venus anadyomene (ana/claire) pg
title: venus anadyomene
fandom: lost
character(s)/pairing(s): ana/claire
rating: pg
word count: 220
prompt: copper for femslash100's periodic table challenge (progress 13/30)
spoilers: s2; fire and water
summary: even goddesses fall sometimes.
The first time Ana sees her, she thinks for sure she’s dead and ascended to Mount Olympus. She doesn’t bother to lift her hands from the scorching sand, can’t focus on the pain, because Venus incarnate is walking toward her, blonde hair rippling down her back, her body a cascade of slow curves and soft planes. She’s never seen a woman so reminiscent of a goddess that she felt the urge to get down on her knees and pray. Normally she wasn’t one for myths, intelligentsia sipping coffee in pretentious Italian cafes, but there’s just something about the other woman that stokes her retrograde memories from an art history class she’d taken to fulfill a credit, the only one the college offered that didn’t require her to touch a paint brush.
Claire (she learns is her name) appears so untouchably pure that Ana doesn’t want to mar her with her brass knuckles and bloodstained palms, her problems being what they are. She’d killed, murdered, stolen what wasn’t rightfully hers. Tainted, some would call her. Unworthy. Sick.
But it isn’t until she witnesses Claire with half-moon shadows beneath her eyes, her face bitter, her eyes scared and her arms empty of that baby of hers, that she realizes maybe we’re all at least a little bit broken.
Even goddesses fall sometimes.