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Apr. 27th, 2006 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moogingAaand...more fic! This is the Rita gen for the Rita gen challenge over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ritaskeeter_ and so it'll be posted over there as well...sorry if you see this twice!
Title: Sunlight and Definition
Rating: PG - Low PG13? Not higher, maybe a smush of the two.
Disclamer: Rita and all the other Harry Potter things are JKR's. *sigh*
Word Count: 1995
Summary: "She tries not to think about the war now."
A/N: I quite like this piece! Um, comments are still fabulous...and there's no blood (Fran, I am looking at you.).
She tries not to think about the war now. It's not that she wants to forget, more that she wants to forgive it, forgive the years of anxiety and repression and fear, forgive herself for giving into all the emotions she never wanted to associate with.
She watched the world around her fall into a state of autonomy, following orders wither light or dark. She saw the expressions on people's faces turn from their usual mix of feelings to that same pinched, haunted, tense look worn by everyone towards the end; the same set to the jaw, the same thin lips, the ducked head and those darting, fearful eyes. They were mice, scurrying into crannies to escape the cat's paw. The only difference was that the blows came in a haze of confusion, striking here and there and no-one could see them coming. There was no honesty, people either lying for profit, by order or from being afraid of the truth and what it could mean. There was no truth. Rita thrived.
She was only a bee in the hive of the war, enclosed and restricted and meant to serve but she was in her element. With so much disarray, everyone wanted to know anything, groping for something to rely on, to rally against, to trust. Opinions flickered as quickly as the wings of a butterfly and people fell in and out of favour. Owls couldn't be trusted, word of mouth was dangerous and even the newspapers were looked over by those in control. Only there wasn't any control. not really, and the staff that ran stories wanted more to be with their families than to work, everyone did, and deadlines had to be kept to. Rita was enthralled.
Of course there were eyes on what the papers ran, of course everyone tried to avoid the taboos, but Rita had never been one to stay in line. She likened the situation to one in her sixth year at Hogwarts. Ever the gossip even then, she had spread some rumour about some Ravenclaw, nameless now so many years on and Rita never did find out if he had been killed in the war. She had found herself trapped in a classroom with that same person. He had scowled his displeasure, advancing on Rita and her heart thundered, excitement and doubt and giddy panic pumping round her body with her blood. The Ravenclaw started their tirade, the usual disjointed mix of 'how dare you's and 'it's not true, not any of it's and 'I'll make you life miserable's, and Rita had kissed the boy, mouth on mouth, melding herself to him. It had worked; he forgot to be angry and after that, he couldn't complain about her.
And so it was then, in the days of the war. Rita used her sexuality, her wit and her femininity to survive and to quell those that rose against her. She knew it was risky but so was everything and nothing made enough sense to make her care. She remembers being in a small room, dusty, with the shutters down and the dust dancing in the sunlight that was streaming through the wooden slats looking for all the world like unreal snow. She wrote on a typewriter, preferred the clarity of the noise made by the keys and the knowledge that if one thing went wrong, the page was ruined. It seemed fitting somehow.
She wrote about everything and anything, lies and half-truths and words that she had twisted to the way she wanted them. Whatever she wanted to write she would and if people had problems with any of it, she would deal with it within the hour. The public needed something and she provided it; with so much worry, news rarely lasted more than a day if it was only the slander that dripped from her ever-moving quill and she reaped the profits.
She lived in a heady rush, hurtling from one story to another, sexual encounter to sexual encounter, and she didn't stop to think about any of it. She had found a way to make her name known and her pockets full, a way to have what she wanted when she wanted it and she didn't want to think about how. She stopped looking at people's faces, couldn't see the hope flared for too brief a moment each time they looked at a newspaper without knowing it would be her words they would be turning to and none of it true. It became painful, over the years, to hear her stories discussed in tones of acceptance when she knew people were debating fallacies.
It struck her as odd how she yearned for one thing, the money and the limelight, however cheaply she came by it, and how the very earning of it could turn her stomach. Her professors had been unanimous in telling her that she was a fickle little girl, all show, all style and no substance and how she would never see things through. In doing what she did and writing what she wrote - living the way she lived during the war - she was subconsciously trying to prove them wrong. She learnt about herself in those years, learnt things that people don't like to examine. She found herself willing to ruin others for profit, to toy with emotions and watch them break. She tried not to care, tried not to let it touch her, but seeing the desperation of those around her ate away at her when she closed her eyes, moths to the flame of her nature.
Everyone who lived through those years remembers where they were when they were told that the war was over. Rita does. When people ask, she tells them that she had gone walking. It was just her in a deserted field, a forest on one side and rolling green expanse on the other three. What she doesn't say is that her mind had driven her out of her rooms to stalk through the dense trees as though out-running an enemy. She wasn't prone to fits of conscience but this one took her to that field, feet sore and aching in their unsuitable shoes, and the weight of selling false hope to people in need buried somewhere in her mind.
She says she had stopped in the middle of the field. She doesn't say that it was because she suddenly realised how stupid she was being, walking alone in this empty, open space, and the unsettling feeling of being utterly defenceless had rooted her to the spot. She tells people how her assistant, who she had sent to the office with her latest lie, had apparated right next to her, drunk and ecstatic and surprised to find Rita glaring at him. She tells of how it was he that related the news to her, he that insisted it was the truth, that he had been told by a ministry official, and anyway, she didn't doubt him. She always says, at this point, that her assistant is too thick to be able to even think about lying and whoever she is talking to duly laughs.
She always changes the subject then. She doesn't add how she shook her assistant by his drooping collar, how she slapped him across his face, twice, or how she demanded to know how it had happened, who had told him and whether he would dare to lie to her. She doesn't tell of his hasty departure, shaken but still smiling, and how, to her mind, his smile stayed behind like a wry Cheshire cat. It is only a memory now, and she doesn't want to remember. What sneaks back into her mind when her guard is down, a rarity, is how she crumpled to her knees right there in that muddy green field and broke down. She doesn't want to remember the angry, choked sobs she cried for the wasted years or the tears that burnt her face as they dripped through her fingers and onto her knees, her skirt, the grass, or the cries she screamed to the skies, feeling somehow let down and betrayed by peace and how, at last, everything had pulled itself together. That is what she remembers, however unwillingly. What she doesn't, and won't let herself, is that her tears were partly for herself and her greed, her selfishness and her lack of regard. She won't cry for herself.
Walking away from that field, the one that even now she cannot bring herself to back to, she thought she would change. She thought that moment, crumpled and alone, would be her epiphany, the moment that one can look back on and say, yes, that changed me. Almost dizzily, she emerged back into the city streets. There had only been peace for a matter of minutes - hours? - if that, and the difference to the air was palpable. The papers blazed with headlines, all true and all gleeful. Rita saw them picked from their stands, almost hesitantly as though in dread of what could be read from their pages, and she saw the look on people's faces, the same on ever face as had been the norm for all those years. It was a slow slide from shock to disbelief to a blissful freedom, children in the height of summer running hot sand through their fingers. The children were everyone and the sand was delirium and Rita couldn't stand it.
She might have changed then, might have become honest and respectable like so many others. It was her intention that day as she saw the celebrations in the streets and the smiles emerge from where they had been hiding, and the clear air of re-birth was the only contaminant of the day. She might have changed.
It was that day that Rita's defining moment came. She was standing, dazed, in the streets and watching the changes around her when a stranger approached her. She had never seen the man before and she is unlikely to recognise him again; the faces of everyone she saw that day have melded into a blur of happiness alien to her mind. This man, whoever he was, grasped her by the shoulders and told her in a voice ringing with the clarity of the recently released, "They can't touch us now," and then he simply walked away.
And he was right. Rita could never be sure exactly what he meant to convey, standing there and gripping her shoulders with a beaming mouth and exultant eyes, but she carried the statement with her. The 'they' of such heavy oppression had gone and so had their cloud of anxiety that had blanketed so many people for too many years. It took her guilty inhibitions with it, and she allowed herself one minute to imagine that mis-matched air floating into the sky and looking down at the world below with unfairly biased lenses. Then she moved on.
She lived as she had always done, flitting from person to person, bed to bed, lie to lie like a carnivorous butterfly. She evolved, using her wile and charm and body to get what she wanted and others where she wanted them. Her mind had evolved too, or the end of the war had taken away her cares, because now she could find no guilt, no immorality, no fault with herself or what she did. She could look at people as they read her articles, could see their eyes crinkle in a half-trust, half-laughing-disbelief, she could hear people discuss her words and she could waltz straight through, the proud lion at the top of its game.
Her style was her substance and the dust that danced in the sunlight looked like unreal snow.
Please comment! Enjoy.
ritaskeeter_ and so it'll be posted over there as well...sorry if you see this twice!Title: Sunlight and Definition
Rating: PG - Low PG13? Not higher, maybe a smush of the two.
Disclamer: Rita and all the other Harry Potter things are JKR's. *sigh*
Word Count: 1995
Summary: "She tries not to think about the war now."
A/N: I quite like this piece! Um, comments are still fabulous...and there's no blood (Fran, I am looking at you.).
She tries not to think about the war now. It's not that she wants to forget, more that she wants to forgive it, forgive the years of anxiety and repression and fear, forgive herself for giving into all the emotions she never wanted to associate with.
She watched the world around her fall into a state of autonomy, following orders wither light or dark. She saw the expressions on people's faces turn from their usual mix of feelings to that same pinched, haunted, tense look worn by everyone towards the end; the same set to the jaw, the same thin lips, the ducked head and those darting, fearful eyes. They were mice, scurrying into crannies to escape the cat's paw. The only difference was that the blows came in a haze of confusion, striking here and there and no-one could see them coming. There was no honesty, people either lying for profit, by order or from being afraid of the truth and what it could mean. There was no truth. Rita thrived.
She was only a bee in the hive of the war, enclosed and restricted and meant to serve but she was in her element. With so much disarray, everyone wanted to know anything, groping for something to rely on, to rally against, to trust. Opinions flickered as quickly as the wings of a butterfly and people fell in and out of favour. Owls couldn't be trusted, word of mouth was dangerous and even the newspapers were looked over by those in control. Only there wasn't any control. not really, and the staff that ran stories wanted more to be with their families than to work, everyone did, and deadlines had to be kept to. Rita was enthralled.
Of course there were eyes on what the papers ran, of course everyone tried to avoid the taboos, but Rita had never been one to stay in line. She likened the situation to one in her sixth year at Hogwarts. Ever the gossip even then, she had spread some rumour about some Ravenclaw, nameless now so many years on and Rita never did find out if he had been killed in the war. She had found herself trapped in a classroom with that same person. He had scowled his displeasure, advancing on Rita and her heart thundered, excitement and doubt and giddy panic pumping round her body with her blood. The Ravenclaw started their tirade, the usual disjointed mix of 'how dare you's and 'it's not true, not any of it's and 'I'll make you life miserable's, and Rita had kissed the boy, mouth on mouth, melding herself to him. It had worked; he forgot to be angry and after that, he couldn't complain about her.
And so it was then, in the days of the war. Rita used her sexuality, her wit and her femininity to survive and to quell those that rose against her. She knew it was risky but so was everything and nothing made enough sense to make her care. She remembers being in a small room, dusty, with the shutters down and the dust dancing in the sunlight that was streaming through the wooden slats looking for all the world like unreal snow. She wrote on a typewriter, preferred the clarity of the noise made by the keys and the knowledge that if one thing went wrong, the page was ruined. It seemed fitting somehow.
She wrote about everything and anything, lies and half-truths and words that she had twisted to the way she wanted them. Whatever she wanted to write she would and if people had problems with any of it, she would deal with it within the hour. The public needed something and she provided it; with so much worry, news rarely lasted more than a day if it was only the slander that dripped from her ever-moving quill and she reaped the profits.
She lived in a heady rush, hurtling from one story to another, sexual encounter to sexual encounter, and she didn't stop to think about any of it. She had found a way to make her name known and her pockets full, a way to have what she wanted when she wanted it and she didn't want to think about how. She stopped looking at people's faces, couldn't see the hope flared for too brief a moment each time they looked at a newspaper without knowing it would be her words they would be turning to and none of it true. It became painful, over the years, to hear her stories discussed in tones of acceptance when she knew people were debating fallacies.
It struck her as odd how she yearned for one thing, the money and the limelight, however cheaply she came by it, and how the very earning of it could turn her stomach. Her professors had been unanimous in telling her that she was a fickle little girl, all show, all style and no substance and how she would never see things through. In doing what she did and writing what she wrote - living the way she lived during the war - she was subconsciously trying to prove them wrong. She learnt about herself in those years, learnt things that people don't like to examine. She found herself willing to ruin others for profit, to toy with emotions and watch them break. She tried not to care, tried not to let it touch her, but seeing the desperation of those around her ate away at her when she closed her eyes, moths to the flame of her nature.
Everyone who lived through those years remembers where they were when they were told that the war was over. Rita does. When people ask, she tells them that she had gone walking. It was just her in a deserted field, a forest on one side and rolling green expanse on the other three. What she doesn't say is that her mind had driven her out of her rooms to stalk through the dense trees as though out-running an enemy. She wasn't prone to fits of conscience but this one took her to that field, feet sore and aching in their unsuitable shoes, and the weight of selling false hope to people in need buried somewhere in her mind.
She says she had stopped in the middle of the field. She doesn't say that it was because she suddenly realised how stupid she was being, walking alone in this empty, open space, and the unsettling feeling of being utterly defenceless had rooted her to the spot. She tells people how her assistant, who she had sent to the office with her latest lie, had apparated right next to her, drunk and ecstatic and surprised to find Rita glaring at him. She tells of how it was he that related the news to her, he that insisted it was the truth, that he had been told by a ministry official, and anyway, she didn't doubt him. She always says, at this point, that her assistant is too thick to be able to even think about lying and whoever she is talking to duly laughs.
She always changes the subject then. She doesn't add how she shook her assistant by his drooping collar, how she slapped him across his face, twice, or how she demanded to know how it had happened, who had told him and whether he would dare to lie to her. She doesn't tell of his hasty departure, shaken but still smiling, and how, to her mind, his smile stayed behind like a wry Cheshire cat. It is only a memory now, and she doesn't want to remember. What sneaks back into her mind when her guard is down, a rarity, is how she crumpled to her knees right there in that muddy green field and broke down. She doesn't want to remember the angry, choked sobs she cried for the wasted years or the tears that burnt her face as they dripped through her fingers and onto her knees, her skirt, the grass, or the cries she screamed to the skies, feeling somehow let down and betrayed by peace and how, at last, everything had pulled itself together. That is what she remembers, however unwillingly. What she doesn't, and won't let herself, is that her tears were partly for herself and her greed, her selfishness and her lack of regard. She won't cry for herself.
Walking away from that field, the one that even now she cannot bring herself to back to, she thought she would change. She thought that moment, crumpled and alone, would be her epiphany, the moment that one can look back on and say, yes, that changed me. Almost dizzily, she emerged back into the city streets. There had only been peace for a matter of minutes - hours? - if that, and the difference to the air was palpable. The papers blazed with headlines, all true and all gleeful. Rita saw them picked from their stands, almost hesitantly as though in dread of what could be read from their pages, and she saw the look on people's faces, the same on ever face as had been the norm for all those years. It was a slow slide from shock to disbelief to a blissful freedom, children in the height of summer running hot sand through their fingers. The children were everyone and the sand was delirium and Rita couldn't stand it.
She might have changed then, might have become honest and respectable like so many others. It was her intention that day as she saw the celebrations in the streets and the smiles emerge from where they had been hiding, and the clear air of re-birth was the only contaminant of the day. She might have changed.
It was that day that Rita's defining moment came. She was standing, dazed, in the streets and watching the changes around her when a stranger approached her. She had never seen the man before and she is unlikely to recognise him again; the faces of everyone she saw that day have melded into a blur of happiness alien to her mind. This man, whoever he was, grasped her by the shoulders and told her in a voice ringing with the clarity of the recently released, "They can't touch us now," and then he simply walked away.
And he was right. Rita could never be sure exactly what he meant to convey, standing there and gripping her shoulders with a beaming mouth and exultant eyes, but she carried the statement with her. The 'they' of such heavy oppression had gone and so had their cloud of anxiety that had blanketed so many people for too many years. It took her guilty inhibitions with it, and she allowed herself one minute to imagine that mis-matched air floating into the sky and looking down at the world below with unfairly biased lenses. Then she moved on.
She lived as she had always done, flitting from person to person, bed to bed, lie to lie like a carnivorous butterfly. She evolved, using her wile and charm and body to get what she wanted and others where she wanted them. Her mind had evolved too, or the end of the war had taken away her cares, because now she could find no guilt, no immorality, no fault with herself or what she did. She could look at people as they read her articles, could see their eyes crinkle in a half-trust, half-laughing-disbelief, she could hear people discuss her words and she could waltz straight through, the proud lion at the top of its game.
Her style was her substance and the dust that danced in the sunlight looked like unreal snow.
Please comment! Enjoy.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 03:22 pm (UTC)Glad you liked it and that you thought it was moving/real. Both good things! Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 12:56 am (UTC)Loved it baby, as always
Big Fan!!
xx
no subject
Date: 2006-04-30 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 04:39 am (UTC)This is beautiful - the prose is amazing, and I can truly see these things happening. It's... it's almost like reading poetry, but less about your choice of words and more about the feelings the words evoke.
This man, whoever he was, grasped her by the shoulders and told her in a voice ringing with the clarity of the recently released, "They can't touch us now," and then he simply walked away.
That? Was one of the most stunning things I've read lately.
Don't listen to me, but I think you should quit school and ignore your family and write fic for me forever, k?