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love_bingo FIC] "Letter to a Young Daughter Reborn" ("Audrey Ros
Mar. 12th, 2011 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugeeThis is an unofficial gift fic for my mom. We'd both recently watched the 1977 movie version of "Audrey Rose" and the ending left us unsatisfied. We agreed that it seemed a bit short shrift for the characters to go through all that madness only for the title character to die in the end, rather than come to some bittersweet ending. So! That leads me to the joy of the fix fic.
Prompt: How deep is your love?
Word Count: 774
Dear Audrey Rose,
I've written a long letter for you to read when you are old enough to understand what happened to you, what lead me to your father and what lead me away from the man whom I married, the man whom I can hardly call your father now, not when I have met the father of your soul.
You were a mess after the disastrous hypnosis session which the prosecutor and my husband had insisted on conducting. Bill, my husband, had been especially insistent on having it carried out, but my motherly heart must have sensed that no good would come of it. You were trapped, a young soul in a body twice its age.
After the procedure, my husband and I sat by you bedside, I holding your hand, he with his arms folded on his chest. He talked about finding a specialist for your, about treatment plans for you. He talked about suing your father for emotional duress, and suing the psychologist for messing up the hypnosis. I had enough of talking, and so I turned on him.
"You talk as though this was a contract that had been broken. Not as if you were talking about your own child."
"But our child has been injured, and by a total stranger," he replied,
"You don't talk like a father: you're talking like a businessman," I snapped. "Do you really love this child?"
"Of course I love our child," he snapped back. "She's my flesh and blood as much as she is yours."
"But is her spirit from either of us?" I cried.
"You're talking crazy," my husband retorted, pacing the room. "You swallowed Hoover's poison and now he has you under a spell."
"You saw what was happening to her," I said, turning away from him. "You saw her panicking and you saw how he calmed her down."
"That's what men like him do!" Bill cried, turning back to me. "They make you believe that they can fix the one thing you want fixed, even though they're really making things worse than they were."
"Did you make it any better? You wanted her hypnotized, and look what happened. How did this make her any better?" It didn't take an expert to see that he was dodging his responsibility, that he was taking his own guilt and shifting it onto the shoulders of a man who only wanted to find his little girl once again. "How deep is your love for this child? Just to the skin and bone, or down to her spirit?"
He had nothing to say to this. Instead, he turned away, muttering something about us needing time apart.
That was not the last time I saw him, but it was one of the last. A few days later, the hospital discharged you into my care. I filed for divorce a few days later, and as part of the terms of the divorce, I pushed to have the charges against your father dropped. My husband contested this, but I marked him as emotionally abusive and the court ruled in my favor. He went down without a fight. I think my question struck a nerve and made my husband aware of something I'd blinded myself towards.
But all this is past us. We are a family now, and you and your daddy, the father of your soul, are reunited again. It will take time for your soul to catch up to your body, but this will give you something which too many children lose too soon in life. You will keep your innocence longer than most children do. It will make your road harder in some ways, but in other ways it will be a more gradual road. Your father and I are in no hurry to grow you up. If there is one thing that I have learned from this, it is that matters of the spirit cannot be hurried. This is why my husband's love proved to be so shallow: he could not love you deeply enough to help you as you needed to be helped.
But your real father, as strange as he seemed, has the love that you need, a love that lead him to seek you out on his seemingly mad quest to find his little girl. It was not an easy end to his journey, but it was an ending which was the start of something beautiful, something which the three of us now share. Your father and I might not be one in flesh and spirit or share the same name, but we are one in purpose and that purpose is caring for you and helping you to find your way in this world.
Love from your mother,
Janice
Prompt: How deep is your love?
Word Count: 774
Dear Audrey Rose,
I've written a long letter for you to read when you are old enough to understand what happened to you, what lead me to your father and what lead me away from the man whom I married, the man whom I can hardly call your father now, not when I have met the father of your soul.
You were a mess after the disastrous hypnosis session which the prosecutor and my husband had insisted on conducting. Bill, my husband, had been especially insistent on having it carried out, but my motherly heart must have sensed that no good would come of it. You were trapped, a young soul in a body twice its age.
After the procedure, my husband and I sat by you bedside, I holding your hand, he with his arms folded on his chest. He talked about finding a specialist for your, about treatment plans for you. He talked about suing your father for emotional duress, and suing the psychologist for messing up the hypnosis. I had enough of talking, and so I turned on him.
"You talk as though this was a contract that had been broken. Not as if you were talking about your own child."
"But our child has been injured, and by a total stranger," he replied,
"You don't talk like a father: you're talking like a businessman," I snapped. "Do you really love this child?"
"Of course I love our child," he snapped back. "She's my flesh and blood as much as she is yours."
"But is her spirit from either of us?" I cried.
"You're talking crazy," my husband retorted, pacing the room. "You swallowed Hoover's poison and now he has you under a spell."
"You saw what was happening to her," I said, turning away from him. "You saw her panicking and you saw how he calmed her down."
"That's what men like him do!" Bill cried, turning back to me. "They make you believe that they can fix the one thing you want fixed, even though they're really making things worse than they were."
"Did you make it any better? You wanted her hypnotized, and look what happened. How did this make her any better?" It didn't take an expert to see that he was dodging his responsibility, that he was taking his own guilt and shifting it onto the shoulders of a man who only wanted to find his little girl once again. "How deep is your love for this child? Just to the skin and bone, or down to her spirit?"
He had nothing to say to this. Instead, he turned away, muttering something about us needing time apart.
That was not the last time I saw him, but it was one of the last. A few days later, the hospital discharged you into my care. I filed for divorce a few days later, and as part of the terms of the divorce, I pushed to have the charges against your father dropped. My husband contested this, but I marked him as emotionally abusive and the court ruled in my favor. He went down without a fight. I think my question struck a nerve and made my husband aware of something I'd blinded myself towards.
But all this is past us. We are a family now, and you and your daddy, the father of your soul, are reunited again. It will take time for your soul to catch up to your body, but this will give you something which too many children lose too soon in life. You will keep your innocence longer than most children do. It will make your road harder in some ways, but in other ways it will be a more gradual road. Your father and I are in no hurry to grow you up. If there is one thing that I have learned from this, it is that matters of the spirit cannot be hurried. This is why my husband's love proved to be so shallow: he could not love you deeply enough to help you as you needed to be helped.
But your real father, as strange as he seemed, has the love that you need, a love that lead him to seek you out on his seemingly mad quest to find his little girl. It was not an easy end to his journey, but it was an ending which was the start of something beautiful, something which the three of us now share. Your father and I might not be one in flesh and spirit or share the same name, but we are one in purpose and that purpose is caring for you and helping you to find your way in this world.
Love from your mother,
Janice
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Good to See You Back to Work
Date: 2011-03-13 06:27 pm (UTC)You know what, I'll let you in on a little something: You're keeping me on my toes here. Keep on trucking!
Re: Good to See You Back to Work
Date: 2011-03-13 06:46 pm (UTC)And I have to admit, I like the challenge of doing thid alongside you! It makes for some healthy competition!
Re: Good to See You Back to Work
Date: 2011-03-13 08:02 pm (UTC)Re: Good to See You Back to Work
Date: 2011-03-14 12:56 am (UTC)