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rainbowfic2020-09-23 08:32 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2020-09-23 08:32 pm
Acanthus #13 [Divide and Rule]
Name: Cut Away
Story: Divide & Rule/Heroes of the Revolution
Colors: Acanthus #13 (scissors)
Supplies and Styles: Seedbeads + Pastels (allbingo February Flowers square “Anemone – Forsaken.”) + Graffiti (September Secrets, since Elizabeth's life is made of secrets anyway)
Word Count: 1207
Rating: Teen
Warnings: There’s not really actually anything in the fic, but there are references to abandonment, an unhappy marriage & illness/death.
Notes: 1908, 1926, 1947. Elizabeth Carter Long/John Iveson, Edward Iveson, Hanne Beck, Hugh Taylor, Julia Graves. (Elizabeth is Edward’s mother.)
Summary: Elizabeth’s life has always been a matter of duty first, but she cuts out patchwork moments for herself.
***
1908
Elizabeth is always busy, cutting briskly through her days. Today she’s turning the sheets sides to middle, applying her scissors with care. The household is her responsibility, and has been ever since her mother died.
“Miss Long,” someone says behind her, and her hold slips momentarily, one crooked cut in the cotton. “There you are. I wanted a word.”
Elizabeth puts the scissors down on the floor and looks up at Mr Iveson. She can only think of one reason her father’s visitor might want to speak to her. “Oh, dear. Is something wrong with your room?”
“With my –?” He stops and blinks, wrong-sided. Then he pushes fairish hair back from his forehead and says, “No, no. Nothing is wrong. Only that I was going to take a walk and I wondered if you might like to join me.”
Elizabeth’s the one now lost in confusion, as she lets him help her to her feet. “For a walk?”
“You do know the country.” He said, tilting his head, his face creasing into a smile. “But I see that you are busy, so perhaps later might be best?”
Elizabeth is always busy; she nearly turns his kind invitation down, but she looks from him back to the old sheets, and opts instead for a walk down the lane under an uncommonly blue sky. She stops to hold one patchwork moment, and doesn’t think of duty. This, she never regrets.
1926
Elizabeth cuts out coloured strips of paper, passing them to Julia, waiting beside her. Newspaper is spread out over the table to save it from the glue. The little girl frowns in concentration, but each loop of the chain springs loose again in her hands.
Elizabeth is cut free from duty for another too-small patchwork square of time. She leans over, before there can be tears of frustration, and says, “Why don’t you paint on the glue, dear, and I’ll make the chain?”
They get on much better that way, and there are already ten multi-coloured loops in their paper chain, before Hanne swirls in through the door in a blur of green and gold chiffon and lace, evidently halfway through trying on an evening dress in need of alteration.
“Elizabeth,” she says, her forehead furrowing as she stops at the table, and strokes Julia’s curls with a careless hand. (“Yes, yes, darling,” she murmurs, turning her head to briefly to look, “very nice.”) “It’s Hugh on the telephone. He needs you at home.”
Duty calls, after all. Elizabeth brushes tiny pieces of pink and green and blue paper from her dress as she rises. “I’m sorry, Hanne,” she says. “I had better go.”
“But,” says Hanne, and stops. Her hand rests now on Julia’s small shoulder, before her daughter can add her voice to the protest. She halts, and then starts again, “Oh, but – Daisy is coming. She said she might bring Ned.”
Elizabeth feels that cut, deep, but she says nothing. She made her choice over a year ago. It was not truly a choice. She has not carelessly trimmed her son out of her life, but in these impossible circumstances, she has her duty – and Ned has Daisy and Ted and Anne and the girls; all those she loves and trusts most in the world. She must do what must be done. That has always been the way of her life.
“She probably won’t,” Hanne says, hastily. “I shouldn’t have said.”
Elizabeth nods. “Another time,” she says. She cannot speak of any of these things, even to Hanne. Why she married Hugh, all the help he needs and will not get from anyone else; that burden is hers alone, no matter what anyone thinks of her. Better their judgement than to talk of things she should not. Now, though, they might as well all be paper loops coming unstuck, separate cut-out strips of paper fallen any which way they may. She wishes she could mend them all.
Julia looks up from her chair. She has her own, more important concerns, and voices them loudly: “You can’t leave! How will I make my paper chain?”
1947
It is in many ways a release to be dying. The pain grows easier lately, and she has all the excuse she needs to trim away duties which she can no longer perform. Hugh is away in Scotland. Her illness is, in any case, another of those things that do not exist in his world. She’s glad of it, for it means that there’s nothing to prevent Ned from visiting her, now he’s finally back from Germany.
She finishes sewing on a loose button on the cuff of his jacket and he watches with a mix of impatience and too painful understanding. She cuts the thread. Her fingers tremble so much she’s doubtless not made a proper job of it.
She allows her mind to wander back through her life. She regrets too much. That she let herself be carried away by Hugh’s need and music and poetry, so alien to her; that she could not find a way to be faithful to him and Edward both. Most of all, the loss of John, which grows sharper now at the end. She wishes Ned was not all that was left of him.
“Haven’t you found someone else yet?” she asks Edward.
He takes back his jacket, folding it over his arm and raises an eyebrow at her. She stares back.
“Found,” he says, surprising her with the sudden unguarded revelation, “and lost again.”
She grips his hand too tightly with thin fingers.
“You remember what I told you about the Graveses?” he asks, but she could hardly forget that. “I saw Julia. There’s nothing much more to say – but I am keeping an eye out for her. I mean to look her up when – if – she’s back in the country.”
Despite everything, she and Ned don’t lie to each other. She can’t tell him the truth of what happened; that remains her secret. Even now shame would overwhelm her if she tried and she will not betray Hugh this side of the grave. She knows her duty. So she says nothing. Kind lies would be another betrayal. It’s another regret of hers that she has so little to give Ned to help him at least to comprehend why she left him.
She wonders if, this once, Ned is not being straight with her, telling her something he thinks she wants to hear. She studies his face, but he meets her gaze with a familiar, small half smile. He looks far too much like her, but he smiles like John.
Hanne would like it; Edward and Julia, she thinks and that makes her laugh, though it hurts. She’s tired enough to think that perhaps she likes the idea, too. For Ned shouldn’t be alone, and neither should Julia, lost and grieving and far away from home.
“You should do that,” she says. “What is she like now? I’ve often wondered. I haven’t seen her since Hanne left – no, even before that.”
She has almost nothing but patchwork moments now, each cut away from the other, and these she spends with Ned – so undeserved – she treasures the most.
***
Story: Divide & Rule/Heroes of the Revolution
Colors: Acanthus #13 (scissors)
Supplies and Styles: Seedbeads + Pastels (
allbingo February Flowers square “Anemone – Forsaken.”) + Graffiti (September Secrets, since Elizabeth's life is made of secrets anyway)Word Count: 1207
Rating: Teen
Warnings: There’s not really actually anything in the fic, but there are references to abandonment, an unhappy marriage & illness/death.
Notes: 1908, 1926, 1947. Elizabeth Carter Long/John Iveson, Edward Iveson, Hanne Beck, Hugh Taylor, Julia Graves. (Elizabeth is Edward’s mother.)
Summary: Elizabeth’s life has always been a matter of duty first, but she cuts out patchwork moments for herself.
***
1908
Elizabeth is always busy, cutting briskly through her days. Today she’s turning the sheets sides to middle, applying her scissors with care. The household is her responsibility, and has been ever since her mother died.
“Miss Long,” someone says behind her, and her hold slips momentarily, one crooked cut in the cotton. “There you are. I wanted a word.”
Elizabeth puts the scissors down on the floor and looks up at Mr Iveson. She can only think of one reason her father’s visitor might want to speak to her. “Oh, dear. Is something wrong with your room?”
“With my –?” He stops and blinks, wrong-sided. Then he pushes fairish hair back from his forehead and says, “No, no. Nothing is wrong. Only that I was going to take a walk and I wondered if you might like to join me.”
Elizabeth’s the one now lost in confusion, as she lets him help her to her feet. “For a walk?”
“You do know the country.” He said, tilting his head, his face creasing into a smile. “But I see that you are busy, so perhaps later might be best?”
Elizabeth is always busy; she nearly turns his kind invitation down, but she looks from him back to the old sheets, and opts instead for a walk down the lane under an uncommonly blue sky. She stops to hold one patchwork moment, and doesn’t think of duty. This, she never regrets.
1926
Elizabeth cuts out coloured strips of paper, passing them to Julia, waiting beside her. Newspaper is spread out over the table to save it from the glue. The little girl frowns in concentration, but each loop of the chain springs loose again in her hands.
Elizabeth is cut free from duty for another too-small patchwork square of time. She leans over, before there can be tears of frustration, and says, “Why don’t you paint on the glue, dear, and I’ll make the chain?”
They get on much better that way, and there are already ten multi-coloured loops in their paper chain, before Hanne swirls in through the door in a blur of green and gold chiffon and lace, evidently halfway through trying on an evening dress in need of alteration.
“Elizabeth,” she says, her forehead furrowing as she stops at the table, and strokes Julia’s curls with a careless hand. (“Yes, yes, darling,” she murmurs, turning her head to briefly to look, “very nice.”) “It’s Hugh on the telephone. He needs you at home.”
Duty calls, after all. Elizabeth brushes tiny pieces of pink and green and blue paper from her dress as she rises. “I’m sorry, Hanne,” she says. “I had better go.”
“But,” says Hanne, and stops. Her hand rests now on Julia’s small shoulder, before her daughter can add her voice to the protest. She halts, and then starts again, “Oh, but – Daisy is coming. She said she might bring Ned.”
Elizabeth feels that cut, deep, but she says nothing. She made her choice over a year ago. It was not truly a choice. She has not carelessly trimmed her son out of her life, but in these impossible circumstances, she has her duty – and Ned has Daisy and Ted and Anne and the girls; all those she loves and trusts most in the world. She must do what must be done. That has always been the way of her life.
“She probably won’t,” Hanne says, hastily. “I shouldn’t have said.”
Elizabeth nods. “Another time,” she says. She cannot speak of any of these things, even to Hanne. Why she married Hugh, all the help he needs and will not get from anyone else; that burden is hers alone, no matter what anyone thinks of her. Better their judgement than to talk of things she should not. Now, though, they might as well all be paper loops coming unstuck, separate cut-out strips of paper fallen any which way they may. She wishes she could mend them all.
Julia looks up from her chair. She has her own, more important concerns, and voices them loudly: “You can’t leave! How will I make my paper chain?”
1947
It is in many ways a release to be dying. The pain grows easier lately, and she has all the excuse she needs to trim away duties which she can no longer perform. Hugh is away in Scotland. Her illness is, in any case, another of those things that do not exist in his world. She’s glad of it, for it means that there’s nothing to prevent Ned from visiting her, now he’s finally back from Germany.
She finishes sewing on a loose button on the cuff of his jacket and he watches with a mix of impatience and too painful understanding. She cuts the thread. Her fingers tremble so much she’s doubtless not made a proper job of it.
She allows her mind to wander back through her life. She regrets too much. That she let herself be carried away by Hugh’s need and music and poetry, so alien to her; that she could not find a way to be faithful to him and Edward both. Most of all, the loss of John, which grows sharper now at the end. She wishes Ned was not all that was left of him.
“Haven’t you found someone else yet?” she asks Edward.
He takes back his jacket, folding it over his arm and raises an eyebrow at her. She stares back.
“Found,” he says, surprising her with the sudden unguarded revelation, “and lost again.”
She grips his hand too tightly with thin fingers.
“You remember what I told you about the Graveses?” he asks, but she could hardly forget that. “I saw Julia. There’s nothing much more to say – but I am keeping an eye out for her. I mean to look her up when – if – she’s back in the country.”
Despite everything, she and Ned don’t lie to each other. She can’t tell him the truth of what happened; that remains her secret. Even now shame would overwhelm her if she tried and she will not betray Hugh this side of the grave. She knows her duty. So she says nothing. Kind lies would be another betrayal. It’s another regret of hers that she has so little to give Ned to help him at least to comprehend why she left him.
She wonders if, this once, Ned is not being straight with her, telling her something he thinks she wants to hear. She studies his face, but he meets her gaze with a familiar, small half smile. He looks far too much like her, but he smiles like John.
Hanne would like it; Edward and Julia, she thinks and that makes her laugh, though it hurts. She’s tired enough to think that perhaps she likes the idea, too. For Ned shouldn’t be alone, and neither should Julia, lost and grieving and far away from home.
“You should do that,” she says. “What is she like now? I’ve often wondered. I haven’t seen her since Hanne left – no, even before that.”
She has almost nothing but patchwork moments now, each cut away from the other, and these she spends with Ned – so undeserved – she treasures the most.
***
no subject
you, uh, didn't happen to write the whole story of Hugh and Elizabeth, did you?
no subject
you, uh, didn't happen to write the whole story of Hugh and Elizabeth, did you?
I haven't. I keep meaning to, but, I don't know, I don't really like to go there for some reason, and this is the closest I've got as yet.