deep in the dream chamber
Title: deep in the dream chamber
Fandom: Hamlet
Verse: Ohtori AU
Characters: Ophelia, Laertes, Claudius
Summary: Marked by dead men's fingers, Ophelia swims through currents of time.
Word Count: 765
Warnings: death mention, implied violence, traumatic memories
before she really understood her situation, ophelia used to draw deeper into herself at every little disappointment. she thought she was escaping her pain, but the closer she got to her heart the more blades she encountered. if, instead, she retreated to her grave, it only got her more embroiled in the plots driven by the End of the World. he reclined in what would be and had been her final resting place and told the foolish boy who used to be her brother all the lies that would make him dance, and seeing that, ophelia could not help but sing.
laertes is so young, they all are, and ophelia pities them their innocence. she can just about remember when she was one of their number, and she knows for sure that in all their iterations she was always the baby of the group. usually not so small that she literally had to run to keep up, there was still an understanding that she was only there because her brother was, and he was the one who made the rules. she didn’t know, none of them could know, that even then they were being manipulated and steered into their starting positions.
maybe she was happier like that, it’s so hard to remember that kind of thing, but she couldn’t do anything to save herself. she still can’t save herself, but at least she knows enough to hate with all her being. and the boys have forgotten her: edited her out of their halcyon days, and edited those days of adolescence so there was only ever one set. even laertes, who most days manages to remember that he’s fighting for his sister and not the Rose Bride, even he has no idea how old they really are. and because he doesn’t know, he isn’t.
heart in her throat (or the metaphor that functions where her heart should be), ophelia has to wonder if it’s her who’s forgotten. did she want a brother so badly that she imagined him into her past? did she stitch his images into the ragged edges of a history that never was? thinking it through in that light, she sees: a father and son grieving a beloved mother and wife, and given - not a replacement, surely a squalling babe could never measure up - but given someone else to whom to direct all that excess love. the End of the World let her have a childhood, and let her forget that it wasn’t her first. and when she was forced to remember he at least let her carry the only person who really cared for her into the darkness called memory.
maybe that’s how it happened. or then again, maybe not; she doesn’t trust memory. she has far too many of them to believe that one single version of events is the only one that’s real. so ophelia the cuckoo, and ophelia the swan raised by ducklings, and ophelia marked by dead man’s fingers, all exist in her. days like this, watching the brother who used to be a larger-than-life protector vow to cut her fiance’s throat in the church, ophelia feels all those versions of herself, and they are all as ancient as she is.
she fights free of the white water rapids of recollection, and swims back through the currents of time to return her to the present. she cannot be a princess so she is a bride and someday, perhaps, a queen by marriage, and would it were not so, she is a witch. the traditional fate for girls like her is drowning, but she had too much of water before her death so she will not willingly return. instead she projects herself out and out to the fringes of sanity and she watches, collecting the songs or flowers that will suit her ends, whatever claudius thinks.
see, the Duelists are all growing up, but slower than they should and in all the cruelest ways. every brush against the specter of adulthood makes each of them feel less prepared to venture out from the dubious shelter of the prison that claudius calls a school. if she can’t save herself she might be able one or all of them instead. but even there she has very little power, and all of it indirect. in her cryptic nursery rhymes, in her elaborate flower arrangements, in her countless spilled water glasses, she hides keys to unlock their cages, chains, and cells. but alack the day, she cannot hand them the keys to decipher her directions. that, they must discover for themselves. This was originally posted at https://ernest.dreamwidth.org/9520.html. There are
comments there.
Fandom: Hamlet
Verse: Ohtori AU
Characters: Ophelia, Laertes, Claudius
Summary: Marked by dead men's fingers, Ophelia swims through currents of time.
Word Count: 765
Warnings: death mention, implied violence, traumatic memories
before she really understood her situation, ophelia used to draw deeper into herself at every little disappointment. she thought she was escaping her pain, but the closer she got to her heart the more blades she encountered. if, instead, she retreated to her grave, it only got her more embroiled in the plots driven by the End of the World. he reclined in what would be and had been her final resting place and told the foolish boy who used to be her brother all the lies that would make him dance, and seeing that, ophelia could not help but sing.
laertes is so young, they all are, and ophelia pities them their innocence. she can just about remember when she was one of their number, and she knows for sure that in all their iterations she was always the baby of the group. usually not so small that she literally had to run to keep up, there was still an understanding that she was only there because her brother was, and he was the one who made the rules. she didn’t know, none of them could know, that even then they were being manipulated and steered into their starting positions.
maybe she was happier like that, it’s so hard to remember that kind of thing, but she couldn’t do anything to save herself. she still can’t save herself, but at least she knows enough to hate with all her being. and the boys have forgotten her: edited her out of their halcyon days, and edited those days of adolescence so there was only ever one set. even laertes, who most days manages to remember that he’s fighting for his sister and not the Rose Bride, even he has no idea how old they really are. and because he doesn’t know, he isn’t.
heart in her throat (or the metaphor that functions where her heart should be), ophelia has to wonder if it’s her who’s forgotten. did she want a brother so badly that she imagined him into her past? did she stitch his images into the ragged edges of a history that never was? thinking it through in that light, she sees: a father and son grieving a beloved mother and wife, and given - not a replacement, surely a squalling babe could never measure up - but given someone else to whom to direct all that excess love. the End of the World let her have a childhood, and let her forget that it wasn’t her first. and when she was forced to remember he at least let her carry the only person who really cared for her into the darkness called memory.
maybe that’s how it happened. or then again, maybe not; she doesn’t trust memory. she has far too many of them to believe that one single version of events is the only one that’s real. so ophelia the cuckoo, and ophelia the swan raised by ducklings, and ophelia marked by dead man’s fingers, all exist in her. days like this, watching the brother who used to be a larger-than-life protector vow to cut her fiance’s throat in the church, ophelia feels all those versions of herself, and they are all as ancient as she is.
she fights free of the white water rapids of recollection, and swims back through the currents of time to return her to the present. she cannot be a princess so she is a bride and someday, perhaps, a queen by marriage, and would it were not so, she is a witch. the traditional fate for girls like her is drowning, but she had too much of water before her death so she will not willingly return. instead she projects herself out and out to the fringes of sanity and she watches, collecting the songs or flowers that will suit her ends, whatever claudius thinks.
see, the Duelists are all growing up, but slower than they should and in all the cruelest ways. every brush against the specter of adulthood makes each of them feel less prepared to venture out from the dubious shelter of the prison that claudius calls a school. if she can’t save herself she might be able one or all of them instead. but even there she has very little power, and all of it indirect. in her cryptic nursery rhymes, in her elaborate flower arrangements, in her countless spilled water glasses, she hides keys to unlock their cages, chains, and cells. but alack the day, she cannot hand them the keys to decipher her directions. that, they must discover for themselves. This was originally posted at https://ernest.dreamwidth.org/9520.html. There are
comments there.