Birthdays and epiphanyfic
Happy Birthday, Monroe_nell! May your day be filled with wonderfullness *g*
Soo, epiphany. I was taking down the decorations today, and was visited by a plot bunny. Soo, here is 400ish words of gen. I suppose you could call it a character study. Benton Fraser, post Good for the Soul, on Epiphany.
His angel is made of sootstained glass, with a blackened red string that is frayed until in parts it is a thin as spidersilk. He takes it off the nail that protrudes from the wall above his cot with careful worshipful fingers. Another Christmas in Chicago gone, another epiphany marked by the return to normality. He sits on his chair, the angel held as if it were alive, able to feel the pressure of his callused fingers. He strokes one wingtip, the lead bordering the glass cool to the touch. Soot comes off from even that small wipe, and this time the need to clean and mend is too strong for him. His duties are done for the day, and one of his old Henleys, one that has been worn through beyond repair will serve well as a cleaning cloth.
The angel is his mother's. He can remember how she would lift him up so he could put the angel on top of the tree. He can remember her laughter, and that the carols she sung were ones he hardly heard now, ones he would whisper to himself as he drifted off to sleep after she died. Christmas is a little glass angel, and words and melodies that no one knows how to sing any more. Christmas now is also a picture in a frame, pride, the remains of bruises and difficulty breathing. Christmas is a hard learned lesson but a useful one. He needs the angel more than ever.
One wing is clean. When he unpacked his possessions on his first night at the Depot, he found it rolled up in one of his shirts, wingtip poking out of the neat bundle. There was no note attached to it, and the next time he saw his father there didn't seem to be any way he could ask who had sent it. The picture is a confirmation for him of something he wanted with all his heart to be true, and knew with all of his mind to be foolish hope. Hearts and minds, and he wonders sometimes if his heart is really meant to be fragile as the ornament he cradles in his hands, clean now. Fragile enough to survive his mother's death, his father's apparent disregard, his father's death, his home burning down-
Yes, fragile as a glass angel on a frayed red string. He holds it up to the light, looks through it into the blurred distorted room, then wraps it in the Henley he cleaned it with and puts it in the drawer, waiting for another year.