Lucy Carrigan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
radicalize) wrote2017-11-04 11:42 pm
radicalize) wrote2017-11-04 11:42 pm
Entry tags:
the takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life
Perhaps the strangest part of this is that she’s been here before. Not in circumstances entirely the same, of course, not even close, but it’s distinctly uncomfortable even so, reminds her of being seventeen and getting the news — seeing those two soldiers leave — that Daniel had been killed in combat. That may have been another lifetime ago, memories grown hazy with age, but Lucy hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it over the past few days, since she first found out that Tommy hadn’t survived the Purge. She’d still been his emergency contact, his listed next of kin. They’ve only been broken up for a month and a half. There hadn’t been time to change anything. She hasn’t even found a goddamn apartment yet. Now…
Now, she’s got to bury her very recently ex-boyfriend. Someone she’d loved. Someone who’d wanted her to marry him. Maybe it didn’t work out, maybe it was never going to, when they wanted such different things, regardless of how long it took them to figure that out, but that doesn’t mean that whatever she felt for him could disappear so easily. Nothing went wrong this time. No one disappeared, and no one cheated. There weren't cracks that spread farther and farther until only the slightest bit of pressure could get it to break. They just went their separate ways.
That wasn't supposed to involve Tommy fucking dying. For weeks, she'd worried about what might happen to her bar when the Purge happened. It never occurred to her that she should have been worried about her former boyfriend instead.
She just sits there, numb and closed-off, for the service, her face pale, the black dress one she'd had to buy for this occasion. Partway through, though, she reaches over to grasp Eden's hand. She isn't sure she could have done this alone, and Eden is her oldest — maybe her only — friend now. It helps, as much as anything can.
After, stepping outside, she exhales heavily, drawing her coat a little tighter around herself. The weather has finally turned, actually feels like fall for a change. There's something fitting about that, the dead leaves on the trees and underfoot, the gray sky and the brisk air. It wouldn't have seemed right, walking out into a hot summer day instead. "Thanks," she says, turning towards Eden, voice a little rough, a little thick. "For doing this with me."
Now, she’s got to bury her very recently ex-boyfriend. Someone she’d loved. Someone who’d wanted her to marry him. Maybe it didn’t work out, maybe it was never going to, when they wanted such different things, regardless of how long it took them to figure that out, but that doesn’t mean that whatever she felt for him could disappear so easily. Nothing went wrong this time. No one disappeared, and no one cheated. There weren't cracks that spread farther and farther until only the slightest bit of pressure could get it to break. They just went their separate ways.
That wasn't supposed to involve Tommy fucking dying. For weeks, she'd worried about what might happen to her bar when the Purge happened. It never occurred to her that she should have been worried about her former boyfriend instead.
She just sits there, numb and closed-off, for the service, her face pale, the black dress one she'd had to buy for this occasion. Partway through, though, she reaches over to grasp Eden's hand. She isn't sure she could have done this alone, and Eden is her oldest — maybe her only — friend now. It helps, as much as anything can.
After, stepping outside, she exhales heavily, drawing her coat a little tighter around herself. The weather has finally turned, actually feels like fall for a change. There's something fitting about that, the dead leaves on the trees and underfoot, the gray sky and the brisk air. It wouldn't have seemed right, walking out into a hot summer day instead. "Thanks," she says, turning towards Eden, voice a little rough, a little thick. "For doing this with me."