As much as I know about computers, as careful as I was, I could not help the fact that someone (who shall go nameless) did something to my computer and thus, coincidentally could not prevent a writer's worst nightmare from occurring.

My writing folder got deleted. Yeah.

So most of the newer stuff (by most I mean 95 percent and by newer I mean as of '08) is kinda gone and that's why it's taken a bit longer than I expected to update... though, ironically, it spurred me to write faster. BUT (and these are big BUTs) my chappy fic was in another folder (thank GOD!) and I did have some things backed up.

These first two drabbles I wrote beforehand and had to redo (that darn second one I lost twice -- and wrote during chemistry note-taking :D) another survived, and actually they popped out pretty quickly. Really, it's only when I remember something I did and then realize it's not there anymore that just kills me... but I have massive short-term memory loss! So that's a plus too I guess.

Oh! And the first two are like dark fyi... I had fun with description. :)

So before I drown in homework, in commemoration of my (tear) files... let's get crackin'.

Perspective

It was his fault.

It was his fault that she lay there, lips a faded pallor, eyes forever shielded from this sight of desolation. His fault that her skin was as cold and unyielding as the stone ruins around them. That in those final moments, in the final lifts of her chest and exhales of breath, his hand hadn't been the one to comfort her; his heart hadn't been with hers. Drops of sorrow came as one... two... a rampage trying to cleanse the dusty mess of a mistake. How could he? How could he...

The red glow of the heavens bathed a figure standing at the threshold of the palace. Limbs frozen; mind numb. He watched the torn wreck sobbing over her figure; the fingers of recrimination picking his own soul apart. She was gone.

And it was all his fault.

--

Sense

If I closed my eyes I could pretend the smooth coldness was a fallen pillar. If I covered my ears I could ignore the cries of war and believe he was in a simple, quiet slumber. If I rinsed my mouth, I would no longer taste the coppery blood that had caked my chapped lips - the blood that wasn't only mine - and if I pinched my nose, the scent of dust and scorched flesh would no longer affect me. But nothing -- nothing -- could erase the image of his body, a marionette with cut strings who had fallen, whose lifeless eyes still bored into mine and had broken my heart clean apart -- no; the feel of his hand, the shrieks around, the taste of his skin, the stench of death all exploded in my mind.

It no longer mattered that I could live in ignorance of everything else. I had one sense... with that, I had all the rest.

--

Grasp

The winds -- his winds -- only amplified the anger, the grief at the moment of truth. It was incomprehensible, only there as an elusive pain one could neither catch nor let go of... could only chase with the fuel of rage. Silence shattered with the roar of the air, deadening the cry that never even left his lips.

Everything was gone.

He felt himself being lifted, lifted by the screams, the yells of a vicious siege one hundred years past. So close. So close to reaching it... so close to understanding it... until he realized he never could touch it or flee from it; he was in it.

Trapped.

Suddenly, a sliver of warmth broke in through the cold. What was this? A solid grip almost as tight -- no -- tighter than the hold of fatality. The heat radiated through him... calming... promising a new life, far down the road, where he'd be released by those terrible claws... where he'd be free.

The gusts slowed, the gale died down; he collapsed into the sadness he'd refused to acknowledge and into the warmth of blue eyes and tan skin. But even cradled in the arms of sorrow, as long as he was firmly within hers as well... he knew he'd survive the storm.

--

Tether

She was uplifting, constant; a rope he clung to, but never feeling too bound. She was protective, caring; a close shelter he eagerly claimed without encroaching sense of suffocation. When he threatened to lose his direction while flailing among the clouds, her gravity pointed him toward the upright path. When he fell too low, her buoyancy lifted his spirit while righting the world around him. Everything he needed was there, but she was the sole one who could turn that energy to his favor; the one who kept him floating, the one who kept him focused.

He may have been the spirit of the Earth, but she was the only soul able to keep him attached to it. The only thing that kept him grounded.

--

Pretension

Sometimes, it was the little glances.

Here and there, it was accidental, the sweep of a cast being caught against its will. Eyes, unblinking, magnetized to brown smoothness painted on a dark-framed face, trailing up long, slender arms, racing down the firmness of expansive leg all glittering in a river bank's afternoon rays. Other times, it was calculated, a slow compromise with reason that overshadows logic, allowing stares to be led astray for but a taste of insanity. Blue rivets to pale and blue, muscles softened in dim moonlight, taut skin slowly rising and falling back into shadow to stretch over hard curves and delicate angles that yearn to be felt with more than just torturous sight.

Still, mostly it was how silver met sapphire and heated, melted, melded as if they forever belonged on each other and nowhere else. Those gentle, silent songs of a gaze that said more than simply an involuntary look, screamed it louder than unseen admiration. Smaller glances just led to more - increasing - fervent - until finally colliding in a single climax. The surge of a second, the rush of eternity. And then nothing else mattered.

Because it was always what they led to that counted.