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fluffybunA Good Memory is Unpardonable: archiveofourown.org/works/1096080
Is That a Yes: archiveofourown.org/works/1098728
And somehow, people seem to like the two gifts I wrote, hurrah! :)
I hope I can participate again next year :) I want to gush more but I still have some fandom_stocking stuff to work on :)
***
I also got an amazing gift fic from
chocolateowls at the Pokeprompts challenge: pokemod.dreamwidth.org/18128.html***
I've been bad about my hc_bingo challenge, but I think I can manage at least a line before the deadline. :)
Title: Better Buried
Fandom: Black Swan
Prompt: Amnesia
Medium: fic
Wordcount: 515
Rating: PG
Warnings: some mention of self-harm
Summary: It’s better not to remember, she thinks, when she does. (Actually written Jan 2, 2014 but didn't want to change the links anymore.)
When someone (her mother, the nurses tell her) hugs her, carefully like a doll, she wonders if she’ll ever remember.
***
“So I am… a ballet dancer?”
“Yes,” said the woman they say was her mother. “You were part of the New York Ballet Company, you had-“ she wonders why her mother seems to bite her tongue. “You were very good.”
“Huh,” she said. “No wonder my feet are so messed up.”
It may have been the wrong thing to say, since her mother then burst into more tears. “You were my sweet girl, Nina, working so hard-“
“Then?”
Her mother couldn’t speak, her tears still rolling down her face.
“Because of this?” Nina gestures to her feet.
She nods.
“Then maybe I should stop.”
Her mother looks torn, horrified and relieved at the same time.
***
A girl introduces herself as Lily, apologetic –not that Nina knows what she is apologetic for- as she hands Nina some flowers.
“Thomas, that dick, doesn’t have the balls to visit you. I’m the first, though some of the others will come by after practice.”
“Thank you,” she says automatically. “They’re beautiful.”
“So you really don’t remember anything about that day?”
“I don’t really remember anything.”
She sees Lily sigh, something she feels is abnormal but doesn’t know why, and then she smiles faintly.
“Let’s try this again. Hi, I’m Lily, and I’d like to get to know you more.”
“Hi, I’m Nina, and I’d like to get to know you too.”
***
When the other ballet dancers come, she is surprised by how thin they are, how light they look. But you are also light, thin, and possibly too thin, if the doctors are right.
She couldn’t imagine a life like this, with so much restrictions, so much pain, and certainly it would only end badly. She felt uncomfortable seeing the pitying looks in their eyes, yes, the fear, maybe it would happen to them.
Well, it wasn’t all that bad, losing one’s memory, if apparently the memories lost weren’t so good anyway.
***
When she comes home, she feels equal parts revulsion and curiosity as she looks at her room. All girlishly pink, like a child’s room. Had I really lived in this room so long?
She can hear what people said in the hospital, how she had worked so passionately that she had lost herself, had gone mad and made the best performance of her life, even.
Maybe it’s for the best.
***
Three months after, she falls asleep after her tenth meeting with her psychiatrist, cheerful and hopeful.
In a trance, she wakes up in the dark apartment and she goes to the living room and stretches, stretches.
It’s better not to remember, she thinks, when she does.
She remembers and she cries.
It was for the best, but it wasn’t meant to last.
