trek fic: unpack my heart with words
Title: Unpack My Heart With Words
Rating: PG (swearing)
Wordcount: 421
Notes: The title is a citation from Hamlet. The text was written for anon_j_anon 's prompt: "Jim and Hamlet. Jim in pentameter, Hamlet in free verse. Tarsis IV." Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Don't hold back your criticism -- I have tough skin.
edited with the help of anon_j_anon 's comments below
dedicated to jademac2442 and louisestrange
Ping-ping! Ping-ping! The sound of radar grows, and guards aim lights into the prickly bramble. I count to five, then hear their voices scatter -- the coast is clear. A pause before I pull the needles from my clothes and make my way to where we've built a hiding-place from Death. The bread I've got won't feed a chicken, let alone nine hungry kids; the thought of arriving so empty-handed kills me somehow, 'cause you see, those kids are all that's left, they're all I've got since Kodos sent the order round -- besides what haunts the keepings of my brain. A week of starving's mostly wiped the slate except for really useful stuff like how to build a fire without a match, and Hamlet. I'd never thought a play could be so useful. It puts the kids to sleep, for one. They like a yarn with ghosts, and Hamlet's pretty good for that I guess. For me it's more about the danger overthinking brings to plans and "enterprises of great pith and moment," as Hamlet says himself. It's knowing this that drives me on, against the fucking odds though, sure, I know it's all an act, a bluff, a thin façade that Kodos' men may learn to crack assuming I don't break down first
. . . The play's the thing,
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. What better means of revenge, being that I am already in a play? To kill would be but to kill upon the page, a vicious waste of ink, and actor's time, but to arrange a play within our own, why that could have the wanted effect, upsetting the well-guarded borders of that state called reality by setting my uncle's fictions in true perspective. The walls have already been breached. A phantom, a spectre all the more horrid for that I know his face, makes use of my services -- sharpens me to his murder instrument. Could my conscience bear the weight of a dead man guiltless of my father's murder? There are forces here at work that defy the solid grounds of logic the syllogisms upon which my knowledge has been built; already I espy cracks so deep they shall bear no attempt at restoration. Whether Claudius killed or not, the question remains of myself - to keep my hands clean of blood and thereby live a lie or to act to murder for a shade with keep inside my brain and perhaps for a lie Am I a coward?
Rating: PG (swearing)
Wordcount: 421
Notes: The title is a citation from Hamlet. The text was written for anon_j_anon 's prompt: "Jim and Hamlet. Jim in pentameter, Hamlet in free verse. Tarsis IV." Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Don't hold back your criticism -- I have tough skin.
edited with the help of anon_j_anon 's comments below
dedicated to jademac2442 and louisestrange
Ping-ping! Ping-ping! The sound of radar grows, and guards aim lights into the prickly bramble. I count to five, then hear their voices scatter -- the coast is clear. A pause before I pull the needles from my clothes and make my way to where we've built a hiding-place from Death. The bread I've got won't feed a chicken, let alone nine hungry kids; the thought of arriving so empty-handed kills me somehow, 'cause you see, those kids are all that's left, they're all I've got since Kodos sent the order round -- besides what haunts the keepings of my brain. A week of starving's mostly wiped the slate except for really useful stuff like how to build a fire without a match, and Hamlet. I'd never thought a play could be so useful. It puts the kids to sleep, for one. They like a yarn with ghosts, and Hamlet's pretty good for that I guess. For me it's more about the danger overthinking brings to plans and "enterprises of great pith and moment," as Hamlet says himself. It's knowing this that drives me on, against the fucking odds though, sure, I know it's all an act, a bluff, a thin façade that Kodos' men may learn to crack assuming I don't break down first
. . . The play's the thing,
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. What better means of revenge, being that I am already in a play? To kill would be but to kill upon the page, a vicious waste of ink, and actor's time, but to arrange a play within our own, why that could have the wanted effect, upsetting the well-guarded borders of that state called reality by setting my uncle's fictions in true perspective. The walls have already been breached. A phantom, a spectre all the more horrid for that I know his face, makes use of my services -- sharpens me to his murder instrument. Could my conscience bear the weight of a dead man guiltless of my father's murder? There are forces here at work that defy the solid grounds of logic the syllogisms upon which my knowledge has been built; already I espy cracks so deep they shall bear no attempt at restoration. Whether Claudius killed or not, the question remains of myself - to keep my hands clean of blood and thereby live a lie or to act to murder for a shade with keep inside my brain and perhaps for a lie Am I a coward?