flavour of the day and grapefruit with lots of things!
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Edward
Rating: G
Challenge: FOTD: polymorphous, Grapefruit #11: under the bridge
Toppings/Extras: pocky chain, malt, whipped cream (first few), fresh peaches, fresh blueberries, caramel (last one)
Wordcount: 1,500
Summary: Human beings are a work-in-progress.
Notes: I could have done this for any of the characters, but it seemed right to do it for the main man who I neglect so terribly! Polymorphous: having, assuming, or passing through many or various forms, stages or the like. Grapefruit PFAH: Ashdown : he who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. Peaches: You’ve spent months in this process of self-transformation and you deserve a little rest. Blueberries: The secret is not to dream… the secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder.
Everything is easy for a six-year-old. At the age of six, one is effortlessly sprightly, witty, knowledgeable and filled with incredible schemes and ideas. At the age of six, one is also… better than those fusty old grown-ups who on being so hopelessly uninteresting.
Edward is no exception.
He likes to make a big fuss.
He breaks things, sometimes on purpose, though he always makes it look like an accident. He’s eerily good at that. He climbs trees and pulls faces at his sister.
And he has discovered how to make the most perfectly unimpressed expression any six-year-old could muster.
-----
He spends a lot of his time at boarding school reading. He doesn’t really like the other children very much, though he can’t really place why. There’s something in the way that they talk that he doesn’t understand-he has nothing to say to them. So he reads.
They all have their own partitions in the dorms and Edward sits in his, elbow on the single desk, fingers raking his hair, which is gold-blonde in his childhood. The word potential rolls around in his head. He can’t stop the ideas-he’s effervescing with them.
He thinks that maybe he’s clever.
-----
It’s a strange young creature that emerges from boarding school. He doesn’t talk much and he thinks a lot. He has a way of looking at people-neck slightly back on his shoulders, face slightly askance to look at them from not quite the centre of his eyes. They flick up and down, shards of blue-grey. Then they look away and whomever he had been facing is dismissed.
Edward Ashdown has decided at some point during his seven years at boarding school that people are intrinsically bad. This includes himself, so it’s not so awful as far as he’s concerned.
-----
Rosalind looks fresh among the new shoots of grass, like she grew there with them. She picks flowers and smells them. She’s so thin, Edward thinks. She looks up at him and beams, shifts the wooden crutches across her lap. They have flowers painted on them. She likes flowers.
“Won’t you carry me back to the house?” she asks.
He smiles rather grudgingly and then looks back towards his feet.
“I think you’re too big for that now,” he says. Rosalind isn’t big at all but she’s fourteen now. They said she wouldn’t live that long. He’s glad she did.
-----
He has a job and is the master of his own house by the time he’s seventeen. It feels strange but not bad. He doesn’t want to live with his mother and he can’t stand seeing his father’s face. Besides, it’s a nice place; a terraced city house in London which has all of the staff a teenage boy could ask for.
There’s a smash and he turns to see Isaac Prowse standing over a broken ornament.
“Sorry,” he says blandly.
Edward shakes his head slightly but doesn’t say anything. Why ever did he let this peasant into his house?
-----
A year later and Isaac Prowse isn’t such a disgusting annoyance any more. Actually, Edward is worried that he’s growing a little bit fond of the man.
He glares up at him across the room because the thought of being fond of anyone aside from his sister makes him glare without much conscious thought at all. Prowse has saved his life quite a few times and has turned out to be very useful.
He’s so solid. So dependable. So…
…working class.
It matters because it’s meant to matter and Edward Ashdown knows that it’s important in some way. To somebody.
-----
It’s midwinter. Fog rolls from the Thames even though it’s already midmorning. The sun seems to droop, its light weak and tainted.
Everything is tainted today.
Rosalind died a few days after Christmas.
When they bury her, Edward realises that this is a boundary that’s been set up for centuries. It is impossible to reach the dead. To touch them. To see them.
He wears gloves because it’s cold. He finds himself looking at them. What does it matter? he thinks.
He’s quite certain that he will never feel this sad ever again, and in a strange way he’s glad.
-----
Edward is twenty-five the next time he feels something of any note, and even that isn’t much of a feeling. It’s a small curiosity, bound up with a sense of duty.
Her name is Verity Whitehall and she’s the most pursued young woman in London. Apparently she’s dazzling and fantastic and the most beautiful girl anyone has ever set eyes on in the history of the universe. Edward doesn’t care for hyperbole.
But he decides that he will marry her.
“Yes,” she says breathlessly, but it doesn’t matter because he’s already asked her father and he said the same thing.
-----
“Maybe you should take it easy, sir,” Prowse says. Edward instantly spins to pin him with a glare. He’s become very good at glaring lately.
“If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” he snaps. Prowse is a patient man. His dark, topaz-brown eyes shine with reproach nonetheless as he slowly turns away.
Edward feels bad, which is stupid, it’s a stupid thing on a pile of stupid things. He’s just been shouted at by his wife for the fourth time in a day and the trade routes keep wriggling around on the map and Prowse is a servant.
-----
It’s a good feeling, getting on the ship to the Bahamas. Not only because he’s getting away from London and the place was starting to slowly suffocate him, but because responsibilities simply drift away. He’s stuck on a ship now, on a journey, a very long one. There’s nothing at all he can do.
He’s starting anew. He likes ships. It’s hot in the New World. Things will be better.
Verity seems to think the same. She holds up a pale hand, wrist bent, fingers dangling, a peace offering of sorts. He wants to sneer but instead he kisses it.
-----
They meet off the coast of Montserrat under the harsh heat of a mid-July sun. The man comes swinging into his life on a rope on a hook and swaggers like an alleycat missing half of one leg.
“I wouldn’t rob this ship if I were you,” Edward says, voice deceptively light.
“I think I bloody well will,” the pirate responds with a brilliant grin. He reaches forwards and plucks at the manacles on the young lord’s wrists. “You’re not me, see? You’re shackled up… and that sort of thing just don’t happen to people like me.”
Edward smiles savagely.
-----
She looks excited and rumpled and her eyes are bright like diamonds. He can almost smell it on her. Another man.
Though ‘another’ doesn’t seem quite right. Not when she’s not really his. She hasn’t been for a long time now.
Verity perches on a lounger and looks at her nails, settling her hair, trying to contain her fidgety smugness. Her gaze flashes towards him, triumphant and expectant. She wants something. But what? For him to admit defeat? To fly into a jealous rage?
He knows how to win because he always wins. He doesn’t care. He smiles, perfectly cold.
-----
Life is better at sea.
Everything is better at sea.
He traps Captain Graham on the Windward Passage.
Captain Graham sinks one ship of his fleet near to Nevis.
He collars Captain Graham’s first mate.
Captain Graham sets fire to one of his houses.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
It’s like chess except exponentially less dull. The stakes rise with every gambit and Edward doesn’t care. He’s convinced by now that he was always meant to die at sea. Him and Captain Graham both. He’ll keep going until they are both destroyed.
And he will damn well enjoy it.
-----
“Sir,” Prowse says. Edward casts him a glance. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of kidnapping a teenage girl…”
“Oh, good grief, Mr Prowse,” Edward sighs. “She’s Captain Graham’s daughter. Trust me, the biggest issue is going to be getting out of the incident without losing a limb.”
Prowse is still eyeing him, obviously unhappy. Edward wonders how he got this far with such a mild-mannered milksop of an assassin, but fondly. It’s been too long now. They know each other too well.
It’s a damn shame.
“Sir…”
“Do as you are told, Mr Prowse. Step to it.”
-----
***
-----
Rosalind is nineteen now. He feels more like a father than a brother sometimes. Bloody time-travel... still. He doesn’t mind awfully much.
“You haven’t changed,” she says with a cheery smile as she turns from a view of the glittering sea.
She would say that. He always showed her the best of himself.
He knows it’s not true, that he has changed, but it’s not a bad thing.
“Nice of you to say so,” he replies loftily. He holds out an ungloved hand for her to take. The sun’s done her good, he’s sure of it.
It’s done everyone good.
Title: Edward
Rating: G
Challenge: FOTD: polymorphous, Grapefruit #11: under the bridge
Toppings/Extras: pocky chain, malt, whipped cream (first few), fresh peaches, fresh blueberries, caramel (last one)
Wordcount: 1,500
Summary: Human beings are a work-in-progress.
Notes: I could have done this for any of the characters, but it seemed right to do it for the main man who I neglect so terribly! Polymorphous: having, assuming, or passing through many or various forms, stages or the like. Grapefruit PFAH: Ashdown : he who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. Peaches: You’ve spent months in this process of self-transformation and you deserve a little rest. Blueberries: The secret is not to dream… the secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder.
Everything is easy for a six-year-old. At the age of six, one is effortlessly sprightly, witty, knowledgeable and filled with incredible schemes and ideas. At the age of six, one is also… better than those fusty old grown-ups who on being so hopelessly uninteresting.
Edward is no exception.
He likes to make a big fuss.
He breaks things, sometimes on purpose, though he always makes it look like an accident. He’s eerily good at that. He climbs trees and pulls faces at his sister.
And he has discovered how to make the most perfectly unimpressed expression any six-year-old could muster.
-----
He spends a lot of his time at boarding school reading. He doesn’t really like the other children very much, though he can’t really place why. There’s something in the way that they talk that he doesn’t understand-he has nothing to say to them. So he reads.
They all have their own partitions in the dorms and Edward sits in his, elbow on the single desk, fingers raking his hair, which is gold-blonde in his childhood. The word potential rolls around in his head. He can’t stop the ideas-he’s effervescing with them.
He thinks that maybe he’s clever.
-----
It’s a strange young creature that emerges from boarding school. He doesn’t talk much and he thinks a lot. He has a way of looking at people-neck slightly back on his shoulders, face slightly askance to look at them from not quite the centre of his eyes. They flick up and down, shards of blue-grey. Then they look away and whomever he had been facing is dismissed.
Edward Ashdown has decided at some point during his seven years at boarding school that people are intrinsically bad. This includes himself, so it’s not so awful as far as he’s concerned.
-----
Rosalind looks fresh among the new shoots of grass, like she grew there with them. She picks flowers and smells them. She’s so thin, Edward thinks. She looks up at him and beams, shifts the wooden crutches across her lap. They have flowers painted on them. She likes flowers.
“Won’t you carry me back to the house?” she asks.
He smiles rather grudgingly and then looks back towards his feet.
“I think you’re too big for that now,” he says. Rosalind isn’t big at all but she’s fourteen now. They said she wouldn’t live that long. He’s glad she did.
-----
He has a job and is the master of his own house by the time he’s seventeen. It feels strange but not bad. He doesn’t want to live with his mother and he can’t stand seeing his father’s face. Besides, it’s a nice place; a terraced city house in London which has all of the staff a teenage boy could ask for.
There’s a smash and he turns to see Isaac Prowse standing over a broken ornament.
“Sorry,” he says blandly.
Edward shakes his head slightly but doesn’t say anything. Why ever did he let this peasant into his house?
-----
A year later and Isaac Prowse isn’t such a disgusting annoyance any more. Actually, Edward is worried that he’s growing a little bit fond of the man.
He glares up at him across the room because the thought of being fond of anyone aside from his sister makes him glare without much conscious thought at all. Prowse has saved his life quite a few times and has turned out to be very useful.
He’s so solid. So dependable. So…
…working class.
It matters because it’s meant to matter and Edward Ashdown knows that it’s important in some way. To somebody.
-----
It’s midwinter. Fog rolls from the Thames even though it’s already midmorning. The sun seems to droop, its light weak and tainted.
Everything is tainted today.
Rosalind died a few days after Christmas.
When they bury her, Edward realises that this is a boundary that’s been set up for centuries. It is impossible to reach the dead. To touch them. To see them.
He wears gloves because it’s cold. He finds himself looking at them. What does it matter? he thinks.
He’s quite certain that he will never feel this sad ever again, and in a strange way he’s glad.
-----
Edward is twenty-five the next time he feels something of any note, and even that isn’t much of a feeling. It’s a small curiosity, bound up with a sense of duty.
Her name is Verity Whitehall and she’s the most pursued young woman in London. Apparently she’s dazzling and fantastic and the most beautiful girl anyone has ever set eyes on in the history of the universe. Edward doesn’t care for hyperbole.
But he decides that he will marry her.
“Yes,” she says breathlessly, but it doesn’t matter because he’s already asked her father and he said the same thing.
-----
“Maybe you should take it easy, sir,” Prowse says. Edward instantly spins to pin him with a glare. He’s become very good at glaring lately.
“If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” he snaps. Prowse is a patient man. His dark, topaz-brown eyes shine with reproach nonetheless as he slowly turns away.
Edward feels bad, which is stupid, it’s a stupid thing on a pile of stupid things. He’s just been shouted at by his wife for the fourth time in a day and the trade routes keep wriggling around on the map and Prowse is a servant.
-----
It’s a good feeling, getting on the ship to the Bahamas. Not only because he’s getting away from London and the place was starting to slowly suffocate him, but because responsibilities simply drift away. He’s stuck on a ship now, on a journey, a very long one. There’s nothing at all he can do.
He’s starting anew. He likes ships. It’s hot in the New World. Things will be better.
Verity seems to think the same. She holds up a pale hand, wrist bent, fingers dangling, a peace offering of sorts. He wants to sneer but instead he kisses it.
-----
They meet off the coast of Montserrat under the harsh heat of a mid-July sun. The man comes swinging into his life on a rope on a hook and swaggers like an alleycat missing half of one leg.
“I wouldn’t rob this ship if I were you,” Edward says, voice deceptively light.
“I think I bloody well will,” the pirate responds with a brilliant grin. He reaches forwards and plucks at the manacles on the young lord’s wrists. “You’re not me, see? You’re shackled up… and that sort of thing just don’t happen to people like me.”
Edward smiles savagely.
-----
She looks excited and rumpled and her eyes are bright like diamonds. He can almost smell it on her. Another man.
Though ‘another’ doesn’t seem quite right. Not when she’s not really his. She hasn’t been for a long time now.
Verity perches on a lounger and looks at her nails, settling her hair, trying to contain her fidgety smugness. Her gaze flashes towards him, triumphant and expectant. She wants something. But what? For him to admit defeat? To fly into a jealous rage?
He knows how to win because he always wins. He doesn’t care. He smiles, perfectly cold.
-----
Life is better at sea.
Everything is better at sea.
He traps Captain Graham on the Windward Passage.
Captain Graham sinks one ship of his fleet near to Nevis.
He collars Captain Graham’s first mate.
Captain Graham sets fire to one of his houses.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
It’s like chess except exponentially less dull. The stakes rise with every gambit and Edward doesn’t care. He’s convinced by now that he was always meant to die at sea. Him and Captain Graham both. He’ll keep going until they are both destroyed.
And he will damn well enjoy it.
-----
“Sir,” Prowse says. Edward casts him a glance. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of kidnapping a teenage girl…”
“Oh, good grief, Mr Prowse,” Edward sighs. “She’s Captain Graham’s daughter. Trust me, the biggest issue is going to be getting out of the incident without losing a limb.”
Prowse is still eyeing him, obviously unhappy. Edward wonders how he got this far with such a mild-mannered milksop of an assassin, but fondly. It’s been too long now. They know each other too well.
It’s a damn shame.
“Sir…”
“Do as you are told, Mr Prowse. Step to it.”
-----
***
-----
Rosalind is nineteen now. He feels more like a father than a brother sometimes. Bloody time-travel... still. He doesn’t mind awfully much.
“You haven’t changed,” she says with a cheery smile as she turns from a view of the glittering sea.
She would say that. He always showed her the best of himself.
He knows it’s not true, that he has changed, but it’s not a bad thing.
“Nice of you to say so,” he replies loftily. He holds out an ungloved hand for her to take. The sun’s done her good, he’s sure of it.
It’s done everyone good.