"Bring Your Own Sun", Desperate Romantics, Lizzie-centric
Title: Bring Your Own Sun
Fandom: Desperate Romantics
Characters: Lizzie; everyone [Gabriel/Lizzie]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4310
Genre: Gen [het]
Copyright: Welcome To England by Tori Amos.
Summary: “Tell me, Johnny; when will I start to feel blessed?”
Author’s Notes: Set between episodes six and seven. I don’t expect anyone to read this, I wrote it for me in about three hours on squared paper. But I’m very, very pleased with this anyway. And although it’s not overtly there, I found a Johnny/Lizzie undertone developing that I enjoyed a lot. Hmmm. I did so enjoy writing crazed, drugged, unhappy Lizzie.
{“do a dance for me”}
The flowers are starting to wilt in Lizzie’s hair, but she pins her smile in place as best she can. She has forgotten how to be natural.
“Do you remember when I nearly drowned you?” Johnny Millais asks; a little drunk, and now Lizzie can see why Gabriel hates him and pretends that he does not: it’s there, a quiet, glittering smugness, an arrogance.
“I wish you’d done a better job,” she mutters.
Gabriel is laughing, eyes too bright; he does not look like a man on his wedding day, but Lizzie is glad he’s pretending to be happy. She flicks her gaze back to Johnny, who looks troubled. This is all your fault, she thinks uncharitably. But she would not wish this on him; no one should know what this feels like. No one.
“Still, you’re married now,” he says, forced joviality in his tone.
It’s sweet, the way he seems to think marriage solves all of life’s problems. Gabriel is smiling, his eyes faraway and haunted.
Lizzie tips her head back and stares at the ceiling. “Tell me, Johnny; when will I start to feel blessed?”
{baby, it is late, still you pour me a tall one}
Charlotte’s eyes dribble tears and no one looks happy as Lizzie trails after her new husband. She has won, but the victory tastes of ashes. Gabriel is alight with manic energy, and it is sweet the way he tries to hide the shake in his hands; a kindness she wasn’t sure she believed him capable of.
Lizzie gulps greedy, desperate swigs of laudanum when he isn’t looking; her eyes roll back into her head and this wasn’t how she pictured her wedding night when she was pricking her fingers raw in the hat shop. Gabriel smells like a brewery and she wishes she didn’t she didn’t love him because it would all be so much easier if her hatred could claim dominance.
After, her thighs wet, she watches the candle burn down and wonders who Gabriel is thinking of. She knows it is too much to ask, even on her wedding night, that he think of her. Those days are gone, after all.
{“go on, let the liquid take off what you’re on”}
There is stale wedding cake for breakfast; Lizzie licks sweetness off her fingers, slumped on the floor in the corner of the studio. Gabriel snores on, twitching occasionally, and when she blinks Lizzie’s eyes feel wet.
It takes three tries to get to her feet; she’s washing the cake down with forgotten gin and the daylight saws sharply across her vision. Lizzie stumbles across to the bed, where Gabriel sprawls naked and cruel.
“My sister said I should have married Hunt,” she mumbles. “He wouldn’t have had me, you know, but I should have, shouldn’t I? Because this is never going to work, is it?”
She’s crushing cake in her hand, crumbs escaping between her fingers and scattering across the sheets. Her breathing shivers.
“D’you say something, Lizzie?” Gabriel mutters, but he’s still asleep and she doesn’t want him awake. If Gabriel is awake then she will have to face up to the consequences of getting what she always wanted; something deliciously bitter, she is learning.
“No,” she mumbles, a tear catching on her upper lip. “No, go back to sleep.”
{“you’ve been down before” - boy, not like this}
Painting has been stolen from her; Lizzie cannot paint, cannot draw. She hears Gabriel asking her if she has any ideas, but she does not. Her mind is listless, empty, leaking love and rationality, drafts at the corners.
Ruskin’s hands linger too long at her shoulders, but Lizzie knows that he doesn’t know what it is that he wants, and she pities him for she can empathise. God, can she empathise. He worries about her, and she recalls Effie’s dire warnings; but Effie was not ill and Lizzie is. Lizzie is falling apart at the seams and she thinks Gabriel might be glad. Or relieved, in any case.
Lizzie cuts red watercolour across a piece of paper, an imagined splash of blood.
“You have stolen my soul,” she mutters to the air.
{i’m in quicksand, i am sinking fast}
An old tin bath, a dirty dress, and candle flames dancing on the ceilings. And the cold; oh, the cold. Lizzie was Ophelia and it nearly killed her. She thinks Gabriel might be the perfect Hamlet: casting her aside on a forgotten pretext that mattered once. She will not drown herself to spite him, but inch by inch Lizzie crawls into the laudanum bottle, where all is warm and glitters.
“I made you,” she tells Johnny. Afternoon tea, an invitation. She thinks Effie was here once, though now she has vanished. An errand, a pretext; too much of Lizzie’s life is fluid these days. “I made you, Johnny, and all the while you sit there and watch me fall apart.”
She has artlessly struck him dumb; once, Lizzie had pretty words and a sort of sparkling wit that may not have been perfect but which was easy enough to feign. Now, she can barely patch sentences together, stitches between the words failing.
“Lizzie-” Johnny’s voice is soft, tinged with pain.
“All I wanted was to be fucking happy,” she breathes, and she cries too much these days; her eyes feel bruised. “You’re happy, you’re successful; and what do I get? A fucking painting and Gabriel.”
In a moment, Johnny is knelt at her feet, taking her hands in his. He looks scared, wretched; the gloss of smugness has faded, and he is still so young. They are all still so young.
“Tell me what I can do,” he says earnestly. His hands are warm against her cold fingers. “Tell me how I can help you. I’ll do anything, Lizzie, let me help you.”
“No one can help me now,” she sighs. And then she’s sobbing. Johnny gathers her into his arms, and he isn’t enough but she appreciates the effort anyway.
“I suppose you always saw I had a face for tragedy,” she murmurs at last.
Johnny says nothing; just breathes “oh, Ophelia” against her hair.
{“perfect,” he laughed, “‘cause your other half has got himself a devil’s access”}
Laudanum curls thin skeins of warmth through her when she returns home, playing the blushing fresh bride more from memories of her childhood fantasies than reality. Lizzie is laughing too hard, shimmering too bright; she can see tears building in Charlotte’s eyes. This marriage has too many tears in it as it is, and she’s just so tired. Her parents nod and smile; Lizzie reflects that they have washed their hands of her, realising that they can’t save their little girl from this tangle of her own making.
“I’m so happy,” she promises with all her teeth; her mother looks like she needs to believe it. Her father looks more satisfied, but there’s so much he doesn’t see that Lizzie would laugh if she was still capable of being amused by things. Things being what they are, she sips too-hot tea and scatters pretty lies for them to leap upon, crumbs of hope because at least then someone might get out of this without dying inside.
{“welcome to england,” he said, “welcome to my world”}
Fred would probably have blanched when he saw her, except that he’s pale as death already.
“Marriage is eating my beauty,” Lizzie explains over a walk in the park. Her arm looped through Fred’s, her feet tipping over themselves, the path wavering in her vision. “I no longer need it, you see.”
“You’re still beautiful, Lizzie,” he says, not looking at her. His voice quivers, and Fred really is too sweet. Though there’s bile and bitterness and anger within him, linger beneath the surface; it’s become increasingly obvious. He’s drowning as fast as she is, and Lizzie reflects that he was happy once; there’s a dead space behind his eyes that never used to be there.
“You wouldn’t care about me if I hadn’t been beautiful,” Lizzie remarks. He tries to protest this, but she shakes her head and he falls silent. “It’s difficult, being beautiful. It’s not designed to last, but we still take it so personally when it all decays.”
Fred is gazing out over the lake, and furtively swipes at his eyes with his cuff. Lizzie wants to tell him not to be so silly - what right has he to be sad? He’s not married to Gabriel - but lets the moment pass, too tired to see it through.
{“you better bring your own sun, sweet girl”}
“You’ve never been a gentleman,” Lizzie mutters, “Why start now?”
Gabriel looks resentful - he’s covering worse and worse nowadays, but then he’s sober less and less often so Lizzie can’t exactly blame him - and sighs.
“I love you,” he says. He makes an effort to sound sincere, and Lizzie finds herself grateful for this.
“I think you did, once,” she murmurs. “Of course, your problem is that you love everyone.”
Gabriel slams to his feet, anger dancing across his features and rendering them ugly.
“Oh, if we’re going to talk about problems,” he spits, “Do you know what your problem is?”
Lizzie does not flinch. “Yes,” she replies. “You.”
Gabriel laughs, mocking and bitter. “Oh, right, blame it all on me.”
“I’ve done nothing,” Lizzie protests. “None of this is my fault.”
Gabriel sneers; a perfect sneer, one she wants to capture with a pencil because the line his mouth makes is abstractly beautiful. “Ruskin,” he spits.
“I’d rather be Ruskin’s whore than yours,” Lizzie hisses, “At least it pays better!”
Her husband looks as though he’s been slapped; white-faced, he leaves, slamming the door so hard the windows shake.
Lizzie has to count to ten before she actually cares.
{who can stay strong when they only have lies to lean on?}
“We fell in love in the wrong places, Maniac,” Lizzie tells Hunt.
He keeps glancing at the door, as though expecting someone to burst in and put a stop to this. Or perhaps he’s hoping someone will; his mind is broken now. Lizzie thinks she would like to break someone as thoroughly as Annie broke Hunt; at least then she’d know someone cared about her.
“I was naïve,” Lizzie adds, when he seems to be incapable of speech. “You could have touched me and I’d have loved you because I knew no better and we’d have been happy.”
Hunt swallows visibly. “Would we?”
Lizzie shrugs. “Happier than we are now.” She grimaces. “We wouldn’t have fallen for bright flames and got ourselves burned, anyhow.”
“Maybe,” Hunt concedes. He looks awkward, but they both know Lizzie is beyond the help of a card directing her to Dickens’ house for fallen women, and Hunt no longer knows how to communicate with women if he’s not propositioning them with salvation. Celibacy doesn’t suit him; his knuckles are far too crimson.
“You shattered me when you brought Annie here,” Lizzie tells him. “I could blame you for all of this, if I wanted to.”
Hunt looks saddened; Lizzie thinks she may have been too cruel but her feelings are so deadened she can no longer communicate. And anyway, Hunt does so love self-flagellation.
{when your heart explodes is it deathly cold?}
Lizzie paints nothing but coloured streaks for far too long. Ideas are slipping from her; she has forgotten how to like things, how to want things. She has forgotten how to see anything appealing in the world around her. Gabriel has taken the sunshine, and it would all be so much easier if she didn’t love him. She thinks she could enjoy despising him, given the opportunity.
She suspects Ruskin will give up on her eventually; there’s no point in having a protégé who is too drugged and too unhappy and too mad to ever produce any work. And it doesn’t matter if he tries to steady her nerves or not; Lizzie’s nerves are not the problem.
Lizzie suspects he would not have encouraged her to get married as vehemently as he did if he’d known this was going to happen.
{you must let the colours violate the blackness}
It’s not that Lizzie wants to die, because she doesn’t; it’s just that life has not been what it promised to be and so she fills herself with substances that make that crushing betrayal easier to bear. Lizzie thinks of herself trapped in a river, flowers pulled from her slack hands, eyes gazing up at a callous sky that never tried to help. Millais was more prophetic than he knew and Lizzie could happily hate him forever for that; for painting an allegory of her life so perfectly and not even knowing it, keeping it so secret that nobody realised until it was too late. She should have drowned in that tub, should have succumbed; it would have saved her from this, from the future that was not all it said it would be.
Now she’s revered on canvas and sneered at in public; with her expensive dresses and whore’s laughter. Fred fills the papers with the dirty truths and even he looks bored with it all now; Lizzie suspects her mother weeps secretly, her sometime dreams for her daughter dragged through the mud, sodden from the river water.
If only she’d charmed Johnny while she was dying for him. Maybe then she’d have gained stability.
{there is a magic world parallel}
Lizzie waits, impatient, for Gabriel to breathe a name that isn’t hers; she feels like a ghost in this bed, a substitute for a score of other lovers; some Gabriel hasn’t even met yet. He wanted no one but her once; but that was once, and the paint dried, and his passion cooled. Gabriel’s spirit will not and cannot be tied down to anything; Lizzie can barely believe that they’re married now. She supposes it was a stupid whim of Gabriel’s, an idea that he must surely regret now.
She loves him so much, too much; loves him to the extent that she hates him with a passion as bright as her affection ever was. Lizzie shuts her eyes; her body feels heavy and unreal. Lizzie looks up at Gabriel, sweating over her, feeling hopelessly detached, barely acknowledging him working inside her. His eyes are closed, and she wonders if he is trying not to gasp Annie or Jane or Fanny, or some combination of the three.
Still, in spite of all this Lizzie is an artist. And artists take things that are natural and normal, add colour and shine and depth to them, and feed them back better and brighter and more real than they ever were in the first place. So she tips her head back and tilts her hips and wails as hard as she ever did when her body was lined with fire, nails in Gabriel’s back.
And he doesn’t realise, doesn’t know. Gabriel laughs down at her afterwards, looking happier than he has done since they married; he does not realise her deception and for a few delicious seconds Lizzie feels a rush of power that she has not felt in the longest time.
{so leave your daily hell}
Things must be getting bad, Lizzie supposes, for Annie and Effie to be sitting at the table looking earnest. Annie has a basic veneer of manners and posture to try and conceal her less than pretty roots, while Effie is still a lady for all the scandal that has danced around her name; they’re dressed beautifully, elegantly, with the placid façade of happiness or at the very least easily-concealed misery. But Lizzie’s true love has shattered, unlike Effie’s, and she did not learn when to cut her losses and escape, like Annie. Now the two of them are here to shower her with pity and Lizzie can’t work out whether to love or hate them for it; she knows she must be sick for them to deign to talk to each other and to come together to help her.
“Let us take you away,” Effie breathes. “I can bring you to stay with friends of mine. Some fresh air, a change of scenery. Johnny would escort us.”
The idea is almost appealing. “The Ruskins-” Lizzie begins.
“Fuck the Ruskins,” Annie cuts in.
“Gabriel-”
“Fuck Gabriel,” Effie interrupts.
It is easy for them to say; much too easy. Lizzie stays silent, and watches Annie pick through the painting paraphernalia scattered about; there are bottles of laudanum mixed among it all, empty and full, a few too many.
“You need to get off this,” Annie snaps, voice sharp and scared. “Lizzie, it’ll kill you faster than anything.”
Lizzie and Annie have never really liked each other and lord knows where Effie fits into all this. Still, Lizzie is touched by their attempt, touched that they think her worth this.
“We can leave next week,” Effie promises.
“I’m sorry.” Lizzie feels breathless. “I’m sorry, I just - I just can’t.”
She doesn’t know if she’s choosing the laudanum or Gabriel; she supposes they amount to one and the same these days.
{it’s not a question}
Hunt’s studio is warm and quiet and it seems so long ago, kneeling on the floor here, feeling self-conscious and uncertain. Lizzie can’t remember her own feelings without a certain amount of bemused disbelief; she can’t think of herself as ever being that naïve. But she was; she sewed hats and dreamed at night while her father boasted of rightful glory they never really deserved. And then she knelt on the dusty floor of Hunt’s studio and everything changed. There is no evidence of this change; her face is concealed beneath new layers of oil, but she was here once. It was here, in this room, that the old Lizzie Siddal died.
“You’re not yourself,” Hunt half-gasps; he looks aghast.
“No,” Lizzie corrects him, “This is myself now.” Her voice does not sound like her own.
“You’re drunk,” Hunt says, taking a step towards her and then hesitating. Lizzie is; and the last dregs of her laudanum bottle are oozing onto the floorboards at home. Lord knows where her husband is.
“You wanted me once,” she says. “When I was a girl here, knelt for you.” She’s weeping, though she wishes that she was not. “Why wouldn’t you have just taken me then, saved me then?”
Hunt looks wretched; his mouth moves wordlessly. He is not angry, which is nearly a surprise; Lizzie supposes he cannot only be made of dull fury.
She’s plucking at the strings and buttons of her bodice, her own tears dripping onto her bared breasts.
“Want me,” she breathes, falling apart for him, “Want me and maybe it will not be too late.”
Hunt crosses to her, pulling her hands away from her clothes. With tender hands, he closes her torn-open dress; he’s looking at her entirely without lust, pity sparking in his gaze, and Lizzie supposes that she must really have broken. Hunt kisses her forehead.
“I’ll take you home,” he says, more gentle than she would ever have believed he could be.
{if i can fight by your side and withstand anything}
“You dragged your mother into the most godawful lies,” Lizzie remarks to Fred. A sunny day, she thinks Gabriel is with William and Ned, feigning friendship so he can steal Jane. Perhaps tonight, if he comes home, she will ask him how it is going. “All those promises of propriety that you all pissed on.”
Fred flinches; he looks sicker than ever. Lizzie reaches out to him, and a moment later manages to catch his hand. It’s shaking.
“I didn’t know they were lies,” he mumbles.
“Yes, you did,” Lizzie tells him simply. “You just didn’t care. It’s all right. I forgive you.”
She’s gaining clarity, the further she sinks. It’s almost worth it, though Fred looks as though he is being torn apart inside. His love is too selfless, it unsettles her.
“I’m so sorry,” he stumbles.
Lizzie smiles; Ophelia’s tired martyred smile. “I’m sorry too.” Fred frowns quizzically. “Well, it was never going to be you.”
She thinks she sees tears in his eyes as he turns away, but her own vision is clear. There has been too much crying in this marriage already.
{but i forgot you said “girl, if you come…”}
Effie is too understanding, slips too often from the room to leave Johnny and Lizzie alone. Not that there’s anything new to say. Lizzie sips at the tea she’s been given and she’s been shaking for hours. She’s been pale for weeks; it’s astonishing that she has any spirit left at all.
“You’re selfish, Johnny,” she tells him. “Do you know that? I nearly died and all you cared about was your painting.”
Johnny looks at her thoughtfully; there’s misery in his gaze. “I sat up all night because I thought I’d killed you,” he says quietly.
It’s something; and Lizzie finds herself surprised. “You’d have finished it anyway,” she tells him. “The painting was what mattered.”
“Yes,” Johnny agrees. “I would have. But that makes me no different from Gabriel, or from Maniac.”
Lizzie concedes that. “You rip people’s lives apart and stroll on to collect the money,” she sighs without bitterness. She flickers her gaze back to Johnny, whose face is twisted. “Ruskin thinks you have lost your genius,” she says. “But I suppose you have happiness, you no longer need talent.”
Johnny grimaces; she can see where she’s stung him. But he does not argue back.
“Tell me if I can help you, Lizzie,” he says steadily.
“You can’t make him love me,” she sighs. “Not even you, golden boy, can do that.” She sighs again; hurting has lost its appeal. “I liked Bubbles,” she adds. “It wasn’t beautiful, but it reminded me that I once felt like that.”
Johnny pours them both so more tea, sadness flicking at his mouth.
{“…you’d better bring your own sun”}
She finds them in their favourite haunt, drinking and laughing. Gabriel is absent, as usual; Lizzie doesn’t want to know where he is. She doesn’t ask, not anymore. But she slips into his usual seat, and looks at his friends. The Brotherhood have cracked and faded from the over-excited boys she once knew and loved. Lizzie is not the only one unrecognisable now; she doesn’t know whether to be reassured.
“You shouldn’t be here, Lizzie,” Hunt says, looking anxiously about.
“I’m a married woman, I’ll come where I like,” she replies; a feeble excuse.
“We should get you home,” Fred asserts. “Gabriel will worry.”
“He will not,” Lizzie sighs. “Tell me, do you know whose bed he’s in right now?” The men avoid her gaze, and each other’s. “No,” Lizzie murmurs, half to herself. “I suppose there is rather a long list of options.”
Johnny - sweet, selfish Johnny - reaches for her hand. “Lizzie,” he whispers.
She looks at him - John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Fred Walters; such names known by the public but no one knows what corrupted, lost bastards they truly are - and fumbles up a helpless smile.
“He’s just waiting for me to die, isn’t he?”
No one says anything for a long, quiet moment. Finally, Johnny stammers: “I wouldn’t use those exact words.”
“What words would you use, Johnny?” Hunt snaps.
Lizzie curls her fingers, tight, in her skirt. “I want to tell you, every one of you, that you have let me down. And I want you to remember that.”
She gets to the door before they run after her and escort her home, all together. Too little, too late, but oh, her boys are still sweet in their way.
{“sweet girl, you’ve got to bring your own sun”}
Gabriel frowns over drawings, candlelight glinting form his scowl. Lizzie sketches him as he works, pencil shaking in her weak hand. It’s too quiet, and there’s nothing in this room that really matters any more.
“The liquor has run out,” she sighs, “The fireworks have burnt, and this is what we are left with.”
Her husband’s eyes show resentment, and for the first time Lizzie pities him too, not just herself.
“I was dying with or without you,” she mumbles.
“So are you saying I shouldn’t have married you?” Gabriel demands. “I thought that was what you wanted.”
“What I wanted?” Lizzie echoes. She’s drugged, her body numb, and she does not know how much longer she will last. “I want - I wish…” She sets down her pencil. “I do not wish I had not met you, but I do wish I had not loved you.”
Anger sparks in Gabriel’s eyes.
“So I have married you for nothing?”
Lizzie exhales, and feels a cruel smile curl her lips; crueller than she knew she could be.
“Well, still, I have you now.”
Her husband is on his feet, storming over to drag her to her feet, his hands too tight at her wrists. Lizzie’s legs cannot hold her and she falls; Gabriel half pulls her, and she hits her head against the table.
“Kill me then!” she screams. “Fucking kill me, because it cannot get worse! Nothing can ever be worth than this, nothing!”
Gabriel drops her arms, horror spreading across his beautiful face. And it is so like Gabriel not to notice things until it is too late.
“What have I done to you, Lizzie?” he asks, tone hushed with shock.
Lizzie stays crumpled on the floor, glaring balefully up at him through her hair. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” she snarls.
Tomorrow, Gabriel will forget to care; but still, right now, she can see the full beauty of his remorse. It’s almost enough, as he stares down at her. Lizzie bares her teeth, and he turns away, slamming yet another door behind him.
{just enough for everyone}
Fandom: Desperate Romantics
Characters: Lizzie; everyone [Gabriel/Lizzie]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4310
Genre: Gen [het]
Copyright: Welcome To England by Tori Amos.
Summary: “Tell me, Johnny; when will I start to feel blessed?”
Author’s Notes: Set between episodes six and seven. I don’t expect anyone to read this, I wrote it for me in about three hours on squared paper. But I’m very, very pleased with this anyway. And although it’s not overtly there, I found a Johnny/Lizzie undertone developing that I enjoyed a lot. Hmmm. I did so enjoy writing crazed, drugged, unhappy Lizzie.
{“do a dance for me”}
The flowers are starting to wilt in Lizzie’s hair, but she pins her smile in place as best she can. She has forgotten how to be natural.
“Do you remember when I nearly drowned you?” Johnny Millais asks; a little drunk, and now Lizzie can see why Gabriel hates him and pretends that he does not: it’s there, a quiet, glittering smugness, an arrogance.
“I wish you’d done a better job,” she mutters.
Gabriel is laughing, eyes too bright; he does not look like a man on his wedding day, but Lizzie is glad he’s pretending to be happy. She flicks her gaze back to Johnny, who looks troubled. This is all your fault, she thinks uncharitably. But she would not wish this on him; no one should know what this feels like. No one.
“Still, you’re married now,” he says, forced joviality in his tone.
It’s sweet, the way he seems to think marriage solves all of life’s problems. Gabriel is smiling, his eyes faraway and haunted.
Lizzie tips her head back and stares at the ceiling. “Tell me, Johnny; when will I start to feel blessed?”
{baby, it is late, still you pour me a tall one}
Charlotte’s eyes dribble tears and no one looks happy as Lizzie trails after her new husband. She has won, but the victory tastes of ashes. Gabriel is alight with manic energy, and it is sweet the way he tries to hide the shake in his hands; a kindness she wasn’t sure she believed him capable of.
Lizzie gulps greedy, desperate swigs of laudanum when he isn’t looking; her eyes roll back into her head and this wasn’t how she pictured her wedding night when she was pricking her fingers raw in the hat shop. Gabriel smells like a brewery and she wishes she didn’t she didn’t love him because it would all be so much easier if her hatred could claim dominance.
After, her thighs wet, she watches the candle burn down and wonders who Gabriel is thinking of. She knows it is too much to ask, even on her wedding night, that he think of her. Those days are gone, after all.
{“go on, let the liquid take off what you’re on”}
There is stale wedding cake for breakfast; Lizzie licks sweetness off her fingers, slumped on the floor in the corner of the studio. Gabriel snores on, twitching occasionally, and when she blinks Lizzie’s eyes feel wet.
It takes three tries to get to her feet; she’s washing the cake down with forgotten gin and the daylight saws sharply across her vision. Lizzie stumbles across to the bed, where Gabriel sprawls naked and cruel.
“My sister said I should have married Hunt,” she mumbles. “He wouldn’t have had me, you know, but I should have, shouldn’t I? Because this is never going to work, is it?”
She’s crushing cake in her hand, crumbs escaping between her fingers and scattering across the sheets. Her breathing shivers.
“D’you say something, Lizzie?” Gabriel mutters, but he’s still asleep and she doesn’t want him awake. If Gabriel is awake then she will have to face up to the consequences of getting what she always wanted; something deliciously bitter, she is learning.
“No,” she mumbles, a tear catching on her upper lip. “No, go back to sleep.”
{“you’ve been down before” - boy, not like this}
Painting has been stolen from her; Lizzie cannot paint, cannot draw. She hears Gabriel asking her if she has any ideas, but she does not. Her mind is listless, empty, leaking love and rationality, drafts at the corners.
Ruskin’s hands linger too long at her shoulders, but Lizzie knows that he doesn’t know what it is that he wants, and she pities him for she can empathise. God, can she empathise. He worries about her, and she recalls Effie’s dire warnings; but Effie was not ill and Lizzie is. Lizzie is falling apart at the seams and she thinks Gabriel might be glad. Or relieved, in any case.
Lizzie cuts red watercolour across a piece of paper, an imagined splash of blood.
“You have stolen my soul,” she mutters to the air.
{i’m in quicksand, i am sinking fast}
An old tin bath, a dirty dress, and candle flames dancing on the ceilings. And the cold; oh, the cold. Lizzie was Ophelia and it nearly killed her. She thinks Gabriel might be the perfect Hamlet: casting her aside on a forgotten pretext that mattered once. She will not drown herself to spite him, but inch by inch Lizzie crawls into the laudanum bottle, where all is warm and glitters.
“I made you,” she tells Johnny. Afternoon tea, an invitation. She thinks Effie was here once, though now she has vanished. An errand, a pretext; too much of Lizzie’s life is fluid these days. “I made you, Johnny, and all the while you sit there and watch me fall apart.”
She has artlessly struck him dumb; once, Lizzie had pretty words and a sort of sparkling wit that may not have been perfect but which was easy enough to feign. Now, she can barely patch sentences together, stitches between the words failing.
“Lizzie-” Johnny’s voice is soft, tinged with pain.
“All I wanted was to be fucking happy,” she breathes, and she cries too much these days; her eyes feel bruised. “You’re happy, you’re successful; and what do I get? A fucking painting and Gabriel.”
In a moment, Johnny is knelt at her feet, taking her hands in his. He looks scared, wretched; the gloss of smugness has faded, and he is still so young. They are all still so young.
“Tell me what I can do,” he says earnestly. His hands are warm against her cold fingers. “Tell me how I can help you. I’ll do anything, Lizzie, let me help you.”
“No one can help me now,” she sighs. And then she’s sobbing. Johnny gathers her into his arms, and he isn’t enough but she appreciates the effort anyway.
“I suppose you always saw I had a face for tragedy,” she murmurs at last.
Johnny says nothing; just breathes “oh, Ophelia” against her hair.
{“perfect,” he laughed, “‘cause your other half has got himself a devil’s access”}
Laudanum curls thin skeins of warmth through her when she returns home, playing the blushing fresh bride more from memories of her childhood fantasies than reality. Lizzie is laughing too hard, shimmering too bright; she can see tears building in Charlotte’s eyes. This marriage has too many tears in it as it is, and she’s just so tired. Her parents nod and smile; Lizzie reflects that they have washed their hands of her, realising that they can’t save their little girl from this tangle of her own making.
“I’m so happy,” she promises with all her teeth; her mother looks like she needs to believe it. Her father looks more satisfied, but there’s so much he doesn’t see that Lizzie would laugh if she was still capable of being amused by things. Things being what they are, she sips too-hot tea and scatters pretty lies for them to leap upon, crumbs of hope because at least then someone might get out of this without dying inside.
{“welcome to england,” he said, “welcome to my world”}
Fred would probably have blanched when he saw her, except that he’s pale as death already.
“Marriage is eating my beauty,” Lizzie explains over a walk in the park. Her arm looped through Fred’s, her feet tipping over themselves, the path wavering in her vision. “I no longer need it, you see.”
“You’re still beautiful, Lizzie,” he says, not looking at her. His voice quivers, and Fred really is too sweet. Though there’s bile and bitterness and anger within him, linger beneath the surface; it’s become increasingly obvious. He’s drowning as fast as she is, and Lizzie reflects that he was happy once; there’s a dead space behind his eyes that never used to be there.
“You wouldn’t care about me if I hadn’t been beautiful,” Lizzie remarks. He tries to protest this, but she shakes her head and he falls silent. “It’s difficult, being beautiful. It’s not designed to last, but we still take it so personally when it all decays.”
Fred is gazing out over the lake, and furtively swipes at his eyes with his cuff. Lizzie wants to tell him not to be so silly - what right has he to be sad? He’s not married to Gabriel - but lets the moment pass, too tired to see it through.
{“you better bring your own sun, sweet girl”}
“You’ve never been a gentleman,” Lizzie mutters, “Why start now?”
Gabriel looks resentful - he’s covering worse and worse nowadays, but then he’s sober less and less often so Lizzie can’t exactly blame him - and sighs.
“I love you,” he says. He makes an effort to sound sincere, and Lizzie finds herself grateful for this.
“I think you did, once,” she murmurs. “Of course, your problem is that you love everyone.”
Gabriel slams to his feet, anger dancing across his features and rendering them ugly.
“Oh, if we’re going to talk about problems,” he spits, “Do you know what your problem is?”
Lizzie does not flinch. “Yes,” she replies. “You.”
Gabriel laughs, mocking and bitter. “Oh, right, blame it all on me.”
“I’ve done nothing,” Lizzie protests. “None of this is my fault.”
Gabriel sneers; a perfect sneer, one she wants to capture with a pencil because the line his mouth makes is abstractly beautiful. “Ruskin,” he spits.
“I’d rather be Ruskin’s whore than yours,” Lizzie hisses, “At least it pays better!”
Her husband looks as though he’s been slapped; white-faced, he leaves, slamming the door so hard the windows shake.
Lizzie has to count to ten before she actually cares.
{who can stay strong when they only have lies to lean on?}
“We fell in love in the wrong places, Maniac,” Lizzie tells Hunt.
He keeps glancing at the door, as though expecting someone to burst in and put a stop to this. Or perhaps he’s hoping someone will; his mind is broken now. Lizzie thinks she would like to break someone as thoroughly as Annie broke Hunt; at least then she’d know someone cared about her.
“I was naïve,” Lizzie adds, when he seems to be incapable of speech. “You could have touched me and I’d have loved you because I knew no better and we’d have been happy.”
Hunt swallows visibly. “Would we?”
Lizzie shrugs. “Happier than we are now.” She grimaces. “We wouldn’t have fallen for bright flames and got ourselves burned, anyhow.”
“Maybe,” Hunt concedes. He looks awkward, but they both know Lizzie is beyond the help of a card directing her to Dickens’ house for fallen women, and Hunt no longer knows how to communicate with women if he’s not propositioning them with salvation. Celibacy doesn’t suit him; his knuckles are far too crimson.
“You shattered me when you brought Annie here,” Lizzie tells him. “I could blame you for all of this, if I wanted to.”
Hunt looks saddened; Lizzie thinks she may have been too cruel but her feelings are so deadened she can no longer communicate. And anyway, Hunt does so love self-flagellation.
{when your heart explodes is it deathly cold?}
Lizzie paints nothing but coloured streaks for far too long. Ideas are slipping from her; she has forgotten how to like things, how to want things. She has forgotten how to see anything appealing in the world around her. Gabriel has taken the sunshine, and it would all be so much easier if she didn’t love him. She thinks she could enjoy despising him, given the opportunity.
She suspects Ruskin will give up on her eventually; there’s no point in having a protégé who is too drugged and too unhappy and too mad to ever produce any work. And it doesn’t matter if he tries to steady her nerves or not; Lizzie’s nerves are not the problem.
Lizzie suspects he would not have encouraged her to get married as vehemently as he did if he’d known this was going to happen.
{you must let the colours violate the blackness}
It’s not that Lizzie wants to die, because she doesn’t; it’s just that life has not been what it promised to be and so she fills herself with substances that make that crushing betrayal easier to bear. Lizzie thinks of herself trapped in a river, flowers pulled from her slack hands, eyes gazing up at a callous sky that never tried to help. Millais was more prophetic than he knew and Lizzie could happily hate him forever for that; for painting an allegory of her life so perfectly and not even knowing it, keeping it so secret that nobody realised until it was too late. She should have drowned in that tub, should have succumbed; it would have saved her from this, from the future that was not all it said it would be.
Now she’s revered on canvas and sneered at in public; with her expensive dresses and whore’s laughter. Fred fills the papers with the dirty truths and even he looks bored with it all now; Lizzie suspects her mother weeps secretly, her sometime dreams for her daughter dragged through the mud, sodden from the river water.
If only she’d charmed Johnny while she was dying for him. Maybe then she’d have gained stability.
{there is a magic world parallel}
Lizzie waits, impatient, for Gabriel to breathe a name that isn’t hers; she feels like a ghost in this bed, a substitute for a score of other lovers; some Gabriel hasn’t even met yet. He wanted no one but her once; but that was once, and the paint dried, and his passion cooled. Gabriel’s spirit will not and cannot be tied down to anything; Lizzie can barely believe that they’re married now. She supposes it was a stupid whim of Gabriel’s, an idea that he must surely regret now.
She loves him so much, too much; loves him to the extent that she hates him with a passion as bright as her affection ever was. Lizzie shuts her eyes; her body feels heavy and unreal. Lizzie looks up at Gabriel, sweating over her, feeling hopelessly detached, barely acknowledging him working inside her. His eyes are closed, and she wonders if he is trying not to gasp Annie or Jane or Fanny, or some combination of the three.
Still, in spite of all this Lizzie is an artist. And artists take things that are natural and normal, add colour and shine and depth to them, and feed them back better and brighter and more real than they ever were in the first place. So she tips her head back and tilts her hips and wails as hard as she ever did when her body was lined with fire, nails in Gabriel’s back.
And he doesn’t realise, doesn’t know. Gabriel laughs down at her afterwards, looking happier than he has done since they married; he does not realise her deception and for a few delicious seconds Lizzie feels a rush of power that she has not felt in the longest time.
{so leave your daily hell}
Things must be getting bad, Lizzie supposes, for Annie and Effie to be sitting at the table looking earnest. Annie has a basic veneer of manners and posture to try and conceal her less than pretty roots, while Effie is still a lady for all the scandal that has danced around her name; they’re dressed beautifully, elegantly, with the placid façade of happiness or at the very least easily-concealed misery. But Lizzie’s true love has shattered, unlike Effie’s, and she did not learn when to cut her losses and escape, like Annie. Now the two of them are here to shower her with pity and Lizzie can’t work out whether to love or hate them for it; she knows she must be sick for them to deign to talk to each other and to come together to help her.
“Let us take you away,” Effie breathes. “I can bring you to stay with friends of mine. Some fresh air, a change of scenery. Johnny would escort us.”
The idea is almost appealing. “The Ruskins-” Lizzie begins.
“Fuck the Ruskins,” Annie cuts in.
“Gabriel-”
“Fuck Gabriel,” Effie interrupts.
It is easy for them to say; much too easy. Lizzie stays silent, and watches Annie pick through the painting paraphernalia scattered about; there are bottles of laudanum mixed among it all, empty and full, a few too many.
“You need to get off this,” Annie snaps, voice sharp and scared. “Lizzie, it’ll kill you faster than anything.”
Lizzie and Annie have never really liked each other and lord knows where Effie fits into all this. Still, Lizzie is touched by their attempt, touched that they think her worth this.
“We can leave next week,” Effie promises.
“I’m sorry.” Lizzie feels breathless. “I’m sorry, I just - I just can’t.”
She doesn’t know if she’s choosing the laudanum or Gabriel; she supposes they amount to one and the same these days.
{it’s not a question}
Hunt’s studio is warm and quiet and it seems so long ago, kneeling on the floor here, feeling self-conscious and uncertain. Lizzie can’t remember her own feelings without a certain amount of bemused disbelief; she can’t think of herself as ever being that naïve. But she was; she sewed hats and dreamed at night while her father boasted of rightful glory they never really deserved. And then she knelt on the dusty floor of Hunt’s studio and everything changed. There is no evidence of this change; her face is concealed beneath new layers of oil, but she was here once. It was here, in this room, that the old Lizzie Siddal died.
“You’re not yourself,” Hunt half-gasps; he looks aghast.
“No,” Lizzie corrects him, “This is myself now.” Her voice does not sound like her own.
“You’re drunk,” Hunt says, taking a step towards her and then hesitating. Lizzie is; and the last dregs of her laudanum bottle are oozing onto the floorboards at home. Lord knows where her husband is.
“You wanted me once,” she says. “When I was a girl here, knelt for you.” She’s weeping, though she wishes that she was not. “Why wouldn’t you have just taken me then, saved me then?”
Hunt looks wretched; his mouth moves wordlessly. He is not angry, which is nearly a surprise; Lizzie supposes he cannot only be made of dull fury.
She’s plucking at the strings and buttons of her bodice, her own tears dripping onto her bared breasts.
“Want me,” she breathes, falling apart for him, “Want me and maybe it will not be too late.”
Hunt crosses to her, pulling her hands away from her clothes. With tender hands, he closes her torn-open dress; he’s looking at her entirely without lust, pity sparking in his gaze, and Lizzie supposes that she must really have broken. Hunt kisses her forehead.
“I’ll take you home,” he says, more gentle than she would ever have believed he could be.
{if i can fight by your side and withstand anything}
“You dragged your mother into the most godawful lies,” Lizzie remarks to Fred. A sunny day, she thinks Gabriel is with William and Ned, feigning friendship so he can steal Jane. Perhaps tonight, if he comes home, she will ask him how it is going. “All those promises of propriety that you all pissed on.”
Fred flinches; he looks sicker than ever. Lizzie reaches out to him, and a moment later manages to catch his hand. It’s shaking.
“I didn’t know they were lies,” he mumbles.
“Yes, you did,” Lizzie tells him simply. “You just didn’t care. It’s all right. I forgive you.”
She’s gaining clarity, the further she sinks. It’s almost worth it, though Fred looks as though he is being torn apart inside. His love is too selfless, it unsettles her.
“I’m so sorry,” he stumbles.
Lizzie smiles; Ophelia’s tired martyred smile. “I’m sorry too.” Fred frowns quizzically. “Well, it was never going to be you.”
She thinks she sees tears in his eyes as he turns away, but her own vision is clear. There has been too much crying in this marriage already.
{but i forgot you said “girl, if you come…”}
Effie is too understanding, slips too often from the room to leave Johnny and Lizzie alone. Not that there’s anything new to say. Lizzie sips at the tea she’s been given and she’s been shaking for hours. She’s been pale for weeks; it’s astonishing that she has any spirit left at all.
“You’re selfish, Johnny,” she tells him. “Do you know that? I nearly died and all you cared about was your painting.”
Johnny looks at her thoughtfully; there’s misery in his gaze. “I sat up all night because I thought I’d killed you,” he says quietly.
It’s something; and Lizzie finds herself surprised. “You’d have finished it anyway,” she tells him. “The painting was what mattered.”
“Yes,” Johnny agrees. “I would have. But that makes me no different from Gabriel, or from Maniac.”
Lizzie concedes that. “You rip people’s lives apart and stroll on to collect the money,” she sighs without bitterness. She flickers her gaze back to Johnny, whose face is twisted. “Ruskin thinks you have lost your genius,” she says. “But I suppose you have happiness, you no longer need talent.”
Johnny grimaces; she can see where she’s stung him. But he does not argue back.
“Tell me if I can help you, Lizzie,” he says steadily.
“You can’t make him love me,” she sighs. “Not even you, golden boy, can do that.” She sighs again; hurting has lost its appeal. “I liked Bubbles,” she adds. “It wasn’t beautiful, but it reminded me that I once felt like that.”
Johnny pours them both so more tea, sadness flicking at his mouth.
{“…you’d better bring your own sun”}
She finds them in their favourite haunt, drinking and laughing. Gabriel is absent, as usual; Lizzie doesn’t want to know where he is. She doesn’t ask, not anymore. But she slips into his usual seat, and looks at his friends. The Brotherhood have cracked and faded from the over-excited boys she once knew and loved. Lizzie is not the only one unrecognisable now; she doesn’t know whether to be reassured.
“You shouldn’t be here, Lizzie,” Hunt says, looking anxiously about.
“I’m a married woman, I’ll come where I like,” she replies; a feeble excuse.
“We should get you home,” Fred asserts. “Gabriel will worry.”
“He will not,” Lizzie sighs. “Tell me, do you know whose bed he’s in right now?” The men avoid her gaze, and each other’s. “No,” Lizzie murmurs, half to herself. “I suppose there is rather a long list of options.”
Johnny - sweet, selfish Johnny - reaches for her hand. “Lizzie,” he whispers.
She looks at him - John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Fred Walters; such names known by the public but no one knows what corrupted, lost bastards they truly are - and fumbles up a helpless smile.
“He’s just waiting for me to die, isn’t he?”
No one says anything for a long, quiet moment. Finally, Johnny stammers: “I wouldn’t use those exact words.”
“What words would you use, Johnny?” Hunt snaps.
Lizzie curls her fingers, tight, in her skirt. “I want to tell you, every one of you, that you have let me down. And I want you to remember that.”
She gets to the door before they run after her and escort her home, all together. Too little, too late, but oh, her boys are still sweet in their way.
{“sweet girl, you’ve got to bring your own sun”}
Gabriel frowns over drawings, candlelight glinting form his scowl. Lizzie sketches him as he works, pencil shaking in her weak hand. It’s too quiet, and there’s nothing in this room that really matters any more.
“The liquor has run out,” she sighs, “The fireworks have burnt, and this is what we are left with.”
Her husband’s eyes show resentment, and for the first time Lizzie pities him too, not just herself.
“I was dying with or without you,” she mumbles.
“So are you saying I shouldn’t have married you?” Gabriel demands. “I thought that was what you wanted.”
“What I wanted?” Lizzie echoes. She’s drugged, her body numb, and she does not know how much longer she will last. “I want - I wish…” She sets down her pencil. “I do not wish I had not met you, but I do wish I had not loved you.”
Anger sparks in Gabriel’s eyes.
“So I have married you for nothing?”
Lizzie exhales, and feels a cruel smile curl her lips; crueller than she knew she could be.
“Well, still, I have you now.”
Her husband is on his feet, storming over to drag her to her feet, his hands too tight at her wrists. Lizzie’s legs cannot hold her and she falls; Gabriel half pulls her, and she hits her head against the table.
“Kill me then!” she screams. “Fucking kill me, because it cannot get worse! Nothing can ever be worth than this, nothing!”
Gabriel drops her arms, horror spreading across his beautiful face. And it is so like Gabriel not to notice things until it is too late.
“What have I done to you, Lizzie?” he asks, tone hushed with shock.
Lizzie stays crumpled on the floor, glaring balefully up at him through her hair. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” she snarls.
Tomorrow, Gabriel will forget to care; but still, right now, she can see the full beauty of his remorse. It’s almost enough, as he stares down at her. Lizzie bares her teeth, and he turns away, slamming yet another door behind him.
{just enough for everyone}