Post by rainstormamaya on Jan 13, 2010 21:03:54 GMT 10
Title: Cold Comfort
Rating: PG
Prompt: #16, Lies
Summary: He doesn’t know how to comfort her, so he plays it safe. He tells himself that’s all he wants to do, and he lies.
-----
The final tally of the dead and injured has been made, and the woman looks at it and takes what she sees as failure. There is a scraping squeaking as she shoves her chair back and stands and stretches stiffly.
Soft-footed she makes her way out, out of the room, out of the building. He follows her, and thinks bitterly of the shadows of the dead that wreathe her mind. He would give her comfort if he could, but he has nothing for her, not now in this wooden fortress with the snow falling to blanket death in white sterility, the soft silence of nothing seeping into every corner.
He steps forward and touches her shoulders as she looks out over the killing field, and her head turns and she smiles wearily at him.
Dom thinks, I saw this in her eyes when she was just a squire, and cries for Kel-that-was, fourteen and dreaming.
And when she turns and strokes his face with her thumb and whispers, "Don’t cry," her touch burns; and when she kisses his cheekbone, her lips scald; and when she walks back to her office, she takes all his warmth with her, but it does not matter- he gave it freely.
He tells himself that he does not want to follow her and take her into his arms and hold her safe, see her eyes close and her heavy head rest against his shoulder.
He lies.
Rating: PG
Prompt: #16, Lies
Summary: He doesn’t know how to comfort her, so he plays it safe. He tells himself that’s all he wants to do, and he lies.
-----
The final tally of the dead and injured has been made, and the woman looks at it and takes what she sees as failure. There is a scraping squeaking as she shoves her chair back and stands and stretches stiffly.
Soft-footed she makes her way out, out of the room, out of the building. He follows her, and thinks bitterly of the shadows of the dead that wreathe her mind. He would give her comfort if he could, but he has nothing for her, not now in this wooden fortress with the snow falling to blanket death in white sterility, the soft silence of nothing seeping into every corner.
He steps forward and touches her shoulders as she looks out over the killing field, and her head turns and she smiles wearily at him.
Dom thinks, I saw this in her eyes when she was just a squire, and cries for Kel-that-was, fourteen and dreaming.
And when she turns and strokes his face with her thumb and whispers, "Don’t cry," her touch burns; and when she kisses his cheekbone, her lips scald; and when she walks back to her office, she takes all his warmth with her, but it does not matter- he gave it freely.
He tells himself that he does not want to follow her and take her into his arms and hold her safe, see her eyes close and her heavy head rest against his shoulder.
He lies.
