Sacrifice
Title: Sacrifice
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Eloise Hawking
Summary: Some things just have to be done.
Spoilers: Up to 5x08 for sure; rumours and speculation to the end of the season.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Nominated for 'Best Gen Fic' at lost_fic_awards for March 2009.
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She always held back a smirk when anyone had grandly proclaimed that family comes first, family is the reason for being.
Bollocks, she thinks to herself. There are far more pressing matters than blood and flesh. Than the misfortune of genetics that dictated whom was related to whom.
And love - a pleasant distraction, maybe, but nothing to stake your future on. The future, when it came down to it.
She was there, had seen his features soften as he professed his feelings. There was steel in his voice - that surprised her, frankly - but his guileless face betrayed every emotion brewing under the surface. Never had enough sense to hide anything.
Silly Richard, ever the romantic, had lapped it up anyhow.
And the red-haired bint, looking up in muted surprise at his confession. There was a sharpness to that girl, she considers, could see it in her narrow, skeptical gaze, how she took measure of her surroundings. A pity, really. A waste.
Back in the present, she casts a glance down on the man before her, slumped against the stone cavern’s wall with one hand curled around the knife buried in his stomach.
She wouldn’t know he was still alive, but for the tiny puffs escaping his lips into the Orchid’s frigid air. His eyes - surely not inherited from his father, with his haughty, unwavering blue gaze - were glassy, unseeing.
She turns to leave, but a strangled, bubbling breath makes her pause.
"… Mom," Daniel whispers, a thin line of blood trailing down his chin. "Please …"
His head rolls back with one final effort, arm still outstretched towards the ancient, wooden wheel and the pile of dynamite beside it.
You’re a few decades late for teenage rebellion, son, especially for some stupid girl. Leaving me to clean up, as usual.
She gathers the folds of her cloak around her, careful to step past the blood slowly pooling on the cavern’s floor.
- a wailing, pink mess she held so gingerly in her arms for the first time … a son, an heir … the shock of dark hair and the round, brown eyes that followed her every move -
- the meek, obedient teen, lost in his books and uncomfortable in his own skin; not an ounce of strength, resolve … no foresight, that idiot boy -
- an arrogant academic, blinded by his own genius, grabbing the leather-bound journal out of her hands like a greedy child with a new toy; all warnings dying on her lips and she knew she’d made a mistake -
All to end up bleeding to death miles underground. All for naught.
Fool, she thinks bitterly. You stupid fool.