more genfluff
I'm glad Betty's doing better, Maddie, and I'm sorry I didn't finish this earlier.
I think I want to continue this. My cruel mind is developing a plot.
Also, everyone else, I have way too much writing to do right now, topped off by my six-page English final paper which is due in rough draft Friday. I'll be gone this weekend for my dear friend's birthday and then Fanime. (By the way, anyone gonna be there besides Kiin?) But anything I should update will be, um, sporadic.
But anyway.
Title: The Princess
Fandom: TRC
Wordcount: 643
A/N: Family!gen for Maddie. This was inspired by a short story called "Jesus Christ's Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation" by Sherman Alexie. I highly recommend it.
--
They hand her to you like she is the Promised One, the hero come to earth to save them all, and tell you that she is named Sakura, that her family died in the fire, and can you take care of her? And you want to refuse because there's no room in your life for a baby, but you are forced to re-evaluate the moment you meet her startling green eyes and she smiles at you. There are worlds upon worlds in those eyes that no has ever or will ever see but her, and for the glimpse of them your life has been irreversibly changed.
She melts your heart before you can get the words out, and you can only gulp and nod assent.
--
Sakura grows up in your shadow, and sometimes your arms, trailing after you as you travel in aimless directions, wherever your sequence of jobs takes you. Employers are sometimes leery of hiring a man with a young child, but Sakura is never a trouble, and always wants to do what she can. And you find that the better employers tend to like hiring a family man, no matter how you deny that you are any such thing, scowling at everything but the child who watches you like royalty with laughing green eyes.
She doesn't look much like you, the women sometimes point out, and they ask who her mother was. You say the same thing each time:
I don't know.
You don't? (and their eyes are always disapproving)
She died. That's why I have her child. (You always called her a princess in the privacy of your own head, but no one believed in royalty here and so the sentiment would have been misplaced even if you had not been completely against showing such sentimentality at all.)
And you've brought her with you, everywhere you went?
What the hell was I supposed to do? (It's not as if you have another profession you can simply pick. Your sword is your life - well, half of it now, you suppose. But it's the only thing keeping you and your princess going in these turbulent days of change.)
You sign on to caravans as a guard, and follow them through the country, to each border where you and Sakura are turned back and paid your dues. Then Sakura waves a sad goodbye to her friends and you find another job. Since the revolution no citizens are allowed to leave the borders without a special pass - one that you can't afford to maintain with Sakura to support. And you'd rather have your princess than the backing of a body of men who think that because the old rulers made mistakes, they will not.
--
Papa? she asks you one night, looking up at the starry sky with the wide-eyed wonder only the young possess. You never were able to bring yourself to correct her, not when she looked so happy the first time someone taught her to call you that. Don't you ever get lonely? she continues.
Are you? you ask before you even think of an answer, which is of course no - you have her, and since you first held her she's all the companionship you need. But maybe it's different for her. Sometimes when you think about it late at night, just before you fall asleep, you imagine her voice surrounded, and those nights you dream of a boy with fire in his eyes and a man who smiles like his heart is broken and another improbable family. When you wake up, all you remember is the sound of laughter reverberating through your subconscious, and those days you are in unusually good spirits. Maybe that's how things should be.
But she smiles blindingly at you. How could I be lonely? she asks. I have the whole world right here.
I think I want to continue this. My cruel mind is developing a plot.
Also, everyone else, I have way too much writing to do right now, topped off by my six-page English final paper which is due in rough draft Friday. I'll be gone this weekend for my dear friend's birthday and then Fanime. (By the way, anyone gonna be there besides Kiin?) But anything I should update will be, um, sporadic.
But anyway.
Title: The Princess
Fandom: TRC
Wordcount: 643
A/N: Family!gen for Maddie. This was inspired by a short story called "Jesus Christ's Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation" by Sherman Alexie. I highly recommend it.
--
They hand her to you like she is the Promised One, the hero come to earth to save them all, and tell you that she is named Sakura, that her family died in the fire, and can you take care of her? And you want to refuse because there's no room in your life for a baby, but you are forced to re-evaluate the moment you meet her startling green eyes and she smiles at you. There are worlds upon worlds in those eyes that no has ever or will ever see but her, and for the glimpse of them your life has been irreversibly changed.
She melts your heart before you can get the words out, and you can only gulp and nod assent.
--
Sakura grows up in your shadow, and sometimes your arms, trailing after you as you travel in aimless directions, wherever your sequence of jobs takes you. Employers are sometimes leery of hiring a man with a young child, but Sakura is never a trouble, and always wants to do what she can. And you find that the better employers tend to like hiring a family man, no matter how you deny that you are any such thing, scowling at everything but the child who watches you like royalty with laughing green eyes.
She doesn't look much like you, the women sometimes point out, and they ask who her mother was. You say the same thing each time:
I don't know.
You don't? (and their eyes are always disapproving)
She died. That's why I have her child. (You always called her a princess in the privacy of your own head, but no one believed in royalty here and so the sentiment would have been misplaced even if you had not been completely against showing such sentimentality at all.)
And you've brought her with you, everywhere you went?
What the hell was I supposed to do? (It's not as if you have another profession you can simply pick. Your sword is your life - well, half of it now, you suppose. But it's the only thing keeping you and your princess going in these turbulent days of change.)
You sign on to caravans as a guard, and follow them through the country, to each border where you and Sakura are turned back and paid your dues. Then Sakura waves a sad goodbye to her friends and you find another job. Since the revolution no citizens are allowed to leave the borders without a special pass - one that you can't afford to maintain with Sakura to support. And you'd rather have your princess than the backing of a body of men who think that because the old rulers made mistakes, they will not.
--
Papa? she asks you one night, looking up at the starry sky with the wide-eyed wonder only the young possess. You never were able to bring yourself to correct her, not when she looked so happy the first time someone taught her to call you that. Don't you ever get lonely? she continues.
Are you? you ask before you even think of an answer, which is of course no - you have her, and since you first held her she's all the companionship you need. But maybe it's different for her. Sometimes when you think about it late at night, just before you fall asleep, you imagine her voice surrounded, and those nights you dream of a boy with fire in his eyes and a man who smiles like his heart is broken and another improbable family. When you wake up, all you remember is the sound of laughter reverberating through your subconscious, and those days you are in unusually good spirits. Maybe that's how things should be.
But she smiles blindingly at you. How could I be lonely? she asks. I have the whole world right here.