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)
rainbowfic2013-01-20 02:21 am
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2013-01-20 02:21 am
the ones left behind
Name: Mischa
Story: fragments of stars falling
Colors: atomic tangerine (catastrophic), dove gray (Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal)
Supplies and Styles: none.
Word Count: 961
Rating: R (narrator swears. a lot.)
Warnings: quite a lot of background violence, child/teenage soldiers (and their deaths), a father's grief for all his children
Summary: I want Her to stop asking if I have any more daughters.
Zorya had known that Ilyas was old - once-dark hair had thinned and gone white, the lines worn into his face, the inches of height he had lost, even the way his aging body could no longer support his flawless swordsmanship - but before this moment, she almost hadn’t realized just how old he was. For the first time, slumped in the stool next to hers, Ilyas looked every year of seventy-five: something had gone out of him with Lilia’s death, and after a moment, she realized just what it was.
He was tired, a soul-deep weariness, and for all his indomitable will, that spirit that had carried him this far, he was still an old, old man who had spent his life fighting, cradled within the broken angles of a wreck of a world, who would not see anything better than shattered ruins and who had lost almost everyone he had ever loved to a war he had grown too old to fight while his daughters would never grow up, any of them.
Yeah. Good fucking job. It wasn’t like she was any good at words that weren’t scientific jargon, or saying anything comforting even before she got involved in the biggest scientific fuckup in the entire history of the world and turned herself into an divine eldritch monstrosity, but what could she say, anyway? Sorry that my fuckups broke the world? Sorry that I nearly got you killed more times than you can count, sorry that all your girls are dead because of me? Zorya didn’t do apologies, never had, least of which because if she started apologizing, then there’d never be an end to it. Needed a better word than sorry, anyway, because sorry would never be fucking good enough.
“You weren’t at the service,” Ilyas said, his head still lowered and his voice still, and he knew her entirely too well because there was neither condemnation nor surprise in it. “All those words. About the love and compassion of the Lady. And all I could think the entire time was...” and for the first time, his voice broke. “I want Her to stop asking if I have any more daughters.”
The story of Abraham, twisted and distorted over the centuries and past the end of the world, only that God gave him back his son and Ilyas would never have any of his girls, his orphaned daughters, back again. Zorya could feel her lips twist into a bitter smirk, as she did every time the Lady was mentioned: shouldn’t they had fucking enough of gods already, rather than cribbing together half-remembered fragments of divine fairytales, rituals that had survived the death of empires and a world, and a half-remembered vision of her alter form throwing magic godslaying weapons at the first random passerby she found to take them into yet another religion? Their Lady wasn’t really kind, or compassionate, just a bitter old bitch who fucked the world over and couldn’t decide whether she gave too much of a shit about the fate of the world or really couldn’t give that much of a fuck anymore.
And Lilia had fought in the Lady’s name and died believing in her, both Zorya herself and the made-up goddess she had never known was the same goddamn person and that was, just what the fuck was she supposed to say here anyway? Wasn’t like ‘being a decent person’ or ‘knowing the hell to say’ was anything she had ever majored in, that was particle and theoretical physics.
“Ain’t like she can ask anything else of you, old man.” Zorya poured more alcohol into his glass, because he damn well needed it more than her for once. “Don’t have anything left to give her.” Unless he tried again, found another girl to raise and teach and train, to love, but she really didn’t think so, even with Ilyas’s bottomless heart, and kind of really hoped not. She hadn’t been sure that he’d survive Lilia’s death, had half-expected the heartbreak to kill him straight out, for him just to drop dead,when she’d walked back into camp holding a dead girl in her arms and two magic swords across her back, but was as certain as she’d ever been that another dead daughter would kill him for sure.
And like she expected, Ilyas was already shaking his head. “Lilia was the last,” he said, staring at his full glass almost like he didn’t know what was for. “I...I don’t have it in me to try again. I can’t give Her any more daughters.”
Zorya hadn’t met all or even most of Ilyas’s daughters, the seven of them over several decades: she knew all their names, like a litany of echoes that haunted their father. Zulema, Aikaterine, Tessa, Sophia, Sasithorn, Sahar, Lilia: she hadn’t gotten along with Aikaterine, the first of Ilyas’s girls she’d actually met and called her a prissy bitch to her face on more than one occasion, but Ilyas had loved her as fiercely as he had loved the rest of those girls. All young, all brilliant and brave, and all just as dead in the end.
“You couldn’t save any of them,” and it was harsher than she had meant to say, but she kept right on going, because what the fuck else could she do now. “All you could do was love them.”
Ilyas’s smile was sad, touched by a lifetime of love and loss. “I know,” he said. “I loved them the best that I could. And the Lady knows if that was enough.”
Story: fragments of stars falling
Colors: atomic tangerine (catastrophic), dove gray (Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal)
Supplies and Styles: none.
Word Count: 961
Rating: R (narrator swears. a lot.)
Warnings: quite a lot of background violence, child/teenage soldiers (and their deaths), a father's grief for all his children
Summary: I want Her to stop asking if I have any more daughters.
Zorya had known that Ilyas was old - once-dark hair had thinned and gone white, the lines worn into his face, the inches of height he had lost, even the way his aging body could no longer support his flawless swordsmanship - but before this moment, she almost hadn’t realized just how old he was. For the first time, slumped in the stool next to hers, Ilyas looked every year of seventy-five: something had gone out of him with Lilia’s death, and after a moment, she realized just what it was.
He was tired, a soul-deep weariness, and for all his indomitable will, that spirit that had carried him this far, he was still an old, old man who had spent his life fighting, cradled within the broken angles of a wreck of a world, who would not see anything better than shattered ruins and who had lost almost everyone he had ever loved to a war he had grown too old to fight while his daughters would never grow up, any of them.
Yeah. Good fucking job. It wasn’t like she was any good at words that weren’t scientific jargon, or saying anything comforting even before she got involved in the biggest scientific fuckup in the entire history of the world and turned herself into an divine eldritch monstrosity, but what could she say, anyway? Sorry that my fuckups broke the world? Sorry that I nearly got you killed more times than you can count, sorry that all your girls are dead because of me? Zorya didn’t do apologies, never had, least of which because if she started apologizing, then there’d never be an end to it. Needed a better word than sorry, anyway, because sorry would never be fucking good enough.
“You weren’t at the service,” Ilyas said, his head still lowered and his voice still, and he knew her entirely too well because there was neither condemnation nor surprise in it. “All those words. About the love and compassion of the Lady. And all I could think the entire time was...” and for the first time, his voice broke. “I want Her to stop asking if I have any more daughters.”
The story of Abraham, twisted and distorted over the centuries and past the end of the world, only that God gave him back his son and Ilyas would never have any of his girls, his orphaned daughters, back again. Zorya could feel her lips twist into a bitter smirk, as she did every time the Lady was mentioned: shouldn’t they had fucking enough of gods already, rather than cribbing together half-remembered fragments of divine fairytales, rituals that had survived the death of empires and a world, and a half-remembered vision of her alter form throwing magic godslaying weapons at the first random passerby she found to take them into yet another religion? Their Lady wasn’t really kind, or compassionate, just a bitter old bitch who fucked the world over and couldn’t decide whether she gave too much of a shit about the fate of the world or really couldn’t give that much of a fuck anymore.
And Lilia had fought in the Lady’s name and died believing in her, both Zorya herself and the made-up goddess she had never known was the same goddamn person and that was, just what the fuck was she supposed to say here anyway? Wasn’t like ‘being a decent person’ or ‘knowing the hell to say’ was anything she had ever majored in, that was particle and theoretical physics.
“Ain’t like she can ask anything else of you, old man.” Zorya poured more alcohol into his glass, because he damn well needed it more than her for once. “Don’t have anything left to give her.” Unless he tried again, found another girl to raise and teach and train, to love, but she really didn’t think so, even with Ilyas’s bottomless heart, and kind of really hoped not. She hadn’t been sure that he’d survive Lilia’s death, had half-expected the heartbreak to kill him straight out, for him just to drop dead,when she’d walked back into camp holding a dead girl in her arms and two magic swords across her back, but was as certain as she’d ever been that another dead daughter would kill him for sure.
And like she expected, Ilyas was already shaking his head. “Lilia was the last,” he said, staring at his full glass almost like he didn’t know what was for. “I...I don’t have it in me to try again. I can’t give Her any more daughters.”
Zorya hadn’t met all or even most of Ilyas’s daughters, the seven of them over several decades: she knew all their names, like a litany of echoes that haunted their father. Zulema, Aikaterine, Tessa, Sophia, Sasithorn, Sahar, Lilia: she hadn’t gotten along with Aikaterine, the first of Ilyas’s girls she’d actually met and called her a prissy bitch to her face on more than one occasion, but Ilyas had loved her as fiercely as he had loved the rest of those girls. All young, all brilliant and brave, and all just as dead in the end.
“You couldn’t save any of them,” and it was harsher than she had meant to say, but she kept right on going, because what the fuck else could she do now. “All you could do was love them.”
Ilyas’s smile was sad, touched by a lifetime of love and loss. “I know,” he said. “I loved them the best that I could. And the Lady knows if that was enough.”
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I don't really know what to say to this story, except that it broke my heart in the very best of ways.
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