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averita at 02:47pm on 16/02/2008 under character: nina myers, fic: 24, fic: sc, lady love: sarah clarke, tv: 24, tv: house, writing: fanfiction
averita at 02:47pm on 16/02/2008 under character: nina myers, fic: 24, fic: sc, lady love: sarah clarke, tv: 24, tv: house, writing: fanfictionHappy Birthday, Sarah!
A very happy birthday to the amazingly talented, gorgeous, overall awesome Sarah Clarke.
To celebrate! A collection of ten character drabbles, including Birdie (Thirteen), Diane (Happy Endings), Reeny (The Accident), Katrina (The Third Date), Clown (Pas De Deux), Christine (Commander in Chief), Mary Ann (Life), Carly (House), Selma (Psychic Driving), and of course, Nina (24).
Paper Faces on Parade
Birdie
Kayla is sleeping, a lock of hair matted to her forehead, mouth open. She’ll turn eight in twelve days. Her report card came in today, all A’s, and Birdie thinks she’ll take her to get ice cream tomorrow.
Mel called today. Tracy has been away for six weeks, and the doctors are optimistic. Tracy, she remembers, used to do well in school, and suddenly she’s afraid for her daughter.
Sitting on the edge of the pink quilted bed, she smoothes the sweaty curl away and kisses the spot where it had been. “Good night, baby girl,” she whispers, and turns off the light.
Diane
It’s better than smoking, better than drugs, better than any of the other vices she may have picked up. Her stash, hidden in one of those cabinets filled with trays they never use, contains it all: caramels, raspberries, dark, milk, white, almonds…
The chocolate itself isn’t her vice. It’s the secrecy, the fact that she’s breaking every rule she sets for herself. Pam knows but doesn’t say anything. She drinks an extra glass of wine with dinner when she gets stressed.
Max pretends to like the nutritious lunches Diane packs him. When she’s feeling nice, she slips him a chocolate kiss.
Reeny
Before Ray, before the lies and the deceit; before they became murderers, Reeny and Nina were friends.
“Do you think it’ll always be like this?” Nina asked once, hugging herself against the cold of the balcony, and Reeny was struck by how young she looked in the moonlight.
“Of course it will,” she replied. In another life, maybe she would want something more, something beyond a seedy apartment in the slums of New York, a job at a store that had been raided three times. Right then, it was enough.
The one thing she would never forgive Nina for was making a liar out of her.
Katrina
“Hello,” she repeats. “How are…you?”
This is her third lesson and she feels sure that she could have learned just as much at home, watching her movies. “I am well,” she adds at her instruction’s raised eyebrow.
“Excellent,” the older woman says. “Can you tell me what you did yesterday?” she continues in English.
Katrina stares at her, eyes wide and frustrated. “I…I…” she stumbles. “I go to…oh, darling, tell me I’m not dreaming!” She spits the words out like they’re bitter.
Tony squeezes her hand and she bites her lip. “I go to Coney Island,” she says, and smiles.
Clown
At the end of each day, she lathers up a cloth and rubs her face raw. The black and white paint slithers down the drain in murky circles. The skin on her cheeks grows redder each time and in the morning she adds just another layer of makeup.
She sleeps in a studio apartment with grimy streaks on the walls and covers them with bright posters from the circuses she’s performed in. It doesn’t do much to brighten the place up.
At home, she never laughs. She likes to save it up; hoping that one day, it might be enough.
Christine
It’s not that she doesn’t want women to have rights. It's just that she needs to focus on the disaster that is Florida’s economy; she needs to focus on her opponent in the upcoming election, and the ERA doesn’t fit into this agenda.
The president is someone Christine respects. She even relates to her, somewhat, but Mackenzie Allen is unelected and Christine voted for her running mate, not her.
One day, maybe she’ll sit in that seat. Maybe then she can do what she should, but for now she’s only three points up and the election is in a month.
Mary Ann
The coffin is made of mahogany. It’s not much lighter than the black, black soil she has in her hand, moist and sticky between her fingers.
She didn’t speak at the service. One of his friends, a skinny kid with oily red hair, talked about what a great guy Jeffrey had been. Mary Ann thinks he must not have known him very well, but then again, neither did she.
None of the people here know who she is. They stare at her as she drops the
dirt onto her son, as though wondering what right she has to do so.
Carly
She kept her promise and the next time she enters Princeton Plainsboro, it’s as a visitor, not a patient. Her brother has a broken arm and taking a long lunch isn’t the end of the world, these days.
When she sees House, standing with the oncologist in line for lunch, she doesn’t say anything. She just gives him a smile over Wilson’s shoulder; inclines her head and orders an egg salad sandwich. She wouldn’t have been sure he saw her at all except for the twitch in his lips and the flicker of recognition behind the pain in his eyes.
Selma
Her first time, she’s 17 and living in New York for the first time. She wants to be a dancer but the schools are expensive and her job as a waitress isn’t enough.
The man, a lawyer with blue eyes and prematurely gray hair, is nice enough. After it’s over she kicks him out and he doesn’t blame her for the tears glazing her cheeks, just hands her the money and closes the door. The room smells sour but the fan is broken.
She washes her sheets every night for a week but after awhile she doesn’t bother.
Nina
The cuffs still bite into her wrists but the leather of the seat is soft, softer than the flat, springless cot she’s slept on for eighteen months. Outside the hard plastic window a greasy-looking cloud shifts and sinks.
Freedom tastes like metallic airplane air but she breathes it in great gulps. Africa, she thinks, might taste like new beginnings: hard and brittle against her tongue. She exhales. The breath from her lips is the only thing she can call her own these days. It dissolves against the window.
Outside, the cloud splits, wisps of vapor spiraling into oblivion.
A very happy birthday to the amazingly talented, gorgeous, overall awesome Sarah Clarke.
To celebrate! A collection of ten character drabbles, including Birdie (Thirteen), Diane (Happy Endings), Reeny (The Accident), Katrina (The Third Date), Clown (Pas De Deux), Christine (Commander in Chief), Mary Ann (Life), Carly (House), Selma (Psychic Driving), and of course, Nina (24).
Paper Faces on Parade
Birdie
Kayla is sleeping, a lock of hair matted to her forehead, mouth open. She’ll turn eight in twelve days. Her report card came in today, all A’s, and Birdie thinks she’ll take her to get ice cream tomorrow.
Mel called today. Tracy has been away for six weeks, and the doctors are optimistic. Tracy, she remembers, used to do well in school, and suddenly she’s afraid for her daughter.
Sitting on the edge of the pink quilted bed, she smoothes the sweaty curl away and kisses the spot where it had been. “Good night, baby girl,” she whispers, and turns off the light.
Diane
It’s better than smoking, better than drugs, better than any of the other vices she may have picked up. Her stash, hidden in one of those cabinets filled with trays they never use, contains it all: caramels, raspberries, dark, milk, white, almonds…
The chocolate itself isn’t her vice. It’s the secrecy, the fact that she’s breaking every rule she sets for herself. Pam knows but doesn’t say anything. She drinks an extra glass of wine with dinner when she gets stressed.
Max pretends to like the nutritious lunches Diane packs him. When she’s feeling nice, she slips him a chocolate kiss.
Reeny
Before Ray, before the lies and the deceit; before they became murderers, Reeny and Nina were friends.
“Do you think it’ll always be like this?” Nina asked once, hugging herself against the cold of the balcony, and Reeny was struck by how young she looked in the moonlight.
“Of course it will,” she replied. In another life, maybe she would want something more, something beyond a seedy apartment in the slums of New York, a job at a store that had been raided three times. Right then, it was enough.
The one thing she would never forgive Nina for was making a liar out of her.
Katrina
“Hello,” she repeats. “How are…you?”
This is her third lesson and she feels sure that she could have learned just as much at home, watching her movies. “I am well,” she adds at her instruction’s raised eyebrow.
“Excellent,” the older woman says. “Can you tell me what you did yesterday?” she continues in English.
Katrina stares at her, eyes wide and frustrated. “I…I…” she stumbles. “I go to…oh, darling, tell me I’m not dreaming!” She spits the words out like they’re bitter.
Tony squeezes her hand and she bites her lip. “I go to Coney Island,” she says, and smiles.
Clown
At the end of each day, she lathers up a cloth and rubs her face raw. The black and white paint slithers down the drain in murky circles. The skin on her cheeks grows redder each time and in the morning she adds just another layer of makeup.
She sleeps in a studio apartment with grimy streaks on the walls and covers them with bright posters from the circuses she’s performed in. It doesn’t do much to brighten the place up.
At home, she never laughs. She likes to save it up; hoping that one day, it might be enough.
Christine
It’s not that she doesn’t want women to have rights. It's just that she needs to focus on the disaster that is Florida’s economy; she needs to focus on her opponent in the upcoming election, and the ERA doesn’t fit into this agenda.
The president is someone Christine respects. She even relates to her, somewhat, but Mackenzie Allen is unelected and Christine voted for her running mate, not her.
One day, maybe she’ll sit in that seat. Maybe then she can do what she should, but for now she’s only three points up and the election is in a month.
Mary Ann
The coffin is made of mahogany. It’s not much lighter than the black, black soil she has in her hand, moist and sticky between her fingers.
She didn’t speak at the service. One of his friends, a skinny kid with oily red hair, talked about what a great guy Jeffrey had been. Mary Ann thinks he must not have known him very well, but then again, neither did she.
None of the people here know who she is. They stare at her as she drops the
dirt onto her son, as though wondering what right she has to do so.
Carly
She kept her promise and the next time she enters Princeton Plainsboro, it’s as a visitor, not a patient. Her brother has a broken arm and taking a long lunch isn’t the end of the world, these days.
When she sees House, standing with the oncologist in line for lunch, she doesn’t say anything. She just gives him a smile over Wilson’s shoulder; inclines her head and orders an egg salad sandwich. She wouldn’t have been sure he saw her at all except for the twitch in his lips and the flicker of recognition behind the pain in his eyes.
Selma
Her first time, she’s 17 and living in New York for the first time. She wants to be a dancer but the schools are expensive and her job as a waitress isn’t enough.
The man, a lawyer with blue eyes and prematurely gray hair, is nice enough. After it’s over she kicks him out and he doesn’t blame her for the tears glazing her cheeks, just hands her the money and closes the door. The room smells sour but the fan is broken.
She washes her sheets every night for a week but after awhile she doesn’t bother.
Nina
The cuffs still bite into her wrists but the leather of the seat is soft, softer than the flat, springless cot she’s slept on for eighteen months. Outside the hard plastic window a greasy-looking cloud shifts and sinks.
Freedom tastes like metallic airplane air but she breathes it in great gulps. Africa, she thinks, might taste like new beginnings: hard and brittle against her tongue. She exhales. The breath from her lips is the only thing she can call her own these days. It dissolves against the window.
Outside, the cloud splits, wisps of vapor spiraling into oblivion.
happy