Writing Prompts + Weekly Challenge

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Samantha14
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Location: Neverland, usually hanging out with Peter Pan.

Writing Prompts + Weekly Challenge

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Calling all Writers. This is where you can post your favorite writing prompts to share with others and challenge them to write based on any of the prompts you give, or you can come for inspiration/challenge from other prompts posted. I'll also be giving a weekly or bimonthly prompt as an overall specific challenge for those two weeks. You can write off the prompt any time, but it only counts for the challenge for the week or two weeks until the next prompt.

This week's challenge:

Your character has just been asked: "Why do you love him/her?" Have your character explain to whoever has asked them, why they love this character in question. The story can be original world/characters, fanfiction, short, long, anything. But the character must explain why they love them/What made them love them.

Aaaand go. I can't wait to see what you lovely writers come up with! I'll write for it and post it soon.
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Helios
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THIS IS LIKE THE BEST PROMPT EVER. O.o Seriously.
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Woody
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I wrote this this morning from 2-4 am (Why am I only inspired in the middle of the night?). Hope you enjoy it! ^_^
I did not answer for a moment, considering how I would answer the question. It was not an unexpected inquiry, and in fact was a question I had asked myself many, many times. All my thoughts and feelings tossed around in my head, trying desperately to reduce themselves to simple words. I wanted my answer to be eloquent, as anyone half as sentimental as I would. Yet no matter how I tried, my thoughts could not form a coherent answer, much less an eloquent one. I considered changing the topic, avoiding the question and the subsequent embarrassment of my thoughts being expressed in a manner as simple as speech. Noticing that the silence had become awkward, I stuttered out some formulaic response, which I cannot recall. The conversation moved on, and I breathed a sigh of relief, having avoided the shame my own mouth would have cast upon me. Even so, the question lingered. Why do I love her? Although I would not have another opportunity to speak it aloud to my friend, I continued to form my reply. Slowly, I put one word after another, constructing a monologue nearly worthy of my love for her. It remains unspoken, but I must express it somehow, for fear I might burst with excitement, having finally found the words to express my love. So I write them now, to be forever immortalized in the written form…

Often a question is followed by another question. This, I found, was no exception. As I pondered these words, I began to wonder, what is love? Though the word’s meaning is known to me, this feeling is beyond my understanding. I began to question the conventional definition of the word; the emotional attachment associated with it. Love is more than a feeling, I conclude. Love is trust. Love is kindness. Love is a listening ear, a reassuring voice. Love is loyalty. Love is understanding. Love is friendship; companionship. Love is, I believe, a connection, a bond between two hearts that is so strong it can never be broken, not by struggles nor pain, nor even those involved. All these things, I find in her.

She was there on the dark nights. When I couldn’t sleep and wished I would never wake. Though her efforts seemed futile, she never once gave up hope. She stayed with me, disregarding every reason and right she had to leave. She reminded me of my worth; never ceased to love me. Though I fought hard, fortifying my heart against both attack and aid, she saw through my lies, straight through to my shattered heart. And rather than turn and walk away, she refused to leave my side. And over time, she began to mend that broken heart. How, I shall never know, all I can be certain of is that she healed my heart, and it loves her for it.

She knows me more than I know myself. She has delved deep into my soul, and she knows it inside out. She has seen the darkest depths and yet loves me still. Where I see a mess, she sees a hero, stronger and braver than I feel I could ever be. I see the same in her. Though she erects the same walls I once had, I see through them to her heart, beautiful and resplendent even in its brokenness. I see her struggles and insecurities, but underneath I see her compassion, her empathy, her hope for change, and her love for others. I see unselfishness; a desire to ensure that no one will ever feel the pain we have felt. Though her strength is depleted and her spirit is broken, she fights like hell to rebuild the hearts destroyed by this pain. She fought for me. And I will fight for her.

I see her kindness. I see her beauty. I see her loyalty. I trust her above all, and she knows and understands me as well as I do her. She has been my best friend, through my blackest hours, she was there in my darkest day, and still she loves me without condition. Why do I love her? I love her because she is love itself. Every standard by which I can define love, she has met and exceeded. I love her because she is who she is, and who she is everything I have ever dreamed of. I love her more than anything, and this is why.
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"You'll never be far, I'm keeping you near, inside of my heart, you're here." ~Owl City, Gold
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Miss Friendship
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Here’s mine:

For those of you considering on clicking the spoiler and wondering why you bother, let me save you time and assure you…
it’s not worth it. :noway:
She advanced towards the stricken creature and stopped with a calm yet deliberate directness.

Her tone was even, “Do you love him?”

The creature jerked upright as if she had been struck. Her eyes widen and then her lips clenched in a frustrated grimace. She disdained answering.

“Do you love him?” It came again. This time the force behind the question had a decided pressure that demanded an answer.

“No…. No. NO.” At which point, the creature burst into a frenzy of hysterical tears. “I hate him in fact. HATE, you hear?? I hate his family, and his wretched successes, I hate that he stands between me and my freedom. He is a viper, a blot upon this earth’s history, a failure, utterly DISGUSTING and void of all human feeling or compassion. I hear tell of the mocking which he received at the hands of the authorities, and gah, why should I care? I’d rejoice, I’d dance, I’d give anything to bask in his ruin and misfortune.” Her bitter laugh scornfully echoed through the room.

“Do you love him?”

The laugh faded and then dried up. The storm of frustrated tears ceased. The whispered reply was hoarse and faint. “Yes.” The head bowed and dropped and silent sobs shook those shoulders which had borne so much grief.

“Why do you love him?” The question was not given instantly, and yet, it had to be given. The world would never be satisfied without this answer.

Gently and delicately, as if caressing the words, in soft tones, she replied, “Because he is real.”
/me sighs wistfully. I lovvvve drama. :mrgreen:
~Lady Friendship Knight of the Order of Chrysostom in the Court of the Debate Vampires~
AKA Countess Concordia of the Chat, Regalia, and the Queen of Sarcasm

I am a personal quirk. --Adrian Dreamwalker
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Bethany Shepard
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I'm in a writing class at my homeschool group and one of the prompts I got was:
"You better leave! I come from a long line of lunatics and I'm not afraid to beat you up!"

(I'll post my story when I can!)
"I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther.
I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion."
-Nicolas Cage
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HomeschoolCowgirl
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"Why do you love him?"

Why do I love him?
Why?

How could I not? When someone has given so much of himself for me, how couldn't I?
Can I stand aside, look away, pretend it never happened?
His sacrifice disregarded, ignored, snubbed by me?
I love him as no other. He alone could take me from my helpless existance and turn me toward the Light.
He rescued me from hopeless despair, from my own filthy actions, thoughts, words.
He is my only Hope.
Why do I love Him? Because He first loved me.
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"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, for rhythm and harmony find their way into the inner places of the soul... making the soul of one who is rightly educated, graceful" -- Socrates
Mickey
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"Why do you love him?"
"Why?" I said out loud.
Inside I though "What an absurd question, but then I never had thought about it."
"Well?" She was persistence.
"Because he cares, He understands. When I feel down he's always there. He understands things even when I don't! He'll listen even when I have nothing to say. He cares."
When I was done I realized, how much I had taken him for granted.
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Mandy
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I didnt edit this at all, just wrote it up in like 10 minutes the other day. But here it is. :anxious:
Why do I love him? In my
heart I know the answer but it
seems too immense, too deep and unfathomable a thing to even begin to put into words. A thousand different reasons run though my mind but none of them come close to doing justice to this question. Neverless, I put forth my best effort at describing the intermost things of my heart.

I love him because he is
kind and caring. Always. No matter how many times I come to him with all my problems and perplexities, he always listen with a symapthetic and understanding heart. Not once has he pushed me away. He makes time for me, regardless of his busy schedule. He never fails to take the time and effort to be there to hear the troubles of a 16 year old girl. His kind-heartedness amazes me. It can only be a reflection of the One living in him.

I love him because he never
fails to be the friend who is always there on dark nights, the one who surrounds me with care and understanding when it feels like I’m all alone in this world. When my heart had been shattered and broken and used, he was there to offer comfort and hope. When I thought there was no reason left to go on living, no beauty in this pain- shattered world, he appeared like a
ray of sunshine in the midst of a
raging storm. He spoke truth to my hurting soul and urged me onward.

I love him because he is everything good and wonderful and amazing. He inspires me to make something out of life, no matter how worthless it may seem. He ignites within me a
hope of something better in the
days to come. He is a reminder to
me that there are people in the world who do love and care like
Jesus does.

I love him because he is
love itself, pure and lasting and
strong. He is unlike any other I have ever known. He stirs within my heart a longing to serve God to the best of my abilities, to live life to the fullest, and to show others the kind of care and kindness he has shown
to me. He has shown me what love really is. He himself is love and everything that love consists of. Because of him, I have seen a
greater picture of God’s love. How
can I help but love him?
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~Lady Mandy Knight of the
Order of Chrysostom in the
Court of the Debate Vampires~

MF: How much do you know about Helios?

Woody: Let's see. I know you survived her
drama, I know she's a danger to
society, I know she's a lie, I know
Belle is unfazed by her wrath, I
know she has ox horns, and I know
I should beware of her.

(And she is also my enemy. :evil: )
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Bethany Shepard
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Bethany Shepard wrote:I'm in a writing class at my homeschool group and one of the prompts I got was:
"You better leave! I come from a long line of lunatics and I'm not afraid to beat you up!"

(I'll post my story when I can!)
I wrote this in about 15 minutes in my class.
I was home alone one evening. My parents had decided to go on a much need date and trusted me to not destroy anything. Being the irresponsible 16 year old male I was, I decided to neglect my homework and watch a movie.

Just as I was about half way into my movie, I heard a knock on the door. Alarmed that someone was even at my door, I sprung up, race to the door and opened it before I had time to think to look to see who it was.

As the door creaked open, I saw a tall, gruff figure make eye contact with me and produce smile that I can only describe as a perverted smile. He opened his mouth to speak, I whiffed the strong scent of alcohol on his breath. With a deep, gravely voice, he said, "Hey kid, you wanna come check out my car?"

Instantly, I slammed the door as hard as I could and locked it. I checked the window a few seconds later to see that he walked back to his car, got in it and slowly drive away.My heart was still pumping but I brushed it off as some dumb, drunk guy thinking he was funny.

I sat back down to finish my movie. When it ended, I decided to hit the sack. More than likely, my parents wouldn't be home for another couple hours, and I decided not to wait for them. 30 minutes after laying down, I was practically asleep. In my drowsy, half awake mind, I heard the back door down stairs shut and I figured it must have been my parents, so I stayed in my half alert state. Then, I heard light, sloppy footsteps walking up the stairs, which was odd because my parents bedroom was downstairs. Suddenly, I heard a creak from the wood floor in my doorway and a deep, gravely voice broke through the darkness and whispered, "Hey, Will."

I jolted up only to see the tall, intoxicated man creepily standing there, smiling. I grabbed my phone from my nightstand and bolted past him and into the bathroom across the hall.
Frantically, I shut and locked the door behind me. I hear the old man angrily muttering some threats to me, but I instead ignored him and dialed 911. When I got off the phone, I yelled as loudly as I could, "I just called the police and they'll be here at any minute! So, you'd better leave! I come from a long line of lunatics and I'm not afraid to beat you up!"

After a minute of the man trying to break down the door, I heard the sound of a squad car and red and blue lights flashing across the bathroom walls through the window. Noticing the lights, the old man sprints down the stairs and, from what I could hear, out the back door.

I bust out of the bathroom and rush downstairs as the police come through the front door. I yell to them that he ran out through the back, but, strangely, they never caught that man. I'll always wonder how he knew my name and... if he'll come back.
THE END.
This is actually the first time I've ever shared my writing. :oops:
"I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther.
I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion."
-Nicolas Cage
Helios
Butter Pecan
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I know this is way overdue, but here's mine for the love prompt. (oh that sounds so weird) :P
Magenna shrugs and frowns at the same time, a careless gesture so artful it almost appears to be natural. It can't be, of course. The question has merely hit her in a place so deep she has to take a moment to descend into it.

“Why did you love him?” Lily asks again, her probing eyes dark and intense. “I mean, I knew all these years that you had...something more for him than for anyone else, but I never understood why.”

“You were his sister,” Magenna replies, a slight smile tugging at her lips. “You wouldn't understand.”

She tilts her head, the black hair falling like a river of shimmering curls over one shoulder, and her face goes blank as she brings back long-forgotten memories of him and their time together. So brief, so sweet. Their first meeting in a forest glade—their arguments, their truces, their push-and-pull, back-and-forth, the rope that bound them forever taut.

“Why did you love him?”

Because he was beautiful.


“Because he was beautiful,” she says aloud. Then she laughs at the look on Lily's face. “I did say you wouldn't understand. He had a beauty like my people, the star-children. He had that glow to him. None of the rest of your siblings did. Only him. I think...I think that's what drew me to him to begin with. That's why I entered his dreams in the beginning. He had some quality that I thought of as being...from home. And I wanted it. I wanted to be around it, to bask in it.”

“And then?” Lily prompts.

“Then I met him face-to-face.”

And he was everything I'd ever hoped he'd be.

“And he was everything I'd ever hoped he be. Wise, gracious, noble, loyal, and so stubborn.” Magenna chuckles, her cheeks flushing. “Next to your sister, Lu, he had the strongest will. You never noticed it when you and your other brother were around. You tended to overshadow him.” She frowns. “That's another thing I liked about him. He was so humble. He had nothing to prove, nothing to show you. He was just himself.”

“He was a traitor once,” Lily says lightly, as if she hadn't been one herself.

“A traitor redeemed,” Magenna reminds her. “And I...understood him.” Her eyes darken and swirl with emotions from centuries ago, when she was a young girl with too much pain to understand the evil that dwelt within her. “We were both tempted by the dark side. And we fell. And were freed.” She smiles, shaking off the bad memories. “And then he died,” she says, tilting her face to the sun. “I suppose I could hold that against him as the one thing I don't love him for.”
Lily giggles. “You're not so silly as to do something like that. You outgrew that years ago.”

“So I did.” Magenna smirks. “Now I just have to settle for reigning in my suicidal hopes of rejoining him soon.”

“You wouldn't,” Lily says, low. “You can't.”

“No,” Magenna sighs. “I can't. Doesn't mean I don't think of it whenever I think of him. Sometimes,” she looks down, blushing, “I just want to get it over with. This wait. I want to be in his arms again and breathe the same air he breathes. Did you know,” she cocks a smile at Lily, “we never even kissed? Not once. I'm not really bothered by it, but I miss...the intimacy we shared. The talks we had, the way our thoughts melded together. The way we knew how each other saw things and felt about things.”

“I thought you were a mind-reader,” Lily points out, leaning back, letting the wind tousle her short-cropped hair. “You were a dream-walker, after all.”

“I can read minds, if I want to. Usually, I just see whatever people choose to reveal. And he revealed so much.” Magenna's voice catches, and she takes a moment to compose herself. “He trusted me,” she whispers. “More so than even the ones who know me well. Or maybe that was it. He didn't know what I was capable of.”

“He wasn't afraid of it,” Lily corrects, closing her eyes as tears threaten to seep out from underneath. “He never feared you. The rest of us did. Not him.”

“Traitors together,” Magenna remarks thoughtfully.

“Is that why you love him?” Lily looks at her, brows raised. “Because you were both traitors who had been redeemed? You felt you had someone who could understand you like know one else could?”

Magenna considers for a moment, then shakes her head. “No. That was only part of it.”

“And the other half?”

Because he was everything I wanted to be.

“Because he was everything I wanted to be,” she says honestly, admitting a truth she's never realized until this moment. “He was good. He had darkness in his soul, but he did not succumb to it. He was a warrior, through and through. Didn't know how to stop fighting. That's what saved him. He never gave up.”

“And you?” Lily looks at her knowingly.

Magenna shrugs, another balanced, perfectly practiced gesture. “I tried to kill you all once. I almost succeeded. Darkness has been second-nature to me. And once you touch it, it doesn't like to let go. I saw in him someone who had touched it and broken free. At least, partway. More than I had. And I wanted to be like that.” She laughs, suddenly, fully. “I suppose that's why I loved him. To me, he was a reminder of everything I should be. He was the light to my darkness, the sun to my moon. He was hope.”

“Hope,” Lily whispers, and nods.
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TigerShadow
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feel free to join me for a time-share in the shipping dumpster my friends
She’s sixteen and just recovering from an identity crisis over the matter when a gleeful Liz is the first to ask the question, and she’s a little annoyed because honestly, she’s having a bit too much trouble with coherent thought at the moment to give her friend a proper answer, and maybe she should have given her some time, for heaven’s sake.

But once she’s thought it through (and stopped running around her room hysterically trying to rearrange things in some sort of bizarre facsimile of feng shui), it just…makes sense. Apart from Liz, Trent is her best friend; they’ve stuck by each other through a lot already, and she trusts him. She feels comfortable around him, and she can be herself around him, and…and there’s something there now, an underlying tension beneath their casual chatting and intellectual banter. She’s drawn to him, somehow, and she just has this gut feeling like—maybe they’re meant to be something more.

(Also he’s letting his hair grow out a bit and it looks soft and fluffy and he’s getting taller and his clothes look nice and he smells good and he’s gotten cute okay)

(…Well, that part she mostly keeps to herself.)

This won’t come out when she finally tells him, though. Mostly, it’ll be awkward, and they’ll trip over their words and misunderstand each other and generally be emotionally clumsy idiots. But they’ll roll with it and move past it, and she won’t help but feel—when they entwine their hands together while on a walk or watch sunsets out in front of Whit’s End or hug each other a little too long before parting ways—that there’s a certain sense of absolution in this new beginning.

“I don’t know,” she mumbles at the time as Liz looks at her eagerly. “I guess I just do.”

It’s about time, Liz thinks with an almost imperceptible eyeroll. Now to peel her nails off her face before she draws blood.

***

She’s seventeen and has been dating him for almost a year when a determined Emily Jones walks up to her with the question. Mandy’s not blind; ensconced as she is with her schoolwork and performances and her desperate need for some sleep amidst it all, she’s observed the younger kids and how they, like she and her friends before them, steamroll blindly through preadolescence. She’s seen how Emily looks at Buck Oliver, hears the sudden breathiness of her normally assured tone when she talks to him, picks up on how Matthew Parker teases her, and has a shrewd idea that the younger girl is trying to prove a point.

But she’s always liked pontificating about feelings, much to most of her friends’ vocal consternation, and she’s wanted an excuse to mull this over for a while now, so she at least gives it her best shot.

Frankly, there’s a lot to like, although she’s probably biased. Lately, she’s taken notice of how much he cares—about schoolwork, about Jesus, about people he’s barely or never met, about his friends…about her. He pays attention to the little things, like who in a group is better at doing what or the tiniest word meanings in Scripture passages or that Marvin doesn’t like talking to anyone until around 10:00 AM and so it’s best to just leave him alone. He does his best to make sure other people are okay—leaving their study date early to help a floundering Grady McKay in pre-calculus and calling out Max when he’s rude to the freshmen and just hugging her when she’s overloaded and finally breaks down in tears and gets mucus all over his sweatshirt. (She’s…not a particularly attractive crier.)

Yes, he can be insensitive, favoring one person or thing over another because he gets tunnel vision something awful. But he’s still loyal and devoted and driven, and she likes him—maybe even loves him—for it.

(Well. She says that now, but she’ll have words with him when he completely ignores Alex’s repeated and increasingly desperate requests for help on a project because he’s so busy constructing a lesson plan for the physics students he tutors.)

(What a nerd.)

“Because, well…he’s really passionate,” she begins with a smile as Emily taps her foot impatiently.

Ugh, here we go, Emily thinks, prepared to contract diabetes from this one conversation alone. Why did I ask again?

***

She’s only just turned twenty-one and an awkward, blushing Trent fumbles the question, and she can’t help but smile because he’s really cute when he’s nervous. They’ve somehow been dating for five years, now juniors in college, and she’s almost not sure that she believes her luck. She’s actually been thinking about this a lot recently, and she’s pretty grateful that he’s given her a chance to say it to him.

She had anticipated from the beginning that there would be rough patches, and she hated the idea of cutting off a relationship out of fear, but still, she always worried when they argued. Because one quarrel can be the breaking point, one tense conversation all it takes to shatter something that was supposed to be unbreakable. She has borne witness to it, is so grateful to God by the day that He saved her parents from it, and she could never bear to watch history repeat itself. Not with him. Friends or more, she loves him, and she won’t do that to him.

But he was one of her best friends, and they’d gotten through fights before. They can make it work. They will make it work, he'd told her as he brushed his fingers across her hand. It won’t be easy and they’ll have to be diligent, but hey, he'd teased, that’s how calculus works and they both had A’s.

Relationships aren’t math (thank goodness), but he’s right. They talk to each other, communicating their problems instead of letting them fester in the deep recesses of their minds. They hear each other out when they have their grievances, and they work together to get through it. They count on each other, they’re there when the other needs them, and they’ve let their guards down around each other more than even with their best friends. (Once you have a stress-based meltdown in front of a person, you’re sort of bonded for life.)

But she supposes that, at the heart of the matter, she wouldn’t have let anyone else get that far. Liz, her parents, David—they’re all so important to her, and she’s open with them, but not quite to the extent that she is with Trent. They’ve been close friends and then dating for so long, shared so many important moments, that she doesn’t think she’d ever have this kind of relationship with another guy. Whether it’s owning up to the truth about a valentine, admitting a wrong after a tantrum in a recording studio, or baring their souls about some of their darkest fears and deepest hopes on a couch in a university library, she knows that she can be herself around him, that she can let loose some of the most restrained parts of who she is, and that he can do the same.

“Because I trust you, and you trust me,” she tells him simply.

Thank You, God, he prays, fiddling with the ring in his jeans pocket. It'll still be a miracle if I don't faint, though.

***

She’s twenty-four and they’re married when she asks the question, under much less contrived and dramatic circumstances.

They had been freshmen in high school and doing homework at his house when she’d discovered that he was something of a tea aficionado. His mother explained (to his slight embarrassment) that he’d liked tea since he was little, and she’d been showing him different ways to brew it ever since he’d been able to properly handle the kettle. His favorites, she’s learned, are chamomile and Earl Grey—one for its calming properties, the other because even if he isn’t a Star Trek fan, Patrick Stewart is a legend, and he still feels kind of cool declaring that he’s making “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

(Dork.)

She’d sort of swallowed her opinions on the matter, but when he asked, she explained, as politely and yet truthfully as possible, that frankly, she hated the smell of tea—it just seemed too sweetly cacophonous a scent for her tastes. She felt this to be only right, because as far as she was concerned, coffee was one of the greatest substances ever created. Add cream and plenty of milk, and she was in breakfast heaven. (Well, okay, and all-nighter heaven, too.)

She’d somehow gotten up and about only a little bit after he did (unusual, as she was not a morning person), and when she walked into the kitchen, she was immediately assaulted by the distinct, pungent, aged-orange aroma of brewing Earl Grey tea.

Making a melodramatic show of covering her mouth and nose, she gave him a longsuffering look and demanded to know what he was doing to her poor kitchen, filling it with this wretched odor? And he had the audacity to smirk at her, the cheeky twerp, and chide her for her own need to plunge the apartment into the incurable stench of charcoal briquettes—er, beans, he corrected with air quotes.

“Why on earth did I fall in love with you?” she had asked with an eyeroll, removing her hand from her face to give her words some dignity.

He grinned at her, then took his opportunity to swoop downward and kiss her firmly and—somehow—merrily. “Because you’ve got excellent, sophisticated taste,” he teases her.

She watches him leave, slightly winded, and smiles in spite of herself. She's married a morning person—a spontaneous, friendly, welcoming, playful, kind, warm-hearted morning person who occasionally replaces her usual coffee with a rare and expensive brand she likes when he thinks she won't notice.

He's right, she muses to herself, smiling as the sunlight streaming through the window hits his face just so as he sits at the table reading a book, the picture of cheerful tranquility. And really, I wouldn't have him any other way.
it's not about 'deserve'. it's about what you believe. and i believe in love
Helios
Butter Pecan
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Location: Stealing your place in the sun

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It started out vaguely following the "time-share in the shipping dumpster" rules and kind of stayed there but also sorta didn't. :)

Warnings: References to violence (mainly blood), implied attempted suicide, non-graphic deaths, implied/referenced marital love, implied/reference child abuse/neglect, bio kids being mean to adopted kids, abandonment, implied/referenced torture. Basically everything is implied except for the blood. Anyone tell me if they think it's too violent/bloody/suggestive, and I'll be glad to tone it down. ;)
All the Time in the World


It's that first night Tim is with her, and it's frightening and uncomfortable and kind of embarrassing to be alone and so...exposed. It's not like they haven't slept in the same room before or seen each other in their underwear (they lead weird lives, don't judge), but somehow this seems more intimate, because they're married and they're supposed to be doing this and it's—too—different.

They lay side-by-side in the bed, with a perfect four inches of empty space between them, and he's staring at the canopy and wondering if he should say something or do something or initiate something—

He feels guilty, somehow, like he always does when something goes wrong. Because this was his idea, the whole marriage thing, and he wants to look after her and take care of her and be there for her the way people should have been (and no one was). He wants to love her, but he's afraid of messing it up, of being a failure, of doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing and making her feel more of an outsider than she already does. He's just so lost when it comes to these things, and he can't help but wonder if maybe they should have waited (he's only nineteen, what is he thinking—he can't be a husband, he can't be a lover, he's barely a good friend—)

And she does the perfect thing: reaches over and takes his hand and squeezes it once, gently, her fingers interlacing with his tense ones. Her skin seems so soft, despite the calluses and scars, and it's warm and comforting and oh-so-very-intimate without being scary at all. It's her way of saying, I understand and I know how you feel and I love you, all at once.
He relaxes, squeezes back, just once, and whispers into the darkness. I love you, too.

And it's not so frightening anymore, because they're together and they're a team and they will figure this out.

After all, they've got all the time in the world.


It's one year since the day and it's the best and worst day of Tim's life. He's going to be a father (already is one, judging from that little squiggle squirming on the screen), and his wife, his beautiful, clever, talented wife, is crying in his arms. She's afraid, so afraid, of being the kind of mother that her own was, and he's ready to cry, too, from joy because he's a father they're a family this is beyond anything he'd ever hoped for and from grief because his parents weren't the best, either, and he doesn't know how to help her be a good one, because their father (his adopted, her biological) hasn't been a model father, and her mother was (is) a terrorist, and there's just too much they don't know how to do, what to say, when to say it.

So he holds her, and he lets her cry, and he tells her that they will do better than their parents, they will love this child the way they never were, and they will protect it from the terrors that haunt their world.

And he cries, too, for the joy and the longing and the grief and the fear.


It's five years since the day and Tim's world has been turned upside down because the dead are returning to life and the world is inexplicably full of people more powerful than is humanly possible and his brother is back from the dead.

Her brother, her baby brother, who died five years ago and was mourned for five years and suddenly he's alive and he's back and he's so tall and strong and beautiful, just like her, and where has he been all this time?

It's not that returning from the dead is that big of a deal (their older brother, the rebel, he did once when he was young); it's that the dead one says he's been in another world, and that is somehow more shocking than one of Tim's friends unexpectedly developing super-powers or a monstrous beast rampaging out of the ocean or the realization that they are not alone in the universe.

Because apparently they aren't the only universe, either.


It's eight years to the day when Tim comes home to find his wife standing in their kitchen, covered in blood and holding a knife to her own throat. He almost freezes, almost turns around and walks out, because this is not what he expected when he slammed his way out of the house this morning after their usual argument. But he can't leave, because he said he would take care of her, he gave her his word, he promised—and he can't back down. He talks to her, like he always does, and gets her to put the knife on the floor and wash her hands in the sink (it has a weird calming effect he still hasn't figured out), and then he takes her to the bathroom and has her undress and examines the blood and breathes a sigh of relief that it's animal and not human, he would never forgive himself if she killed someone while she was in this state.

They sit on the bed and they talk and she cries and he almost does but doesn't because someone has to be the strong one, and what happened wasn't his fault anyway (it's not hers, either, not her fault for what they did to her when she was a child). Eventually they fall asleep in each others arms and he can't help but feel that he's dodged another bullet yet again, because one day her past is going to kill them both.

And it's killing him, inside, to know that he may not be able to help her. He's a doctor, he's supposed to fix broken people, make them better. They just need a little more time, that's all.

They just need all the time in the world.


It's ten years to the day and they've finally adopted a child. They have their two boys, precious little bundles of joy that Tim and his wife can't help but love, despite all their fears. But adoption runs in the blood of her family, and now in his, and so they take in a little girl who has no home and no hope without them.

She's beautiful and clever and talented, like his wife, but so young, so fragile, unlike his wife. He doesn't know if they can do the right thing for the girl, but he hopes, and he plans, and he knows they will do their very best to make her part of the family.

The boys seem oddly repulsed by her. But he's not worried. They'll learn to love her. In time.

After all, they've only got all the time in the world.


It's twelve years to the day and he's so proud of his firstborn son, his namesake, his clever little bird. His son has just rescued a cloned hero, gained the loyalty of a speedster everyone else had given up on, and started his own team—all by himself. He's the pick of the litter, even in a family as talented and success-driven as this one, and Tim is nearly beside himself with excitement (or as excited as he gets these days). He can't wait for the world to see what his son, his son, can really do.

His wife is more reserved, more cautious. She doesn't trust people as readily as he does (not that either of them could be described as trusting), but she's willing to let their son, their first hatchling, take his first tumble from the nest. Birds are born to fly, after all, and their family firmly believes that the sky is the limit.

It's all right. They'll get used to it, in time. Little Timmy has all the time in the world.


It's fourteen years to the day and Tim's brother, his eldest brother, the light of all their lives, the one who held him that night at the circus and promised to fly just for him, is missing. They can't find him anywhere, his brother's wife, is frantic because even she, the one with a camera in every window and door, has lost all trace of him, and his own wife is—not even here anymore.

She's run off before, of course, when she had something important to do (important enough not to tell him, he reminds himself angrily), but this time, with his eldest brother, his acrobat brother, he knows it's more than just another mission. She loved his brother once, before he married her, before they bonded to each other. And love is a hard thing to deny.

He knows the truth of that all too well.

In the end, he finds his wife with his brother, both of them in a puddle of the kidnapper's blood, and it's the most horrible thing he has ever seen, because his brother, his brave, beautiful brother, the first person to give him a hug, the light of their lives—

Will never fly again.


And for Tim, it is the beginning of the end.


It's sixteen years to the day and his world is crumbling into the dust. His firstborn son, who was once so clever and sneaky and mischievous, is gone. Taken. Abducted. Stolen.

Tim knows who has the boy. The specter that haunts all their nightmares, the clown with the white-faced grin, has stolen his son and tortured him and made videos of it and showed them to the world.

He cannot handle this. He will not let his son die, he will not stand by while another child is ripped from this world. He leaves his remaining son and daughter with his wife's parents (her father, his father, a better man in his old age than he ever was when he wore a cowl, and her mother, who is different since her son returned but still oh-so-very-dangerous), and then he and his wife go to rescue their son.

It ends, as most things do, in blood and fire and the wreckage of a former life. They take their boy back, their little bird with his torn wings and bloodied breast, but the damage has already been done.

Because they killed the clown and now they have done the unthinkable.


And there is no time to explain, no time to comprehend what they have done.


Six months later, he leaves.

He breaks his promises, he breaks his sacred vows (before God, Tim, you swore before God!) and he leaves.

Everything.

His wife, his children, his father, his brothers, his home.

His world.

He's finally cracked the secret of inter-dimensional travel, finally figured out how the worlds will open
and close their doors as if on a timer set by the deity of Time, and he's done it.

Stepped outside his world and into another.

It's a nice place he goes to, a quiet place with few people and fewer crises and no pressure, no blood, no death that haunts his every waking moment. Here, he actually sleeps for once. It's like he's let go of a breath he didn't even know he was holding.

He tells himself he came to seek healing, to seek refuge from the horrors of the world he left behind. He tells himself he's broken, that he needs fixing, and that the place he once called home cannot provide that for him any longer.

But here, alone in the tranquil green, he has feels himself breaking a little more every day.


It's eighteen years to the day that she finds him. He wonders if she broke through the wall by force or timed it like he did. He wonders if she's finally been driven mad as well, the way he feared after their first kill together, when her hair and her face were streaked with the blood of the clown and her hands were digging into the ground, gouging up handfuls of crimson-clotted soil like she was digging her own grave.

He wonders if she will kill him, too, for breaking his promise.

She almost does. She comes so close to it, putting the sword to his neck, letting the edge wet itself on scarlet blood, tantalizing him with the image of death (and it looks so good now, doesn't it?)
But she doesn't. She lets him go with only a punch to the face that almost breaks his nose (again) and then sits down and stares at him until he drops his gaze, too ashamed and broken and numb to care whether she stays or leaves.

“Tim,” she says, her voice hollow with grief and cracked from exhaustion and so, so, sad. “Tim, we need you.”

“You never needed me,” he replies, his voice a mere echo of hers. “No one needs me.”

“I always have,” she tells him. “Even when I didn't know it. And you need me, Tim. Remember? Til death do us part was a promise, not a suggestion.” Her voice hardens, strengthens. “And we are not dead yet.”

He looks at her, at the lines on her once-flawless face, and the bags under her eyes, the short-crop of her formerly-luxuriant hair. And he remembers their first night, and their first kiss, and their first love, and all the other beautiful firsts and seconds and thirds that followed every moment they spent together.

And he wonders why he ever left this woman who refuses to let him go.


A month later, he's in a world he doesn't recognize anymore.

The waters have risen and the fires have descended and it seems the gates of Hell have been opened and its contents spilled forth. There are living heroes and dead heroes and some who are somewhere in the middle (only a little dead? he wonders), and the villains are stronger, faster, smarter.

And his family is—not the same.

His lovely daughter, the adopted one who was more like him than he ever realized, is no longer his. She lives with his rebellious older brother, who spends half his time estranged from the family, and treats the girl like a princess. He calls her Baby J, as if she's more him than her father, and it hurts. It aches, like an old bone reset long ago that cracks again along the edges.
The light of their lives, who never flew again, is once again missing, only this time his wife and children have gone with him, and there is a hole in the sky where the sun used to shine.

His dead brother, the one who came back, is gone as well, with his twin and his best friend (Tim's former best friend), and they cannot help this world anymore.

His adopted sister—well, no one knows where she is. No one ever knows. Maybe she died, too, like so many others.

His father, and his father's wife, are long gone. He's happy about that, actually, that they can heal together and finally be at peace.

And his sons—

Oh, his sons. His brave, precious little birds, his pride and joy, his Robins.

They are not his sons anymore. They are strangers, angry and bitter, and skilled in the art of death.
He doesn't blame his wife for what they have become. He has only himself, and his foolish, stupid selfishness to blame.

As for his friends, his colleagues and partners and allies, they are scattered. Some here, some there, some dead. He wonders if they were angry when he left, if they tried to bring him back. He wonders if they would care that he has returned.

He'd ask, but he doesn't see them. His wife is very specific in her instructions that no one know he's back. She brought him here to be a hero. God knows they need one.

Because the world is ending and there's no time left to fix anything anymore.


Eighteen and a half years of marriage, and that's all there will ever be.

He should be sad at the thought, but instead he feels...

Light.

Elated, almost.

The numbness is gone, and the pain is gone, and there is only the feel of his wife in his arms and her hair on his neck (where it should be), and her heart beating in tandem with his.

Their sons are gone, safe, with his daughter and her uncle, and there is nothing more to worry about, to grieve over. Nothing left to kill, nothing left to fix.

There is only them, together, the way it should be, the way it will be into eternity. Even death cannot separate them, if they die as one.

She steps back and takes his hand, and squeezes, and he squeezes back, once. Their little sign, all their own. I understand. I know how you feel. I love you.

He looks into her eyes, so blue, so clear, and for that brief second, as the ground shakes and the sky falls and the fire rushes toward them, he feels himself falling in love with her all over again. It's like that first day, when he woke up to her eyes fixed on him, her lips to his, her soul and his a single, brilliant star.

And then he feels something else, a shift in his bones (and it burns, and it thrills, and he knows he's felt this before).

He's drawn into her eyes, her sapphire-blue eyes, and the blue surrounds him and encompasses him and fills him with something he can't name, a feeling he's never felt before.

A hope for something he will never have.

And yet...

And yet...

“I don't think,” she says, breathless, “that we're going to die just yet.”

“No.” He bends down and kisses her, as the sky falls and the fire takes them and they do not burn, no, not with fire. The ground opens and the blue flings them forward, forward, into a world beyond that which they have known.

He is overcome with weariness, after his long day and the still longer night, and he rests in her arms, and she in his. And they are at peace.

The world is ending.

But we have all the time in the worlds.
Phew! That took a bucket-load of formatting! :D
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