Title: Those Two Small Words
Author: Manda
Rating: PG
Word count: 404
Fandom: Babylon 5, episode 'Born to Purple'AN: For the lj user"thefiringline" challenge
Two words.
Two small words.
Eight letters counted.
Both words were very small yet filled her mind. The filled up her mind utterly and completely. She turned the bauble over and over in her hand. She knew how much she could get for it almost literally. How much it was worth sold legally, how much it was worth on the black market, and how much it was worth if she gave it to someone in trade.
But she couldn't even imagine taking it out of her hand.
She'd run errands as a child. She'd taken what she was given and been told to be glad for it. She'd been a maid, a servant, and a worker as an adolescent. She'd learned her place during those year, how everything could be bought and sold; especially herself. And then she was taken pity on by one of her masters. He gave her a new line of work telling she would find her escape in it. He made her an exotic dancer.
It did make her more powerful, more worldly, more traveled, more known, more wealthy, but just as trapped. Still just as much a slave.
And so she had lived. She had learned to sell her body. She had learned to enjoy her life. She became part of a family with the other girls. She had enough money always to feed herself, to buy herself things and to pay those she owed. And she had convinced herself it was all she needed and that she was happy.
But in the space of a week that had changed completely because of one man.
Because he had given her the two things she'd given up on as a child. Things she'd never wanted for except in the black of her heart and the tears on her pillow, of which both were rare. But even more he'd given her these things for free. He asked for only her to enjoy them. And one last thing, to hold her head up, to smile.
So here she was.
Turning the pin over and over in her hand as the ship took off, Adira Tyree admitted to herself she was now two things she'd never imagined she might ever be. Two things that when spelled out were so incredibly small. Two things that meant everything in her world had suddenly and irrevocably changed.
She was free and she was in love.