Prompt 10- Awake
Title: Awake
Author: summoning_muse
Format & Word Count: Ficlet, 1060
Rating: Very Mild PG13
Prompt: 10, Awake
Warning: ... Not a very happy bday fic. Not actually remotely related to Remus's birthday. Also, decisively odd. And creepy, and hopefully sad.
Summary: If she sleeps she may miss him. So she stays awake.
Author's Note: All this, this story is inspired by Regina Spektor's song 'The Flowers'. I'd recommend it for ANYONE to look it up. The song, and the prompt, are deeply signifcant to me. I hope someone looks up the song and reads this, but eh, that's optimistic. This is going to have two parts, though I think quiet a few parts of my challenges will deal with it. I sort of want to finish this up, but I feel it will work better in two sections. I'm trying to decide which of the other prompts to have for the second part, but it will follow the scond part of the song 'The Flowers'. I do feel terrible about doing this to Remus on his birthday (oh, he's not even IN this fic, just a memory.) but nothing else could come of this prompt, not with me, not with the song I attribute it to.
Awake
The rain pattered- pat, pat, pat, pat- an endless mantra outside her glassy window. The world outside it was dark, barren, cold, a moonless night with no beautiful, healing light visible anywhere. All that was left was cold, and the very real absence of it's silvery tendrils. She gazed outside, eyes uncomprehending, a thin, pale, slender hand placed against the pane, encroached by white glassy fog, as if attempting to freeze her living body as well as the chains it had struck upon her soul. It was cool to touch, and she wondered about this feeling, these icy crystals underneath her palm, that was currently starting to burn in protest. She almost found it ironic her body could still feel, when her mind had grown so numb.
She found it ironic the cold could burn so much. And she found it ironic she would think like a bloody, depressed muggle poet. Not ironic enough to stem her morbid thoughts, of course, but she appreciated the ridiculousness of the situation all the same, in a deeply black humorous way. He was the one who was supposed to go off on ridiculously morbid lines of thinking. And she was the one who was supposed to blink, fall on her arse, and laugh. The world was completely and utterly wrong, and she couldn’t get it to straighten itself. She couldn’t get it to work, and throughout this all she could feel was this bone-chilling cold.
Oh, but her body could always feel couldn't it? Could feel the ice under her hand, could feel the nausea in the mornings, would soon feel kicks and contradictions, could remember so strongly it was as if it was not just a memory the feel of him touching her, caressing her, kissing her, devouring her, running his hands along her spine, and her legs, and her breasts....
Her hand tightened against the cold window, a quick spasm of the muscles, and she did her best to clear her mind. To not remember those things. Those beautiful, wondrous, terrible things. She was getting better at it, at emptying her mind, but it was always there, just below the surface of her consciousness, waiting to torment her in her every dream.
She would not fall to nightmares. Better a hellish, grayish reality than a nightmare of lust and love and longing that has left you broken and cold and a shadow of what you once were. She may never have been perfect, she may have been clumsy and silly and odd and ditsy and everything else, and she wanted herself back. She had thought last year the girl in the mirror was a lie, the girl devoid of color. But that girl was still herself. Now she did not know who she even was.
"Nymphadora?" She turned slightly at the sound of her mother's voice, the old aggravation and annoyance at the dreaded name still there, but she didn't have the energy for it anymore.
"Yes, Mum?" Her voice sounded tired and croaked even to her; and it cracked slightly from a general lack of recent use- she was actually rather surprised the words had gotten out of her vocal cords correctly. The day had finally come that Nymphadora Tonks was no longer a chatterbox. Once predicted as a sure sign of the apocalypse, And the thing was, she wasn’t sure that it wasn’t.
"You've been sitting here for hours, dear." Mum's voice was worried, thick with apprehension, "It's nearly midnight, don't you think you'd like to sleep-"
"No." She said, childishly, still staring out the foggy glass into the black nothingness. "I have to watch." And wait. For eternity.
"Dora..." she twitched. It was a silly reaction. She had been Dora her entire life, since Dad had first sobered up after his I-have-a-daughter! Let's-get-pissed! binge, and realized that Mum had actually had him sign the magical contracts so his daughter’s birth name was bloody Nymphadora. He wasn't the only one to ever call her Dora. She should be outraged, truly, at him stealing her name from her- and yet, she could not hear it anymore, without thinking back to those whispered caresses, to the safety of being in his arms, to his crooked smile, to-
Stop it.
"Dora," Mum began again, and she tried not to twitch, but she did, but Mom ignored it and continued on, "Wasting away like this, its not- you could have a miscarriage..."
Her arms gripped her abdomen convulsively, protectively, over the little miniscule life stored inside that she could not even feel yet. Except in everything he had cost her. Her soul felt it all.
"No." She whispered. "They can't take this away." They can't take away this. This is the last thing I have to connect to him. They won't take away my child, they won't, they won't they won't they won't they won't they won't they won't they won't-
"It's... it’s fact dear. You need to be strong, in order to- and you need to sleep, and to eat and-" A part of her felt terrible for worrying Mum so terribly when she was grieving over Dad's flight for his life so terribly, but she somehow couldn't trudge past this. She knew she should be strong for Mum, and smile, and fight this war to the best that she could.But she couldn’t. Not anymore. Not without him.
"I can't sleep." She said again, automatically. "He might come back if I sleep. They might take the baby away if I sleep." It was illogical, it was absurd, and it was the only thing she knew anymore.
"Dora..." Mum whispered, sadly, but she sighed deeply, and walked up to her, kissing her on the head as if she was a small child- and in some ways, she felt like a small child, and wanted to cry in her Mummy's arms and beg for everything to be better again- and left to go to her room. Where she knew that she’d just as very bad an attempt as sleep as her daughter, waiting for any whim of news, any tappings of an owl, from her dear, hunted, detested husband. And she wondered why. She stared at the ring on her finger, that symbol that pledged forever, and wondered why he couldn't be in her arms now. Why.
She waited, and stayed awake.
Author: summoning_muse
Format & Word Count: Ficlet, 1060
Rating: Very Mild PG13
Prompt: 10, Awake
Warning: ... Not a very happy bday fic. Not actually remotely related to Remus's birthday. Also, decisively odd. And creepy, and hopefully sad.
Summary: If she sleeps she may miss him. So she stays awake.
Author's Note: All this, this story is inspired by Regina Spektor's song 'The Flowers'. I'd recommend it for ANYONE to look it up. The song, and the prompt, are deeply signifcant to me. I hope someone looks up the song and reads this, but eh, that's optimistic. This is going to have two parts, though I think quiet a few parts of my challenges will deal with it. I sort of want to finish this up, but I feel it will work better in two sections. I'm trying to decide which of the other prompts to have for the second part, but it will follow the scond part of the song 'The Flowers'. I do feel terrible about doing this to Remus on his birthday (oh, he's not even IN this fic, just a memory.) but nothing else could come of this prompt, not with me, not with the song I attribute it to.
Awake
The rain pattered- pat, pat, pat, pat- an endless mantra outside her glassy window. The world outside it was dark, barren, cold, a moonless night with no beautiful, healing light visible anywhere. All that was left was cold, and the very real absence of it's silvery tendrils. She gazed outside, eyes uncomprehending, a thin, pale, slender hand placed against the pane, encroached by white glassy fog, as if attempting to freeze her living body as well as the chains it had struck upon her soul. It was cool to touch, and she wondered about this feeling, these icy crystals underneath her palm, that was currently starting to burn in protest. She almost found it ironic her body could still feel, when her mind had grown so numb.
She found it ironic the cold could burn so much. And she found it ironic she would think like a bloody, depressed muggle poet. Not ironic enough to stem her morbid thoughts, of course, but she appreciated the ridiculousness of the situation all the same, in a deeply black humorous way. He was the one who was supposed to go off on ridiculously morbid lines of thinking. And she was the one who was supposed to blink, fall on her arse, and laugh. The world was completely and utterly wrong, and she couldn’t get it to straighten itself. She couldn’t get it to work, and throughout this all she could feel was this bone-chilling cold.
Oh, but her body could always feel couldn't it? Could feel the ice under her hand, could feel the nausea in the mornings, would soon feel kicks and contradictions, could remember so strongly it was as if it was not just a memory the feel of him touching her, caressing her, kissing her, devouring her, running his hands along her spine, and her legs, and her breasts....
Her hand tightened against the cold window, a quick spasm of the muscles, and she did her best to clear her mind. To not remember those things. Those beautiful, wondrous, terrible things. She was getting better at it, at emptying her mind, but it was always there, just below the surface of her consciousness, waiting to torment her in her every dream.
She would not fall to nightmares. Better a hellish, grayish reality than a nightmare of lust and love and longing that has left you broken and cold and a shadow of what you once were. She may never have been perfect, she may have been clumsy and silly and odd and ditsy and everything else, and she wanted herself back. She had thought last year the girl in the mirror was a lie, the girl devoid of color. But that girl was still herself. Now she did not know who she even was.
"Nymphadora?" She turned slightly at the sound of her mother's voice, the old aggravation and annoyance at the dreaded name still there, but she didn't have the energy for it anymore.
"Yes, Mum?" Her voice sounded tired and croaked even to her; and it cracked slightly from a general lack of recent use- she was actually rather surprised the words had gotten out of her vocal cords correctly. The day had finally come that Nymphadora Tonks was no longer a chatterbox. Once predicted as a sure sign of the apocalypse, And the thing was, she wasn’t sure that it wasn’t.
"You've been sitting here for hours, dear." Mum's voice was worried, thick with apprehension, "It's nearly midnight, don't you think you'd like to sleep-"
"No." She said, childishly, still staring out the foggy glass into the black nothingness. "I have to watch." And wait. For eternity.
"Dora..." she twitched. It was a silly reaction. She had been Dora her entire life, since Dad had first sobered up after his I-have-a-daughter! Let's-get-pissed! binge, and realized that Mum had actually had him sign the magical contracts so his daughter’s birth name was bloody Nymphadora. He wasn't the only one to ever call her Dora. She should be outraged, truly, at him stealing her name from her- and yet, she could not hear it anymore, without thinking back to those whispered caresses, to the safety of being in his arms, to his crooked smile, to-
Stop it.
"Dora," Mum began again, and she tried not to twitch, but she did, but Mom ignored it and continued on, "Wasting away like this, its not- you could have a miscarriage..."
Her arms gripped her abdomen convulsively, protectively, over the little miniscule life stored inside that she could not even feel yet. Except in everything he had cost her. Her soul felt it all.
"No." She whispered. "They can't take this away." They can't take away this. This is the last thing I have to connect to him. They won't take away my child, they won't, they won't they won't they won't they won't they won't they won't they won't-
"It's... it’s fact dear. You need to be strong, in order to- and you need to sleep, and to eat and-" A part of her felt terrible for worrying Mum so terribly when she was grieving over Dad's flight for his life so terribly, but she somehow couldn't trudge past this. She knew she should be strong for Mum, and smile, and fight this war to the best that she could.But she couldn’t. Not anymore. Not without him.
"I can't sleep." She said again, automatically. "He might come back if I sleep. They might take the baby away if I sleep." It was illogical, it was absurd, and it was the only thing she knew anymore.
"Dora..." Mum whispered, sadly, but she sighed deeply, and walked up to her, kissing her on the head as if she was a small child- and in some ways, she felt like a small child, and wanted to cry in her Mummy's arms and beg for everything to be better again- and left to go to her room. Where she knew that she’d just as very bad an attempt as sleep as her daughter, waiting for any whim of news, any tappings of an owl, from her dear, hunted, detested husband. And she wondered why. She stared at the ring on her finger, that symbol that pledged forever, and wondered why he couldn't be in her arms now. Why.
She waited, and stayed awake.