I Resist the Muses

It's hard to pick one thing when you've lost so much.

Muse: Veronica Mars
Words: 234

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Casey Z.
Original Character
Prompt #7: What is your greatest loss?
72 words
Warnings: adult language

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The mother that I never knew. She died giving birth to me or so I was told.

Life would've been so different with her around. I would've actually had a mother instead of a step-mother who never gave a shit about me.

Sometimes I see her in my dreams and I wake up crying.

I suppose that if this exercise is to have any real merit, I have to answer the question properly.

I don't lose.

Losing isn't in the future we're making.

On the list of things that Crawford has asked me to check on, pick-up, completely destroy, mess with, sabotage or influence this week, the status of our loss is not one. Therefore, this is irrelevant. Feh. Loss, my ass.

Although, sometimes I go missing. Heh.
Not for long and I always come back, of course, but head-walking across Tokyo.. what a trip, what a packed and frantic and scary-busy place. I can lose myself in a crowd of millions, then play pick-up-the-pieces all the way home, and never leave my place on the balcony. How I play this is, I have to get back before the cigarette burns down to my fingers. If I don't, not can't, don't- If I don't, I get this nasty reminder of where I'm at.

I've caught Farf taking the smoke away and puffing it down, putting it back. Cute.

One time, or more than once, I don't know when, see, so maybe I never had one; I must have lost my name. You know, the real one? I think it was before Rosen, but if not, then they've got it in a file somewhere. I'd like to find my file, if we don't just burn the place to the stones it's built on. Crawford hasn't been too clear on the afterward, but it sounds like we're gonna do something like that.

I can't fucking wait. Whomever the fuck I am.

I remember what it felt like to stare at the one I loved as his life was starting to leave him. I can still hear his breathing as it rattled in his chest like a cold wind. His hand was so terribly frozen it seemed compared to how warm they used to be. That icey touch lingers in the dead of the night. I can hear his words as if he was dying again right in front of me. Its for him I walk on like he asked me. Its for him I will fight until there is no life left in my body because I promised him.

...He gave me a chance, and still worried about me even when he should have been concerned for himself. My world shattered to pieces and I felt like I was bleeding inside. It ached and there was no one to make it better, to hold onto. Just the grave that sat as still as the night sky on a cloudless night. Words etched into stone were all that remained of a living man above the ground. I tried to keep going, to press on like I said I would. But the grief I couldn't control it.

It raged out of control and all I wanted was to see his smile again. to hear him laugh again...to be loved and held again. I was selfish in my desires to not be alone. And it cost Mana a lot. The Earl...came to me when I was at my lowest. I think it was hunger and pain that made me so vulnerable to his words. They were the hope that I couldn't trust God with back then. It hurt worse than anything else to hear Mana curse me. But nothing was compared to when my innocence awoke...even worse? Mana telling me he loved me and to destroy him.

I know what drives people to accept the Earl's deal. Maybe attachments are wrong or something terrible. But I don't regret loving and still loving Mana, my foster father. I just will never let anyone that close to my heart ever again.

Jade Dragon
Original Character
Prompt #7: greatest loss…

What was my greatest loss? That should be obvious I think. My home, my family, my world. .. In a way I've lost everything…yet I've gained enormous opportunity. Here I am in a totally different world that I never even imagined existed. I've gained a whole new adventure. And hopefully I have not really lost everything, only misplaced. After all it is most likely still where it has always been; only now I am someplace else.

It has left a sense of emptiness inside of me that I can not quite fill no matter how much I try.

I will get home someday, I am sure of it.

Mom died in the fall. I'll always remember it if only for the apples spilled across the floor, juicy and ripe and just picked from a neighbor's farm. She was almost cold to the touch when we found her, but she was still breathing. Still alive. She hung on for a little while ... was it that night, or a few nights later that she died? I honestly don't remember. It's all so mashed together in my mind. I made Al go get Granny Pinako. He didn't want to, but I made him go. I didn't want him to have to be there if she died right then. He had only just turned eight, he didn't need to be there for that. Didn't matter that I'm barely a year older than he is, I'm the older brother. It's my responsibility to see things through. Mom didn't die right then, though ... she hung on.

She hung on a little bit longer so we wouldn't find her dead and she hung on just long enough for the doctor to say that there wasn't anything he could do, and then she just kind of smiled at us and died. I've never understood why. Some sort of sickness, I get that. I don't even know what she died of and really I don't want to know. If she was sick why didn't she get help? Why did she just let her body shut down like that? I don't understand, I can't understand...

Mom left just like dad did. No explanations. Just gone, almost overnight. Abandoned. The only consolation we had was that mom didn't want to go. We held on to her until the life left her body and the doctor gave a time of death and Winry was crying and Al was crying and ... fuck. Resembool's a small town, the wake was held in our house and it was almost a week until the funeral. It had been rainy for a few days after she died and they wouldn't be able to dig a grave that wouldn't collapse. She stayed in our house for a week. Granny Pinako forbade us from going home while her body was there. Alphonse couldn't stop crying. Winry cried a lot too, almost more than when the soldier came to tell her her parents weren't coming home. The house, when we went back to it, smelled like death for a long time. I don't think Al quite knew what the smell was, and I'm glad for that. I hope he's forgotten it by now. I never will.

I didn't care what Granny said. I went every day and looked at her in her coffin. She looked so peaceful, like she could just sit up and laugh and say 'wasn't this a horrible joke?' It wasn't a joke. It was real and that Sunday they buried her. That day, still in our Sunday best - it was the first time Granny Pinako had tied our ties and not mom, mine was a little crooked because I kept playing with it since no one told me not to - I told Al what I had been thinking about all week. I told him the plan I had concocted while staring at her face, now forever buried under our feet.

It seemed so perfectly innocent. We wanted to see her smile again. We wanted another hug, another laugh, another story before bed. So who cares if we break a few rules here and there, we're kids! We just wanted our mom back, how wrong could that be?

My greatest loss?

I am several thousand years old and immortal, so loss has been a recurring feature of my life.

Loss is one of the few consistencies of my life and is to be expected sooner or later. No one particular incident stands out. They were equally as sad.

They are best forgotten.

Hope. My daughter, Hope.



Muse: Gabrielle
Fandom: Xena the Warrior Princess
Word Count: 246

What’s your greatest loss?

Warning: Talks of school shooting



Muse: Haley James Scott
Fandom: One Tree Hill
Word Count: 379

( After five thousand of years of living, what lost haven’t I experienced? I’ve lost my mortality, but gained immortality. Some might argue I’ve lost my humanity and I would agree that I did at one point, but I prefer to think I have gained some it back. )

Character: Methos
Fandom: Highlander
Word Count: 622
Crossposted to here

Sweat-drenched, limbs trembling, Obi-Wan held the kata a moment longer. He closed his eyes, trying to shift his focus inward again, but the moment was gone. His datapad continued to chirp shrilly, sign that he had a new message. He knew exactly what sort, too, even before he glanced at the damn thing. He sighed and dropped the pose, a towel suddenly about his shoulders as if by magic. It was pure laziness to use the Force for such things, but at the moment he didn't care. He dried his hair one-handedly, almost angrily, and jabbed the receive button with the other.

What was your greatest loss?

Obi-Wan sucked in air between his teeth. The hotel room dropped away around him, its comforting lines replaced in his mind with the cold, sleek metal of the hall that housed the generators of Theeds. Ever so faint, the scent of burning filled his nostrils--a curious blend of Alderaani cotton and skin, the slightest trace of fresh blood. Across the expanse that separated them, his Master's eyes met his, widened, and glazed with pain. Qui-Gon slumped to the floor, motionless, and the Sith that had slain him turned back to Obi-Wan, saber still ablaze, his tattooed face split with a grin.

Willpower alone kept Obi-Wan's jaws locked shut, holding back a scream. Slowly the hotel room came into focus again, everything where it should be. Eventually he swallowed, wet his lips, began to breathe again. Eventually he picked up his datapad.

Anakin--

You've been poking at me for weeks, swearing you can hear his voice, but this... This is too much. I know you think I should talk about what happened, but this is going too far. I'm not sure what you trying to prove at this point, but these letters have got to stop.

~ Obi-Wan

Without hesitation, he pushed send.

---

310 words, open to critique and RP. Love this community!

What is your greatest loss?

My greatest loss was my mother. Plain and simple. When you're a slave, the only things you have are your family.

When I found out that Watto sold my mother to a moisture farmer, I was skeptical. But hearing how he married her, and treated her like what she was - a person - I knew she was happy there. There she spent the years as a wife and step mother to a loving family.

Then while gathering some mushrooms one morning the Sand People took her. And beat her horribly. She was bloody and broken when I found her. She died in my arms when I was too late to save her.

Then I snapped. I... killed them all. Every stinking one of them met his or her end on my saber that night. Even the children were not so lucky. Even now, years later I have a hard time having remorse for my actions that night.

I'll never be too late to save a person I love ever again. I am the best and brightest of the Jedi, it is not beyond my abilities.

If I had to pick my greatest loss, I think it would be my sanity.

If I ever had it in the first place, that is.

I've never been entirely sure if I was sane or not. Sometimes I wonder if I was born insane and the only thing I lost was the ability to hide my insanity from both the world and myself.

The other in my mind constantly reminds me of the fact that I've not been sane for a long time. How many sane people have someone in their heads who like to hear others scream in fear? My other has been there for a long time - since junior high maybe. Can't really remember.

He is me and I am him and together we lost our mind. Sometimes I can't tell myself apart from him.

...I think I've drifted off topic a bit.

Anyways, I think my greatest lost was any semblance of sanity I had because...now how can I pass for a normal person and appear to have a normal life now that Jonathan Crane is known as a lunatic and with Batman on his tail?

My greatest loss was when I thought my Lord was dead. That was.. absolutely crushing. I had fought so hard for him, and to think he was dead.. I felt like I had absolutely let him down. I knew, in my heart, that I couldn't have stopped him from going to the Potters that night, that he had made the decision to kill them himself. But I still felt like It should have been me that had gone to the Potters' house that evening, not him.

I was determined to never let his cause die, like I had let him die. That's what kept me alive during all those dark nights in Azkahban.

I was overjoyed to find out that my Lord was alive, though. Victory will be that much more glorious because I'm by his side again.

Cass Marshall
Prompt #7: What was your greatest loss?

I would have to say my life, of course. That was a pretty big loss and the trade off has been spectacular. Shrugging off that mortal coil was the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh, but you probably didn’t mean it like that, did you?

I suppose that I could say my innocence and all that, but really why bother? Everything thing that has happened has led me to this road. I am what I am because of all the events in my life and unlife, and I like this road, so why complain?

We have a saying in the Circle that tribulation brings enlightenment. We don’t pull away from the big struggles of life, we run towards them. It is what sets us apart from the herd.

My greatest loss?

I think my greatest loss would be the family I never had.

Not that I have problems with the one I ended up with; my aunt was a good soul with a firm hand and her husband was surprisingly kind. But it doesn't stop me from wondering what could've been if my mother had survived giving birth to me and my father had not lost his mind.

I know things would've turned out differently if it was so, but I don't know how it would be different. I half wish it would've been for the better, but who really knows in the grand scheme of things?

I suppose only God knows - I've never been one for divination and even so, how could a person scry for what could've been instead of what will be?

( [OCC: Cut for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows spoilers] )

I've been alive so long now, grown so old...I've lost a lot. Friends, family....everything.

It was the last great time war where I suffered my greatest loss. My people, the Timelords fighting against the Daleks to save the whole of creation. And there was only one way to end it.

I had to end it. It was through me that the Daleks were destroyed and that my home Gallifrey was burnt. Two mighty races died that day.

I'm the last of the timelords. I was once called the "lonely god" and in a way that's fitting. I have no one that can stay with me for the rest of my long life.

That is my greatest loss.