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writing_shadows2011-05-28 11:48 am
sea-of-flame.livejournal.com) wrote in writing_shadows2011-05-28 11:48 am
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[Requiem/Lizzy James] 1 Corinthians 13
OoC note: This was originally started in response to an ST query about how willpower spent monthly to maintain a ghoul was recouped; and then after seeing the prompts I realised this fitted in rather well with both the 'humanity/virtue/vice' & 'confession' prompts. Not a comfortable piece to write! The actual story starts under the 2nd cut - sometimes characters need a bit of a run-up - plus, cuts for length/trigger seemed sensible.
It is insufficient to say 'I became angered'. The cause must be noted. Ditto the personal weakness the cause played upon. That which was resisted, that which was succumbed to. The consequences. That which was unaffected, remaining constant before, during & after the event...
...and I am not very good at this, so this can stay in my personal notes until I can rewrite it into something suitably dry and academic - and I'm still too close to this to do that just yet.
Oh, I can observe. I see, all too clearly - I'm just bad at doing so dispassonately. I want to jump in. I observe more clearly than others, at times, I think - because they get mesmerised by consequence and then justify the preceding action to themselves based on what happened next. That is - well, soothing, calming, I suppose - but it's lazy thinking. It's dangerously pragmatic, and it allows people to do bad things because they can convince themselves good will follow later. It may be that the predicted chain of events does occur - but it doesn't make the initial act any less bad. In some great metaphysical tally sheet it may be less dreadful than an alternative chain of actions - but it must still be judged in isolation, even if it was the lesser of possible evils. As soon as you - I - start using comparatives and context to justify why we do this thing here and now, it's a slippery slope.
Which is why I am stalling - because I don't want to set down what I was actually left thinking, because by my own logic it's wrong but at least I know it's wrong - and I need to cling to that intuitive knowledge of wrongness - even if I cannot hypothesise and justify to explain why I know it to be wrong - because too many do not know and wouldn't even comprehend why I am (again) beating myself up about this, other than to coldly alienly observe it as a weakness to use against me. Monsters. More on some of those another time - I'm still stalling, aren't I?
I am not weak. Such restrictions as are on me are placed by me, by choice, and that is another kind of strength. At any time I could break them easily - and the horror is that if I did, I fear wouldn't even know what it had cost me, because the price would be ceasing to care. And not needing to care never stops being its own temptation. I have taken steps down that road - and even while being abhored by it now after years of struggling back, in ill-paired parallel I still remember the savage joy, unfettered by guilt, of being the Hound. Of being so certain that I was right, that the Carthian prince was justified and judicious, when he called and I obeyed, to hunt and hurt those who threatened our domain. There is within me the ever-present howl of a mob seeking redress, the massed anger of the crowd on the edge. Prised cobblestones in hand, curses on the tongue, muscles tensed and lungs filled, ready at the smallest provocation to hurl those stones, to scream. This is the hue and cry, this is the rough music, this is temptation. The crunch of bone and the yielding of flesh, the satisfaction of getting the bastard...
Which is still me stalling - but perhaps it gives context to what I'm about to write (despite what I said about context being a damn fool thing to judge actions by) - because I was left thinking:
At least I didn't hit him.
At least. I. Didn't hit. Him.
Over and back, like waves against a receding coastline, footprints on a often-trodden path - til every nuance of individual syllable is lost, til only the massed susurration, erratic erosion effect remains.
I was once taught that describing in the third person assists with objectivity. The scientific approach, to remove sentimentality. Let's try.
As she returns to the house, the radio whispers and beeps and clicks from within. Exact words are obscured by stone and glass, unimportant.
Her hunger is...quelled. Satisfied is not the right word. She is sustained, and that will suffice. It is what she is familiar with.
She enters the house. Sees her husband sitting in an armchair, back to the door, listening to the back & forth of the coastguard's night patrol. She smiles, stealing forward to wrap arms around his shoulders, to lean a vitae-flushed cheek against his living one, feeling his pulse caught between them, smelling his skin as she kisses lightly. Posture, scent, sensation - it merely evokes, in these new nights and years, a decades-yellowed memory of an all-eclipsing hunger, of a rich taste that calms the beast, of guilt and abhorrence. Yes, 'sustained' suffices.
Distracted, the radio's words take time to filter through. She is alerted not by the words themselves, but by a tensing of his neck muscles, a faint increase in pulse rate, a twist as he moves from her embrace and reaches towards the switch. There is a defensiveness, something craven in the movement - and her hand darts forward, their fingers intertwining as his motion is stilled, stifled.
[Please repeat, over?]
[We've got a...we think it's a...It's an old bomb. In the nets. What do we do? . . . Um. Over?]
[Stand by. We're contacting the MOD now. Just stay where you are. Please confirm GPS coordinates? Over.]
Some part of her mind registers and recognises the numbers that follow - several miles out to sea. No threat.
But the rest is snarling in rage. The shaking fear of the fisherman's voice. She can picture it. The weed and barnacle cloaked old thing, raised from the salt. Deadly. She is shouting, cursing long-dead German pilots, their mothers, their children. Eyes fixed unseeing on some point on the wallpaper, recalling sullen orange savage red flames.
[Lower it back in. Slowly. Mark it with a buoy. It may be pressure-sensitive. Keep your engines OFF. MOD boat is enroute. Over]
She hears the words - this is anger, not frenzy - but they just stir up memories of wailing sirens, of people afraid, of would-be invaders overhead, of calling on inner reserves just to stay calm among the primal fear of fire. It doesn't make her afraid now though, just angry, that this dead threat is still haunting, still threatening, still lurking beneath the surface.
And then - fingers still caught together, though the armchair is gone, she must have pushed it aside - still caught fast, he tries to talk her down. Rests his free hand on her shoulder. Speaks soothing words.
Her voice quietens, curses become hissed. An external observer might think he had succeeded. Perhaps for a moment even he thinks the same, as their eyes meet and silence falls heavy.
She yanks her hand away from his, shrugs the other from her shoulder, steps back, leans head and shoulders forward, eyes narrowed and voice cold.
"This is. Your. Fault."
She pauses, swallows reflexively, throat dry.
"Lizzy..."
His voice grates - wheedling, manipulative. Self-preserving. Chicken-shit.
She presses forward, "All. Your. Fault. You drain me dry, you suck my will from me, my strength and my solace, you press me, squeeze me, need me, drag me..."
He is backing away, wet eyes locked to hers, feet feeling their way down the steps, into the dark. Retreating, not fleeing, her words beating a lop-sided hurtful tattoo with each step they take.
"You make me do this, like this. All your fault. Bound."
There is a twist to her lips, something feral and confrontational, "Deny it! Prove me wrong!"
He reaches behind him, opening the door to her haven. Her space. Her sanctuary. Tears running down his face, he steps backwards into the room, slams the door smartly in her face, and she hears heavy bolts crash home.
She gasps - perhaps it is in relief - and flings herself at the heavy door.
Fists hit metal-studded wood. Hesitation falls away from her voice as she lets herself descend, gags guilt and silences sorrow, sending such fragile things far into the shadows.
She raves at his cowardice, his inconstancy. His weakness in allowing himself to be fed upon. She scorns him for needing to be rescued by her. For failing to do the same for her. For letting her become this. All his fault.
She questions his desires, for accepting blood from her sire, for letting himself be ghouled, for having shown affection to any other than her. She pounds the door in frustration at his passivity, his refusal to fight back, beating her fists raw against the welcome resistance of the great iron studs and rough wood. This, now, is his fault too. She loves him, defends him, from age and death and all that would tear them apart - and it sucks her dry, makes her like THIS, she would be calm and kind if only, if only...
All the truths fall like fists, all the rage stabs like knives. Empty insults could never penetrate bone-deep like this.
And in the end, it passes. She slumps with her back to the door, knees hunched beneath her chin, one bloody hand cradling the other. She glowers at the whitewashed wall opposite, wrath...quelled.
After some time, she hears the bolts slide back. The door opens behind her, and arms wrap around her shoulders.
Silence reigns. This, then, is not something they will speak of.
He reaches for her hands, and draws breath inward in wordless concern. Still holding one hand, he stands and moves around her, crouching to meet her gaze. "You're hurt."
He lifts each hand in turn to his lips, licking the oozing vitae from raw knuckles, an unconscious parody of fealty.
She reaches to run a finger along his jawline. Her smile is a mere ghost of a fragile thing, as she draws his face to hers for a kiss, "I love you. I'd never hurt you."
At least I didn't hit him.
...and I am not very good at this, so this can stay in my personal notes until I can rewrite it into something suitably dry and academic - and I'm still too close to this to do that just yet.
Oh, I can observe. I see, all too clearly - I'm just bad at doing so dispassonately. I want to jump in. I observe more clearly than others, at times, I think - because they get mesmerised by consequence and then justify the preceding action to themselves based on what happened next. That is - well, soothing, calming, I suppose - but it's lazy thinking. It's dangerously pragmatic, and it allows people to do bad things because they can convince themselves good will follow later. It may be that the predicted chain of events does occur - but it doesn't make the initial act any less bad. In some great metaphysical tally sheet it may be less dreadful than an alternative chain of actions - but it must still be judged in isolation, even if it was the lesser of possible evils. As soon as you - I - start using comparatives and context to justify why we do this thing here and now, it's a slippery slope.
Which is why I am stalling - because I don't want to set down what I was actually left thinking, because by my own logic it's wrong but at least I know it's wrong - and I need to cling to that intuitive knowledge of wrongness - even if I cannot hypothesise and justify to explain why I know it to be wrong - because too many do not know and wouldn't even comprehend why I am (again) beating myself up about this, other than to coldly alienly observe it as a weakness to use against me. Monsters. More on some of those another time - I'm still stalling, aren't I?
I am not weak. Such restrictions as are on me are placed by me, by choice, and that is another kind of strength. At any time I could break them easily - and the horror is that if I did, I fear wouldn't even know what it had cost me, because the price would be ceasing to care. And not needing to care never stops being its own temptation. I have taken steps down that road - and even while being abhored by it now after years of struggling back, in ill-paired parallel I still remember the savage joy, unfettered by guilt, of being the Hound. Of being so certain that I was right, that the Carthian prince was justified and judicious, when he called and I obeyed, to hunt and hurt those who threatened our domain. There is within me the ever-present howl of a mob seeking redress, the massed anger of the crowd on the edge. Prised cobblestones in hand, curses on the tongue, muscles tensed and lungs filled, ready at the smallest provocation to hurl those stones, to scream. This is the hue and cry, this is the rough music, this is temptation. The crunch of bone and the yielding of flesh, the satisfaction of getting the bastard...
Which is still me stalling - but perhaps it gives context to what I'm about to write (despite what I said about context being a damn fool thing to judge actions by) - because I was left thinking:
At least I didn't hit him.
At least. I. Didn't hit. Him.
Over and back, like waves against a receding coastline, footprints on a often-trodden path - til every nuance of individual syllable is lost, til only the massed susurration, erratic erosion effect remains.
I was once taught that describing in the third person assists with objectivity. The scientific approach, to remove sentimentality. Let's try.
As she returns to the house, the radio whispers and beeps and clicks from within. Exact words are obscured by stone and glass, unimportant.
Her hunger is...quelled. Satisfied is not the right word. She is sustained, and that will suffice. It is what she is familiar with.
She enters the house. Sees her husband sitting in an armchair, back to the door, listening to the back & forth of the coastguard's night patrol. She smiles, stealing forward to wrap arms around his shoulders, to lean a vitae-flushed cheek against his living one, feeling his pulse caught between them, smelling his skin as she kisses lightly. Posture, scent, sensation - it merely evokes, in these new nights and years, a decades-yellowed memory of an all-eclipsing hunger, of a rich taste that calms the beast, of guilt and abhorrence. Yes, 'sustained' suffices.
Distracted, the radio's words take time to filter through. She is alerted not by the words themselves, but by a tensing of his neck muscles, a faint increase in pulse rate, a twist as he moves from her embrace and reaches towards the switch. There is a defensiveness, something craven in the movement - and her hand darts forward, their fingers intertwining as his motion is stilled, stifled.
[Please repeat, over?]
[We've got a...we think it's a...It's an old bomb. In the nets. What do we do? . . . Um. Over?]
[Stand by. We're contacting the MOD now. Just stay where you are. Please confirm GPS coordinates? Over.]
Some part of her mind registers and recognises the numbers that follow - several miles out to sea. No threat.
But the rest is snarling in rage. The shaking fear of the fisherman's voice. She can picture it. The weed and barnacle cloaked old thing, raised from the salt. Deadly. She is shouting, cursing long-dead German pilots, their mothers, their children. Eyes fixed unseeing on some point on the wallpaper, recalling sullen orange savage red flames.
[Lower it back in. Slowly. Mark it with a buoy. It may be pressure-sensitive. Keep your engines OFF. MOD boat is enroute. Over]
She hears the words - this is anger, not frenzy - but they just stir up memories of wailing sirens, of people afraid, of would-be invaders overhead, of calling on inner reserves just to stay calm among the primal fear of fire. It doesn't make her afraid now though, just angry, that this dead threat is still haunting, still threatening, still lurking beneath the surface.
And then - fingers still caught together, though the armchair is gone, she must have pushed it aside - still caught fast, he tries to talk her down. Rests his free hand on her shoulder. Speaks soothing words.
Her voice quietens, curses become hissed. An external observer might think he had succeeded. Perhaps for a moment even he thinks the same, as their eyes meet and silence falls heavy.
She yanks her hand away from his, shrugs the other from her shoulder, steps back, leans head and shoulders forward, eyes narrowed and voice cold.
"This is. Your. Fault."
She pauses, swallows reflexively, throat dry.
"Lizzy..."
His voice grates - wheedling, manipulative. Self-preserving. Chicken-shit.
She presses forward, "All. Your. Fault. You drain me dry, you suck my will from me, my strength and my solace, you press me, squeeze me, need me, drag me..."
He is backing away, wet eyes locked to hers, feet feeling their way down the steps, into the dark. Retreating, not fleeing, her words beating a lop-sided hurtful tattoo with each step they take.
"You make me do this, like this. All your fault. Bound."
There is a twist to her lips, something feral and confrontational, "Deny it! Prove me wrong!"
He reaches behind him, opening the door to her haven. Her space. Her sanctuary. Tears running down his face, he steps backwards into the room, slams the door smartly in her face, and she hears heavy bolts crash home.
She gasps - perhaps it is in relief - and flings herself at the heavy door.
Fists hit metal-studded wood. Hesitation falls away from her voice as she lets herself descend, gags guilt and silences sorrow, sending such fragile things far into the shadows.
She raves at his cowardice, his inconstancy. His weakness in allowing himself to be fed upon. She scorns him for needing to be rescued by her. For failing to do the same for her. For letting her become this. All his fault.
She questions his desires, for accepting blood from her sire, for letting himself be ghouled, for having shown affection to any other than her. She pounds the door in frustration at his passivity, his refusal to fight back, beating her fists raw against the welcome resistance of the great iron studs and rough wood. This, now, is his fault too. She loves him, defends him, from age and death and all that would tear them apart - and it sucks her dry, makes her like THIS, she would be calm and kind if only, if only...
All the truths fall like fists, all the rage stabs like knives. Empty insults could never penetrate bone-deep like this.
And in the end, it passes. She slumps with her back to the door, knees hunched beneath her chin, one bloody hand cradling the other. She glowers at the whitewashed wall opposite, wrath...quelled.
After some time, she hears the bolts slide back. The door opens behind her, and arms wrap around her shoulders.
Silence reigns. This, then, is not something they will speak of.
He reaches for her hands, and draws breath inward in wordless concern. Still holding one hand, he stands and moves around her, crouching to meet her gaze. "You're hurt."
He lifts each hand in turn to his lips, licking the oozing vitae from raw knuckles, an unconscious parody of fealty.
She reaches to run a finger along his jawline. Her smile is a mere ghost of a fragile thing, as she draws his face to hers for a kiss, "I love you. I'd never hurt you."
At least I didn't hit him.