wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2020-08-30 09:30 pm
wintersday) wrote2020-08-30 09:30 pm
Fic: Always Remembered
Title: Always Remembered
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Major Characters/Pairings: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Wordcount: ~1,400
Rating: Teen
POV: First person (Statement fic)
Summary: Statement of Larissa Eaves, regarding an unusual garden. (This isn't a love story, or at the very least, it's not a nice one.)
In the heart of the largest park in my hometown, which is nowhere you need to know, there’s a rose garden. It’s picturesque: little pebbled paths, a fountain at the center, what seemed when I was young to be every variety of rose known to humankind. I used to go there when school was out, and spend my time running through the rows of rosebushes, unconcerned by thorns, with my big sister following behind me. I liked to read the little brass plaques in front of each one. They had names like Always Remembered and Masquerade, and each one seemed like a little window into a world where magic was just a bit realer than it is here. For years, there was nothing I liked better, and there was nowhere else outside my home that felt more like it belonged to me. And then – I lost the habit. Life grew busier, and magic more mundane, and at some point, I stopped thinking of the place at all. I don’t know when my last childhood visit was, but I do know that it wasn’t until university that I found my way back there again.
It was a cold day in late November, no snow in the air but a brisk and biting wind. I’d just broken up with my girlfriend of almost three years, a fellow student named Kate who I’d had fantasies of marrying someday, and I felt ugly and empty inside, like there was something missing that I’d never find again. I walked out her door that day with no plans and an empty flat waiting, and eventually, though I hadn’t meant to go anywhere, the long path I walked took me back to the park and the rose garden that I hadn’t visited in years.
It was nothing much to look at, in winter. Dead, sere grass beneath dirty snow. Rotting leaves fallen around the roots of bushes that were mostly thorns. There was a loneliness to it that’s hard to describe, melancholy and compelling, an almost addictive sort of emotion. I wanted to wallow in it, and for a while I did, hardly caring where I was going – but as I walked, I found my eye drawn again to the little plaques that named each cultivar of rose. I stopped to read one, as I had in childhood, then frowned, unsure I’d seen it right. But there it was, when I looked again, bold as a newspaper headline: Elaine Drover. The name of an old, old friend who’d died in an accident when I was young. I wondered if her family had purchased this as a memorial, and it struck me strangely, seeing it there unexpectedly, like I’d witnessed something private.
I walked on hastily, my hands numb with cold in my pockets and my breath steaming, until something further up the path caught my eye: ivory petals on the ground, curling inward at the edges and crumbling. These flowers had died later in the season than roses ever did. I bent down to check the name inscribed near the rosebush’s roots, strangely fearful, and saw that it said, Esmeralda Eaves. My grandmother. She’d passed away that year, long enough ago that the grief was beginning to fade from its first freshness, but not long enough for it to be gone, and my first thought, while I was still too numb for tears, was that we hadn’t purchased any memorial, but my second was of how bare the branches looked, how cruel the thorns, and how little I wanted my grandmother to be remembered like that.
I paid closer attention to the brass plaques, after that. I checked them all, growing more unnerved with every rosebush I passed. Each one bore the name of one of the dead. Some were people I knew, and some were famous; some were strangers, but I knew by then what I was looking at. I should have left. I know that now. I should have left, and I could have left – all I needed to do was turn and find the gate behind me – but I let my feet carry me deeper, until I came to something I didn’t expect to find there.
A living rose.
It was a deep burgundy, lush and dark and impossible in winter, and I knew already, before I brushed the covering of snow and leaf mulch away, whose name I would see. And there it was, revealed by my shaking fingers: Kate Samson.
In that moment, I felt, very strongly, that I should turn away – that in this garden of the dead, this was the one thing not meant for me – but though I stood to leave, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m not strong. I’ve never been strong. You understand. I reached down, breathing in winter air that stung my throat as it filled my lungs, feeling the emptiness expanding inside my chest, and I plucked a petal. I don’t know why. It was soft against my fingers, cool to the touch and slightly velvety, and on impulse, I raised it to my lips and watched as it fluttered in my breath, not wanting to let it go. I kissed it, just once. And then I placed it on my tongue and swallowed it whole.
I knew what I was doing, I think. I wanted to have her with me. Not a little piece of her, not a memory only. The whole. I took another petal, and then another after, until that stem was as bare as the all others, and each one, I ate.
And it won’t surprise you – so few things surprise you, I think – to hear what happened, some time between when I found my way into that rose garden and when I found my way out. An aneurism, the doctor said. Blood blooming in her brain. And all the time that I spent sitting there at the funeral service, and standing in the winter chill as they lowered her coffin into the hard earth, I could feel in the pit of my stomach the warmth of something that belonged all and only to me.
I never had another relationship after that. I simply never felt the need to. I was content in myself, complete – replete, maybe. Filled up with something good and nourishing. I’ve kept roses in every garden I planted, and tended them with care, as though that might serve for some sort of atonement. Sometimes I woke at night with guilt digging its roots down into me, but I told myself that I had been younger when I did what I did, and I took comfort in the fact that the person who had done it wasn’t me any longer.
You don’t notice, do you, when life changes you? Not when it happens gradually. I expanded my horizons, year by year – started reading mystery novels, learned to like spicier food, took up knitting and online gaming. Small things like that. Does a house notice, when you rebuild it brick by brick? Does a garden, when new flowers are planted?
A week ago, I passed the rose garden again, and once more, something drew me back. The roses lining the winding paths were lush and beautiful this time of year, their golds and pinks and heartsblood reds all bright amid the greenery, and they had names like Polar Star and Desert Blush, and not like Esmeralda. But I noticed something odd, as I wandered further from the gate. Most of the bushes were in full bloom, but one was almost bare. I stopped when I saw it, then hurried to look closer, a little cold and a little uncertain. The leaves trembled in the breeze, the few that remained unfallen. A few pale white blossoms clung to a thorny branch, their petals dusting the earth, and low to the ground, just off the path, I saw a small square of brass with raised letters marking out Larissa Eaves.
Does that surprise you? Not at all.
I do recognize it, Ms. Robinson, that satisfaction in your eyes as I pour out my story for you. I know the look of someone who knows what it’s like to swallow a person down piece by piece. I don’t even have the right to blame you for it – but whatever it is that you’re taking from me, I don’t think you’ll have it for long, and I even think, looking at that little smile of yours, that you know it. Roses die quickly, when their time comes.
When I walked in here today, I almost told them that my name was Kate.
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Major Characters/Pairings: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Wordcount: ~1,400
Rating: Teen
POV: First person (Statement fic)
Summary: Statement of Larissa Eaves, regarding an unusual garden. (This isn't a love story, or at the very least, it's not a nice one.)
In the heart of the largest park in my hometown, which is nowhere you need to know, there’s a rose garden. It’s picturesque: little pebbled paths, a fountain at the center, what seemed when I was young to be every variety of rose known to humankind. I used to go there when school was out, and spend my time running through the rows of rosebushes, unconcerned by thorns, with my big sister following behind me. I liked to read the little brass plaques in front of each one. They had names like Always Remembered and Masquerade, and each one seemed like a little window into a world where magic was just a bit realer than it is here. For years, there was nothing I liked better, and there was nowhere else outside my home that felt more like it belonged to me. And then – I lost the habit. Life grew busier, and magic more mundane, and at some point, I stopped thinking of the place at all. I don’t know when my last childhood visit was, but I do know that it wasn’t until university that I found my way back there again.
It was a cold day in late November, no snow in the air but a brisk and biting wind. I’d just broken up with my girlfriend of almost three years, a fellow student named Kate who I’d had fantasies of marrying someday, and I felt ugly and empty inside, like there was something missing that I’d never find again. I walked out her door that day with no plans and an empty flat waiting, and eventually, though I hadn’t meant to go anywhere, the long path I walked took me back to the park and the rose garden that I hadn’t visited in years.
It was nothing much to look at, in winter. Dead, sere grass beneath dirty snow. Rotting leaves fallen around the roots of bushes that were mostly thorns. There was a loneliness to it that’s hard to describe, melancholy and compelling, an almost addictive sort of emotion. I wanted to wallow in it, and for a while I did, hardly caring where I was going – but as I walked, I found my eye drawn again to the little plaques that named each cultivar of rose. I stopped to read one, as I had in childhood, then frowned, unsure I’d seen it right. But there it was, when I looked again, bold as a newspaper headline: Elaine Drover. The name of an old, old friend who’d died in an accident when I was young. I wondered if her family had purchased this as a memorial, and it struck me strangely, seeing it there unexpectedly, like I’d witnessed something private.
I walked on hastily, my hands numb with cold in my pockets and my breath steaming, until something further up the path caught my eye: ivory petals on the ground, curling inward at the edges and crumbling. These flowers had died later in the season than roses ever did. I bent down to check the name inscribed near the rosebush’s roots, strangely fearful, and saw that it said, Esmeralda Eaves. My grandmother. She’d passed away that year, long enough ago that the grief was beginning to fade from its first freshness, but not long enough for it to be gone, and my first thought, while I was still too numb for tears, was that we hadn’t purchased any memorial, but my second was of how bare the branches looked, how cruel the thorns, and how little I wanted my grandmother to be remembered like that.
I paid closer attention to the brass plaques, after that. I checked them all, growing more unnerved with every rosebush I passed. Each one bore the name of one of the dead. Some were people I knew, and some were famous; some were strangers, but I knew by then what I was looking at. I should have left. I know that now. I should have left, and I could have left – all I needed to do was turn and find the gate behind me – but I let my feet carry me deeper, until I came to something I didn’t expect to find there.
A living rose.
It was a deep burgundy, lush and dark and impossible in winter, and I knew already, before I brushed the covering of snow and leaf mulch away, whose name I would see. And there it was, revealed by my shaking fingers: Kate Samson.
In that moment, I felt, very strongly, that I should turn away – that in this garden of the dead, this was the one thing not meant for me – but though I stood to leave, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m not strong. I’ve never been strong. You understand. I reached down, breathing in winter air that stung my throat as it filled my lungs, feeling the emptiness expanding inside my chest, and I plucked a petal. I don’t know why. It was soft against my fingers, cool to the touch and slightly velvety, and on impulse, I raised it to my lips and watched as it fluttered in my breath, not wanting to let it go. I kissed it, just once. And then I placed it on my tongue and swallowed it whole.
I knew what I was doing, I think. I wanted to have her with me. Not a little piece of her, not a memory only. The whole. I took another petal, and then another after, until that stem was as bare as the all others, and each one, I ate.
And it won’t surprise you – so few things surprise you, I think – to hear what happened, some time between when I found my way into that rose garden and when I found my way out. An aneurism, the doctor said. Blood blooming in her brain. And all the time that I spent sitting there at the funeral service, and standing in the winter chill as they lowered her coffin into the hard earth, I could feel in the pit of my stomach the warmth of something that belonged all and only to me.
I never had another relationship after that. I simply never felt the need to. I was content in myself, complete – replete, maybe. Filled up with something good and nourishing. I’ve kept roses in every garden I planted, and tended them with care, as though that might serve for some sort of atonement. Sometimes I woke at night with guilt digging its roots down into me, but I told myself that I had been younger when I did what I did, and I took comfort in the fact that the person who had done it wasn’t me any longer.
You don’t notice, do you, when life changes you? Not when it happens gradually. I expanded my horizons, year by year – started reading mystery novels, learned to like spicier food, took up knitting and online gaming. Small things like that. Does a house notice, when you rebuild it brick by brick? Does a garden, when new flowers are planted?
A week ago, I passed the rose garden again, and once more, something drew me back. The roses lining the winding paths were lush and beautiful this time of year, their golds and pinks and heartsblood reds all bright amid the greenery, and they had names like Polar Star and Desert Blush, and not like Esmeralda. But I noticed something odd, as I wandered further from the gate. Most of the bushes were in full bloom, but one was almost bare. I stopped when I saw it, then hurried to look closer, a little cold and a little uncertain. The leaves trembled in the breeze, the few that remained unfallen. A few pale white blossoms clung to a thorny branch, their petals dusting the earth, and low to the ground, just off the path, I saw a small square of brass with raised letters marking out Larissa Eaves.
Does that surprise you? Not at all.
I do recognize it, Ms. Robinson, that satisfaction in your eyes as I pour out my story for you. I know the look of someone who knows what it’s like to swallow a person down piece by piece. I don’t even have the right to blame you for it – but whatever it is that you’re taking from me, I don’t think you’ll have it for long, and I even think, looking at that little smile of yours, that you know it. Roses die quickly, when their time comes.
When I walked in here today, I almost told them that my name was Kate.