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indy_go.
You, dear, were delightfully inspecific. So. Um. We'll see where this ends up, hey. XD
A slightly belated Happy Birthday to you, with sprinklings of Merry Christmas wishes, too.
When You Are Old
It depends how you measure these things.
-
There was a thread of white in Bernard's hair that made her carefully hide her laughter. Not from him; never from him, because he knows her expressions well enough that the face doesn't much matter any more. He threw her over his shoulder and ignored her hicupping giggles and made sure to prove to her, very thoroughly, that 'old' was relative, and you're only as old as you feel, and multiples is the only way to count.
Anthony, answering the door and the query after his parents' whereabouts in one, wasn't old enough for tact; Aziraphael turned a quite extraordinary shade of pink and carefully explained that some things aren't things that should be shared with everyone, my dear.
Crowley was crowing for weeks that it was the angel that taught him to lie.
-
There was an entire shelf for photo albums. Too many photographers in the bar for there not to be, but it was a measurement of time, too.
It's strange how alike they look when tiny. Until the photos move.
Only Sunny's pictures don't start from the beginning but there's carefully taped Art. And a picture, carefully clipped from a newspaper, that had taken almost three years to track down.
Demons are persistent.
It's strange - the newspaper clipping is labelled carefully with a pen that leaked, first names and last names (except no one would really call a child Sunny) and they look like a family only... Two pages later on. Brightly coloured crayons and three scribbles that lack definition but somehow manage hands to hold. Yellow, pink, and red. And underneath, laboriously scrawled, barely legible: "My Family."
-
Bernard never thought it'd happen. It was one of those things that was for other people because you're going to live forever. Knowing it's going to happen is different from the moment, the one single defining moment that marks where you stopped being young. The moment at which you make a conscious decision to let go of everything that could have been, and choose to accept everything that is.
It washed over him. The knowledge that this was it. That his actions in this single moment would define the rest of his life, define how he thought about himself, define who he was.
A pause.
And he said it, anyway.
"You are not going out dressed like that, young lady."
Your argument, he's found, is seriously undermined when you can't stop grinning.
-
Sunny's eldest was almost called Chlamydia. That's what you get when you get the proud grandfather celebtrating with his best friend and a few bottles of tequila, and a long and moving speech on how words shouldn't be discriminated against just because of meanings, aesthetics were everything and he'd always liked the sound of it, dammit.
At least this time no one got married.
Aziraphael was as endearingly incompetent with the child as ever, looking hugely uncomfortable until she was settled in her mother's arms. Tonks carefully brushed sweat-darkened blonde hair away from her daughter's head and kissed her gently.
"I think," Sunny eventually managed, "I'll call her Nymphadora."
Crowley nearly broke something, laughing at the expression on 'Dora's face; somewhere between flattered, gobsmacked, and utterly horrified.
Susan, it was decided eventually, would be a safe enough name.
Susan Julia Fruitnugget.
Aziraphael didn't quite manage to get out of Crowley whether or not that would be on this one's birth certificate, and worried about it for weeks.
-
It wasn't all that long, between them.
They hadn't expected it to be because it was like he'd lost a part of himself, like he wasn't quite sure he remembered how to exist without her.
He sought out the angel, more. Fair head bent toward iron grey, and when Ted smiled - even though it wasn't nearly what it had been - Tonks squeezed Bernard's hand with a quirk of her lips and went to tend to Jake, or Charlotte, or whichever small crisis was a part of today's family life, carefully wiping her eyes.
It was something she'd never grown out of. Aziraphael collected handkerchiefs.
He waited. Maybe he didn't want to ruin Star Wars for her. Maybe he couldn't miss the ending. She went to the kitchen, as the credits rolled, to fetch a cup of tea, and that was it. It wasn't unexpected, of course it wasn't unexpected and she'd known the angel long enough to know that he'd be happier and he'd be with mum but not quite long enough to stop herself hating him for the quiet Latin in the living room.
She stayed precisely where she was, and didn't move, and barely breathed until Bernard came out to join her. Because a handkerchief wasn't enough for this, a Tonks pocket wasn't enough; she needed a black woolen jumper and her husband's shoulder and the faint scent of whiskey and gunpowder that was a reminder why she needed to keep breathing.
She managed to forgive Aziraphael, once she saw how tightly he was holding onto Crowley's hand.
-
Crowley'd never given in on the stair lift.
Aziraphael had one arm carefully supporting 'Dora's back, his other hooked underneath her knees, her white head resting against his shoulder as she gently teased him about wearing the same jacket for as long as she'd known him, and he countered with something about her face, something that made her lift her head enough to send a smile over the angel's shoulder.
It still made Bernard's stomach clench, a little.
"You want a fireman's lift, granddad?"
Same smirk, under the same damned glasses, and Bernard grinned.
Same grin.
"You want a walking stick up your ass?"
"Really, my dear."
You didn't have to see the angel's face to know he was smiling. That was what this long a friendship did for you.
There were two deckchairs on the flat roof and a parasol. No one knew where, precisely, Aziraphael had found one with such a jaunty pattern of ducks, but he was allowed to keep it. Only, Crowley said, because no one could see. They were a permanent installation, now, Aziraphael excusing the minor miracles that protected them from weather with a wince and a careful allusion to how much trouble it had taken Crowley to get them standing in the first place.
Aziraphael went down, as soon as 'Dora was settled, to put together a tea tray. Crowley followed him, after a couple of minutes, because that was just what he did. And she smiled up at the blue summer sky and Bernard couldn't help but reflect it.
"You still love me, don't you? Even though I'm old and ugly?"
Her voice was gently teasing and he made a show of thinking about it until her cushion smacked him in the face. Less strength than there had been once, but her aim was still perfect.
"You'll always," he managed, once he'd stopped laughing, "be beautiful to me."
"Still old, though."
And he leaned over, and took her hand, and grinned the way he always had.
"It depends," he told her, "how you measure these things."
indy_go.You, dear, were delightfully inspecific. So. Um. We'll see where this ends up, hey. XD
A slightly belated Happy Birthday to you, with sprinklings of Merry Christmas wishes, too.
When You Are Old
It depends how you measure these things.
-
There was a thread of white in Bernard's hair that made her carefully hide her laughter. Not from him; never from him, because he knows her expressions well enough that the face doesn't much matter any more. He threw her over his shoulder and ignored her hicupping giggles and made sure to prove to her, very thoroughly, that 'old' was relative, and you're only as old as you feel, and multiples is the only way to count.
Anthony, answering the door and the query after his parents' whereabouts in one, wasn't old enough for tact; Aziraphael turned a quite extraordinary shade of pink and carefully explained that some things aren't things that should be shared with everyone, my dear.
Crowley was crowing for weeks that it was the angel that taught him to lie.
-
There was an entire shelf for photo albums. Too many photographers in the bar for there not to be, but it was a measurement of time, too.
It's strange how alike they look when tiny. Until the photos move.
Only Sunny's pictures don't start from the beginning but there's carefully taped Art. And a picture, carefully clipped from a newspaper, that had taken almost three years to track down.
Demons are persistent.
It's strange - the newspaper clipping is labelled carefully with a pen that leaked, first names and last names (except no one would really call a child Sunny) and they look like a family only... Two pages later on. Brightly coloured crayons and three scribbles that lack definition but somehow manage hands to hold. Yellow, pink, and red. And underneath, laboriously scrawled, barely legible: "My Family."
-
Bernard never thought it'd happen. It was one of those things that was for other people because you're going to live forever. Knowing it's going to happen is different from the moment, the one single defining moment that marks where you stopped being young. The moment at which you make a conscious decision to let go of everything that could have been, and choose to accept everything that is.
It washed over him. The knowledge that this was it. That his actions in this single moment would define the rest of his life, define how he thought about himself, define who he was.
A pause.
And he said it, anyway.
"You are not going out dressed like that, young lady."
Your argument, he's found, is seriously undermined when you can't stop grinning.
-
Sunny's eldest was almost called Chlamydia. That's what you get when you get the proud grandfather celebtrating with his best friend and a few bottles of tequila, and a long and moving speech on how words shouldn't be discriminated against just because of meanings, aesthetics were everything and he'd always liked the sound of it, dammit.
At least this time no one got married.
Aziraphael was as endearingly incompetent with the child as ever, looking hugely uncomfortable until she was settled in her mother's arms. Tonks carefully brushed sweat-darkened blonde hair away from her daughter's head and kissed her gently.
"I think," Sunny eventually managed, "I'll call her Nymphadora."
Crowley nearly broke something, laughing at the expression on 'Dora's face; somewhere between flattered, gobsmacked, and utterly horrified.
Susan, it was decided eventually, would be a safe enough name.
Susan Julia Fruitnugget.
Aziraphael didn't quite manage to get out of Crowley whether or not that would be on this one's birth certificate, and worried about it for weeks.
-
It wasn't all that long, between them.
They hadn't expected it to be because it was like he'd lost a part of himself, like he wasn't quite sure he remembered how to exist without her.
He sought out the angel, more. Fair head bent toward iron grey, and when Ted smiled - even though it wasn't nearly what it had been - Tonks squeezed Bernard's hand with a quirk of her lips and went to tend to Jake, or Charlotte, or whichever small crisis was a part of today's family life, carefully wiping her eyes.
It was something she'd never grown out of. Aziraphael collected handkerchiefs.
He waited. Maybe he didn't want to ruin Star Wars for her. Maybe he couldn't miss the ending. She went to the kitchen, as the credits rolled, to fetch a cup of tea, and that was it. It wasn't unexpected, of course it wasn't unexpected and she'd known the angel long enough to know that he'd be happier and he'd be with mum but not quite long enough to stop herself hating him for the quiet Latin in the living room.
She stayed precisely where she was, and didn't move, and barely breathed until Bernard came out to join her. Because a handkerchief wasn't enough for this, a Tonks pocket wasn't enough; she needed a black woolen jumper and her husband's shoulder and the faint scent of whiskey and gunpowder that was a reminder why she needed to keep breathing.
She managed to forgive Aziraphael, once she saw how tightly he was holding onto Crowley's hand.
-
Crowley'd never given in on the stair lift.
Aziraphael had one arm carefully supporting 'Dora's back, his other hooked underneath her knees, her white head resting against his shoulder as she gently teased him about wearing the same jacket for as long as she'd known him, and he countered with something about her face, something that made her lift her head enough to send a smile over the angel's shoulder.
It still made Bernard's stomach clench, a little.
"You want a fireman's lift, granddad?"
Same smirk, under the same damned glasses, and Bernard grinned.
Same grin.
"You want a walking stick up your ass?"
"Really, my dear."
You didn't have to see the angel's face to know he was smiling. That was what this long a friendship did for you.
There were two deckchairs on the flat roof and a parasol. No one knew where, precisely, Aziraphael had found one with such a jaunty pattern of ducks, but he was allowed to keep it. Only, Crowley said, because no one could see. They were a permanent installation, now, Aziraphael excusing the minor miracles that protected them from weather with a wince and a careful allusion to how much trouble it had taken Crowley to get them standing in the first place.
Aziraphael went down, as soon as 'Dora was settled, to put together a tea tray. Crowley followed him, after a couple of minutes, because that was just what he did. And she smiled up at the blue summer sky and Bernard couldn't help but reflect it.
"You still love me, don't you? Even though I'm old and ugly?"
Her voice was gently teasing and he made a show of thinking about it until her cushion smacked him in the face. Less strength than there had been once, but her aim was still perfect.
"You'll always," he managed, once he'd stopped laughing, "be beautiful to me."
"Still old, though."
And he leaned over, and took her hand, and grinned the way he always had.
"It depends," he told her, "how you measure these things."
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 12:33 pm (UTC)I know I betaed and so you know what I think, but I just have to say.
Them growing old together puts a queer ache in my heart. It's beautiful, and you write it so beautifully.
Thank you, even though it's not for me. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 01:01 pm (UTC)I just cried.
I second Josie - it hurts, kind of, but in a good way.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 01:13 pm (UTC)And thirded, it hurts to read, but in a comforting sort of way.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:34 am (UTC)Thanks ever so, dear. It was kind of painful to write, as well, and I would absolutely not advise reading accompanied with Edward Scissorhands music, 'cos ow, but sometimes a little gratuitous weepy is necessary.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 02:45 pm (UTC)What a lovely thing.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 06:02 pm (UTC)Awwwwwwwww. Am sad now, but in a good way. This I can see all too clearly. It makes me glad that I haven't yet missed what's coming, if that makes any sense at all. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 06:22 pm (UTC)That is beautiful. Beautiful and aching and wistful and celebrating, and right.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 09:01 pm (UTC)I just had to try really hard not to cry, as I'm in a hotel room with my parents.
I just.
The parent-part, I think, was almost the hardest to read -- but so beautiful and so subtle and so very much yes, Nny.
And the end. Oh God. So bittersweet but really really right. You know? As it should be.
There are no words large enough to thank you for this, hon. Just. *hugs tight*
Thank you.