![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse... This is...
This is how the world ends.
It lay in dust, now, the singular reminder of what had been the end of her old world, and the beginning on her new. She picks up the shoe box, and the dust is coarse against her palm, scratching against the warped, peeling cardboard as she clears it away.
Inside are the memories of a life she once lived, before the world ended. An identification card, with a picture of a woman who had become a stranger. It was unsettling to think that had once been the face she saw, every day, when she looked in the mirror. Her old warrant card from the police; she’d never been told, exactly, to turn it in, so she never did. A few newspaper clippings, the ones that had not been kept in her desk and had not, thus, been lost when her old world had burned.
A single, faded photograph. The smiling face of a familiar stranger, surrounded by the figures of ghosts who have never ventured far from the safe confines of her memory.
The video tape lay at the bottom. Outdated technology now, near-forgotten, like the events the tape had captured. But when she sets it in her palm, she can still feel the weight of an ending world, and she can still hear her own, trembling words in her ears as if she were still speaking them.
I’m recording this in case anyone every finds it so you can see...
... you can see how the world ended.
This is how the world ends.
“Mum?”
Gwen drops the tape back in the box and closes it swiftly, a cloud of dust rising up to tickle her nose.
“Mum, what are you doin’?”
She’s grown so much, Gwen thinks, already fourteen with a commanding presence that reminds Gwen of herself in a way that isn’t particularly comforting. Her daughter stands in the doorway, pushing dark hair from her eyes and crossing her arms.
“You’ve been up here two hours. Dad says come down for tea.”
Gwen looks at her daughter. She is tall, stocky like her dad, her round features so reminiscent of the stranger in that faded photo. Gwen looks at the shoebox. It holds only dust covered memories of a distant past she has fought so hard to remember.
She slides the box back between other dust choked relics of her past and stands up, brushing off her hands. “Okay. Let’s go eat.”
Her daughter looks at her, green eyes alight with an innocent curiosity. “What were you lookin’ at, Mum?”
“Things,” Gwen answers, too quickly, with a tone of finality. “Just... old things.”
She ruffles the girl’s hair playfully, and daughter shoots mother a look of defiant disbelief. Arm and arm they walk downstairs, Gwen once again ready to live in the present, allowing the old world, the ended world, to remain at undisturbed rest.
This is how the world begins.
------------
Cut for length and minor spoilers for Children of Earth
------------
Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #300: This is...
Verse: Open Future
Word Count: 497
It lay in dust, now, the singular reminder of what had been the end of her old world, and the beginning on her new. She picks up the shoe box, and the dust is coarse against her palm, scratching against the warped, peeling cardboard as she clears it away.
Inside are the memories of a life she once lived, before the world ended. An identification card, with a picture of a woman who had become a stranger. It was unsettling to think that had once been the face she saw, every day, when she looked in the mirror. Her old warrant card from the police; she’d never been told, exactly, to turn it in, so she never did. A few newspaper clippings, the ones that had not been kept in her desk and had not, thus, been lost when her old world had burned.
A single, faded photograph. The smiling face of a familiar stranger, surrounded by the figures of ghosts who have never ventured far from the safe confines of her memory.
The video tape lay at the bottom. Outdated technology now, near-forgotten, like the events the tape had captured. But when she sets it in her palm, she can still feel the weight of an ending world, and she can still hear her own, trembling words in her ears as if she were still speaking them.
I’m recording this in case anyone every finds it so you can see...
... you can see how the world ended.
This is how the world ends.
“Mum?”
Gwen drops the tape back in the box and closes it swiftly, a cloud of dust rising up to tickle her nose.
“Mum, what are you doin’?”
She’s grown so much, Gwen thinks, already fourteen with a commanding presence that reminds Gwen of herself in a way that isn’t particularly comforting. Her daughter stands in the doorway, pushing dark hair from her eyes and crossing her arms.
“You’ve been up here two hours. Dad says come down for tea.”
Gwen looks at her daughter. She is tall, stocky like her dad, her round features so reminiscent of the stranger in that faded photo. Gwen looks at the shoebox. It holds only dust covered memories of a distant past she has fought so hard to remember.
She slides the box back between other dust choked relics of her past and stands up, brushing off her hands. “Okay. Let’s go eat.”
Her daughter looks at her, green eyes alight with an innocent curiosity. “What were you lookin’ at, Mum?”
“Things,” Gwen answers, too quickly, with a tone of finality. “Just... old things.”
She ruffles the girl’s hair playfully, and daughter shoots mother a look of defiant disbelief. Arm and arm they walk downstairs, Gwen once again ready to live in the present, allowing the old world, the ended world, to remain at undisturbed rest.
This is how the world begins.
------------
Cut for length and minor spoilers for Children of Earth
------------
Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #300: This is...
Verse: Open Future
Word Count: 497