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lobelia321Title: Shriven
Author: Lobelia;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321
Fandom: Lord of the Rings Real Person Slash (lotrips)
Pairing: Karl Urban / Dominic Monaghan
Rating: G
Length: 770 words
Disclaimer: I do not know these people. I am not making money. This is amateur fiction. This never happened.
Summary: It's been eight years since Karl last rode the North Island-South Island ferry together with Dominic.
-----
Shriven
by Lobelia
The wind whips the tips of the waves into frayed spectres. Two girls stand pressed against the railing, faces lifted into the spray. Their identical coats glow pink against the grey sky. A gull lands on the deck, steps forward, backwards, looks busy like a hairdresser out shopping.
Eight years. It's been eight years since Karl last rode the North Island-South Island ferry together with Dominic.
Dominic's hands grip the railing next to Karl's. Dominic's fingers are so close that Karl could feel the heat radiating out from their skin if only it weren't so cold or so windy. If only the world weren't so light and so grey. Karl looks away from Dominic's fingers. He narrows his eyes. He stares at the line between sea and clouds.
Words hover around the edges of everything. Unsaid words, unspoken meanings. They coat the horizon. They land in droplets on noses and cheeks.
"You know", says Karl, and that's one way to start. "I never answered that question you asked me."
Dominic doesn't ask which question. Karl knows that Dominic doesn't need to ask which question because there has only ever been that one question. After all they did together, after all the nights and days and dusks and dawns, it's the only thing that remains intact. It's the question left on Karl's answering machine, one drunk lost night, eight years ago.
Things happened after the leaving of that message. Life happened, and things broke.
The pink girls make a hooting sound. "Yes," says Karl. "The answer was yes." Droplets throw themselves at Karl's eyeballs. "Desperately."
Silence. A sulphuric light, smudged acid, dances on the gust.
"Okay," says Dominic. Says Dominic's voice to the left of Karl's field of vision. "Now it's your turn. To ask a question."
Immediately, words rush into Karl's mouth. They are the words that, as it turns out, have been flying in the slipstream all along.
"Did you love me?" are the words.
He can't believe he said them. He can't believe they formed themselves between his gums and puffed out into a speech bubble. The railing freezes under his palms.
"Oh," says Dominic's voice. "I didn't know what love is."
That is not an answer. Karl knows that is not an answer. Karl knows that he now has another question open. Karl also knows that he will never ask that other question. Asking that other question, the only question that matters, is to plummet into the abyss.
Karl asks the other question. Or rather, the question asks itself through him. It forces its way past his teeth and out into the metal gale.
"Do you love me now?"
Wind roars into Karl's ears and into his brain. The waves stop moving. Their spray coagulates in the motionless air. The straits are a static desert and the ferry has run aground. The horizon is as relentless as the zero wave on a cardiogram.
Is this death? Has his blood stopped circulating? What is that howling that prevents him from hearing anything?
"What?" he says at random. He is not even sure that a reply has been uttered. Perhaps there is no reply to his question. No, he is certain that there can be no reply. The question is bottomless, and an answer would need to fall through eternity before it hit its target.
"Yes," says Dominic. "I said yes."
A beam of light, sun piercing mist, smacks Karl in the face. The rain has pushed its way through his eyeholes, into the inside of his retina. Somewhere, in another land, twin sisters screech and a seagull cackles.
The water has started to move again. The ferry is seasick. Clouds whip past. Karl grips the railing.
This is the answer. And that was the question. And these are the men, standing side by side. Neither speaks. Neither turns. Each stares straight ahead, at the same spot on the horizon. Their gazes form parallel lines. But they are parallel lines that meet in the vanishing point of their hearts.
-----
In Picton, two men get off the five o'clock ferry from Wellington. They walk along the glistening pier, side by side. They don't touch. They don't even talk. They are two small figures among a throng of milling passengers. Already, they are far away.
-----
The End.
All original parts of this story © Lobelia.
Written in October 2006. Revised and posted in March 2008.
Author note: Originally conceived as part of my long-and-long Karl/Dominic epic but then rediscovered as a stand-alone story. But the depths of that angsty and taut-prosed epic resonate under the surface.
http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/599284.html
Posted 13-3-08.
Author: Lobelia;
lobelia321Fandom: Lord of the Rings Real Person Slash (lotrips)
Pairing: Karl Urban / Dominic Monaghan
Rating: G
Length: 770 words
Disclaimer: I do not know these people. I am not making money. This is amateur fiction. This never happened.
Summary: It's been eight years since Karl last rode the North Island-South Island ferry together with Dominic.
-----
Shriven
by Lobelia
The wind whips the tips of the waves into frayed spectres. Two girls stand pressed against the railing, faces lifted into the spray. Their identical coats glow pink against the grey sky. A gull lands on the deck, steps forward, backwards, looks busy like a hairdresser out shopping.
Eight years. It's been eight years since Karl last rode the North Island-South Island ferry together with Dominic.
Dominic's hands grip the railing next to Karl's. Dominic's fingers are so close that Karl could feel the heat radiating out from their skin if only it weren't so cold or so windy. If only the world weren't so light and so grey. Karl looks away from Dominic's fingers. He narrows his eyes. He stares at the line between sea and clouds.
Words hover around the edges of everything. Unsaid words, unspoken meanings. They coat the horizon. They land in droplets on noses and cheeks.
"You know", says Karl, and that's one way to start. "I never answered that question you asked me."
Dominic doesn't ask which question. Karl knows that Dominic doesn't need to ask which question because there has only ever been that one question. After all they did together, after all the nights and days and dusks and dawns, it's the only thing that remains intact. It's the question left on Karl's answering machine, one drunk lost night, eight years ago.
Things happened after the leaving of that message. Life happened, and things broke.
The pink girls make a hooting sound. "Yes," says Karl. "The answer was yes." Droplets throw themselves at Karl's eyeballs. "Desperately."
Silence. A sulphuric light, smudged acid, dances on the gust.
"Okay," says Dominic. Says Dominic's voice to the left of Karl's field of vision. "Now it's your turn. To ask a question."
Immediately, words rush into Karl's mouth. They are the words that, as it turns out, have been flying in the slipstream all along.
"Did you love me?" are the words.
He can't believe he said them. He can't believe they formed themselves between his gums and puffed out into a speech bubble. The railing freezes under his palms.
"Oh," says Dominic's voice. "I didn't know what love is."
That is not an answer. Karl knows that is not an answer. Karl knows that he now has another question open. Karl also knows that he will never ask that other question. Asking that other question, the only question that matters, is to plummet into the abyss.
Karl asks the other question. Or rather, the question asks itself through him. It forces its way past his teeth and out into the metal gale.
"Do you love me now?"
Wind roars into Karl's ears and into his brain. The waves stop moving. Their spray coagulates in the motionless air. The straits are a static desert and the ferry has run aground. The horizon is as relentless as the zero wave on a cardiogram.
Is this death? Has his blood stopped circulating? What is that howling that prevents him from hearing anything?
"What?" he says at random. He is not even sure that a reply has been uttered. Perhaps there is no reply to his question. No, he is certain that there can be no reply. The question is bottomless, and an answer would need to fall through eternity before it hit its target.
"Yes," says Dominic. "I said yes."
A beam of light, sun piercing mist, smacks Karl in the face. The rain has pushed its way through his eyeholes, into the inside of his retina. Somewhere, in another land, twin sisters screech and a seagull cackles.
The water has started to move again. The ferry is seasick. Clouds whip past. Karl grips the railing.
This is the answer. And that was the question. And these are the men, standing side by side. Neither speaks. Neither turns. Each stares straight ahead, at the same spot on the horizon. Their gazes form parallel lines. But they are parallel lines that meet in the vanishing point of their hearts.
-----
In Picton, two men get off the five o'clock ferry from Wellington. They walk along the glistening pier, side by side. They don't touch. They don't even talk. They are two small figures among a throng of milling passengers. Already, they are far away.
-----
The End.
All original parts of this story © Lobelia.
Written in October 2006. Revised and posted in March 2008.
Author note: Originally conceived as part of my long-and-long Karl/Dominic epic but then rediscovered as a stand-alone story. But the depths of that angsty and taut-prosed epic resonate under the surface.
http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/599284.html
Posted 13-3-08.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-14 06:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-15 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-14 05:42 pm (UTC)Brilliant, thank you very much for giving me a smile and pleanty of nostalgic, warm feelings that I am only capable of getting when i think of the lotrips days!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-15 12:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-16 04:53 pm (UTC)And, of course, Karl/Dom sap that I am, I hope they can start figuring out a way to bridge the distance. I think the questions & answers helped.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-16 08:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-22 06:10 am (UTC)