title Girl Anachronism
author pinkeop
summary Behold the world's worst accident, I am the girl anachronism. ( AU )
authors note HAY GUYS. You wanted it, you got it. Here's the epilouge for the last ten chapters that you've been faithfully rewiewing and telling me how much you love or hate it. This is for you guys!
Without any further ado...
the end.
Love!
Pink Elephants on Parade
--
Epilouge
a cold heart will burst
if mistrusted first
and a calm heart will break
when given a shake
this is how
how my heart behaves
"Momma, are we there?"
"Is this it?"
Analise Jeane glanced back at her children, their warm faces slightly hopeful, even if her daughter tried to make her expression distasteful. Her life, these two little bundle of joys were.
Her son was a spitting image of the man sitting beside her in the passenger seat. His skin pallid and ashen, sticking out sharply against her mess of black curls that rested ontop of his head, always in a constant disarray and never able to be brushed staight no matter how many products were used. Always hanging in his eyes, it was. His big, blue eyes. He was a good boy, always did as he was told, but mischevious like a son should be and sharp as a tack. Her daughter, her first child, her problem child, stared out the window in mild and watered down interest. Her skin was pale as well, but really- like mother like daughter. Her hair was a firey auburn, messy and tucked around one shoulder, her square bangs just hiding her forehead. Her eyes were sharp and green and always hid some sort of secret or another. She was rebellious for having it so much easier than Ana did as a child, but Ana had to remember that she was just like her. They were one in the same.
"This is it," Ana told her children, glancing out her window to look up at the old house. Her aunt had died early in the spring and left her home to Ana. Not everything in it, of course, perhaps most of the furniture and "whatever be up stairs" but not her most valuables, which Ana could never remember seeing, all those years ago, when she spent the summer there. Then again, she couldn't remember much about that summer. Just another summer out of many.
The back door of the car opened just as Ana cut the engine and her children scrambled out.
"What are you gonna do with it?" a gruff voice sounded beside her. Ana turned slightly to smile at her young groom. His black hair, that had grown out of it's curls, hung slightly in his big blue eyes. He'd always been a man of few words, but love her he did. He was good to her. He cared about her. And she found that even after all this time, she still loved him beyond anything. She reached a hand over to pat him on the cheek.
"Donno," she answered. "I'd always fancied moving back here."
The man snorted before opening the passenger door and getting out, shutting it behind him. Ana wasn't far behind, watching as her son ran around the side to enter the gate, dancing through the court beside the house. Whatever they were going to do with that she wasn't sure. Her daughter was trumping up the stairs around the side of the house.
"Toby!" Ana called. "Johanna! Come 'ere, loves." Reluctantly, Johanna stoped her accend and Toby wandered back from the court. Smiling, Ana handed her daughter a small key and nodded upwards. "You'll need this to get on up there."
Johanna's smile was fleeting, but it was there, before she turned to go explore the upper floor of the house. Ana tucked an arm around Toby's shoulder and let her husband grab her hand as the unlocked the front door that still lead into the kitchen and entered the house. Everything was layered in dust, but that could be easily remedied. Patting Toby on the back, she said, "Go explore and see what you can find."
He went rather willingly, wheeling around the corner into the parlor.
Johanna came trumping in through the front door after a failed attempt at getting in through the court.
"Mum, there's only one room upstairs," she said in dismay.
"Queer little house, isn't it?" Ana chuckled, leaning against the island counter, getting an odd sense of deja vu. Sat there during the summer she did, all those years ago. Only behind it, on a stool, watching a kind baker make pies to be filled with a delicious meat no one could quite identify. But that was such a long time ago- another life time, another Ana. "Used to be a shop," she went on. "And the shop keep would rent out the flat upstairs. But that was a long time ago... your great Aunt Helen got a hold of it and made it into a home."
Johanna wrinkled her nose and sat at the kitchen table as Toby came wheeling back into the kitchen. "Can I go look upstairs?"
"I'll go with you," Ana said, leaning up on her toes to give her other half a kiss on the lips. His brows knit together and he then touched his lips to her forehead as well before turning her around by the shoulders and nudging her gently towards the court door. Wrapping an arm around Toby's shoulders, Ana unlocked the door and stepped out into the warm sun shine. Her boy went up the stairs two at a time as Ana was much more gentle on her old bones. At the top, Toby was already inside the room, investigating the large four poster bed and the random furniture that hadn't been touched when they came for Helen's things. Ana looked around fondly, a soft smile on her lips.
"Woah, Mum, lookit this!" young Toby exclaimed in excitement.
Ana ventured further into the room, looking curiously for her son. It wasn't hard- he was over by the window, where he had tipped up the broken floorboard with his foot. He looked guilty for a moment before he bent down to reach in, pulling out a dust covered book and a little box. "Get out of there!" She reprimanded, a sudden weight on her shoulders, pressing into her chest. "It's all dusty and you'll get sick if you breath too much of it in. Go on, move." She pushed him lightly with her hands away from the whole in the floorboards. Something was pushing at the back of her memory, but the older woman couldn't quite figure what. Her heart was pounding so loud in her ears that she heard little else as it tried to escape out her throat.
"What is it?" He whined, pointing to where he had laid the little worn book and the box. "And there's something else in there, too!"
"Just some things from my childhood," she assured him. "I hid them there so my Aunt wouldn't find them. An old journal and a box full of sewing things, that's all it t'is."
Toby looked almost instantly less interested. He turned and left the room in pouty disappointment, traveling down the stairs in quick steps. Ana knelt to the dusty ground and fingered the journal, pulling it carefully to her. The words Do Not Read were plainly written in the front. She could remember, just barely, that first day all those years ago. Finding this journal, opening it, reading it. After that was almost a blurr. Like a dream she couldn't remember. Her fingers came up to brush the long faded scar over her throat, still bumpy under her fingertips. She blew the dust off the cover of the journal and pried the old pages open. They were even older now, creaking and yellow and almost breaking with the effort it took to turn them.
And there's something else in there, too!
Ana crawled to the edge of the open floor board and looked inside. Indeed, hidden under the layers of age and dust, was a aged, yellow folded sheet of paper. She pulled it out and made sure nothing warned her not to read it, and unfolded it on her lap. Faded, curvy writing was perfectly straight over the lineless page.
She's fire and ice
a little crazy but it's nice
and when she's mad
you best leave her alone;
cause she'll rage just like a river
then she'll beg you to forgive her
Ana, Ana
the baker's prize
She's fire and ice
always crazy, never nice
but when she smiles
you best leave her alone
because she'll steal your heart
and leave you wanting more.
Ana, Ana
the barber's casuality
swing your razors high
another innocent throat gone home
at last, where she belongs
Ana, Ana...
It all didn't come flooding back, but the cold face of a prisoner, of a baber, in the dark, was most particularly memorable. His cold, black eyes freckled with warm honey brown. His skin pale and the squint in his eye. His raven hair streaked with that one curious line of white. His hands strong and demanding as they continuously left bruises whenever he touched another person. A heart, cold, broken, bloody, but still beating. Still beating. Her baber. The baker's barber. The warm, kind, forever smiling baker, even in death, that smile on her lips as she was blinded by what she so desperately wanted her barber to be- healed and in love. The baker and the barber. The woman crushed the paper in her hands, jumping with fright as the sound of her husbands voice entered the room. "Ana?"
She looked up with wide green eyes. He looked worried for her as he took three broad steps across the room and knelt at her side. "What is it, love?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Nothing," she whispered. "Just... some things I found... from back when I was young."
He carefully took the paper from her hands and folded it without reading it, setting it ontop of the dusty old journal. "There, there, dear," he said. His arm came around her shoulders. Ana leaned into him, watching as he carefully placed the things back under the floor. She almost stopped him as he dropped the velvet-red box, dusted with age, but she didn't. When they were hidden from sight, he carefully helped her to her feet. Not bruising, not demanding. Careful, loving. Something the barber never could be. Something she would soon come to realize she never wanted the barber to be.
Ana threw her arms around her husbands shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss. His arms wound around her back and lifted her off her feet so that her toes just brushed the floor. They stumbled back under he sank onto the bed and pulled her to straddle his lap. Her arms tighted around his shoulders and his around her back as they kissed with ferocious intensity, neither daring to stop for a breath. Heaving, Ana finally pulled away to look him in the eyes- those beautiful, bright blue eyes. She always thought she would perfect dark with honey brown, but god how she loved his eyes. Her fingers moved to stroke his cheeks and she smiled, feeling her skin wrinkle around her eyes. Her laugh lines were so prominante and they seemed to fit her, as she seemed to always be laughing and smiling. She smoothed her fingers over his skin over and over and kissed him again, softer, more gentle. He smoothed his hands across her back and held her close.
Clutching him tightly, Ana said the words that came out easily since the first time their eyes met across the room all those years ago.
"I love you, Benjamin."
I think sometimes we
Love people so much
That we have to be numb to it
Because if we felt how much
We really loved them,
It would kill us.