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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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No Bad News (Zearing, 1/1)

A/N: Birthday fic for the lovely and amazing sabretonguedtiger. I haven’t written anything in a while so I’m sorry this fic seems a bit sub-par. Heavily inspired by (and also references) No Bad News -- a song I’ve been listening to rather religiously and which I recommend for an ideal reading experience. :D

~angst, 2600 words, some of which are not suitable for children.

What’s a funeral if not a theatrical performance for the living whose diet consists of numbness and regret, a dream whose latent content says nothing about the deceased and everything about you, a play at the end of which the curtain falls and the lights dim and there’s nothing but a simple truth?

“Look, I didn’t know this would happen. If you need someone to blame, I can understand that. I should have discussed it with you first. I’ll be the first to admit that. But please, please don’t cut me off because of this. I love you.”

Zara’s eyebrows shot all the way up to her hairline as she and Claire passed an arguing couple in the lobby. The man, who had not shaved in a good few days, was hobbling behind a positively unfazed young woman wearing too much makeup to look natural but not quite enough to hide the lack of sleep etched into her features. She picked up her pace, and the man did not follow. Instead he stood alone amidst laughing children and crying parents (or was it the other way around?). He ran a hand through a tuft of his ruffled black hair and shared a look with the holographic T-Rex next to him. Nothing but a pile of bones in bright blue coating.

“What was that all about?” Zara asked, sipping latte from her Starbucks cup.

“That’s none of our concern,” Claire replied, buried up to her perfectly trimmed bangs in some file or other and leaving Zara to the eternally rewarding job of making sure she doesn’t accidentally pierce any unsuspecting children under the age of 10 with her five-inch heels.

“The guy looks like he’s learned his lesson three times over. I’d forgive him. Wouldn’t you?”

Claire furrowed her brow but said nothing.

Shit. Shit, fuck, bloody hell. On the list of things Zara didn’t need on this bright sun-shiny day, losing her boss’s nephews in a maelstrom of fangs in the middle of an involuntary impromptu park-wide performance of Dante’s Inferno ranked somewhere around getting a sex change to Sweden and accidentally amputating her own leg with a pair of tweezers. That is to say it was an unfortunate development of considerable magnitude.

She remembered calling Claire at first, her own voice hoarse with something that might have been fairly close to worry if worrying was a sport Zara practiced. She didn’t. She considered it a meager substitute for action. She’s just lost the boys in the park, that’s all. They can’t reasonably vanish off the face of the Earth. And as far as prepubescent male urges go, she hoped they were both past that wondrous phase in life that would have them flinging themselves over the nearest fence in order to say hi to an archaeopteryx in a more intimate setting. No, no, they were certainly past that. The smaller one was always ranting about dinosaurs. He’d know better. Or was it Pokemon?

But then, oh, then the events of her day went from mildly inconvenient to spiraling out of control uncomfortably fast, and sooner than she would have liked she found herself scrutinized by Claire’s hopeful but vaguely antagonistic gaze in the now-empty lobby. Dirt and mud was splattered on Claire’s clothes and face and her hair had lost much of its immaculate smoothness during an unsuccessful rescue mission with Burly Man, whatever his name was. Zara bit the inside of her cheek and stood up straight so that at least one of them would maintain an air of professionalism.

…She thought as she heard a new wave of frightened screams echo from somewhere behind her, or to the left, or to the right, and hell, what did she care where it came from.

Because this wasn’t about them.

They found the boys, she said. Injured but alive. They had been attacked by pterodactyls. They were being transported to a hospital at the moment along with some other people who got mauled. Zara called Claire as soon as she got the news. They would be fine, she said. Her lips were pressed in a tight line. They were in capable hands now. There were bigger things to worry about, she said.

Claire’s jaw clenched at the now.

“Go away,” Claire said.

“I’m s—I can help you. I’ve talked to the, to him, and there is a plan with the raptors but I’ll need to contact engineering and get the gear and then—”

“Get out!”

It was over. Zara wasn’t entirely sure just what she meant by ‘it’ as she cradled the words on her tongue. She wanted to drink comfort from them but could taste only the dull sting of their fullness, like forcing yourself to swallow on a bloated stomach. People had become codenames for what had happened in her small, small world. Alec was over. Owen was over. Zach was over, Claire’s family was over. It had all gone bollocks up. Nobody died, but they might as well have. She was already hosting her own personal funeral after all, alone with a bottle of Scotch in a hotel room where she was forced to stay until she can find a new place to live, somewhere away from there. And what’s a funeral if not a theatrical performance for the living whose diet consists of numbness and regret, a dream whose latent content says nothing about the deceased and everything about you, a play at the end of which the curtain falls and the lights dim and there’s nothing but a simple truth:

Gray would never walk again.

She hated Scotch. She was hoping she would hate it more than she hated herself as her own words resonated in a corner of her mind she was trying to flood with literally anything but that.

“I’m so sorry, Claire. If you need anything—“

“There is no need for excessive cordiality, Miss Young. Our relationship is purely professional. I appreciate your concern, but if I need anything I will not be discussing it with you.”

One more shot for that.

“If you want to be left alone, I completely understand. I just wanted to let you know I’ll—be. Here, I mean. For when you’ve—for later.”

And one for the wall of silence that separated them then.

“They could have died, Zara! What the hell is wrong with you? For later? Later? Do you have any idea what you’ve caused? My nephew is fucked for life because of you! There’s no ‘later’ for this!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, like you ever cared about the runts! I was babysitting for you—a job for which I am entirely overqualified, mind you—while you were fooling around with Burly over there instead of spending time with your own bloody family!”

She rose from the floor and knocked the something over with her foot. Then she was in the bathroom, splashing cold water over her face while the contents of her bottle spilled over the carpet, adding a sizeable sum to her bill. An aged, pale-faced woman with smeared eyeliner stared back at her from the mirror. It was the first time she noticed that her shirt wasn’t buttoned up correctly, one button hanging loose over her abdomen. She reached down to fix it with trembling hands when she heard the familiar di-ding of a new text message on her phone.

I’m at Rooster’s Peck. Come and get me. – C. Dearing

It was a thirty minute drive to the bar. Or maybe it took three hours. Somewhere between the two, that much Zara knew. She didn’t have time to check the clock because she was too busy gaping at the space between her hands on the steering wheel, her mouth hanging open in a drunken stupor. Perhaps it took so long because she realized after a while of driving that she had never started the car. After she tried to rub the disconnect between her and reality from her eyes, she turned on the radio and kept switching from one overused pop song that ripped a hole in her eardrums to the next. She did this methodically once every few minutes to keep her hands busy with the buttons and her mind preoccupied with melodies as she drove. None of them lasted. At the end of each song she crashed and burned back into her rightful place in the world: in the driver’s seat of a Renault swooping past everyone else who had made a series of bad decisions that night with little regard for the speed limit—My regrets are bigger than yours!—her fingers clenching around the steering wheel as she was told to

keep your face near the earth and your heartbeat high, and you may transcend the bad news.

She parked her car the same way she had buttoned up her shirt. The front left wheel jumped up on the sidewalk and made gravity force her head down at a painful angle while the right reel wheel remained sticking out into the road, offering itself with glee to every passing stranger.

“Misssssss Young! Young missssssss!” Claire hissed from her seat at the counter, giving Zara a toothy smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth a little too forcefully. Dry, salty trails descended from her bloodshot eyes down her cheeks. “You look like shit,” she remarked, gleaming, when Zara took a seat next to her.

“You, on the other hand, are stunning as always,” Zara smirked. She took a sip from Claire’s drink to identify the unmistakable flavor of tequila. Not the first one by any means.

Claire narrowed her eyes. “Sarcasm?”

“No.”

Zara never realized what she said—not then, not afterwards. She was having an entirely different conversation in her mind, kept playing it over and over with a different final outcome each time as she stared at her fingernails on the counter. Her nail polish had begun to peel off.

The real Claire’s voice got to her some time later, but what it was missing in volume it made up for in color. If the real Claire’s voice were a color then, it would have been deep indigo blue, swirling lazily in the air as she spoke. “—said she never wants to see me again. I am to never approach her or her family again. She said, ‘You wouldn’t know what it’s like. You’ve always been playing your own game.’ And then…” Claire made a clicking sound with her lips.

The brunette caught herself staring at Claire’s jaw as it moved up and down with every word. The lights of the pub gave her face an iridescent glow so perfectly out of tune with her empty eyes. Zara’s brow quivered. This was neither the time nor the place to surrender to her emotions and she had just enough self-respect, as well as respect for the shell of a woman beside her, left to shake off the tears that threatened to fall. “This is all my fault. I had no idea this was going to happen—I am so sorry, Claire. I’m so sorry.”

Claire laughed humorlessly at the ceiling and grimaced. “Eugh. You’re making me want to throw up more than the booze. Take your pathetic excuse for remorse and shove it up your ass, will you? That’s not why you’re here.”

“Then why am I here?”

Claire looked her dead in the eye and stuck out her chin, sharp smell of alcohol rolling off her tongue when she spoke. “Fight me.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said,” Claire spat and punched the space next to her shot glass among several wet rings, “Fight me.”

“I don’t know what you think you need, but this isn’t it.”

The bartender, who had been observing the duo from a distance that ensured his safety from potential airborne glass shards, mouthed an ‘oh shit’ to his buddy and proceeded to take a picture of the two women having a staring contest with his phone before he returned to mixing cocktails. “Some grade A lesbian drama going down in this joint tonight, Franco,” he said in a low voice to a regular. “Redhead been here since nine or so, downs my tequilas like a goddamn gladiator. Xena just got here a while ago looking like someone’d made her drown a box of puppies. I’d steer clear of that tragedy if I were you. Don’t get me wrong, they’d be easy as toast what with how shitfaced they both are, but I sorta get the feeling they’d rip your balls off with their teeth. Avoid. Now this over there blonde chick—”

The bartender’s soliloquy was interrupted by the sound of a slap resonating off the walls. His head snapped back to the two women to see the brunette holding onto the counter for support with one hand and pressing the other to her cheek, where a bright hand-shaped mark was just forming, dyed a sickly yellow under artificial light.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what I do or don’t need? Huh? Huh?”

Zara wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”

The jukebox wasn’t working. Somebody kicked it.

“Just be you. You’re my employee and I’m asking you to do something so just—Just be you! Just be my insufferable asinine British know-it-all of an assistant!” Claire screamed, her whole body bouncing up on the bar stool. She suddenly looked no less than several decades younger—a petulant child with puffy eyes and scarlet cheeks, her face wet with snot and tears, but she kept crying and hiccupping, chest heaving with ragged breaths, as if it would change anything, as if she could buy what she wanted—and nothing but that—with the migraine she was giving herself sobbing like that. Her body seemed to vibrate with the strength of her anger. It wouldn’t listen when she told her voice to stop shaking, wouldn’t obey when she told her hands to stop itching with the need to repeat what she’d just done. Then again, she didn’t try very hard to make them.

“I’m so sor—“

She hit Zara again. This time she drew out tears of her own. “Try again.”

“I’m not doing this, Claire.”

It was just a flash. The second she offered one look of defiance Claire’s fingers were digging into the skin of her neck. She could barely make out somebody yelling at the two of them to cut it out and take it outside—or to the restroom, whichever worked for them, ha, ha, ha. It didn’t hurt much. Claire had bitten off most of her fingernails—that and she had been having trouble keeping a tight grip on anything that wasn’t a shot glass for some time now. What she was looking for in Zara’s eyes, Zara didn’t know. (She still didn’t know, god dammit.) She spent a good while looking, though. Zara could smell warm breath and rage and disgust and it occurred to her in a brief moment of clarity not wasted trying to inhale that Claire’s hair strangely resembled a lion’s mane in this certain angle, certain light.

“You’ve been drinking too,” Claire observed, her eyes widening. She let go of Zara’s neck and wiped her palm on her skirt. “For fuck’s sake,” she said, threw a bunch of bills on the counter and started to gather her things.

She left without looking Zara in the eye again or saying another word, and Zara didn’t follow her.

Her fingers twitched over a spot where she had been scratching at the wood. Deeper, deeper, have to dig deeper. She pictured the innocent counter as a man’s back shielding Claire from her gaze. An unspecified man’s back. Completely random. She imagined her nails were daggers and she tried to stab and twist like her instincts told her to as her vision swam and her breath came in short gasps. No, Claire wasn’t the one she wanted to hurt ever again.

“What was that all about?” she heard Franco the regular ask. The bartender shrugged in response.

Zara left the pub with him in the end; nothing but a pile of bones in a badly buttoned shirt.

#Zearing #Claire Dearing #Zara Young #Jurassic World #fanfiction #thar be femslash in these parts

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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So I hear sabretonguedtiger likes my chibis. Here, have a Zearing doodle. :3

#Jurassic World #Zara Young #Claire Dearing #Zearing #artsypants

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Harry Potter was on TV earlier, so I doodled a smol Hufflepuff Riley.

#Riley Blue #artsypants #fanart #sense8 #my smol hufflepuff child

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Not Today [PG, 1/1]

Ship: Riley/feels you guys Genre: angsty hurt/comfort Word count: ~1500

Nobody knew her like this. No parts of her, that is. Strangers, acquaintances, people she needed without wanting them, those knew her as nothing but. Her other selves, however, all felt the tingling sensation at the back of their minds they had in common, an itch they couldn’t scratch that told them something was missing and they could not find out what it was. The only thing they were aware of was that Riley wouldn’t talk to them anymore.

Every day she got home and took off her hat and her jacket but she was still too hot. So she took off her shirt, too, and then her pants, and her underwear, but none of it was enough, none of it changed a single damn thing. The smell of sweat and prison and Indian cuisine lingered in every single molecule she came into contact with like a disease. Wearing herself had become difficult for her. With every step she took the weight of her own skin dragged her further down. With every breath she took she felt as if she were really inhaling empty air eight times at once. Every song she listened to resonated in her ears at eight times the right volume and she snatched off her earphones and threw them against the wall, watching as the circular plastic band snapped in half. Her father found her on her knees in the living room with tears streaming freely down her face as she wondered whose strength broke her little treasure, because it wasn’t hers. When she came home the very next day she found the exact same pair of headphones still unpacked on her desk with a note that read: “It’s only teenage wasteland.” Another part of herself found its way unopened into a drawer, but later she snuck up on Gunnar and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he reached behind to pat her head.

The tearful smile she gave Will when he looked back at her from the mirror spoke a thousand apologies that didn’t know why they were uttered and she wiped the glass with them, her own face smiling back at her afterwards. Back in his apartment in Chicago, Will cursed loudly – albeit just in his head – and Kala asked him to please tone down the language because she was trying to focus and his screaming was making her drop things and Will, good grief, this is the sixth time today! And Lito, he was doing better than ever shooting a particularly intense scene that day, so much so that much later at the premiere his costar admitted that at times he would be so committed to the role he scared her. The movie was a tremendous commercial success.

One time Riley saw Wolfgang staring up through her window from the street. She shut the blinds with trembling hands and ran downstairs to do the same there, to lock the door and turn on the TV loud enough to stifle any possible sound of knocking, but even when she closed her eyes she knew he was looking at her. She tripped on her own two feet running back upstairs to hide under her bed like she used to when she was a child and the tree cast a shadow on her sheets in the middle of the night. Even though she had grown considerably since those days she could easily curl up and wrap her arms around herself. That was why there had never been monsters under Riley’s bed – she had colonized the premises long before any witches could have hatched. And now she knew and she despised herself for thinking of witches while her chest heaved and a snake curled around her ribcage trying to suffocate all that fear they were watching. Wolfgang could have visited her in her home, but he didn’t.

Everyone knew. At first it had comforted her to know she was not alone. Over time, though, the truth kicked in. The pain she had felt that never truly left but instead remained nestled comfortably among scattered pages of the diaries she kept when she was a teenager lay naked and open for them all to witness again and again as she did, to perceive, and to feel. It burned her throat and tore her apart. Riley kept running around her world – her own world – in panic, frantically searching every nook and cranny for gaps between the walls. Close it down, wall it up, surround it with traps, she thought. Circle it with police tape, she thought, like you would a crime scene or a dangerous underpass. Only investigators allowed. Serve and protect, she told herself, and Will punched a wall with Sun’s fist for putting that thought in her head when that really, really wasn’t what they meant by that, in America or anywhere else.

But then something changed.

She was making pancakes in the morning when she saw her. Nomi was sitting there in her kitchen chair, her blank eyes staring into the white space between the oven and the cupboards. For the first time in quite a while Riley’s pulse didn’t quicken. Instead she turned the stove off and tiptoed towards the woman on curious feet with her head tilted to the side just a bit and a mug of hot cocoa in her hand.

Nomi’s head snapped up when the mug entered her line of sight and she jumped. “I thought I was alone.”

“Me too,” Riley smiled. “But it’s the perfect day for a cocoa in two, I think.”

“It’s fucking freezing here. Every day is the perfect day for a cocoa in two.”

“That’s what makes it so appealing,” Riley nodded.

And then she was sitting on Nomi’s couch and staring down at the eviction notice on her desk. Amanita wasn’t home yet. Riley’s heart sank along with the sense of security she – they – had worked so hard to construct again. A different kind of cold brushed against her shoulder, one that seeped through her veins and turned her blood to stone. This cold she couldn’t hide from behind a woolen hat and a thick wall. This cold promised a bitter reunion outside in the snow. She turned to Nomi and rested her hand on her shoulder. “Hey, I have a really comfortable bed. And it’s big enough for two people. And I’ve checked under it many times and I can almost guarantee there are no monsters.”

Incredibly, something close to a laugh vibrated in Nomi’s throat as she remembered all the nights the other girl spent reading under her bed with a flashlight, and the time she fell asleep there and in the morning poor Gunnar was calling every family friend scared out of his wits before she crawled out yawning in her pajamas, Sven the leopard tucked safely under her arm. “Riley, I don’t think—”

“I know. Now go on. My dad always says the sun shines brighter above an empty mug.”

Once Nomi opened up, one by one, they all visited. Capheus shared stories of the days and nights he’d spent in his bus surrounded by armed delinquents but knowing Jean Claude’s spirit would never falter. He would always wake up taking the same, delicious breath of fresh morning air, and get the feeling he was going to have a really good day. Wolfgang rolled his eyes but couldn’t hold back a crooked smile, upon which Kala playfully swatted his arm. Lito went on about the courage in their hearts and Kala asked what movie that was from, and the man defended himself because come on, man, I’m trying to be profound here, this is real, this is the truth and you know it.

“Everyone’s truth is just what they imagine it to be,” Sun commented dryly, sipping cocoa that Riley had fixed her up with in the meantime, much to the others’ chagrin – and Lito’s displeasure.

It was hard to maintain a somber mood with so much life flowing in them. Soon enough smiling wasn’t such a chore anymore. Riley’s gaze met Will’s unapologetically as their hands touched once more, letting him know there would come a day when she would talk about it and be content with more than being needed. There would come a day when she would unlock the door, unseal the gaps, and tear down the tape behind which the monsters she did acquaint herself with over the years lurked waiting to hunt down the old and the lame. There would come a day she would want someone to become conscious of the discrepancy between her and her reflection in hopes that smiling wouldn’t be such a chore anymore.

That day was just not today.

#Sense8 #Riley Blue #Wiley #I am absolute Riley angst trash and I regret none of my life choices #fanfiction

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Kept you sleeping and even and I didn’t believe them when they called you a hurricane thunderclap.

//a couple (many) hours in Paint Tool SAI

#Riley Blue #sense8 #fanart #I've filled my arting quota for the year #Riley Gunnarsdóttir #artsypants

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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I’ve finished Sense8 and had to doodle my most beautiful child, Riley. A couple hours in SAI.

#artsypants #Sense8 #Riley Blue #the most beautiful of all my children #fanart

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Guys, our song “Sanctuary” is currently competing in the “Czech Parade” over at TV rebel. We want YOU to vote for us here with a simple click!

#signal boost #Wishmasters #YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Happy Valentine's day to the Sharja family!

#Sharja #Sharon den Adel #Tarja Turunen #artsypants #fanart

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Within Temptation - The Last Dance music box. Made in FL Studio 11.

#Within Temptation #The Last Dance #music box

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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Good at This [Sharja, 1/1]

Rated E, hurt/comfort. A shortie inspired by a certain performance and a subsequent conversation with moving-taylor-swiftly-on.

~800 words. She was good at this, she convinced herself as the audience started to blur before her. She had always been. Nobody would be there if she weren’t. Nobody would come.

She was good at this. She had no choice, after all. When she was fifteen she thought it would all be so simple; get on stage, wear your heart on your sleeve, and produce euphonic sounds. It wasn’t until the first magazine slandered her appearance that she found out she had to be that much more. Looking the part at all times, even between four stone walls, even behind closed curtains, was a necessity. In addition, life on the road taught her how to play a role. Acting came naturally to her once she’d seen how much it could change and her ambitious self brimmed with longing.

She was good at this, she convinced herself as the audience started to blur before her. She had always been. Nobody would be there if she weren’t. Nobody would come. All those people, they’d come to see a performance, and she had not faltered, not once in twenty years.

“You touch my hand These colors come alive In your heart and in your mind I’d cross the borders of time Leaving today behind to be with you again.”

That she was good at this was what her mind was saying while her mouth sang a different story entirely. Her lip quivered and her voice was breaking and her heart was breaking too, but nobody could hear the crack because by god, she was good at this, and she would be until the end of time. Or the beginning of it, should she choose to rewind. And she let the soft strumming of a guitar dull her awareness as her equally competitive heart raced to surpass the beat.

“Please say my name Remember who I am You will find me in the world of yesterday.”

Watching from the side, Tarja tensed up at the sight unfolding before her. Sharon was fighting back tears in the spotlight while the men of the group hovered in shadows, stealing a glance her way every now and then before turning their gaze back to their instruments as if they were too ashamed to acknowledge the slip. They were also quite good at this. Arms crossed over her chest, Tarja listened to the strain in Sharon’s voice. The woman fought for her dignity like one who had had to do so one too many times, her back straightened stiff and her chin up high. But then she turned away.

“You drift away again, too far from where I am when you ask me who I am,” Sharon sang, off-key tones betraying her distress. One tiny gap in the picture was all it took for the puzzle to fall apart. Her brow furrowed, twisting her face into a grimace of pain, and she turned her back on the audience, turned her back on the judgment, fading into a bubble where no one but her could see. No one but her and Tarja, that is.

Tarja’s lips parted in awe in its purest sense. There she was, the woman who had stood tall and proud before the masses so many times before. There she was, a girl desperate to hug herself and find comfort in her own arms the first time no one else was there, her head bowed and her hands shaking.

Originally, Tarja had planned to wait until the encore for what she was about to do. But after the encore would have been pointless. It was now that Sharon wanted to run to her. It was now that she wanted to run to Sharon. If only the stage were big enough for them both! And so Tarja swung her arm, bent her wrist at the right angle, and watched the plain, stuffed red heart fly through smoke and land at Sharon’s feet.

Startled, Sharon took a small step back. She turned her head to face Tarja, though Tarja was fairly certain she couldn’t see anything but a fuzzy, monochrome silhouette at best, and for a moment she could swear they locked eyes. At the very least Tarja witnessed the most beautiful of changes then, topping every smile and every weary wrinkle in the corners of Sharon’s eyes. There was pain – a spark of anger, even – but then her features softened, basking in the eerie glow cast by the lights. Sharon grew twenty years older again, back into the woman she was. How silly to think that one fragile heart could harden and complete another so.

Guidance goes a longer way than the guided. It is not the memory that hurts but the loneliness of remembering. In a time of need, true proof of affection is difficult to doubt. Sharon wiped her tears and finished the song, and then another, and another after that. Later she sang one more song in Tarja’s arms, one that was meant only for her, and then gazed up at the roof of the tour bus deep in thought.

“We should do a song together,” she said. "We'd be good at that."

#Sharja #fanfiction #Sharon den Adel #Tarja Turunen #RPFS #RPF

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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As delighted as I am that the Zimbio poll included Swan Queen as a possible outcome (and that I got it), imagine my surprise when I noticed they used a picture that I drew back in 2011 to represent Storybrooke. They even cut out my signature.

That picture is a repainted still. They could have just as easily pressed Print Screen during the pilot episode to get a nice smooth picture of the Storybrooke sign. So for future reference, don't be a douche. Take a screenshot.

Or, y'know, asking works too.

#Once Upon a Time #ouat #zimbio #Swan Queen #not cool dudes not cool

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nightingaleinasilverycage · 9 years

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The Last Thing She Remembered [Sharja, 1/1]

Sharja fluff, rated E, dedicated to unchain-the-escapist and moving-taylor-swiftly-on. Shhh friends, take this fluff and be good.

THE LAST THING SHE REMEMBERED

The last thing Tarja remembered was a bright light. She remembered gazing into the vast unknown beyond all mortal experience and then the touch of pure, radiant warmth caressing her cheek, welcoming her to the halls of eternal judgement that lay beyond. What sort of path would await her there, she recalled wondering, and would there be a path at all, or are we all expected to pave our own way through? Casting all her doubts away, she had risen up on the other side.

Now here she lay in a bed of roses and lavender. The smell overpowered her senses. When she looked up, she couldn’t hold back a gasp. Above her a gentle face was smiling down at her. It hovered where the sun would have been if she was staring directly at it. The lips burned honey mist pomegranate and a sparkle glimmered in the eyes, which were outlined by thin wrinkles that smiled with her. Yes, it was a woman to whom that beautiful face belonged, a woman of certain stature and grace showering the pitiful mortal with kindness that she emanated. Tarja’s eyes glazed over with tears. Salty droplets began to descend down the sides of her face and she sobbed, drowning out the smell of the flowers around her.

The face stopped smiling. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“You’re the beauty one, isn’t you?”

“Sorry?”

“I know, I know. You’re the beauty one and you will take me away. But Aphrodite, I’m not even prettier than you. You are the most beauty! Please don’t feed me to the trolls,” Tarja cried, shaking her head.

“I’m not taking you anywhere, honey,” the face replied.

“Oh… Oh! But then why are you here? Am I dead? But—if you are the beauty one, you don’t take people away to the deathning. Right? You must be the beauty one—Have you seen your face?”

“I’m not—”

“Of course you haven’t!” Tarja exclaimed as the realization dawned on her, her eyes widening in shock. She slapped her forehead in frustration. “You can’t see your face. Because it’s on your face! Your face is on your face—that is so sad,” she said before her voice broke and she burst into tears once more.

“Sweetie, I’m not Aphrodite,” the woman comforted her, a faint blush creeping up her cheeks. She seemed to conjure a Kleenex-branded tissue out of thin air and reached out to wipe Tarja’s tear and snot-lined cheeks. Meanwhile, Tarja wondered about the limits of such otherworldly magic, should there be any, and if not, why this sublime creature of light wasted time talking to her at all.

“Not? But then—what even is this face?” Tarja asked drawing a lopsided circle in the air around the face in question. “Oh my god, you don’t understand. You do not. Your face is making me have love for you right now. Here, touch my heart. You’re a god, you can touch my heart and feel me have love for you,” she said and reached out to take the goddess’s hand to place it on her chest. For every beat of her heart there came a beeping sound. Her love for the goddess was simply that strong. “What is your name, can I ask?”

“I’m Sharon.”

“Oh god! Sharon! Sha—ron. Can you hear it? It flows so pretty! Sharononon. Hey, listen, listen to this: Sharrrrr—onnnnnnnnnnnn…”

“I’m your wife, silly.”

Tarja recoiled from the woman’s touch, narrowing her eyes at her. She dove backwards deeper down into the bed of flowers. “You’re making fun of me. That’s not legal.”

“What, gay marriage? Of course it is!”

“Not gay marriage! Humans marrying high forest elves. Not legal. You are a high creature.”

“But I don’t have pointy elf ears,” Sharon retorted.

“Everybody knows elves come to humans in human disguise,” Tarja snarled. “But you can’t trick me. You are too beauty to human.”

Sharon pursed her lips. Because she was a goddess with manners – a rare breed if the younger woman knew it – she pretended not to notice the way Tarja’s breath hitched on every third word in the middle of her accusatory monologue. Instead she kept nodding patiently, patting her head and caressing color into her cheeks. Of course Tarja was right and she was a celestial being from the high heavens, sent across the boundaries of space and time to see her. The purpose of her visit remained unknown. “What can I do to convince you of my good intentions?” Sharon asked as Tarja blew her nose for the umpteenth time.

“No thing to do,” Tarja deadpanned.

“Really? You can’t think of anything?” Sharon raised a suspicious eyebrow.

The bedridden woman paused. “Well… maybe smooches. If you are my wife, you have to give me smooches.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Sharon smirked. She covered Tarja’s hand with her own and leaned over her until their faces were mere inches apart. Tarja whimpered under her, her back stiff and her muscles tense, causing Sharon to giggle under her breath. “What’s the matter now?” she asked, pressing her forehead to Tarja’s and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

“But if you—elf and then smooches—” Tarja sobbed, “I will die—again—because I’m mortal, get it? But it’s worth it—do the smooches—I’ll gladly die from it! I’m just—a little scared.”

“Uh-huh,” Sharon hummed and nudged Tarja’s red, runny nose with hers. She dragged a finger along Tarja’s jawline and gently pressed her lips to hers, swallowing the younger woman’s panicked breaths. A second passed and Tarja felt shivers running down her spine. Two seconds passed and there was a tingling sensation in her fingertips. Three seconds passed, the softness didn’t, and Tarja was alive.

When she opened her eyes again, Sharon was sitting upright next to her, a pleased grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “WIFEY!” Tarja yelled, shooting up to envelop the goddess-who-was-an-elf-who-was-her-wife in a stifling bear hug despite the woman’s protests.

For long minutes after she calmed down she kept marveling at Sharon’s beauty and the generosity of the world, and good god, had she noticed her mouth had the same texture as velvet? And that her hair was the color of a sunset in the Caribbean winter seen through a pair of dusty sunglasses? It didn’t matter she had never seen a Caribbean sunset in the winter. Somehow she bet it would look more or less the same. Less, probably, because Sharon was more beautifuller. Tarja spent so long looking at the sunset that she grew tired. At 2:45 in the afternoon she said good night and was out cold within seconds, clutching Sharon’s forearm like a stuffed animal. And Sharon, well – at first she sat by her hospital bed and she took pictures of Tarja drooling on her pillow to upload on Instagram. But most of the time she giggled to herself. When uncle Ruud brings them over, she would pay to see her wife discover their children. To her dismay, they were the first thing mommy Tarja remembered.

#Sharja #Tarja Turunen #Sharon den Adel #RPFS #fanfiction

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