Fic: Bruised Memories - Angst ficlet
Title: Bruised memories
Author: mustbethursday3
Rating/Warnings: PGish
Word Count: 457
Characters/Pairings: Good question. It's meant to be Elena/Gwaine, but it could be anyone ...yay vagueness? Just pick a girl (Elena, Gwen, Morgana) and a guy (Gwaine, Lancelot, Merlin) and read it however you want.
Summary: She (whoever she is) is engaged and he (whoever he is) is the guy who's always going to let her go.
Author's notes: I originally wrote this for a prompt of the 306 spec/coda!fest on merlin_multis and it turned into a style that I don't write very often, because I can't do it on purpose XD ...I think this plot!bunnie may be in witness protection or something.
~~~
In a harsh whisper, her father had once advised her that people with sharp, thoughtless words on their tongues would be certain to cut themselves. At the time she'd been barely more than a child, her cheeks stained with embarrassment; for her fevered mind had stolen away the day. Her promises left abandoned that morning, scattered to the winds, as soon as her foot had first touched sunlight, the gravel crunching wickedly against the sole of slippers. The forest beckoning to her in the distance.
This is the memory that stirs, fitfully, as the condensation ghosts itself to the panes of glass. She feels warm and cold and tired, sleep pressing at her mind, though she can not give in. The lower part of her face she has tucked under the blankets, and if she turns her head, she will see his hair dark, crumpled against the pillow and her resolve will break, touching in on itself and sticking, fragile, like wet paper. Her vow blurring as easily as ink. And the quiver in her muscles is a distraction she is grateful for, it roots her hand to the sheets, when it would so easily rise and touch his skin, his face.
Marriage, it is a cursed word for many and only a saviour of some; she has always feared she is the former, the cursed. And she feels it more now, then ever. For it is a word he does not know, does not speak, as foreign to him as flight to a fish. He excuses it as his nature and no matter how much she wishes she could change his mind, how much easier it would be if he would commit a tie to her, she is promised. She has promised. And this moment, a tiny little thing...and all the tiny moments before it she cannot hope to afford. Not by any count and it is this that swings her legs from the bed. The phantom tickle of weighted broken words on her naked shoulders like wings that pull her down.
Many years later, when moments have become memories, he asks if she had been in love with him once, and with the sweet scent of reminiscence filling the air like dust, little fragments that cover them both in invisible patterns. She stands, looking out through a different window, this one open, her children playing in the distance, cartwheeling on the stones. And it isn't a lie when she tells him no, because for her it has not past, it has not dulled, only growing finer, more woven into her day and her thoughts and each morning she wakes the same.
In love with a dream. A moment. Tiny, and yet it's shadow reaches everything.
_______________________
LOL. Pairings this could be: Elena/Gwaine, Elena/Merlin, Gwen/Gwaine, Gwen/Lancelot (which is something I can't support), Gwen/Merlin, Morgana/Gwaine, Morgana/Lancelot, Morgana/Merlin...
Author: mustbethursday3
Rating/Warnings: PGish
Word Count: 457
Characters/Pairings: Good question. It's meant to be Elena/Gwaine, but it could be anyone ...yay vagueness? Just pick a girl (Elena, Gwen, Morgana) and a guy (Gwaine, Lancelot, Merlin) and read it however you want.
Summary: She (whoever she is) is engaged and he (whoever he is) is the guy who's always going to let her go.
Author's notes: I originally wrote this for a prompt of the 306 spec/coda!fest on merlin_multis and it turned into a style that I don't write very often, because I can't do it on purpose XD ...I think this plot!bunnie may be in witness protection or something.
~~~
In a harsh whisper, her father had once advised her that people with sharp, thoughtless words on their tongues would be certain to cut themselves. At the time she'd been barely more than a child, her cheeks stained with embarrassment; for her fevered mind had stolen away the day. Her promises left abandoned that morning, scattered to the winds, as soon as her foot had first touched sunlight, the gravel crunching wickedly against the sole of slippers. The forest beckoning to her in the distance.
This is the memory that stirs, fitfully, as the condensation ghosts itself to the panes of glass. She feels warm and cold and tired, sleep pressing at her mind, though she can not give in. The lower part of her face she has tucked under the blankets, and if she turns her head, she will see his hair dark, crumpled against the pillow and her resolve will break, touching in on itself and sticking, fragile, like wet paper. Her vow blurring as easily as ink. And the quiver in her muscles is a distraction she is grateful for, it roots her hand to the sheets, when it would so easily rise and touch his skin, his face.
Marriage, it is a cursed word for many and only a saviour of some; she has always feared she is the former, the cursed. And she feels it more now, then ever. For it is a word he does not know, does not speak, as foreign to him as flight to a fish. He excuses it as his nature and no matter how much she wishes she could change his mind, how much easier it would be if he would commit a tie to her, she is promised. She has promised. And this moment, a tiny little thing...and all the tiny moments before it she cannot hope to afford. Not by any count and it is this that swings her legs from the bed. The phantom tickle of weighted broken words on her naked shoulders like wings that pull her down.
Many years later, when moments have become memories, he asks if she had been in love with him once, and with the sweet scent of reminiscence filling the air like dust, little fragments that cover them both in invisible patterns. She stands, looking out through a different window, this one open, her children playing in the distance, cartwheeling on the stones. And it isn't a lie when she tells him no, because for her it has not past, it has not dulled, only growing finer, more woven into her day and her thoughts and each morning she wakes the same.
In love with a dream. A moment. Tiny, and yet it's shadow reaches everything.
_______________________
LOL. Pairings this could be: Elena/Gwaine, Elena/Merlin, Gwen/Gwaine, Gwen/Lancelot (which is something I can't support), Gwen/Merlin, Morgana/Gwaine, Morgana/Lancelot, Morgana/Merlin...