FICLET: Soldier's Wife (PG-13)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serai.
A surprise fic, inspired by the day and the posts I've seen about it. Dang, sometimes they just jump out of nowhere.
Soldier's Wife
by Serai
Notes: For Veteran's Day.
Soldier’s Wife
by Serai
Some nights she goes out and looks at the stars, staring up into the depths until she’s dizzy, losing herself in the brilliant spill of light, wrapped in it as if in place of his arms.. Some nights she can’t look at them at all, and they are her enemies, have torn his arms away from her.
She doesn’t dare admit what she knows is true, hidden deep down where she can’t look at it: that her happy independence is gone, replaced by a vague feverish darkness running underneath everything. There’s nothing in her life that isn’t sown now with a thread of dread and worry, even if it’s only one thread in a tapestry. She is never completely content, every accomplishment not enough, every triumph scarred by his absence.
Her job at the agricultural campus was once a joy of life and growth, developing ways to feed and sustain, nourish and heal. Now deep within among all the green grows a tiny seed of panic. Where once she felt satisfaction at every new strain sent off, every report of success, now she mourns darkly over each plant that dies. Any withered stalk or failed attempt turns her bones to water, and she sees images she pushes away in desperation: implosions, burns, fire. The wisp of energy left by a phaser’s bolt. Death.
She tries to fill her days because she knows it’s what he wants. His messages come through fitfully, sometimes frequent and sometimes rare, his deep quiet voice filling her with calm, if only for those few minutes. His words about the mission and what’s happened since he last sent are brief. Mostly the messages are about the two of them, the world they inhabit when they’re together, what they will do when he next comes home. Every now and then a special message comes through, audio only, locked and protected against prying ears at Starfleet. These she plays late at night when she’s alone.
She tries to avoid the comm channels, but sometimes she can’t help sifting through the programs, looking for stories or reports. Mostly the news is good: tensions averted, treaties signed, peace kept. He is a star among the stars, well-known and universally praised, his prudence and steadiness admired even by those who’d lost to it. She remembers the reception on Rigel VII, and sometimes she looks at the dress he’d had made for her to wear to the occasion. How they’d all stared as she entered the room, all the dignitaries and officers. The flame of pride and heat in his eyes as she walked towards him, the press of his hand, and his lips on her forehead a promise: I’m yours.
But now and then, word comes that grips her heart with cold, and she’s reminded that subspace is a slow medium, and every message is days and sometimes weeks old. Vega V, Betelgeuse, the Spider Nebula…Delore 17. She shies away from that memory, though sometimes it comes back to her in dreams. His face when he’d walked in the door, his flight bag dropping to the floor from nerveless fingers, his jaw stony and eyes lost. He hadn’t heard when she called his name, and it took a long minute before his arms returned her embrace. Then he’d taken her face in his hands and his eyes burned as he looked at her, whispering two words that froze her blood – “You’re alive” - the last words he’d uttered for three days. In the daylight he was quiet and withdrawn, at night frantic, making love to her as if trying to burrow into her body and never come out again. The whole crew had been given two months’ leave, and not once during that time did he speak of what had happened. He’d wake in the night gasping or weeping, once with a scream, and clutch at her with the strength of a drowning man. She held him in silence and took the waves of darkness into herself, never pressing him to speak. But he was blessed with a strong mind and a sound soul, and it wasn’t until after he’d gone again with a reassuring smile that she’d contacted the admiralty. It took days of pleading and threats before the file was unlocked and she found out the details that no one else knew. She sat in that office and cried for an hour after she’d finished reading. The nightmares had lasted for weeks.
At an art gallery years ago, she saw an old 2-D image printed on chemically-treated wood paper, what they’d once called a “photograph.” Monochrome, its golden brown tones softly faded, it was titled Soldier’s Wife. In it a woman sat at the edge of a bed, clutching a sheet of paper in one hand. She was dressed simply in a plain, unflattering smock, her hair tied up in a bun, and the sunlight from the window behind her caught the hairs straying from the tight coil. Her face was turned half away so neither her age nor her expression were clearly visible, and on the paper in her hand could just be seen what looked like an official seal of some kind. It was a strange, enigmatic image, pregnant with unnamed implications. She’d been puzzled by it at first, for years not knowing how to interpret its calm, steady gaze at such a private moment.
But now when she thinks back on that image, on that unknown woman sitting alone in her dark bedroom, turned to gaze out at the light of the world, she knows with a fearful certainty what it meant, what was written on that page held so tight in the woman’s hand. And she knows in her heart the terror and the awful void, the loneliness of the soldier’s wife.
A surprise fic, inspired by the day and the posts I've seen about it. Dang, sometimes they just jump out of nowhere.
Soldier's Wife
by Serai
Notes: For Veteran's Day.
Soldier’s Wife
by Serai
Some nights she goes out and looks at the stars, staring up into the depths until she’s dizzy, losing herself in the brilliant spill of light, wrapped in it as if in place of his arms.. Some nights she can’t look at them at all, and they are her enemies, have torn his arms away from her.
She doesn’t dare admit what she knows is true, hidden deep down where she can’t look at it: that her happy independence is gone, replaced by a vague feverish darkness running underneath everything. There’s nothing in her life that isn’t sown now with a thread of dread and worry, even if it’s only one thread in a tapestry. She is never completely content, every accomplishment not enough, every triumph scarred by his absence.
Her job at the agricultural campus was once a joy of life and growth, developing ways to feed and sustain, nourish and heal. Now deep within among all the green grows a tiny seed of panic. Where once she felt satisfaction at every new strain sent off, every report of success, now she mourns darkly over each plant that dies. Any withered stalk or failed attempt turns her bones to water, and she sees images she pushes away in desperation: implosions, burns, fire. The wisp of energy left by a phaser’s bolt. Death.
She tries to fill her days because she knows it’s what he wants. His messages come through fitfully, sometimes frequent and sometimes rare, his deep quiet voice filling her with calm, if only for those few minutes. His words about the mission and what’s happened since he last sent are brief. Mostly the messages are about the two of them, the world they inhabit when they’re together, what they will do when he next comes home. Every now and then a special message comes through, audio only, locked and protected against prying ears at Starfleet. These she plays late at night when she’s alone.
She tries to avoid the comm channels, but sometimes she can’t help sifting through the programs, looking for stories or reports. Mostly the news is good: tensions averted, treaties signed, peace kept. He is a star among the stars, well-known and universally praised, his prudence and steadiness admired even by those who’d lost to it. She remembers the reception on Rigel VII, and sometimes she looks at the dress he’d had made for her to wear to the occasion. How they’d all stared as she entered the room, all the dignitaries and officers. The flame of pride and heat in his eyes as she walked towards him, the press of his hand, and his lips on her forehead a promise: I’m yours.
But now and then, word comes that grips her heart with cold, and she’s reminded that subspace is a slow medium, and every message is days and sometimes weeks old. Vega V, Betelgeuse, the Spider Nebula…Delore 17. She shies away from that memory, though sometimes it comes back to her in dreams. His face when he’d walked in the door, his flight bag dropping to the floor from nerveless fingers, his jaw stony and eyes lost. He hadn’t heard when she called his name, and it took a long minute before his arms returned her embrace. Then he’d taken her face in his hands and his eyes burned as he looked at her, whispering two words that froze her blood – “You’re alive” - the last words he’d uttered for three days. In the daylight he was quiet and withdrawn, at night frantic, making love to her as if trying to burrow into her body and never come out again. The whole crew had been given two months’ leave, and not once during that time did he speak of what had happened. He’d wake in the night gasping or weeping, once with a scream, and clutch at her with the strength of a drowning man. She held him in silence and took the waves of darkness into herself, never pressing him to speak. But he was blessed with a strong mind and a sound soul, and it wasn’t until after he’d gone again with a reassuring smile that she’d contacted the admiralty. It took days of pleading and threats before the file was unlocked and she found out the details that no one else knew. She sat in that office and cried for an hour after she’d finished reading. The nightmares had lasted for weeks.
At an art gallery years ago, she saw an old 2-D image printed on chemically-treated wood paper, what they’d once called a “photograph.” Monochrome, its golden brown tones softly faded, it was titled Soldier’s Wife. In it a woman sat at the edge of a bed, clutching a sheet of paper in one hand. She was dressed simply in a plain, unflattering smock, her hair tied up in a bun, and the sunlight from the window behind her caught the hairs straying from the tight coil. Her face was turned half away so neither her age nor her expression were clearly visible, and on the paper in her hand could just be seen what looked like an official seal of some kind. It was a strange, enigmatic image, pregnant with unnamed implications. She’d been puzzled by it at first, for years not knowing how to interpret its calm, steady gaze at such a private moment.
But now when she thinks back on that image, on that unknown woman sitting alone in her dark bedroom, turned to gaze out at the light of the world, she knows with a fearful certainty what it meant, what was written on that page held so tight in the woman’s hand. And she knows in her heart the terror and the awful void, the loneliness of the soldier’s wife.
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