wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2021-04-12 10:34 pm
wintersday) wrote2021-04-12 10:34 pm
Entry tags:
- character: tma: georgie,
- character: tma: jon,
- character: tma: martin,
- character: tma: original character,
- character: tma: statement giver(s),
- fandom: the magnus archives,
- fanfic,
- fanfic: length: under 1k,
- fanfic: rating: teen,
- fanfic: type: gen,
- fanfic: type: m/m,
- fanfic: type: other,
- format: drabble sequence,
- pairing: tma: jon/martin,
- pairing: tma: oc/oc,
- trope: hurt/comfort,
- trope: recovery
Fic: Towards The Morning
Title: Toward the Morning
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Major Characters/Pairings: Various Statement-givers and OCs, Georgie, Jon/Martin, original character/original character
Wordcount: Seven 100 word drabbles
Rating: Teen
POV: Third person & second person
Summary: Scenes from the aftermath of the end of the world.
What happened fades as nightmares do. It’s hard to hold it all in the mind at once. Memories take on a merciful distance, except when they cut with the jagged edge of a rusty tin. Landscapes mostly revert. Some structures remain, abandoned impossibilities collapsing beneath reality’s weight. And in a field outside of town, a man named Sam stretches out on the surface of the earth and doesn’t think. He only feels: sunlight, long grass tickling his face, emptiness around and above. The fear isn’t gone, but time grips him differently, and the sky – the sky is what it was.
A woman turns the handle to Room 288. She doesn’t remember her name, but she remembers the child waiting inside. His face is tear-stained, but he doesn’t cry when she pulls him into her arms. He clings to her, and all he says is, “Mummy, it was dark.”
He’s too big to carry, but she carries him anyway, through halls now straight and shabby, until she finds the reception desk with its wilted ferns. There’s no one there. She and Alex stumble out into sunlight together.
When she looks back, there’s no door in the solid brick behind her.
Francis wakes in their flat, curled up on an unmade bed, and there are cobwebs everywhere – hanging from light fixtures, draping shelves and furniture in a grey shroud. Clearing them out feels like more effort than Francis can bear, and they curl tighter, flinching at a dream they can’t remember. How long were they asleep? How is this even possible?
But time passes. Dreams end. Eventually, they stand and throw open the windows to let in the air, which rushes in to fill the room, cold and clean. There’s a broom somewhere. They need to do this, and they can.
Georgie isn’t sure anyone will want their stories collected. To her surprise, some do. The ones from lonely places, mostly, shivering from remembered fog, who tell her that they’re real with whatever words they can. Some who lost their names return them to her for safekeeping; some who traded faces ask her incessantly, obsessively – what does she see, when she looks at them?
And then there are the quiet ones, marked by a subtle hunger she learns to recognize, who come to tell her what they did when the world was wrong. She takes their stories too. It isn’t absolution.
One of them ran with the Pack. The other fought in a war. It doesn’t matter which side was which, or who was hunter, or who was prey.
They meet in the alley outside the bar, beneath flickering streetlight, to share a cigarette and silence. The one taken by the Slaughter makes a joke about a sweetheart back home, which isn’t funny, and the one who hunted holds smoke in their lungs, grateful they never learned whether they would have run a lover down.
One pitches a brick at the light with practiced aim. In darkness, it’s safe enough to kiss.
Carmen walks down the street with a steel bat from an abandoned sporting goods shop, smashing cameras as she goes. There are a lot of them and she hates them all, though nothing now animates the things. Strangers turn sometimes to look, shaken from their nightmares by the tinkling crunch of glass and metal, but they avert their eyes when she looks back and lifts her weapon. It’s not their fault. She still can’t stand them watching.
When she’s done here, she’s moving to the countryside. It might be better there. If not, at least she’ll be free of London.
And you –
What do you know of fear?
Children shout somewhere, carefree. Dogs chase the bright disc of a thrown frisbee. And two men sit on a park bench, resting, their hands linked. They seem so tired. The thin one is a palimpsest of scars. His eyes catch the light in the falling dusk, and catch you in that light – and then he smiles and looks away.
(Were the shadows on the edge of sunset always this dark? Did the path back always have so many unfamiliar turnings?)
You make it home. If you have dreams, you don’t remember them.
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Major Characters/Pairings: Various Statement-givers and OCs, Georgie, Jon/Martin, original character/original character
Wordcount: Seven 100 word drabbles
Rating: Teen
POV: Third person & second person
Summary: Scenes from the aftermath of the end of the world.
What happened fades as nightmares do. It’s hard to hold it all in the mind at once. Memories take on a merciful distance, except when they cut with the jagged edge of a rusty tin. Landscapes mostly revert. Some structures remain, abandoned impossibilities collapsing beneath reality’s weight. And in a field outside of town, a man named Sam stretches out on the surface of the earth and doesn’t think. He only feels: sunlight, long grass tickling his face, emptiness around and above. The fear isn’t gone, but time grips him differently, and the sky – the sky is what it was.
A woman turns the handle to Room 288. She doesn’t remember her name, but she remembers the child waiting inside. His face is tear-stained, but he doesn’t cry when she pulls him into her arms. He clings to her, and all he says is, “Mummy, it was dark.”
He’s too big to carry, but she carries him anyway, through halls now straight and shabby, until she finds the reception desk with its wilted ferns. There’s no one there. She and Alex stumble out into sunlight together.
When she looks back, there’s no door in the solid brick behind her.
Francis wakes in their flat, curled up on an unmade bed, and there are cobwebs everywhere – hanging from light fixtures, draping shelves and furniture in a grey shroud. Clearing them out feels like more effort than Francis can bear, and they curl tighter, flinching at a dream they can’t remember. How long were they asleep? How is this even possible?
But time passes. Dreams end. Eventually, they stand and throw open the windows to let in the air, which rushes in to fill the room, cold and clean. There’s a broom somewhere. They need to do this, and they can.
Georgie isn’t sure anyone will want their stories collected. To her surprise, some do. The ones from lonely places, mostly, shivering from remembered fog, who tell her that they’re real with whatever words they can. Some who lost their names return them to her for safekeeping; some who traded faces ask her incessantly, obsessively – what does she see, when she looks at them?
And then there are the quiet ones, marked by a subtle hunger she learns to recognize, who come to tell her what they did when the world was wrong. She takes their stories too. It isn’t absolution.
One of them ran with the Pack. The other fought in a war. It doesn’t matter which side was which, or who was hunter, or who was prey.
They meet in the alley outside the bar, beneath flickering streetlight, to share a cigarette and silence. The one taken by the Slaughter makes a joke about a sweetheart back home, which isn’t funny, and the one who hunted holds smoke in their lungs, grateful they never learned whether they would have run a lover down.
One pitches a brick at the light with practiced aim. In darkness, it’s safe enough to kiss.
Carmen walks down the street with a steel bat from an abandoned sporting goods shop, smashing cameras as she goes. There are a lot of them and she hates them all, though nothing now animates the things. Strangers turn sometimes to look, shaken from their nightmares by the tinkling crunch of glass and metal, but they avert their eyes when she looks back and lifts her weapon. It’s not their fault. She still can’t stand them watching.
When she’s done here, she’s moving to the countryside. It might be better there. If not, at least she’ll be free of London.
And you –
What do you know of fear?
Children shout somewhere, carefree. Dogs chase the bright disc of a thrown frisbee. And two men sit on a park bench, resting, their hands linked. They seem so tired. The thin one is a palimpsest of scars. His eyes catch the light in the falling dusk, and catch you in that light – and then he smiles and looks away.
(Were the shadows on the edge of sunset always this dark? Did the path back always have so many unfamiliar turnings?)
You make it home. If you have dreams, you don’t remember them.