thelinesoflearning: ([ASW] if your wings are real)
crystal and sweet violin ([personal profile] thelinesoflearning) wrote in [community profile] rainbowfic2013-06-08 04:07 am

Halloween Orange, True Blue

Name: Morgan
Story: All Through the Night
Colors: True Blue 20, Secret you wouldn't even tell your best friend; Halloween Orange 19, I am nothing you should trust.
Supplies and Styles: Glitter ("You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." – Frank Crane)
Word Count: 447
Rating: G
Warnings: N/A
Notes: Need a story tag for All Through the Night, please.

Someday you're going to miss a dose.

Maybe you'll run out. You watch your stock grow smaller and smaller each time you take a new one, and though it'll take so long, longer than the mission was supposed to be, it could happen. As time marches on and the rendezvous gets pushed back farther and farther, you think maybe that's how it could go.

Or maybe your quick exit will be too quick one of these days, and you'll leave it behind. In the rush, some things always get missed. The little case you keep concealed, even though he wouldn't ask if you told him not to, will get left where you hide it. You'll only realize when you unpack, or maybe not until you go for the little vial and needle for the next booster. Then it will be too late.

Maybe, just maybe, you'll do it on purpose. You'll watch six months slide by. And you'll do nothing. And then you'll deliberately take hold of his hand and let him see who you really are.

He's more than a charge now, more than the burden of his assignment. He's a friend, and your heart breaks every time he expresses his relief that you don't register. Every time he tucks himself into his side for the break you give, knowing that he'll only be himself when he does. That your memories stay in your own head and out of his.

It would be nice to be able to give him the break, if you didn't have to lie to him about why it's like that. If you could tell him about the injections and the program and how you really found him. If you could tell him you've been leading him this whole time, that your wandering hasn't been aimless, that you have an agenda and you're so sorry, you can't even tell him why the program wants him because you don't know. All you know is they put you through training, and these injections, and sent you his way.

You don't know what you're doing, and you're ashamed that you never thought to ask.

So three years, four years, five years pass, ten doses, and you take your boosters, and you wonder when they'll tell you where to bring him. You wonder if you will, because you don't know. You wonder what they'll do to him, if you do.

And you wonder if you'll miss a dose, before then. If you'll lay your mind bare and let him look inside and see everything, your past and your present, your dreams and your nightmares, your head and your heart.

Maybe he can tell you what he sees, because you're not sure you know yourself anymore.
isana: Taiwan from Hetalia (happy taiwan)

[personal profile] isana 2013-06-08 05:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, man. The second-person narration is a great choice here--somehow that distance just makes things all that much starker and shows the reader what's at stake. I love that it's so complicated--that the deception is there, but at the same time it's so tangled that one can't really seem to tell that it's out of malice.
finch: (Default)

[personal profile] finch 2013-06-08 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
This has an amazing amount of urgency for all that it's talking about months and years. I suspect that has to do with the second person, which is used impeccably here. Beautful.
bookblather: Gentleman in a turquoise sombrero staring at camera. (mighty mod chapeau)

[personal profile] bookblather 2013-06-08 08:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Your tags have been added, author and story! I'll come back and read this when I have time.
bookblather: A picture of Yomiko Readman looking at books with the text "bookgasm." (Default)

[personal profile] bookblather 2013-06-10 05:23 am (UTC)(link)
Okay having actually read it now.

This is delightfully spooky and hurty to read. The way you build it up, and the second person, work really, really well.
tanager: (Default)

[personal profile] tanager 2013-06-09 01:35 am (UTC)(link)
This is fantastic! I like how you reveal the situation bit by bit, keeping me guessing (at first I imagined someone taking daily life-saving medication). I love all the uncertainty and tension, and yet the certainty of the narrator's friendship with his/her assignment. I look forward to seeing how that plays out. (You have me hoping that they get a happy ending, but with a creeping feeling that it isn't likely - wonderfully done!)
kay_brooke: Stick drawing of a linked adenine and thymine molecule with text "DNA: my OTP" (Default)

[personal profile] kay_brooke 2013-06-09 02:34 am (UTC)(link)
This is one of those cases where second person works so well. There's something intimate about it, yet distant at the same time, and that just works for this particular narration. Nicely done!