Leverageland: Challenge #11 - What Time Is It, Mr. Ford?
Team: Thief
Title: take me away from this old game
Rating: Light R
Warnings: Some cursing, temporary character death
Prompt: Turn of the century
Word Count: 1,790
Summary: AU. The gods created immortal beings to shape the course of the world.
Notes: I...I don't even know. Seriously, I got this prompt and had no idea what to do with it. Then I started thinking, and this idea formed itself, and I'm not even a big fan of the way it's written, but I've spent all day grappling with it while my big bang with a rapidly approaching deadline stared me down. So, this is what I have. Maybe I'll edit later.
The first time Sophie sees him, she falls in love. It’s embarrassing for her, later, when she remembers how she blushed any time he looked at her. Her name is different then. He whispers Guinevere in her ear before he kisses her, and she is conquered. This immortal being, like her but created by different gods, a king with blue eyes and messy brown curls.
She somehow forgets about the fiasco in Egypt with Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony, how her own conniving brought that country to its knees, how she destroyed her brothers and sisters out of sheer boredom. She is worlds away from that creature; she can’t even remember why she did all those things.
Her happiness is ruined when she finds out one of her brothers has become the great wizard Merlin, the king’s closest friend and advisor. Apparently, his death didn’t stick as long as she had hoped it would.
It doesn’t take Arthur long to notice her unease.
“What’s wrong, darling?”
The conversation starts along those lines, and she has a chance every time to tell him the truth. To explain to this man she loves how she destroyed her family in a grab for power. She can’t bear the idea of losing him.
“You can’t trust Merlin. He is not your friend.”
Arthur just shakes his head and laughs at her distrust; she wants to believe that he is right, that her brother is not here to destroy her. She wants to be happy with Arthur and help him build his kingdom, create Camelot, a paradise on this earth to rival that of the gods.
But perfection is made to be destroyed.
In the end, it all falls apart, and her brother kills her. Death isn’t a pleasant experience.
After all, just because she’s immortal, that doesn’t mean she can’t be killed. She just gets to come back.
***************
Sophie isn’t surprised to find out there are other immortals like her; after all, she’s run into different families created by different gods over the years.
Eliot comes from a clan created by the Norse gods. He landed in America long before Christopher Columbus ever stumbled across it, and when he finds out Sophie was the infamous Cleopatra, he laughs like it’s the funniest jokes he’s ever heard. She still doesn’t know if she should be insulted or not.
Parker is the youngest of them all, unleashed on the world in England during the Industrial Revolution by the Celtic gods who were tired of being ignored. That is all any of them know about her; Sophie understands better than most that this is because Parker has died several times, and when she was reincarnated, life wasn’t kind to the girl.
Hardison is the only one out of them who has never been killed, which makes him seem younger than anyone else. He is actually from the second set of immortals crafted by the Indian gods, a racially diverse group that was scattered all through the world. He can’t name a single of his brother or sisters.
She doesn’t like to think about how her past is intertwined with Nate’s. She doesn’t know what happened after he was carried to Avalon by boat, and he hasn’t volunteered the information. Instead, they both ignore their mutual history because there are some things that can’t be forgiven.
All of them were created to be creatures of power, an influence on the events of the world, and they’ve all turned into criminals.
She’s pretty sure this says something significant about the world.
Or maybe they all just like to take the shortcut to getting what they want.
***************
Sophie comes back as a baby, christened Anne Boleyn, and she quickly finds that instead of choosing her battles, she is now a pawn to be used for her family’s wishes.
She thinks that this new life has to be a punishment for her actions in Egypt. But she grits her teeth and learns how to find new power, perfects the turn of her head, her ability to smile on command, how to flatter a man she finds absolutely repugnant.
No one can ever say that she lacks ambition.
She wants to laugh when King Henry VIII overthrows his first wife out of desire for Anne. It’s not as though she does anything out of spite; this is what she was made to do. She brings the Protestant Reformation to England with the hopes of allowing the people better access to their religion; she bears a little princess, the fourth of the children she has brought into this world. Henry adores her, and for a moment, she lets herself believe that this time will be different. This time she can do things right and be happy.
However, she is undone by her own machinations. Once a queen has been deposed for another, precedence has been established; any woman can be the queen if she only knows how to charm the king.
Anne watches helplessly as all of her accomplishments burn away, and she is left at her husband’s mercy. When she looks up into his face and sees his blind hatred, she understands that this is the price she will pay as long as she seeks power.
Death dogs the steps of those who rule over others.
***************
“I think Nate and I are destined to be together,” Sophie announces.
Eliot rolls his head on his neck and looks at her. “What the fuck?”
His words slur together, and she giggles. They’re sprawled on the top of Nate’s building, sharing a bottle of whiskey she snatched from the bar downstairs.
She nods her head. “I’m right. I know I’m right. I was married to him once, you know.”
“And how did that go?”
She purses her lips and grabs the bottle, swallows, wincing against the burn. Eliot chuckles.
“Thought so.”
He pulls the bottle of her hands and sits up, leaning against the brick wall behind him. Sophie flings her arms out wide and stares up at the sky, barely able to see the stars past the city lights.
“Do you believe in soul mates?” she asks quietly.
“No. Love would be a hell of a lot easier if that was true,” he grumbles, and she knows he’s thinking about Aimee. Pretty little Aimee who is mortal and who was always going to break his heart, either by choosing someone else or by dying when she was ninety years old and could no longer remember who Eliot was.
She rolls over onto her side and curls up, tapping her fingers on the toe of Eliot’s boot. He hums something under his breath, watches her with ice-blue eyes; she shivers.
“I still think Nate and I were destined to find each other again,” she murmurs. “Have a second chance.”
Eliot hands the bottle to her and shakes his head. “Soph, that’s fucking ridiculous.”
“But maybe it’s true.”
“Maybe.”
***************
The second Sophie gets a chance, she heads to New York with the intentions of becoming an actress in spite of her parents’ disapproval. But she has had her fill of playing the part of the proper lady; she wants to get a chance to live this time around.
She only finds minor success on the stage, but she doesn’t give it up. She’s been at it for two years when she meets Tara.
Tara is someone completely different from what Sophie is used to, and Tara is also an immortal; Sophie starts to wonder if there’s something that draws the immortals to each other. But Tara owns one of the most prosperous brothels in the city, and she tries to convince Sophie to join the whores because it will afford a better life than Sophie’s current acting career.
Sophie has had enough of spreading her legs for the pleasure of men, though, so she seduces Tara instead. They end up with a satisfactory arrangement: Sophie tutors the whores in French and Greek and is basically Tara’s kept woman.
They move to Atlanta when it becomes impossible to hide the fact that they are not aging. Then they continue on to Chicago when the same problem arises.
They have to flee the city on October 8th, 1871 after Tara accidentally sets a barn on fire that spreads to consume a large portion of the city. Sophie is less than amused by the event, but she stays with Tara.
“How long can we keep this up?” Sophie asks one night as Tara curls into her, wrapping an arm around Sophie’s waist.
“It’s not that bad is it?” Tara replies quietly.
“I just get so tired.”
She doesn’t say that she’s used to dying when she’s happy; it feels too much like inviting tragedy to happen.
Tara traces a line down Sophie’s back and murmurs, “Then rest. The world will still be here when you wake up.”
Pearl Harbor takes Tara away from her. Sophie just lifts her chin and continues on. This is only a waiting game, after all.
***************
“I never slept with Lancelot.”
Nate looks up, startled, and Sophie bites her lip; his eyebrows raise just the slightest bit as he puts down his pen.
“I just, um, well, we’ve never talked about what happened, and I thought you should know. That.” She blinks and looks anywhere but at him.
The silence that follows is the kind that paralyzes her bones and thickens her tongue, and she has the urge to run because she has just opened a can of worms that has stayed firmly closed for hundreds of years.
“Oh.” He shuffles some of his file’s papers, his eyes flicking to her once then to his desk.
She watches the muscles in his cheeks tighten and relax, his fingers fumbling along the edge of his desk, trying to find a bottle out of muscle memory alone.
“I think I’m going to go,” she murmurs, breathing deeply as she tries not to sprint to the door and get the hell out of there.
“Soph, wait.”
She stops, stiffens her back, but she doesn’t turn to face him. She hears him come up behind her.
“If you didn’t…I thought…” He sighs and touches her arm. She flinches. His voice is quiet when he continues, “I thought you loved him.”
She turns around slowly as his hand wraps around her upper arm, his fingers tightening a little. Looking up at him, she smiles.
“I didn’t. I loved you. Only you.”
“And now?”
She steps closer to him, drapes her arms around his neck, feels his body shift closer to hers, and she kisses him. He pulls her closer, as though he will never let her go again, and all she can think is finally.
Title: take me away from this old game
Rating: Light R
Warnings: Some cursing, temporary character death
Prompt: Turn of the century
Word Count: 1,790
Summary: AU. The gods created immortal beings to shape the course of the world.
Notes: I...I don't even know. Seriously, I got this prompt and had no idea what to do with it. Then I started thinking, and this idea formed itself, and I'm not even a big fan of the way it's written, but I've spent all day grappling with it while my big bang with a rapidly approaching deadline stared me down. So, this is what I have. Maybe I'll edit later.
The first time Sophie sees him, she falls in love. It’s embarrassing for her, later, when she remembers how she blushed any time he looked at her. Her name is different then. He whispers Guinevere in her ear before he kisses her, and she is conquered. This immortal being, like her but created by different gods, a king with blue eyes and messy brown curls.
She somehow forgets about the fiasco in Egypt with Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony, how her own conniving brought that country to its knees, how she destroyed her brothers and sisters out of sheer boredom. She is worlds away from that creature; she can’t even remember why she did all those things.
Her happiness is ruined when she finds out one of her brothers has become the great wizard Merlin, the king’s closest friend and advisor. Apparently, his death didn’t stick as long as she had hoped it would.
It doesn’t take Arthur long to notice her unease.
“What’s wrong, darling?”
The conversation starts along those lines, and she has a chance every time to tell him the truth. To explain to this man she loves how she destroyed her family in a grab for power. She can’t bear the idea of losing him.
“You can’t trust Merlin. He is not your friend.”
Arthur just shakes his head and laughs at her distrust; she wants to believe that he is right, that her brother is not here to destroy her. She wants to be happy with Arthur and help him build his kingdom, create Camelot, a paradise on this earth to rival that of the gods.
But perfection is made to be destroyed.
In the end, it all falls apart, and her brother kills her. Death isn’t a pleasant experience.
After all, just because she’s immortal, that doesn’t mean she can’t be killed. She just gets to come back.
***************
Sophie isn’t surprised to find out there are other immortals like her; after all, she’s run into different families created by different gods over the years.
Eliot comes from a clan created by the Norse gods. He landed in America long before Christopher Columbus ever stumbled across it, and when he finds out Sophie was the infamous Cleopatra, he laughs like it’s the funniest jokes he’s ever heard. She still doesn’t know if she should be insulted or not.
Parker is the youngest of them all, unleashed on the world in England during the Industrial Revolution by the Celtic gods who were tired of being ignored. That is all any of them know about her; Sophie understands better than most that this is because Parker has died several times, and when she was reincarnated, life wasn’t kind to the girl.
Hardison is the only one out of them who has never been killed, which makes him seem younger than anyone else. He is actually from the second set of immortals crafted by the Indian gods, a racially diverse group that was scattered all through the world. He can’t name a single of his brother or sisters.
She doesn’t like to think about how her past is intertwined with Nate’s. She doesn’t know what happened after he was carried to Avalon by boat, and he hasn’t volunteered the information. Instead, they both ignore their mutual history because there are some things that can’t be forgiven.
All of them were created to be creatures of power, an influence on the events of the world, and they’ve all turned into criminals.
She’s pretty sure this says something significant about the world.
Or maybe they all just like to take the shortcut to getting what they want.
***************
Sophie comes back as a baby, christened Anne Boleyn, and she quickly finds that instead of choosing her battles, she is now a pawn to be used for her family’s wishes.
She thinks that this new life has to be a punishment for her actions in Egypt. But she grits her teeth and learns how to find new power, perfects the turn of her head, her ability to smile on command, how to flatter a man she finds absolutely repugnant.
No one can ever say that she lacks ambition.
She wants to laugh when King Henry VIII overthrows his first wife out of desire for Anne. It’s not as though she does anything out of spite; this is what she was made to do. She brings the Protestant Reformation to England with the hopes of allowing the people better access to their religion; she bears a little princess, the fourth of the children she has brought into this world. Henry adores her, and for a moment, she lets herself believe that this time will be different. This time she can do things right and be happy.
However, she is undone by her own machinations. Once a queen has been deposed for another, precedence has been established; any woman can be the queen if she only knows how to charm the king.
Anne watches helplessly as all of her accomplishments burn away, and she is left at her husband’s mercy. When she looks up into his face and sees his blind hatred, she understands that this is the price she will pay as long as she seeks power.
Death dogs the steps of those who rule over others.
***************
“I think Nate and I are destined to be together,” Sophie announces.
Eliot rolls his head on his neck and looks at her. “What the fuck?”
His words slur together, and she giggles. They’re sprawled on the top of Nate’s building, sharing a bottle of whiskey she snatched from the bar downstairs.
She nods her head. “I’m right. I know I’m right. I was married to him once, you know.”
“And how did that go?”
She purses her lips and grabs the bottle, swallows, wincing against the burn. Eliot chuckles.
“Thought so.”
He pulls the bottle of her hands and sits up, leaning against the brick wall behind him. Sophie flings her arms out wide and stares up at the sky, barely able to see the stars past the city lights.
“Do you believe in soul mates?” she asks quietly.
“No. Love would be a hell of a lot easier if that was true,” he grumbles, and she knows he’s thinking about Aimee. Pretty little Aimee who is mortal and who was always going to break his heart, either by choosing someone else or by dying when she was ninety years old and could no longer remember who Eliot was.
She rolls over onto her side and curls up, tapping her fingers on the toe of Eliot’s boot. He hums something under his breath, watches her with ice-blue eyes; she shivers.
“I still think Nate and I were destined to find each other again,” she murmurs. “Have a second chance.”
Eliot hands the bottle to her and shakes his head. “Soph, that’s fucking ridiculous.”
“But maybe it’s true.”
“Maybe.”
***************
The second Sophie gets a chance, she heads to New York with the intentions of becoming an actress in spite of her parents’ disapproval. But she has had her fill of playing the part of the proper lady; she wants to get a chance to live this time around.
She only finds minor success on the stage, but she doesn’t give it up. She’s been at it for two years when she meets Tara.
Tara is someone completely different from what Sophie is used to, and Tara is also an immortal; Sophie starts to wonder if there’s something that draws the immortals to each other. But Tara owns one of the most prosperous brothels in the city, and she tries to convince Sophie to join the whores because it will afford a better life than Sophie’s current acting career.
Sophie has had enough of spreading her legs for the pleasure of men, though, so she seduces Tara instead. They end up with a satisfactory arrangement: Sophie tutors the whores in French and Greek and is basically Tara’s kept woman.
They move to Atlanta when it becomes impossible to hide the fact that they are not aging. Then they continue on to Chicago when the same problem arises.
They have to flee the city on October 8th, 1871 after Tara accidentally sets a barn on fire that spreads to consume a large portion of the city. Sophie is less than amused by the event, but she stays with Tara.
“How long can we keep this up?” Sophie asks one night as Tara curls into her, wrapping an arm around Sophie’s waist.
“It’s not that bad is it?” Tara replies quietly.
“I just get so tired.”
She doesn’t say that she’s used to dying when she’s happy; it feels too much like inviting tragedy to happen.
Tara traces a line down Sophie’s back and murmurs, “Then rest. The world will still be here when you wake up.”
Pearl Harbor takes Tara away from her. Sophie just lifts her chin and continues on. This is only a waiting game, after all.
***************
“I never slept with Lancelot.”
Nate looks up, startled, and Sophie bites her lip; his eyebrows raise just the slightest bit as he puts down his pen.
“I just, um, well, we’ve never talked about what happened, and I thought you should know. That.” She blinks and looks anywhere but at him.
The silence that follows is the kind that paralyzes her bones and thickens her tongue, and she has the urge to run because she has just opened a can of worms that has stayed firmly closed for hundreds of years.
“Oh.” He shuffles some of his file’s papers, his eyes flicking to her once then to his desk.
She watches the muscles in his cheeks tighten and relax, his fingers fumbling along the edge of his desk, trying to find a bottle out of muscle memory alone.
“I think I’m going to go,” she murmurs, breathing deeply as she tries not to sprint to the door and get the hell out of there.
“Soph, wait.”
She stops, stiffens her back, but she doesn’t turn to face him. She hears him come up behind her.
“If you didn’t…I thought…” He sighs and touches her arm. She flinches. His voice is quiet when he continues, “I thought you loved him.”
She turns around slowly as his hand wraps around her upper arm, his fingers tightening a little. Looking up at him, she smiles.
“I didn’t. I loved you. Only you.”
“And now?”
She steps closer to him, drapes her arms around his neck, feels his body shift closer to hers, and she kisses him. He pulls her closer, as though he will never let her go again, and all she can think is finally.