Peace

I am so DISGUSTINGLY lazy right now that that's all the drawing you're going to get out of me. Also my knees hurt like a pair of BITCHES all the way up and down the sciatic nerves and I need sleep. But as Meesh and Namnam will attest, I am a giant schizophrenic and Laurence would not. Stop. Talking to me. So you get two in one day, go you.


"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Previously on:



The applause started just as Ellie ran out onto the track, a glorious sound that did the world for her frayed nerves. And then she saw them: Bolt and Frankie each walking into the back of an ambulance on their own steam. Ephialtes bore his weight on three legs when he could, limping on his left fore, which was already so thickly bandaged that the limb bore striking resemblance to a greek column. For his part, Frankie appeared to be having a very hard time extracting his face from Chloe's. Ellie sighed deeply and smiled, continuing towards them at a more leisurely pace, waving her arms at the crowd in imitation of a maestro and eliciting a crescendo of cheers.

They'd all seen it, after all, as clearly as she had or clearer: Jean-François Pellerin still had the reflexes of a superhero. No sooner had he hit the ground than Bolt's reins had been clasped in his hands. There was no doubt in her mind that were it not for him, Ephialtes would have run. No one knew the extent of his injuries yet, but Ellie was convinced that Frankie had just saved Bolt's life.

She reached the nearer ambulance just as Frankie was about to finally remove himself from Chloe and lunged at him, squeezing him about the middle as hard as she could.

"Don't do that," she squealed into his shoulder, ignoring the petulant "Owwwww" her action elicited.

"Oh, good, you're here!" Chloe said brightly. "I wanted to make sure you'd be my maid of honour."

Ellie bolted upright. She stared at Chloe, and then at Frankie. "Did you just--"

He chuckled. "No. Would've been a good one, though."

She hit him open-handed and he winced. "You've been hiding things from me!"

"Don' think now's de best time to be hitting de man," Laurence said as he appeared behind her. "Ça va aller, François?"

"They are engaged and they did not tell us," Ellie complained loudly, and watched with satisfaction as Laurence's expression shifted. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and Ellie raised one eyebrow, which she hoped said absolutely everything she wanted it to.

"Pour vrai?" was what Laurence finally said. And when he got a pair of sheepish nods in reply, his face split in a grin and he clapped Frankie on the back. "Félicitations. Next time, maybe better not to wait until you fall in front of a tousand-pound animal to say dese tings."

"Now get in that ambulance so you can get out of the hospital and procreate," Ellie said, ushering him toward the rather impatient-looking paramedic still waiting at the door of said service vehicle. "Since you're doing your best to retire, too, I demand miniature Chloes and Frankies, stat."

Frankie laughed and turned to do as told, but before stepping into the ambulance he made a point of catching her eye and glancing back toward the gap in the rail. Ellie furrowed her brow and looked, too: June was there. On either side of her, people who had paused in their raucous appreciation of Frankie's heroism started up again with equal fervour; she folded her arms, spun on her heel and stormed out of view.

-----

When Laurence and Ellie returned to the jocks' room, the grins on their faces must have been articulate enough concerning the state of affairs which had just taken place, because a load of tension lifted the moment they arrived.

June, on the other hand, had gone. Laurence had caught sight of her dramatic exit while Frankie and Ellie had been oh-so-stealthily watching her. Although her angry reaction--to an event which had earned an ovation from a hundred thousand others--distressed him, what was even more distressing was that it didn't distress him as much as it should. If that made any sense at all. This probably just proved again that Ellie had been right in raking him across the coals and back, though he'd never admit it out loud.

It was probably time to let June go, though he dreaded actually breaking up with her. It wasn't her fault, after all, and she'd been so affectionate today when he was so disinterested. It wasn't at all fair to her. Yes, definitely time to let June go. He'd just have to think of a way to do it that would be easy (ish) on her. But surely she'd noticed that he wasn't really all there with her lately, she'd have to know it might be coming. And after all the fuss she'd made about the L the first time, she couldn't have missed its re-emergence.

And if he was honest with himself, he planned to perpetuate its use this afternoon.

Laurence deliberately steered his thoughts away from one Santa Castillo-Reyes, but, for a change, he did not do so out of guilt. It had been surprisingly easy to admit to himself, after Ellie'd ripped him a new one, that he liked her. A lot. But one of the other things he had realized was that he was far too impulsive as a rule. He'd made a conscious decision to pull back, pull away, get to know her better as a person. He was already (acutely) aware that they were sexually compatible, but...

Laurence deliberately steered his thoughts away from one Santa Castillo-Reyes.

Which, of course, was the point in time she chose to sit beside him on his usual bench, in front of his locker. He looked up at her, startled, and instinctively evaluated her condition relative to the last time he'd seen her. The bruises were still dark, but somehow seemed less ominous. Her cheeks reminded him less of a mummy's. Something in him, something he hadn't realized was quite so tense, relaxed. He met her eyes. They were rich and brown.

And then they vanished from his view as she leaned in to press her lips against his cheek. Her hand lay briefly on his shoulder. When she moved away, the air was cold where both parts of her had been.

"What was dat for?" Laurence managed to say. He was genuinely curious.

She shrugged, looking away. The air was cold where the warmth of her eyes had been.

"For good luck, I guess. Bring Imp home safe, and don't get hurt out there."

And then she was gone, swaying off in the direction of Ellie and Eddie, who were giving him twin looks from the other end of the room.

-----

C'est Impossible's head was on his shoulder. She made it a little difficult to listen to any instructions Tom might be giving, but then again, there wasn't much left to say. It was the Kentucky Oaks, so he should be anxious by definition, but he wasn't. The slender, beautiful filly currently using him as a pillow banished his doubts with remarkable dexterity.

After all, she seemed to whisper in his ear, I'm the Imp. In five starts, I've never been beaten. I'm the sister of a Derby winner, the daughter of an international champion, and for some reason, I chose you. Laurence's hand moved up to pull at her ear, and she groaned happily around her plain snaffle bit. He sighed: his Imp was miraculously uncomplicated. Another reason he wasn't nervous.

Laurence pushed the elegant black head away only when the call came for riders up, and he had to momentarily break contact with her to be boosted into the saddle. Almost instantly, his fingers threaded through her mane and the connection was remade.

One of the things he loved to watch during a post parade on the Imp's back was the movement of her ears. They were almost constantly pointed straight up, of course--very little could ever persuade her to pin them--except for the occasional flicker backward toward him. She would alternate which ear came back, but she always kept tabs on him like this. Today was no exception; in fact, she may have done it more often under the weight of a hundred thousand pairs of eyes and shouting voices. He felt a subtle difference in her countenance, and could tell that she was surprised at the number of people, but not once did she shy or make to bolt. Laurence tightened his fingers in the silky jet of her hair.

The filly needed no assitance walking into the starting gate before the most prestigious race in the country for the fairer sex. She strode into place at once delicately and confidently, one ear twitching episodically back as she bored holes in the bars in front of her. The Imp was utterly still as the rest of the horses loaded, a sea of bays and chestnuts, and once again the purity of black in her coat became remarkable. In the shadows of the gate, she became surreal, the depth of her unfathomable. Laurence took a deep breath and let it out slowly: C'est Impossible matched him, a heaving breath surging into her lungs as the metal before her parted.

The surging mass of brown engulfed them immediately, and yet Laurence could not shake the feeling of being completely alone with his filly, skipping across the Churchill dirt as though she'd been born to run here. He'd never known a horse to simultaneously glide and thunder. He hadn't even realized that C'est Impossible could thunder, but oh, she could.

Before this, he had been under the impression that they were one, that she had shown him herself. She had not.

In the depths of the rolling ocean of horseflesh, the inky shadow darted and hissed, ears flickering, shoulders pivoting powerfully, each stride longer than the last. Could she really be only fifteen and a half hands tall? The fillies on either side seemed to bend away from her as they flew for the backstretch and straightened away. Perhaps they feared the fresh power in her; Laurence thought that they would be wise to. He himself had no idea where it was headed.

Headed into the far turn, she began to tug on his hands. He loosened his grip on her mane and gave her the slack in rein she desired. The fluid acceleration she'd shown him in her previous races elegantly reappeared, and suddenly they were devouring ground, soaring past their competition.

They had the lead before the back markers had straightened away, and from there, C'est Impossible made no sign that she was going to slow down. Her shoulders rolled higher, shimmering with sweat despite the mud which, once again, seemed to fall away to preserve her loveliness. Her single white leg flashed with every snapping leap, and her rich brown eyes sparkled as she stretched out under the line.

Laurence could hear only one set of hoofbeats.

He raised his right hand, and let it fall into a familiar shape.

Ref:
by ~aussiegal7