I decided to create a little challenge for myself to help my muse and my time constraints, so here is the first part in a drabble collection using an A-Z format with a random word generator.
They are not connected. Some are AU, some are very AU, some are more concrete and others much more metaphorical. I hope you enjoy!
A
Alive
She never knew what a beautiful word it was before: alive. Alive. Alive. It was like a breath of cold air in a snowstorm, stingingly clean and relieving, shaking her to her core.
She pushes past Whale to see for herself, and those cobalt eyes meet hers from across the room.
She wonders how the word makes her struggle for air, but also makes her need it less.
He is alive.
Cracked ribs and sunken eyes, but alive. Scratchy voice and weak grip, but alive.
"Savior," he accuses, but playfully.
She squeezes, and thinks she'll accept the title for once.
B
Blame
She shouldn't blame him.
Of course she shouldn't; he didn't ask for this, no more than she.
She dreams of dark and damp, leaves and dirt and rot climbing her throat until the pain is real and fresh and she is screaming the last of her fear into her pillow.
A worn bit of leather bites into her wrist, and she catches storm-filled eyes across the room in a corner too dark to make out any detail, wonders why she is buried with him.
She can only blame him for the feeling of being just as gone as he is.
C
Confession
The first confession is in a low breath, almost soundless.
She didn't mean for him to hear it; his eyes are closed and his breaths had been even for several minutes.
Still, its echo weighs heavily on his tongue, demanding its own declaration to hers. But the penance for hearing it is his silence, he knows, and so he does not shift as she nestles against him, sleeps on.
He knows she finds love a scary thing, and cannot claim not to be frightened of its depths himself.
But now that he knows, he can wait, tend, let it grow.
D
Doctor
He never cared much for doctors. Healers or medics, they were called, back in the old world. He never had the means to hire one back then, and they were humans, anyhow. He wouldn't have trusted them.
Here, he just had Whale for scale; he was not one to instill much faith in the profession.
But when the blond steps out from the operating room, hands clean and smug smile tugged across his face before a sharp nod of a yes, he could kiss him.
Emma is fragile like he's never seen, but her eyes are bright.
His mind changes.
E
Estate
The estate is sprawling, majestic, cold.
Emma isn't used to the narrow halls, the winding staircases, the rooms made of stone. It feels hollow, unnatural. The shadows get too thick at night.
She first sees him on the grounds, far from the echoes of the manor, an illusory image in the fog. He is a ghost to mock and mimic the gothic terrors she grew up with.
She knows him all at once, as if she always had and always will.
Their lips first meet where the trees meet the air, and she feels at home for the first time.
F
Fuel
It doesn't take much to ignite.
The thing between them had always had a spark, waiting for its tinder. They had each desperately hung on to a piece, until he didn't care anymore to keep his grip.
Lust, that she was used to. In those cases, the fuel burned out quickly and she could move on.
She didn't expect the stores to only grow within her, until the flames were indistinguishable from her own fire.
She didn't expect to want it to consume her.
Instead, it warmed and cast its light like a beacon, until it augmented rather than destroyed.
G
Graze
Her fingers graze his arm, just touch enough from the callous of her fingertips to catch his attention.
He looks up, finding the crest in the ocean of her eyes and the worry buried inside them, and doesn't need the whispered words that utter from her parted lips.
He captures her wrist loosely, finds the storm that lies behind the concern.
"Just a scratch," he barely jokes, a piece of trivia from half a memory.
The starburst of color under his covered chest bellies that, but he stumbles forward, persists.
If it means her safety, it is a mere scrape.
H
Hypnotize
The blood is vividly red as it spiderwebs outwards and across pale skin, hypnotizing.
She traces the path with her eyes and then her hands, calling upwards to the wound that never quite heals. The heart that pulsates and beats out more of the viscous pain stutters but does not falter, cannot quite meet the looming darkness it wishes to retreat to.
This game has been played before, will be played again, splayed to define the past in mere trickles of horror.
It's all she can do to hold the pieces together, to right them so they may fight again.
I
Ignorance
Sometimes, he wishes for ignorance.
Prays to a foreign god that he could be wiped clean of the memory once again, to remove the ache in his brain and heart and soul.
He wonders if she wishes that, too. There is an effortlessness to ignorance, one they haven't had since curses broke.
But in the early morning, the strands of gold fall across his skin and they drink in each other's warmth, feeling that truth acutely but managing to heal each other from it through touch.
He supposes the price is worth the reward, finds that love trumps the pain.
J
Jump
She is at the edge, crumbling stone and crashing waves waiting for her with just a step.
He is at her back, and her fingers have flung back to catch his shirtfront in her grip.
She could jump. It wouldn't be an effort. She could let go, and the past would be behind her.
She can't loosen her hold, though, and instead falls back into him, waiting for him to catch her. He disappears into the mist just as quickly as she leaps into him, and she wakes gasping and drenched in her bed.
She knows then it was love.
K
Kid
"Kid."
They are grinning at each other, mother and son, and the term of endearment slips from her as easily as any. They seem mirror images, matching eyes and grins, and his heart never felt so full.
It's just a start, and he can only watch from the shadows of the in-between, but it is at least a start.
Maybe once the pieces fall back into place, when the curse is done and the evil defeated, he can find his own corner in which to fit with them.
But the beginnings of this beautiful relationship can only bring him peace.
L
License
The license lives in a manila envelope on a plain, unassuming shelf, tucked in between other important files and miscellany. It gathers dust, and is only yanked free on occasions it is called for, but there is no other indication of the piece of paper anywhere else.
Bodies fit together as one on a faded couch and loose, empty left hands hang from the backs of armrests. A house is filled with children's voices and laughter, loneliness a distant memory.
The paper is forgotten, sits stale, even as the passion and the adoration never does.
Only they know it exists.
M
Map
He likes to map her out.
His hands and mouth will trace routes made over and over, finding new trails to discover, places of interest to linger on. Scars become stories, ones to press into some guidebook he builds in his mind.
She knows the difference from his touch and his patience, the seduction versus the exploration even when the two might meet from time to time.
He knows before her any time her body changes through the years, but she feels the worship of it before she can be self-conscious.
She hopes her maps make him feel the same.
