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tempus frangit
1. A good meme: When you see this, quote Douglas Adams in your journal.
"I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons."
2. I HAVE IT I HAVE IT. I have Return to the Secret Garden by Susan Moody, and I am... quite excited! But first I have to finish rereading A Wrinkle in Time, and that's partially this Charles Wallace/Lucy fic's fault.
3. According to their respective fandom wikis, Tom Riddle and Susan Pevensie are two years apart. Which sort of brings me to my next point.
Salva Veritate
Narnia/Harry Potter. Susan Pevensie/Tom Riddle, PG13. Warning: spoilers for The Last Battle. Tip of the hat to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard for crack and enablement.
Post-TLB. Magic is a blessing and being different can be a tool of power.
Susan knows magic when she sees it, when she feels it. She grew up (the first time around) breathing magic like air. There is something of Tom Riddle that tastes like a hundred years of winter.
She’s not surprised to learn there is a hidden world of wizards and witches. Of course there is. Walk through a looking glass, a wardrobe, a barrier at a train station, and who knows where you’ll end up.
She tells him, “I know a little of the double life.”
“Double life?” Tom echoes, raising his eyebrow. “No, I am living only one life. One life will be all I need, if all goes according to plan.”
“What plan?”
He chuckles, and leans in close. Susan resists the urge to flinch away.
“Why on earth,” he says, amused, “would I tell you?”
Magic unfurls from his fingers, his eyes. It washes over her skin and, when he kisses her, it’s not quite like coming home but it is close enough.
+
As Tom fashions snakes out of green fire with his wand, he tells her, “I can teach you to bottle death. I can teach you to break your soul apart and keep the pieces in a secret place.”
She doesn't doubt he can but Lucy’s cordial had bottled life, which is more precious, and Susan thinks she’s had enough of the soul divided and left in inaccessible places.
A snake swims through the air between them and coils around her proffered arm, slithering to her shoulder, around the back of her neck until she is eye to eye with it. There is no heat from its fire, only a coolness to the touch that recalls the whispers of the dead. Through its transparent body she can see Tom watching her as the snake does, their shapes juxtaposed, man and phantom blurring into one.
+
When struggle shapes who you are, victory brings the destruction of identity. For so long now Susan has resolved to move on, to accept that the discourse of forgetting is inherent in reconciliation. She let rifts grow believing she would have time to rebuild the bridges later.
Lucy’s brow had furrowed, inspecting the lipstick and liner and perfume on Susan’s dresser. “Would you sacrifice who you are for this?”
And Susan had laughed – had laughed – saying, “Oh Lucy, what a dreary perspective.” After all, she was close to victory.
Susan picks and chooses her memory, as we all do. She does remember what it is like to be queen, to gain the love of the public, to have it nourish her, to walk into a room and turn all heads. Most of the rest she leaves up to the will of the passage of time.
The passage of time brings Tom, with his purpose and his drive so tied to who he is. Susan takes cues from his arrogance, his readiness to seize the past so that he may have his future. Tom is not afraid to stand alone, and Susan remembers through him the strength to stand apart.
When being alone is thrust upon you, you tend to forget why you should want it in the first place.
+
The old adage is that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. But repetition is inevitable; nothing is really so new. Revolutions come and revolutions go, and people are bandying this word ‘revolution’ quite a bit now, self-determination in the colonies, people crying independence, people crying freedom, as if they’ve forgotten that revolution can also refer to the revolution of a wheel, the completion of a cycle.
And it’s all the same cycle, really.
The end is the beginning is the end.
We will not be chained by history, they declare, when it is history who bears the burdens of the present day.
+
“Can you bring the dead back to life?”
It took time to work herself up to the question, and Susan knows Tom can read it on her face. Her hands don’t know what to do with themselves, and she doesn’t know what she would do if he says yes.
But Tom replies, “The dead are dead. Even when they come back, they are still dead.”
It’s not a real answer, and she’s almost relieved.
She doesn’t ask again.
+
She keeps the rings wrapped in a dishrag, in the cabinet where she keeps disused kitchenware and extra lightbulbs. She keeps the rings, not to use, but to guard. To make sure no one else uses them, she tells herself. (The desire to use them will fade in time, she tells herself.)
+
Tom leans back in a chair, shirt unbuttoned, smoking a cigarette and using his wand to manipulate the smoke into patterns and figures that are edged in a soft green glow. Susan watches him from the bed, still naked under the covers. Her heart and mind are older than this man, but in sheer bloody-mindedness Tom has his lessons to teach.
She is older than her body. But that’s the trick to immortality, she thinks. You just keep changing bodies, changing lives.
He feels her gaze on him, and turns a bored expression on her. “What?”
Susan says, “There are so many worlds out there. It makes me weary to think of it.”
“One world will be enough for me,” Tom replies, “if all goes according to plan.”
"I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons."
2. I HAVE IT I HAVE IT. I have Return to the Secret Garden by Susan Moody, and I am... quite excited! But first I have to finish rereading A Wrinkle in Time, and that's partially this Charles Wallace/Lucy fic's fault.
3. According to their respective fandom wikis, Tom Riddle and Susan Pevensie are two years apart. Which sort of brings me to my next point.
Salva Veritate
Narnia/Harry Potter. Susan Pevensie/Tom Riddle, PG13. Warning: spoilers for The Last Battle. Tip of the hat to
bedlamsbard for crack and enablement.Post-TLB. Magic is a blessing and being different can be a tool of power.
Susan knows magic when she sees it, when she feels it. She grew up (the first time around) breathing magic like air. There is something of Tom Riddle that tastes like a hundred years of winter.
She’s not surprised to learn there is a hidden world of wizards and witches. Of course there is. Walk through a looking glass, a wardrobe, a barrier at a train station, and who knows where you’ll end up.
She tells him, “I know a little of the double life.”
“Double life?” Tom echoes, raising his eyebrow. “No, I am living only one life. One life will be all I need, if all goes according to plan.”
“What plan?”
He chuckles, and leans in close. Susan resists the urge to flinch away.
“Why on earth,” he says, amused, “would I tell you?”
Magic unfurls from his fingers, his eyes. It washes over her skin and, when he kisses her, it’s not quite like coming home but it is close enough.
+
As Tom fashions snakes out of green fire with his wand, he tells her, “I can teach you to bottle death. I can teach you to break your soul apart and keep the pieces in a secret place.”
She doesn't doubt he can but Lucy’s cordial had bottled life, which is more precious, and Susan thinks she’s had enough of the soul divided and left in inaccessible places.
A snake swims through the air between them and coils around her proffered arm, slithering to her shoulder, around the back of her neck until she is eye to eye with it. There is no heat from its fire, only a coolness to the touch that recalls the whispers of the dead. Through its transparent body she can see Tom watching her as the snake does, their shapes juxtaposed, man and phantom blurring into one.
+
When struggle shapes who you are, victory brings the destruction of identity. For so long now Susan has resolved to move on, to accept that the discourse of forgetting is inherent in reconciliation. She let rifts grow believing she would have time to rebuild the bridges later.
Lucy’s brow had furrowed, inspecting the lipstick and liner and perfume on Susan’s dresser. “Would you sacrifice who you are for this?”
And Susan had laughed – had laughed – saying, “Oh Lucy, what a dreary perspective.” After all, she was close to victory.
Susan picks and chooses her memory, as we all do. She does remember what it is like to be queen, to gain the love of the public, to have it nourish her, to walk into a room and turn all heads. Most of the rest she leaves up to the will of the passage of time.
The passage of time brings Tom, with his purpose and his drive so tied to who he is. Susan takes cues from his arrogance, his readiness to seize the past so that he may have his future. Tom is not afraid to stand alone, and Susan remembers through him the strength to stand apart.
When being alone is thrust upon you, you tend to forget why you should want it in the first place.
+
The old adage is that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. But repetition is inevitable; nothing is really so new. Revolutions come and revolutions go, and people are bandying this word ‘revolution’ quite a bit now, self-determination in the colonies, people crying independence, people crying freedom, as if they’ve forgotten that revolution can also refer to the revolution of a wheel, the completion of a cycle.
And it’s all the same cycle, really.
The end is the beginning is the end.
We will not be chained by history, they declare, when it is history who bears the burdens of the present day.
+
“Can you bring the dead back to life?”
It took time to work herself up to the question, and Susan knows Tom can read it on her face. Her hands don’t know what to do with themselves, and she doesn’t know what she would do if he says yes.
But Tom replies, “The dead are dead. Even when they come back, they are still dead.”
It’s not a real answer, and she’s almost relieved.
She doesn’t ask again.
+
She keeps the rings wrapped in a dishrag, in the cabinet where she keeps disused kitchenware and extra lightbulbs. She keeps the rings, not to use, but to guard. To make sure no one else uses them, she tells herself. (The desire to use them will fade in time, she tells herself.)
+
Tom leans back in a chair, shirt unbuttoned, smoking a cigarette and using his wand to manipulate the smoke into patterns and figures that are edged in a soft green glow. Susan watches him from the bed, still naked under the covers. Her heart and mind are older than this man, but in sheer bloody-mindedness Tom has his lessons to teach.
She is older than her body. But that’s the trick to immortality, she thinks. You just keep changing bodies, changing lives.
He feels her gaze on him, and turns a bored expression on her. “What?”
Susan says, “There are so many worlds out there. It makes me weary to think of it.”
“One world will be enough for me,” Tom replies, “if all goes according to plan.”
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