FIC: Ghosts (Blackwood/Coward)

[linndechir]

Title: Ghosts
Author: linndechir 
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes 2009
Pairing: Blackwood/Coward
Rating: G
Words: 392
Warning: none, unless pure introspection needs a warning
Summary: Why Lord Coward hates portraits.
Author's note: Inspired by a painting I saw yesterday in the Tretyakov Gallery: a self-portrait by Ivan Kramskoy. I don't even know why, but I found it incredibly intimidating and felt like his eyes were following me everywhere, especially since there were a few more portraits by the same painter in the room. I wrote this ficlet right there in the Gallery, and just edited it a bit afterwards. Thanks to life_of_amesu for the helpful suggestions. :)


Lord Coward hated portraits. As an educated man, he could appreciate their aesthetic value, he could admire the artist's talent and skill. But he could not enjoy them the way he enjoyed other paintings. They made him uncomfortable. The eyes of long-dead men staring at him, following him through the room, ghosts from the past haunting him even when he turned his back on them.

When his father had died, the young lord had defied tradition and taken every single family portrait from the walls. He couldn't bear the scrutinising, stern looks of his forefathers, just as he couldn't bear the frighteningly alive eyes of dead strangers on the canvases of art galleries. He felt as if they alone, removed and distant from this world, could see through his mask, through the charming smile and the perfect manners, down to the frightened boy who had once been so desperate for the guidance and purpose that father and church failed to provide. When Lord Blackwood had given him everything he had always longed for, Coward had willingly offered him his life and soul in return.

And only He was allowed to strip him down to his most secret emotions and fears, only He was allowed to look at him like that, as if He could peer right into his soul. He, not these ghosts, these eyes that would never close on a deathbed, forever immortal in the eerily vivid colours of the greatest artists. They looked so real, so present, as if they were about to step out of the frame and question him, accuse him, judge him, for everything he had ever done and everything he still wanted to do.

He always felt shivers run down his spine in these portraits' company, and while his lips formed the appropriate, well-mannered, educated comments on the beauty of these paintings, followed by polite compliments on their owners' taste, Lord Coward wanted nothing more than to run, run away like a little boy who got lost in the dark of the night and suspected monsters in every shadowed corner. He counted the seconds until he could flee from the ghosts on the canvas, flee from the darkness of their memories and expectations, and into the light of his Lord's eyes, the only eyes that Coward ever wanted to follow him when he left a room.

Comments

[unsettledink.livejournal.com]

And why didn't I comment on this ages ago when I first read it?

IDK. But it might have been because a lack of coherence.

Wonderfully done, pretty damn creepy, worshipful Coward is mouthwatering.

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! :D Lack of coherence is goood.

Creepy indeed, that picture still creeps me out whenever I look at it. But it was so much worse when I was standing in the gallery. Help. And I'm just in love with worshipful Coward. ^^