fic: a knife inside me
Title: a knife inside me
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Mels, Amy, Rory
Word Count: 421
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own no Who, as usual.
Warnings: Implied violence, discussion of death.
Summary: I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me
A/N: Written for fluffyfrolicker's Multifandom Women Comment Ficathon. For eve11, whose prompt made a better summary than I could come up with. Title from the same song as the prompt, Jack White's "Love Interruption."
The teachers at school said she never did her homework, never bothered to practice. Well. That just wasn’t true. Mels was doing homework all the time, practicing to be something bigger, something better, schooling herself to channel cold like steel.
When she broke Shanna Poggit’s favorite doll, that was homework, was practice.
When she took the shining Year Three pet goldfish home for the weekend, and it never came back: practice.
When she shut the bedroom door, quick, with Amy’s hand still curled over the jamb: practice.
(Practice for what? Rory asked, after, in a voice that was quiet and sounded broken. Broken and bruised, like Amy’s fingers.
When he wouldn’t speak to her for three weeks, and Amy four, that was practice, too.)
*
Mels never cheated at Spin the Bottle, unlike the others. She never had to. She could kiss anyone, boy or girl, ugly or gorgeous, horrible or kind, and afterward it would be like they’d never touched her. The two of them would step away from the others, Mels rising on tiptoe to press her cool lips to his, or to hers. Mels kissed with her eyes open, and knew how the others looked when they wanted something, and when they got it, or didn’t. In the stale dark of borrowed closets and bedrooms, she wondered how they’d look when they died.
She could kiss anyone she wanted, and did, because she knew the secret of Spin the Bottle: if you loved anyone in the circle, you had already lost.
*
Dying was either cold enough to burn or hot enough to prick like ice. She was never quite sure which. It didn’t bother her, the uncertainty of it; she toyed with it in the dark when she was not sleeping like the others, not dreaming like the others. They wanted to grow up, fall in love, make a life. She had already grown up, though it didn’t show outside, in her skin, on her face. She was just waiting for the world to catch up to her, here in this patch of green that time forgot.
In the winter, she stepped into the frost with bare feet. In summer, she flicked dying coals from the bonfire between the palms of her hands. She had the gun at home in her drawer, cool metal tucked beneath the ghostly legs of her stockings. When he died, would he feel like she remembered?
It didn’t matter, she decided in the end. The only thing that mattered was getting there.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Mels, Amy, Rory
Word Count: 421
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own no Who, as usual.
Warnings: Implied violence, discussion of death.
Summary: I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me
A/N: Written for fluffyfrolicker's Multifandom Women Comment Ficathon. For eve11, whose prompt made a better summary than I could come up with. Title from the same song as the prompt, Jack White's "Love Interruption."
The teachers at school said she never did her homework, never bothered to practice. Well. That just wasn’t true. Mels was doing homework all the time, practicing to be something bigger, something better, schooling herself to channel cold like steel.
When she broke Shanna Poggit’s favorite doll, that was homework, was practice.
When she took the shining Year Three pet goldfish home for the weekend, and it never came back: practice.
When she shut the bedroom door, quick, with Amy’s hand still curled over the jamb: practice.
(Practice for what? Rory asked, after, in a voice that was quiet and sounded broken. Broken and bruised, like Amy’s fingers.
When he wouldn’t speak to her for three weeks, and Amy four, that was practice, too.)
*
Mels never cheated at Spin the Bottle, unlike the others. She never had to. She could kiss anyone, boy or girl, ugly or gorgeous, horrible or kind, and afterward it would be like they’d never touched her. The two of them would step away from the others, Mels rising on tiptoe to press her cool lips to his, or to hers. Mels kissed with her eyes open, and knew how the others looked when they wanted something, and when they got it, or didn’t. In the stale dark of borrowed closets and bedrooms, she wondered how they’d look when they died.
She could kiss anyone she wanted, and did, because she knew the secret of Spin the Bottle: if you loved anyone in the circle, you had already lost.
*
Dying was either cold enough to burn or hot enough to prick like ice. She was never quite sure which. It didn’t bother her, the uncertainty of it; she toyed with it in the dark when she was not sleeping like the others, not dreaming like the others. They wanted to grow up, fall in love, make a life. She had already grown up, though it didn’t show outside, in her skin, on her face. She was just waiting for the world to catch up to her, here in this patch of green that time forgot.
In the winter, she stepped into the frost with bare feet. In summer, she flicked dying coals from the bonfire between the palms of her hands. She had the gun at home in her drawer, cool metal tucked beneath the ghostly legs of her stockings. When he died, would he feel like she remembered?
It didn’t matter, she decided in the end. The only thing that mattered was getting there.