![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolevalanIt's time for the perennial "I should be writing something else, but I'll write angst!fic instead" ficlet. This is so not what I needed to spend the last half hour on.
Title: The Ghost in the Bed
Fandom: Original
Rating: Erm...PGish, I think. Because young children should not be subjected to this much angst.
She knew that it was stupid. Perhaps stupid was too harsh. She knew that it was foolish, to cling to a memory of something so dead. To carry its corpse within her heart, to worry it like an old photograph as she lay in bed at night. She never would have guessed, before, that she could share the foolishness she had so wished him free of. But here she was.
It had been more than a year, now. And if there had been a grave to visit, she told herself, it would have been easier. It was probably a lie, but it was an easy lie, when she knew that the lips she had kissed still drew breath. The face that haunted her could, in fact, return
The face. But nothing more.
She loved others, and others loved her, and she needed to be here and now to deal with all the things that threatened those she cared for. But when she stopped moving, when she stopped trying to think of ways to get past the obstacles she faced, she found the ache rushing in to silently fill up the cracks of her days, dimming mornings, making the nights starless. And she began to fear that she never would heal, because of course, if she was going to, it should have begun to get easier by now. Shouldn’t it have? She should have stopped expecting him to walk through her door, stopped expecting to hear his voice, feel him touch her shoulder.
She wondered if this is what he had felt, and wondered how he did not go mad.
In her heart, she knew that if he died, that she would not be the one to kill him. Not because she was incapable, but because she simply wasn’t that important, in the grand scheme of his life. He and his once love had been tangled for centuries, and she had brushed only a handful of months with him. What did an oak care, if one summer a daisy sprung up at his feet and adored him, only to be gone at the first chill autumn breeze? A passing sadness only. A dream of sweetness to be left behind in the morning of the first chill frost.
Once she had been afraid of letting go. Now she was afraid that she no longer knew what it was she was clinging to, so very hard.
--
He knew that it was stupid. Foolish. That even if they did love one another, that he would never be the kind of man she needed. And yet he could not help it, wanting to protect her. Wanting to bring back her smile.
If he asked himself why, after all that had happened, he still regretted their angry words, still wished he had been calm enough to think of a way to stay by her side… he could find no sort of answer. Certainly no answer in his mind, and even elsewhere, it was difficult. A family, even one that ended before it began, changed things. Power changed things as well. There had been so much between them. So many unchangeable, stone cold things.
And yet here he was, lying in bed and wishing it was hers. He knew that, if his pride would let him, he could go to her. That she would forgive him, that they could try again. That she loved him. She did not love only him, but loved that he loved only her. Or did. Does.
It would be enough.
He had fled to his old life, only to find his old life was gone. But to go back to her would mean facing that, though she wanted him, there would always be a deeper want behind her words, at the corners of her looks. A want he could never supply. That no one living could. And that even if he could change himself into a man that she could love without reservation, there was still the risk that she could never give so freely again.
He had only been a couple months too late, really. But that made all the difference. And now, after all the weeks and months that liquefied into water under the bridge, he still had to ask himself… would he have been better off without her?
Would she have been better off without him?
Title: The Ghost in the Bed
Fandom: Original
Rating: Erm...PGish, I think. Because young children should not be subjected to this much angst.
She knew that it was stupid. Perhaps stupid was too harsh. She knew that it was foolish, to cling to a memory of something so dead. To carry its corpse within her heart, to worry it like an old photograph as she lay in bed at night. She never would have guessed, before, that she could share the foolishness she had so wished him free of. But here she was.
It had been more than a year, now. And if there had been a grave to visit, she told herself, it would have been easier. It was probably a lie, but it was an easy lie, when she knew that the lips she had kissed still drew breath. The face that haunted her could, in fact, return
The face. But nothing more.
She loved others, and others loved her, and she needed to be here and now to deal with all the things that threatened those she cared for. But when she stopped moving, when she stopped trying to think of ways to get past the obstacles she faced, she found the ache rushing in to silently fill up the cracks of her days, dimming mornings, making the nights starless. And she began to fear that she never would heal, because of course, if she was going to, it should have begun to get easier by now. Shouldn’t it have? She should have stopped expecting him to walk through her door, stopped expecting to hear his voice, feel him touch her shoulder.
She wondered if this is what he had felt, and wondered how he did not go mad.
In her heart, she knew that if he died, that she would not be the one to kill him. Not because she was incapable, but because she simply wasn’t that important, in the grand scheme of his life. He and his once love had been tangled for centuries, and she had brushed only a handful of months with him. What did an oak care, if one summer a daisy sprung up at his feet and adored him, only to be gone at the first chill autumn breeze? A passing sadness only. A dream of sweetness to be left behind in the morning of the first chill frost.
Once she had been afraid of letting go. Now she was afraid that she no longer knew what it was she was clinging to, so very hard.
--
He knew that it was stupid. Foolish. That even if they did love one another, that he would never be the kind of man she needed. And yet he could not help it, wanting to protect her. Wanting to bring back her smile.
If he asked himself why, after all that had happened, he still regretted their angry words, still wished he had been calm enough to think of a way to stay by her side… he could find no sort of answer. Certainly no answer in his mind, and even elsewhere, it was difficult. A family, even one that ended before it began, changed things. Power changed things as well. There had been so much between them. So many unchangeable, stone cold things.
And yet here he was, lying in bed and wishing it was hers. He knew that, if his pride would let him, he could go to her. That she would forgive him, that they could try again. That she loved him. She did not love only him, but loved that he loved only her. Or did. Does.
It would be enough.
He had fled to his old life, only to find his old life was gone. But to go back to her would mean facing that, though she wanted him, there would always be a deeper want behind her words, at the corners of her looks. A want he could never supply. That no one living could. And that even if he could change himself into a man that she could love without reservation, there was still the risk that she could never give so freely again.
He had only been a couple months too late, really. But that made all the difference. And now, after all the weeks and months that liquefied into water under the bridge, he still had to ask himself… would he have been better off without her?
Would she have been better off without him?
