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picfor10002007-02-28 11:50 pm
morvoren.livejournal.com) wrote in picfor10002007-02-28 11:50 pm
Entry tags:
In This Twilight - original fiction
TITLE: In This Twilight
AUTHOR:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
morvoren
FANDOM: Original
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Forslodwick's Fifth annual Picture is Worth a Thousand Words challenge. Picture is here.
Tucked away, down in the bottom of a jewelry box she hardly ever opens, she keeps photos of houses. Seven different houses in seven different cities – one for each of the women she’s been.
It’s always the same story – her parents are dead, some horrible accident years before. She knows how to look properly sad and strong, forged by the tragedy, and no one asks questions. No one thinks to dig deeper under the surface.
She’s never been able to explain it, not even to herself, this restlessness that shadows her heels state to state, following her steps across the country.
She keeps the wedding rings in the same jewelry box, rattling slightly under the false bottom as she bumps a drawer closed with her hip. Seven wedding rings from seven different men. Six of them bought her diamonds in yellow gold, too set in their ways and their image of her to see past the illusions. Diamonds are cold against her skin; she flashed fire at every opportunity, desperate to break the mould and escape the bars that caged her.
The seventh gave her his grandmother’s wedding band, sterling silver claddaugh with an emerald in the heart. She regrets him – almost regrets leaving, almost regrets breaking his heart with her own needs and wants.
He was her first love, first ring, first house.
Almost.
She has little pieces of her former lives scattered throughout her bedroom; necklaces and tee-shirts, perfume bottles and picture frames. All small things, easy to pack.
It was her birthday last month – the one on this birth certificate, the closest to her real one she’s ever dared to go. He gave her a slate waterfall for her desk. It won’t fit in her bags anywhere, and she told him the tears in her eyes were happiness. She’s always been an excellent liar.
But he knows, this one, the eighth man she’s married, about the value of secrets. He has his own, tucked away into drawers and memories, and doesn’t press her about the past.
The others all poked and prodded and nagged, begrudging her the silences; they stared accusingly at the few pictures she’s kept, sighed and turned away when she woke screaming in the night.
He kisses her in the silence, this one; he puts his few pictures on the mantle next to hers. They hold each other in the night, and the nightmares stay away.
He gave her a sapphire in platinum; smiled wider at her blue ball gown paired with the flowing veils, loving her defiance of the traditional white wedding dress. He left opal earrings next to her on the pillow the first time he went away on business and she thinks that this time it could be different. With all the others, she married fast, and barely lasted a year in the chains of wife. The urge to walk away swirled around her like the skirts they preferred her to wear. More than once she’d cursed the fact that she needed the closeness of someone else to keep her content – at least temporarily.
This marriage, though – this one has lasted for two years, and counting. She’s learning to cook, with him as a patient teacher despite more than a few scorched meals. She wears jeans or sweats around the house, and nothing in her life has ever been this easy.
The wedding vows said ‘forever’. She’s starting to believe it.
The threads begin to fray, just a little, when she refuses a business trip with him. Too much of her own work is unfinished, and she can’t spare the time. It’s their first real fight, and he storms out of the house cursing her.
He’s gone for two weeks, and she can’t get past the fear that this time she’s been left behind.
She never understood the pain it must leave in the hearts of the men she’s abandoned, how it must rip apart everything inside and stitch it back together wrong, uneven seams and jagged edges and hurt and anger in spades. The box of her past sits open on her dresser and she spends hours flipping through it, staring blankly at the pictures and the rings.
She buys postcards and sits at her desk for two days before she can think what to say. Three words that are barely enough and yet too much, I’m sorry and goodbye scribed on the backs to ease her guilt. She leaves them at her old houses, cramming them into the mailboxes. It’s all she can do to quiet the screams in her head.
He comes back still angry and she clings to him, begs him to forgive her without words, pouring her love and agony into her kisses, binding him to her.
She’s been lonely before. She’s never been afraid to be alone.
Two more business trips, two more fights. Everything is falling apart, like sand slipping through her hands. She takes her pictures off the mantle, but can’t bring herself to pack them away. Putting them into her suitcase seems too final.
She weeps bitterly, the first time she’s cried in too many years to count, when he’s been gone a month, and she knows she has to go. Has to run first, before she is left behind.
She leaves the waterfall. She’s got her suitcase almost packed when she goes into his dresser for one of his shirts and finds it. It’s a worn old cigar box, and she almost puts it back, but the rattling piques her curiosity and she opens it.
His arms around three different women, pictures in front of three different houses. Three rings with different initials and it freezes her in her tracks. She sits on the floor for a long time before she has the courage to call, begging him to return.
She takes her box and his down to the kitchen. She sets them on the table and waits, hope and fear at war in her heart, for him to come home.
AUTHOR:
morvorenFANDOM: Original
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For
slodwick's Fifth annual Picture is Worth a Thousand Words challenge. Picture is here.
Tucked away, down in the bottom of a jewelry box she hardly ever opens, she keeps photos of houses. Seven different houses in seven different cities – one for each of the women she’s been.
It’s always the same story – her parents are dead, some horrible accident years before. She knows how to look properly sad and strong, forged by the tragedy, and no one asks questions. No one thinks to dig deeper under the surface.
She’s never been able to explain it, not even to herself, this restlessness that shadows her heels state to state, following her steps across the country.
She keeps the wedding rings in the same jewelry box, rattling slightly under the false bottom as she bumps a drawer closed with her hip. Seven wedding rings from seven different men. Six of them bought her diamonds in yellow gold, too set in their ways and their image of her to see past the illusions. Diamonds are cold against her skin; she flashed fire at every opportunity, desperate to break the mould and escape the bars that caged her.
The seventh gave her his grandmother’s wedding band, sterling silver claddaugh with an emerald in the heart. She regrets him – almost regrets leaving, almost regrets breaking his heart with her own needs and wants.
He was her first love, first ring, first house.
Almost.
She has little pieces of her former lives scattered throughout her bedroom; necklaces and tee-shirts, perfume bottles and picture frames. All small things, easy to pack.
It was her birthday last month – the one on this birth certificate, the closest to her real one she’s ever dared to go. He gave her a slate waterfall for her desk. It won’t fit in her bags anywhere, and she told him the tears in her eyes were happiness. She’s always been an excellent liar.
But he knows, this one, the eighth man she’s married, about the value of secrets. He has his own, tucked away into drawers and memories, and doesn’t press her about the past.
The others all poked and prodded and nagged, begrudging her the silences; they stared accusingly at the few pictures she’s kept, sighed and turned away when she woke screaming in the night.
He kisses her in the silence, this one; he puts his few pictures on the mantle next to hers. They hold each other in the night, and the nightmares stay away.
He gave her a sapphire in platinum; smiled wider at her blue ball gown paired with the flowing veils, loving her defiance of the traditional white wedding dress. He left opal earrings next to her on the pillow the first time he went away on business and she thinks that this time it could be different. With all the others, she married fast, and barely lasted a year in the chains of wife. The urge to walk away swirled around her like the skirts they preferred her to wear. More than once she’d cursed the fact that she needed the closeness of someone else to keep her content – at least temporarily.
This marriage, though – this one has lasted for two years, and counting. She’s learning to cook, with him as a patient teacher despite more than a few scorched meals. She wears jeans or sweats around the house, and nothing in her life has ever been this easy.
The wedding vows said ‘forever’. She’s starting to believe it.
The threads begin to fray, just a little, when she refuses a business trip with him. Too much of her own work is unfinished, and she can’t spare the time. It’s their first real fight, and he storms out of the house cursing her.
He’s gone for two weeks, and she can’t get past the fear that this time she’s been left behind.
She never understood the pain it must leave in the hearts of the men she’s abandoned, how it must rip apart everything inside and stitch it back together wrong, uneven seams and jagged edges and hurt and anger in spades. The box of her past sits open on her dresser and she spends hours flipping through it, staring blankly at the pictures and the rings.
She buys postcards and sits at her desk for two days before she can think what to say. Three words that are barely enough and yet too much, I’m sorry and goodbye scribed on the backs to ease her guilt. She leaves them at her old houses, cramming them into the mailboxes. It’s all she can do to quiet the screams in her head.
He comes back still angry and she clings to him, begs him to forgive her without words, pouring her love and agony into her kisses, binding him to her.
She’s been lonely before. She’s never been afraid to be alone.
Two more business trips, two more fights. Everything is falling apart, like sand slipping through her hands. She takes her pictures off the mantle, but can’t bring herself to pack them away. Putting them into her suitcase seems too final.
She weeps bitterly, the first time she’s cried in too many years to count, when he’s been gone a month, and she knows she has to go. Has to run first, before she is left behind.
She leaves the waterfall. She’s got her suitcase almost packed when she goes into his dresser for one of his shirts and finds it. It’s a worn old cigar box, and she almost puts it back, but the rattling piques her curiosity and she opens it.
His arms around three different women, pictures in front of three different houses. Three rings with different initials and it freezes her in her tracks. She sits on the floor for a long time before she has the courage to call, begging him to return.
She takes her box and his down to the kitchen. She sets them on the table and waits, hope and fear at war in her heart, for him to come home.
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