shiegra (shiegra) wrote in kinkfest, @ 2008-07-05 15:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | a: shiegra, f: baccano!, july 05, p: ennis solo |
Beginning Again, Baccano! (Ennis)
Title: Beginning Again
Author/Artist: shiegra
Rating: PG13/R
Word count: 566
Prompt: Baccano! - Ennis - courage - "I might go on; naught else remained to do"
Life is harder to adapt to than she expected.
Freedom, once a hazy concept she turned her eyes from, is suddenly in her grasp. And Szilard's shadow is no longer at her shoulder; instead gone, an empty space she is always aware of. If it is like the pain of a phantom limb, it is a third arm or leg, something awkward and unpleasant but undeniable.
Suddenly denied.
She likes to take long walks, watching the sun splinter through velvet-green leaves in the park, dew on the grass. Sometimes she strips off her shoes and walks barefoot, concentrating on moving so softly she doesn't disturb the animals she comes across. She is adjusting to meeting humans and creatures alike and not measuring them for threat.
Before, when she had to focus on moving so quietly, it felt like she was trying to become a ghost--a thing not here or there, a not-quite-alive observer. Now it feels more like she's trying grow into the park, become a breath of the wind that stirs the leaves and long branches but does not garner attention.
It's pretty here; she'd never really paid attention to places so full of life, but now she almost doesn't want to leave.
She's used to concrete, marble and stone and dark wood, long halls with the scent of oils and expensive fabrics, all the sumptuous luxury money can buy and all of it most often tainted with the slow cold breath of decay, the scent of dying flesh tainted by acrid fear of the future.
Death never frightened her the way it should have, not for a long time. She, too, was trapped in a body that she had no true control over--strength there, in the force of her limbs and the life that flowed back to her, but no real power. Szilard moved her like a puppet, her life in the palm of his hand. Was the immortality of her flesh such a finer thing than the rotting cells of their bodies? The true difference, she had thought, was that they had once had power and were only now learning its loss.
She wonders how many lives she's swallowed into the palm of her hand, heavy and flushed in the cage of her ribs as her heart beats--sometimes, just after she took them, she thought she felt soft echoes of the rhythm.
Firo had been the first human that she'd really been close to--really been paying attention to--other than Miria and Isaac that didn't smell of encroaching death and sick rabbitting panic. He smelled like clean sweat, the hint of cologne and fabric and alcohol on his breath. There was no terror in him.
He smelled clean, like a precognitive echo of her life after he--Firo--sheared away the anchor of Szilard and left her floating free.
The sun gilds the edge of the leaves, turns them glassy and bright, and she left her shoes at the crest of the hill to glide down through soft spikes of grass, towards a knotted, rising trunk.
Shh, she thinks, and a bird in the tree ruffles its wings, blue darts running under the glossy black color of the feathers. It cocks its head in a quick, clever movement and she ignores it until it settles.
There's nowhere to go but forward. The rising sun is warm on her face.