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Just finished watching an old favorite movie of mine, Dead Poet's Society. Wrote a small ficlet about it.
Title: Cold
Fandom: Dead Poet's Society
Characters: Todd, Neil
Rating: PG
Warnings: Lots of ANGST.
Neil is dead.
At first the words didn’t make sense to him. They were nothing but letters, nonsensical syllables falling from Charlie’s (Nuwanda’s) lips and they made as much sense as the tears he could see falling from his eyes. Later he would stare at the empty bed beside his and think on how so much devastation could be held in so few words. He wouldn’t think it was possible if Mr. Keating hadn’t taught them earlier in the year that it could be so.
If he hadn’t felt it to be so.
(Mr. Keating said that words only had as much power as what people gave them. The letters that made them were nothing but shapes and lines, placed in an order that would hold no meaning if they didn’t want it to. But Todd had never felt so powerless as he had then, in that room.)
Neil had always been so alive.
He wasn’t surprised, afterwards, to hear that it had happened in his father’s study. Always full of energy, Neil was unusually subdued whenever Mr. Perry was around. He seemed paler even, his brown eyes dull and the shadows beneath his cheekbones suddenly more prominent, like his father’s presence was actually sucking the life force from him.
(He remembered now how pale and small Neil sometimes seemed, in the morning, when they were walking back from the showers, the bones of his spine proudly visible before he pulled on a shirt. Todd had never thought Neil seemed fragile, till then. )
Neil was supposed to be the strong one. Not him.
It wasn’t supposed to be him who was left behind, who had to look on the puffy, tear stained faces of his friends in the doorway and hear those words and be expected to keep going. It wasn’t supposed to be him who had to stand up against Cameron and Nolan and his parents to keep the one person Neil admired most still in the school. It wasn’t supposed to be him who, in a sudden fit of understanding, ran out of the school, cold despite the coat that covered him, alone despite the number of hands that grabbed at him and tried to hold him up as he fell, vomiting, into the snow.
(That’s what he would always think on when he thought of death--the cold that bit at his hands and face, the taste of bile in his mouth, how he suddenly felt closed in, like he couldn’t breathe, smothered in the same cold white that surrounded him. For years later he would shiver when he’d see the snow and remember that Neil’s skin had been cold the first time they shook hands in the courtyard. Todd swore that someday, he’d move somewhere warm.)
He should write a poem, he thought, as he leaned against the window that Neil had so often liked to lean against. Neil would like that. A poem written in his memory--not some sad, solemn verse to be read in the chapel by Nolan, that had less life than in the lines than the dead grass beneath the snow Todd had felt he was lost in, but a poem by someone who knew him, who could fill the lines with all the passion and life that Keating expected of poets, that Neil had always seemed so full of. It could be read in the cave, at a Dead Poet’s meeting.
Except.
Except Charlie was gone and Neil was dead and everyone hated Cameron now and Keating was leaving tomorrow morning and Todd didn’t think he could do it anyway.
(He never did like what he wrote, never thought he was capable of anything that was any good, unless it was what Neil or Mr. Keating was able to drag out of him. And they were both gone now.)
He passed by the photos of graduated classes in the hall and remembered what Keating had said--all gone and dead and worm food and rosebuds and carpe diem and did seize the day suddenly mean live quick and die young, or was it just live?--and thought, maybe it was alright if he didn’t write a poem. Maybe Neil didn’t deserve one anyway.
(Maybe.)
Title: Cold
Fandom: Dead Poet's Society
Characters: Todd, Neil
Rating: PG
Warnings: Lots of ANGST.
Neil is dead.
At first the words didn’t make sense to him. They were nothing but letters, nonsensical syllables falling from Charlie’s (Nuwanda’s) lips and they made as much sense as the tears he could see falling from his eyes. Later he would stare at the empty bed beside his and think on how so much devastation could be held in so few words. He wouldn’t think it was possible if Mr. Keating hadn’t taught them earlier in the year that it could be so.
If he hadn’t felt it to be so.
(Mr. Keating said that words only had as much power as what people gave them. The letters that made them were nothing but shapes and lines, placed in an order that would hold no meaning if they didn’t want it to. But Todd had never felt so powerless as he had then, in that room.)
Neil had always been so alive.
He wasn’t surprised, afterwards, to hear that it had happened in his father’s study. Always full of energy, Neil was unusually subdued whenever Mr. Perry was around. He seemed paler even, his brown eyes dull and the shadows beneath his cheekbones suddenly more prominent, like his father’s presence was actually sucking the life force from him.
(He remembered now how pale and small Neil sometimes seemed, in the morning, when they were walking back from the showers, the bones of his spine proudly visible before he pulled on a shirt. Todd had never thought Neil seemed fragile, till then. )
Neil was supposed to be the strong one. Not him.
It wasn’t supposed to be him who was left behind, who had to look on the puffy, tear stained faces of his friends in the doorway and hear those words and be expected to keep going. It wasn’t supposed to be him who had to stand up against Cameron and Nolan and his parents to keep the one person Neil admired most still in the school. It wasn’t supposed to be him who, in a sudden fit of understanding, ran out of the school, cold despite the coat that covered him, alone despite the number of hands that grabbed at him and tried to hold him up as he fell, vomiting, into the snow.
(That’s what he would always think on when he thought of death--the cold that bit at his hands and face, the taste of bile in his mouth, how he suddenly felt closed in, like he couldn’t breathe, smothered in the same cold white that surrounded him. For years later he would shiver when he’d see the snow and remember that Neil’s skin had been cold the first time they shook hands in the courtyard. Todd swore that someday, he’d move somewhere warm.)
He should write a poem, he thought, as he leaned against the window that Neil had so often liked to lean against. Neil would like that. A poem written in his memory--not some sad, solemn verse to be read in the chapel by Nolan, that had less life than in the lines than the dead grass beneath the snow Todd had felt he was lost in, but a poem by someone who knew him, who could fill the lines with all the passion and life that Keating expected of poets, that Neil had always seemed so full of. It could be read in the cave, at a Dead Poet’s meeting.
Except.
Except Charlie was gone and Neil was dead and everyone hated Cameron now and Keating was leaving tomorrow morning and Todd didn’t think he could do it anyway.
(He never did like what he wrote, never thought he was capable of anything that was any good, unless it was what Neil or Mr. Keating was able to drag out of him. And they were both gone now.)
He passed by the photos of graduated classes in the hall and remembered what Keating had said--all gone and dead and worm food and rosebuds and carpe diem and did seize the day suddenly mean live quick and die young, or was it just live?--and thought, maybe it was alright if he didn’t write a poem. Maybe Neil didn’t deserve one anyway.
(Maybe.)
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oh and i like your word...ficlet...it made me laugh :D
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