( imagined you saw me ) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
imaginedyou) wrote2009-06-04 01:31 pm
imaginedyou) wrote2009-06-04 01:31 pm
Various Shutupanddoeet Fic [Hobbfic, Xena, Time Traveller's Wife]
Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
shutupanddoeet's poetry prompts way back in 2006. And I promptly (ha!) forgot they existed, so I'm posting them where I can find them.
The Tawny Man Trilogy, Gen, Post "Fool's Fate", The Fool, #17; The face of all the world is changed, I think - Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 300 Words.
-
The Fool knows as he journeys that there should be many things on his mind; first and foremost Fitz, and the fact that he never got to say a proper goodbye. The memories of what they have done don't just live on in both of their minds, but they are becoming apparent in every step the Fool takes towards his homeland.
It is less painful when he doesn't seek to think of Fitz, and so he concentrates on other things. He knows his homeland will have changed since he was last there so long ago, but that is nothing; the whole world is changing. The leaves on the trees seem a little greener, as though they know the world is healed a little more than it was yesterday. The ground beneath his feet seems softer, less resisting. The wind through his hair whispers its thanks, and the sun shines down a warmth not unlike a mother's love. A mother he can still remember, when he tries.
As the Fool makes his way past villages he hears familiar noise. Children running, yelling. Mothers shouting after them. Fathers hard at work with axe and hammer and saw. Life goes on as it ever did; so many have no idea of the sacrifices that have been made so that they may go on just as they did the day before. But the Fool likes to believe there is a deeper meaning underneath that child's laughter, that grandmother's hug. Deep inside where they don't even realise it themselves, they know the world has been set onto a better path.
And when the dragons come? They won't like it at first, the Fool thinks to himself, the arrogance and the demands that mirror humans all too accurately. But they'll eventually realise it's for the best.
-
The Tawny Man Trilogy, set during "The Golden Fool", Fitz/The Fool, #13 I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so - John Donne. 209 Words.
-
T'was so easy to say the words in the heat of the moment; anger seems to give one a poet's tongue, the ability to put into the most precisely cutting words just how you feel. Then, as quickly as it washed over you, the anger is gone, but the words still remain etched in your memory forever.
True, I said some awful things, but none so tasteless as Fitz. And oh, I am loathe to admit it, but I love him all the more for his bluntness, Fool that I am. I could have lied, I should have lied, but something inside me compels me to be my most open and honest around him. Intimacies I have shared with no-one else. That is my love.
Had I not told him I loved him, I would have felt I'd betrayed my own self. And to live with that would have been worse than to live with his words of rejection. Words are only words, after all. They can be disassembled into mere grunts of sound, the letters separated on parchment, to build up other words.
I tell myself this, but I barely believe in it. And that merest bit of belief is taut, holding tight to sanity, and dignity.
-
So it's clumsy and not exactly what I intended, but it got the characters out of my head and helped the story diffuse out too, which is like writing therapy. Henry and Clare are from the book The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Spoilers for the ending of the book. 427 words.
---
There are things Henry had to say, and writing them down was the way to do it. A collection of landscapes, views into his thoughts through the window pane. He told Clare where to find the first letter, and consequently the rest which happened to be in the same spot. To be read in no particular order, all at once or weeks or months apart like a cleansing shower, the same but different every time.
There is one, however, that he does not mention. Not in conversation before he is gone, and not in any of the other letters. Perhaps he has forgotten he has written it, but perhaps not. Clare likes to believe he visited the day she found it for herself; out of sight, like a spectre, and saw the impact it had when it hadn't existed to her until that point. Also; the sense of irony in it would have amused him.
It is like he is speaking to himself at first, a recollection of events. It reads a little coldly, all fact and no feeling. But when Clare thinks back to the first day they met for her, she realises it would be too much, and not enough at all, to put into plain words. Of any language.
Their memories differ, here. And not in the traditional sense. Henry remembers a girl eight years younger than himself, just out of her teenage years, browsing a library that felt like home, while Clare remembers a beach towel around an older man's waist, and how it important it was to practice her letters.
She knows him well when they meet again, and refuses to let it upset her when he cannot place her by looks or name. She knows that everything that is to happen has already happened, and it gives her a sense of stability she never had when she was young and Henry had all the answers but refused to answer any of the questions. Henry, by this point in his life, has experienced enough strange events that he can shrug and smile amiably and accept an invite to dinner with someone who knows him intimately, though he's never met her.
He never seemed to mind that she had the upper hand, and she knows why, now. Coming to and from times where events were predetermined, where all he could do was possibly warn and reassure past selves that things would change.
The last line of his note makes Clare burst into tears.
Sometimes the best things in life are the most unexpected. – Henry
-
Xena: Warrior Princess, (mostly) gen, Gabrielle & Xena, #15 My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! - Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 290 Words.
-
With the true nature of an artist, Gabrielle looks at her blank sheet of parchment and feels all at once a sense of disappointment and delight. Part of her wishes the page was filled already with her captivating words, her epic tales of adventure, the swirls and loops of the letters that cannot convey the destructive dance of a fight. The other part of her loves nothing more than a blank page, ready for any number of delights, innocent and wide-eyed like a child, knowing nothing other than what she feeds into it.
Gabrielle knows that there has always been this writer inside of her. Dormant, but there. The story-teller is not a new facet of her personality; she had been retelling her mother's bedtime stories to the children of her town ever since she could talk. But the writer, this art of hand on quill and ink, with the ability to put into mere scrawls on the page, without sound, noise or vocal emotion a reproduction of events gone by, this is new. A talent she had not known lurked inside of her until only recently. For how can you explain a raindrop in mere words? A fight, a dance, love? You can, with the right words, and the right inspiration.
Gabrielle looks down at her scroll, full of words and letters. She sees so much more than anyone else does upon that page when it is finished. Xena looks up from the river, hair hanging in wet tangles, a fish in hand for the next meal. When she reaches the fire she sits down, looks over Gabrielle's scroll. She sees only words, and Gabrielle is okay with that.
Without Xena, there would be no words at all.
-
Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena/Gabrielle, set whenever; no specific spoilers, #10 Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes? Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again, - William Shakespeare. 235 Words.
-
Xena isn't the most demonstrative person in the world.
It almost makes Gabrielle laugh just to think it; if she were to say it aloud to any of her companions she surely would giggle and chuckle over it before it came out properly. But she could easily sober herself thinking about it in the way she truly means.
Xena is not ashamed; there are so many things in her life she has done to be ashamed of, to regret, but this is not one of them, and not why she restrains herself. Gabrielle isn't completely sure why, in fact. Perhaps because her past is so full of recklessness and wild actions without thought behind them, that now she plots and plans, acts slowly and carefully. Cautiously and quietly. Gabrielle was naive enough not to notice when she was being pursued, but even if she hadn't been an innocent teen from a little town, Xena did not make it easy to tell.
A hand on Gabrielle's shoulder with the tiniest squeeze of reassurance, the corner of her mouth quirking almost into a smile, her eyelids half-closing for her dark eyelashes to mask the pleasurable thoughts rolling around in her head. Xena is full of small puzzle pieces most find impossible to fit together.
And yet Gabrielle knows, with no more than a grin and wink, what is to come. She makes her excuses, and follows.
-
Xena: Warrior Princess, Gabrielle/Perdicus, Xena, Callisto. Spoilers for Return Of Callisto (Season 2, Episode 5). #18 Because the point A., is the centre Of the circular B. C. D., And because the point B., is the centre Of the circular A. C. E., A. C. to A. B. and B. C. to B. A. Harmoniously equal for ever must stay; - Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 384 Words.
-
It's hard for her to back down, because Xena is always right, and Gabrielle doesn't need this to be another point Xena can accumulate, and make her wrong once again. It's hard being the younger, the less experienced, the one with more faith in people and love, and life. Until now.
Inside she feels her heart has withered and died. Shrunken and black, it poisons itself and the rest of her body. Perdicus is gone, and when she thinks of him, she remembers her innocence; home in Potadeia playing chasing games and laughing, helping her mother with the chores. Feeding the animals. She loved him as her friend, and when he came back into her life, and she had changed and grown, she found she loved him still, for his choices as he stared war and pain in the face.
It is easier to back down for Perdicus, to remember his words, and know that he loved her after everything she had been through with Xena, because she had held on to the same hope that he had. She believed love would conquer all, even the cycle of hate. She remembers telling him in the bed they shared on their wedding night, love will end the cycle of hate, and how he whispered it back to her, believed in it.
She shudders as she did then when she thinks of it, and tries to hold back yet more tears. If Xena were to see her, the lines on her face might grow even deeper. Gabrielle knows Xena cannot bear to see what Callisto's actions have done to her. She swings her sword through the air, her movements like a fierce and dangerous dance. Beautiful and treacherous all at once. Her concentration is near unbreakable; she is determined to reach Callisto first and make her suffer for what she ahs done, now that she knows Gabrielle has a need to feel blood on her hands.
But the need is dissolving; Gabrielle knows at the end of all things, that this is not what Perdicus would want. Callisto seeks to turn her into something she is not, for that would hurt Xena far more than anything Callisto could do to her directly. For Perdicus, for Xena, for herself, she will not do this thing.
Callisto will not win.
-
shutupanddoeet's poetry prompts way back in 2006. And I promptly (ha!) forgot they existed, so I'm posting them where I can find them. The Tawny Man Trilogy, Gen, Post "Fool's Fate", The Fool, #17; The face of all the world is changed, I think - Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 300 Words.
-
The Fool knows as he journeys that there should be many things on his mind; first and foremost Fitz, and the fact that he never got to say a proper goodbye. The memories of what they have done don't just live on in both of their minds, but they are becoming apparent in every step the Fool takes towards his homeland.
It is less painful when he doesn't seek to think of Fitz, and so he concentrates on other things. He knows his homeland will have changed since he was last there so long ago, but that is nothing; the whole world is changing. The leaves on the trees seem a little greener, as though they know the world is healed a little more than it was yesterday. The ground beneath his feet seems softer, less resisting. The wind through his hair whispers its thanks, and the sun shines down a warmth not unlike a mother's love. A mother he can still remember, when he tries.
As the Fool makes his way past villages he hears familiar noise. Children running, yelling. Mothers shouting after them. Fathers hard at work with axe and hammer and saw. Life goes on as it ever did; so many have no idea of the sacrifices that have been made so that they may go on just as they did the day before. But the Fool likes to believe there is a deeper meaning underneath that child's laughter, that grandmother's hug. Deep inside where they don't even realise it themselves, they know the world has been set onto a better path.
And when the dragons come? They won't like it at first, the Fool thinks to himself, the arrogance and the demands that mirror humans all too accurately. But they'll eventually realise it's for the best.
-
The Tawny Man Trilogy, set during "The Golden Fool", Fitz/The Fool, #13 I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so - John Donne. 209 Words.
-
T'was so easy to say the words in the heat of the moment; anger seems to give one a poet's tongue, the ability to put into the most precisely cutting words just how you feel. Then, as quickly as it washed over you, the anger is gone, but the words still remain etched in your memory forever.
True, I said some awful things, but none so tasteless as Fitz. And oh, I am loathe to admit it, but I love him all the more for his bluntness, Fool that I am. I could have lied, I should have lied, but something inside me compels me to be my most open and honest around him. Intimacies I have shared with no-one else. That is my love.
Had I not told him I loved him, I would have felt I'd betrayed my own self. And to live with that would have been worse than to live with his words of rejection. Words are only words, after all. They can be disassembled into mere grunts of sound, the letters separated on parchment, to build up other words.
I tell myself this, but I barely believe in it. And that merest bit of belief is taut, holding tight to sanity, and dignity.
-
So it's clumsy and not exactly what I intended, but it got the characters out of my head and helped the story diffuse out too, which is like writing therapy. Henry and Clare are from the book The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Spoilers for the ending of the book. 427 words.
---
There are things Henry had to say, and writing them down was the way to do it. A collection of landscapes, views into his thoughts through the window pane. He told Clare where to find the first letter, and consequently the rest which happened to be in the same spot. To be read in no particular order, all at once or weeks or months apart like a cleansing shower, the same but different every time.
There is one, however, that he does not mention. Not in conversation before he is gone, and not in any of the other letters. Perhaps he has forgotten he has written it, but perhaps not. Clare likes to believe he visited the day she found it for herself; out of sight, like a spectre, and saw the impact it had when it hadn't existed to her until that point. Also; the sense of irony in it would have amused him.
It is like he is speaking to himself at first, a recollection of events. It reads a little coldly, all fact and no feeling. But when Clare thinks back to the first day they met for her, she realises it would be too much, and not enough at all, to put into plain words. Of any language.
Their memories differ, here. And not in the traditional sense. Henry remembers a girl eight years younger than himself, just out of her teenage years, browsing a library that felt like home, while Clare remembers a beach towel around an older man's waist, and how it important it was to practice her letters.
She knows him well when they meet again, and refuses to let it upset her when he cannot place her by looks or name. She knows that everything that is to happen has already happened, and it gives her a sense of stability she never had when she was young and Henry had all the answers but refused to answer any of the questions. Henry, by this point in his life, has experienced enough strange events that he can shrug and smile amiably and accept an invite to dinner with someone who knows him intimately, though he's never met her.
He never seemed to mind that she had the upper hand, and she knows why, now. Coming to and from times where events were predetermined, where all he could do was possibly warn and reassure past selves that things would change.
The last line of his note makes Clare burst into tears.
Sometimes the best things in life are the most unexpected. – Henry
-
Xena: Warrior Princess, (mostly) gen, Gabrielle & Xena, #15 My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! - Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 290 Words.
-
With the true nature of an artist, Gabrielle looks at her blank sheet of parchment and feels all at once a sense of disappointment and delight. Part of her wishes the page was filled already with her captivating words, her epic tales of adventure, the swirls and loops of the letters that cannot convey the destructive dance of a fight. The other part of her loves nothing more than a blank page, ready for any number of delights, innocent and wide-eyed like a child, knowing nothing other than what she feeds into it.
Gabrielle knows that there has always been this writer inside of her. Dormant, but there. The story-teller is not a new facet of her personality; she had been retelling her mother's bedtime stories to the children of her town ever since she could talk. But the writer, this art of hand on quill and ink, with the ability to put into mere scrawls on the page, without sound, noise or vocal emotion a reproduction of events gone by, this is new. A talent she had not known lurked inside of her until only recently. For how can you explain a raindrop in mere words? A fight, a dance, love? You can, with the right words, and the right inspiration.
Gabrielle looks down at her scroll, full of words and letters. She sees so much more than anyone else does upon that page when it is finished. Xena looks up from the river, hair hanging in wet tangles, a fish in hand for the next meal. When she reaches the fire she sits down, looks over Gabrielle's scroll. She sees only words, and Gabrielle is okay with that.
Without Xena, there would be no words at all.
-
Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena/Gabrielle, set whenever; no specific spoilers, #10 Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes? Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again, - William Shakespeare. 235 Words.
-
Xena isn't the most demonstrative person in the world.
It almost makes Gabrielle laugh just to think it; if she were to say it aloud to any of her companions she surely would giggle and chuckle over it before it came out properly. But she could easily sober herself thinking about it in the way she truly means.
Xena is not ashamed; there are so many things in her life she has done to be ashamed of, to regret, but this is not one of them, and not why she restrains herself. Gabrielle isn't completely sure why, in fact. Perhaps because her past is so full of recklessness and wild actions without thought behind them, that now she plots and plans, acts slowly and carefully. Cautiously and quietly. Gabrielle was naive enough not to notice when she was being pursued, but even if she hadn't been an innocent teen from a little town, Xena did not make it easy to tell.
A hand on Gabrielle's shoulder with the tiniest squeeze of reassurance, the corner of her mouth quirking almost into a smile, her eyelids half-closing for her dark eyelashes to mask the pleasurable thoughts rolling around in her head. Xena is full of small puzzle pieces most find impossible to fit together.
And yet Gabrielle knows, with no more than a grin and wink, what is to come. She makes her excuses, and follows.
-
Xena: Warrior Princess, Gabrielle/Perdicus, Xena, Callisto. Spoilers for Return Of Callisto (Season 2, Episode 5). #18 Because the point A., is the centre Of the circular B. C. D., And because the point B., is the centre Of the circular A. C. E., A. C. to A. B. and B. C. to B. A. Harmoniously equal for ever must stay; - Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 384 Words.
-
It's hard for her to back down, because Xena is always right, and Gabrielle doesn't need this to be another point Xena can accumulate, and make her wrong once again. It's hard being the younger, the less experienced, the one with more faith in people and love, and life. Until now.
Inside she feels her heart has withered and died. Shrunken and black, it poisons itself and the rest of her body. Perdicus is gone, and when she thinks of him, she remembers her innocence; home in Potadeia playing chasing games and laughing, helping her mother with the chores. Feeding the animals. She loved him as her friend, and when he came back into her life, and she had changed and grown, she found she loved him still, for his choices as he stared war and pain in the face.
It is easier to back down for Perdicus, to remember his words, and know that he loved her after everything she had been through with Xena, because she had held on to the same hope that he had. She believed love would conquer all, even the cycle of hate. She remembers telling him in the bed they shared on their wedding night, love will end the cycle of hate, and how he whispered it back to her, believed in it.
She shudders as she did then when she thinks of it, and tries to hold back yet more tears. If Xena were to see her, the lines on her face might grow even deeper. Gabrielle knows Xena cannot bear to see what Callisto's actions have done to her. She swings her sword through the air, her movements like a fierce and dangerous dance. Beautiful and treacherous all at once. Her concentration is near unbreakable; she is determined to reach Callisto first and make her suffer for what she ahs done, now that she knows Gabrielle has a need to feel blood on her hands.
But the need is dissolving; Gabrielle knows at the end of all things, that this is not what Perdicus would want. Callisto seeks to turn her into something she is not, for that would hurt Xena far more than anything Callisto could do to her directly. For Perdicus, for Xena, for herself, she will not do this thing.
Callisto will not win.
-