(no subject)
Runaway
by whereupon
Dexter: Lumen, post 5.12, PG. 590 words.
The Bride of Frankenstein is on her own.
When Lumen Pierce was four years old, she was afraid of the dark. When she was sixteen, she was afraid that Max Gibson would tell the whole school, and when she was twenty-nine, she was afraid that she would die bound to that filthy bed, and that she would have to spend years there before it happened.
Lumen Pierce isn't afraid anymore. Not of anything. She should be, she thinks, because now, after everything, surely she knows the worst things people are capable of, the kinds of terrible things they can do to each other out of love or lust or something as simple as the need for control. Now she knows what kind of monsters live in the world.
She should be afraid, but she isn't. Because now she's one of them. It is this thought that occurs to her when she has been driving for three hours down the 75 in the grey Taurus rented in her own name, and it is this thought that makes her pull into the breakdown lane, slowly and methodically, checking in the rearview to make sure that she won't be cutting anyone off. Only when the car is stopped do her hands begin to shake, and then only for a moment, because it is sunny and hot the way it always seems to be in Florida, and she has survived so much; she will not be undone now, on the side of a freeway beneath that blue sky like eternal summer, with every trace of blood scrubbed from her hands.
She has taken lives. She's a killer; reminders of that are burned into her body, maybe into her soul. She's taken lives -- that will not change, even if she never does it again -- and she's destroyed them, but for the first of these, she does not need to be forgiven, and for the second, Dexter will forgive her.
He did forgive her, she tells herself. With his back to the wall, crouched in the corner of his kitchen, she knelt before him on shards of broken stoneware, and he gave her permission to forget; she pressed her face against his neck and he held her as though she was the one whose heart was breaking.
He saved her then, just as he saved her in Boyd Fowler's house, in the attic that became the room in which part of her died and another part was born, and in the hotel, and so many times, every day. She thinks that she would have left anyway, even if he hadn't understood, but she would have looked back, always, and this way, she won't have to.
Instead she meets the eyes of her reflection in the rearview mirror, and she recognizes the person she sees there, and though she is not afraid, she tells herself too that she will be brave, that she is brave, that whoever she turns out to be, she will make him proud.
She will never be able to save him the way he saved her, but that isn't the only way to save someone, and this she will do for him: she will have the life he can never have, and she will never once look down, never once look back.
She is a monster, like him, but if there is one thing she has learned from the last few months, it's that monsters are people, too. For both of them, she will remember that; for both of them, she will live, as brightly as he cannot.
--
end
by whereupon
Dexter: Lumen, post 5.12, PG. 590 words.
The Bride of Frankenstein is on her own.
When Lumen Pierce was four years old, she was afraid of the dark. When she was sixteen, she was afraid that Max Gibson would tell the whole school, and when she was twenty-nine, she was afraid that she would die bound to that filthy bed, and that she would have to spend years there before it happened.
Lumen Pierce isn't afraid anymore. Not of anything. She should be, she thinks, because now, after everything, surely she knows the worst things people are capable of, the kinds of terrible things they can do to each other out of love or lust or something as simple as the need for control. Now she knows what kind of monsters live in the world.
She should be afraid, but she isn't. Because now she's one of them. It is this thought that occurs to her when she has been driving for three hours down the 75 in the grey Taurus rented in her own name, and it is this thought that makes her pull into the breakdown lane, slowly and methodically, checking in the rearview to make sure that she won't be cutting anyone off. Only when the car is stopped do her hands begin to shake, and then only for a moment, because it is sunny and hot the way it always seems to be in Florida, and she has survived so much; she will not be undone now, on the side of a freeway beneath that blue sky like eternal summer, with every trace of blood scrubbed from her hands.
She has taken lives. She's a killer; reminders of that are burned into her body, maybe into her soul. She's taken lives -- that will not change, even if she never does it again -- and she's destroyed them, but for the first of these, she does not need to be forgiven, and for the second, Dexter will forgive her.
He did forgive her, she tells herself. With his back to the wall, crouched in the corner of his kitchen, she knelt before him on shards of broken stoneware, and he gave her permission to forget; she pressed her face against his neck and he held her as though she was the one whose heart was breaking.
He saved her then, just as he saved her in Boyd Fowler's house, in the attic that became the room in which part of her died and another part was born, and in the hotel, and so many times, every day. She thinks that she would have left anyway, even if he hadn't understood, but she would have looked back, always, and this way, she won't have to.
Instead she meets the eyes of her reflection in the rearview mirror, and she recognizes the person she sees there, and though she is not afraid, she tells herself too that she will be brave, that she is brave, that whoever she turns out to be, she will make him proud.
She will never be able to save him the way he saved her, but that isn't the only way to save someone, and this she will do for him: she will have the life he can never have, and she will never once look down, never once look back.
She is a monster, like him, but if there is one thing she has learned from the last few months, it's that monsters are people, too. For both of them, she will remember that; for both of them, she will live, as brightly as he cannot.
--
end