once been, how lovely once upon a time. All he had to do was put the pieces together again, to mend the cracks, to repaint the face and bring life back into those dull glass eyes. If he had to hold the doll together long enough to give the glue a chance to set, then hold it he would.
Sleep could come later. Food was something that could wait. It would be so easy to abandon the doll, at least for anyone else, but if he did, he knew the doll was lost. How could he fix anything, if he couldn't fix a broken doll?
With care, he applied the glue one more time, and once more as needed.
Author: light__of__day
Rating: G
Wordcount: 372
Pairing: Ed/Riza
Fandom: Nexus (FMA)
Disclaimers: Author does not play superman_dead, the pup from which the POV of the story's told; however the player of aforementioned pup has approved of the fic.
Notes: Just a little heavily symbolic flashfic that suddenly popped into my head one morning, fully fleshed out, out of nowhere, due to something Ed-mun said about the relationship. Better stop, the intro's getting longer than the story.
Salvage
He didn't look it, he knew. Too young, too clean. No one turned away from him on the street, averting the eyes, but he waited for them to. Everyone looked away from vagabonds, adrift and homeless. No one wanted to see the nightmares that could be them.
It was the new dress that caught his eye, brilliant blue beside the dumpster, unstained and untattered, the lace still white. But the doll wearing it was like him - clad in an outward appearance of fresh and clean, but underneath it was decay from a life lived too hard. On a whim, a flight of fancy, he picked it up - there. He wasn't alone anymore. Two broken down remnants of an era slipping into forgetfulness to the rest of the world, wearing their disguises of something wholesome and unbent.
Later, pieces started to fall away, the china face and arms laced with spidery cracks, and the paint was faded, flaked off, leaving a ghost trace over the blankness. He tried to keep the pieces together, but he hadn't realized how deep the fissures in the china ran. His broken, quiet companion fell to pieces in his hands, and there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable.
Glue didn't seem to work, not at first. He'd put the broken pieces back together, but they'd fall apart again before it would have a chance to set. Again and again, until they were both a mess, he tried.
In his attempts, he saw what the doll had once been, how lovely once upon a time. All he had to do was put the pieces together again, to mend the cracks, to repaint the face and bring life back into those dull glass eyes. If he had to hold the doll together long enough to give the glue a chance to set, then hold it he would.
Sleep could come later. Food was something that could wait. It would be so easy to abandon the doll, at least for anyone else, but if he did, he knew the doll was lost. How could he fix anything, if he couldn't fix a broken doll?
With care, he applied the glue one more time, and once more as needed.