Just Blue

Angelina/George

[Off The Block Competition: Backstroke, Extra Hard - Write a story surrounding the death of a loved one.]

[Legendary Gods & Goddesses Challenge: Raijin - Write about something that takes place during a thunderstorm]

[Interesting Words Challenge: Eternitarian - one who believes in the eternity of the soul

Welkin - the sky or vault of Heaven]

[Fan-Fiction Terms Category Competition: PM - write about someone lonely.]


Pale gray sky above my head

Dark gray road, my rolling bed

Close my eyes, see you instead

Sometimes, when she was especially fed up with the baby's crying, Angelina would drop him into her husband's arms and walk out the door.

"Where are you going?" he'd said the first time, but she hadn't answered, and now he knew better than to ask.

She trekked up the grassy hill behind their house, walking as fast as she could without running, until she was far enough away that she couldn't see it anymore. Because sometimes she just needed to get away. Sometimes she needed to wander, because it was much too hard to dwell.

It was raining here, always raining, and the dirt beneath the grass turned to mud that stuck on her galoshes, but Angelina didn't mind the rain, and she didn't mind getting dirty, either. She liked it. It felt like playing Quidditch again, like flying at a breakneck speed through wind and sleet, and she'd lived for those matches, because it was heavenly to feel so raw.

She started to run. Her boots tripped her up, so she stepped out of them and let the mud squish deliciously between her toes. There was thunder in the distance, she could hear it coming up fast, and if anything it made her feel wilder. She wanted to outrun it. She pulled her jumper up over her head and left it in a heap on the ground and kept going.

(The baby would've stopped crying by now, and George would be looking out the window, wondering how long she'd be gone this time.)

She wanted to run so fast that she was flying, like the old days, and she wanted to go up into the welkin and pass the clouds and find him, and collapse onto him, because she loved George, really she did, but it was Fred she wanted, Fred she craved, Fred she missed more than she could ever make anyone understand.

(And it didn't matter that they'd been identical: Angelina knew the baby looked more like Fred than George. Everyone knew.)

Her face was wet with rain and tears, and she hated her life, she hated it, she hated it, she hated it. Off came her dress, left behind in a puddle just as another roll of thunder sounded.

She ran faster, so fast that she couldn't feel her heart anymore, and not for the first time she wondered about souls.

(She knew they were real. She knew they were eternal. She just didn't know how to bring one back.)

She reached up behind her, still running, and yanked her hair out of its bun. The storm was catching up. She'd known it would - there was no escape from storms as large and dark and heartbreaking as these - but she put on one last burst of speed anyway, because she wasn't ready to accept her fate yet. She could keep going (no, she couldn't), she had George (he wasn't enough), she had a child (not her husband's), she had a life (not a good one), and it wasn't fair to them if she crumpled just because one man had died (She. Still. Needed. Him.) -

- and then her foot caught on a root, and Angelina fell.

She tumbled over herself twice and then lay on the ground in a naked heap, her hands clenched in fists around the grass, and she sobbed into the earth as the thunderstorm erupted around her.

I'm missing you and there's not a thing to do

I'm blue, just blue, just blue.