m_findlow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
m_findlow) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly2019-10-13 12:33 pm
m_findlow) wrote in fandomweekly2019-10-13 12:33 pm
Entry tags:
[#027] A MEETING OF MINDS (THE HANDMAID'S TALE)
Theme Prompt: #027 - Double Trouble
Title: A meeting of minds
Fandom: The Handmaid's Tale
Rating/Warnings: M. Spoilers for Season 2.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Offred and Serena Joy have to work together to protect their interests.
Serena Joy's words still leave me feeling speechless. 'Commander Cushing turned out streets into a war zone. It's about time things started getting back to normal around here, don't you think?'
Word passed around the Marthas earlier today. Commander Cushing was going to find himself with a sack over his head and a noose around his neck, strung up on the wall for treason and apostasy. The same Commander Cushing that had been here just yesterday, desperate to know who had aided me in my attempted escape.
I was taken against my will. It's a lie of course, but I repeat the words twice, just in case he's one of those simple men who needed things reinforced. Serena and I both know the price that will be paid if he doesn't believe me. Execution not just for me, but for everyone in this house, Marthas and Guardians included, as well as Commander's wives.
She did it. I wasn't sure how until now. Serena had taken advantage of Fred's hospitalization and faked documents with his signature, authorizing Cushing's arrest. It was insanely risky, but Serena is nothing if not vested in her own survival. Right now she needs me. I have something she wants, and something that can be taken away by the right people. Handmaids are afforded only so much much protection. After what happened at the Red Centre however, even a Handmaid isn't safe from being gunned down. Not if she's got a vest of plastic explosive strapped to her chest.
With a flick of red pen on paper, I've just removed seventeen checkpoints from the local downtown area. Two hours ago, I redeployed fifty Guardians to a district thirty miles away.
At first it felt like a heresy. We weren't allowed in Commander Waterford's office, not even to peruse any of the dozens of books he kept there, so we certainly weren't allowed to read official documents or write anything. Even holding a pen is a crime, yet here we are, Serena and I, pulling down checkpoints, scaling back the number of men on the streets with guns, and waiting at the end of every aisle inside Loaves and Fishes. Anything to protect her baby. Not our baby, or my baby - her baby.
Under any other circumstances, we would hate each other, but in this were are united. Just thinking about what we could do in the name of the Commander makes me feel dizzy. I'll bet we could order ourselves up a massive armored truck and no one would question it. Then we could drive ourselves out of this shithole of a place. No amount of bullets would stop us. You, me and baby makes three. How happy we would be. At least until we got to the border. First chance I get I'd run her over and keep on driving. Lucky for Serena there won't be any trucks requested. Just arrest warrants, tactical personnel reorganizations, and municipal security orders. Things the Commander might do on a normal day, but this time they dance to a tune only Serena knows. The two of us running some little piece of Gilead from the Commander's office.
I feel like we should be lounging back in those leather armchairs, sipping snifters of brandy and chortling as we asked one another the question "whose life should we destroy today?".
I'll bet this was how Serena imagined it would have been when she stood up at all those rallies, demanding the reconstruction of society - that she would be sitting there behind that desk, issuing commands in this new world order, rather than suffering under the weight of them. You got just what you deserved, bitch. How do you like your new world order now?
'You're a really good writer,' she says, making the edits to a sheaf of papers I've already corrected. This is the first time she's ever acknowledged there was a time before Gilead, when both of us had real jobs and real lives. That we were more than just vessels for procreation. Before they took it all away. We were the smart ones - the breadwinners, the difference makers. We're still the difference makers, but in a different way now. The survival of the human race depends on us, but there's no accolades for it. In another lifetime we might have even been friends.
Not in this lifetime, though. Outside of the Commander's office, the two of us are just as we've always been. Each of us knows their place in this house. Rita and the other Marthas don't say anything about what we're doing in here, nor does Nick query Serena's questions about procedure. Nick has spent hours in the Commander's presence, watching him govern this small fiefdom. He'll tell us if we're making a misstep in protocol, and Serena understands the politics of it and what questions to ask. All she needs from me is to make sure the wording is right. Who better to give it the cadence of the man whose office has now been overtaken by the women of his household than the woman who has stood there invisible, listening to his conversations all this time - including those conversations we had over games of scrabble? I probably know more about how the Commander thinks than his own wife does.
I hand over another pile of papers with my markings on them and Serena accepts them as if this is something we've do been doing for years instead of just hours. In this one treasonous act, we are equals.
'Do you miss working?' I ask. I have to know and this may be the only opportunity to find out. How does a woman like Serena Joy go from being at the top of the political ladder to the bottom without a fight?
'It's a small sacrifice to make to be welcomed back into God's grace.'
Bullshit.
'I won't forget your help,' she promises.
Of course she won't. But that won't make her hate me any less.
Title: A meeting of minds
Fandom: The Handmaid's Tale
Rating/Warnings: M. Spoilers for Season 2.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Offred and Serena Joy have to work together to protect their interests.
Serena Joy's words still leave me feeling speechless. 'Commander Cushing turned out streets into a war zone. It's about time things started getting back to normal around here, don't you think?'
Word passed around the Marthas earlier today. Commander Cushing was going to find himself with a sack over his head and a noose around his neck, strung up on the wall for treason and apostasy. The same Commander Cushing that had been here just yesterday, desperate to know who had aided me in my attempted escape.
I was taken against my will. It's a lie of course, but I repeat the words twice, just in case he's one of those simple men who needed things reinforced. Serena and I both know the price that will be paid if he doesn't believe me. Execution not just for me, but for everyone in this house, Marthas and Guardians included, as well as Commander's wives.
She did it. I wasn't sure how until now. Serena had taken advantage of Fred's hospitalization and faked documents with his signature, authorizing Cushing's arrest. It was insanely risky, but Serena is nothing if not vested in her own survival. Right now she needs me. I have something she wants, and something that can be taken away by the right people. Handmaids are afforded only so much much protection. After what happened at the Red Centre however, even a Handmaid isn't safe from being gunned down. Not if she's got a vest of plastic explosive strapped to her chest.
With a flick of red pen on paper, I've just removed seventeen checkpoints from the local downtown area. Two hours ago, I redeployed fifty Guardians to a district thirty miles away.
At first it felt like a heresy. We weren't allowed in Commander Waterford's office, not even to peruse any of the dozens of books he kept there, so we certainly weren't allowed to read official documents or write anything. Even holding a pen is a crime, yet here we are, Serena and I, pulling down checkpoints, scaling back the number of men on the streets with guns, and waiting at the end of every aisle inside Loaves and Fishes. Anything to protect her baby. Not our baby, or my baby - her baby.
Under any other circumstances, we would hate each other, but in this were are united. Just thinking about what we could do in the name of the Commander makes me feel dizzy. I'll bet we could order ourselves up a massive armored truck and no one would question it. Then we could drive ourselves out of this shithole of a place. No amount of bullets would stop us. You, me and baby makes three. How happy we would be. At least until we got to the border. First chance I get I'd run her over and keep on driving. Lucky for Serena there won't be any trucks requested. Just arrest warrants, tactical personnel reorganizations, and municipal security orders. Things the Commander might do on a normal day, but this time they dance to a tune only Serena knows. The two of us running some little piece of Gilead from the Commander's office.
I feel like we should be lounging back in those leather armchairs, sipping snifters of brandy and chortling as we asked one another the question "whose life should we destroy today?".
I'll bet this was how Serena imagined it would have been when she stood up at all those rallies, demanding the reconstruction of society - that she would be sitting there behind that desk, issuing commands in this new world order, rather than suffering under the weight of them. You got just what you deserved, bitch. How do you like your new world order now?
'You're a really good writer,' she says, making the edits to a sheaf of papers I've already corrected. This is the first time she's ever acknowledged there was a time before Gilead, when both of us had real jobs and real lives. That we were more than just vessels for procreation. Before they took it all away. We were the smart ones - the breadwinners, the difference makers. We're still the difference makers, but in a different way now. The survival of the human race depends on us, but there's no accolades for it. In another lifetime we might have even been friends.
Not in this lifetime, though. Outside of the Commander's office, the two of us are just as we've always been. Each of us knows their place in this house. Rita and the other Marthas don't say anything about what we're doing in here, nor does Nick query Serena's questions about procedure. Nick has spent hours in the Commander's presence, watching him govern this small fiefdom. He'll tell us if we're making a misstep in protocol, and Serena understands the politics of it and what questions to ask. All she needs from me is to make sure the wording is right. Who better to give it the cadence of the man whose office has now been overtaken by the women of his household than the woman who has stood there invisible, listening to his conversations all this time - including those conversations we had over games of scrabble? I probably know more about how the Commander thinks than his own wife does.
I hand over another pile of papers with my markings on them and Serena accepts them as if this is something we've do been doing for years instead of just hours. In this one treasonous act, we are equals.
'Do you miss working?' I ask. I have to know and this may be the only opportunity to find out. How does a woman like Serena Joy go from being at the top of the political ladder to the bottom without a fight?
'It's a small sacrifice to make to be welcomed back into God's grace.'
Bullshit.
'I won't forget your help,' she promises.
Of course she won't. But that won't make her hate me any less.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject