citrusjava (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
citrusjava) wrote2016-01-30 12:33 am
citrusjava) wrote2016-01-30 12:33 am
FIC: Two days from then, around 07:30
Title: Two days from then, around, 07:30
Rating: gen
Character(s): Amelia
Words: ~700
Warnings:slurs, fantasy fire/violence, military canon badness, unbeta'ed
Notes: this is for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kalliel - this is not the I was supposed to write, I hope it's still a bit enjoyable (though it's ok to say if not!).
This is very rough but I'll probably leave it like that - I like it enough to post
though it's ok if i am the only one.... Also - I feel like I might have stolen one of the lines here, if you recognize it, please let me know so I can return it home.
Summary: Why Amelia left for Texas
She'd planned it for a long while. Not the sort of planning that's about tickets and movers and dates, the sort of planning where you fantasize for four months about setting fire to your house, and the neighbor's, and running and running forever, and four months in you realize you're ready to go, all you need is your car keys and you run.
It was the pity she couldn't stand- that was true - but that was only part of it. It was the constant reminder. She'd lost him. He'd left her- just up and left her, no warning. That is- that's a lie- there were a thousand little warnings. In the slant to his tone, in the way his palm felt on her belly. In telling her- I'm unhappy, Amelia, I hate it here.
Everybody was unhappy.
No one left, really left.
Enlisted, like olden days, like she was the woodsmith's daughter and he needed out of an arranged marriage. She'd loved him so simply, before. Can't believe she'd even done something so wholeheartedly. Tried since to talk herself out of naivety, gotta stop, like everybody does . He's not coming back to you, don't let yourself hope for it. Be smart, Amelia, don't be an idiot, please, she begs herself. Still.
She didn't even have time for shock when he left, was still standing there hands wet clutching her dish towel for weeks. Don was off, kisses and hugs and a duffle, because there are not enough roads in the desert and trolleys get trapped in the sands - not even a letter yet and her mind filled with images of that trolley wheel sand-logged, hands still holding her dishtowel and she was coming back home with her paper bag, didn't know how to buy groceries for one, seemed pointless to cook for no one - not even a letter yet and he has no internet still - or he'd have texted her he would have texted her.
Mrs Snyder said hi, rummaging in her mommy bag - Amelia expected words about trash day or porch lights, about painting the front of their house pastel to match the neighborhood plan, and she'd be making those decisions on her own now. Mrs Snyder asked instead about Don, already went over that, didn't want to do it out again. Looks like she might make it a coffee invitation, they'd never gotten along, come have dinner with me and the kids some night, a neighborly patriotic thing that no one would need to follow up on - instead she pulled out a copy of Trauma and Recovery. Squeeze Amelia's arm sympathetically and Amelia's throat clenched with bile. The end of their life. "How bad do you think Don's flight was?" she deadpanned - but Mrs Snyder had left, family matters, offspring making his proud way to the middle of the road, only a moment unsupervised.
Don was missing, and she hated him for putting this unchangeable thing in her life, always, always going to be there, wanted to kick herself in the kneecaps for not knowing, not running on time, for never being this American wife right. The officer at her door barely legal to drink and she wanted to slap him hard and ask whether he was good to his girlfriend, slap him and tell him and America hands off my man you homewrecking slut.
She'd wanted to go to Texas for so long, fantasized about big people and big hearts, all of those families, surely she could find her own. Big dogs jumping of the back of a truck, jumping into the kid's pool like on all those YouTube videos, and she'd finally know the difference between normal BBQ and the real sort she'd never tried.
Once she was there, she was unable to say why she'd found her way to this big empty desert, to this town named after a Muppet.
Then a haunted eyed man hit a dog and messed with her AC, and she wore his shirt, and she needed that book again, and she knew better than hoping, in retrospect.
Rating: gen
Character(s): Amelia
Words: ~700
Warnings:
Notes: this is for
kalliel - this is not the I was supposed to write, I hope it's still a bit enjoyable (though it's ok to say if not!).This is very rough but I'll probably leave it like that - I like it enough to post
though it's ok if i am the only one.... Also - I feel like I might have stolen one of the lines here, if you recognize it, please let me know so I can return it home.
Summary: Why Amelia left for Texas
She'd planned it for a long while. Not the sort of planning that's about tickets and movers and dates, the sort of planning where you fantasize for four months about setting fire to your house, and the neighbor's, and running and running forever, and four months in you realize you're ready to go, all you need is your car keys and you run.
It was the pity she couldn't stand- that was true - but that was only part of it. It was the constant reminder. She'd lost him. He'd left her- just up and left her, no warning. That is- that's a lie- there were a thousand little warnings. In the slant to his tone, in the way his palm felt on her belly. In telling her- I'm unhappy, Amelia, I hate it here.
Everybody was unhappy.
No one left, really left.
Enlisted, like olden days, like she was the woodsmith's daughter and he needed out of an arranged marriage. She'd loved him so simply, before. Can't believe she'd even done something so wholeheartedly. Tried since to talk herself out of naivety, gotta stop, like everybody does . He's not coming back to you, don't let yourself hope for it. Be smart, Amelia, don't be an idiot, please, she begs herself. Still.
She didn't even have time for shock when he left, was still standing there hands wet clutching her dish towel for weeks. Don was off, kisses and hugs and a duffle, because there are not enough roads in the desert and trolleys get trapped in the sands - not even a letter yet and her mind filled with images of that trolley wheel sand-logged, hands still holding her dishtowel and she was coming back home with her paper bag, didn't know how to buy groceries for one, seemed pointless to cook for no one - not even a letter yet and he has no internet still - or he'd have texted her he would have texted her.
Mrs Snyder said hi, rummaging in her mommy bag - Amelia expected words about trash day or porch lights, about painting the front of their house pastel to match the neighborhood plan, and she'd be making those decisions on her own now. Mrs Snyder asked instead about Don, already went over that, didn't want to do it out again. Looks like she might make it a coffee invitation, they'd never gotten along, come have dinner with me and the kids some night, a neighborly patriotic thing that no one would need to follow up on - instead she pulled out a copy of Trauma and Recovery. Squeeze Amelia's arm sympathetically and Amelia's throat clenched with bile. The end of their life. "How bad do you think Don's flight was?" she deadpanned - but Mrs Snyder had left, family matters, offspring making his proud way to the middle of the road, only a moment unsupervised.
Don was missing, and she hated him for putting this unchangeable thing in her life, always, always going to be there, wanted to kick herself in the kneecaps for not knowing, not running on time, for never being this American wife right. The officer at her door barely legal to drink and she wanted to slap him hard and ask whether he was good to his girlfriend, slap him and tell him and America hands off my man you homewrecking slut.
She'd wanted to go to Texas for so long, fantasized about big people and big hearts, all of those families, surely she could find her own. Big dogs jumping of the back of a truck, jumping into the kid's pool like on all those YouTube videos, and she'd finally know the difference between normal BBQ and the real sort she'd never tried.
Once she was there, she was unable to say why she'd found her way to this big empty desert, to this town named after a Muppet.
Then a haunted eyed man hit a dog and messed with her AC, and she wore his shirt, and she needed that book again, and she knew better than hoping, in retrospect.
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Thank you for sharing :)
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And for saying such kind words!
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Yeah, you definitely undesrtood her better than I - I didn't even know/remember that backstory part....
btw, is that Muppet line yours? I just get this nagging feeling sometimes that some line I've written is from someplace else, and I know at least sometimes it's just intrusive thoughts and I google them and try to find out - but IDK! I'd rather find out!
Anyway - thank you so much for reading this messy thing, and for your kind words! Means a lot a lot....
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I think it's common for writers to worry their ideas come from a source outside themselves, even when they don't. Paul McCartney was apparently convinced when he first conceived "Yesterday" that he'd stolen it, and went around playing it for everyone he knew, hoping they could tell him who the "real" author was.
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Guh, you're such a (wo)mensch <3 <3 <3 <3
Thank you, sweetie <3 <3 <3
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There was something one of my NF teachers was always insistent about in undergrad--and it was writing people with compassion. It didn't matter if you agreed with them, or if you liked them--what mattered was being able to hold those opinions (and perhaps even voice them--this wasn't about sugar-coating, or playing nice, etc.; you were still allowed to disagree, and to dislike) at the same time as you were extending compassion to them, in your portrait of them. And that's what this piece really rings with, bb. Amelia is Amelia in this, in ways and nuances and facets that can only be told with real compassion. <3333
This is FABULOUS.