chapter word count: 712

noir heart: seventy-two

Frowning, Elsa tilts her head but slants a small smile. "Are you saying that your ex-husband became a monster?"

Rapunzel vigorously shakes her head, eyes slightly widened. "Oh, no!" she says hastily, "no, nothing like that. No, Jack...I suppose you could say he looked too long into the abyss, and what he saw changed him."

She reaches over for the forgotten tea and is about to take a sip - much to the wrinkling of Elsa's nose, as it's probably approaching lukewarm by now - when she pauses. "As you can probably tell," she says, tittering awkwardly, "I like to paint. A lot. And...well, I have a portfolio of pieces I created during our marriage. I usually painted what I was inspired by, and what was on my mind at the time, so...it might be useful for you. Would you like to see it?"

Cocking a slight eyebrow, Elsa nods. Her host replaces the cup and leans down to dive her hand under the coffee table, and soon after produces a moderately thick black portfolio. "You could say that this contains an artistic record of our marriage."

Elsa leans over to place her cup on the table with one hand and accepts the portfolio with the other, and with eyes of interest and scrutiny she pours over the various works.

They start sweet...which is so predictable. Rapunzel seems to have a consistent motif in that she regularly paints a nude, amber-coloured woman with impractically long, golden hair and a thin, nude, alabaster man. As far as allegories go, it's heavy-handed to the point of cliche - obviously Rapunzel is the Sun and Jack is the Moon. Each painting has the two lovers in various situations - one in particular involves the Sun and the Moon around a huge sphere, inside which an unborn baby resides. Another is a rather lustful piece where the Sun is astride the Moon, both in the throes of passion. How delightfully saccharine.

"He started zoning out every so often," Rapunzel says, and a quick glance up as she speaks tells Elsa that while her host is looking at the portfolio, her eyes are too glazed to see it, "and became really...distant. I'd have to say something two or three times before he paid attention. He, um, stopped laughing as much. Smiling, too. It was like the humour had been sapped from him. Every time I asked if I could help, he'd just force a smile and say 'I'm just tired, that's all'."

At this point, Elsa has turned to a piece where the the Sun has been separated from the Moon by an invisible barrier, where she is pressed against it and he has turned away. "Our sex life just...yeah. He stopped talking as much...and then he got the White Fairy case, he started coming home late, and when he did he brought his work home with him. I can't tell you how many times I found him asleep on his case files and notes when he should have been in bed with me. He started drinking a little more. We stopped talking altogether, 'cause when we did, we'd argue."

Turning over, Elsa finds quite an interesting piece entitled Eclipse, of the Sun and Moon's upper bodies, where she gazes upon him with a forlorn, longing expression and reaches for him while he turns away...and there's a pitch black silhouette of a woman between them, caressing him and whispering in his ear. Fascinating representation.

"He left behind a piece of himself each day...and I realised one day when he came home, and went straight to the spare room with a bottle of whisky...when I told him I was leaving and he barely even registered it, that the man who had been walking through my door was not my husband anymore."

Rapunzel reaches over and turns the last piece to reveal, in Elsa's opinion, the most poignant one of all - Jack with his head in his hands, surrounded by the ghosts of adults and children bearing down upon him.

Sadly, almost bitterly, Rapunzel finishes with, "In the end...the dead meant more to Jack than the living."

not feeling this one, probably because I'm slightly out of rhythm with it. I hope it is to everyone's satisfaction. Also, I might be silent for a bit - Daredevil Season Two :D

special thanks to: rainbowcolorw0w, hornedgoddess, chiqanti ceres, oninoko, invisibleme, lunasnoir, doomstone, vrupd.1992, stefalove and jpbake for the reviews!