A/N: Hello, everyone! This story is for a competition made by LittleLovelyLlamas where I was given a picture (the one on the cover) and I had to write about it. I had some trouble interpreting the photo, or actually, I had some trouble sticking to a decent interpretation, but here's what I settled for. Although this contest ends today, September 30th (my birthday o:), I will probably post additional chapters in the future with more interpretations (not for the contest).
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It was on days like these with the birds singing, the sky cloudless, and the bright sun raining down on her that Arianne needed her umbrella the most. She’d been emotionally attached to the old thing since she was sixteen. To be precise, she’d been attached since the morning after her sixteenth birthday when she’d run away from home.
Home isn’t the right word, she thought. Home is a loving place with comfy conversations and caring family members.
*flashback*
“You need to learn to keep your mouth shut, you ungrateful little brat!” Hilda backhanded her across the mouth, making Arianne lose her balance as her head turned sharply.
She stumbled but caught herself on the edge of the dinner table. Her foster mother came at her with a burning in her eyes that made Arianne panic and throw the nearest object at her. It happened to be a glass elephant centerpiece that had been in Hilda’s family for ages. Arianne’s aim was off by a hair so the elephant crashed into the wall, shattering on impact into a hundred pieces.
Instead of screaming or crying, Hilda only smiled. It was a cruel smile, stretching from ear to ear and exposing two rows of clean but uneven teeth. It terrified Arianne.
In one swift movement, Hilda grabbed Arianne by the hair shoved her to the ground. Before Arianne could scramble to her feet, Hilda had her pinned down on the shards of glass. They poked through her thing shirt and created a thousand cuts every time she tried to wiggle out of Hilda’s chokehold. Her lungs were on fire, her brain was pounding, and she felt something warm oozing from beneath her before she passed out.
*end of flashback*
Home is where the heart is.
She allowed herself a smile at the thought of the cheesy phrase and how she’d finally understood the meaning of it not too long ago.
*flashback*
She stood in the pouring rain, leaning over the little wooden bridge’s side and looking out into the river and wishing it could take her far away- far from Hilda and her problems and all the hate in that horrid house. She looked up at the sky and let the rain mix with her tears, wishing it could wash away her pain, wishing she could transform into a raindrop and wash away with the stream.
Always wishing.
Today was her sixteenth birthday but all she heard from Hilda was, “I’ll be back by midnight. Don’t try anything stupid.”
But then someone had given her hope.
He listened to her rant and held her when she cried and always knew the right thing to do. His kind, blue eyes always held answers and his dimpled grin was impossible to resist. He said he had something important to tell her and gave her instructions to meet him on the little bridge over Abbey River at midnight. It was already fifteen minutes past twelve and there was no sign of him yet.
Why had she even come here? Did he stand her up on purpose? Was it all some cruel joke? Had she been wrong about him all along? Was she so deluded that she would agree to meet in the rain, late at night, with any boy who made her stomach twist when he said her name? She didn’t know, but when she turned around it no longer mattered.
He smiled at her from under a black umbrella and presented her with a pink-frosted cupcake in a little plastic box.
“Happy birthday, Arianne. Will you run away with me?”
Although the umbrella protected them from the pouring rain, it only increased the pouring love underneath it.
*end of flashback*
A shadow fell across her and she looked up to find her husband holding out their umbrella. He smiled at her with the warmth that made the cold disappear and when he leaned down to kiss her, she remembered the way she felt the first time they kissed under the umbrella of pouring love.
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A/N: If you liked it, click that like button and/or leave a comment below!
~Harley Quinn <3
