you are the light that's leading me (Madeline and James)
Apr 8, 2014 18:50:15 GMT -5
Jim Ratigan likes this
Post by Madeline Medina/ Madame Medusa on Apr 8, 2014 18:50:15 GMT -5
Maddie Hannigan, or Madame Medusa as the children liked to call her, was drunk. This wasn’t a particularly abnormal event for her. She was very often intoxicated to some extent. Her life was rather miserable. She was a single woman, living in a house full of children and Maddie hated children. She couldn’t even remember why she had taken this position to begin with, why she had gotten herself boxed in to this life of misery. When she was intoxicated, she tended to overanalyze her life which was truthfully quite lonely. She was miserable in this job with these children around but it was the only thing she had. Still, that didn’t mean she treated the children any better; in fact, she treated them worse as she was certain being the overworked orphanage matron spoiled her for many other relationships. She took it out on the children, making them clean and cook and do other menial tasks just to watch them suffer.
The little brats, of course, retaliated often. Today they had replaced her toothpaste with mayonnaise, which gave her a queasy feeling just from the smell alone. It was a small prank, but it still infuriated Maddie to no end. How dare they treat her like that? How dare they disrespect her? They were snot nosed children and she was their superior, but they didn’t listen and went out of their way to make her miserable. She couldn’t even recall how or when it started; it seemed as if it had always been that way. Perhaps the alcohol had diminished her memory. Anyway, it certainly was one of the smaller pranks they had done in their long reign of terror, but big or small didn’t matter to Maddie.
After heaving over the toilet for nearly an hour, Maddie stormed upstairs to the children’s quarters, grumbling her fury loudly. She nearly punched her fist into the wall when she heard them giggling. “You brats! I’m going to make you scrub these floors until they are shinier than your greasy little faces,” she screamed, face turning pink. She rounded into the room with Annie, the leader of the troublemakers, and grabbed the red head by the front of her shirt. “I’ll make your tiny little fingers bleed.” The children were no longer laughing because they knew that’s exactly what she would do to them and worse. “Everyone in bed until I let you out!”
“Miss Hannigan, it’s the middle of the day,” one little girl complained. Maddie swung around on her and she shrunk back, realizing her mistake. Maddie promised herself she would give the eight year old an extra punishment just for daring to question her.
“I don’t care,” Maddie screamed in her face, some spittle flying out of her mouth. The girl nodded and ran to her bed, eyeing Maddie warily. She had never hit any of them but she sure knew how to scare them without ever using force. She was unsure why she didn’t hit them because she certainly agreed with physical punishment, but perhaps something in her contract had stopped her from doing such a thing. Maddie slammed the door shut to the room, watching at children in the other rooms scampered into their beds as well. She went through the floor, slamming each door. A few bounced back and had to be shut twice. Grumbling darkly under her breath, Maddie stomped down the stairs to her living quarters, slamming that door as well. Her two Rottweilers, Brutus and Nero, looked up with grumbles before settling back into their beds. With fury, she swept several items off her dresser, stalking away as the items clattered and crashed to the floor.
Maddie slouched across the room to a bottle of whiskey, which she poured into a glass. The first glass was quickly tossed back and she belched before she poured herself another. Her gaze went to the mirror, finding her own tired, angry gaze in it. “How did I get here?” she asked herself and was disappointed by the lack of a reply. Her head tilted to one side as she examined herself. She was not an awful looking woman, she thought. Her hair was a deep shade of red and she had nice skin. She dressed as well as she could for a woman of her means and occupation, but her dress was covered in stains and didn’t fit her perfectly. She pulled on the fabric so it clung closer to her body; her figure was curvy and though she knew she had some extra flesh here and there, she again didn’t understand why men didn’t want her. With a long suffering sigh, she took another drink of whisky and continued her examination of herself.
Little known to Maddie, across the town at the hospital, two mothers, one biological and one adopted, entered a hospital room to see the pale, still form on their son. Tears filled their eyes as they slowly walked towards him, knowing they would have to say goodbye. One had only just gotten him back and the other had always struggled to hold onto him. They had tried to save him, but even with all the power of love between them, it didn’t seem as if it had been enough. The blonde mother who had given birth to the child bent over his head, the tears falling faster. Her fingers brushed across his forehead and into his hair, feeling the last bit of warmth flow out of him as if she could feel the last bit of life leaving him. The mother leaned in closer and pressed her wet lips to his forehead. And with that the curse of Storybrooke was broken.
Maddie stumbled as the broken spell flooded over her body, returning the memories of her former life to her, and she toppled on to the vanity chair with a huff of breath. Her head dropped forward, red hair covering her face, as she thought back over the hundreds of years of her life that she only just remembered. Her shoulders shook and she felt exhausted for a moment, as if she had just run a long distance. Another deep breath escaped her lips and her head lifted, eyes landing on her reflection in the mirror with dread. Her appearance was the same as only moments ago but now Maddie was deeply disgusted by what she saw in the mirror. Her hair was a mess, her clothes were disastrous and she had lipstick smeared on her cheek as they had been. It was the eyes that had changed. Gone was the glazed look of too much alcohol and not enough sleep, replaced by an intelligence and pride. She wasn’t Maddie Hannigan; she was Madeline Medina, regal and graceful mistress of jewels.
Fury flashed across her features, the dark look in her eyes terrifying with promise. Regina, the Evil Queen, had done this to her. Madeline was a prideful person, in her looks, her behavior, in the way she held herself; she was everything that Maddie Hannigan wasn’t, and she was overcome with anger that she had been forced into such a role. Madeline leaned forward to gaze at her mess face in the mirror, fingers treading through her greasy hair, which lay in limp curls around her face. There was a part of her that was mortified by how she looked and how she had spent the last twenty eight years looking, and it was such an assault on her person that she truly was. Not only that, she had separated Madeline from her husband, the only person who meant anything to her. He was everything and a thrill ran through her at seeing him again, even if she had only now just realized what she was missing.
“James,” she exclaimed with a breathlessness, rising from her seat with a clumsy quickness that was more Maddie than Madeline, the chair knocking to the floor. She paid no mind to it but dashed to the door. As her hand closed around the doorknob, she froze, slowly looking down at herself. She looked dreadful. The dress was sagging in all the wrong places, it was filthy and frankly not anything like what Madeline would normally wear. She couldn’t let him see her like this; she didn’t want to. Madeline withdrew her hand from the doorknob. The clothes at the back of her closet, much too fancy to be practical as the matron of an orphanage, made sense now. Turning on her heels, she calmly walked back to her room to take one step in making things right.
Her mind flickered through all the possibilities of where he was, who he was with. Perhaps Regina had coupled him with another as she had with Prince Charming and Snow White. That thought drew back the darkness across her features. Madeline and her husband had been together for hundreds of years and had never once felt the need to stray. They were that devoted to each other, but if he had been cursed, he wouldn’t have known what he was betraying. Her knuckles turned white around the head of the walking stick. Generally, Madeline wasn’t a particularly jealous person, not when it came to her husband, but that was because they both were devoted to each other. As Maddie Hannigan, she hadn’t been a devoted lover and perhaps he hadn’t either. God help whoever had touched her husband during the curse.
Finally, Madeline began to move through the crowd, which seemed the part easily with her ascent. She didn’t care about the looks that were tossed her way, whether it was because of her dress that stood out in Storybrooke (and even in the Enchanted Forest) or because they recognized who she was now. Although she had not interacted with many from the Enchanted Forest, particularly those who were not of the high class, there had been many whispers about her character, much of which was not particularly flattering (though Madeline did enjoy the fear and mystery they brought). For now, she wasn’t interested in any of them nor interested in encouraging their fear. She merely wanted to find her husband. Gliding through the crowd, she came to a stop on the steps of the town hall. There she should for a moment, already garnering a lot of attention, but when she slapped her cane against the concrete with a snap, it quieted even more. Madeline wouldn’t find herself among the panicked hordes, but would calm the hordes to get what she wanted.
“Good afternoon,” she called over the crowd. “My name is Madeline Medina and I am searching for my husband. He goes by name James Ratigan or James Moriarty. If you have seen him or know of his whereabouts, it would be appreciated if you would inform me.” The crowd remained quiet and Madeline arched an eyebrow. “Continue with your business.”
Madeline knew her husband had left to a place in this Land Without Magic before the curse had hit, but she didn’t know if the curse had still affected him, since he was from the Enchanted Forest as all the rest here were. She could hope that he would be here so their reunion could be quick but there were many other possibilities and as Madeline stood on the steps, watching as many were reunited and others were left without a sign of their loved ones, her thoughts ran through them.
Like them, Madeline would go to bed alone that night and for many nights afterwards.
That left her doing her best to figure out where he was. She had once had a stone that was the same as one her husband carried. She had enchanted them so they could communicate through them. Much of her time she had spent searching for that stone, along with the Devil’s Eye, but it was difficult without the help she had had in the Enchanted Forest, coupled with the fact that Madeline wasn’t made for laborious tasks. Still, she found herself trekking through the woods and doing other menial tasks like sweating. She was unable to leave Storybrooke without losing who she was once more, so it wasn’t even an option for her to seek him out and they had no other communication besides that stone.
Madeline paused as Nero and Brutus stopped to sniff a corner of one of the building where Madeline was walking. Though the dogs had been somewhat unruly when she was Maddie, Madeline had not stood for that business and had quickly drawn the two back in line. She treated them with more love than the children but just as much strictness. They were loyal and affectionate beasts and had certainly had an effect on her retaining her sanity among the feelings of loss that she felt. And there was the added bonus of them adding a new level of fear.
Madeline and her husband had been separated before, but they had always held a means of communication between them and it was that lost connection that was the hardest to deal with. She just wanted to hear her voice and she could handle not seeing him for many more years, if she had to. The two dogs suddenly sat down and Madeline frowned at their refusal to move forward. “Brutus, Nero,” she said, sharply, but they continued with their disobedience, their gaze pointedly not looking at her. Madeline looked up to see what they were focused on.
Madeline gasped and dropped her walking stick to the ground, the sound of its clatter unheard by her as her gaze zeroed in on what Brutus and Nero had been watching. Nearly twenty feet in front of her stood her husband. A shiver ran through her body at the sight of that handsome man once more in front of her, his gaze locked onto hers. Time stood still and she could hear every breath she took echo through her head. Was this real? Was it a dream or her imagination? Was her mind playing a cruel trick on her heartbreak? For a moment, she couldn’t tell, couldn’t understand how he was suddenly standing there in front of her with no warning.
She was frozen for only the briefest moment before she was running towards her husband, not caring about her dress, her shoes or anything else. When she reached him, she threw her small frame at him and kissed him hard on the mouth, arms wrapping around the back of his head to pull him in close, lining their bodies together. She wasn’t sure if it was a dream or a reality but he felt so real in her arms and her hands slid down his back as if making sure the rest of him was real as well. The way her heart dropped into her stomach made her realize there was a small part of her that had believed he was dead and the relief was overwhelming. “Oh my! James,” she breathed out when she withdrew, before grasping his face in her arms and kissing it all over with a desperation and relief. Her legs went around his, gracelessly and desperate to entwine their bodies. Different from her norm, she clearly couldn’t care much for graces right now, laughing loud enough that some other residents were looking at them. Madeline naturally had the air of grace, but even she could find reason to break it and her husband was one of the best ones. “You’re alive. You’re here. You’ve come back to me.” His face still cradled between her hands, she pulled back to simply stare at him, noticing the subtle changes but beaming at him in a way that was rare for her. Her hands stroked the light stubble on his face, which was not there the last time she had seen him. He looked tired and worn, a look she was sure was mirrored in her own, even underneath the joy. She let her feet drop back to the ground, though didn’t move her body from pressed against him. She didn’t ever want to let him go again. “Oh my own heart, I knew you would find me.”
(You are under no obligation to post this much. My next both will be at least 2000 words less than this, lol. Outfit)
Jim Ratigan
The little brats, of course, retaliated often. Today they had replaced her toothpaste with mayonnaise, which gave her a queasy feeling just from the smell alone. It was a small prank, but it still infuriated Maddie to no end. How dare they treat her like that? How dare they disrespect her? They were snot nosed children and she was their superior, but they didn’t listen and went out of their way to make her miserable. She couldn’t even recall how or when it started; it seemed as if it had always been that way. Perhaps the alcohol had diminished her memory. Anyway, it certainly was one of the smaller pranks they had done in their long reign of terror, but big or small didn’t matter to Maddie.
After heaving over the toilet for nearly an hour, Maddie stormed upstairs to the children’s quarters, grumbling her fury loudly. She nearly punched her fist into the wall when she heard them giggling. “You brats! I’m going to make you scrub these floors until they are shinier than your greasy little faces,” she screamed, face turning pink. She rounded into the room with Annie, the leader of the troublemakers, and grabbed the red head by the front of her shirt. “I’ll make your tiny little fingers bleed.” The children were no longer laughing because they knew that’s exactly what she would do to them and worse. “Everyone in bed until I let you out!”
“Miss Hannigan, it’s the middle of the day,” one little girl complained. Maddie swung around on her and she shrunk back, realizing her mistake. Maddie promised herself she would give the eight year old an extra punishment just for daring to question her.
“I don’t care,” Maddie screamed in her face, some spittle flying out of her mouth. The girl nodded and ran to her bed, eyeing Maddie warily. She had never hit any of them but she sure knew how to scare them without ever using force. She was unsure why she didn’t hit them because she certainly agreed with physical punishment, but perhaps something in her contract had stopped her from doing such a thing. Maddie slammed the door shut to the room, watching at children in the other rooms scampered into their beds as well. She went through the floor, slamming each door. A few bounced back and had to be shut twice. Grumbling darkly under her breath, Maddie stomped down the stairs to her living quarters, slamming that door as well. Her two Rottweilers, Brutus and Nero, looked up with grumbles before settling back into their beds. With fury, she swept several items off her dresser, stalking away as the items clattered and crashed to the floor.
Maddie slouched across the room to a bottle of whiskey, which she poured into a glass. The first glass was quickly tossed back and she belched before she poured herself another. Her gaze went to the mirror, finding her own tired, angry gaze in it. “How did I get here?” she asked herself and was disappointed by the lack of a reply. Her head tilted to one side as she examined herself. She was not an awful looking woman, she thought. Her hair was a deep shade of red and she had nice skin. She dressed as well as she could for a woman of her means and occupation, but her dress was covered in stains and didn’t fit her perfectly. She pulled on the fabric so it clung closer to her body; her figure was curvy and though she knew she had some extra flesh here and there, she again didn’t understand why men didn’t want her. With a long suffering sigh, she took another drink of whisky and continued her examination of herself.
Little known to Maddie, across the town at the hospital, two mothers, one biological and one adopted, entered a hospital room to see the pale, still form on their son. Tears filled their eyes as they slowly walked towards him, knowing they would have to say goodbye. One had only just gotten him back and the other had always struggled to hold onto him. They had tried to save him, but even with all the power of love between them, it didn’t seem as if it had been enough. The blonde mother who had given birth to the child bent over his head, the tears falling faster. Her fingers brushed across his forehead and into his hair, feeling the last bit of warmth flow out of him as if she could feel the last bit of life leaving him. The mother leaned in closer and pressed her wet lips to his forehead. And with that the curse of Storybrooke was broken.
Maddie stumbled as the broken spell flooded over her body, returning the memories of her former life to her, and she toppled on to the vanity chair with a huff of breath. Her head dropped forward, red hair covering her face, as she thought back over the hundreds of years of her life that she only just remembered. Her shoulders shook and she felt exhausted for a moment, as if she had just run a long distance. Another deep breath escaped her lips and her head lifted, eyes landing on her reflection in the mirror with dread. Her appearance was the same as only moments ago but now Maddie was deeply disgusted by what she saw in the mirror. Her hair was a mess, her clothes were disastrous and she had lipstick smeared on her cheek as they had been. It was the eyes that had changed. Gone was the glazed look of too much alcohol and not enough sleep, replaced by an intelligence and pride. She wasn’t Maddie Hannigan; she was Madeline Medina, regal and graceful mistress of jewels.
Fury flashed across her features, the dark look in her eyes terrifying with promise. Regina, the Evil Queen, had done this to her. Madeline was a prideful person, in her looks, her behavior, in the way she held herself; she was everything that Maddie Hannigan wasn’t, and she was overcome with anger that she had been forced into such a role. Madeline leaned forward to gaze at her mess face in the mirror, fingers treading through her greasy hair, which lay in limp curls around her face. There was a part of her that was mortified by how she looked and how she had spent the last twenty eight years looking, and it was such an assault on her person that she truly was. Not only that, she had separated Madeline from her husband, the only person who meant anything to her. He was everything and a thrill ran through her at seeing him again, even if she had only now just realized what she was missing.
“James,” she exclaimed with a breathlessness, rising from her seat with a clumsy quickness that was more Maddie than Madeline, the chair knocking to the floor. She paid no mind to it but dashed to the door. As her hand closed around the doorknob, she froze, slowly looking down at herself. She looked dreadful. The dress was sagging in all the wrong places, it was filthy and frankly not anything like what Madeline would normally wear. She couldn’t let him see her like this; she didn’t want to. Madeline withdrew her hand from the doorknob. The clothes at the back of her closet, much too fancy to be practical as the matron of an orphanage, made sense now. Turning on her heels, she calmly walked back to her room to take one step in making things right.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An hour later, Madeline Medina walked to the town center, which was crowded and loud. Madeline took a moment to stand on the outskirts, observing it with both hands wrapped around the head of her walking stick. Her eyes searched the harried crowds for the sign of her husband, though she knew he wouldn’t be one bumbling around and making a scene. Her eyes flicked to the outskirts, to see if he was like her and above the fray. Despite the fact that she had taken some moments (or an hour) to gather herself, Madeline eagerly anticipated being reunited with her husband. There was a hole within her that she finally recognized as being her missing husband. The loneliness of the past twenty eight years didn’t compare to now when she realized what she was missing.Her mind flickered through all the possibilities of where he was, who he was with. Perhaps Regina had coupled him with another as she had with Prince Charming and Snow White. That thought drew back the darkness across her features. Madeline and her husband had been together for hundreds of years and had never once felt the need to stray. They were that devoted to each other, but if he had been cursed, he wouldn’t have known what he was betraying. Her knuckles turned white around the head of the walking stick. Generally, Madeline wasn’t a particularly jealous person, not when it came to her husband, but that was because they both were devoted to each other. As Maddie Hannigan, she hadn’t been a devoted lover and perhaps he hadn’t either. God help whoever had touched her husband during the curse.
Finally, Madeline began to move through the crowd, which seemed the part easily with her ascent. She didn’t care about the looks that were tossed her way, whether it was because of her dress that stood out in Storybrooke (and even in the Enchanted Forest) or because they recognized who she was now. Although she had not interacted with many from the Enchanted Forest, particularly those who were not of the high class, there had been many whispers about her character, much of which was not particularly flattering (though Madeline did enjoy the fear and mystery they brought). For now, she wasn’t interested in any of them nor interested in encouraging their fear. She merely wanted to find her husband. Gliding through the crowd, she came to a stop on the steps of the town hall. There she should for a moment, already garnering a lot of attention, but when she slapped her cane against the concrete with a snap, it quieted even more. Madeline wouldn’t find herself among the panicked hordes, but would calm the hordes to get what she wanted.
“Good afternoon,” she called over the crowd. “My name is Madeline Medina and I am searching for my husband. He goes by name James Ratigan or James Moriarty. If you have seen him or know of his whereabouts, it would be appreciated if you would inform me.” The crowd remained quiet and Madeline arched an eyebrow. “Continue with your business.”
Madeline knew her husband had left to a place in this Land Without Magic before the curse had hit, but she didn’t know if the curse had still affected him, since he was from the Enchanted Forest as all the rest here were. She could hope that he would be here so their reunion could be quick but there were many other possibilities and as Madeline stood on the steps, watching as many were reunited and others were left without a sign of their loved ones, her thoughts ran through them.
Like them, Madeline would go to bed alone that night and for many nights afterwards.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It had been a month since the curse was broken. Many had been reunited with their dear ones. Snow White and Charming, her seven little munchkins, that crazy Hatter and his daughter. Yet, Madeline was still left without her husband. Madeline had searched every inch of Storybrooke but still found no sign of her husband. If he were here she knew they would have found each other by now, that he would be as desperate to find her as she was to find him. She had come to the conclusion that he must have remained in the land called England, or that he was possibly back in the Enchanted Forest, if it still existed; the latter being uncertain, even by the Evil Queen. She hadn’t given up. Madeline would never give up on her husband, even if it meant she had to find some way to raise the dead. He wasn’t dead, though; she would feel it if he had died, in her soul and her heart. That left her doing her best to figure out where he was. She had once had a stone that was the same as one her husband carried. She had enchanted them so they could communicate through them. Much of her time she had spent searching for that stone, along with the Devil’s Eye, but it was difficult without the help she had had in the Enchanted Forest, coupled with the fact that Madeline wasn’t made for laborious tasks. Still, she found herself trekking through the woods and doing other menial tasks like sweating. She was unable to leave Storybrooke without losing who she was once more, so it wasn’t even an option for her to seek him out and they had no other communication besides that stone.
Madeline paused as Nero and Brutus stopped to sniff a corner of one of the building where Madeline was walking. Though the dogs had been somewhat unruly when she was Maddie, Madeline had not stood for that business and had quickly drawn the two back in line. She treated them with more love than the children but just as much strictness. They were loyal and affectionate beasts and had certainly had an effect on her retaining her sanity among the feelings of loss that she felt. And there was the added bonus of them adding a new level of fear.
Madeline and her husband had been separated before, but they had always held a means of communication between them and it was that lost connection that was the hardest to deal with. She just wanted to hear her voice and she could handle not seeing him for many more years, if she had to. The two dogs suddenly sat down and Madeline frowned at their refusal to move forward. “Brutus, Nero,” she said, sharply, but they continued with their disobedience, their gaze pointedly not looking at her. Madeline looked up to see what they were focused on.
Madeline gasped and dropped her walking stick to the ground, the sound of its clatter unheard by her as her gaze zeroed in on what Brutus and Nero had been watching. Nearly twenty feet in front of her stood her husband. A shiver ran through her body at the sight of that handsome man once more in front of her, his gaze locked onto hers. Time stood still and she could hear every breath she took echo through her head. Was this real? Was it a dream or her imagination? Was her mind playing a cruel trick on her heartbreak? For a moment, she couldn’t tell, couldn’t understand how he was suddenly standing there in front of her with no warning.
She was frozen for only the briefest moment before she was running towards her husband, not caring about her dress, her shoes or anything else. When she reached him, she threw her small frame at him and kissed him hard on the mouth, arms wrapping around the back of his head to pull him in close, lining their bodies together. She wasn’t sure if it was a dream or a reality but he felt so real in her arms and her hands slid down his back as if making sure the rest of him was real as well. The way her heart dropped into her stomach made her realize there was a small part of her that had believed he was dead and the relief was overwhelming. “Oh my! James,” she breathed out when she withdrew, before grasping his face in her arms and kissing it all over with a desperation and relief. Her legs went around his, gracelessly and desperate to entwine their bodies. Different from her norm, she clearly couldn’t care much for graces right now, laughing loud enough that some other residents were looking at them. Madeline naturally had the air of grace, but even she could find reason to break it and her husband was one of the best ones. “You’re alive. You’re here. You’ve come back to me.” His face still cradled between her hands, she pulled back to simply stare at him, noticing the subtle changes but beaming at him in a way that was rare for her. Her hands stroked the light stubble on his face, which was not there the last time she had seen him. He looked tired and worn, a look she was sure was mirrored in her own, even underneath the joy. She let her feet drop back to the ground, though didn’t move her body from pressed against him. She didn’t ever want to let him go again. “Oh my own heart, I knew you would find me.”
(You are under no obligation to post this much. My next both will be at least 2000 words less than this, lol. Outfit)
Jim Ratigan