A Cracked Mirror
Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
-From The Lady of Shalott by Lord Tennyson
She runs the tips of her fingers over the wrinkles that scar her face. She remembers when she was beautiful. She had used her looks like a weapon at times; reeling in the men she wanted then letting them loose. She had many of them entranced, she could string them along so easily.
She is still beautiful now, not as she once was, but she holds the dignity of age. Her charm lies in the angles of her face and body, instead of the purity and perfection of youth. Her lines are not that of laughter, and she lets off a feeling of profound sadness that is enchanting in itself. Stress has caused her hair to silver prematurely, and it gives her an air of divinity. She is unaware that the servants and her colleagues regard her with fascination and worshipful respect. She looks in the mirror and sees herself as spoiled.
She remembers being young. Her ideals had entranced her. She had watched the world from her mansion, and it had fascinated her. She had mapped it out. The science had leaped readily to her mind, and she had felt as if she understood it. The earth had moved her.
Isolated by her brilliance, she had observed life through her science. The reactions of chemistry, the workings of biology and the subtleties of psychology had fooled her into thinking that she knew people. She had decided that she loved them.
So she had set about to change the world. She had cared about it, she said, and that had been true. But most of all she had wanted to join it. She weaved her plan, and she imagined presenting it to those it was based on. It was as if she had the power to reveal something about themselves and their planet that they had never known. Her work was that of beauty and discovery, and often enough it took her own breath away.
And then he came in. He was presented as simply another part of her plan; he was an obstacle to avoid, because she knew that it couldn't be so simple. He was just a person to beat. But something about him compelled her, and she looked, really looked, for a second. Then, in an instant, everything changed. They connected like she would never have imagined. She had felt complete for the first time. He was the other half of her soul; he was so like her that he filled her emptiness. Finally someone saw her as she saw everyone else. When he left, she knew it was her own fault.
What she hadn't expected was the pain. The ache of want taunted her endlessly. The searing hurt of guilt nearly tore her apart. The world, she found, wasn't what she had thought it was. She had seen it through her science, but never had she believed that its experience would be so excruciating.
Old sores came back to haunt her, and she realized that she could not be so detached this time. The affliction she thought she felt came back threefold. She remembered being abandoned, she remembered being alone. What she had felt through the shield of her work was suddenly unbearable. Now that she knew what happiness was, and could conceive true sadness, it was if it was happening all over again.
Somehow she had begun to feel as if she was part of something greater, and yet alone at the same time.
She had changed herself to suit him; she rewrote her character and made it a braver one. She wore a face a lot like another she had once met. She tried to be fierce and stubborn, and so often failed.
When he came back he was changed. He didn't look at her; he looked at the one who was once her experiment. The facade she had worn in an attempt to win him crumbled, and, she thought, so did she.
She had let herself be taken by the current. She worked and worked, and fell under the public eye. Those who she had watched now watched her. She composed her life as if it were a masterpiece. She did change the world.
The frightening beauty of her work moulded society. Her fierce devotion scared many; they said that she worked like a woman dying. And so she was, she reasoned, after all, we start dying the moment we are born.
Nobody could escape the haunting truths she presented. He couldn't, least of all, and he watched her with veiled enthrallment. She was still brilliant, and they still were two halves to a larger whole.
But for some reason, no matter what she did, he was always thinking of someone else, someone he couldn't have.
Perhaps she should never embarked from the safety of her house, never looked down on the boy who changed her life. Maybe she shouldn't have loved the world so much. How else could she have avoided all of this pain?
She sits in front of her mirror and thinks that maybe she never should have left it.
AN: This is quite obviously based off the The Lady of Shalott. I own the poem about as much as I own Artemis Fowl (which, for the slow ones out there, is not at all ;)).
I have to mention the people who made me think of this. There is Meo, who helped me write part of it (your paragraph was great, I wanted to use the entire thing) and MMK, who, though she doesn't know it, made me think about Minerva's character. In a conversation over a year ago she said that the problem with Minerva was that Colfer tried to write her to be hot and cold, she had a temper, but was cool and collected at the same time, which somehow led me to think about Elaine pretending to be Guiniveire… Concrit is more than welcome. :D This is very unbeta'd. Reviewers get virtual cupcakes.
Edit: I spaced it out via , thanks to the reviewrs who pointed the problem out. :)