Finishing The Catch Up
Sep. 11th, 2013 05:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
PotC's Jack/Will in
Winds rip at him; he barely notices, despite holding to his Captain's hat with one, ringed hand. Lightning crashes all around him. He doesn't miss a beat of his song. It is a Pirate's life for him, even if it's a lonely one. He leaves the wheel suddenly, neither flinching nor noticing as a bolt of lightning strikes the place where he'd just been standing.
His men are yelling. They call for him, for his help, but it's not to them he goes. It isn't even to Gibbs, the man who did all for him when he was a boy but actually birthing him himself. Instead, he jumps into the riggings. The lightning illuminates his gold tooth as it flashes with his smile.
A sea monster roars. The winds howl. Lightning and thunder beat out a Hellacious melody. Jack climbs, and Gibbs shakes his head.
"TRY AN' KEEP 'ER STEADY, BOYS!" he yells to the crew. He sees the disappointment, the concern, and the horror on all their faces. He feels a touch of every emotion they do and then some. But he has no time for any feelings when he has to be both Captain and father in one.
As Gibbs takes the wheel, however, Anamaria sees her Captain in the riggings. She sees him dangling, wanting to fall but not quite slipping, and she hears the name he bellows into the storm. She sees. She understands, and something dark gleams in the African woman's eyes.
Jack walks the highest rope, lightning cutting all around his dashing figure. He tries to step into the blinding light, but each time, it's over just a second too soon. Below him, Gibbs cusses, Anamaria watches, his crew cries, and the Pearl bucks, but Jack notices none of them.
It's another face he sees in the storm, the same face that hovers behind his eyelids each time they close, the same face whose name he calls to every time he's alone. He doesn't want to be here any more, out on the open sea. He doesn't want to live this life alone, and no matter how much Gibbs cares for him or how many people with whom they surround themselves, he's still alone. He's alone, because he doesn't have the one man he loves.
That bigot chose a woman over him. He chose his darling Elizabeth, though he never loved her. Jack thinks, as the lightning slashes just behind his booted feet, that he should have ran the bitch through when he'd had the chance. He'd tried his best, instead, to make her love him, thinking she might want to come away with him to the life of a Pirate and knowing that Will would follow wherever she went. It would be better to have the boy in his life pretending not to love him than to be as he is now, completely and forever more without him.
He screams Will's name into the savage winds, daring the raging storm to hit him and yet knowing he will never be that lucky. This is his lot in life to live. He won't take his life, because that coward's way out would condemn him to Hell. He's living Hell now, but he promised Gibbs long ago, after the older Pirate pulled him back from the brink of death when he'd tried to kill himself while still in boyhood, that he would never be that much of a coward.
So he lives, though he doesn't want to, and he dances the dance, in and out of lightning beams, always secretly trying to be a moment too slow with swords clashing all around him, seeking the greatest fight of his life, yearning for death. He yearns for Will, too, but he knows he'll never have him. He'll probably never even see the boy again. That thought brings more sorrow than anything else he's ever known, even the moment when he saw his beloved Will kiss that bitch, Elizabeth.
Lightning strikes at his feet. He grins, hoping death will at last be his, but instead of being taken out to sea, the storm tosses him, singed boots and all, to Gibbs' waiting feet. "DON'T JUST LAY THERE, BOYO!" his elder yells at him over the roar of the continuing storm. "GET OFF O' YER ASS, AN' SAVE TH' PEARL!"
That command is finally enough to break through Jack's despair. The Pearl is the only home he's ever known. If not for her, he'd never have even known Will. He owes it to her, at least, to make sure she survives as long as he is forced to live. He takes action swiftly, but the moment is not forgotten, not by Jack or the Pearl, not by Gibbs, and not by any of his crew, least of all Anamaria.
It's a month or two later -- Jack's never been especially good at keeping track of dates -- that the Pirate Captain waltzes into the pub on Tortuga and stops dead in his tracks. Gibbs smiles knowingly, his eyes alighting for the first time since the storm in which Jack, though he swears otherwise, tried to kill himself. The Giant-sized man in their midst lets out a loud, bawdy laughter that fills the pub. Several of the wenches start forward, but various members of Jack's crew intervene, placing themselves between the women and their Captain and letting them come no further.
Anamaria slaps her Captain on the back. "Enough bullshit," she tells him sternly. "I would've given him to you in a box, but Gibbs said he would come willingly. He did."
Will rises from his table where two, untouched tankards of rum sit. He walks to Jack, and he finally makes his Captain's fondest dreams, those he dared never to mention nor to even admit to himself, come true as he wraps his loving hands tenderly around Jack's handsome, shocked face and kisses him deeply and passionately. "It's about time," he breaths afterwards against Jack's still open lips. "All you had to do was say you love me."
"But -- But I didn't!"
Will smiles; his brown eyes twinkle in the tavern's dim lighting. "That's not what I heard," he says simply, and although Jack might not have said he loved him, his every action since their parting has said it for him. If there could have been any doubt, their kiss would have quelled it all. "Permission to come ashore, Captain, in you, forever."
Jack's grin fills his face as he sweeps Will up into his arms. "Permission granted!" He wastes no time in carrying him to the Pearl, not even pausing for rum. There, they make sweet, passionate love, and the next day, they set sail with Jack's crew, their hearts, home, and family whole at last.
The End, rated PG-13/T
The Little Mermaid's Ariel in
She sat at the edge of the seashore, listening to the cry of the seagulls, all of whom she had once called by name and considered her friends. Only Scuttle still talked to her, and too often now, she could not understand a single word he squawked. She knew her friend spoke clearer language than the humans with whom she was now surrounded on a daily basis, but somehow, her human, mortal ears were rapidly losing the ability to understand him.
She had already lost that connection with Flounder. She hardly ever saw him anymore. She missed the days they had spent together, searching for treasure, swimming in races, and just being friends. She missed holding his little flippers in her hands, missed seeing him look at her with such complete and utter trust and adoration. She missed him.
Ariel sighed and moved her legs restlessly in the water. The perfectly clear, blue liquid splashed around her. The tide was coming in. She'd be completely soaked soon, but she didn't care, not about that at least. She wanted to be wet. She wanted to be wet from head to toe. She wanted to be engulfed in water but not be sitting or standing in it. She wanted to swim in it again not with her human legs but with the tail that had been rightfully hers up until the time she had decreed that she no longer wanted it.
Ariel sighed again and drew her knees up to her not to pull away from the water -- no, never again would she make that mistake --, but just so that she could wrap her arms around her long, gangly, and painfully mortal legs and huddle more closely together like the terrified, almost sobbing ball she was on this rock, her rock. This was the place where she had come often to watch the human world, but now she came to here to watch the world that had once been hers and never should have stopped belonging to her. It wouldn't have, either, if she hadn't been so foolish.
She closed her eyes against the tears that welled therein as she remembered the day she had made the fatal decision that had eventually led to this, the ruining of her life. Her father had tried to warn her. He had told her that he feared she would come to regret this day. She, of all mermaids, knew that one of her father's many gifts was prophesy. She should have listened to him. She should have known he had been right.
But she hadn't. She had been too blinded to listen to him. To make matters worse, it wasn't love that had blinded her. She had been convinced that she was in love at the time, but she hadn't loved Eric. She hadn't even known what love was back then, and had barely known the man to whom she had been wed. But he was a human, and that had been all she'd thought she'd needed to know.
The grass is always greener on the other side. She remembered reading that somewhere in one of the many, many books in the royal library. She hadn't understood it at the time, but now she did. The grass wasn't exactly the green stuff upon which humans trampled. She snorted in derision, remembering how she'd once thought the two leggers to be so graceful and now, knowing from experience, that they were anything but. Why, she'd had her human feet stepped on more times than she could count, and she'd never once had her tail trod on by accident!
Life on the surface wasn't graceful. It was rude and noisy, painful and bothersome, with duties that never ceased and a Prince who wanted to sit on his fleshy, human behind and be waited upon. He had servants for that, but yet, more often than not, it was for Ariel whom he called. He expected her to rub his feet, fluff his pillows, and do truly disgusting things in bed. He liked to have her wait on him, even while he had a whole palace of servants to do the things he asked of her. She knew it wasn't right, but she wouldn't have cared if every courtier in the palace went to her husband's bed, as long as she never had to look at him naked again!
Even now, in the brisk warmth of daylight, she shuddered at the mere thought. The grass was always greener on the other side until you got there and you realized that what you had had in the beginning was far better than anything that would come after. Ariel sighed yet again as she mused over how backward it all was. Human girls wanted to be mermaids -- hundreds had asked her, with proverbial stars in their big eyes, what it was like --, but she had been the only mermaid to want to be a human.
She had been a fool. She wishes now, with all her heart, that her father hadn't let her go. There have been times, over the years, that she's thought he didn't truly love her and that was why he released her to this gruelsome surface world, but she's wise enough now, having had a daughter of her own, to know he actually sacrificed her for love. She would never have stopped asking to be with Eric, never have stopped begging to be human, not even when he'd made her understand, point blank, that doing so would mean giving up her entire family, including him.
She closes her blue eyes against her tears that rise like the surf now crashing against her rock. She remembers all of them as vividly as if she'd just been with them yesterday. Her sisters might have teased her mercilessly, but the friends she'd had had been truer and more loyal than any human being will ever be. Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle had loved her so greatly that they would have done anything for her, but her father had loved her even more. He had made the greatest sacrifice in hopes that she would somehow find happiness in a world he'd known she didn't belong, but his fears had been right. She'll never be happy here.
She belongs in the water. She belongs splashing underwater with her own tail. She belongs swimming through the crystal blue lagoons of her homeland. She belongs dancing with fish and chattering with gulls. She belongs with her friends, with her family. She belongs with him.
Ariel gasps, her eyes flutter open. Through her tears, in the far off distance, she sees a silhouette towering above the shoreline, and she knows. She knows, though she can not see him for the gathering shadows of the evening, that her father is still looking over her. He still loves her.
She wants, with all her heart, to cry out to him. She wants to beg him to lift this curse, to take her home with him, to give her back all that she never appreciated until it was too late. She wants to feel his arms wrap around her again in a hug. She wants to hear him call her his little girl. She wants to hear him tell her how much he loves her.
Tears flow down Ariel's cheeks as she stands on legs that wobble again for a moment. There's not a single bit of her that wants to go to the palace to which she knows she must return. Everything in her, every single fiber, is screaming to go home, to dive into that water and keep swimming, keep swimming until her lungs burn and her human body gives out and her father at last has to give her back her mermaid form or watch her die. She wants to be back with him, to be back amongst all those who truly love her.
But she can't. A promise is a promise. He made her promise she wouldn't return. He made her vow, thinking, she's sure now, that she wouldn't do it, that she would never ask for her tail back again or her life as a Princess of Atlantica and his daughter, in order to be with the human she claimed to love, but whom he knew she didn't. She'd seen the sorrow and horror in his eyes when she'd accepted his terms. He hadn't wanted to do it, but he had given her his word.
And she gave him hers. She covers her mouth to keep her sobs from echoing out over the ocean to him now and runs back to the palace and the humans waiting there to hide once more amongst a people with whom she will never belong. She doesn't know that her cries are still heard all throughout the ocean. She doesn't know that Flounder, Scuttle, and little Sebastian all cry when they hear her sobs, or that even her father, wise, noble, and strong as he is, sobs along with her.
She doesn't know she left him hovering there in the ocean, one hand held out to her, the other gripping his glowing trident, and every fiber of his being hoping, aching, and wishing that his little girl would just ask to come home again. King Triton has never broken a promise, but for his daughter, he would. For his daughter, he would do anything, even watch her grow gray and old and die, still a human, still grieving for their world and family that should still and will always be hers, too, all because she wouldn't break her promise to him.
The End, rated PG-13/T
Disney's Mickey Mouse in
He walks through his kingdom alone, knowing he's welcomed everywhere but not stopping anywhere. Every one likes to see him. Every one wants to see him and be his friend, but no one can understand. No one knows what it's like to be a King of his stature, not the Princes who rule their little segments of his grand kingdom or even Triton, who rules the entire ocean.
No one else knows what it's like to put on a smile and a dance not only for the people who come to gawk at him every day, to laugh and point and giggle like crazed hyenas, but for every one around him, even those closest to him. Not a single being in all of his kingdom truly understands him. He acts a role for every one of them, even those closest to him, Minnie and Donald, who think they know him better than any one else.
He sighs and continues to move through the crowd of beings rushing to ride rides and adventure while his kingdom is closed to outsiders. It won't be long now, and the gates will open again to another crowd of a million or so. Every day, it's the same; every night, too. He's always acting a part, playing a role, fulfilling somebody else's wish.
When will his own wish be granted? Mickey wonders, his ears and tail lowering further and his white-gloved hands shoving deep into the pockets of his little, red shorts. When will he be able to do what he wants? When will he be free from all his roles? When will he die?
He sighs and ducks swiftly behind Hades, Gaston, and Shan Yu as he hears Minnie calling for him. She's always calling for him. She, Donald, Goofy, at least a half dozen others in their kingdom, and the whole world of their fans are constantly screaming his name. There's never even a second that he has that some one somewhere doesn't want him. Even now, he's supposed to be popping over to China to please his Oriental fans at Tokyo Disney, but he just doesn't have it in him tonight.
Oh, he could go. He could go to any one of his hundreds of teleporters and allow them to whisk him away into his land over seas. He could act the role again a thousand times over. He could smile and laugh and please his friends and fans, and no one would ever be the wiser. But Mickey doesn't have the spirit for it tonight. He's too tired, too weary, too exhausted of doing the right thing, too pleading to be allowed to just merely close his eyes and never have to open them again.
He knows he's not being fair, but then what is fair? He never asked for any of this. He never asked to lead multiple worlds and dimensions, to spend his entire life pleasing others. He only went to one man with one simple request: free the beings of the kingdom in which he was in. They schemed together to bring them into this world, but what was never said, the warning Mickey never received, was that he would lead them even after they left their own dying world and the pen and paper of Walt Disney.
He never knew what would happen, only that the beings of his world would live after their dimension died. He'd seen no other choice, and he fears, even now, that he would have done the same had he known. But he's tired of playing the part every one expects of him. He's brought magic to them all; now, he only wants his piece of it.
"Mickey?" The voice calling him now, as he enters the Haunted Mansion, is the only one from whom he'll never hide. "Mickey, are you okay?"
He sighs, his entire being drooping. "Yes." It's not a complete lie -- he is okay as far as he'll ever be okay again. He is as okay as can be with the weight of not just one world but many upon his tiny, black shoulders. He is as okay as he can be without ever dying. "Walt," he squeaks, "it's not fair. You should have penned my death before you died!"
Walt's hand touches him. In this midnight hour is the only time that they can physically feel each other, though they sense one another constantly, even when they can not see each other. "I know," his friend tells him sadly and rubs his little shoulders. "I know."
He should have penned his death, but he didn't. Now Mickey will live forever without him and without the most fundamental rights of any being. He'll never be free. He'll never be his own mouse, and there's nothing Walt can do except say, "I'm sorry," and hold him in this Witching hour as he cries.
The End, rated PG/K+
DC Comics' Batfamily in
They were no strangers to death. They had each been visited by it at different times in their lives, afterwards, and in the in between moments. They had lost parents, siblings, teachers, and friends. They had felt the final breath go out of an enemy while their hands yet lingered upon their bodies. They had all died at least once only to come back to more suffering.
They should not be surprised by this moment. All of them had to have known, deep down, that it would come, but yet now that they were facing the actual grave, the inevitable seemed impossible. All of them wanted to cry at their impending loss. Even the bravest amongst them wanted to wail of how unfair this death was. None wanted to admit just how vulnerable losing this old friend would leave them.
Dick placed a comforting hand on Tim's shoulder. Jason paced nervously, wringing his hands with his need to pummel some one or thing. Alfred hovered, a silent sentry ready to defend and console but knowing, at this time, how to do neither. It was Bruce, as always, who finally broke the silence. "Well?" he persisted, leaning over Barbara's shoulder.
She tried again, then slammed her fist down with her frustration and wheeled away from her worktable. She shook her red head. "I'm sorry, Bruce. There's nothing I can do. The Batcomputer's dead." The bats suddenly flew, screaming, throughout the cave and echoing the sentiments of all who lived there.
The End, rated G/K
Xena's Xena/Gabrielle in
"How'd you do it?" a listener to her stories asks, and Gabrielle knows what question is coming. Yet again, they wonder from whence her courage to stand with Xena comes. They can't imagine a life like theirs, going from battle to battle with too often barely a stop in betweenst.
"Because I had Xena with me," is the answer she always gives, but Gabby knows the truth. Standing with Xena isn't the hard part. Keeping to her love's side, instead of running, doesn't really take that much courage. She can do anything as long as she has Xena with her. It's the thought of ever having to live without her that's impossible.
The End, rated G/K
Winds rip at him; he barely notices, despite holding to his Captain's hat with one, ringed hand. Lightning crashes all around him. He doesn't miss a beat of his song. It is a Pirate's life for him, even if it's a lonely one. He leaves the wheel suddenly, neither flinching nor noticing as a bolt of lightning strikes the place where he'd just been standing.
His men are yelling. They call for him, for his help, but it's not to them he goes. It isn't even to Gibbs, the man who did all for him when he was a boy but actually birthing him himself. Instead, he jumps into the riggings. The lightning illuminates his gold tooth as it flashes with his smile.
A sea monster roars. The winds howl. Lightning and thunder beat out a Hellacious melody. Jack climbs, and Gibbs shakes his head.
"TRY AN' KEEP 'ER STEADY, BOYS!" he yells to the crew. He sees the disappointment, the concern, and the horror on all their faces. He feels a touch of every emotion they do and then some. But he has no time for any feelings when he has to be both Captain and father in one.
As Gibbs takes the wheel, however, Anamaria sees her Captain in the riggings. She sees him dangling, wanting to fall but not quite slipping, and she hears the name he bellows into the storm. She sees. She understands, and something dark gleams in the African woman's eyes.
Jack walks the highest rope, lightning cutting all around his dashing figure. He tries to step into the blinding light, but each time, it's over just a second too soon. Below him, Gibbs cusses, Anamaria watches, his crew cries, and the Pearl bucks, but Jack notices none of them.
It's another face he sees in the storm, the same face that hovers behind his eyelids each time they close, the same face whose name he calls to every time he's alone. He doesn't want to be here any more, out on the open sea. He doesn't want to live this life alone, and no matter how much Gibbs cares for him or how many people with whom they surround themselves, he's still alone. He's alone, because he doesn't have the one man he loves.
That bigot chose a woman over him. He chose his darling Elizabeth, though he never loved her. Jack thinks, as the lightning slashes just behind his booted feet, that he should have ran the bitch through when he'd had the chance. He'd tried his best, instead, to make her love him, thinking she might want to come away with him to the life of a Pirate and knowing that Will would follow wherever she went. It would be better to have the boy in his life pretending not to love him than to be as he is now, completely and forever more without him.
He screams Will's name into the savage winds, daring the raging storm to hit him and yet knowing he will never be that lucky. This is his lot in life to live. He won't take his life, because that coward's way out would condemn him to Hell. He's living Hell now, but he promised Gibbs long ago, after the older Pirate pulled him back from the brink of death when he'd tried to kill himself while still in boyhood, that he would never be that much of a coward.
So he lives, though he doesn't want to, and he dances the dance, in and out of lightning beams, always secretly trying to be a moment too slow with swords clashing all around him, seeking the greatest fight of his life, yearning for death. He yearns for Will, too, but he knows he'll never have him. He'll probably never even see the boy again. That thought brings more sorrow than anything else he's ever known, even the moment when he saw his beloved Will kiss that bitch, Elizabeth.
Lightning strikes at his feet. He grins, hoping death will at last be his, but instead of being taken out to sea, the storm tosses him, singed boots and all, to Gibbs' waiting feet. "DON'T JUST LAY THERE, BOYO!" his elder yells at him over the roar of the continuing storm. "GET OFF O' YER ASS, AN' SAVE TH' PEARL!"
That command is finally enough to break through Jack's despair. The Pearl is the only home he's ever known. If not for her, he'd never have even known Will. He owes it to her, at least, to make sure she survives as long as he is forced to live. He takes action swiftly, but the moment is not forgotten, not by Jack or the Pearl, not by Gibbs, and not by any of his crew, least of all Anamaria.
It's a month or two later -- Jack's never been especially good at keeping track of dates -- that the Pirate Captain waltzes into the pub on Tortuga and stops dead in his tracks. Gibbs smiles knowingly, his eyes alighting for the first time since the storm in which Jack, though he swears otherwise, tried to kill himself. The Giant-sized man in their midst lets out a loud, bawdy laughter that fills the pub. Several of the wenches start forward, but various members of Jack's crew intervene, placing themselves between the women and their Captain and letting them come no further.
Anamaria slaps her Captain on the back. "Enough bullshit," she tells him sternly. "I would've given him to you in a box, but Gibbs said he would come willingly. He did."
Will rises from his table where two, untouched tankards of rum sit. He walks to Jack, and he finally makes his Captain's fondest dreams, those he dared never to mention nor to even admit to himself, come true as he wraps his loving hands tenderly around Jack's handsome, shocked face and kisses him deeply and passionately. "It's about time," he breaths afterwards against Jack's still open lips. "All you had to do was say you love me."
"But -- But I didn't!"
Will smiles; his brown eyes twinkle in the tavern's dim lighting. "That's not what I heard," he says simply, and although Jack might not have said he loved him, his every action since their parting has said it for him. If there could have been any doubt, their kiss would have quelled it all. "Permission to come ashore, Captain, in you, forever."
Jack's grin fills his face as he sweeps Will up into his arms. "Permission granted!" He wastes no time in carrying him to the Pearl, not even pausing for rum. There, they make sweet, passionate love, and the next day, they set sail with Jack's crew, their hearts, home, and family whole at last.
The End, rated PG-13/T
The Little Mermaid's Ariel in
She sat at the edge of the seashore, listening to the cry of the seagulls, all of whom she had once called by name and considered her friends. Only Scuttle still talked to her, and too often now, she could not understand a single word he squawked. She knew her friend spoke clearer language than the humans with whom she was now surrounded on a daily basis, but somehow, her human, mortal ears were rapidly losing the ability to understand him.
She had already lost that connection with Flounder. She hardly ever saw him anymore. She missed the days they had spent together, searching for treasure, swimming in races, and just being friends. She missed holding his little flippers in her hands, missed seeing him look at her with such complete and utter trust and adoration. She missed him.
Ariel sighed and moved her legs restlessly in the water. The perfectly clear, blue liquid splashed around her. The tide was coming in. She'd be completely soaked soon, but she didn't care, not about that at least. She wanted to be wet. She wanted to be wet from head to toe. She wanted to be engulfed in water but not be sitting or standing in it. She wanted to swim in it again not with her human legs but with the tail that had been rightfully hers up until the time she had decreed that she no longer wanted it.
Ariel sighed again and drew her knees up to her not to pull away from the water -- no, never again would she make that mistake --, but just so that she could wrap her arms around her long, gangly, and painfully mortal legs and huddle more closely together like the terrified, almost sobbing ball she was on this rock, her rock. This was the place where she had come often to watch the human world, but now she came to here to watch the world that had once been hers and never should have stopped belonging to her. It wouldn't have, either, if she hadn't been so foolish.
She closed her eyes against the tears that welled therein as she remembered the day she had made the fatal decision that had eventually led to this, the ruining of her life. Her father had tried to warn her. He had told her that he feared she would come to regret this day. She, of all mermaids, knew that one of her father's many gifts was prophesy. She should have listened to him. She should have known he had been right.
But she hadn't. She had been too blinded to listen to him. To make matters worse, it wasn't love that had blinded her. She had been convinced that she was in love at the time, but she hadn't loved Eric. She hadn't even known what love was back then, and had barely known the man to whom she had been wed. But he was a human, and that had been all she'd thought she'd needed to know.
The grass is always greener on the other side. She remembered reading that somewhere in one of the many, many books in the royal library. She hadn't understood it at the time, but now she did. The grass wasn't exactly the green stuff upon which humans trampled. She snorted in derision, remembering how she'd once thought the two leggers to be so graceful and now, knowing from experience, that they were anything but. Why, she'd had her human feet stepped on more times than she could count, and she'd never once had her tail trod on by accident!
Life on the surface wasn't graceful. It was rude and noisy, painful and bothersome, with duties that never ceased and a Prince who wanted to sit on his fleshy, human behind and be waited upon. He had servants for that, but yet, more often than not, it was for Ariel whom he called. He expected her to rub his feet, fluff his pillows, and do truly disgusting things in bed. He liked to have her wait on him, even while he had a whole palace of servants to do the things he asked of her. She knew it wasn't right, but she wouldn't have cared if every courtier in the palace went to her husband's bed, as long as she never had to look at him naked again!
Even now, in the brisk warmth of daylight, she shuddered at the mere thought. The grass was always greener on the other side until you got there and you realized that what you had had in the beginning was far better than anything that would come after. Ariel sighed yet again as she mused over how backward it all was. Human girls wanted to be mermaids -- hundreds had asked her, with proverbial stars in their big eyes, what it was like --, but she had been the only mermaid to want to be a human.
She had been a fool. She wishes now, with all her heart, that her father hadn't let her go. There have been times, over the years, that she's thought he didn't truly love her and that was why he released her to this gruelsome surface world, but she's wise enough now, having had a daughter of her own, to know he actually sacrificed her for love. She would never have stopped asking to be with Eric, never have stopped begging to be human, not even when he'd made her understand, point blank, that doing so would mean giving up her entire family, including him.
She closes her blue eyes against her tears that rise like the surf now crashing against her rock. She remembers all of them as vividly as if she'd just been with them yesterday. Her sisters might have teased her mercilessly, but the friends she'd had had been truer and more loyal than any human being will ever be. Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle had loved her so greatly that they would have done anything for her, but her father had loved her even more. He had made the greatest sacrifice in hopes that she would somehow find happiness in a world he'd known she didn't belong, but his fears had been right. She'll never be happy here.
She belongs in the water. She belongs splashing underwater with her own tail. She belongs swimming through the crystal blue lagoons of her homeland. She belongs dancing with fish and chattering with gulls. She belongs with her friends, with her family. She belongs with him.
Ariel gasps, her eyes flutter open. Through her tears, in the far off distance, she sees a silhouette towering above the shoreline, and she knows. She knows, though she can not see him for the gathering shadows of the evening, that her father is still looking over her. He still loves her.
She wants, with all her heart, to cry out to him. She wants to beg him to lift this curse, to take her home with him, to give her back all that she never appreciated until it was too late. She wants to feel his arms wrap around her again in a hug. She wants to hear him call her his little girl. She wants to hear him tell her how much he loves her.
Tears flow down Ariel's cheeks as she stands on legs that wobble again for a moment. There's not a single bit of her that wants to go to the palace to which she knows she must return. Everything in her, every single fiber, is screaming to go home, to dive into that water and keep swimming, keep swimming until her lungs burn and her human body gives out and her father at last has to give her back her mermaid form or watch her die. She wants to be back with him, to be back amongst all those who truly love her.
But she can't. A promise is a promise. He made her promise she wouldn't return. He made her vow, thinking, she's sure now, that she wouldn't do it, that she would never ask for her tail back again or her life as a Princess of Atlantica and his daughter, in order to be with the human she claimed to love, but whom he knew she didn't. She'd seen the sorrow and horror in his eyes when she'd accepted his terms. He hadn't wanted to do it, but he had given her his word.
And she gave him hers. She covers her mouth to keep her sobs from echoing out over the ocean to him now and runs back to the palace and the humans waiting there to hide once more amongst a people with whom she will never belong. She doesn't know that her cries are still heard all throughout the ocean. She doesn't know that Flounder, Scuttle, and little Sebastian all cry when they hear her sobs, or that even her father, wise, noble, and strong as he is, sobs along with her.
She doesn't know she left him hovering there in the ocean, one hand held out to her, the other gripping his glowing trident, and every fiber of his being hoping, aching, and wishing that his little girl would just ask to come home again. King Triton has never broken a promise, but for his daughter, he would. For his daughter, he would do anything, even watch her grow gray and old and die, still a human, still grieving for their world and family that should still and will always be hers, too, all because she wouldn't break her promise to him.
The End, rated PG-13/T
Disney's Mickey Mouse in
He walks through his kingdom alone, knowing he's welcomed everywhere but not stopping anywhere. Every one likes to see him. Every one wants to see him and be his friend, but no one can understand. No one knows what it's like to be a King of his stature, not the Princes who rule their little segments of his grand kingdom or even Triton, who rules the entire ocean.
No one else knows what it's like to put on a smile and a dance not only for the people who come to gawk at him every day, to laugh and point and giggle like crazed hyenas, but for every one around him, even those closest to him. Not a single being in all of his kingdom truly understands him. He acts a role for every one of them, even those closest to him, Minnie and Donald, who think they know him better than any one else.
He sighs and continues to move through the crowd of beings rushing to ride rides and adventure while his kingdom is closed to outsiders. It won't be long now, and the gates will open again to another crowd of a million or so. Every day, it's the same; every night, too. He's always acting a part, playing a role, fulfilling somebody else's wish.
When will his own wish be granted? Mickey wonders, his ears and tail lowering further and his white-gloved hands shoving deep into the pockets of his little, red shorts. When will he be able to do what he wants? When will he be free from all his roles? When will he die?
He sighs and ducks swiftly behind Hades, Gaston, and Shan Yu as he hears Minnie calling for him. She's always calling for him. She, Donald, Goofy, at least a half dozen others in their kingdom, and the whole world of their fans are constantly screaming his name. There's never even a second that he has that some one somewhere doesn't want him. Even now, he's supposed to be popping over to China to please his Oriental fans at Tokyo Disney, but he just doesn't have it in him tonight.
Oh, he could go. He could go to any one of his hundreds of teleporters and allow them to whisk him away into his land over seas. He could act the role again a thousand times over. He could smile and laugh and please his friends and fans, and no one would ever be the wiser. But Mickey doesn't have the spirit for it tonight. He's too tired, too weary, too exhausted of doing the right thing, too pleading to be allowed to just merely close his eyes and never have to open them again.
He knows he's not being fair, but then what is fair? He never asked for any of this. He never asked to lead multiple worlds and dimensions, to spend his entire life pleasing others. He only went to one man with one simple request: free the beings of the kingdom in which he was in. They schemed together to bring them into this world, but what was never said, the warning Mickey never received, was that he would lead them even after they left their own dying world and the pen and paper of Walt Disney.
He never knew what would happen, only that the beings of his world would live after their dimension died. He'd seen no other choice, and he fears, even now, that he would have done the same had he known. But he's tired of playing the part every one expects of him. He's brought magic to them all; now, he only wants his piece of it.
"Mickey?" The voice calling him now, as he enters the Haunted Mansion, is the only one from whom he'll never hide. "Mickey, are you okay?"
He sighs, his entire being drooping. "Yes." It's not a complete lie -- he is okay as far as he'll ever be okay again. He is as okay as can be with the weight of not just one world but many upon his tiny, black shoulders. He is as okay as he can be without ever dying. "Walt," he squeaks, "it's not fair. You should have penned my death before you died!"
Walt's hand touches him. In this midnight hour is the only time that they can physically feel each other, though they sense one another constantly, even when they can not see each other. "I know," his friend tells him sadly and rubs his little shoulders. "I know."
He should have penned his death, but he didn't. Now Mickey will live forever without him and without the most fundamental rights of any being. He'll never be free. He'll never be his own mouse, and there's nothing Walt can do except say, "I'm sorry," and hold him in this Witching hour as he cries.
The End, rated PG/K+
DC Comics' Batfamily in
They were no strangers to death. They had each been visited by it at different times in their lives, afterwards, and in the in between moments. They had lost parents, siblings, teachers, and friends. They had felt the final breath go out of an enemy while their hands yet lingered upon their bodies. They had all died at least once only to come back to more suffering.
They should not be surprised by this moment. All of them had to have known, deep down, that it would come, but yet now that they were facing the actual grave, the inevitable seemed impossible. All of them wanted to cry at their impending loss. Even the bravest amongst them wanted to wail of how unfair this death was. None wanted to admit just how vulnerable losing this old friend would leave them.
Dick placed a comforting hand on Tim's shoulder. Jason paced nervously, wringing his hands with his need to pummel some one or thing. Alfred hovered, a silent sentry ready to defend and console but knowing, at this time, how to do neither. It was Bruce, as always, who finally broke the silence. "Well?" he persisted, leaning over Barbara's shoulder.
She tried again, then slammed her fist down with her frustration and wheeled away from her worktable. She shook her red head. "I'm sorry, Bruce. There's nothing I can do. The Batcomputer's dead." The bats suddenly flew, screaming, throughout the cave and echoing the sentiments of all who lived there.
The End, rated G/K
Xena's Xena/Gabrielle in
"How'd you do it?" a listener to her stories asks, and Gabrielle knows what question is coming. Yet again, they wonder from whence her courage to stand with Xena comes. They can't imagine a life like theirs, going from battle to battle with too often barely a stop in betweenst.
"Because I had Xena with me," is the answer she always gives, but Gabby knows the truth. Standing with Xena isn't the hard part. Keeping to her love's side, instead of running, doesn't really take that much courage. She can do anything as long as she has Xena with her. It's the thought of ever having to live without her that's impossible.
The End, rated G/K