Insomnia -- PG-13 Challenge #127
Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:38 pm
Title: Insomnia
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, never have been.
A/N: This month's challenge is to write a story titled "Insomnia", incorporating the words: wire, uniform and heat. It can be any length, any style, any genre, as long as it's set within the Moonlight universe.
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Insomnia
The rhythm of his being altered the moment her tiny fingers fluttered against his. At the time he hadn’t fully understood the significance of the humid little hand pressed against his; the simple trust in her cool, blue eyes an incoming tide, a warmth that surged against the walls of his defences in an irresistible advance, a gentle wave that swelled into each tiny crevice of his implacable interior and filled it with the siren call of an emotion he hadn’t experienced since he’d been human - a sense of belonging.
He’d assumed that the vampirism had eradicated his ability to form the tensile wires that shaped a union between two people, had mourned it with Irish whiskey swigged straight from the bottle while he fed photos of his family one by one into the flames. Too late he’d realised that the passion he felt for Coraline was a trap, their heat a terrible enchantment leaving nothing in its wake but the sour aftertaste of despair and other people’s deaths. Hell isn’t sulphur and brimstone, it is loving your executioner. He’d believed he’d been lost to the pit forever.
The pain the alterations her acceptance had made in him didn’t become apparent until later, the isolation in his eyrie abrading him, the ache of his aloneness doubling him over with grief. He sobbed out loud for the loss of his mother and for the tousle-haired children he would never catch to his chest in infinite gratitude. How weak to sink as low as this! His fist clenched in defiance. He was strong, he was invincible, he was Death Incarnate!
He was beaten, he was vulnerable, he was afraid of living. If only he could he go back to his detachment, to his compassion for humanity as a principle. But the tide once turned wouldn’t be stopped. His soul had awoken and it was human. It was human.
He visited her that night and every night for a thousand moonlit evenings, crouched beside by her bedside, rigid with terror in the silence between each exhalation and softly indrawn breath. That she survived despite his nightly vigilance didn’t comfort him, only drove the anxiety higher. Who better than he to know what dangers lurked within the daylight? Perhaps she was a cruel, cosmic joke, the universe producing her only to snatch her away again, to give him hope only it to crush it dead. Her loss would be no less punishment than he deserved, a justice to all those whose lives he’d taken.
He couldn’t bear the thought of her little girl laughter stilled, his life returned to its uniform self-loathing. Nightly vigils bled into bleary-eyed oblivion as the sun dipped toward the indigo and began again each moonrise. Wakeful weeks became sleepless months and those months grew into years.
He still watched her now, his lips against her brow and the changes roll through like thunder, no less terrifying than before. But it is his own heart that beats within her body now, his own soul captured in the rhythm of her breath. She is his life, his very existence. He is no longer alone, no longer all alone and only now can he comprehend the meaning that humid little hand had pressed into his so very long ago. No humanity is contained within the Cure. It is in the crumbling walls of his defences, the expression on her face each sunrise and the tenderness of her midnight touch.
In the rising tide of her cool, blue eyes, he is as whole and pure as any man.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, never have been.
A/N: This month's challenge is to write a story titled "Insomnia", incorporating the words: wire, uniform and heat. It can be any length, any style, any genre, as long as it's set within the Moonlight universe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Insomnia
The rhythm of his being altered the moment her tiny fingers fluttered against his. At the time he hadn’t fully understood the significance of the humid little hand pressed against his; the simple trust in her cool, blue eyes an incoming tide, a warmth that surged against the walls of his defences in an irresistible advance, a gentle wave that swelled into each tiny crevice of his implacable interior and filled it with the siren call of an emotion he hadn’t experienced since he’d been human - a sense of belonging.
He’d assumed that the vampirism had eradicated his ability to form the tensile wires that shaped a union between two people, had mourned it with Irish whiskey swigged straight from the bottle while he fed photos of his family one by one into the flames. Too late he’d realised that the passion he felt for Coraline was a trap, their heat a terrible enchantment leaving nothing in its wake but the sour aftertaste of despair and other people’s deaths. Hell isn’t sulphur and brimstone, it is loving your executioner. He’d believed he’d been lost to the pit forever.
The pain the alterations her acceptance had made in him didn’t become apparent until later, the isolation in his eyrie abrading him, the ache of his aloneness doubling him over with grief. He sobbed out loud for the loss of his mother and for the tousle-haired children he would never catch to his chest in infinite gratitude. How weak to sink as low as this! His fist clenched in defiance. He was strong, he was invincible, he was Death Incarnate!
He was beaten, he was vulnerable, he was afraid of living. If only he could he go back to his detachment, to his compassion for humanity as a principle. But the tide once turned wouldn’t be stopped. His soul had awoken and it was human. It was human.
He visited her that night and every night for a thousand moonlit evenings, crouched beside by her bedside, rigid with terror in the silence between each exhalation and softly indrawn breath. That she survived despite his nightly vigilance didn’t comfort him, only drove the anxiety higher. Who better than he to know what dangers lurked within the daylight? Perhaps she was a cruel, cosmic joke, the universe producing her only to snatch her away again, to give him hope only it to crush it dead. Her loss would be no less punishment than he deserved, a justice to all those whose lives he’d taken.
He couldn’t bear the thought of her little girl laughter stilled, his life returned to its uniform self-loathing. Nightly vigils bled into bleary-eyed oblivion as the sun dipped toward the indigo and began again each moonrise. Wakeful weeks became sleepless months and those months grew into years.
He still watched her now, his lips against her brow and the changes roll through like thunder, no less terrifying than before. But it is his own heart that beats within her body now, his own soul captured in the rhythm of her breath. She is his life, his very existence. He is no longer alone, no longer all alone and only now can he comprehend the meaning that humid little hand had pressed into his so very long ago. No humanity is contained within the Cure. It is in the crumbling walls of his defences, the expression on her face each sunrise and the tenderness of her midnight touch.
In the rising tide of her cool, blue eyes, he is as whole and pure as any man.
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And you chose some of the lines I liked best of all in this too! 
