noisee: After studying A Midsummer Night's Dream in senior one English, we had to do a final project- so of course I wrote a fanfic. I've found that writing fanfics gives me closure, because the play was just- just what. Like, come on. It felt so plastic. But, yea, this is what I handed in, I never got it back, so maybe I'll get feedback here? I was happy with the end result.
Whatever.
Oh, and Ms Fedorkiw, if you stumble across this and think I plagerised it (how do you spell that anyway?), this is Hazel A. Yea, it's just me.
An Atrophied Heart: Helena in the Spring
Helena and Demetrius live in a nice, little home in a nice, little neighborhood. They have three nice, little children, two boys and one girl. They go out to nice, little dinners at nice, little restaurants with Lysander and Hermia. They live a nice, little life in their nice, little marriage.
Sometimes, when Helena watches the skies from her nice, little porch, she feels like crying. The clear blue reminds her of eyes, Demetrius' eyes, how they were, before. Vivid and angry in the woods. Bright and smiling the day they…
They're different, now. Full of clouds. He looks at her and says he loves her, but something is off. She hadn't noticed it until a few months after the wedding. She's sure, however, that it started right after that very strange dream. He looks at her and says he loves her, but it's not the same. Not like the way his eyes used to shine when he looked at Hermia.
At the dinners and the teas, Helena notices that Lysander is different, too. The change is nowhere near as drastic as Demetrius', but it's there- the lethargic curving of his lips, the almost-dreamy lilt in his voice. Then, when he says 'I love you' to Hermia, conviction is clear in his eyes. Of his devotion, there is no doubt. There never was.
Helena looks at Demetrius and there is nothing. No frustration, no anger, no ecstatic, exuberant joy, not even the simple, contented satisfaction that settled in after the birth of their first child. She feels only as though there is a void within her that's too far to reach. She feels like she is kneeling over the crevasse, hand extended into darkness, attempting desperately to grasp the fleeting images of a falling sky.
He was her sky. He was her moon, her stars, her sun, her smiles. Now, he is her clouds and storms and rain.
More often than not, she tries to forget. She looks at him and imagines a different azure, a blue long gone. She imagines her heart beating the way it used to, all fast and slow and right against her ribcage, instead of the strained thump thump thump that works only to push the blood through her veins. She smiles, it feels like the muscles in her face are rusted and cracking but she smiles, and says that she loves him, too.
It's a lie, but it feels far from foreign. The way the words feel between her lips, the way the sounds tumble off her tongue, everything feels so natural; she wonders if it's been a lie all along.