The "I Usually Hate Memes But I Love This Idea" Meme!
Stolen from daystarsearcherPick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the characters' heads, why I chose certain words, what this
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He rented a car (How long, sir? How long what? How long do you need the car for? How long can I have it?), and familiarized himself with the act of driving again. He threw a bag in the backseat and just…drove. She’d done all the driving for so long and he’d forgotten how relaxing it could be once he got out of the city.
He had no clue where he was going, but that seemed oddly fitting for his situation. He stopped in a small country store, bought water and a sandwich, egg salad wrapped in plastic, a pack of cigarettes, lighter. Beer. A road map, because Eames would approve.
He stayed that night in a long, low motel with sagging beds and threadbare curtains. He sat up late and smoked and sipped a beer and flipped through channels that played nature shows or snow or nature shows about snow. He thought about Eames.
The next day he drove, and drove and drove. The map sat folded on the seat next to him. He rolled the window down and let the cold air fill the car. His head was starting to clear for the first time in…well, a long time. Occasionally he even smiled, just a little.
Another motel, another day of driving. And again. He thought about Eames, how she was doing, her job, her life. He wondered why she hadn’t called, realized he didn’t know what the hell he’d say to her if she did.
Late one night he pulled out a photo of her, tucked in the back of his wallet, folded and creased, weathered with age and repeated handling. Taken at some mind-numbing Christmas police function they’d both attended, standing with…what was his name? Gordon? Maybe. She was holding a drink (bourbon) and her hair was up, but tendrils had escaped. Her face was flushed and she was smiling. Grinning. Who had snapped it? It didn’t matter. Afterwards, a bunch of photos had been pinned to the bulletin board (none of him) and when no one had been looking, he’d taken it. She was so young. He remembered her looking exactly this way, but that memory was somehow combined, morphed, with how she looked now. She was interchangeable, she was beautiful and she was just Eames. She was unlined then, smooth, bright-eyed and eager. He knew she had lines now, fine lines around her eyes, creases between her eyebrows, but somehow they only made her more lovely. His own face, when he dared glance in a mirror, plainly puzzled him these days.
Who the fuck was that? The grey hair, the rounded face, the heavy stature. He had changed so much more dramatically than she. What the hell happened to his face? His body? His hair? He looked like an old man. Life, he knew, would be kinder to Eames, and she would continue to age gracefully, would probably outlive him by at least 20 years. Thank god. He simply couldn’t imagine her going before him. The notion of existing, breathing in a world where she was not was…ludicrous. He knew, had known for a long time, that if she should die before him, he’d last about two weeks without following, in any manner possible.
These are the kinds of things he thought about as he drove.
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