On the eleventh day of Christmas...
...eleven open doors, ten shocking moments, nine recorded happening, eight nosy parkers, seven Cupid's arrows, six open books, five punishments, four floods of tears, three portents of doom, two buried secrets, and one outstretched hand.
Title: Cliche
Fandom: Tomb Raider
Rating: G
Word Count: 222
[Click to continue]Another door. Lara barely contained the sigh of frustration as she stopped in front of what had to be at least the tenth door in these ruins. Of course it didn’t have a handle, apparently they were a decidedly modern day invention.
“I don’t know how these ancient civilizations ever had any time to do anything else. They seem to have spent most of their existence building elaborate locking mechanisms for their tombs”, Lara muttered to herself as she walked across the front of the door, scouring the wall for any indication of a switch or pressure pad.
“Oh of course it’s up there”, she said when she finally caught the glint of a switch embedded just above the giant door, and of course there were convenient hand holds for her to climb up to the door in the least practical way possible. How anyone ever got around in ancient society was beyond her. She finally swung herself up and slammed the palm of her hand against the switch. The door scraped open, a hideous noise that Lara had gotten more than used to other the years and Lara perched on the top of the door frame.
Because if there was anything as common as finding hideously complicated locked doors, it was that just behind the locked doors there were always enemies.
Title: Personal Walls
Fandom: Malory Towers
Rating: G
Word Count: 295
[Click to continue]The problem with building walls to keep yourself safe, was that eventually someone tried break them down.
Sally shut the door of the music room, and let out a sigh of relief at the silence that surrounded her. She stood and listened to it for just a moment, then walked over and took a seat in front of the piano and began to play her warm up scales.
The steady pace of the notes echoed through the room, and Sally felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders as she straightened her back. She played each scale through, then started again. She could move onto songs, should really if she wanted to expand her repertoire, but there was something so calming about scales.
She hadn’t meant for the walls to be quite so impenetrable. Her parents stopped trying to reach her quite early on, and although they had forgiven her surly moods and jealousy, she could never quite forget that they had sent her away from home. Oh they had given reasons, and Sally was certain that whatever the real reason was, the fact that she had grown so much in her time at Malory Towers was a good enough outcome. So her parents gave her space, hoped that one day the sweet daughter they remembered would return. Sally wasn’t sure that would ever happen.
She paused with her fingertips ready to move onto the first song she usually played. Then a smile pulled at the corner of her lips and she shook her head.
But then perhaps those walls wouldn’t always be there; since Darrell Rivers hadn’t so much chipped away at her walls as she had kicked down the front door and started dismantling them from inside.
And Sally was okay with that.
Title: Notes are all that remain
Fandom: Primeval
Rating: PG
Word Count: 304
[Click to continue]
As Jenny sat on the floor of her office, she was struck by how little of his work they had managed to salvage. Helen had blown the place up so she shouldn’t have been surprised really, but sitting there with the realisation that the two boxes in front of her contained everything Cutter had been working on in the weeks and months before his death made her feel…
It made her feel small. Insignificant. She wondered how many boxes would commemorate her passing.
No-one had disturbed the contents of the boxes since they were first packed up. It hurt too much, the wounds were too raw. Jenny wasn’t convinced she was ready to open them herself, but someone had to because what Cutter had done was important and it deserved to be read.
She knew a little of his theories. That the anomalies were based on myths and legends, and that he was torn between whether the anomalies were doorways to the past and future or whether they were doorways to a parallel universe. She didn’t know at the time, when he first told her, how much that would matter to her.
Now she found herself wondering, if they could control the anomalies, would she be able to go back and save Cutter? Or would that be impossible because if he had never died she would never have tried to go back? She could ask Connor, but he would get that heartbroken look in his eyes and tell her that they shouldn’t play with the past because look what happened with Claudia Brown.
She was sick of hearing about Claudia Brown. So she didn’t tell Connor or anyone else, and just hoped that maybe Cutter’s work would point her in the right direction.
She took the first piece of paper from the box.
Title: Failed
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rati ng: PG- 12
Word Count: 157
Note: Spoilers for Season 5 Double Finale.
[Click to continue]Ziva already knew what they would find when they opened the door to the dinner. As she stepped over bodies, not recognising any of the men, she knew what she would find at the end of the trail of bodies. Knew who she would find.
That didn’t make it hurt any less. Didn’t stop the sharp pain in her chest or the lump in her throat when she looked around and saw her.
Director Jenny Shepard was dead.
Ziva called Tony’s name and that was the last word she said for a long time. The guilt got heavier with each minute that passed; she blamed herself, she blamed Tony, and she blamed Jenny. They should never have left her side, and she should have told them the truth.
Ziva knew the tears were coming, that they wouldn’t stay at bay forever, but until then she held them down and let her anger bubble to the surface instead.
Title: Taking Turns
Fandom: Left 4 Dead
Rating: 12
Word Count: 291
[Click to continue]“It’s definitely your turn Francis”, Bill cut off the bickering, “Louis was first out at the train station, Zoey was out of the first safe house, and I went out first at the log cabin”.
“Zoey was out first at the train station cos I remember Louis whining like a baby ‘bout how his leg was still hurting”, Francis growled as he loaded shotgun shells in his gun, “And I don’t remember you being in the lead at the log cabin old man”.
“You scared or something? I mean I don’t blame you”, Louis held his hands up as Francis pointed the gun at him, “I’d be scared too, the sound of that witch moaning out there”.
“I can’t see her”, Zoey called from her position peering out the tiny bits of window that were covered by metal and wood.
“Don’t matter if you can see her, can hear her is the problem”, Francis muttered, “What if she’s right outside the door?”
“Pretty sure she’d be much louder”, Louis suggested as he nudged Francis towards the door, “Come on man, we can’t stay here all day.” Francis pumped the handgrip on his shotgun to chamber the next bullet and took a few steps towards the door.
“And we definitely can’t go through the roof?”, Francis asked one last time.
“No!”
“Fine, alright”, and Francis reached out and pulled back the deadbolts. He raised an eyebrow at the others to check they were ready and then threw the door open.
The witch screeched as soon as the light from their torches cast across her face, and she rose like a hunched up scarecrow, claws bared.
“Motherfu…”, Francis groaned as he fired off his first shot, square into her face, “I hate witches”
Title: Runner
Fandom: Dying Light
Rating: 12
Word Count: 323
[Click to continue]Amir had tried running at college, but it was nothing like this. There wasn’t the pain, shooting agony through his ankles, his knees, through his chest. In college if he had slipped he might have been out of running for a few weeks, here if he slipped, he died.
He could hear them behind him, the screams and the cries, the slapping of dead flesh pounding the road behind him. He had started climbing as soon as a route to the rooftops had become clear, but they had followed him. The bastards could climb! Amir jumped from the roof, clearing the van beneath him by a few inches, and rolled as he hit the floor. It lessened the pain but he still staggered back to his feet, shaken by the fall.
He felt sick; he couldn’t tell if it was fear or pain or a mixture of both. Dark thoughts were crossing his mind, wondering if it was even worth running. Something would get him eventually, probably one of these creatures. Would it have been worth it to have fought so hard only to succumb in the end?
Then he saw the light from the tower and he felt his adrenaline fire up one more time and his paces grew longer and his jumps further. As the glow of the UV light grew closer and closer, so too did the sounds over his shoulder and when he was within a few metres of the door he felt the warmth of their rasping breath on his neck and he flung himself forward. He dove through the UV light, crashed to the concrete on the other side and rolled into the pile of crates. He rolled onto his front and stared in horror at the creature thrashing under the UV light, stared until it spun around and fled back into the night.
Next time he would heed the advice to not stay out after sundown.
Title: A Matter of Trust
Fandom: Major Crimes
Rating: G
Word Count: 175
[Click to continue]For the first few days, Rusty just wanted to run away. How was he supposed to just trust her? She wasn’t Brenda, she didn’t know him. She wasn’t friendly or compassionate or flawed the way Brenda was, who Rusty could believe because she seemed so human. Sharon Raydor, Captain Raydor didn’t seem human, and Rusty didn’t trust her.
So on the third day he did run away. Late one night, when it was dark enough that no-one would recognise him, he gathered his stuff into a backpack and ran. He ran until his throat burned with each gasp of breath, and his legs trembled beneath him.
He stayed out for hours that night, walked up and down back streets as he contemplated his options, with all of Brenda’s words echoing through his head. He wasn’t sure when he started walking back towards her apartment but before he reached the front door, it opened.
Rusty glanced up at Captain Raydor as he stepped past her,
“Brenda trusts you, I guess that’s good enough for me”.
T itle: L acking a Key
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 185
[Click to continue]
People always acted like locked doors were such huge barriers - you saw it in movies all the time. The door that the hero desperately needed to flee through was always locked.
Buffy ducked under the flailing arm of the vampire and kneed him hard in the gut. Considering he had supposedly been dead for longer than Angel and Spike combined, he was less challenging than she’d anticipated.
“If you’re quite finished playing around we still need to work out how to get inside”, Giles called, and Buffy was a little put out that the Watcher was less than impressed with her work.
“Always so desperate to get to the finale Giles, you’d really do to learn some patience”, and Buffy pretended she didn’t notice the trademark eye-roll. Then as the vampire charged her once more, she turned and kicked him firmly in the abdomen. It was almost perfect the way he flew through the air and smashed through the once locked door, leaving splinters and hinges in his wake.
“After you”, she grinned and she definitely saw the weary smile that Giles tried to hide.
Title: Waiting
Fandom: Elementary
Rating: G
Word Count: 211
Continuation from the Elementary fic in ‘10 shocking moments’
[Click to continue]Perhaps he should have gone to collect her from the hospital. That was the third time in as many minutes that Sherlock had experienced that line of thinking. It was ridiculous of course, because he didn’t drive and so instead would have had to have offered her a lift back to the Brownstone in a taxi. Hardly the most comfortable of journeys when one was recovering from a gunshot wound.
He paced the corridor. He had tried books, tried the internet, tried old cases; and nothing had been able to sustain his attention for more than a few minutes before he became agitated and restless. He wasn’t supposed to get like this, and it irritated him how his own mind and body were betraying him. Years of learning the utmost control over himself could be undone in minutes.
He turned abruptly at the sound of the key in the lock and strode towards the door. He stopped a few steps from it when the door swung open, and Watson stepped through.
They stood like that for a minute, maybe longer. Sherlock had rehearsed what he wanted to say to Watson when she returned but in that moment his voice failed him. Eventually Watson just smiled.
“I’m glad to see you too”.
Title: Going in circles
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: G
Word Count: 171
[Click to continue]“You have got to be kidding me”, Myka peered over Pete’s shoulder as he finally managed to shove the door open.
“Nope, it is another door”, and she had never heard her partner sound so close to tears before.
“How many is this now?”
“I stopped counting after thirty”, Pete leant against the door frame and banged the back of his head against it, “Any luck reaching Artie yet?” Myka held up the Farnsworth with it’s static screen and shook her head. They stood in silence for a minute, maybe two. Then Pete lifted his hands and ran them down his face in despair,
“What do we do?”
“I guess we keep opening doors”, Myka shrugged.
“Should we split up?”
They looked at each other for a moment, then simultaneously shook their heads.
“Alright, maybe it’s lucky door number sixty two”, Pete groaned as he stood up again.
“I thought you stopped counting”
“Yeah well, I lied”, and Pete grabbed the handle of the text door and flung the door open.
Title: Divide
Fandom: Elementary
Rating: G
Word Count: 195
Note: Mild spoilers for S3
[Click to continue]The door to the Brownstone would be open. Watson knew that. After Sherlock’s words, she knew he would violate his usual careful sense of security and privacy and would leave the door unlocked, at least until he was certain that Watson wasn’t going to show.
And she wasn’t going to.
She wanted to, and she had no intentions of trying to convince herself otherwise because she was far too old to be playing games with herself, but she wouldn’t. He had moved on, traded her in for a younger, and decidedly irritating, partner. Watson felt a little guilty for thinking of Kitty like that, considering what the younger woman had gone through; but reminded herself that everyone had gone through something bad, everyone had scars, and that didn’t make annoying people any less annoying.
Perhaps it was childish to not just rekindle their partnership - they had made a great team after all - but Watson was not willing to give in again. Sherlock got what he wanted far too often in this world, and far too often at the expense of someone else. Watson wasn’t prepared to put herself out yet again, not even for him.
Title: Cliche
Fandom: Tomb Raider
Rating: G
Word Count: 222
[Click to continue]Another door. Lara barely contained the sigh of frustration as she stopped in front of what had to be at least the tenth door in these ruins. Of course it didn’t have a handle, apparently they were a decidedly modern day invention.
“I don’t know how these ancient civilizations ever had any time to do anything else. They seem to have spent most of their existence building elaborate locking mechanisms for their tombs”, Lara muttered to herself as she walked across the front of the door, scouring the wall for any indication of a switch or pressure pad.
“Oh of course it’s up there”, she said when she finally caught the glint of a switch embedded just above the giant door, and of course there were convenient hand holds for her to climb up to the door in the least practical way possible. How anyone ever got around in ancient society was beyond her. She finally swung herself up and slammed the palm of her hand against the switch. The door scraped open, a hideous noise that Lara had gotten more than used to other the years and Lara perched on the top of the door frame.
Because if there was anything as common as finding hideously complicated locked doors, it was that just behind the locked doors there were always enemies.
Title: Personal Walls
Fandom: Malory Towers
Rating: G
Word Count: 295
[Click to continue]The problem with building walls to keep yourself safe, was that eventually someone tried break them down.
Sally shut the door of the music room, and let out a sigh of relief at the silence that surrounded her. She stood and listened to it for just a moment, then walked over and took a seat in front of the piano and began to play her warm up scales.
The steady pace of the notes echoed through the room, and Sally felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders as she straightened her back. She played each scale through, then started again. She could move onto songs, should really if she wanted to expand her repertoire, but there was something so calming about scales.
She hadn’t meant for the walls to be quite so impenetrable. Her parents stopped trying to reach her quite early on, and although they had forgiven her surly moods and jealousy, she could never quite forget that they had sent her away from home. Oh they had given reasons, and Sally was certain that whatever the real reason was, the fact that she had grown so much in her time at Malory Towers was a good enough outcome. So her parents gave her space, hoped that one day the sweet daughter they remembered would return. Sally wasn’t sure that would ever happen.
She paused with her fingertips ready to move onto the first song she usually played. Then a smile pulled at the corner of her lips and she shook her head.
But then perhaps those walls wouldn’t always be there; since Darrell Rivers hadn’t so much chipped away at her walls as she had kicked down the front door and started dismantling them from inside.
And Sally was okay with that.
Title: Notes are all that remain
Fandom: Primeval
Rating: PG
Word Count: 304
[Click to continue]
As Jenny sat on the floor of her office, she was struck by how little of his work they had managed to salvage. Helen had blown the place up so she shouldn’t have been surprised really, but sitting there with the realisation that the two boxes in front of her contained everything Cutter had been working on in the weeks and months before his death made her feel…
It made her feel small. Insignificant. She wondered how many boxes would commemorate her passing.
No-one had disturbed the contents of the boxes since they were first packed up. It hurt too much, the wounds were too raw. Jenny wasn’t convinced she was ready to open them herself, but someone had to because what Cutter had done was important and it deserved to be read.
She knew a little of his theories. That the anomalies were based on myths and legends, and that he was torn between whether the anomalies were doorways to the past and future or whether they were doorways to a parallel universe. She didn’t know at the time, when he first told her, how much that would matter to her.
Now she found herself wondering, if they could control the anomalies, would she be able to go back and save Cutter? Or would that be impossible because if he had never died she would never have tried to go back? She could ask Connor, but he would get that heartbroken look in his eyes and tell her that they shouldn’t play with the past because look what happened with Claudia Brown.
She was sick of hearing about Claudia Brown. So she didn’t tell Connor or anyone else, and just hoped that maybe Cutter’s work would point her in the right direction.
She took the first piece of paper from the box.
Title: Failed
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rati ng: PG- 12
Word Count: 157
Note: Spoilers for Season 5 Double Finale.
[Click to continue]Ziva already knew what they would find when they opened the door to the dinner. As she stepped over bodies, not recognising any of the men, she knew what she would find at the end of the trail of bodies. Knew who she would find.
That didn’t make it hurt any less. Didn’t stop the sharp pain in her chest or the lump in her throat when she looked around and saw her.
Director Jenny Shepard was dead.
Ziva called Tony’s name and that was the last word she said for a long time. The guilt got heavier with each minute that passed; she blamed herself, she blamed Tony, and she blamed Jenny. They should never have left her side, and she should have told them the truth.
Ziva knew the tears were coming, that they wouldn’t stay at bay forever, but until then she held them down and let her anger bubble to the surface instead.
Title: Taking Turns
Fandom: Left 4 Dead
Rating: 12
Word Count: 291
[Click to continue]“It’s definitely your turn Francis”, Bill cut off the bickering, “Louis was first out at the train station, Zoey was out of the first safe house, and I went out first at the log cabin”.
“Zoey was out first at the train station cos I remember Louis whining like a baby ‘bout how his leg was still hurting”, Francis growled as he loaded shotgun shells in his gun, “And I don’t remember you being in the lead at the log cabin old man”.
“You scared or something? I mean I don’t blame you”, Louis held his hands up as Francis pointed the gun at him, “I’d be scared too, the sound of that witch moaning out there”.
“I can’t see her”, Zoey called from her position peering out the tiny bits of window that were covered by metal and wood.
“Don’t matter if you can see her, can hear her is the problem”, Francis muttered, “What if she’s right outside the door?”
“Pretty sure she’d be much louder”, Louis suggested as he nudged Francis towards the door, “Come on man, we can’t stay here all day.” Francis pumped the handgrip on his shotgun to chamber the next bullet and took a few steps towards the door.
“And we definitely can’t go through the roof?”, Francis asked one last time.
“No!”
“Fine, alright”, and Francis reached out and pulled back the deadbolts. He raised an eyebrow at the others to check they were ready and then threw the door open.
The witch screeched as soon as the light from their torches cast across her face, and she rose like a hunched up scarecrow, claws bared.
“Motherfu…”, Francis groaned as he fired off his first shot, square into her face, “I hate witches”
Title: Runner
Fandom: Dying Light
Rating: 12
Word Count: 323
[Click to continue]Amir had tried running at college, but it was nothing like this. There wasn’t the pain, shooting agony through his ankles, his knees, through his chest. In college if he had slipped he might have been out of running for a few weeks, here if he slipped, he died.
He could hear them behind him, the screams and the cries, the slapping of dead flesh pounding the road behind him. He had started climbing as soon as a route to the rooftops had become clear, but they had followed him. The bastards could climb! Amir jumped from the roof, clearing the van beneath him by a few inches, and rolled as he hit the floor. It lessened the pain but he still staggered back to his feet, shaken by the fall.
He felt sick; he couldn’t tell if it was fear or pain or a mixture of both. Dark thoughts were crossing his mind, wondering if it was even worth running. Something would get him eventually, probably one of these creatures. Would it have been worth it to have fought so hard only to succumb in the end?
Then he saw the light from the tower and he felt his adrenaline fire up one more time and his paces grew longer and his jumps further. As the glow of the UV light grew closer and closer, so too did the sounds over his shoulder and when he was within a few metres of the door he felt the warmth of their rasping breath on his neck and he flung himself forward. He dove through the UV light, crashed to the concrete on the other side and rolled into the pile of crates. He rolled onto his front and stared in horror at the creature thrashing under the UV light, stared until it spun around and fled back into the night.
Next time he would heed the advice to not stay out after sundown.
Title: A Matter of Trust
Fandom: Major Crimes
Rating: G
Word Count: 175
[Click to continue]For the first few days, Rusty just wanted to run away. How was he supposed to just trust her? She wasn’t Brenda, she didn’t know him. She wasn’t friendly or compassionate or flawed the way Brenda was, who Rusty could believe because she seemed so human. Sharon Raydor, Captain Raydor didn’t seem human, and Rusty didn’t trust her.
So on the third day he did run away. Late one night, when it was dark enough that no-one would recognise him, he gathered his stuff into a backpack and ran. He ran until his throat burned with each gasp of breath, and his legs trembled beneath him.
He stayed out for hours that night, walked up and down back streets as he contemplated his options, with all of Brenda’s words echoing through his head. He wasn’t sure when he started walking back towards her apartment but before he reached the front door, it opened.
Rusty glanced up at Captain Raydor as he stepped past her,
“Brenda trusts you, I guess that’s good enough for me”.
T itle: L acking a Key
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 185
[Click to continue]
People always acted like locked doors were such huge barriers - you saw it in movies all the time. The door that the hero desperately needed to flee through was always locked.
Buffy ducked under the flailing arm of the vampire and kneed him hard in the gut. Considering he had supposedly been dead for longer than Angel and Spike combined, he was less challenging than she’d anticipated.
“If you’re quite finished playing around we still need to work out how to get inside”, Giles called, and Buffy was a little put out that the Watcher was less than impressed with her work.
“Always so desperate to get to the finale Giles, you’d really do to learn some patience”, and Buffy pretended she didn’t notice the trademark eye-roll. Then as the vampire charged her once more, she turned and kicked him firmly in the abdomen. It was almost perfect the way he flew through the air and smashed through the once locked door, leaving splinters and hinges in his wake.
“After you”, she grinned and she definitely saw the weary smile that Giles tried to hide.
Title: Waiting
Fandom: Elementary
Rating: G
Word Count: 211
Continuation from the Elementary fic in ‘10 shocking moments’
[Click to continue]Perhaps he should have gone to collect her from the hospital. That was the third time in as many minutes that Sherlock had experienced that line of thinking. It was ridiculous of course, because he didn’t drive and so instead would have had to have offered her a lift back to the Brownstone in a taxi. Hardly the most comfortable of journeys when one was recovering from a gunshot wound.
He paced the corridor. He had tried books, tried the internet, tried old cases; and nothing had been able to sustain his attention for more than a few minutes before he became agitated and restless. He wasn’t supposed to get like this, and it irritated him how his own mind and body were betraying him. Years of learning the utmost control over himself could be undone in minutes.
He turned abruptly at the sound of the key in the lock and strode towards the door. He stopped a few steps from it when the door swung open, and Watson stepped through.
They stood like that for a minute, maybe longer. Sherlock had rehearsed what he wanted to say to Watson when she returned but in that moment his voice failed him. Eventually Watson just smiled.
“I’m glad to see you too”.
Title: Going in circles
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: G
Word Count: 171
[Click to continue]“You have got to be kidding me”, Myka peered over Pete’s shoulder as he finally managed to shove the door open.
“Nope, it is another door”, and she had never heard her partner sound so close to tears before.
“How many is this now?”
“I stopped counting after thirty”, Pete leant against the door frame and banged the back of his head against it, “Any luck reaching Artie yet?” Myka held up the Farnsworth with it’s static screen and shook her head. They stood in silence for a minute, maybe two. Then Pete lifted his hands and ran them down his face in despair,
“What do we do?”
“I guess we keep opening doors”, Myka shrugged.
“Should we split up?”
They looked at each other for a moment, then simultaneously shook their heads.
“Alright, maybe it’s lucky door number sixty two”, Pete groaned as he stood up again.
“I thought you stopped counting”
“Yeah well, I lied”, and Pete grabbed the handle of the text door and flung the door open.
Title: Divide
Fandom: Elementary
Rating: G
Word Count: 195
Note: Mild spoilers for S3
[Click to continue]The door to the Brownstone would be open. Watson knew that. After Sherlock’s words, she knew he would violate his usual careful sense of security and privacy and would leave the door unlocked, at least until he was certain that Watson wasn’t going to show.
And she wasn’t going to.
She wanted to, and she had no intentions of trying to convince herself otherwise because she was far too old to be playing games with herself, but she wouldn’t. He had moved on, traded her in for a younger, and decidedly irritating, partner. Watson felt a little guilty for thinking of Kitty like that, considering what the younger woman had gone through; but reminded herself that everyone had gone through something bad, everyone had scars, and that didn’t make annoying people any less annoying.
Perhaps it was childish to not just rekindle their partnership - they had made a great team after all - but Watson was not willing to give in again. Sherlock got what he wanted far too often in this world, and far too often at the expense of someone else. Watson wasn’t prepared to put herself out yet again, not even for him.