"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."
-Matsuo Basho, Narrow Road (tr. Sam Hamill)


The M1 stretched out before them, and Alex peered out the rear view mirror before casting a sideways glance at her daughter in the passenger's seat.

“Chin up, Molls,” she chirped. “We're driving towards your new home. You could be a bit more excited.”

Molly huffed a sigh, her slender form curled up in the seat as she peered out the window. “Easy for you to say, Mum. You've lived in London your whole life.”

“Which is precisely why Cambridge is such a great opportunity for you,” Alex replied. “You can always come back to London after university. It's not as if you're moving to another planet.”

“Might as well be,” Molly answered, glumly. Alex wasn't sure what had happened to the intense excitement that had surrounded her daughter the day she had received her acceptance letter in the post. For the last two years, Molly had talked about leaving London as if it were the only thing she'd wanted in the whole world. Alex didn't remember being as confused and disgruntled at eighteen as her daughter seemed now.

“You can come back every other weekend, if you'd like.”

Molly readjusted herself in her seat, looking down at her hands and looking back up at her mother. “What are you going to do with me gone?”

“Hm, I don't know. Maybe I'll try dating again.”

“Mum.”

“Really. I think your poor, old mum could use a bit of companionship...”

“Mum.”

( Alex looked over again, and Molly's eyes were welling up with tears. )


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Cut for length
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: #327 - "Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."
Verse: Open Verse, speculative post-series
Word Count: 936

Summers made it sound as if she had to choose between her loyalty to Gene or her loyalty to Molly; but in the end, Alex knew giving in to his demands would mean she would have to betray them both.


{{ link }}

Episode 2x01: Homesick
Episode 2x02: Language
Episode 2x03: Team
Episode 2x04: Blood

I've lost control.

This world – this creation of my own mind (if that's really what it is, I can't even be sure now) – but this world, this world I live in now, it's as if all within it is completely beyond my grasp. I thought this was about staying in control. Staying in command. Having a rule over my subconscious. All of that was to keep me afloat. ( All of that was to keep me alive. )


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Cut for length and spoilers through 2x08
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: #320 - What do you command?
Verse: Open and Canon Verses
Word Count: 320

The leaves of the old book were delicate in your hands. You handled them gently, and the ridiculous thought occurred to you that your should be wearing gloves. You've seen them in museums, the broad, calloused hands of the tour guide somehow softened by thin silk as he paged through a book so old that he wasn't sure when it was made.

But this book wasn't nearly as old. It was your grandmother's, one of the few things your mother kept, and one of the few things you took as your own. It reminds you of your mother, the way the fragile pages slide under the pads of your fingers, like thin flesh that could be torn apart. But that wouldn't stop you, because this was your ritual. A warming glass of wine, and the soft light of the lamp next to you, and the book that was once your mother's in your hands. When you read it you would mumble to yourself, as if you could remember your mother's voice weaving through the words on the page.

“I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;”

It's a memory, and like all memories of that world it appears suddenly in your mind, like a flash a light in the darkness. You barely remember it now, so you grasp to the single thread you can, anything to remind you of what you left behind. ( It's so important you get back, why can't you remember that? )


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Cut for length and minor spoilers for the second series.
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: #313 - Write about something old, something new, or something borrowed.
Verse: Open and Canon Verses
Word Count: 1180
Note: This also involves a prompt given to me by pi_sparrow, who challenged me to write in the second person and include a line from a Robert Frost poem, fireworks, broken glass, and a baby. The poem used is "A Minor Bird" by Robert Frost.

I've forgotten the details.

All the small things. The tiny things I never even knew I knew. What colour were those eyes? What was the sound of that laugh? The tone of that anger?

Sometimes I still hear it. There's a voice that haunts me (It's in the darkness, when I can hear it whisper to me in the night.). But I've lost the details. I've lost the meaning. I've forgotten the importance.

I don't think I wanted it to be like this. Is it easier to forget? Is it easier to move on, if you think the world you came from wasn't real?

That made it easier for Sam. I think, that was why he did what he did. ( What I could never, ever do. )

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Cut for length and minor spoilers for the series.
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Muse: Alex Drake, Ashes to Ashes
Prompt: #309 - What have you forgotten?
Verse: Open Verse, speculative post-series
Word Count: 510

{Thanks to pi_sparrow for the help!}