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rainbowfic2013-08-18 12:45 pm
kay_brooke) wrote in rainbowfic2013-08-18 12:45 pm
Summertime Blues #8, Yellow #1
Name: kay_brooke
Story: The Myrrosta
Colors: Summertime Blues #8 (I thought I could trust you), Yellow #1 (and they were all yellow)
Styles/Supplies: Graffiti, Frame, Eraser (Merrus/Jay AU)
Word Count: 756
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply
Summary: It can be painful to talk about family.
Notes: Lint Roll answer forjkatkina, who asked: Edward, who was your least favorite person growing up, and do you have the same opinion of them now?.
They got on the subject of families at one point, the three of them sitting around the fire while Ava slumbered beneath the saddle blanket nearby. It had all started when Jay had mentioned, off-hand, her disappointment that Ava had not been allowed to begin training for the Sun Guard. This led to an uncomfortable silence for all the things it didn’t say, which was that Jay was still bitter and Merrus blamed himself and Edward privately thought it would have been a damn waste to turn that bright, warm child into a warrior.
So to break the silence, he said, “Did you ever see your parents again? After they gave you to the temple?”
“Never,” said Jay, sounding infuriatingly nonchalant about it.
“Do you have siblings?” he continued, looking over at Merrus. The salkiy was hunched over and staring into the fire, his mouth set and his eyes full of misery. The more they wandered, these days, the easier it was to put him into one of his moods.
“None when I left.”
“And you never wanted to find out? See how your family was doing?”
“The Sun Guard was my family,” said Jay. “I had no need for another.” But her mouth had dropped into a frown, and she was starting to look almost as haunted as Merrus, and Edward decided this was a bad topic of conversation.
“I had five brothers and sisters,” said Edward, even though he never talked about his past. There was something about the night and the fire and the unbearable guilt in Merrus’s eyes that spurned his mouth to run and run, though. “All younger.”
Jay stared. “So many.”
“My mother kept having them.” And then, “About the only time we saw her, when she showed up to dump another kid on the woman who raised us.”
“You were...fostered?” said Jay, and even Merrus blinked a little in a small show of interest.
“Nothing so grand,” said Edward. “My mother simply didn’t want to keep us. She wanted to be a visitor in our lives, coming and going as she pleased. We were raised by a friend.”
The only other person he had ever told the story to was Hopina, and she had reacted with shock and concern that he’d been so terribly neglected by his own mother. It had been embarrassing, and thankfully he received nothing like the same reaction now. Jay, it had been established, held little regard for blood ties, and though Merrus had never talked about his family, it was them he’d been running away from when he and Edward met, so Edward could take a guess there wasn’t a lot of fondness for relations there, either.
“Did you hate her?” Jay asked, cocking her head.
Yes, Edward thought, but that wasn’t quite right. He had wondered. He had been disappointed. And then he had made himself stop feeling anything about her at all. So he said, “No. The most I ever wanted to know was why. Then I got older and figured there probably wasn’t a why, so there was no point in dwelling on it.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, either. If he had turned his back on his mother, why did he still even think of her sometimes? Why couldn’t he have just said nothing, like Merrus? He always did talk too much. Truth was, his whole childhood his mother’s shadow had hung over him, haunting his dreams and idle thoughts--a ghost of a person, someone who showed up after years had gone by as if no time had passed, and then disappeared again just as suddenly. He had never found out where she went when she left, nor what she was doing there.
He loved her, and he hated her. He hated that most of all, that she had taken up so much of his adolescence in her absence. So many wasted questions, too long before he realized their futility, an imagination taken up with meaningless scenarios that sought for a solution he would never get. He hadn’t seen her since he was sixteen, but his advanced age now surely meant she was long dead, and with her all her secrets.
Edward knew so many stories, stories from every corner of the world, but he didn’t know his own. And maybe that was what drove that little bit of hate he still harbored.
But Jay nodded, taking his response at face value. Silence crept over the night once again.
kay_brookeStory: The Myrrosta
Colors: Summertime Blues #8 (I thought I could trust you), Yellow #1 (and they were all yellow)
Styles/Supplies: Graffiti, Frame, Eraser (Merrus/Jay AU)
Word Count: 756
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply
Summary: It can be painful to talk about family.
Notes: Lint Roll answer for
jkatkina, who asked: Edward, who was your least favorite person growing up, and do you have the same opinion of them now?.They got on the subject of families at one point, the three of them sitting around the fire while Ava slumbered beneath the saddle blanket nearby. It had all started when Jay had mentioned, off-hand, her disappointment that Ava had not been allowed to begin training for the Sun Guard. This led to an uncomfortable silence for all the things it didn’t say, which was that Jay was still bitter and Merrus blamed himself and Edward privately thought it would have been a damn waste to turn that bright, warm child into a warrior.
So to break the silence, he said, “Did you ever see your parents again? After they gave you to the temple?”
“Never,” said Jay, sounding infuriatingly nonchalant about it.
“Do you have siblings?” he continued, looking over at Merrus. The salkiy was hunched over and staring into the fire, his mouth set and his eyes full of misery. The more they wandered, these days, the easier it was to put him into one of his moods.
“None when I left.”
“And you never wanted to find out? See how your family was doing?”
“The Sun Guard was my family,” said Jay. “I had no need for another.” But her mouth had dropped into a frown, and she was starting to look almost as haunted as Merrus, and Edward decided this was a bad topic of conversation.
“I had five brothers and sisters,” said Edward, even though he never talked about his past. There was something about the night and the fire and the unbearable guilt in Merrus’s eyes that spurned his mouth to run and run, though. “All younger.”
Jay stared. “So many.”
“My mother kept having them.” And then, “About the only time we saw her, when she showed up to dump another kid on the woman who raised us.”
“You were...fostered?” said Jay, and even Merrus blinked a little in a small show of interest.
“Nothing so grand,” said Edward. “My mother simply didn’t want to keep us. She wanted to be a visitor in our lives, coming and going as she pleased. We were raised by a friend.”
The only other person he had ever told the story to was Hopina, and she had reacted with shock and concern that he’d been so terribly neglected by his own mother. It had been embarrassing, and thankfully he received nothing like the same reaction now. Jay, it had been established, held little regard for blood ties, and though Merrus had never talked about his family, it was them he’d been running away from when he and Edward met, so Edward could take a guess there wasn’t a lot of fondness for relations there, either.
“Did you hate her?” Jay asked, cocking her head.
Yes, Edward thought, but that wasn’t quite right. He had wondered. He had been disappointed. And then he had made himself stop feeling anything about her at all. So he said, “No. The most I ever wanted to know was why. Then I got older and figured there probably wasn’t a why, so there was no point in dwelling on it.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, either. If he had turned his back on his mother, why did he still even think of her sometimes? Why couldn’t he have just said nothing, like Merrus? He always did talk too much. Truth was, his whole childhood his mother’s shadow had hung over him, haunting his dreams and idle thoughts--a ghost of a person, someone who showed up after years had gone by as if no time had passed, and then disappeared again just as suddenly. He had never found out where she went when she left, nor what she was doing there.
He loved her, and he hated her. He hated that most of all, that she had taken up so much of his adolescence in her absence. So many wasted questions, too long before he realized their futility, an imagination taken up with meaningless scenarios that sought for a solution he would never get. He hadn’t seen her since he was sixteen, but his advanced age now surely meant she was long dead, and with her all her secrets.
Edward knew so many stories, stories from every corner of the world, but he didn’t know his own. And maybe that was what drove that little bit of hate he still harbored.
But Jay nodded, taking his response at face value. Silence crept over the night once again.