"Blackberry Stone" (Fic)

[sistergrimmel]

Based on the decision Neko and I made that Geoffrey's first wife was Brigitte's mom, this fic turned out surprisingly well! Let us know what you think of the song. Brownie points to those who can pick out the Wuthering Heights and F. Scott Fitzgerald references!
Blackberry Stone

By Neko Kuroban and Sister Grimm Erin

I'd be sad that I never held your hand as you were lowered, but I'd understand that I'd never let it go
I'd be sad that I never held your hand as you were lowered, but I'd understand that the world does what it does

And you never did learn to let the little things go
And you never did learn to let me be
And you never did learn to let little people grow
And you never did learn how to see

But I whisper that I love this man, now and for forever to your soul as it floats out off the window
To the world that you turned your back on,
To the world that never really let you be...

~Laura Marling.

Summary: Fifty sentences of what was and was not. Some adult themes, but pretty mild by my standards.

Motion

They both make exactly the same counterclockwise turn as they deposit the same teaspoon of carefully measured sugar into the same black cup of coffee.

Cool

They are both cool-headed-extremely useful in any situation, and they both cut through bullshit with a certain suave easiness, so why is it that they always get so full of hot air around each other?

Young

Stacy turns twenty-one on their second date, but he only knows this because of her voice mail-and the slice of cake he buys her at the restaurant that night only serves to embarrass her, as does the bottle of champagne afterwards.

Last

She’s looking at a picture of their wedding some thirty years later, and it’s a shock to remember that there was a time that if you had told her exactly how it was going to end, she would have done it anyway, because she loved him that much.

Wrong

They were wrong to believe that people like people who are like them, he was wrong to believe opposites attract, she was wrong to believe a child is a basis for romantic love, so maybe they’re both right that falling in love is a wrong you can never, ever correct.

Gentle

She hadn’t known he possessed a shred of gentleness, so it’s a shock when his fingers trace her stomach hesitantly.

One

Neither of them really believed in love before they met each other or since.

Thousand

A thousand years of resentment and bitterness were somehow compressed into eleven months during the divorce.

King

When she meets the Real Estate King, her future second husband, she asks him if he’s ever been to Sussex, and can’t help but feel disappointed when he shakes his head ‘no.’

Learn

For such good students, neither of them ever learns.

Blur

The honeymoon is a blur-all she can recall is that they had a lot of really fabulous sex in a hotel in Quebec because they couldn’t afford a time-share in Aruba, and for once, she doesn’t need any more clarity than that.

Wait

Wait, she wants to tell the marriage counselor, I didn’t mean never or always, why do we have to deal in absolutes?

Change

“Zip me up, will you?” she tells him absently in a dressing room, but she starts when his knuckles graze against her spine, surprised by the tingle.

Command

They both have a tendency to turn innocuous questions into statements without qualifiers-“Could you please get the coffee?” becomes “Get me a cup of coffee,” which becomes “Get it yourself, you asshole,” which becomes “How hard is it to make two servings, bitch?” which becomes… a mess.

Hold

They never got to physical violence during their fights, but once he held her hand hard enough to pinch the wrist, and she was startled until she saw him looking at a bandit dead in the eye.

Need

They never made sweet, soft, virginal love, but they sometimes went slow enough to postpone their own satisfaction, slow enough to make the need hurt.

Vision

The first time he sees her in a formal setting, it’s in a red open-shouldered dress with her honey-brown locks curled all around her face, and he has never sympathized more with Adam more than at that moment.

Attention

He always paid careful attention to her, because in the facets of her personality revealed through her speech he found himself.

Soul

The most romantic thing she ever read was “Whatever souls are made of, yours and mine are the same,”, and she remembers that exact feeling she got when she read it when she looks at him-that in a world of strangers, there could be mirrors in his eyes.

Picture

He made a show of burning their wedding photos with the cigarette lighter she’d given him, and he has a face-down photo of his second wife in his desk drawer, but he still has a picture of her somewhere, the one of their sixth date, when they didn’t know they had a thousand days of slammed doors and miserable arguments and secret griefs and public hatreds and mutual self-loathing and pain stretching far ahead, and when they loved each other enough to do it anyway.

Fool

He has been a fool twice and a monster once, but he never felt quite as furious as when she beat him to filing the divorce papers.

Mad

Nick thought he was mad to let Stacy go, Geoffrey remembers, and he still remembers exactly how he had told Nick he was tired of trying to pretend he wasn’t insane.

Child

What could have been a child died before they even knew it was there, and Stacy cannot, for once, pretend not to be horrified.

Now

Now, she looks up at him and shakes her head. “I can’t believe we expected better of them,” she says, and he can only say, “I can’t believe we expected better of us.”

Shadow

Did the ghost of his first wife, Calanthe wondered, sometimes come to breathe in his ear, the way Hermes' occasionally did in hers?

Goodbye

He never did say goodbye to her, not properly, and she never did say goodbye to him, properly, and that’s what bothers her the most when he dies-she needs some closure, damn it.

Hide

Neither of them are the type to hold back anything, to hide anything from each other-maybe that was the problem, maybe if they’d learned to keep secrets from themselves , they could have lasted longer.

Fortune

Somehow, he always thought she would do better than he did, that she was more resilient, and it’s true, but sometimes the world tilts and she feels more alone than ever, no matter how hard she holds onto her daughter.

Safe

She never felt quite safe or at peace with him, and that’s what she likes about the series of men she dates after her daughter’s birth-they’re all very safe and suitable and utterly interchangeable.

Ghost

One of the first arguments they had was about whether people got was coming to them, and Geoffrey supposes she won that one.

Book

The living will his assistant hands to Madison Yen leaves three things to three other people: to Calanthe’s family, her piano, to his son, nothing, exactly what the boy wanted, and to Stacy, a lump sum and the funeral arrangements.

Eye

The first thing he lost in not seeing her was her smell, the second her voice, and the third most of her face, but he never lost her blue-gray eyes.

Never

“I’ll never understand you,” was the last lie she told him, but he never knew it for a falsehood.

Sing

She can’t carry a tune in a bucket, which is why he never tells her he was part of the choir when he went to Oxford.

Sudden

He packed his memories of her away the moment he met Calanthe, and it was only in the third year of his second marriage he remembers, suddenly, that she never did ask for the marital home, just alimony checks, and he realizes exactly why now.

Stop

She calls him up the day before she marries Peter, tells him he can stop sending the checks, and he only tells her thank you and clicks the phone shut.

Time

Time killed him, but for a woman only three years younger than he is, she looks remarkably well.

Wash

He mails her the last of her laundry, and she notices cynically that he paid no attention to the ‘cold-water, gentle, then rinse’ instructions on the tag.

Torn

She never quite realized that she was sad to see him go until she was holding her second child in her arms and promising the baby girl that she would never be torn from her body.

History

The best way of describing her past with Geoffrey is that they have some ‘history’, and so that’s what Stacy tells Brigitte as she drives the girl away from the Castellan household.

Power

They’re both power junkies, they’re both exactly the same when it comes to power imbalances, so why did she ever think they could have their most intimate relationship as anything but a war?

Bother

She never hated him any more than she had already hated herself.

God

“Do you believe in God?” Geoffrey asks soberly, and Stacy shakes her head ‘no.' What she does not add is the not anymore.

Wall

With their next relationships, they learn to build walls-he won’t date anyone he works with, she won’t date anyone who reminds her even a little bit of herself.

Naked

She wakes up naked in a god’s arms and all she can think is that another man would have been dressed long before the morning light and left a note on her nightstand.

Drive

“A bad driver is safe until she meets another bad driver,” Geoffrey reminds her, but she already has.

Harm

He’s over her the day he wakes up and reaches not for her, but for the caramel-haired woman at his side, and she’s over him the day she wakes up and thinks I have work today, not We have work today.

Precious

He never held her like she was anything special, like she was made of spun sugar or like she was beautiful, but she never doubted he knew the person under her skin.

Hunger

The time she sees him put in the Earth, she thinks that the last look in his eyes was hungry, full of a savage longing, and shudders to think how many times she’s seen the same look in the mirror.

Believe

Their relationship was never based on belief, but knowledge, so when someone asks if she thought he loved her, she says, “I know he did.”

Author's Notes: Titled after this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVv_luSygQQ&feature=player_embedded

--Erin.