Drabbles

By spheeris1

Pairings: Multiple…

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[An Interview]

"We didn't even know someone was there till a week ago, did we dear?" The old gentleman asked his wife. She didn't answer, just nodded her head. The young girl jotted this down with a sigh. She wasn't sure why she was here, doing this story....
"Did you talk to him?"
The man shook his head, his weathered and wrinkled fingers fiddling with peanut shells...tossing them in a silver bucket.
"Just one time, isn't that right?" He looked to his wife.
She smiled over at the young girl then, eyes of blue getting vaguely glittery, shining with wetness.
"He was very handsome..." She said softly, making her husband clear his throat. The young girl chuckled inwardly. Never too old for that it seems.
"I just went to check the place out, like I always do...maybe pick some blackberries...and there he was. Chopping wood. Looked like he had cleared some brush back as well. Even had a horse with him, in the barn out back. Pretty little filly, all white and tall...wasn't it?" More shells hitting tin. The wife nodded once more in affirmation.
"Is this when he talked to you?" The young girl asked, hoping to speed this along.
"Yes. I asked him who he was and he said nothing. Just let the axe drop and hauled some wood inside. I told him that this cabin was private property, though who owns it...I don't really recall. That boy just smiled and sipped water from a canning jar." The man sort of grinned. The young girl found herself grinning back, not really sure why.
"What did he look like?"
"Tan skin, beautiful green eyes...and his hair...his hair was like faded violets..." The wife sighed out, her eyes now very distant. The husband cleared his throat once again and then offered the young girl a peanut. She accepted.
"What did he say to you?"
"Well, I followed him around a bit, just to see what he was up to. And he went into the barn, tacking up his horse....then rode him out, coming up next to me. I looked up at him..."
The man paused in talking, his face seemingly growing younger before the young girl's very eyes. All relaxed and smooth once more. She leaned closer and waited...maybe she wasn't in such a hurry afterall.
"I swear to you, I might sound crazy--but he looked like something out of a story-book. Like Prince Charming."
The wife was smiling a little more broadly now, patting her husband's hand with affection.
"I asked him again for his name and that boy looked away from me, looking out toward the dirt road there...and he said 'I'm just preparing for a wake.' That's all he said before riding off down the road."
The young girl sat back, writing down on her notepad a little slower now. She felt oddly flushed.
Silence fell over the house then. Her pencil scratching on paper the only sound, the couple completely quiet.
"Uh...so that was it then...then he was gone correct?" The young girl asked, her voice very quiet.
"Yep. Gone. And that's all we know, right?" The man nodded to his wife, standing up and taking the bucket with him. The wife reached for the young girl's arm, pulling her close.
"Excuse me--" The girl started, but one look in the wife's eyes stalled her words.
"He left this for you. This white rose, prettiest I've ever seen...left it on the table with a note. Just for you." The wife pressed a fragrant flower into the young girl's hand and a tiny slip of a note.
Then she stood up and made her way into the rest of the house, the voices of the couple echoing from the kitchen.
The young girl looked down, trying not to lose any of the petals. The scent washed over her and made her feel warm, made her feel safe. She turned the note over, running her fingers over the words.
They all at once made no sense and then made all the sense in the world.
They were the words she had been seeking and did not know she was in desperate need for.
'You made it. Thank you.' it read, in pretty blue ink, delicate calligraphy.
And Utena knew that everything had finally come full circle.

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[Mirage]

Juri looked from the young woman in her bed--smooth as cream skin, poured into the mold of flesh, curled up on the bed.
One leg exposed, tangled in sheet...the slight curve of the back, the ridge of spine...all vaguely seen.
Juri looked from this female Adonis to a tiny picture.
She had found it yesterday, emptying out boxes as she moved into Utena's apartment.
Juri stumbled onto this picture on the very day she had decided that her murky past was not worth the time or effort to recall.
Juri was moving on. With Utena.
They met six months ago. Six months ago, sharing a taxi--one of them going to the airport, the other going home.
Neither made it to their respective destinations.
Talks became kissing, kissing became sex, sex became love.
Juri looks at the picture, old emotions gnawing at her bones like starving rats.
Juri stares at the picture, willing the feelings attached to the faded image to disappear. They don't.
And the past does not come rushing back to Juri.
Just the ache, just the disappointment, just the wounds.
Juri wants to hate herself for tucking the little black-and-white snapshot in between the pages of her secrets, for clinging to something she cannot go back to...especially once she realizes just who she is sharing her life with.

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[Click, Bang, Boom]

Damp.
Humid.
Tense.
Anticipation.
That's what Utena thought of in rapid succession as she kneels down next to Anthy in the tiny enclosed garden.
Damp due to sweat, making her uniform feel uncomfortable.
Sweating due to the humidity in this brass greenhouse, the heat storing up painfully and thick in the non-existent air.
Tense because Utena held her muscles tight, like moving too much might dislodge the memory hanging precariously at the edge of her mind, might cause words Utena did not understand to come off of her tongue.
Anticipation. That one was harder to pin down. Utena felt the rush in her blood when something wonderful and new and important was about to happen. She felt her pulse race as she looked up slowly into Anthy's eyes.
Time was suspended. It had truly stopped, just for the two of them.
Time gave them a moment to look with wonder at the other, to feel that wondrous relief at finding the missing half of your battered soul.
And then the door opened. Utena forgets the moment.

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[Images Like Icicles]

Snow was a blanket and Nanami felt ice surround her, wrapped about her limbs in a chilly embrace.
Frozen are his eyes, glassy and without feeling---Nanami shudders as lights blur by, as fingers dance against her skin.
Winter came early to the campus.
It created shadows that Nanami wanted to hide in.
Could slips of shade cover her now that everything about her can be seen?
And whose back-seat did she cry in? As sharp as crystalline knives, as glacial as Antarctica--Nanami is her brother's wasteland.

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[Necrophilia]

She thinks his touches would have been cold even if his body still pumped blood to his golden heart.
He understands her reasons, her need to scramble to the top of the hill only to fall down again--Jill must fall, so Jack can come tumbling after.
In her mind, it was the boy rushing to save the girl.
In his mind, it was just the way the boy was made.
He could do nothing else but die for others.
She peels the wings off of butterflies, presses them into her diary and talks like a piano being smashed--But he can hear her just fine.
Her tongue dropping discord upon his lips as the world outside pushes against barriers, against this mausoleum.
She loves that he is man enough to appreciate the beauty of the buried.
And the kisses are dirty.

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END [for now…]