Settlement

[zopyrus]

Title: Settlement
Challenge/Prompt: Yesterday
Original Fiction
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mention of self-harm.
Disclaimer:  Plot and characters are mine.
Summary:  Hippothoe's marriage ends messily; she goes to live in her brother's house.

She hasn’t moved since yesterday, hasn’t made a sound since I brought her home. Her hair tangled, her dress askew, and the angry scratches she made, from throat to breast, red against the pale of her skin.

The house feels huge, and empty. Even the servants have caught her sadness, like another kind of plague, choking the sound from their throats.

When I sit down beside her, I can hear the rustle of cloth, raw and loud. I take her hand, but she flinches away.

I wish, desperately, that she would scream--that I could scream.

The silence gets louder.

On Eagle's Wings

[sinsyne]

Title: On Eagle's Wings
Challenge/Prompt: Yesterday
Original Fiction or Fanfiction: Original Fiction
Characters: Nameless couple.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mentions of suicide.
Disclaimer: All mine.
Summary: In the end, he couldn't save her from herself.
Author's Notes: The title is drawn from the church hymn of the same name. It's a heavy piece, and seeing as there was much more I wanted to put in it, I'm not sure how well I handled the 100 words.

She was gone, yet the despair she left in her wake easily made up for the absence. In death, as in love, she lingered, but there was no solace in that.

Silently, he ghosted through the house, memories of their life together resurfacing with every step, every breath, that he took. That was all she was now: memory.

In sickness and in health, they had once vowed, many years ago. He had thought it such an easy promise, unaware of the inner-demons that tormented her, until she vanished with her painkillers.

Yesterday, she had been alive, now...

Silence welcomed him.