(no subject)

[sunshine_queen]

Because I posted my reply to dollsome 's meme thinger, I am now posting it myself. Have at it.

Lyric Ficlet Meme
I will post lyrics from 20 songs. You pick one (or more, if you feel so inclined) and write me a drabble/ficlet/epic novel/what have you based on it. Then post this on your own lj and I'll write something for you.

 

01. for it's my thoughts that bind me here
it's this love that I most fear
and this child I would destroy
for I hold her pain most dear
- My Medea, Vienna Teng

02. no pleasing drama
in subtle averted eyes
the swelling fermata
as the chord dies
- Between, Vienna Teng

03. All I ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
- Hallelujah, Rufus Wainwright

04. I feel too young to hold on
And I'm much too old to break free and run
Too deaf, dumb, and blind to see the damage I've done
- Lover, You Should've Come Over- Jeff Buckley

05. Your common sense, your best defense
Lay wasted and in vain
- Ophelia, Natalie Merchant

06. They say she died easy of a brokenheart disease
- One Headlight, The Wallflowers

07. Time has colored in the black and white of your sin
- You Cut Her Hair, Tom McRae

08. Watching our fantasies decay
nothing will ever stay the same
and all of the love we threw away
and all of the hopes we've cherished fade
- Falling Away With You, Muse

09. Can you tell me how it used to be?
Have we missed our chance?
Have we changed our hopes for fears
And our dreams for plans?
- Dreams for Plans, Shakira

10. Wait on me girl
Cry in the night if it helps
- I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues, Elton John

11. This is nothing new, no, no just another phase of finding
what I really need is what makes me bleed
- Volcano, Damien Rice

12. For a sunrise or sunset, your lover is an actress-
Did you really think she’d stay?
- Sunrise, Sunset, Bright Eyes

13. It's with your sins that you have killed me
Thinking of your sins I die
Thinking how you'd let them touch you
- Auf Achse, Franz Ferdinand

14. The choice was yours and no one else's
You can cry for a body in despair
Hang your head because she is no longer there
To shine, or dazzle, or betray.
- Lament, Evita

15. Christ, you know it ain't easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.
- The Ballad of John and Yoko, The Beatles

16. Drop of a hat she's as willing as a playful as a pussy cat
Then momentarily out of action, temporarily out of gas
- Killer Queen, Queen

17. Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die
- The Show Must Go On, Queen

18.I must be mad thinking I'll be remembered - yes
I must be out of my head!
Look at your blank faces! My name will mean nothing
Ten minutes after I'm dead!
- The Last Supper, Jesus Christ Superstar

19. Tonight tenants range from: a lawyer and a virgin
Accessorizing with a rosary tucked inside her lingerie
- Build God, then We'll Talk, Panic! At the Disco

20. All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
- Here Comes the Flood, Peter Gabriel

 

Comments

[miana-dude.livejournal.com]

I'm nabbing 12. Drabble/tiny vig coming soon. ;-)

[miana-dude.livejournal.com]

Wow, I wrote this faster than I've been able to write in a while. I probably should write more of this fandom...


And following #12, here is your Moulin Rouge ficlet/drabble. ;)


************
For a sunrise or sunset, your lover is an actress-
Did you really think she’d stay?
- Sunrise, Sunset, Bright Eyes

Christian sat beside the window of his rented flat, looking out over Montmartre as he did every night. The cool night air played with his curtains and a few strands of his black hair, blowing them across his forehead. They brushed against his skin like sweet kisses from the sky. Almost like her kisses.

A jealous lump rose in his throat as his eyes settled upon the Moulin. Most of the nights had been extinguished in the main dance hall, yet the brilliantly red windmill remained lit; ever-turning like the wheels of time.

She was with the Duke tonight. The thought made his insides churn. He had actually thought that perhaps her professed love for him was real. She had tempted him with sweet kisses and her body and he, like the naive fool he was, had fallen into her trap. How many men had done the same before him?

She is a courtesan, he reminded himself. She even said herself that she can't fall in love.

So then why did it hurt so much to know that she was with another man? She had been with many before he ever came to Paris. The way she seduced him upon meeting him... she had even confessed that it was all an act. She played her part and swooned in his arms; until he mentioned that he was a writer. Then, with astonishing speed, she used her charms upon the Duke.

So why had he even hoped that she could truly love him? Every night, she came to him; shared his laughs, his wine, and his bed. She was just Satine the lover; no one more. Yet when the sun rose, she once more became the infamous courtesan, the sparkling diamond of the Moulin Rouge.

"I make men believe what they want to believe..."

A bitter flame rose inside of Christian. Your lover in an actress, he scolded himself. Did you really think she'd stay? He bit the inside of his cheek as he pondered. The voice of reason inside of his head - which sounded too much like his father - told him to walk away. She would never be only his. She belonged to the Moulin Rouge. She would never leave it up for him.

And yet, he remained beside the window, waiting for her to come once she had finished her dinner with the Duke.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, Moulin Rouge! Thank you so much!

It was lovely. Poor Christian is so distraught and loved Satine so much...

[miana-dude.livejournal.com]

*Points to mine* Go! :-P ;-)

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Madi, so many pretty lyrics. How's a girl to choose?

for it's my thoughts that bind me here
it's this love that I most fear
and this child I would destroy
for I hold her pain most dear

Irina knows almost at once how to make her daughter suffer.

It doesn't take much --

Irina catches Sydney's gaze and holds it, and her eyes -- so unwillingly open, so much like Jack's -- spell out every weakness, pressing them, small diamond-hard weapons, into Irina's palms. How she has yearned for years, how for so long she would have given anything, how she had wanted so desperately to step in here now and meet a stranger's eyes only to know every detail of her face, a memory perfectly preserved. Her mother's face, despite the sharpness of betrayal.

-- and Irina has all she needs.

The only aspect of this cell that holds any interest for her is the glass and the illusion of safety that accompanies it. Jack looks down at her and, knowing she cannot touch him, threatens her with a steadiness that is admirably feigned, when one considers the circumstances.

She doesn't think of him often, though she knows she will in time; for now, her thoughts are of Sydney.

She is beautiful and strong and aching. Her poorly concealed sorrow, her practiced indifference is Jack's. She is everything Irina had suspected she might be.

There, too, are things that hadn't been foreseen.

Sydney tucks her hair behind her ear unconsciously. She holds the capacity for great manipulation, a charm ruthless and blinding. Her hair and eyes, her grace, her hands (oddly sturdy, perhaps inspiring embarrassment in adolescence) -- Irina knows all of them quite well.

She does not acknowledge the indiscernible something this discovery shatters within her.

Days and nights become indistinguishable, as she had known they would. She sits, waiting patiently, not hiding the fact that she is waiting -- it stirs anxiety in those who watch her. Patience is more frequently and deeply feared than it is given credit for.

To make the time pass, she considers a multitude of things: what she might say, what slight hand movement or glance might be enough to destroy her daughter. Irina is, of course, the enemy; as feared and despised as she is unknown, one to inspire greatest revulsion. To be able to do the things she's done is something someone with Sydney's inherent goodness wouldn't be able to endure, Irina suspects. And yet it runs in her blood, is reflected in her prettiness, her charm. The next time Sydney pays her a visit, perhaps Irina will pay the glass close attention, watch their reflections merge.

It is only the very beginning of something. It fascinates, to consider how far one might go.

Irina sits and contemplates, with methodical grace, the destruction of her child. Each calculation, once sharpened and refined, is locked somewhere deep within her, built to stay. Irina lines them up side by side in her head, assembling them dutifully. Sydney isn't the one she means to hurt.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

I practically put that lyric for you to use, darling girl. ;-)

And you certainly did it justice. The way you had Irina dissect Sydney, what is hers and what is his and what is Sydney's... it was fantastic. Thank you so much!

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

For a sunrise or sunset, your lover is an actress-
Did you really think she’d stay?

He feels her leaving in the air before anything is said. It's nameless, heavy; unbecoming of Jules, whom he's come to associate with a lithe animal grace. When she kisses him hello there's no savagery in it.

'What are we now, old marrieds?' he demands, half-feigning disgrace, and pulls her back in for more. The last thing he sees before he shuts his eyes is her face lit up in a cheshire cat grin.

'That's my girl,' he says when they break apart. She smiles, pleased, but he still knows, all at once, that it's a lie, and that she knows it too.

They pour drinks and exchange lazy, drawling conversation that doesn't mean much. The candlelight leaves her face shadowed and almost gaunt. He's struck with the sudden strange sense that he doesn't know her at all.

'You're quiet tonight,' he observes, off-handed.

A smirk plays at her mouth. 'What do you want me to say?'

He automatically lists off a number of unseemly things, which she echoes in soft lilting tones. There's something that frightens him in her tonight. In her voice, the words almost sound like prayers.

When she abandons her chair for his lap, he doesn't protest -- he's not crazy -- but he can't enjoy it with the dizzy mindlessness her attention usually stirs in him. There is a porcelain quality to her skin that he'd never noticed before. She seems delicate, easily broken.

(Ridiculous, of course, because Julia Thorne does not break, because Julia Thorne is the sort that delights in watching other things shatter.)

It isn't until after, his fingertips grazing light lazy patterns against her hip, that she speaks.

'I'm gonna be gone for awhile,' she informs him, brusque and businesslike, the stark quality of her voice divorcing him completely from the mingled scent of sweat and her perfume, pleasantly lingering aches. He's not one for poetic sentiments but the world almost seems to stop.

'New job?' he asks.

'Yeah.'

He studies her, half-draped in moonlight and dark satin sheets. He doesn't know her, and it shouldn't bother him, because it's not as though he'd aimed to.

The brown roots in her hair catch his attention.

'You're not a natural blonde,' he says, absurdly. It's an obvious thing, not something that bears saying.

Maybe the slight intake of breath is something he merely imagines.

'No,' she replies, and the word is so weighted down with -- he finds he doesn't even know. Something deep, tortured maybe. He misses the black and white of her.

'Hey.' His voice cuts into the night, shatters some nonexistent peace. 'It's been fun, love.'

The left corner of her mouth arches up, and it's her again, violence and sex and glory. 'Who's saying it's goodbye?'

She presses her open mouth against his, and as he kisses her back he feels almost like he's swallowing something. The memory of her.

Still smiling softly, she slips out of bed and begins to gather her clothes. He watches with an odd feeling like mourning.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

violence and sex and glory

A-freaking-mazing. The way that Simon could read her, in spite of not knowing her, and how Syd/Julia said goodbye and was so very Sydlike but still Julia... wow.

Belatedly, I take #14

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

The choice was yours and no one else's
You can cry for a body in despair
Hang your head because she is no longer there
To shine, or dazzle, or betray.


He regrets it every day.

Jack has never regretted anything else he's done to keep Sydney safe, whether that was as hypocritical as making nice with Sloane or as vicious as sacrificing Rusik's life for hers. Her safety has served as a universal justification, a kind of papal indulgence for anything Jack might do in her name.

Irina's murder changes that, forever. It haunts him, and Jack had thought he'd met all his ghosts a long time ago. This one weighs heavier than all the rest.

Tell me why, he'd said. And even then, with the gun in his hand and her face in his sights, Jack had believed that she would have an answer. That she would either deny her involvement, or give one of her maddeningly thorough and unprovable explanations -- something, anything that would at least buy him time. Perhaps she'd explain everything; perhaps he hadn't even kissed her for the last time.

Instead Irina denied nothing, and he fired. He has nightmares about nothing more than the orchid she'd been wearing in her hair; it floated on the surface of the pool afterward, its pale pink petals flecked with blood.

Sydney hates him now, and Jack lets her hate him. He does not give his reasons, and he tells himself that this is because the truth about her mother's motivations would hurt her even more deeply than the lie about his own. What he doesn't admit, except in his darkest hours, is that he needs Sydney to hate him for it. It means he doesn't have to wait for his punishment.

Re: Belatedly, I take #14

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

You completely captured exactly what I pictured for that lyric. I know you know that writing Jack is your strong point, but seriously, it cannot be said enough: you are always dead-on. I especially loved your ending, because letting Sydney hate him did serve two purposes- to keep her from hating herself for forcing his hand, so to speak, and to provide his own punishment.