the androgynous keeper of plushfrogs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crossfortune) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2015-10-09 07:13 pm
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-10-09 07:13 pm
forgetting and undoing
Name: Mischa
Story: the empty throne
Colors: spark (and i sang holy holy as he buttoned down his pants), bistre (I keep my promises), elvish green (I have to believe he can come back.)
Supplies and Styles: graffiti (special bonus), canvas (at least partially) fingerpainting
Word Count: 2396
Rating: R
Warnings: oh dear god: this is going to have a ton of warnings. rape (and Lin is 15 at the onset), child abuse, attempted suicide, suicidal ideation, depression, abusive relationships. if I missed one, please tell me.
Summary: (this is what happens when your heart is broken open. forgetting and undoing. you don’t remember who and what you truly are.) Being the most beautiful person in the world has never been a blessing. Lin knows this to be true.
Notes: extremely experimental in style and disturbing in content.
you’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be dead inside your own body. you take a breath. keep breathing. one breath at a time. this is not what your father wanted for you. he tried to teach you to live, not just to survive.
(but your father is dead. your father is dead, and you are alive. you survive. a breath at a time.)
he promised you, once, to find you a marriage, when you were old enough. when it was clear from the lines of your body and the bones of your face that you would be beautiful. more than beautiful. beautiful enough for princes and kings and emperors to desire, to covet. find you a marriage to someone, a man or a woman, who would be good to you. who could protect you.
(you dreamed of it, once. of a good man. not handsome. who would be kind. who wouldn’t hurt you. your dreams were so simple once. you don’t dream anymore.)
he promised. he tried. he wrote a letter, when you were fifteen, to an old friend of his. a mercenary, your father told you: a mercenary and a heretic, an open follower of the enchained one. a sellsword who only sells his services to causes that he finds just. a hard, grim man, but a good one. he could protect you. your father sent the letter by a conjured familiar and the white lady’s west wind, hoping against hope that it would find his friend.
it never did. time ran low. you were fifteen and still unmarried, fifteen and still not quite a man grown when your father had to go to war. he could not take you and his sister with you: he distrusted leaving you at what remains of court with his king’s son, but had little options. he left you with his books of magic and your own set of ritual tools and a promise to return.
(you don’t believe in promises anymore. you can’t.)
you hate the way they look at you, wrap yourself in layers of silk and veils. your sister is fearless, tries to draw attention off you. but she is a celestial maiden, a goddess. she has wings as long as she has her feathered cloak: she can fly away. you are only mortal, though named the most beautiful in the world.
(you know how to hide. you lock yourself in your rooms with your father’s books, try to teach yourself everything your father didn’t have time to teach you. you try to hide. you try to keep yourself safe. you try you try you try-.)
you step out, once. with your sister, who coaxed you out to walk in the gardens beneath the moon when no one will be there. when you come back, the wards on the chest she keeps her feathered cloak in are broken. the cloak is gone. the cloak is gone, stolen, and you hold your sister as she sobs. anyone could have her mantle, and whoever has her mantle could force her to stay with them. it was one of the first stories your father taught you: the punishment of the celestial maidens for their rebellion put them under the dominion of mortals. his wife, your mother, was the eldest daughter of the most-beloved. he found her robe by the shore while she was bathing and returned it to her: in the end, she came back and chose to stay, until she chose to leave again.
you know who stole your sister’s robe and why. you don’t care what you have to do. you only promise to get it back.
(you are fifteen years old, and this is the last choice you make in your life. this isn’t a choice, not truly, but you tell yourself so. why? you don’t remember. you are fifteen years old and you tell yourself that this is a choice. the bedroom door locks behind you.
you tell your prince to give you your sister’s feather-mantle. he doesn’t need to tell you what he wants in exchange. you put the mantle with your veils and silks, set a ward on the bundle. his hands are rough and heedless.
by the time dawn breaks, you know how to die in your own body. how to go away and not be there inside.)
you stumble back to your rooms at dawn, with your sister’s feather cloak in your arms. lan opens the door and you fall into her arms and tremble and she holds you tight, rocks you like the mother you never truly had. maybe you cry: you can’t remember. she draws you a bath. hours, pieces, missing. you don’t remember. can’t remember.
lan rages, after, a storm in the shape of a girl. she would take you with her, when she goes, and you want to. oh how you want to. (and you can’t remember anymore how it felt to want something so much). but you can’t. you know you can’t. the shape and edges of the bargain bind you. if you both leave, both flee, when they catch you, they will never give your sister’s mantle back. and if only one of you can be free, you would rather it be her. she’s tried her best to take care of you, and now it is your turn to take care of her. you beg her to go, to go alone, beg her until she relents. you will not let her blame herself. you want her to save herself.
(she flies south, with the summer storms, to a hidden sacred grove, claims it as her own and guards it against trespassers: she is safe and she is well, and that is all that matters)
it won’t last long. you tell yourself that. you know. this war will be no stalemate. win or lose. you listen. you hear. you know. you know what all the pieces mean, put together. you listen close and hold what you know to your heart. it won’t last long. speed is the essence of war.
(if the war is somehow won, your father will return. your father will return, and kill your prince, without caring about the cost to him. the knowledge is heavy on your heart. if the war is lost, then it won’t matter anymore. you close your eyes and breathe and endure. endure. endure-.)
you are right, in the end. the days blur together, but it isn’t long before the fall. the empress lifen engages your king’s army: she sends her eldest son and his troops to deal with your city. the siege is short. too short.
there is fire and there is blood and there is death. there is nowhere you can run. there is nowhere you can go. and your prince tries to bargain for his life. for peace. he offers you to the first prince of the empire, as if your body, your life, was his to give away. he doesn’t give you a choice. (he never gave you a choice.)
it doesn’t save his life. the first prince of the empire stares at you, his eyes hungry, and then smiles, sharp and cold. he accepts, but the sound of metal on metal echoes in the room. the first prince draws his sword and cuts down your prince. but not quick. never quick. his blow isn’t immediately fatal. slow suffering. there is blood and screaming that dies away into agonized gurgling. you don’t scream. can’t scream. can’t even make a sound. even when his body lies at your feet, nothing left but mutilated, empty flesh. you cannot even be happy, for even a moment, cannot be happy that your prince is dead because worse still is yet to come.
cold fingers slide under your chin, force your eyes up to look at him. the first prince flicks the blood off his sword before he sheaths it.
“he touched what is mine,” he says, fingers cupping your jaw, caressing your cheek. everything in you wants to shiver away and even more when he stares at you like you’re a butterfly pinned under glass, intent and possessive. takes what he wants, when he wants, and never lets it go. especially when it should never have been his to begin with.
you never wanted this. you never wanted any of this. you are more than beautiful enough to be consort and concubine to kings and emperors and princes. any number of men would draw swords and kill in your name. you never wanted this. you never wanted any of this.
(your city is dead. your kingdom is dead. you are alive.)
you cannot bring yourself to hate empress lifen. you cannot bring yourself to hate her, even though she brought war to your home, your kingdom, sweeping it under her feet. you cannot bring yourself to hate her even though your father is dead. you cannot bring yourself to hate a tired woman so haunted by her regrets, her eldest son chief among them, and who will be dead all too soon.
you hate your husband, while you still have heart enough to hate. it’s not long, because it’s not long that you still can feel, but-
(your prince was a drunken lout. a fool, who saw something beautiful and demanded it be his. your husband is neither a drunk or a fool. he is worse. much worse.
you remember how to die in your own body again. this time you don’t come back.)
it blurs together, after that. time passes. your hair gets longer. the empress dies. you remember strangely. a wedding night with familiar cold hands and a different marriage dress. you fought, for all the good it did you. you wept. you cried out for your brother-
(you never had a brother).
it doesn’t matter. is that what happens when your heart is broken open? forgetting and undoing. you no longer truly remember who you are.
time passes. you think you like the youngest princess, as much as you can like anything anymore. she prays. you almost wish you could still pray. still believe. you don’t believe in the gods like you don’t believe in promises or hope.
you find her in the shrine to the most-beloved. you come here sometimes, to be alone, and talk to him, deep in the empty silence of your heart. you don’t pray to him, but you talk to him, even though he cannot hear. he cannot help anyone. he cannot even help himself. he’s like you, you think, or you’re like him. empty, feeling nothing, a beautiful thing for others to want and possess. he doesn’t want anything but freedom. you don’t want anything but the silence and the stillness.
freedom from words, from hunger, from lust, from everything. there is no freedom in the eldest’s realm, but at least then you will be dead. at least then you will truly be dead instead of just dead in your own body.
you watch lihua try to kindle the altar-flame and fail. you told her he doesn’t hear her. she doesn’t give up. you don’t understand. you don’t understand how she can still hope. hope hurt too much before you let it go.
(time passes. you wait. your hairpins are sharp. you remember how the body works from your father’s lessons and his books. this is a choice. this is a choice.
you have not had any choices for a long time. you make your choice. the last choice you will ever have in your life. in a life where you have had far too few choices, and all you can choose is silence and stillness and freedom from-
but you wake up again, without even any scars to mark your skin. you cannot even slip away.
you endure, because you have no other choice. you endure. forgetting and undoing.
you remember your husband’s hand, tight on your arm, while your daughter screams for you, her scream echoing off the walls. you remember laughing, the moment you cast your heart away. you remember-
no. none of this ever happened. but you remember-
illusion-and-delusion. your stock-in-trade)
you drift and you listen. you hear. you are beautiful and mad, and no one holds their tongue around you. you pour wine for your husband’s councilors and hear the advice they give your husband.
you hear and you know.
(you are unseen. you are an ornament. you know how the empire is being run. you know everything they plan.)
lihua shines with secrets untold. her lady with devotion. none of you are wearing your own face, but most of all is the man she never claimed to be her lover yet half the court thinks is. he is both more and less than what he is, chains and locks and banked flame, who knows you and doesn’t know you and sees you.
lady daiyu stands in your rooms with the poem lihua sent you. this is something like a choice: you are still not free. you don’t hope that you will ever be free. but you know. and you know. and you know. you burn the poem, so your husband will not find it.
(he does not see you. he never sees you.)
you are not afraid. you have forgotten what fear feels like. forgetting and undoing. your tools are dusty. your father’s books have lain too long by. you find the box and take it with you.
(your father is dead. your father is dead, and you never were able to light incense and an offering for him. but you are alive. you survive. one breath at a time.)
lihua smiles at you. daiyu laughs, and in her laugh is a sharp-edged blade. jun burns like flame, jun knows you, and you remember him with another name though you never met him before this moment-
(this is what happens when your heart is broken open. forgetting and undoing. you don’t remember who and what you truly are.)
you tell them everything.
Story: the empty throne
Colors: spark (and i sang holy holy as he buttoned down his pants), bistre (I keep my promises), elvish green (I have to believe he can come back.)
Supplies and Styles: graffiti (special bonus), canvas (at least partially) fingerpainting
Word Count: 2396
Rating: R
Warnings: oh dear god: this is going to have a ton of warnings. rape (and Lin is 15 at the onset), child abuse, attempted suicide, suicidal ideation, depression, abusive relationships. if I missed one, please tell me.
Summary: (this is what happens when your heart is broken open. forgetting and undoing. you don’t remember who and what you truly are.) Being the most beautiful person in the world has never been a blessing. Lin knows this to be true.
Notes: extremely experimental in style and disturbing in content.
you’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be dead inside your own body. you take a breath. keep breathing. one breath at a time. this is not what your father wanted for you. he tried to teach you to live, not just to survive.
(but your father is dead. your father is dead, and you are alive. you survive. a breath at a time.)
he promised you, once, to find you a marriage, when you were old enough. when it was clear from the lines of your body and the bones of your face that you would be beautiful. more than beautiful. beautiful enough for princes and kings and emperors to desire, to covet. find you a marriage to someone, a man or a woman, who would be good to you. who could protect you.
(you dreamed of it, once. of a good man. not handsome. who would be kind. who wouldn’t hurt you. your dreams were so simple once. you don’t dream anymore.)
he promised. he tried. he wrote a letter, when you were fifteen, to an old friend of his. a mercenary, your father told you: a mercenary and a heretic, an open follower of the enchained one. a sellsword who only sells his services to causes that he finds just. a hard, grim man, but a good one. he could protect you. your father sent the letter by a conjured familiar and the white lady’s west wind, hoping against hope that it would find his friend.
it never did. time ran low. you were fifteen and still unmarried, fifteen and still not quite a man grown when your father had to go to war. he could not take you and his sister with you: he distrusted leaving you at what remains of court with his king’s son, but had little options. he left you with his books of magic and your own set of ritual tools and a promise to return.
(you don’t believe in promises anymore. you can’t.)
you hate the way they look at you, wrap yourself in layers of silk and veils. your sister is fearless, tries to draw attention off you. but she is a celestial maiden, a goddess. she has wings as long as she has her feathered cloak: she can fly away. you are only mortal, though named the most beautiful in the world.
(you know how to hide. you lock yourself in your rooms with your father’s books, try to teach yourself everything your father didn’t have time to teach you. you try to hide. you try to keep yourself safe. you try you try you try-.)
you step out, once. with your sister, who coaxed you out to walk in the gardens beneath the moon when no one will be there. when you come back, the wards on the chest she keeps her feathered cloak in are broken. the cloak is gone. the cloak is gone, stolen, and you hold your sister as she sobs. anyone could have her mantle, and whoever has her mantle could force her to stay with them. it was one of the first stories your father taught you: the punishment of the celestial maidens for their rebellion put them under the dominion of mortals. his wife, your mother, was the eldest daughter of the most-beloved. he found her robe by the shore while she was bathing and returned it to her: in the end, she came back and chose to stay, until she chose to leave again.
you know who stole your sister’s robe and why. you don’t care what you have to do. you only promise to get it back.
(you are fifteen years old, and this is the last choice you make in your life. this isn’t a choice, not truly, but you tell yourself so. why? you don’t remember. you are fifteen years old and you tell yourself that this is a choice. the bedroom door locks behind you.
you tell your prince to give you your sister’s feather-mantle. he doesn’t need to tell you what he wants in exchange. you put the mantle with your veils and silks, set a ward on the bundle. his hands are rough and heedless.
by the time dawn breaks, you know how to die in your own body. how to go away and not be there inside.)
you stumble back to your rooms at dawn, with your sister’s feather cloak in your arms. lan opens the door and you fall into her arms and tremble and she holds you tight, rocks you like the mother you never truly had. maybe you cry: you can’t remember. she draws you a bath. hours, pieces, missing. you don’t remember. can’t remember.
lan rages, after, a storm in the shape of a girl. she would take you with her, when she goes, and you want to. oh how you want to. (and you can’t remember anymore how it felt to want something so much). but you can’t. you know you can’t. the shape and edges of the bargain bind you. if you both leave, both flee, when they catch you, they will never give your sister’s mantle back. and if only one of you can be free, you would rather it be her. she’s tried her best to take care of you, and now it is your turn to take care of her. you beg her to go, to go alone, beg her until she relents. you will not let her blame herself. you want her to save herself.
(she flies south, with the summer storms, to a hidden sacred grove, claims it as her own and guards it against trespassers: she is safe and she is well, and that is all that matters)
it won’t last long. you tell yourself that. you know. this war will be no stalemate. win or lose. you listen. you hear. you know. you know what all the pieces mean, put together. you listen close and hold what you know to your heart. it won’t last long. speed is the essence of war.
(if the war is somehow won, your father will return. your father will return, and kill your prince, without caring about the cost to him. the knowledge is heavy on your heart. if the war is lost, then it won’t matter anymore. you close your eyes and breathe and endure. endure. endure-.)
you are right, in the end. the days blur together, but it isn’t long before the fall. the empress lifen engages your king’s army: she sends her eldest son and his troops to deal with your city. the siege is short. too short.
there is fire and there is blood and there is death. there is nowhere you can run. there is nowhere you can go. and your prince tries to bargain for his life. for peace. he offers you to the first prince of the empire, as if your body, your life, was his to give away. he doesn’t give you a choice. (he never gave you a choice.)
it doesn’t save his life. the first prince of the empire stares at you, his eyes hungry, and then smiles, sharp and cold. he accepts, but the sound of metal on metal echoes in the room. the first prince draws his sword and cuts down your prince. but not quick. never quick. his blow isn’t immediately fatal. slow suffering. there is blood and screaming that dies away into agonized gurgling. you don’t scream. can’t scream. can’t even make a sound. even when his body lies at your feet, nothing left but mutilated, empty flesh. you cannot even be happy, for even a moment, cannot be happy that your prince is dead because worse still is yet to come.
cold fingers slide under your chin, force your eyes up to look at him. the first prince flicks the blood off his sword before he sheaths it.
“he touched what is mine,” he says, fingers cupping your jaw, caressing your cheek. everything in you wants to shiver away and even more when he stares at you like you’re a butterfly pinned under glass, intent and possessive. takes what he wants, when he wants, and never lets it go. especially when it should never have been his to begin with.
you never wanted this. you never wanted any of this. you are more than beautiful enough to be consort and concubine to kings and emperors and princes. any number of men would draw swords and kill in your name. you never wanted this. you never wanted any of this.
(your city is dead. your kingdom is dead. you are alive.)
you cannot bring yourself to hate empress lifen. you cannot bring yourself to hate her, even though she brought war to your home, your kingdom, sweeping it under her feet. you cannot bring yourself to hate her even though your father is dead. you cannot bring yourself to hate a tired woman so haunted by her regrets, her eldest son chief among them, and who will be dead all too soon.
you hate your husband, while you still have heart enough to hate. it’s not long, because it’s not long that you still can feel, but-
(your prince was a drunken lout. a fool, who saw something beautiful and demanded it be his. your husband is neither a drunk or a fool. he is worse. much worse.
you remember how to die in your own body again. this time you don’t come back.)
it blurs together, after that. time passes. your hair gets longer. the empress dies. you remember strangely. a wedding night with familiar cold hands and a different marriage dress. you fought, for all the good it did you. you wept. you cried out for your brother-
(you never had a brother).
it doesn’t matter. is that what happens when your heart is broken open? forgetting and undoing. you no longer truly remember who you are.
time passes. you think you like the youngest princess, as much as you can like anything anymore. she prays. you almost wish you could still pray. still believe. you don’t believe in the gods like you don’t believe in promises or hope.
you find her in the shrine to the most-beloved. you come here sometimes, to be alone, and talk to him, deep in the empty silence of your heart. you don’t pray to him, but you talk to him, even though he cannot hear. he cannot help anyone. he cannot even help himself. he’s like you, you think, or you’re like him. empty, feeling nothing, a beautiful thing for others to want and possess. he doesn’t want anything but freedom. you don’t want anything but the silence and the stillness.
freedom from words, from hunger, from lust, from everything. there is no freedom in the eldest’s realm, but at least then you will be dead. at least then you will truly be dead instead of just dead in your own body.
you watch lihua try to kindle the altar-flame and fail. you told her he doesn’t hear her. she doesn’t give up. you don’t understand. you don’t understand how she can still hope. hope hurt too much before you let it go.
(time passes. you wait. your hairpins are sharp. you remember how the body works from your father’s lessons and his books. this is a choice. this is a choice.
you have not had any choices for a long time. you make your choice. the last choice you will ever have in your life. in a life where you have had far too few choices, and all you can choose is silence and stillness and freedom from-
but you wake up again, without even any scars to mark your skin. you cannot even slip away.
you endure, because you have no other choice. you endure. forgetting and undoing.
you remember your husband’s hand, tight on your arm, while your daughter screams for you, her scream echoing off the walls. you remember laughing, the moment you cast your heart away. you remember-
no. none of this ever happened. but you remember-
illusion-and-delusion. your stock-in-trade)
you drift and you listen. you hear. you are beautiful and mad, and no one holds their tongue around you. you pour wine for your husband’s councilors and hear the advice they give your husband.
you hear and you know.
(you are unseen. you are an ornament. you know how the empire is being run. you know everything they plan.)
lihua shines with secrets untold. her lady with devotion. none of you are wearing your own face, but most of all is the man she never claimed to be her lover yet half the court thinks is. he is both more and less than what he is, chains and locks and banked flame, who knows you and doesn’t know you and sees you.
lady daiyu stands in your rooms with the poem lihua sent you. this is something like a choice: you are still not free. you don’t hope that you will ever be free. but you know. and you know. and you know. you burn the poem, so your husband will not find it.
(he does not see you. he never sees you.)
you are not afraid. you have forgotten what fear feels like. forgetting and undoing. your tools are dusty. your father’s books have lain too long by. you find the box and take it with you.
(your father is dead. your father is dead, and you never were able to light incense and an offering for him. but you are alive. you survive. one breath at a time.)
lihua smiles at you. daiyu laughs, and in her laugh is a sharp-edged blade. jun burns like flame, jun knows you, and you remember him with another name though you never met him before this moment-
(this is what happens when your heart is broken open. forgetting and undoing. you don’t remember who and what you truly are.)
you tell them everything.
no subject
no subject
I ended up rewriting this piece a couple of times to make absolutely certain I was respectful to the subject matter, and I was still nervous about it.
no subject
(for the record, that line about hope being too painful is way too real.)
no subject