Ficlet: Reminds Us All of What We Used to Be
Title: Reminds Us All of What We Used to Be
Author: empressearwig
Prompt: 15 - Photograph(s)
Pairing/Character(s): Lulu
Rating: G
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me.
Word Count: 492
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Summary: Lulu was left to try to find her family in pictures she’s not a part of.
Author's Notes: Written for theechochorus.
When Lulu misses her mother the most, she pulls out the photo albums her mother so lovingly put together and flips through them slowly.
She starts with the pictures of just her parents. She traces her finger over the smile on her mother’s face, and marvels that her mother hadn’t been much older than she was now when the picture was taken. Lulu can’t imagine loving someone enough to be able to look at that them way, not now. She wants to experience the same sort of epic love, but in the moments where she’s most honest with herself, she knows she hasn’t found it yet.
Sometimes she thinks that she’s safer that way.
Gradually the albums progress to include pictures from her parents time on the run from the mob. Lucky shows up in the photos, and flashes of envy run through her. In the deepest, most jealous parts of herself, she resents Lucky for having gotten the best of their parents; for getting the family that she never got to experience.
Lucky got to live the Spencer legacy. Lulu was left to try to find her family in pictures she’s not a part of.
As she reaches the pictures that signify her arrival into the world, Lulu pauses. She doesn’t like this part of the story. In a way, her appearance in the family photo albums, her being born, signified the beginning of the end for the Spencer’s as a family. There are a few years of happy family photos, with all four of the members of the family together, but eventually her father disappears from group shots, one brother is replaced with another, and her mother’s face loses the radiant luster of a woman utterly in love with her husband and is replaced by with a woman who tries her best to pretend that everything is alright for her daughter who doesn’t understand why everyone keeps leaving.
Lulu wonders if she isn’t the curse Helena Cassadine put on her parents marriage.
The albums stop after her mother got sick. Lulu knows there’s a box of photographs somewhere, ones that Grandma Lesley dutifully took of Christmas’, birthdays, and every other occasion that seemed to require immortalization. Lulu knows that Lesley took the pictures for her mother, in hopes that someday Laura would wake up and not have missed out completely on her daughter’s life.
Because Lulu clings to the same hope, she smiled and posed and tried to hide the fact that she wished it was her mom wielding the camera.
As Lulu closes the final album, she thinks she ought to start a new one. An album with photographs of Nikolas and Spencer, Lucky with Cameron and Jake, of her father, on the rare occasions when he stands still long enough to have his picture taken.
It never occurs to her that she should include pictures of her life.
After all, she’s used to family photographs she’s not in.
Author: empressearwig
Prompt: 15 - Photograph(s)
Pairing/Character(s): Lulu
Rating: G
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me.
Word Count: 492
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Summary: Lulu was left to try to find her family in pictures she’s not a part of.
Author's Notes: Written for theechochorus.
When Lulu misses her mother the most, she pulls out the photo albums her mother so lovingly put together and flips through them slowly.
She starts with the pictures of just her parents. She traces her finger over the smile on her mother’s face, and marvels that her mother hadn’t been much older than she was now when the picture was taken. Lulu can’t imagine loving someone enough to be able to look at that them way, not now. She wants to experience the same sort of epic love, but in the moments where she’s most honest with herself, she knows she hasn’t found it yet.
Sometimes she thinks that she’s safer that way.
Gradually the albums progress to include pictures from her parents time on the run from the mob. Lucky shows up in the photos, and flashes of envy run through her. In the deepest, most jealous parts of herself, she resents Lucky for having gotten the best of their parents; for getting the family that she never got to experience.
Lucky got to live the Spencer legacy. Lulu was left to try to find her family in pictures she’s not a part of.
As she reaches the pictures that signify her arrival into the world, Lulu pauses. She doesn’t like this part of the story. In a way, her appearance in the family photo albums, her being born, signified the beginning of the end for the Spencer’s as a family. There are a few years of happy family photos, with all four of the members of the family together, but eventually her father disappears from group shots, one brother is replaced with another, and her mother’s face loses the radiant luster of a woman utterly in love with her husband and is replaced by with a woman who tries her best to pretend that everything is alright for her daughter who doesn’t understand why everyone keeps leaving.
Lulu wonders if she isn’t the curse Helena Cassadine put on her parents marriage.
The albums stop after her mother got sick. Lulu knows there’s a box of photographs somewhere, ones that Grandma Lesley dutifully took of Christmas’, birthdays, and every other occasion that seemed to require immortalization. Lulu knows that Lesley took the pictures for her mother, in hopes that someday Laura would wake up and not have missed out completely on her daughter’s life.
Because Lulu clings to the same hope, she smiled and posed and tried to hide the fact that she wished it was her mom wielding the camera.
As Lulu closes the final album, she thinks she ought to start a new one. An album with photographs of Nikolas and Spencer, Lucky with Cameron and Jake, of her father, on the rare occasions when he stands still long enough to have his picture taken.
It never occurs to her that she should include pictures of her life.
After all, she’s used to family photographs she’s not in.