justprompts: Distance

[hecalledmeivy]

The sunlight filtered through the leaves of the tree overhead is golden, and it plays in beautiful patterns across the skin visible on him as the branches sway in the breeze. The sound of the ocean in the distance lulls them as their hands move gently across the still barely-noticeable baby bump and they talk. About the past, about the present. About the future. She is seventeen, and she is going to have trouble at school soon probably, but that can be worked out somehow. Her mother is coming to them right now, actually, driving across the country. She's not upset by the news, and that is enough to give them a lever or security.
It's going to be all right.

She suddenly shivers slightly, as though the breeze has become a little cooler, and he suggests they get up and walk. It's calm and nice enough in the park, and she agrees.

No. Stop here. Let them be.

They stroll, hand in hand down the alley--

And she's running down an alley, pigtails flying around her hair. Or walking hand-in-hand with a man. A little pregnant, or very much more pregnant, or with a baby of her own...

She blinks, and the images fade, and she takes a deeper breath and makes herself recall his question and answer it.

Sometimes the man beside her is blond, like now; other times he's dark-haired, or dark-skinned. A couple of times, even though there is a baby, it's a woman walking beside her, embracing her, gentle hands on the bugling belly... loved, such as now...

She stops, fingers flying to cover her mouth. "What..."

"Dana? What is the matter?"

'These are the memories of your mother. And her mother. And the mother of her mother's mother... and so on. For a very long time.'
Her head is full now, of images of so many such walks. Then before that, moments of passion. So many different moments of love, of passion--

No! Please... stop here. Please!

She staggers under the weight of so much information, so much emotion, so quickly, and feels his arms wrapping around her, keeping her upright.

Arms wrapping around her lovingly. Then others that don't. Hands that push at her, hit her. Fingers that tear against her clothes, bodies pressed against her, forcing her, hurting her. Hurting... pain... loud noise, a crush, a whistle of tires, so much pain...

Mother!

'She's dead.'

She screams in the beautiful, unhelpful silence of the park, breaks away from him, and runs, blindly away while he's standing, confused, in the sunlit alley.

WHAT is this? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

'You are the Archive now. You remember everything. You know everything.'

The girl's eyes opened in the dark, on another continent, another century, another person. Another face for the tears to fall across as Ivy tried not to sob out loud. She did entirely too much crying these days anyway, and this, this had happened so long ago, one of the things that had to be, nobody had any choice in the matter, and the consequences had happened in the past too.

Her lips, nevertheless, formed the word voicelessly in the quiet room.

"Mother."

She was the Archive. She didn't have the mercy of being able to forget, no matter how much the distance.

Not. A single. Thing.


ooc: Don't kill me for this? I think Ivy's making up for all the muses I have who don't have TOO many nightmares...