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rainbowfic2012-08-18 11:28 pm
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2012-08-18 11:28 pm
Gunmetal Saturation, Faded Blue 16: Survivors
Author: Kat
Title: Survivors
Story: In the Heart - Wild West AU
Colors: Gunmetal saturation, faded blue 16 (I got plenty o'nothin' and nothin's plenty for me)
Supplies and Materials: Miniature collection, eraser, canvas, novelty beads (this picture), acrylic (a clear connection), modeling clay (sky), seed beads, beading wire (this picture), glitter (animal), pastels (under pressure).
Word Count: 1500
Rating: R.
Summary: The Wild West is where I wanna be.
Warnings: depression, suicidal ideation, violence.
Notes: I'm really not sure what I'm doing with this AU. Meme fill. Thanks to Isana for checking my privilege. <3
1. Knife
Summer looks neat and pretty and innocent, like the primmest schoolmarm anyone ever met, but she isn't at all what she seems.
She wears her flaming hair in tight braids pinned around her head, but when it's loose it winds in curls. She keeps her dresses clean and mended, but she wears knives beneath them, at her wrists and calves. Her hands are clean and pale, but she's worked hard with them, even killed with them, men and beasts.
She'd like it if someone saw all of her, not just the outside. But she knows not to hope too hard.
2. Dagger
Bees drone lazily in the heavy golden haze that lies over the wildflowers, the summer air thick and hard to breathe. Olivia lies in the tall grass and pretends not to hear her mother calling for her, increasingly loud.
She could lie here forever, she thinks, staring up at the wide-open sky. She could melt into the earth, drift into the sky. She could drive a dagger into her heart and disappear for good....
She could. But she can't.
Her mother shrieks her name, and Olivia sits up with a sigh.
This is her life, and she must live it.
3. Parang
The further east Felipe goes, the more odd looks he gets for speaking anything but English. It bothers him in a way he's not sure it should, and he really doesn't need that in his life, so he heads right back out west to the open skies and the other vaqueros who ask no questions and tell no lies.
It's a lonely life, out on the plains after dark, the only sounds the cattle lowing and a single harmonica. And it's a brilliant life, with the stars endless overhead, and silent but loyal friends.
He'll take what he can get.
4. Machete Jr
Aaron loves the land, the feel of it under his hands, the smell of growing things on the wind, the crisp not-quite-taste of fresh-cut hay, even the frozen clods of earth that turn his ankles in the winter. He helped to clear it as a child, his own heavy knife in his hands; helped to harvest hay and care for the livestock and gather fuel for the winter. He even helped to build the house. It's his, in a way nothing has ever been before.
They want to drive him off, so they can take his land.
They can try.
5. Machete
Jake feels sometimes like he's hacking through a jungle, trying to keep order in this damn town. It's not that there's a lot of troublemakers exactly, just that the few they have are unusually active, or maybe just really competitive. Shooting contests, drunken brawls, shootouts in which both participants are too tipsy to stand...
No one's died. There is that. But on holiday nights when he's hauling drunks to the lockup, or breaking up fistfights outside the church, he wonders why the hell he ever signed up for this job.
It's worth it. He knows it is. He just wonders.
6. Machete Pro
Lars is an explorer. A professional explorer, which is a thing most people don't know exists, and he's still amazed he stumbled into the job. Going out into the west, into endless wilderness, to meet the people who live there and see its hidden marvels, it seems like a dream to him sometimes, like a pale gunslinger with a cocky stance.
It isn't about the freedom, although that's nice too. It isn't about the money, though he likes that as well.
It's the land, his land, not of his birth but of his heart. He loves the land the best.
7. Hatchet
Ivy had the best childhood of any of her peers. Running around her mama's farm barefoot and gleeful, turning chores into games, stepping on thorns and getting stepped on by horses, falling off of things and breaking bones and generally having a grand old time. She's grown now, at sixteen, or grown enough to not be pulling childish pranks. But she does it anyway, because it's fun, and she's learned enough of life to want it to be fun.
Anyway, her mama makes her chop wood as penance, and she can pretend the axe is a guillotine.
Vive la revolution.
8. Pistol
Joy's not a prostitute, though people think she is, with the way she dances and flirts with the cowboys. It gets annoying, but what’s she to do?
At least out west reputation doesn’t matter much. She’ll smile and flirt and take her pay, and if anyone gets fresh they’ll find out how handy she is with a six-shooter. She’ll dance—oh, she’ll dance, free and easy, careless. She’ll sneak out to meet her lover, and they’ll never see how their starched schoolmarm melts for her, how they fit together.
There’s so much they’ll never see. It makes her sad, sometimes.
9. Revolver
Her daddy left his guns behind when he went. Momma hid them, but not as well as she thought; Danny finds them less than a week later, by accident, high in the hayloft behind a stack of bales.
Momma always said to leave guns alone, but Daddy is gone and Michael can't defend them. Somebody's gotta be the man around here. She picks one up, experimentally.
The revolver is smooth under her fingers, pearl handle fitting perfectly into her palm, the weight of a man's life in her hands.
It feels right.
She closes her hand tight around the handle.
10. Katana
Zack met a man from Japan, once, or at least that's where the man said he was from. Not that it mattered because Zack wasn't listening much; he was too busy admiring the sword, a curved line of rippled steel, light and deadly grace. He couldn't keep his hands to himself.
The man went on his way eventually and took his sword with him, but Zack still longs for it, or maybe what it represents. A more elegant civilization, days less about gunfights and brawls and more about turning weapons into beauty, fights into something that peace will not reject.
11. Shotgun
Gail turns schoolmarm once they move further west, leaves her old farm behind her and travels into town every morning to her little log schoolhouse. She reads to the children, hears their lessons, makes sure they learn their letters and figures and how to be good people until she lets them run home to their chores.
And once bandits ride through town, banging on all the doors; they come to her schoolhouse and she picks up a shotgun because these are her children, her pupils, and she will let nothing happen to them, ever.
No one questions her after that.
12. Rifle
This is the one unladylike thing she'll ever be allowed to learn, and she's had to beg for weeks. But here she is in the misty morning, her father jigging nervously by the fence, and the sheriff standing by, loading the rifle for her.
He said right now they're just working on aim, but Gina doesn't believe that there will ever be another lesson, so she's committed everything he did to memory, and now he's handing her the rifle, and she's lifting it to her shoulder, and...
"Good aim," he says, though it's wretched, and she lowers it, feeling strong.
13. Mace
Nathan did not want to be elected mayor, but it happened anyway and now he has no idea what to do with the job.
Aaron has some ideas but they're all the plans of a young boy, games and fairs, and that can't be all. There's no need to keep order since their schoolteacher chased off the last bandits, no point in collecting taxes since the townspeople do that on their own. But he can't do nothing-- there's a weight to the job, a seriousness that won't let him ignore it.
He'll figure something out. Eventually. He must.
He hopes.
14. Crossbow
Michael can defend himself. He knows Danny doesn't think so, but he's capable of it. He wouldn't have survived this long if he couldn't, no matter what his sister thinks.
He keeps moving-- walking, because the jolts of a horse hurt him, and the jolts of a wagon even more. He's polite and friendly to everyone he meets. He keeps his head down, invisible. And when he has to, he uses a crossbow, because it hurts him less than a pistol.
He's a survivor. He's always been a survivor. He'll go on being a survivor.
He hopes Danny knows that.
15. Brass Knuckles
It's a wild and frightening place, the West, full of dangerous people and animals. Teeth and bullets and blood and bone, survival always at the point of a knife or the barrel of a gun, and always the fear.
But there's beauty, too: vast grassy plains dotted with wildflowers, brilliant red stone like steps carved by the hand of God. The kindness of strangers: a schoolteacher with a shotgun, a young sheriff's deputy who takes his job seriously, a smile across a dusty town.
They'll fight down the dangers with their bare hands, if necessary.
And they will all survive.
Title: Survivors
Story: In the Heart - Wild West AU
Colors: Gunmetal saturation, faded blue 16 (I got plenty o'nothin' and nothin's plenty for me)
Supplies and Materials: Miniature collection, eraser, canvas, novelty beads (this picture), acrylic (a clear connection), modeling clay (sky), seed beads, beading wire (this picture), glitter (animal), pastels (under pressure).
Word Count: 1500
Rating: R.
Summary: The Wild West is where I wanna be.
Warnings: depression, suicidal ideation, violence.
Notes: I'm really not sure what I'm doing with this AU. Meme fill. Thanks to Isana for checking my privilege. <3
1. Knife
Summer looks neat and pretty and innocent, like the primmest schoolmarm anyone ever met, but she isn't at all what she seems.
She wears her flaming hair in tight braids pinned around her head, but when it's loose it winds in curls. She keeps her dresses clean and mended, but she wears knives beneath them, at her wrists and calves. Her hands are clean and pale, but she's worked hard with them, even killed with them, men and beasts.
She'd like it if someone saw all of her, not just the outside. But she knows not to hope too hard.
2. Dagger
Bees drone lazily in the heavy golden haze that lies over the wildflowers, the summer air thick and hard to breathe. Olivia lies in the tall grass and pretends not to hear her mother calling for her, increasingly loud.
She could lie here forever, she thinks, staring up at the wide-open sky. She could melt into the earth, drift into the sky. She could drive a dagger into her heart and disappear for good....
She could. But she can't.
Her mother shrieks her name, and Olivia sits up with a sigh.
This is her life, and she must live it.
3. Parang
The further east Felipe goes, the more odd looks he gets for speaking anything but English. It bothers him in a way he's not sure it should, and he really doesn't need that in his life, so he heads right back out west to the open skies and the other vaqueros who ask no questions and tell no lies.
It's a lonely life, out on the plains after dark, the only sounds the cattle lowing and a single harmonica. And it's a brilliant life, with the stars endless overhead, and silent but loyal friends.
He'll take what he can get.
4. Machete Jr
Aaron loves the land, the feel of it under his hands, the smell of growing things on the wind, the crisp not-quite-taste of fresh-cut hay, even the frozen clods of earth that turn his ankles in the winter. He helped to clear it as a child, his own heavy knife in his hands; helped to harvest hay and care for the livestock and gather fuel for the winter. He even helped to build the house. It's his, in a way nothing has ever been before.
They want to drive him off, so they can take his land.
They can try.
5. Machete
Jake feels sometimes like he's hacking through a jungle, trying to keep order in this damn town. It's not that there's a lot of troublemakers exactly, just that the few they have are unusually active, or maybe just really competitive. Shooting contests, drunken brawls, shootouts in which both participants are too tipsy to stand...
No one's died. There is that. But on holiday nights when he's hauling drunks to the lockup, or breaking up fistfights outside the church, he wonders why the hell he ever signed up for this job.
It's worth it. He knows it is. He just wonders.
6. Machete Pro
Lars is an explorer. A professional explorer, which is a thing most people don't know exists, and he's still amazed he stumbled into the job. Going out into the west, into endless wilderness, to meet the people who live there and see its hidden marvels, it seems like a dream to him sometimes, like a pale gunslinger with a cocky stance.
It isn't about the freedom, although that's nice too. It isn't about the money, though he likes that as well.
It's the land, his land, not of his birth but of his heart. He loves the land the best.
7. Hatchet
Ivy had the best childhood of any of her peers. Running around her mama's farm barefoot and gleeful, turning chores into games, stepping on thorns and getting stepped on by horses, falling off of things and breaking bones and generally having a grand old time. She's grown now, at sixteen, or grown enough to not be pulling childish pranks. But she does it anyway, because it's fun, and she's learned enough of life to want it to be fun.
Anyway, her mama makes her chop wood as penance, and she can pretend the axe is a guillotine.
Vive la revolution.
8. Pistol
Joy's not a prostitute, though people think she is, with the way she dances and flirts with the cowboys. It gets annoying, but what’s she to do?
At least out west reputation doesn’t matter much. She’ll smile and flirt and take her pay, and if anyone gets fresh they’ll find out how handy she is with a six-shooter. She’ll dance—oh, she’ll dance, free and easy, careless. She’ll sneak out to meet her lover, and they’ll never see how their starched schoolmarm melts for her, how they fit together.
There’s so much they’ll never see. It makes her sad, sometimes.
9. Revolver
Her daddy left his guns behind when he went. Momma hid them, but not as well as she thought; Danny finds them less than a week later, by accident, high in the hayloft behind a stack of bales.
Momma always said to leave guns alone, but Daddy is gone and Michael can't defend them. Somebody's gotta be the man around here. She picks one up, experimentally.
The revolver is smooth under her fingers, pearl handle fitting perfectly into her palm, the weight of a man's life in her hands.
It feels right.
She closes her hand tight around the handle.
10. Katana
Zack met a man from Japan, once, or at least that's where the man said he was from. Not that it mattered because Zack wasn't listening much; he was too busy admiring the sword, a curved line of rippled steel, light and deadly grace. He couldn't keep his hands to himself.
The man went on his way eventually and took his sword with him, but Zack still longs for it, or maybe what it represents. A more elegant civilization, days less about gunfights and brawls and more about turning weapons into beauty, fights into something that peace will not reject.
11. Shotgun
Gail turns schoolmarm once they move further west, leaves her old farm behind her and travels into town every morning to her little log schoolhouse. She reads to the children, hears their lessons, makes sure they learn their letters and figures and how to be good people until she lets them run home to their chores.
And once bandits ride through town, banging on all the doors; they come to her schoolhouse and she picks up a shotgun because these are her children, her pupils, and she will let nothing happen to them, ever.
No one questions her after that.
12. Rifle
This is the one unladylike thing she'll ever be allowed to learn, and she's had to beg for weeks. But here she is in the misty morning, her father jigging nervously by the fence, and the sheriff standing by, loading the rifle for her.
He said right now they're just working on aim, but Gina doesn't believe that there will ever be another lesson, so she's committed everything he did to memory, and now he's handing her the rifle, and she's lifting it to her shoulder, and...
"Good aim," he says, though it's wretched, and she lowers it, feeling strong.
13. Mace
Nathan did not want to be elected mayor, but it happened anyway and now he has no idea what to do with the job.
Aaron has some ideas but they're all the plans of a young boy, games and fairs, and that can't be all. There's no need to keep order since their schoolteacher chased off the last bandits, no point in collecting taxes since the townspeople do that on their own. But he can't do nothing-- there's a weight to the job, a seriousness that won't let him ignore it.
He'll figure something out. Eventually. He must.
He hopes.
14. Crossbow
Michael can defend himself. He knows Danny doesn't think so, but he's capable of it. He wouldn't have survived this long if he couldn't, no matter what his sister thinks.
He keeps moving-- walking, because the jolts of a horse hurt him, and the jolts of a wagon even more. He's polite and friendly to everyone he meets. He keeps his head down, invisible. And when he has to, he uses a crossbow, because it hurts him less than a pistol.
He's a survivor. He's always been a survivor. He'll go on being a survivor.
He hopes Danny knows that.
15. Brass Knuckles
It's a wild and frightening place, the West, full of dangerous people and animals. Teeth and bullets and blood and bone, survival always at the point of a knife or the barrel of a gun, and always the fear.
But there's beauty, too: vast grassy plains dotted with wildflowers, brilliant red stone like steps carved by the hand of God. The kindness of strangers: a schoolteacher with a shotgun, a young sheriff's deputy who takes his job seriously, a smile across a dusty town.
They'll fight down the dangers with their bare hands, if necessary.
And they will all survive.