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tamingthemuseTitle: Nothing Left to Burn
Fandom: original / 'verse: People's Republic of Heaven
Prompt: #315: Dilapidated
Warnings: implied alcoholism and domestic violence
Rating: PG13
Summary: They rebuild their relationship on a broken foundation.
Notes: The night referred to in this piece was the breaking point for their past relationship. She got v. drunk and it culminated with them fighting and him pushing her down a flight of stairs. They are not romantically involved; he is her uncle, but they have lived together for thousands of years. (Immortality gets lonely, which is why they keep going back to each other.)
Neither of them can forget what she said that night, but both of them pretend they don't remember.
She, because she is ashamed to have given voice to that dark thought. It escaped her mouth like Pandora opening her box and there was no way to take it back. It burst out of her like a bat from hell and she could never unsay it.
He, because he knows that hidden underneath the veneer of a lie, there was a grain of truth and he knows she is right about what was left unsaid in the space between two half-truths.
She lied to him that night with two pieces of the truth that she used like gasoline and matches, lighting a fire that razed their relationship.
They left it untouched to collect dust, exposed to the elements, to collapse under the weight of snow in winters, shingles pried off by hurricanes in summers. In springs, plants took root in the rotting boards and they withered in autumns.
She had been drinking, but that was no good reason. When she met him again, years later in the barren wasteland where their relationship had been, she didn't try to make it an excuse and that was why he let her in.
He had been angry, but that couldn't undo the damage. He opened the door to see her there, but any injuries were long since healed or very well hidden. She had recovered, and that was why she asked to be let back in.
She told him she stopped drinking the night after he threw her down the stairs. Her admission rained down on the drought-blasted ground between them.
He said he never forgave himself for hurting her. Forgiveness was in her power alone. His apology shone down like sun after a storm.
She reached out a hand.
He took it in his own.
They shook like strangers meeting for the first time, and put the past behind them, laying the foundation for a new relationship over the ruins of the old.
They tread carefully around each other, around their new relationship. They live in a glass house. There was no virgin field, no blank slate to build upon and it was easy to fall back into old ruts and they struggled to pull themselves back out.
Their history hid between them in rusting nails and rotting boards that they gave wide berth. Someday, they would have to clear out the debris of their history, centuries of memories piled up haphazardly like old newspapers. They walked past gingerly, afraid and unwilling to wake up what slept there, hiding and waiting. They averted their eyes.
When their skins were thicker, when they were safer around each other, when they didn't feel like sandpaper and broken glass around the edges of themselves, then they would clear the air between them.
For now, it was enough to share air again at all, even toxic, heavy with cigarette smoke and words unspoken. It was worth tip-toeing through a fragile structure, avoiding arguments like splinters and squeaks in floors wore down under years of footsteps in these halls, echoing from her to him and back again.
They cannot avoid their ghosts entirely. There are skeletons in every closet qand songs drift out of empty rooms like cold drafts, sending chills down their spines. Their walls shake with every raised voice and beams bend under suspicious glances. Their home together is built on a broken foundation, but neither of them have the courage to assess the damage, to face it, to face their history, to look each other in the eye and truly say:
"I'm sorry."
Fandom: original / 'verse: People's Republic of Heaven
Prompt: #315: Dilapidated
Warnings: implied alcoholism and domestic violence
Rating: PG13
Summary: They rebuild their relationship on a broken foundation.
Notes: The night referred to in this piece was the breaking point for their past relationship. She got v. drunk and it culminated with them fighting and him pushing her down a flight of stairs. They are not romantically involved; he is her uncle, but they have lived together for thousands of years. (Immortality gets lonely, which is why they keep going back to each other.)
Neither of them can forget what she said that night, but both of them pretend they don't remember.
She, because she is ashamed to have given voice to that dark thought. It escaped her mouth like Pandora opening her box and there was no way to take it back. It burst out of her like a bat from hell and she could never unsay it.
He, because he knows that hidden underneath the veneer of a lie, there was a grain of truth and he knows she is right about what was left unsaid in the space between two half-truths.
She lied to him that night with two pieces of the truth that she used like gasoline and matches, lighting a fire that razed their relationship.
They left it untouched to collect dust, exposed to the elements, to collapse under the weight of snow in winters, shingles pried off by hurricanes in summers. In springs, plants took root in the rotting boards and they withered in autumns.
She had been drinking, but that was no good reason. When she met him again, years later in the barren wasteland where their relationship had been, she didn't try to make it an excuse and that was why he let her in.
He had been angry, but that couldn't undo the damage. He opened the door to see her there, but any injuries were long since healed or very well hidden. She had recovered, and that was why she asked to be let back in.
She told him she stopped drinking the night after he threw her down the stairs. Her admission rained down on the drought-blasted ground between them.
He said he never forgave himself for hurting her. Forgiveness was in her power alone. His apology shone down like sun after a storm.
She reached out a hand.
He took it in his own.
They shook like strangers meeting for the first time, and put the past behind them, laying the foundation for a new relationship over the ruins of the old.
They tread carefully around each other, around their new relationship. They live in a glass house. There was no virgin field, no blank slate to build upon and it was easy to fall back into old ruts and they struggled to pull themselves back out.
Their history hid between them in rusting nails and rotting boards that they gave wide berth. Someday, they would have to clear out the debris of their history, centuries of memories piled up haphazardly like old newspapers. They walked past gingerly, afraid and unwilling to wake up what slept there, hiding and waiting. They averted their eyes.
When their skins were thicker, when they were safer around each other, when they didn't feel like sandpaper and broken glass around the edges of themselves, then they would clear the air between them.
For now, it was enough to share air again at all, even toxic, heavy with cigarette smoke and words unspoken. It was worth tip-toeing through a fragile structure, avoiding arguments like splinters and squeaks in floors wore down under years of footsteps in these halls, echoing from her to him and back again.
They cannot avoid their ghosts entirely. There are skeletons in every closet qand songs drift out of empty rooms like cold drafts, sending chills down their spines. Their walls shake with every raised voice and beams bend under suspicious glances. Their home together is built on a broken foundation, but neither of them have the courage to assess the damage, to face it, to face their history, to look each other in the eye and truly say:
"I'm sorry."
