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storypaint) wrote2010-07-14 10:33 am
storypaint) wrote2010-07-14 10:33 am
[Magic Knight Rayearth/Polychromatic] Blink (and you'll miss it) (Clef/Presea)
Title: Blink (and you'll miss it)
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth/Polychromatic
Length: 1427 words
Prompt: When you leave![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
polychromatic, you're supposed to forget what happened in the City. What if you can't forget?
Pairing: Clef/Presea
Other: n/a
Excerpt: He feels like months have passed instead of seconds: the cause of his confusion. He leans on his staff for a moment, trying to process. It's as if he's forgotten something very important.
Clef blinks and in a moment everything is different. He nearly falls over, in fact, suddenly disoriented. Glancing around quickly at the forest around him, he can see no source to the problem. This is the Forest of Silence, and he has become intimately familiar with it over the past few days. He can't stay in Presea's house all the time, waiting for her to recover; the idea gives him claustrophobia. So he's been looking in on her regularly, and this will be his visit for the afternoon.
He feels like months have passed instead of seconds: the cause of his confusion. He leans on his staff for a moment, trying to process. It's as if he's forgotten something very important. Whatever it is, it's there at the bottom of his mind, reminding him that it happened, that he should recall it, but it's not there. It's a strange, hollow feeling, and it worries him.
Is he going senile? Has the stress finally become too much? He's been taking a lot of long walks lately, wearing down the paths and trying not to think about what the Knights are out doing. Someone needs to be here, near the center of government, when everything falls apart. That someone has been him for the past few months, and it will be until a replacement Pillar can be found.
Or until something else happens, he thinks, and shakes his head, because even though he'd rather not have anyone else suffer to be Pillar (and would Emeraude blame him for that? The thought pinches at him), he doesn't know what the alternative would be. Without a Pillar, there would be no Cephiro. So he has to hope that the next choice won't be so hard for the Pillar to make.
Whatever just happened is still pressing at the edges of his consciousness, and he's giving himself a headache trying to remember it. So deliberately he pushes it away, gives himself time to process, and he finishes the rest of his walk in comfortable silence. He presses his hand to Presea's door and it opens for him, but he pauses in the threshold.
"Pharle?"
There is no response, and there hasn't been for the past few days. She worked very hard on those weapons, he can tell, and it took a lot from her. She's been sleeping very heavily and isn't conscious for much longer than five minutes at a time. It's strange to him to see her when she isn’t vibrant and loud and excitable. He walks down the hall to her room, stopping at the door to see if she's wakened, but no. So he climbs up into the chair next to her bed and looks.
She's still sleeping, arm flung up over her eyes against the afternoon sunshine. (She has no curtains in her whole house, but that doesn't seem to stop her from sleeping well.) Her other arm is splayed across her stomach comfortably, fingers curled a little.
And a sense-memory comes to Clef. He knows what it is like to hold those hands, warm from her gloves, rough from her work. Her fingernails are clipped short and her grip is strong. She likes to lace their fingers together.
The thought is so vivid that he reaches for her hand, pulling back at the last moment and shaking his head in confusion.
Normally he sits and reads at her bedside for a while, but he’s too unsettled. He leaves soon after, pausing in the doorway to look back at her speculatively. She sighs in her sleep and turns over, clutching at the covers.
"You always steal them," he says fondly.
And knowing that confuses him even more, so he strides away, trying to preoccupy his mind with other things.
*
Clef doesn't sleep very much. He's old and doesn't need much sleep to start with, and then there's the fact that he always has something to do. He has many things that take priority over sleeping and so he rarely catches more than a couple of hours a night, and a few naps here and there.
He chalks it up to stress when he begins to have the dreams; his two hours a night are filled with colorful, incomprehensible tales blurring together into faces he's seen and never seen before. It isn't as if he never had dreams, but these are dreams that feel like waking, even though they are like normal dreams in that they slide together with few transitions. There's a tall, dark woman bending over him, red lips curled in a dangerous smile, but then she turns around and a kitten runs by, with an odd device in his mouth. There's a gun in his hand and then he's facing himself, a taller version with a cruel turn to his lips. And underneath all of it, there's the relentless sound of a clock ticking.
It isn't every night that he dreams like this, or wakes reaching for a warm body, knowing at the same time that he's never slept beside anyone, even though he can still smell her in the air. But it happens often enough that when he can ponder over it, he does, cracking open books and consulting dreamseers in calm moments.
There aren't many calm moments, so he tries to hold onto the present and the whirlwind that it is. Presea wakes and he does not tell her about his "memories" or whatever they are. It feels strange to keep something like this from her; she is always at his side lately, trying to help him keep Cephiro from falling to pieces.
He tells her what the Knights have done with the weapons she made, and she cries. But only for a moment, for their sakes and sadnesses, before she asks him what they are going to do next.
Clef isn't sure (of very much, anymore), but he has a very secret feeling that it might turn out all right.
Even so, no one is more surprised than he is when it does.
*
The dreams become less frequent as time passes, and Clef is thankful for this. He still wonders where they came from, if he is having particularly vivid hallucinations, or, if not-- what could it possibly be? He still finds himself reaching for Presea's hand at strange moments. Some part of him is infinitely more comfortable with her, and though he can admit to himself that he likes her romantically, he's not quite sure where his psyche got the idea that she likes him back.
Still, she doesn't seem to mind his random brushes of skin, or occasional neglect of her title. Sometimes he thinks that she reaches for him first. Otherwise, they go on as usual. She offers her advice and helps with government policy to the best of her ability. When they have free time they read, they joke, just like the old friends they are.
That is, until one day when Presea comes to see him, openly agitated. She gestures, speaking hesitantly, but it doesn't make any sense until she says the word "ticking." He stares.
She stops and stares back, searching his face, and then she clutches a fist and seems to decide something.
"And you and I--" she says, taking a breath, "we--"
She looks down and then pulls off a glove. He still doesn't see her bare hands often, but they look just like he remembers, callused and pale. She offers her fingers to him, and he takes them without hesitation.
She laces their fingers together and it feels like the millionth time instead of the first.
"This is how it's supposed to be," she says, and she almost sounds relieved. He leans forward and kisses the back of her hand.
"I love you," he says seriously. Maybe their tenure in the ticking place was the catalyst, but he had before then, and he does now.
"I know," she says, a grin bright on her face, and she giggles. "I love you too." He smiles back.
If they've figured this out, the rest can't be far behind.
*
The next time he's startled awake by a strange dream, he fumbles for the notebook he's been keeping. He notes down all the details that he can remember, trying to be as precise as possible.
And then he steals some of the covers back from Presea and lets himself drift off to sleep again.
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth/Polychromatic
Length: 1427 words
Prompt: When you leave
polychromatic, you're supposed to forget what happened in the City. What if you can't forget?Pairing: Clef/Presea
Other: n/a
Excerpt: He feels like months have passed instead of seconds: the cause of his confusion. He leans on his staff for a moment, trying to process. It's as if he's forgotten something very important.
Clef blinks and in a moment everything is different. He nearly falls over, in fact, suddenly disoriented. Glancing around quickly at the forest around him, he can see no source to the problem. This is the Forest of Silence, and he has become intimately familiar with it over the past few days. He can't stay in Presea's house all the time, waiting for her to recover; the idea gives him claustrophobia. So he's been looking in on her regularly, and this will be his visit for the afternoon.
He feels like months have passed instead of seconds: the cause of his confusion. He leans on his staff for a moment, trying to process. It's as if he's forgotten something very important. Whatever it is, it's there at the bottom of his mind, reminding him that it happened, that he should recall it, but it's not there. It's a strange, hollow feeling, and it worries him.
Is he going senile? Has the stress finally become too much? He's been taking a lot of long walks lately, wearing down the paths and trying not to think about what the Knights are out doing. Someone needs to be here, near the center of government, when everything falls apart. That someone has been him for the past few months, and it will be until a replacement Pillar can be found.
Or until something else happens, he thinks, and shakes his head, because even though he'd rather not have anyone else suffer to be Pillar (and would Emeraude blame him for that? The thought pinches at him), he doesn't know what the alternative would be. Without a Pillar, there would be no Cephiro. So he has to hope that the next choice won't be so hard for the Pillar to make.
Whatever just happened is still pressing at the edges of his consciousness, and he's giving himself a headache trying to remember it. So deliberately he pushes it away, gives himself time to process, and he finishes the rest of his walk in comfortable silence. He presses his hand to Presea's door and it opens for him, but he pauses in the threshold.
"Pharle?"
There is no response, and there hasn't been for the past few days. She worked very hard on those weapons, he can tell, and it took a lot from her. She's been sleeping very heavily and isn't conscious for much longer than five minutes at a time. It's strange to him to see her when she isn’t vibrant and loud and excitable. He walks down the hall to her room, stopping at the door to see if she's wakened, but no. So he climbs up into the chair next to her bed and looks.
She's still sleeping, arm flung up over her eyes against the afternoon sunshine. (She has no curtains in her whole house, but that doesn't seem to stop her from sleeping well.) Her other arm is splayed across her stomach comfortably, fingers curled a little.
And a sense-memory comes to Clef. He knows what it is like to hold those hands, warm from her gloves, rough from her work. Her fingernails are clipped short and her grip is strong. She likes to lace their fingers together.
The thought is so vivid that he reaches for her hand, pulling back at the last moment and shaking his head in confusion.
Normally he sits and reads at her bedside for a while, but he’s too unsettled. He leaves soon after, pausing in the doorway to look back at her speculatively. She sighs in her sleep and turns over, clutching at the covers.
"You always steal them," he says fondly.
And knowing that confuses him even more, so he strides away, trying to preoccupy his mind with other things.
*
Clef doesn't sleep very much. He's old and doesn't need much sleep to start with, and then there's the fact that he always has something to do. He has many things that take priority over sleeping and so he rarely catches more than a couple of hours a night, and a few naps here and there.
He chalks it up to stress when he begins to have the dreams; his two hours a night are filled with colorful, incomprehensible tales blurring together into faces he's seen and never seen before. It isn't as if he never had dreams, but these are dreams that feel like waking, even though they are like normal dreams in that they slide together with few transitions. There's a tall, dark woman bending over him, red lips curled in a dangerous smile, but then she turns around and a kitten runs by, with an odd device in his mouth. There's a gun in his hand and then he's facing himself, a taller version with a cruel turn to his lips. And underneath all of it, there's the relentless sound of a clock ticking.
It isn't every night that he dreams like this, or wakes reaching for a warm body, knowing at the same time that he's never slept beside anyone, even though he can still smell her in the air. But it happens often enough that when he can ponder over it, he does, cracking open books and consulting dreamseers in calm moments.
There aren't many calm moments, so he tries to hold onto the present and the whirlwind that it is. Presea wakes and he does not tell her about his "memories" or whatever they are. It feels strange to keep something like this from her; she is always at his side lately, trying to help him keep Cephiro from falling to pieces.
He tells her what the Knights have done with the weapons she made, and she cries. But only for a moment, for their sakes and sadnesses, before she asks him what they are going to do next.
Clef isn't sure (of very much, anymore), but he has a very secret feeling that it might turn out all right.
Even so, no one is more surprised than he is when it does.
*
The dreams become less frequent as time passes, and Clef is thankful for this. He still wonders where they came from, if he is having particularly vivid hallucinations, or, if not-- what could it possibly be? He still finds himself reaching for Presea's hand at strange moments. Some part of him is infinitely more comfortable with her, and though he can admit to himself that he likes her romantically, he's not quite sure where his psyche got the idea that she likes him back.
Still, she doesn't seem to mind his random brushes of skin, or occasional neglect of her title. Sometimes he thinks that she reaches for him first. Otherwise, they go on as usual. She offers her advice and helps with government policy to the best of her ability. When they have free time they read, they joke, just like the old friends they are.
That is, until one day when Presea comes to see him, openly agitated. She gestures, speaking hesitantly, but it doesn't make any sense until she says the word "ticking." He stares.
She stops and stares back, searching his face, and then she clutches a fist and seems to decide something.
"And you and I--" she says, taking a breath, "we--"
She looks down and then pulls off a glove. He still doesn't see her bare hands often, but they look just like he remembers, callused and pale. She offers her fingers to him, and he takes them without hesitation.
She laces their fingers together and it feels like the millionth time instead of the first.
"This is how it's supposed to be," she says, and she almost sounds relieved. He leans forward and kisses the back of her hand.
"I love you," he says seriously. Maybe their tenure in the ticking place was the catalyst, but he had before then, and he does now.
"I know," she says, a grin bright on her face, and she giggles. "I love you too." He smiles back.
If they've figured this out, the rest can't be far behind.
*
The next time he's startled awake by a strange dream, he fumbles for the notebook he's been keeping. He notes down all the details that he can remember, trying to be as precise as possible.
And then he steals some of the covers back from Presea and lets himself drift off to sleep again.