Assorted Ficlets
This afternoon, I've been having a lot of fun with desperateprompt. Which, means, of course, that I've been writing a number of small ficlets for characters that I RP as. Here they are! (And, by the way, there may indeed be more of these soon.)
Fandom: Dracula (novel)
Character/Pairing: Mina Harker
Rating: PG-13
During the month that she spends (unwillingly) mentally connected to him, the Count talks to Mina almost constantly. He tells her about everything, it seems, from his opinions on modern literature to his recollections of his mortal life. She never replies to him, so it is as though he conducts a running monologue from sunset to sunrise, though her reactions to his confessions are enough of a response to constitute a conversation.
Most of all, he talks about the murders he has committed. There are thousands, from both his mortal life as a merciless tyrant and his immortal one as vampire. The murders from his mortal life are the ones he describes in the most detail. Indeed, he speaks of them almost lovingly, as if those he killed were his lovers and he is speaking about their most intimate moments together. Perhaps they were. She cannot tell and doesn't wish to know.
But neither does she wish to know about the type of pain a sharpened stake causes when it enters one's entrails, or how long it takes someone to die when their stomach has been cut open.
And, when she looks at her husband, she certainly doesn't want to be thinking of what sort of patterns his blood would make against the clean white wall if someone were to slice his throat.
Fandom: Woman in White (musical)
Character/Pairing: Anne Catherick
Rating: PG-13
“Some people say that madness is caused by a curse from the Devil,” says one of the nurses at the asylum, as she mops up the traces of Anne's vomit from when the doctor tried to examine her earlier that day.
“Or from God,” says another of them, who is fastening Anne's strait-waistcoat securely, and making sure the gag in her mouth is unmoved.
“So, which do you think she is?” asks the first, casually. It's the kind of conversation carried on often by the staff of the asylum about the patients, while the patients, mute objects, listen.
“I'm not sure,” says the second, sticking her fingers into Anne's mouth to readjust the gag. “she looks innocent enough to have offended the Devil, with all that blonde hair. But the way she thrashes about, and her infernal screaming...that could annoy even the angels.”
They both laugh and, their work done, leave the room, the heavy door shutting with an ominous sound behind them. But Anne, awake and very much able to reason, thinks on their words. Is she cursed? It would explain much in her life, from her unlucky conception to her current situation. But, no, the nurses were talking about the insane being cursed, and, if there is one thing Anne still knows, it is that she is not insane. And, if she were to go insane, it would be from the memory of Sir Percival Glyde's hands on her, whether caressing or hitting her, from the memory of her poor little child, sinking deep into the dark water, from being injected full of laudanum and brought to this place, a compliant, unthinking ghost, and left to suffocate in her strait-waistcoat.
And so, she realizes, it is people like Sir Percival Glyde who drive others insane, not God or the Devil, who couldn't care less. The nurses were wrong.
Fandom: Hunchback of Notre Dame (novel)
Character/Pairing: Esmeralda, Phoebus, implied Esmeralda/Phoebus
Rating: PG
She blushes the first time Phoebus kisses her, and he seems stunned by that, as though he imagined that she, being a gypsy, is incapable of modesty. After all, she spends her life making a public exibition of herself, dancing where all of Paris can see her, doesn't she? And, in the midst of the dancing, she often reveals a foot, and ankle, even, on one notorious occasion, a thigh! She never seems to care then, does she?
He would never imagine that Esmeralda is unused to the touch of another's skin against her own, and that, on that final, tragic night they spend together alone in the rented room, it is the first time a man has ever lifted her skirts up or begun unlacing her bodice. A gypsy, in his mind, is a sort of archetypal creature, one who is highly experienced in matters such as kissing, or sex, or even those sorts of sex that one asks for only from prostitutes. All his fantasies of Esmeralda involve her hitching up skirts with the experienced grace of a courtesan, winking at him lewdly.
None of them involve a rose-red blush spreading over her dark cheeks as he presses his lips against hers.
And that, perhaps, is why they could never, even were tragedy not to strike them so suddenly and so unexpectedly, be happy together.
Fandom: Into the Woods
Character/Pairing: The Baker's Wife
Rating: G
She doesn't understand magic, even though she has lived her whole life surrounded by it. It is something that belongs to other people, people who are not so completely, unfailingly normal. Other people, who lived dangerous, unpredictable lives, and did things that no one but themselves could understand. People with magic lived lives different from the rest of them, and not happier either - why, look at the Witch who lived next door to them, alone and unloved, with nothing but her garden to show for her long lifetime. Who would want to live like that?
But, nevertheless, beyond all reason, she finds herself fascinated with magic, often wondering what it would be like to have that kind of power, to know that you're capable of doing something beyond baking a loaf of bread or nursing a child. Perhaps the world of magic is not the world of royalty, not the world of satin ballgowns and glittering chandeliers and handsome princes of her adolescent fantasies, but when her arms ache from scrubbing the floor and all the rolls she has made have come out misshapen, it seems a far more practical fantasy.
Her husband, though, tells her the magic is dangerous, and evil, and she cannot blame him, not after the curse that changed both their lives. And so she remains content with what she has, and the world of magic remains always near, but ever untouchable. Like so many things.
Fandom: Dracula (novel)
Character/Pairing: Mina Harker
Rating: PG-13
During the month that she spends (unwillingly) mentally connected to him, the Count talks to Mina almost constantly. He tells her about everything, it seems, from his opinions on modern literature to his recollections of his mortal life. She never replies to him, so it is as though he conducts a running monologue from sunset to sunrise, though her reactions to his confessions are enough of a response to constitute a conversation.
Most of all, he talks about the murders he has committed. There are thousands, from both his mortal life as a merciless tyrant and his immortal one as vampire. The murders from his mortal life are the ones he describes in the most detail. Indeed, he speaks of them almost lovingly, as if those he killed were his lovers and he is speaking about their most intimate moments together. Perhaps they were. She cannot tell and doesn't wish to know.
But neither does she wish to know about the type of pain a sharpened stake causes when it enters one's entrails, or how long it takes someone to die when their stomach has been cut open.
And, when she looks at her husband, she certainly doesn't want to be thinking of what sort of patterns his blood would make against the clean white wall if someone were to slice his throat.
Fandom: Woman in White (musical)
Character/Pairing: Anne Catherick
Rating: PG-13
“Some people say that madness is caused by a curse from the Devil,” says one of the nurses at the asylum, as she mops up the traces of Anne's vomit from when the doctor tried to examine her earlier that day.
“Or from God,” says another of them, who is fastening Anne's strait-waistcoat securely, and making sure the gag in her mouth is unmoved.
“So, which do you think she is?” asks the first, casually. It's the kind of conversation carried on often by the staff of the asylum about the patients, while the patients, mute objects, listen.
“I'm not sure,” says the second, sticking her fingers into Anne's mouth to readjust the gag. “she looks innocent enough to have offended the Devil, with all that blonde hair. But the way she thrashes about, and her infernal screaming...that could annoy even the angels.”
They both laugh and, their work done, leave the room, the heavy door shutting with an ominous sound behind them. But Anne, awake and very much able to reason, thinks on their words. Is she cursed? It would explain much in her life, from her unlucky conception to her current situation. But, no, the nurses were talking about the insane being cursed, and, if there is one thing Anne still knows, it is that she is not insane. And, if she were to go insane, it would be from the memory of Sir Percival Glyde's hands on her, whether caressing or hitting her, from the memory of her poor little child, sinking deep into the dark water, from being injected full of laudanum and brought to this place, a compliant, unthinking ghost, and left to suffocate in her strait-waistcoat.
And so, she realizes, it is people like Sir Percival Glyde who drive others insane, not God or the Devil, who couldn't care less. The nurses were wrong.
Fandom: Hunchback of Notre Dame (novel)
Character/Pairing: Esmeralda, Phoebus, implied Esmeralda/Phoebus
Rating: PG
She blushes the first time Phoebus kisses her, and he seems stunned by that, as though he imagined that she, being a gypsy, is incapable of modesty. After all, she spends her life making a public exibition of herself, dancing where all of Paris can see her, doesn't she? And, in the midst of the dancing, she often reveals a foot, and ankle, even, on one notorious occasion, a thigh! She never seems to care then, does she?
He would never imagine that Esmeralda is unused to the touch of another's skin against her own, and that, on that final, tragic night they spend together alone in the rented room, it is the first time a man has ever lifted her skirts up or begun unlacing her bodice. A gypsy, in his mind, is a sort of archetypal creature, one who is highly experienced in matters such as kissing, or sex, or even those sorts of sex that one asks for only from prostitutes. All his fantasies of Esmeralda involve her hitching up skirts with the experienced grace of a courtesan, winking at him lewdly.
None of them involve a rose-red blush spreading over her dark cheeks as he presses his lips against hers.
And that, perhaps, is why they could never, even were tragedy not to strike them so suddenly and so unexpectedly, be happy together.
Fandom: Into the Woods
Character/Pairing: The Baker's Wife
Rating: G
She doesn't understand magic, even though she has lived her whole life surrounded by it. It is something that belongs to other people, people who are not so completely, unfailingly normal. Other people, who lived dangerous, unpredictable lives, and did things that no one but themselves could understand. People with magic lived lives different from the rest of them, and not happier either - why, look at the Witch who lived next door to them, alone and unloved, with nothing but her garden to show for her long lifetime. Who would want to live like that?
But, nevertheless, beyond all reason, she finds herself fascinated with magic, often wondering what it would be like to have that kind of power, to know that you're capable of doing something beyond baking a loaf of bread or nursing a child. Perhaps the world of magic is not the world of royalty, not the world of satin ballgowns and glittering chandeliers and handsome princes of her adolescent fantasies, but when her arms ache from scrubbing the floor and all the rolls she has made have come out misshapen, it seems a far more practical fantasy.
Her husband, though, tells her the magic is dangerous, and evil, and she cannot blame him, not after the curse that changed both their lives. And so she remains content with what she has, and the world of magic remains always near, but ever untouchable. Like so many things.