On Wasted Fields
Jun. 21st, 2019 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intheheartTitle: On Wasted Fields
Rating: PG
Summary: The McKean children and their father's grave.
Warnings: Mentioned domestic and child abuse.
Notes: This is an AU where Gina is straight, and these are her children.
1)
So this was his father's grave.
Robbie stared down at the heap of earth, barren and brown amid so much summer greenery. The cemetery itself was absurdly beautiful: he'd passed gorgeous statuary and huge mausoleums, wrought-iron railings, a fountain, even a damn wedding party outside a gazebo. It seemed ghoulish to him, holding a wedding in a graveyard, but what did he know?
And this was where his father would stay forever, his body rotting slowly in this lovely place, a canker in the rose, just like he'd been all his life.
Robbie spat on the grave, and walked away.
2)
She couldn't even approach it at first. She was still so afraid.
Leah only had an hour, and she spent most of it circling around the cemetery. It was historic in its own right, sprawling and storied, Victorian and modern architecture cheek by jowl. She picked up a guidebook and visited the more famous graves: Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, the town founders, even a Seth Green, if not that one.
Finally, five minutes left, she crept up to her father's site. It looked so normal. The monster from her childhood, just another carved stone among thousands.
She fled anyway.
3)
Beth had very few memories of her father. None that were clear. He was a fuzzy presence in her earliest recollections, sometimes benevolent, sometimes nightmarish. But she thought maybe, if she sat with his headstone for a while, she might remember something more.
She couldn't really have said why she was sitting here, picking at the grass that had begun to cover his grave. She knew he was-- had been-- an awful person, abusive and violent. But he was still her father, and she wanted, just once, to remember him.
She tried as hard as she could, but nothing came.
4)
They went in age order: Robbie right after the funeral, Leah a week later, Beth after school ended. Now it was Caty's turn, in the July swelter, to visit her father's grave.
It was a weird idea. She had no memory of him and wanted none. But Robbie thought they should go, and Mama agreed, and now Caty was here at the cemetery gates. Mama would be back in an hour.
Fuck her father. She wanted nothing to do with him or his grave.
There was a shady bench beside the gatehouse. Caty sat down and got out her book.
Rating: PG
Summary: The McKean children and their father's grave.
Warnings: Mentioned domestic and child abuse.
Notes: This is an AU where Gina is straight, and these are her children.
1)
So this was his father's grave.
Robbie stared down at the heap of earth, barren and brown amid so much summer greenery. The cemetery itself was absurdly beautiful: he'd passed gorgeous statuary and huge mausoleums, wrought-iron railings, a fountain, even a damn wedding party outside a gazebo. It seemed ghoulish to him, holding a wedding in a graveyard, but what did he know?
And this was where his father would stay forever, his body rotting slowly in this lovely place, a canker in the rose, just like he'd been all his life.
Robbie spat on the grave, and walked away.
2)
She couldn't even approach it at first. She was still so afraid.
Leah only had an hour, and she spent most of it circling around the cemetery. It was historic in its own right, sprawling and storied, Victorian and modern architecture cheek by jowl. She picked up a guidebook and visited the more famous graves: Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, the town founders, even a Seth Green, if not that one.
Finally, five minutes left, she crept up to her father's site. It looked so normal. The monster from her childhood, just another carved stone among thousands.
She fled anyway.
3)
Beth had very few memories of her father. None that were clear. He was a fuzzy presence in her earliest recollections, sometimes benevolent, sometimes nightmarish. But she thought maybe, if she sat with his headstone for a while, she might remember something more.
She couldn't really have said why she was sitting here, picking at the grass that had begun to cover his grave. She knew he was-- had been-- an awful person, abusive and violent. But he was still her father, and she wanted, just once, to remember him.
She tried as hard as she could, but nothing came.
4)
They went in age order: Robbie right after the funeral, Leah a week later, Beth after school ended. Now it was Caty's turn, in the July swelter, to visit her father's grave.
It was a weird idea. She had no memory of him and wanted none. But Robbie thought they should go, and Mama agreed, and now Caty was here at the cemetery gates. Mama would be back in an hour.
Fuck her father. She wanted nothing to do with him or his grave.
There was a shady bench beside the gatehouse. Caty sat down and got out her book.
