[Mad Muses] November 1.3 - Iris Murdoch Quote (for heroslayer)

[thepainted_lady]

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." ~ Iris Murdoch

She was going to die.

This wasn't exactly news, given it had happened once already, but the follow up was one she hadn't really considered, even though she'd seen proof of it in her trailer that night she didn't like to dwell on.

He wasn't.

The two sentences rolled around in her head as she stood in the kitchen mixing up batter for muffins because she couldn't stand to just sit staring out the window at the cold winter waves beating on the empty shoreline anymore. She was going to die. He wasn't. It could be strung together as one sentence and the horrible implications became all the more clear. She was going to die, and he wasn't.

After the cold reaches of the darkness she liked to dwell on even less than that night, she would have thought the contemplation of her own mortality would be the far more upsetting of those two propositions. He'd expected her to hate him for it, or feared she would grow to, but when she thought about it, all she felt was this ache that caught at her throat and twisted up around inside of her making it hard to breathe.

She was going to die, and he wasn't. Someday, someway, despite all of her promises, and no matter how hard she tried not to...she was going to leave him, just like everyone else had. Her own body would betray her, and him, and she'd simply...cease to be, and he'd be alone. The little fears and vanities that reared their heads in the back of her mind, the will-he-still-want-me-when-I'm-not-as-young-and-pretties and the how-could-he-stay-if-I-get-old-and-sick-at-the-ends, faded under the lines of pain at that.

She didn't want to leave him alone, didn't want to leave him to watch the centuries stretch out in front of him in a string of loss or loneliness. The fact that Claire might be there was hardly a consolation, and one she dismissed. The fact that he might fall in love again...to what end? To lose love again, as well? That hurt, too, both personally, and for him.

She was crying again, as she had the night before, though it wasn't for the same reasons this time. The fear that had lingered wasn't really gone, but it wasn't at the forefront of her mind. Pain for him, for what he'd go through without her, for knowing that he had to live with that everyday...it left her gasping a little for air, and clinging to the counter until her knuckles were white.

She was going to die, and he wasn't. That meant she had to find a way to make every day he did have with her count, so he'd never doubt in all those years to come that he'd been loved. No matter what anyone else had done, or would do, no matter what happened or what he faced after she was gone...she wanted him to know that and have that as a surety. For as long as she had, he'd be loved, he'd have a home. They'd have a life, and by god, it would be a good one. No regrets. No looking back. No doubts. No second-guessing. No more what-might-have-beens.

She wiped her tears and gave the batter a vicious punch with the spoon. She wasn't exactly sure where to start, but making muffins to rival Mrs. Comey's waffles seemed to be as good as anywhere, even if she was still figuring out the cooking things after years of not. If she was going to die, and he wasn't, she didn't want to waste any more of their precious time on tears.

Comments

[heroslayer]

The face in the mirror wasn't technically his -- technically, it was an amalgam of all the shapeshifts he'd picked up over the months since he'd gotten the power. The lines that branched out from the corners of his eyes had come from Danko, the gray that bled in from his temples now, from his mother, and so on and so forth, all of it super-imposed on his features to make him look older and to great effect. It was seamless, all of it, if a little hard to hold in place without one of his eyes shifting their color or his hair threatening to grow out, but that could be fixed with time and practice. He'd accomplished what he'd meant to, that was the important thing, even if he felt like an imposter. He'd done his part, done something selfless, for her, trying desperately to make up for how selfish he felt he was being in making her stay in the first place.

Sighing, he reached up to rub at the corners of his eyes, massaging the lines he'd put there away, then smoothed a hand through his hair, pushing the gray out of it. He studied himself in the mirror for a minute, making sure the other signs of age he'd inflicted on himself had faded when the two he'd physically willed away had, and once he was satisfied, he nodded, turning to head out of the bathroom where he'd spent most of the morning. And bracing himself for questions about why he'd been in there for so long in the first place, he meandered through the house, stopping in the doorway to the kitchen when he found Lydia there.

"Hey."