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dolevalanTitle: Flames
Fandom/original: Original
Characters: Nicolas and Stella Willoughby
Rating: G
Word count: 415
His sister wrote him that she was creating something, as if he had never heard the word before. It was like her, to only write for gloating, after months of implacable silence. And even now, she left no way for him to write her back. No place to send an answer. Just the single sheet of paper, covered on both sides with her neat, slanted handwriting.
Nicolas had almost memorized the letter, now. He could hear her, in his mind, speaking the words aloud, and it comforted him even as it made him furious. “It is funny to think,” she said calmly, “that half a world away, you carry on taking the lives deemed unfit while I attempt to do my work and extend life far beyond what we can now imagine. I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that, should my experiments prove impractical or dangerous, there will always be people like you to correct the problem.”
“People like you.” He refused to believe he had become so distant to her. That she thought of them as opposites now. He threw the letter on the fire, and went out.
--
Stella ran her fingers through the single, clear flame of her candle, quick enough not to do any real damage. Of course it hurt. She was stuck, and she was trying to loosen her mind. Destroying the body for the sake of the mind. It would have made her laugh, if she had anyone to share the joke with. But, as was usual now, Stella was alone.
She had always been the booksmart one, of the two. She had been forever reading, forever asking questions. And over time, both she and her brother had mistook her education for true superiority in understanding. He had been their voice, but she had been the leader. Always. And she knew, now, despite everything, that some part of him would believe what she’d written.
The problem was, it was a lie.
Oh, not the part about her work, or what she was attempting to do. Not even the bit about creation and destruction; it was hyperbolized for drama, but was also true, more or less. The lie was the message behind the message, running through the letter like ribbon tucked in bookbinding. The lie was that she didn’t miss him. The lie was that she didn’t regret giving him no sort of return address.
The lie was that she wasn’t just as destructive as he was.
Fandom/original: Original
Characters: Nicolas and Stella Willoughby
Rating: G
Word count: 415
His sister wrote him that she was creating something, as if he had never heard the word before. It was like her, to only write for gloating, after months of implacable silence. And even now, she left no way for him to write her back. No place to send an answer. Just the single sheet of paper, covered on both sides with her neat, slanted handwriting.
Nicolas had almost memorized the letter, now. He could hear her, in his mind, speaking the words aloud, and it comforted him even as it made him furious. “It is funny to think,” she said calmly, “that half a world away, you carry on taking the lives deemed unfit while I attempt to do my work and extend life far beyond what we can now imagine. I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that, should my experiments prove impractical or dangerous, there will always be people like you to correct the problem.”
“People like you.” He refused to believe he had become so distant to her. That she thought of them as opposites now. He threw the letter on the fire, and went out.
--
Stella ran her fingers through the single, clear flame of her candle, quick enough not to do any real damage. Of course it hurt. She was stuck, and she was trying to loosen her mind. Destroying the body for the sake of the mind. It would have made her laugh, if she had anyone to share the joke with. But, as was usual now, Stella was alone.
She had always been the booksmart one, of the two. She had been forever reading, forever asking questions. And over time, both she and her brother had mistook her education for true superiority in understanding. He had been their voice, but she had been the leader. Always. And she knew, now, despite everything, that some part of him would believe what she’d written.
The problem was, it was a lie.
Oh, not the part about her work, or what she was attempting to do. Not even the bit about creation and destruction; it was hyperbolized for drama, but was also true, more or less. The lie was the message behind the message, running through the letter like ribbon tucked in bookbinding. The lie was that she didn’t miss him. The lie was that she didn’t regret giving him no sort of return address.
The lie was that she wasn’t just as destructive as he was.
