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rainbowfic2015-06-26 02:24 am
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2015-06-26 02:24 am
Octarine 4, Spring Green 19: Beautiful Life
Author: Kat
Title: Beautiful Life
Story: Shine Like It Does
Colors: Octarine 4 (The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.), spring green 19 (why pretend that you're so dull)
Supplies and Materials: Mixed media, miniature collection, illustration, canvas, frame, glue (Your inner world seems more spacious today, giving you enough room to contemplate your feelings without the judgmental restrictions of others.)
Word Count: 2000
Rating: R
Summary: A fanmix for Charlotte Hennessy.
Warnings: mention of underage, consensual but deeply unfun sexual activity, racism.
Notes: Charlotte is played by the gorgeous and talented Mia Maestro. Whose character slept with Matt Bomer's on White Collar. That was weird for me.
Download here.
1. Prayer of St. Francis, Sarah McLachlan
Lord make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Charlotte wanted to make the world a better place.
She thought everyone did, deep down, even if it was nearly impossible to see. Who could look at a starving child or a person in pain and not want to help? She only had to look at her own life to feel impossibly guilty if she didn't.
So many people who weren't as lucky as she was, with loving parents and the best siblings anyone could ask for, with all the money she could ever need and the best schools anyone could find. She wanted to share. Everyone did.
Didn't they?
2. The Tower, Vienna Teng
Reach out, hold back
Where is safety
Reach out and hold back
Where is the one who can change me
Or maybe they didn't.
Charlotte might have been lucky in every other respect, but she was half Mexican,, and she looked it, and almost everyone she knew made her feel it. Her grandmother, sighing and tsk'ing every time she saw her. Kids at school doing double-takes when she walked in. People looking at her parents and her brother and sister and looking right over her.
She reached out a few times, tried to make friends, but every time she did she got hurt, slapped back and laughed at and mocked. What was the point?
At least her family loved her.
3. Fairytale, Heather Dale
It's supposed to be important
That you come and set me free
You're supposed to be a hero
Not out with easier girls then me
Andrew was the worst.
She tried not to think about it, afterwards. It helped that he got arrested-- and she still wasn't sure that Miranda hadn't been involved with that, but sometimes it was better not to ask.
She'd loved him. She'd believed that he loved her. She'd let him talk her into... into having sex with him, and afterwards he'd told her to get out. He'd told her he never would have bothered with her, if it hadn't been for the hat trick.
Charlotte never cried as hard in her life as she did after he told her that.
4. Hideaway, The Weepies
Some will call me all kinds of names
Some will say I don't play the right kind of game
I try to be honest, try to be kind
And honestly leave when I know that it's time
I know that it's time
After Andrew, Malibu felt too small. Charlotte got through high school as best she could, but she wanted out so badly her skin itched with it.
She didn't want to be Charlotte Hennessy anymore. Charlotte Hennessy had advantages, true, but these days she felt like she smacked into a wall everywhere she went. School? The white kids whispered and tittered and avoided her. Shopping? Security followed her, and store clerks ignored her. Home to Mexico? She looked at her cousins' lives and guilt overwhelmed her-- how could she live as she did when they had so little?
She wanted out.
5. Welcome to New York, Taylor Swift
Everybody here wanted something more
Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before
And it said
Welcome to New York
It's been waiting for you
Welcome to New York
Atlanta felt liberating.
Which was ironic, considering the city's history, but when she stepped off the plane and into muggy air, she felt free. No one here knew who she was. No one here cared. There was nothing to live up to, no rules to obey.
It should have felt lonely, and it did, a bit. She knew no one in the city, had no family or friends or even acquaintances. But she still had those people a phone call away, and in the meantime she could do and be anything she wanted.
She breathed easier just at the thought.
6. Hear the Bells, Vanessa Carlton
Floating on the sea stars are watching me
Current takes me out what will be will be
Floating on the sea stars are watching me
Current takes me out what will be will be
Charlotte settled in easily.
She had a job before she moved, but she'd left everything else to fate, and fate obliged. The first apartment complex she spoke to had a one-bedroom within her budget that wasn't too run-down. Another tenant was selling their furniture before moving, so she got a bed, a sofa, a dining table and a set of chairs for half their worth. Craigslist furnished her with a small but working car and a bicycle.
It all fell into place so simply that she wondered if she was using up her luck.
Oh well. No sense in worrying.
7. Bells for Her, Tori Amos
There's nothing I can do
Can't stop what's coming
Can't stop what is on it's way
And then there was Daniel, and Benjy, and everything was so perfect she hardly dared breathe for fear she would shatter it. Because she was lying, and everything in her new life depended on that lie.
But.
But, but, Charlotte loved her family, and she loved Daniel; she really thought she might marry him someday, but if they did get married she'd have to tell him the truth, and who would react well to that? He might be fine with the secret millionaire part, but everything else...
She couldn't tell him the truth. She choked on it with every breath.
8. Here Before, Lissie
Tell me which way to go, how will I know to shine again?
I've been here before, I've seen it all
And I can't take no more, I mean it
I'll go
At first, when she thought Miranda was dead or dying, it wiped out every other thought in her head. It wasn't until she sat curled up by her sister's hospital bed, watching the spikes of the EKG, that she realized.
Daniel knew now. She wasn't sure how much she'd babbled at him, but he definitely knew who she really was: Charlotte Hennessy, snotty rich girl instead of Charlotte Rueda, music teacher. The principal had always known but now it would be all over school. Her landlord might know. Her neighbors almost certainly did did.
How could she ever go back?
9. Hope for the Hopeless, A Fine Frenzy
Making the best of it
Playing the hand you get
You're not alone in this
There's hope for the hopeless
You can't keep running, Carlita, Jack said to her, which was rich coming from him, but she couldn't dismiss it no matter the source. Miranda was getting better, off all the machines now and beginning to walk again, and Charlotte was still there, still sleeping in her childhood bedroom and trying not to miss Atlanta.
She didn't know how to go back. Everyone would want an explanation-- and they were owed one, but she didn't know where to start.
Start somewhere, Jack told her. Start anywhere. Someone will help you finish.
Someone. She wished she had that kind of faith.
10. Here to Stay, Lissie
I am here and I will be
Following my own way
Forever and a day
I am here and I'm here to stay
The plane touched down smoothly and deja vu swamped Charlotte, sudden and intense. She'd landed years ago, just like this, everything she owned in three suitcases and a young, fresh, hopeful heart. She was older now, if she couldn't claim wiser, and she was here to... what?
To talk to Daniel, see if there was a chance they could get each other back. To return to work when summer recess ended. To see her friends, and the boy she thought of as a son.
She didn't know if things could be fixed. But she was coming home.
Anything seemed possible.
11. Daughter, Vienna Teng
Did you know you're so beautiful
On the edge of summer
That years from now
I'll cry to remember
Charlotte loved her parents. She really did. They were wonderful parents, and she knew they loved her as she was, which was rare enough.
But she didn't need them, not like Jack or Miranda did. Charlotte could manage by herself, wanted to, and she knew her parents knew it. They knew it even as they tried to help her; her father cajoling her to take just a little money, Carlita, I don't like where you live, her mother saying nothing, but sending extravagent presents.
She loved them, and they loved her, but sometimes she thought they needed to let go.
12. The Atheist Christmas Carol, Vienna Teng
You are safe here, you know now
Don't forget
Don't forget I love, I love, I love you
There was nothing she could give Miranda.
It wasn't that Miranda didn't need anything; she needed comfort and she needed safety, but Charlotte couldn't give her those, even if Miranda would accept them. She needed love, too, and that Charlotte could manage, but there was only so much her love could do from three thousand miles away.
But if Miranda showed up on her doorstep occasionally, stayed for a few days and never said why, well, Charlotte could let her stay, and ask no questions, and love her as hard as she could.
She could do that, so she did.
13. Forevermore, Katie Herzig
You could be my white knight
And I could be your fairy tale
And you could come and save me
But that is not the end
If Miranda was her protector, then Jack was her playmate, brother and friend and accomplice all in one. Her whole childhood she spent in his unjudgmental company, playing pretend and lottery and hide and seek. They were grown now, but it seemed like nothing had changed.
It went like this: sometimes she would need him, and Jack would just appear, her knight in shining armor to slay all her demons, and they would spend the afternoon laughing and playing and being children again. He never called ahead, never scheduled his visits, but somehow he always knew.
She'd always have Jack.
14. Old Friend, Sea Wolf
But now we're getting older
And we're growing up
So now less action in the water
And we know enough
Charlotte wasn't stupid. She knew Sebastian was in love with her, and even if she hadn't known Jack pointed it out when she was nineteen. It made things awkward, at least at first.
But the thing was, Seb himself never made it awkward. He never said anything to her, never made her feel like she owed him. If he loved her, he wanted her to be happy more than he wanted her, and she could be okay with that. She could be relaxed.
Some years after her marriage, he finally met someone of his own, and she was only happy.
15. If I Told You, Idina Menzel
If I told you that I lie sometimes,
If I told you that I'd run away,
If I told you who I was before,
Would you follow me?
The thing was, she'd been lying to Daniel from the start. Not about anything important-- she'd never pretended to be anything she wasn't-- but her name, her family, he didn't know anything about that. He didn't know about her childhood, about Grandmother Hennessy, about everything she had gone through to be where she was, and she didn't know how to tell him.
How could she begin? Explaining why she'd lied, maybe, but she was scared he wouldn't stay past "I've been lying to you." Why would he, after all? It was only her.
She did know that was bad thinking.
16. A Way To Us, The Pierces
Well I want you
But I want you to believe in my life
It's now or never
I want you to hold your body close to me
I feel alive together
Charlotte hadn't spoken to Daniel since Seb got her. A thousand times she thought about calling him, but she could never quite press the button-- and he hadn't tried to contact her at all. Maybe he was just thinking about the circumstances, her sister in the hospital, but maybe he didn't want to talk to her, and...
She was overthinking this.
So, basics: she loved him. She thought he loved her. She had to explain and see what happened. If he stayed, good. If he didn't, well, maybe it was for the best.
She just had to see it through.
17. State of Grace (Acoustic Version), Taylor Swift
This is a state of grace
This is the worthwhile fight
Love is a ruthless game
Unless you play it good and right
They went through a rough patch. Of course they did. But the first thing Daniel said to her was 'I love you, I want to work this out,' and they had. She still couldn't quite believe it.
But it was all worth it, every painful step of the way, because she could be his wife now without any reservations at all. She didn't have to hold anything back. She didn't have to run.
Things weren't perfect. She couldn't overcome the habits of a lifetime in a few years. But they were perfect enough. Everything was worth it, in the end.
18. The One Who Knows, Dar Williams
Time it was I had a dream
You're that dream come true
If I had the world to give
I'd give it all to you
Benjy was a gift she had never imagined.
She met him before Daniel, actually, when his class filed in for music and he'd come right over, beaming. He opted out of music shortly after, though she started dating his father soon after, so it wasn't as if she never saw him.
And Benjy was... she knew his mother was dead before Daniel ever told her, because who could willingly leave this child? She wasn't his only mother, she knew that. She had to do well, for all their sakes.
Whatever heaven Alicia Kiley occupied, Charlotte hoped she would be pleased.
19. Summer Child, Dar Williams
There is time and time to come,
Underneath the golden sun,
And forever will melt slowly in a glass of lemonade
And then Emma.
Emma, her precious daughter, her little girl, bright and excited and full of life. Charlotte had never thought of herself as beautiful, but if Emma looked like her then she must be, because Emma was a star, warm brown skin and big brown eyes and a halo of corkscrewing, fractal curls.
Benjy loved her on sight, and a good thing too, because Emma adored her brother and chased after him at any opportunity. They were both growing up so fast, running so far; she had to lose them someday.
Not today, though. So that was all right.
20. Beautiful Life, Charlotte Martin
Try to remember these days down the road
And try to remember this time
The sun may come up and go down again
And I'll still swear it's a beautiful life
Charlotte was happy.
In some ways she thought she'd always been happy, buried under the fear and the lies and the need to be someone else. She had her family, her parents and brother and sister, her cousins and aunts and uncles, and now Daniel and Benjy and Emma. There were her friends, Seb and Paola and Ivanna. And yes, terrible things had happened, but underneath that, she'd always been all right.
She'd taken comparative religions in college, and wondered at the Buddha's assertion that suffering came from attachment.
For her, it had always been joy. And always would be.
Title: Beautiful Life
Story: Shine Like It Does
Colors: Octarine 4 (The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.), spring green 19 (why pretend that you're so dull)
Supplies and Materials: Mixed media, miniature collection, illustration, canvas, frame, glue (Your inner world seems more spacious today, giving you enough room to contemplate your feelings without the judgmental restrictions of others.)
Word Count: 2000
Rating: R
Summary: A fanmix for Charlotte Hennessy.
Warnings: mention of underage, consensual but deeply unfun sexual activity, racism.
Notes: Charlotte is played by the gorgeous and talented Mia Maestro. Whose character slept with Matt Bomer's on White Collar. That was weird for me.
Download here.
Lord make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Charlotte wanted to make the world a better place.
She thought everyone did, deep down, even if it was nearly impossible to see. Who could look at a starving child or a person in pain and not want to help? She only had to look at her own life to feel impossibly guilty if she didn't.
So many people who weren't as lucky as she was, with loving parents and the best siblings anyone could ask for, with all the money she could ever need and the best schools anyone could find. She wanted to share. Everyone did.
Didn't they?
Reach out, hold back
Where is safety
Reach out and hold back
Where is the one who can change me
Or maybe they didn't.
Charlotte might have been lucky in every other respect, but she was half Mexican,, and she looked it, and almost everyone she knew made her feel it. Her grandmother, sighing and tsk'ing every time she saw her. Kids at school doing double-takes when she walked in. People looking at her parents and her brother and sister and looking right over her.
She reached out a few times, tried to make friends, but every time she did she got hurt, slapped back and laughed at and mocked. What was the point?
At least her family loved her.
It's supposed to be important
That you come and set me free
You're supposed to be a hero
Not out with easier girls then me
Andrew was the worst.
She tried not to think about it, afterwards. It helped that he got arrested-- and she still wasn't sure that Miranda hadn't been involved with that, but sometimes it was better not to ask.
She'd loved him. She'd believed that he loved her. She'd let him talk her into... into having sex with him, and afterwards he'd told her to get out. He'd told her he never would have bothered with her, if it hadn't been for the hat trick.
Charlotte never cried as hard in her life as she did after he told her that.
Some will call me all kinds of names
Some will say I don't play the right kind of game
I try to be honest, try to be kind
And honestly leave when I know that it's time
I know that it's time
After Andrew, Malibu felt too small. Charlotte got through high school as best she could, but she wanted out so badly her skin itched with it.
She didn't want to be Charlotte Hennessy anymore. Charlotte Hennessy had advantages, true, but these days she felt like she smacked into a wall everywhere she went. School? The white kids whispered and tittered and avoided her. Shopping? Security followed her, and store clerks ignored her. Home to Mexico? She looked at her cousins' lives and guilt overwhelmed her-- how could she live as she did when they had so little?
She wanted out.
Everybody here wanted something more
Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before
And it said
Welcome to New York
It's been waiting for you
Welcome to New York
Atlanta felt liberating.
Which was ironic, considering the city's history, but when she stepped off the plane and into muggy air, she felt free. No one here knew who she was. No one here cared. There was nothing to live up to, no rules to obey.
It should have felt lonely, and it did, a bit. She knew no one in the city, had no family or friends or even acquaintances. But she still had those people a phone call away, and in the meantime she could do and be anything she wanted.
She breathed easier just at the thought.
Floating on the sea stars are watching me
Current takes me out what will be will be
Floating on the sea stars are watching me
Current takes me out what will be will be
Charlotte settled in easily.
She had a job before she moved, but she'd left everything else to fate, and fate obliged. The first apartment complex she spoke to had a one-bedroom within her budget that wasn't too run-down. Another tenant was selling their furniture before moving, so she got a bed, a sofa, a dining table and a set of chairs for half their worth. Craigslist furnished her with a small but working car and a bicycle.
It all fell into place so simply that she wondered if she was using up her luck.
Oh well. No sense in worrying.
There's nothing I can do
Can't stop what's coming
Can't stop what is on it's way
And then there was Daniel, and Benjy, and everything was so perfect she hardly dared breathe for fear she would shatter it. Because she was lying, and everything in her new life depended on that lie.
But.
But, but, Charlotte loved her family, and she loved Daniel; she really thought she might marry him someday, but if they did get married she'd have to tell him the truth, and who would react well to that? He might be fine with the secret millionaire part, but everything else...
She couldn't tell him the truth. She choked on it with every breath.
Tell me which way to go, how will I know to shine again?
I've been here before, I've seen it all
And I can't take no more, I mean it
I'll go
At first, when she thought Miranda was dead or dying, it wiped out every other thought in her head. It wasn't until she sat curled up by her sister's hospital bed, watching the spikes of the EKG, that she realized.
Daniel knew now. She wasn't sure how much she'd babbled at him, but he definitely knew who she really was: Charlotte Hennessy, snotty rich girl instead of Charlotte Rueda, music teacher. The principal had always known but now it would be all over school. Her landlord might know. Her neighbors almost certainly did did.
How could she ever go back?
Making the best of it
Playing the hand you get
You're not alone in this
There's hope for the hopeless
You can't keep running, Carlita, Jack said to her, which was rich coming from him, but she couldn't dismiss it no matter the source. Miranda was getting better, off all the machines now and beginning to walk again, and Charlotte was still there, still sleeping in her childhood bedroom and trying not to miss Atlanta.
She didn't know how to go back. Everyone would want an explanation-- and they were owed one, but she didn't know where to start.
Start somewhere, Jack told her. Start anywhere. Someone will help you finish.
Someone. She wished she had that kind of faith.
I am here and I will be
Following my own way
Forever and a day
I am here and I'm here to stay
The plane touched down smoothly and deja vu swamped Charlotte, sudden and intense. She'd landed years ago, just like this, everything she owned in three suitcases and a young, fresh, hopeful heart. She was older now, if she couldn't claim wiser, and she was here to... what?
To talk to Daniel, see if there was a chance they could get each other back. To return to work when summer recess ended. To see her friends, and the boy she thought of as a son.
She didn't know if things could be fixed. But she was coming home.
Anything seemed possible.
Did you know you're so beautiful
On the edge of summer
That years from now
I'll cry to remember
Charlotte loved her parents. She really did. They were wonderful parents, and she knew they loved her as she was, which was rare enough.
But she didn't need them, not like Jack or Miranda did. Charlotte could manage by herself, wanted to, and she knew her parents knew it. They knew it even as they tried to help her; her father cajoling her to take just a little money, Carlita, I don't like where you live, her mother saying nothing, but sending extravagent presents.
She loved them, and they loved her, but sometimes she thought they needed to let go.
You are safe here, you know now
Don't forget
Don't forget I love, I love, I love you
There was nothing she could give Miranda.
It wasn't that Miranda didn't need anything; she needed comfort and she needed safety, but Charlotte couldn't give her those, even if Miranda would accept them. She needed love, too, and that Charlotte could manage, but there was only so much her love could do from three thousand miles away.
But if Miranda showed up on her doorstep occasionally, stayed for a few days and never said why, well, Charlotte could let her stay, and ask no questions, and love her as hard as she could.
She could do that, so she did.
You could be my white knight
And I could be your fairy tale
And you could come and save me
But that is not the end
If Miranda was her protector, then Jack was her playmate, brother and friend and accomplice all in one. Her whole childhood she spent in his unjudgmental company, playing pretend and lottery and hide and seek. They were grown now, but it seemed like nothing had changed.
It went like this: sometimes she would need him, and Jack would just appear, her knight in shining armor to slay all her demons, and they would spend the afternoon laughing and playing and being children again. He never called ahead, never scheduled his visits, but somehow he always knew.
She'd always have Jack.
But now we're getting older
And we're growing up
So now less action in the water
And we know enough
Charlotte wasn't stupid. She knew Sebastian was in love with her, and even if she hadn't known Jack pointed it out when she was nineteen. It made things awkward, at least at first.
But the thing was, Seb himself never made it awkward. He never said anything to her, never made her feel like she owed him. If he loved her, he wanted her to be happy more than he wanted her, and she could be okay with that. She could be relaxed.
Some years after her marriage, he finally met someone of his own, and she was only happy.
If I told you that I lie sometimes,
If I told you that I'd run away,
If I told you who I was before,
Would you follow me?
The thing was, she'd been lying to Daniel from the start. Not about anything important-- she'd never pretended to be anything she wasn't-- but her name, her family, he didn't know anything about that. He didn't know about her childhood, about Grandmother Hennessy, about everything she had gone through to be where she was, and she didn't know how to tell him.
How could she begin? Explaining why she'd lied, maybe, but she was scared he wouldn't stay past "I've been lying to you." Why would he, after all? It was only her.
She did know that was bad thinking.
Well I want you
But I want you to believe in my life
It's now or never
I want you to hold your body close to me
I feel alive together
Charlotte hadn't spoken to Daniel since Seb got her. A thousand times she thought about calling him, but she could never quite press the button-- and he hadn't tried to contact her at all. Maybe he was just thinking about the circumstances, her sister in the hospital, but maybe he didn't want to talk to her, and...
She was overthinking this.
So, basics: she loved him. She thought he loved her. She had to explain and see what happened. If he stayed, good. If he didn't, well, maybe it was for the best.
She just had to see it through.
This is a state of grace
This is the worthwhile fight
Love is a ruthless game
Unless you play it good and right
They went through a rough patch. Of course they did. But the first thing Daniel said to her was 'I love you, I want to work this out,' and they had. She still couldn't quite believe it.
But it was all worth it, every painful step of the way, because she could be his wife now without any reservations at all. She didn't have to hold anything back. She didn't have to run.
Things weren't perfect. She couldn't overcome the habits of a lifetime in a few years. But they were perfect enough. Everything was worth it, in the end.
Time it was I had a dream
You're that dream come true
If I had the world to give
I'd give it all to you
Benjy was a gift she had never imagined.
She met him before Daniel, actually, when his class filed in for music and he'd come right over, beaming. He opted out of music shortly after, though she started dating his father soon after, so it wasn't as if she never saw him.
And Benjy was... she knew his mother was dead before Daniel ever told her, because who could willingly leave this child? She wasn't his only mother, she knew that. She had to do well, for all their sakes.
Whatever heaven Alicia Kiley occupied, Charlotte hoped she would be pleased.
There is time and time to come,
Underneath the golden sun,
And forever will melt slowly in a glass of lemonade
And then Emma.
Emma, her precious daughter, her little girl, bright and excited and full of life. Charlotte had never thought of herself as beautiful, but if Emma looked like her then she must be, because Emma was a star, warm brown skin and big brown eyes and a halo of corkscrewing, fractal curls.
Benjy loved her on sight, and a good thing too, because Emma adored her brother and chased after him at any opportunity. They were both growing up so fast, running so far; she had to lose them someday.
Not today, though. So that was all right.
Try to remember these days down the road
And try to remember this time
The sun may come up and go down again
And I'll still swear it's a beautiful life
Charlotte was happy.
In some ways she thought she'd always been happy, buried under the fear and the lies and the need to be someone else. She had her family, her parents and brother and sister, her cousins and aunts and uncles, and now Daniel and Benjy and Emma. There were her friends, Seb and Paola and Ivanna. And yes, terrible things had happened, but underneath that, she'd always been all right.
She'd taken comparative religions in college, and wondered at the Buddha's assertion that suffering came from attachment.
For her, it had always been joy. And always would be.
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