Fire in Her Eyes
Author: TheLadyHoll
Pairing: Andy/Miranda
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Yes, they are mine. I own them. Come to me my pretties and dance, DANCE I SAY. Or, more truthfully, not...On a cold winter's day, a young woman arrives in New York City, full of hope and excitement and grand ideals. She stands in the middle of the street taking it all in, not knowing that someone is watching her, and neither could know that their paths would cross years later, under much different circumstances, and learning what the consequences could be when fire and ice collide.
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I don't tend to be a 'one-shot' girl, but something that struck me as I was running the other day and watching the sun come up. Blinking away my bad habit of staring directly into the sun, I could only think of the juxtaposition between the fire Andy has inside her and the cold, frigid nature Miranda has come to be associated with. I also wrote this very, very quickly fearing my battered brain would forget otherwise, so it may not be on par with my usual grammatical fanaticism. On other notes, I WILL update A Flawed Fragility soon, so bear with me, I beg of you. I open the Word document every day, staring at it, reading it over and over again and willing inspiration to come.
So don't be shy to chat me up & tell me what you think!
With her usual impatient gait, Miranda Priestly, Editor-in-Chief of Runway magazine for nearly eighteen years, headed towards the waiting car at the steps of the building. The building itself was a gleaming reflection of the beauty created inside it under Miranda Priestly's direction, and the Elias-Clarke logo shone brightly from the glass paneled walls that climbed nearly 30 stories. It's one flaw however, at least, a flaw in Miranda's opinion - was that there was no pathway for cars to pull up directly to the building. One had to cross the sidewalk in order to reach the street. And this meant occasionally being forced to interact with the sadly, improperly dressed denizens who had the gall to walk the streets of what Miranda considered to be the most beautiful city in the world. Arriving here at 17 from a Midwestern town, Miranda had been awestruck by the beauty and the pace of the city. It was always moving, or being reconstructed or some way or another being improved upon. And that's what she based her own work ethic on as she worked her way up the ranks. The City that Never Sleeps, how apropos, Miranda often thought as she paced her office in the small hours of the morning, not having been home in nearly 24 hours and retrieving a fresh outfit from the closet before beginning her work day that for her, had never finished.
She rarely looked up anymore, her eyes always on what was in her hands or straightforward with acute attention and laser focus at whatever her intention was. No, there was no time for looking around or look at the sky at something when there was so much to do around her and almost always beneath her. As Editor in Chief at Runway magazine, Miranda felt the weight of every employee who depended on her to do her job and to do it well, since their jobs all rested in her hands as to how successful each edition was. And that pressure extended until she had reached an almost manic state to make each edition better than the last. This meant there was no time to be a mentor, or a friend, or to associate with her employees. That would only serve to ease the innate and powerful fear she instilled in each and every person who was in her employ. This meant that they did their jobs with the attention to detail and perfection that Miranda needed, even though she would often rip their work to shreds and demand they re-do whatever they had been working on until it had reached the standards of what it took to be published in Runway magazine.
Fear. That's what she was used to seeing in people's eyes whenever their gazes connected. Even through the smiles, on both sides, one was fake, beautifully practiced and graceful but empty of any true feeling, while the others were filled with fear or dislike - emotions which they tried to hide behind their bared grins. But Miranda could see through all of that. It was only in the two sets of blue eyes that belonged to her five-year old babies that she saw the love and innocence and genuine wonder as they grew. She had thought she had seen it in her husband of a year. But she could see the beginnings of discontent in his eyes and an arrow pierced through her soul. Not at the thought of losing him, God forgive her, but at failing again, failing at being able to maintain a marriage and a failure to provide a father figure to make up for failing at her first marriage and sending their real father away so that they only saw him every other weekend. She knew it bothered Stephen when the little girls talked about daddy, not having transferred the moniker over to him. To the girls he was still 'Teefen'. The subject of having children of their own didn't come up until after the wedding. Only a month or so after they were married, she had come out of the bathroom in her robe, having refreshed herself after their scheduled evening of weekly lovemaking. Stephen brought up the issue and Miranda froze where she stood, holding her robe tightly against her chest as she haltingly told Stephen that after the complications she experienced in her last pregnancy and the emergency Caesarean of the twins, her doctors had told her it would be all but impossible to conceive again, and at her age the risk to both her lives and the potential baby's were too great. She watched his expression as she explained in a cold, brisk manner why they would not be having children. Her manner may have been cold, but her chest and lungs burned with the pent-up emotion the story caused. She had even been willing to consider adoption, despite the celebrity cliché, but Stephen had no interest. It became apparent to her that it wasn't that he wanted to have a child with her, but to have offspring of his own as a source or a symbol of power and virility. And she knew it was only a matter of time before she saw in his eyes what she saw in everybody elses save for her girls. Hate, fear, disgust. With each glance or look that held these emotions, her heart hardened a little more and it was easier and easier to use and harden her own gaze to instill the fear in her employees that would make them succeed. And so the Ice Queen was born, becoming a popular phrase in the papers that deemed her hard and frigid.
Her mind snapped back to the present, to the girl who was still standing almost in the middle of the road.
The girl had been looking up, her hands not even above her eyes to protect them but looking straight up into the sun, one could say almost defiantly, but Miranda could find no sign of the battle thirst or greed or avarice that surrounded her each day and what she saw to some extent, in all the people who went in and out of her office in her shallow world of complexions and complexities, of fashion and fascists who might sit on the Board of Directors that was the only authority Miranda Priestly had to answer to.
No, this was wonder pure and simple. It was only when she looked down again that Miranda nearly caught her gaze, but still she saw in it a familiar but long forgotten hunger. But not a hunger for blood, not the bloodthirst that she had described in others. Hers she saw as a hunger and a thirst for knowledge, and only after she had succeeded in achieving whatever mission of justice she had undoubtedly come here to do would that fire, would that thirst be slaked. Until then, she looked at the world with fire in her eyes and that fire seemed so pure as she was able to face the sun with open eyes, as she did with the whole of New York City.
Fire in her eyes, what a silly descriptor. Certainly hers would be described as a cold fury, flames dulled she knew as the years had taken their toll and used as a means for protection for herself. Her touch was ice and it could burn, and so she let it, encouraged it even, to augment her power and position. But even as her flames had turned to ice perhaps, perhaps it could be that the girl with the fire in her eyes could melt her. And as she passed through the throng of common people to reach the warmth of the waiting car, rather than cold, Miranda felt warned, something she hadn't felt in a long long time and perhaps wouldn't again for years until the right someone walked into her office with a nervous smile, a hideous blue sweater and fire in her eyes.