Vanilla 11, chocolate 3, strawberry 7: how bright you glow
Title: how bright you glow
Main Story: In the Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Vanilla 11 (walk in the woods), chocolate 3 (sympathy), strawberry 7 (fireflies), rainbow sprinkles, cherry on top, malt (slysionnachnano's picture prompt).
Word Count: 704
Rating: PG.
Summary: Joanna had not been hurt very much in her life, and she did not understand how someone could suffer so much and still keep walking.
Notes: I swear these people are connected to my main bunch, but how will have to wait for another time. This is a cherry on top because I was consciously imitating Angela Carter, so it's not my usual style at all. Title is from Vienna Teng's Feather Moon.
The first time Joanna Amala met Hugh Marhenke, she knew he was walking wounded, but she could not tell why.
She temped for him once, covering for a secretary out after surgery. She never spoke to him but for two-sentence professional exchanges, polite and impersonal, but she saw the little flinching lines around his eyes, the deepening creases around his mouth, the way he tightened and froze around blonde women and teenage girls.
He was hurting, but she dared not ask why.
She temped again, some months later, for the police station. Not criminal intake; they had policemen and women for that. Joanna was a glorified receptionist again, directing calls, finding detectives; she was happier that way.
She saw him there, the last place she ever expected him. He had a weary-eyed look that made her ache in sympathy, and a solemn-mouthed detective escorting him out, speaking to him in low, compassionate tones. He did not seem to hear her; he left without saying anything.
The detective sighed out a long breath of pity, and turned away towards her office, pausing briefly by Joanna's desk to murmur something of mingled pity and incomprehension: why won't he give up, the poor bastard, it's never going to work.
Joanna did not ask-- she did not even look up; the comment was not directed at her but at the nodding beat cop standing by her. But she took the comment, and that tired, bone-deep pain, and filed them away.
She wanted to know him, after that. She had not been hurt very much in her life, and she did not understand how someone could suffer so much and still keep walking. But how did you ask that? Where did you begin?
It was much, much later, when she finally understood what it was to carry a secret pain beside your heart, that she felt capable of asking.
They were friends, by then, obviously: she could never ask a stranger what she wanted to know. They were good friends, close friends, friends who held each other dear as family. And if they kept secrets from each other, well, so did all friends who wished to be safe. Hers was deadly but his was killing him, and she did not know how to save him, except to ask, and offer hers in exchange if she must.
He came for dinner and she took him for a walk in the woods behind her house, after. It was getting dark; the fireflies were dancing, tracing glowing lines against the treetrunks and weaving not-quite-words against a purpling sky. Joanna took him back to her favorite spot, the quiet little stream that fell translucent over rocks the grey of dirty ice and dead leaves that rustled in the twilight wind. It seemed a place for telling secrets, a place for understanding and for broken hearts to take ease in knowing they were not alone.
Hugh squatted and plucked a leaf from the stream, shredded it methodically between his long doctor's fingers. She watched, as calm as she could be, and tried to remember the words she had memorized. They slipped away from her like the fading light on the water.
Then he stood, and ran a hand through his hair, and his tight-lipped look of sorrow was there and gone, a leaf on the stream.
It was killing him. She knew it was killing him. And she knew how to ask.
"Who did you lose?" she whispered, her voice barely rising above the rustle of the leaves, the glossy sigh of the stream.
He was silent, reaching out to catch a firefly as children do, holding it in cupped hands to watch it blink on and off. A signal fire at the harbor's mouth. It flew away at last, and he blinked as if woken from a trance.
"My daughter," he said, and the pain was there, so thick and raw she could taste it. "I lost my daughter."
There was nothing she could say to that; her own small ache seemed infinitesimal next to that. So she took his hand instead, and they stood together in the dying light, as the stream and the wind carried the fireflies away.
Main Story: In the Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Vanilla 11 (walk in the woods), chocolate 3 (sympathy), strawberry 7 (fireflies), rainbow sprinkles, cherry on top, malt (slysionnachnano's picture prompt).
Word Count: 704
Rating: PG.
Summary: Joanna had not been hurt very much in her life, and she did not understand how someone could suffer so much and still keep walking.
Notes: I swear these people are connected to my main bunch, but how will have to wait for another time. This is a cherry on top because I was consciously imitating Angela Carter, so it's not my usual style at all. Title is from Vienna Teng's Feather Moon.
The first time Joanna Amala met Hugh Marhenke, she knew he was walking wounded, but she could not tell why.
She temped for him once, covering for a secretary out after surgery. She never spoke to him but for two-sentence professional exchanges, polite and impersonal, but she saw the little flinching lines around his eyes, the deepening creases around his mouth, the way he tightened and froze around blonde women and teenage girls.
He was hurting, but she dared not ask why.
She temped again, some months later, for the police station. Not criminal intake; they had policemen and women for that. Joanna was a glorified receptionist again, directing calls, finding detectives; she was happier that way.
She saw him there, the last place she ever expected him. He had a weary-eyed look that made her ache in sympathy, and a solemn-mouthed detective escorting him out, speaking to him in low, compassionate tones. He did not seem to hear her; he left without saying anything.
The detective sighed out a long breath of pity, and turned away towards her office, pausing briefly by Joanna's desk to murmur something of mingled pity and incomprehension: why won't he give up, the poor bastard, it's never going to work.
Joanna did not ask-- she did not even look up; the comment was not directed at her but at the nodding beat cop standing by her. But she took the comment, and that tired, bone-deep pain, and filed them away.
She wanted to know him, after that. She had not been hurt very much in her life, and she did not understand how someone could suffer so much and still keep walking. But how did you ask that? Where did you begin?
It was much, much later, when she finally understood what it was to carry a secret pain beside your heart, that she felt capable of asking.
They were friends, by then, obviously: she could never ask a stranger what she wanted to know. They were good friends, close friends, friends who held each other dear as family. And if they kept secrets from each other, well, so did all friends who wished to be safe. Hers was deadly but his was killing him, and she did not know how to save him, except to ask, and offer hers in exchange if she must.
He came for dinner and she took him for a walk in the woods behind her house, after. It was getting dark; the fireflies were dancing, tracing glowing lines against the treetrunks and weaving not-quite-words against a purpling sky. Joanna took him back to her favorite spot, the quiet little stream that fell translucent over rocks the grey of dirty ice and dead leaves that rustled in the twilight wind. It seemed a place for telling secrets, a place for understanding and for broken hearts to take ease in knowing they were not alone.
Hugh squatted and plucked a leaf from the stream, shredded it methodically between his long doctor's fingers. She watched, as calm as she could be, and tried to remember the words she had memorized. They slipped away from her like the fading light on the water.
Then he stood, and ran a hand through his hair, and his tight-lipped look of sorrow was there and gone, a leaf on the stream.
It was killing him. She knew it was killing him. And she knew how to ask.
"Who did you lose?" she whispered, her voice barely rising above the rustle of the leaves, the glossy sigh of the stream.
He was silent, reaching out to catch a firefly as children do, holding it in cupped hands to watch it blink on and off. A signal fire at the harbor's mouth. It flew away at last, and he blinked as if woken from a trance.
"My daughter," he said, and the pain was there, so thick and raw she could taste it. "I lost my daughter."
There was nothing she could say to that; her own small ache seemed infinitesimal next to that. So she took his hand instead, and they stood together in the dying light, as the stream and the wind carried the fireflies away.
