Tag Archives: ;drabble

-This stays between us.-

“Absolutely,” she muttered. Like she wanted anyone else to know they’d accidentally dyed their hair blue.

Never mind that they’d done it with magic. Nobody needed to know that either.

“Are you /sure/ you read that shapeshifting spell right? Let me see that book.” Summer grabbed it from Merlin, running her finger down the lines. She flicked her gaze up to glare at him. “And stop snickering, at least if you shave your head people won’t look at you funny. If we can’t /fix/ this I’ll have to wear a wimple for months.”

Looking back down the page, she mouthed the words to herself. “No, look, here, this is what went wrong. Try it again.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Don’t what?” Summer smiles slowly, lifting her sword slightly. She’s confident, not in her ability to best him, but in her ability to at least hold her own. Abruptly, she lunges forward, thrusting, and Mordred barely gets his own blade up in time to parry.

The other knights whoop and laugh, cheering them on, though it’s not clear which of the two they’re cheering louder. It takes a few passes before Mordred takes her seriously — the part where she nearly has the shield out of his hand might have something to do with that.

Then they clash in circles across the field. She avoids closing with him, knowing his strength will overpower her, and concentrates on swift darts in and out of his range. But she miscalculates one spin, or he predicts her motion — either way, her sword flies from her grip and she’s on the ground, holding her hands up in laughing surrender.

Summer perches her chin on her hand, staring blankly out the window. Mordred is on patrol, or guard duty, or — he’s elsewhere.

And that train of thought, right there, is the problem. She can’t /stop/ thinking about him. That soft, secret smile, and the way it crinkles around his blue eyes; his dark curls and the warmth in his voice when he speaks to her. His fierce loyalty and bone-deep honour — everything.

It’s dangerous, she knows it’s dangerous — falling for someone so hard, so fast. So they share magic. So he’s kind, and his heart harbours no more danger, no more shadows than anyone else she’s ever met. None of that will protect her if he decides to push her away; when he’s had enough of her need and her cling and the fact that there’s more than magic that makes her different.

They’ve spent so little time together, and she feels his absence every moment he’s away. Yet she cannot persuade herself to let go. Her hands curl in her lap, clenched together.

In a fit of passionate despair, Summer swept everything off her altar with one arm. The carpeted floor was too soft to make the crash she wanted, and the candles went out before anything could catch fire.

Unsatisfying. She threw her head back and screamed, then kicked the table. It tipped over, but that was all.

Hot tears burned down her face, blinding her. “Useless. Worthless,” she panted, fists clenched painfully tight. “Not even the god you thought you followed gives a damn about your pitiful life. You should just die. Rip your own heart out and offer it to him, maybe that will be good enough.”

She dropped to her knees, bracing herself on her elbows over the ritual implements tumbled in a heap. Five gemstone cat carvings glittered up at her. “I’m nothing,” she whispered to them. “Everything about me offends him.”

One hand curled around the knife, shaking. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Everything was wrong. As if the world was sideways to her, and she couldn’t touch it. Or be touched by it. She lifted the blade, and a flicker of sanity wondered if she even had the strength to drive it into her own skin.

No matter how many people I save, it isn’t enough. Because I can still hear the ones I didn’t save.

some days I don’t know which is worse: that I can remember what it feels like to be on the receiving end of my fire, or that nothing I do ever lifts that weight of the people I can’t help.

The hardest thing, always, is knowing that so often I /must/ not help.

Take Tony, for example. God, please take Tony.

I know who he is. Who doesn’t know? but I’ve had my powers longer than he’s been Iron Man. Twice longer. So I know that when we first hooked up, it was just a game to him, like so many others. He barely opens his heart to Pepper. He wasn’t going to open it to a random girl, even if she was a heroine. I slid in through the cracks.

It wasn’t my idea either. I wasn;t so foolish as to make any kind of vow after Cro. I’m an empath, I can’t help getting close to people, but even for me there’s close and there’s close. He slid in through the cracks.

So I know the days he can barely look himself in the eyes in the mirror. The days when he’s Iron Man because Tony is in too much pain to exist. The days when he wants to convince himself he could have stopped Ivan, could have saved all those lives if only he’d been better.

Afghanistan. Yinsen. Iron Monger. Stane. His father. Palladium. The armor war. Vanko.

Manhattan. Loki.

I know those nightmares, almost as intimately as he does. Some of them I share.

See, although i can wield fire, i’m tasked for search and rescue or crowd control. I’m needed more there, and I don’t argue. But sometimes it means I get a more up close and personal look at the results of combat than even the Avengers. That’s what fuels my nightmares. Having to choose, in the rubble of a collapsed building, who I /can/ save. Can this person last long enough to even be got out, or do I apply painblocks and move on to the next person? Every choice like that haunts me.

I know I’m not the only person facing the aftermath of those choices. Every emergency worker has those nightmares. Sometimes that knowledge helps.

Mostly, it doesn’t.

But in the end, even if someone holds me while I shudder through the backlash, even if someone wakes me before I scream myself awake, the only person who can deal with those thoughts is myself. No amount of outside concern, no amount of — therapy, no amount of drug-induced or adrenaline-induced forgetfulness will do more than postpone the inevitable.

And I have to remember that although I have the power to change other people; to wipe out Tony’s self doubt; I must not. To do so would be to negate everything they’ve achieved, everything they could achieve. On their own. Knowing that, sticking to that, is the one burden I can’t share.

Or forget. if I rationalize it even once, I’m lost.

I can’t ever let myself choose for anyone else.

Summer weighed the rubber mallet in one hand, eyeing the box of aluminium cans. She got down on her knees, planting one empty can upright on a scrap piece of board, and hefted the mallet again.

It wasn’t even that it had been a particularly bad day. She just felt — off. Angry, for no reason.

Smashy.

Hence, the empty cans. Lifting the mallet high, she brought it down squarely on the top of the can. It kinda … bounced. The rim crushed a little, sideways.

“Well /that’s/ interesting.” She smacked it again, a little off-centre. That strike produced a satisfying crunch and a flatter can. Tossing it back in the box, she set up another can.

She isn’t one to pray, not really. Oh, hurried gasps half-beseeching anyone who might be listening, Lord or Lady or lost angel —those, yes. But true, get-down-on-your-knees prayer? Not in ages.

Not since she was small, and still believed in a God who loved her.

Now she is grown, and believes in a Lady who guides her, and a god does love her, and a genius. And she’s down on her knees, in her tiny living room, facing into the lowering sun, hands clasped.

“Gabriel.” She can’t think how to say what she wants, how to ask, or beg. Or pray.

Only his name, and the thought of his golden eyes brings all the mute misery of his absence to the fore. She bows her head, letting it spill out into the cosmos, a heartfelt prayer for his return.

It’s always the same nightmare. Doesn’t matter where she is. There’s no cue, no trigger. But it’s always the same.

She dreams their anger. Their disdain.

It’s eerily simple, the dream. She sees their eyes. Their faces, yes, but mostly their eyes. Filled with dismissal.

She doesn’t dream their turning away, but the sense of it is there. The sense of leaving, of absence, of abandonment. The knowledge that she isn’t enough. Isn’t wanted. Isn’t welcome.

Sometimes what wakes her is crying out; other times she doesn’t know. She always wakes in tears, trembling with fear. She can’t move for long moments.