meatbrained: (Default)
matt. ([personal profile] meatbrained) wrote in [community profile] dankmemes2016-09-19 06:40 pm

(no subject)

( five + one )


how it works:
i. post a comment with the characters you play.
ii. go around and prompt other players with a 5 + 1 prompt (e.g. "Five times Hope said sorry and one time he didn't")
iii. write a fic for the prompts people leave you!
iv. enjoy your fic? we hope?
dedikated: (071)

2/2 INTERPRET AS I WISH HMMM. have an au then

[personal profile] dedikated 2016-09-19 09:20 pm (UTC)(link)
| five times Kate toed the line and one time she crossed it
「IT'S BEEN A LONG ROUGH ROAD AND I'M FINALLY HERE」
Sprinting, Kate finds, is very different to the triple jump. You're held in position, left with the anticipation building in your veins, thundering in your ears with each shift

Ready.

Set.


Her fingers shake.

She stays behind the line until the gunshot echoes in her ears and suddenly everything is a blur of pulsing speed and rushing air.

(She takes home silver. Not quite quick enough.)

「I MOVE AN INCH FORWARD」
The next time, she goes home without any medal at all. Her feet don't find the push to start until the smoke of the gun has cleared and by then it's too late.

Her competition - girls three years older than her at least - smile and gossip and never quite include her. Too young, too short to be part of this, even if she does reach the age group limit.

「FEELS LIKE A YEAR」
She goes back to triple jump for a while, springs with a hop skip and jump and starts taking home medals once more. It's beautiful, easy. Gold begins to line the wall of her father's office again and she hears him gushing to his new teaching assistant about how great his kids are, but Kat-

Well, just look at what she's achieved. We'll see her in the Olympics soon enough!

She flushes pink but grits her teeth at practice, fails a jump when the kids who were practicing for the 400 meters dash by.

Triple jump is never quite the same after that.

「EVERYTHING I FEEL SEEMS SO UNREAL」
It's mid-practice when her coach turns to her - he's a burly man, a former weightlifter that never really explained how he moved into coaching triple jump, of all things, with no hair and a constant case of sunburn because he thinks sunscreen is for girls - and snaps.

Concentrate, Galloway! Stop drooling over the boys!

(The men's relay teams are training and she keeps watching, engrossed in the thud of trainer against rubberised asphalt and the swell of muscle. The men are secondary, they exist as nothing more than vague concepts of where she could be, rather than smashing her ass into sand again and again.)

"I'm not. I'm done. This isn't what I want any more."

She crosses the field and talks to the sprint coach instead.

「IS IT TRUE?」
She's twenty, finally.

But more importantly, it's the Olympics. Finally.

Her eyes flick to the stands before the announcement begins, catches the glint of her father's glasses, the nick of her mother's head, the sight of Marc buzzing in his seat next to his own parents (and hears the go get 'em! echoing in her head). She scans more faces, lowers her eyes towards where her coach sits, legs folded neatly and sunglasses on-

and catches the sight of a bald, sunburned head and the rare sort of smile her ex-coach only ever used when she held a gold medal aloft at local competitions.

When the gunshot rings, she's the first to pull away from the line. In time and ahead.

One gold for Team Great Britain down. There's more to come.
Edited 2016-09-19 21:24 (UTC)

[personal profile] dogsanddaughters 2016-09-19 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
!!!!!!

Wow! I didn't expect the direction either of these went in. I'm still in the middle of the playthrough for Until Dawn, so I haven't had a chance to see much of of Matt in action just yet, but that last bit just made his character click for me. I'm used to seeing him through Emily, if that makes sense, and now suddenly he's got motivations and a life all his own. It's so simple and it's easy to see where he could think he'd done the right thing, because he's the guy who helps! He's helping! Only it goes wrong, and he's left with this thing that happens, which really doesn't click with who he's supposed to be.

And Kate as an olympian! Unexpected, but oddly perfect? She struggles and finally gets it in the end.

Thank you for sharing these :)