Challenge #72
Title: Fracture
Rating: G
Challenge #72: "Snow"
Warnings/Spoilers: Set around the Fallen/Homecoming arc.
Summary: Even if you can't recognize what you've lost, you can still remember.
The parking lot was covered in white. Fuzzy snow banks, topped with fresh flakes, ringed the outside edges of the pavement and road. No two cars had the same amount of snow dumped onto them, some barely dusted while others seemed like they had been buried for weeks.
He stopped next to a truck-shaped lump and scooped a handful of snow off the hood, marveling at the biting chill that instantly seeped into his fingers and palm. He carefully pressed it into a ball, the outer snow melting from the faint warmth of his body and refreezing in the chilled air.
He stared at the fragile construct in his hands, and resisted the urge to squeeze and break it apart. His fingers were numb, feeling nothing and everything, naked to the elements. With a sigh, he placed the snowball onto the truck’s hood and leaned up against the door, watching his foggy breath dissipate into the sky, and wished that he could follow. He imagined breaking, escaping, a shining light so bright that it would have hurt his eyes, if he’d had any. Pain and joy, death and life, isolation and comfort, all swirled into a confusing mess of stray thought and fantasy.
When he came back to himself, the truck was cleared of snow and its driver sitting inside. The engine rumbled against his shoulder, and warmth billowed out against his cheek as the window rolled down.
“Are you getting in or what?”
He opened the door and eased inside. The familiar metallic scent of gun oil and the strains of O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn surrounded him as surely as the heat that stole the cold from his bones. He flexed his fingers, that strange disconnected feeling fading away, replaced by a twinge of belonging.
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
He smiled, and looked out the window, false reflections coloring the world.
Rating: G
Challenge #72: "Snow"
Warnings/Spoilers: Set around the Fallen/Homecoming arc.
Summary: Even if you can't recognize what you've lost, you can still remember.
The parking lot was covered in white. Fuzzy snow banks, topped with fresh flakes, ringed the outside edges of the pavement and road. No two cars had the same amount of snow dumped onto them, some barely dusted while others seemed like they had been buried for weeks.
He stopped next to a truck-shaped lump and scooped a handful of snow off the hood, marveling at the biting chill that instantly seeped into his fingers and palm. He carefully pressed it into a ball, the outer snow melting from the faint warmth of his body and refreezing in the chilled air.
He stared at the fragile construct in his hands, and resisted the urge to squeeze and break it apart. His fingers were numb, feeling nothing and everything, naked to the elements. With a sigh, he placed the snowball onto the truck’s hood and leaned up against the door, watching his foggy breath dissipate into the sky, and wished that he could follow. He imagined breaking, escaping, a shining light so bright that it would have hurt his eyes, if he’d had any. Pain and joy, death and life, isolation and comfort, all swirled into a confusing mess of stray thought and fantasy.
When he came back to himself, the truck was cleared of snow and its driver sitting inside. The engine rumbled against his shoulder, and warmth billowed out against his cheek as the window rolled down.
“Are you getting in or what?”
He opened the door and eased inside. The familiar metallic scent of gun oil and the strains of O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn surrounded him as surely as the heat that stole the cold from his bones. He flexed his fingers, that strange disconnected feeling fading away, replaced by a twinge of belonging.
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
He smiled, and looked out the window, false reflections coloring the world.