Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!
GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.
This story is a GENRE SWAP on "Red in the Face" a Red series story originally posted on July 1 2013.
(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)
"A Work of Art"
((Older) Rachel), Chloe (OC), George (OC)
Red series
GENRE SWAP: Fantasy
The last thing she wanted to appear as was someone who didn't belong in New York. She had lived here once, unofficially, when she'd come to look for her father, and now she was back a second time, living under the roof of her long time idol and the creator of the workshop that brought her back here from Indiana, Rachel Berry. She wanted nothing more than to fit into this city. So getting lost was not something she would do without feeling like a complete idiot.
She was supposed to meet her friends, to unwind after their second day in the Berry workshop, and she had returned home, like they all had, to shower and change and look like a normal person again. She was already running late, and maybe for that reason she had not paid attention to two things: the fact that she'd taken a wrong turn, and that her phone was not nearly as charged as she thought it was… it wasn't charged at all. And now the battery had failed. She had nothing left to direct her without assistance, which meant sucking up her pride and asking for directions… somewhere.
"Are you lost?" a voice asked out of the blue, and coming out of silence, it startled her, more so because when she did look around she saw that she was alone. There was not a single person there. Was she hearing voices now? Was this what she was coming to?
"Hello?" she called. It couldn't be in her head, there had to be a real live person somewhere who had spoken and she simply hadn't seen them.
"Up here," the voice directed with a chuckle. Again, she turned, and again, she saw no one.
"Up where?" she asked, frustrated.
"Follow the sound of my voice, lost girl," the amused tone was not helping to calm her, and finding the end of his vocal trail wouldn't do much better.
There were so many statues around New York, she barely noticed them anymore most of the time, but she knew she'd passed this one many times. In the beginning, she would pass and stop, looking up at the sculpted man with the bronze curls, his arms outstretched… Only now his head was not in the same angle it usually was, and his eyes were not turned up: they were looking down at her, as his mouth curved into a smile. She gasped and took two steps back.
"I really am hearing voices…" she sputtered. "How… You're not really talking, are you? Please tell me you're not really talking."
"Alright, I won't," the statue agreed. Both stood quiet. The statue kept looking at her, almost like he was admiring her.
"Hey, stop that," she pointed her finger at him.
"Forgive me. It's only I've seen you many times and never had the chance to greet you."
"Greet… You're a-a statue, you're not… Wait, are you one of those people who paint themselves up like a statue and stands still all day? There's no one here."
"No paint," he promised. "See?" he climbed down from his place, and Chloe felt every part of herself wanting to run away, but her feet stayed right where they were as the statue boy came walking to her. Under the street light, he looked even more like what he was: bronze. "No paint," he repeated, offering his hand. It could have been a trap, and she could have been about to get snatched up by some lunatic, but she reached out and touched his hand.
"That's…" she blanched. He had not been born, he had been sculpted, but… but he was talking to her, looking at her. "You look so real," the world trembled out of her before she could revise her response and he laughed.
"So do you," he replied, and she frowned. "Are you lost?" he repeated his original question, and she didn't know how it could be that standing here, speaking to a statue, did not feel as strange and frightening as she thought it should feel. It took her far longer than she intended before she remembered everything from before the moment she had locked eyes with the bronze boy.
"I am," she admitted, deciding it wasn't as though he would tell anyone else. "And my phone is dead, so I can't call, or look it up, I… I'm supposed to meet some friends.
"Where are you meeting these friends?" he simply asked. Again, she hesitated, but finally she told him. "Come, I'll take you there," he smiled and, still holding her hand, he pulled her down the street.
"Wait, no, you can't, what if someone sees you?"
"You saw me," he pointed out.
"But that's different."
"People see what they want to see. They would no sooner understand what I am that…"
"What are you exactly?" she cut him off. "Do all the statues in here talk like you?"
"Some, not all," he laughed, and she only felt her legs go weaker. "You're safe," he promised.
"I bet you say that to all the girls," she answered nervously.
"You're the first one I've spoken to since I was commissioned," he admitted, and she only had time to feel herself blush before she remembered he was not real, not flesh and blood, and that made any fancies pointless. He was not a boy, he was a thing, a very stunning thing… Whoever this artist was that had sculpted him… "What's your name, lost girl?"
"If I tell you, will you stop calling me lost girl?" she asked.
"Would you like me to?" he asked back, and part of her would have said no.
"Chloe. My name is Chloe. Do you have a name?"
"My plaque says…" he started, and she was distracted by this reminder of his 'statue status.'
"Wh… So you don't have a name, like a person name."
"You could give me one," he offered with a smile, and she felt warm again. She looked at his face, his curled bronze hair… What name could fit him?
"George. You look like a George," she decided.
"Then George I will be," he stood taller. It made her smile, but it was a sad one. He would never be real, no matter how much he made her heart flip.
"What do you do all day? Don't you get tired of standing in place, especially if you can move, not just stand there like a…"
"Statue?" he finished for her, and now she looked down. "It's easy, it's what I was made to do."
"Right, of course." When he stopped, it took her a moment to realize they may not have been right at the place she was supposed to be, but she was close enough that she knew where she was again.
"You're found now, Chloe," he told her. "It's time I went back to my place." In her head, she wanted to ask him if he really had to, even though of course he did.
"Thank you, I…" She let go of his hand, placed hers over where his heart should be. Nothing. Why had she ever expected to feel a beat under there?
"I'll be where you found me, if you ever need me again. Consider me at your service," he bowed his head, and she hated to watch him leave. "Good night, found girl."
"Good night… George," she told him, and he looked so proud of his new name.
She watched the bronze boy walk back down where they had come from, the lights of night shining off of him. The world around them wouldn't see him, he was right. They were always so preoccupied, how could they ever know what was right under their eyes?
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!