Love Letters

From http://tiutiubells.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/tumblr_lnbtk5uiao1qzur8to1_500.jpg, with a background added by me. Image depicts one couple I wasn't able to work into this story: Lady Justice and Lady Liberty. Yes, I ship them. They're an amazing couple.

This was actually written shortly after the repeal of DOMA (hip-hip-hooray!), but I waited to post it so it will be in conjunction with International Femslash Day, an internet-wide celebration of lesbian couples in fanfiction and original fiction. I decided to write a piece with six different couples, half of whom are not my characters and the other half who are. Enjoy!

(Somewhat Obvious) Note: This story contains six lesbian couples. If you aren't okay with that, then don't go on the internet for all of today.

Love Letters

(for international femslash day)

There is no distance I would not travel to save you, my love. You are the only person I can open my heart up to, and I can feel that same heart burning up in my chest every day, every passing sunset that reminds me of you—you, suffering in that lab at the blood-stained hands of your own family... You don't deserve that. No one deserves that.

I would trust you with my life. And you know how hard it is for me to trust anyone. I can only hope that you remember how deep my love runs and find the strength to keep yourself alive, if just for one more day.

You'll be able to fly soon, Faye. I'll fly you away to kingdom come, to your castle in the sky. It may take me a little time, but know that I'm coming and that I will always be here for you. I won't abandon you.

Don't abandon me.

A blink of a tear. “You deserve so much more…”

“Do I? Do I really? You should not be so quick to assume my virtue and purity.” She trains her eye on the girl, watching from behind the cover of bitterness and the thick black wings that shoot ice through her spine whenever she feels their weight. “You think me to be 'good' inside, underneath my guarded exterior. How do you define that? How are you to know what is beneath my shell when you are not there? How are you to know that there is a whole person there, and not a pile of ashes?”

Morian knows this crush Faye has on her is just a desperate attempt at self-identification—the deluded ramblings of a terrified child. It doesn't mean anything. And yet there is still a little stab of relief when Faye answers without hesitation:

“Because! BECAUSE I SEE IT! I see it in your eyes…”

You would have liked John. Him and his music—there was always music when he was around. I could never carry a tune, but he could, and he managed to make those old songs so beautiful, it was like the whole world stopped to feel his music. And once you felt his music... it was like you felt his soul. And you couldn't help but fall a little in love with him. I just fell farther than most.

I don't think I could ever love another man.

But you're not a man. You're not even a woman, and neither am I. We're something more, human plus... something. Something cold and dark and frightening, something that neither of us could handle alone. We need each other, if only so that we don't fall back into the way we were before; hold each other, if only to hold each other back.

(Ick. Does love always have to taste like high-fructose corn syrup?)

“I just want you to know that I think you're the most amazing person I have ever met. You can do so many things that I can't. You're... you're like a goddess, a human incarnation of a goddess. And I-”

Without even bothering to finish her sentence, Becca wrapped her arm around Lilah's back and kissed her.

She kissed her.

Whatever Lilah had felt towards the other girl before was magnified a thousand times. For one moment, they had kissed. For one brief, shining moment, they had kissed. Becca... Becca loved her? What? That was... impossible...

She pulled away. “What about Mark?” she whispered.

Becca shook her head, eyes downcast. “I love you both. So much. Is that wrong of me?”

“No.” Lilah gripped the shovel in her hand tighter, trying to regain control of the rush of emotions that had all of a sudden flooded her brain. “But you're going to have to choose-”

“I know. Just not now.”

You didn't hear me, did you? The last sentence I said to you?

Of course you didn't. You were walking away, tossing your hair and sticking up your chin in the air like the snob you are. You were walking away, because you didn't care about anything I was saying, just like you didn't care about my life or emotions or anything about me. You walked away and left me here to die inside. I needed you. And you walked away.

I still think about you, do you know that? I still think about you and how beautiful you are and how if I had known what to do I might not have lost you—because a part of my brain still wonders if it was my fault or yours. Or both of ours, I suppose.

It doesn't matter. I'm still alive. Still here, writing you love letters.

And what I said was, “Because I'm still in love with you.”

“I resent your implication of impropriety. We are married.”

“Which is more than we can say for you, eh, dear?”

Simeon looks horrified. Jenny can't help but laugh. She always loves it when high society folk cluck their tongues and frown on women who hold each others' hands in the streets without gloves. She loves it because she knows they're wrong. They've never known what it feels like to love someone and have society consider it “perverted”. They'll never know. And that is something to laugh at, not to hide.

Because she and Vastra are married. They are in love and they are married and they are female and different species and that is never going to be a source of shame, not for her. People may say as they please—heaven knows, they have before—but Vastra always says that words are just words and lies even more so. But truth is singular, and love is what's true.

Love from,

Faye & Jem

Morian & Faye

Conall & Zanna

Becca & Lilah

Lilah & Inara

Vastra & Jenny