Title: She is Temptation
Lucien/Jean
(300) word drabble for Bugs's birthday. (It's not very sunny or happy though. Sorry… Maybe you might be just happy that I wrote something? 2020's a Mood though, so it sort of fits?) Anyway, this is set in season one, after Jean gets a bit snoopy with Lucien's papers.
He runs a thumb along the seals of the envelopes. He is sure she didn't have a chance to read any of the letters they enclose. Besides, the story is rambling and the correspondence would need to be read in chronological order to be understood. Snippets would prove nothing. Lines, phrases, words here and there, they're nothing without context and order. But the sketches...
Skeletal soldiers with missing limbs. Bullet holes and bamboo sticks. Tins with jagged edges. Open gashes from boots and blisters from sunburn. Side by side sweating with fever. Heads drooping from thirst and heads held down to drown in a bucket (careful what you wish for!). A hole in the ground. Skin crawling in the darkness. The dying and dead and fates worse (careful what you wish for!).
It's not his privacy he worships. It's not that she violated when she opened the pages. He knows she seeks answers. She wants to understand, to know why.
She knows sleep is his elusive holy grail. She knows at night the faces in the pictures come alive. Then, they die. And die again. Time doesn't heal, it brings perspective, makes each death clearer, adds a crispness which he strives to repel.
She knows he tries the dullness that whisky can fleetingly provide. The bliss of intoxication. That or distraction.
Then, he catches glimpses of what she might offer. If he should share…
He knows he could embrace her pity and sympathy. He felt it catch him in the chest, penetrated faster than a sword's blade, when she sat on his bed, head bent, studying the drawings.
But he can't be selfish. Soldiers protect. He has removed the uniform but the representation remains.
He closes the folio, buries the box. But he knows she waits for him to surrender. .