Ficlet: Pandora

[dolevalan]

Title: Pandora
Fandom/original: original
Rating: G
A/N: Another little Stella snippet. Set just a little bit after rougen's Richer Than Gold.



The journal was plain and businesslike, as she would expect it to be. She'd kept a journal since she was young, as having a photographic memory wasn't any guarantee of recall or synthesis. There was no reason it should have been gone, and here it was, waiting for her. Her fingers rested on the leather, warming it a bit.

Stella wasn't stupid. Her intellect had always been her dominant, perhaps her defining quality. So of course she had noticed the burn marks around her finger, the tenderness at the back of her scalp. She'd gone back to her notes, and she'd found a letter from herself. It raised many questions, answered few. It had even anticipated her irritation with herself, addressing it as a necessary evil. The hand, while clearly her own, was odd - not as precise as usual, the hint of a scrawl instead of careful printing. She must have written it while ill.

Her own past self had been of the opinion she would be happier, not knowing what had happened. Safer, to be more accurate; she'd not mentioned happiness or unhappiness in her self-addressed letter. It was not an opinion to take lightly, considering the source. On the other hand, if she had been ill, it might have impaired the soundness of her judgment.

Still. She hesitated.

The dreams made her hesitate, despite her curiosity, her hatred of being left in the dark. The dreams that seemed so vivid, the dreams she could never remember properly upon waking. The dreams that left her voice a half gasp in her throat some nights, and left tears smeared on her cheek the next.

She'd recovered physically - she was satisfied on that point. But something psychological was happening, besides the memory loss, or perhaps related to it. She felt inexplicably lonely, for no one she could name, sometimes. Empty, at others, as if she'd been physically hollowed out - not to the point of delusion, of course, but still - a strong, certain impression.

There was the journal.

She couldn't decide, if she wanted to know. And so she continued to hesitate. And from time to time her hand would absently rest against her stomach without her notice. It was simply an anomaly, nothing more.

Comments

[rougen.livejournal.com]

Mm... good old self denial. How we love it... *cough*