Title: Wednesday's Child
Genre: Angst
Rating: K+
Pairing: N/A
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: If one cannot control the violence of the beast… let it run free…
Word Count: 652
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Just something that I thought of when I heard this little poem.
Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace
Wednesday's child is full of woe
Thursday's child has far to go
Friday's child is loving and giving
Saturday's child works hard for a living
But a child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is blithe and bonny, good and gay
The day he was born was an overcast Wednesday – the storm clouds dark and heavy. The air was thick and poignant with the promise of a storm. His mother said that as soon as he came into the world it started to rain, because God was sad his favorite soul was leaving Heaven for a life on Earth. But Gabriel knew it was different. He knew that it was really raining because he was a Wednesday child.
When he was young, he'd heard a girl in school tell him her mother told her she was beautiful because she was born on a Monday. When the other children all begged her to tell them their futures from her mother's rhyme she had memorized. You will be loving. You hard-working. You'll graceful. And on and on and on. The children were delighted. They were the sons of Saturday, Tuesday daughters. Their lives would be good.
"What day were you born on Gabriel?" They were staring at him expectantly, eyes wide and expressive.
"Wednesday."
He knew before she answered he would not like what she said. "Oh, um. Wednesday's child," she pursed her little lips at him, eyes doleful and sad, "Wednesday's child is full of woe," she said, just like a sentence in a rhyme. A life sentence. And then she skipped off to her friends, his own troubles forgotten in the wake of the rest of the children, fun and carefreeness.
But her words stayed with young Gabriel Grey throughout his life. Every hardship, every trouble, and he simply reminded himself that he was a Wednesday child. It was his lot in life to be sorrowful, to be miserable.
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Day in, day out, the same repetitive tasks, the same meaningless days. Tedious. Time-consuming. Monotonous. So cliché. Wednesday's child is full of woe. Wednesday's child... Wednesday's child...
Then – a light in the day. He was different, not the same, unique. Powerful. He could become whoever, whatever, he wanted. He could be good, he could be fair. Anything he wanted. He could be everyday. If he found it. He could take those tedious skills, that repetitive talent, and remake himself into something better. A Monday child. Anything. Full of grace. Just something better.
Tick, tock, tick, tock
That power called to him – like a voice from beyond the veil. He could feel it, always hovering outside his sight, beckoning to him like sin, like the apple tree in Eden, his own serpent. He saw people now as their talents. Should he take that one, should he leave another? What were the correct choices, how to make the right ones – the ones that would make him better?
But that creature inside of him didn't care about grace and blitheness and goodness – it cared about power. It cared about strength. It was sick and tired of being the one people overlooked, the one people glanced over, the one at the bottom of the totem pole. It wanted to be a predator. It wanted to hunt, to stalk, to consume. It wanted to be better.
Maybe Wednesday's child himself wasn't full of woe, maybe he granted woe, spread it out into the world like seeds of despair, like a plague, like scattering strife and sadness.
So he would not worry about his fate, his daily destiny, his weekday prophecy. He would make it his own, he would take it into himself like a new talent, twist it to suit his purpose, make it work for him, make it a gear, a lever in his mind that did precisely as he asked and no more.
He would sow the world in woe.