[mirrormask] His Name Was
I’m gonna go ahead and semi-dedicate this to Pixieness, who seems to be my main source of ficspiration these days. And wrote this in a style I usually hate but that I found strangely fitting for the subject.
Title: His Name Was
Fandom: MirrorMask
Pairing: Valentine/Helena Campbell, unValentine/Helena Campbell
Rating: PG
Summary: She was nothing like the Princess... she doesn’t know why she expected him to be anything like Valentine.
His Name Was
_______________________________________________
She asked his name as they tossed balls back and forth between them, first three, then four, then six. He told her it was Mark Arthurs, something decidedly unromantic (though perhaps not entirely: Arthurs did sound a bit like authors, but that was stretching it, wasn’t it? If you had to look that hard for romance in something, it probably wasn’t naturally romantic). He had been a Psychology major until recently, when he decided to drop school entirely and search for passion elsewhere.
Some weeks later, after she’d trained him and they were a perfect double act, under the dim light of the empty big-top, he said he’d found his passion in her. Helena was glad for the darkness and the shadows stretching across her face - Mark couldn’t see her struggle not to laugh.
The words were sweet but sticky, like maple syrup gluing her childish fingers together. She kept her mind on the sweetness and tried to ignore the stickiness, tried not to think that he tasted like spearmint gum when he kissed her and that that was not a natural human taste. Mark’s kisses were not as she imagined them to be, as she’d hoped Valentine’s would be: soft and honest and a little bit selfish. Taste a bit like dirt, a bit like copper from biting down on coins to test their worth, from biting his tongue to stop himself from apologizing.
But Mark was too carefree to be anything but gentle and giving. After all, he was a much better person than Valentine. He said sorry a lot (too much) and he always paid for their movie tickets, and he let her have the first and last bite of any dessert they shared. And it was all rather lovely for a time - it was all rather sweet.
Helena liked that she could see all the planes of his face - that his brow knitted and furrowed and rose and wiggled like hers did, like any normal human’s did. There was plenty about Mark she liked. His clean clothes, his rough hands, his clumsiness. She liked that he liked her, that he liked her drawings, and that he never asked her to bend the lead into something more pleasant or less strange.
He asked her to draw him, and she spent all night wondering what he might look like in her dream (in a place she knew was real) and by the morning she’d almost drawn a person that didn’t look exactly like Valentine, and that was something to be proud of. But she never gave it to Mark, told him she wasn’t good at drawing real things, couldn’t bring herself to share a memory of an unbalanced world and the journey she’d been on there (and the people she’d met).
Just as there were things she liked about him, there were things she didn’t. He was clumsy and it was endearing, but it meant his juggling wasn’t perfect - sometimes wasn’t even that good. After a while they learned to work his occasional fumbles into their act, and though they were rare, they made Helena want to rip off her mask and scream at him. She didn’t like that his hair was always flat against his head and that he almost always knew what he’d done to make her sad, when it was reasonable. She didn’t like that he was very modest and very humble (and with traits like that, would never be a very important man).
Helena did not like that when Mark looked into a mirror it was still Mark staring back - and he was pretty but he was plain, as he had a face just like everyone else, one that she could read too well and that held no surprise. His face grew boring and she soon found his eyebrows too heavy or his forehead too broad or his eyes too whatever color they were.
So things got sticky, and eventually lost their sweetness. Maple syrup turned to sap dripping down her hands and arms as she clawed at the bark of a tree, ripping it away, looking for a door or a keyhole or a window or a jewel and a mirror to call back a reluctant tower. Helena told Mark they would be better friends than anything more. She saw in his face that she broke his heart a little, and she hated that. If he wore a mask, she would never have to know.
She told him in the park and she wasn’t sad to see him leave. He loved the circus and he loved her, both simultaneously and separately, so she hadn’t really lost him. But that night, she pretended to be sad, took some sleeping pills, and slept all day and all night, waiting patiently for a dream.
Miss me, don’t you? Kind of flattered. I thought you said I wasn’t your boyfriend?
Behind him is a golden pond - not sunlight reflected on rippling blue water, but an amber ichor swaying slightly with the breeze. It is meant to be golden, it is meant to dull the silhouette of the person standing in front of it. “You’re not. You’re my friend who is a boy.”
And yet I think you love me. (And this he says with a happy sneer.) You love me, you love me!
That doesn’t bother her. She likes the vanity and the singsong lilt in his voice and that he jumps a little, not in a jig but in genuine happiness he can’t fully express in his face, hidden as half of it is. “Suspect you love me too.”
… Probably.
He looks defeated when he says it, but she doesn’t mind that either. Love means giving something away, and Valentine is very selfish, and love is something he has yet to fully comprehend. “It’s just the way it works out in books and dreams and television. We’re not much different.”
I beg to differ! There’s no one quite like me, Helena.
A bit of offense, a bit of pride. (And this she says with a disgusted smirk, which shows on her sleeping face - because the sun is up and it’s pouring through the trailer window, inching closer to her eyes, and she’ll be awake very soon.) “No, there’s no one quite like you.”
Title: His Name Was
Fandom: MirrorMask
Pairing: Valentine/Helena Campbell, unValentine/Helena Campbell
Rating: PG
Summary: She was nothing like the Princess... she doesn’t know why she expected him to be anything like Valentine.
His Name Was
_______________________________________________
She asked his name as they tossed balls back and forth between them, first three, then four, then six. He told her it was Mark Arthurs, something decidedly unromantic (though perhaps not entirely: Arthurs did sound a bit like authors, but that was stretching it, wasn’t it? If you had to look that hard for romance in something, it probably wasn’t naturally romantic). He had been a Psychology major until recently, when he decided to drop school entirely and search for passion elsewhere.
Some weeks later, after she’d trained him and they were a perfect double act, under the dim light of the empty big-top, he said he’d found his passion in her. Helena was glad for the darkness and the shadows stretching across her face - Mark couldn’t see her struggle not to laugh.
The words were sweet but sticky, like maple syrup gluing her childish fingers together. She kept her mind on the sweetness and tried to ignore the stickiness, tried not to think that he tasted like spearmint gum when he kissed her and that that was not a natural human taste. Mark’s kisses were not as she imagined them to be, as she’d hoped Valentine’s would be: soft and honest and a little bit selfish. Taste a bit like dirt, a bit like copper from biting down on coins to test their worth, from biting his tongue to stop himself from apologizing.
But Mark was too carefree to be anything but gentle and giving. After all, he was a much better person than Valentine. He said sorry a lot (too much) and he always paid for their movie tickets, and he let her have the first and last bite of any dessert they shared. And it was all rather lovely for a time - it was all rather sweet.
Helena liked that she could see all the planes of his face - that his brow knitted and furrowed and rose and wiggled like hers did, like any normal human’s did. There was plenty about Mark she liked. His clean clothes, his rough hands, his clumsiness. She liked that he liked her, that he liked her drawings, and that he never asked her to bend the lead into something more pleasant or less strange.
He asked her to draw him, and she spent all night wondering what he might look like in her dream (in a place she knew was real) and by the morning she’d almost drawn a person that didn’t look exactly like Valentine, and that was something to be proud of. But she never gave it to Mark, told him she wasn’t good at drawing real things, couldn’t bring herself to share a memory of an unbalanced world and the journey she’d been on there (and the people she’d met).
Just as there were things she liked about him, there were things she didn’t. He was clumsy and it was endearing, but it meant his juggling wasn’t perfect - sometimes wasn’t even that good. After a while they learned to work his occasional fumbles into their act, and though they were rare, they made Helena want to rip off her mask and scream at him. She didn’t like that his hair was always flat against his head and that he almost always knew what he’d done to make her sad, when it was reasonable. She didn’t like that he was very modest and very humble (and with traits like that, would never be a very important man).
Helena did not like that when Mark looked into a mirror it was still Mark staring back - and he was pretty but he was plain, as he had a face just like everyone else, one that she could read too well and that held no surprise. His face grew boring and she soon found his eyebrows too heavy or his forehead too broad or his eyes too whatever color they were.
So things got sticky, and eventually lost their sweetness. Maple syrup turned to sap dripping down her hands and arms as she clawed at the bark of a tree, ripping it away, looking for a door or a keyhole or a window or a jewel and a mirror to call back a reluctant tower. Helena told Mark they would be better friends than anything more. She saw in his face that she broke his heart a little, and she hated that. If he wore a mask, she would never have to know.
She told him in the park and she wasn’t sad to see him leave. He loved the circus and he loved her, both simultaneously and separately, so she hadn’t really lost him. But that night, she pretended to be sad, took some sleeping pills, and slept all day and all night, waiting patiently for a dream.
Miss me, don’t you? Kind of flattered. I thought you said I wasn’t your boyfriend?
Behind him is a golden pond - not sunlight reflected on rippling blue water, but an amber ichor swaying slightly with the breeze. It is meant to be golden, it is meant to dull the silhouette of the person standing in front of it. “You’re not. You’re my friend who is a boy.”
And yet I think you love me. (And this he says with a happy sneer.) You love me, you love me!
That doesn’t bother her. She likes the vanity and the singsong lilt in his voice and that he jumps a little, not in a jig but in genuine happiness he can’t fully express in his face, hidden as half of it is. “Suspect you love me too.”
… Probably.
He looks defeated when he says it, but she doesn’t mind that either. Love means giving something away, and Valentine is very selfish, and love is something he has yet to fully comprehend. “It’s just the way it works out in books and dreams and television. We’re not much different.”
I beg to differ! There’s no one quite like me, Helena.
A bit of offense, a bit of pride. (And this she says with a disgusted smirk, which shows on her sleeping face - because the sun is up and it’s pouring through the trailer window, inching closer to her eyes, and she’ll be awake very soon.) “No, there’s no one quite like you.”