Wow, 15 Whole Minutes! What Luxury!
I can't believe I wasn't playing with this before, because it seems right up my alley: 15minuteficlets. Every week, they give you a word, and you're challenged to write a ficlet in any fandom using that word, in exactly 15 minutes.
Anyway, here's my first attempt at it. I'm not sure how happy I am with it... Oddly, writing something in 15 minutes seems much more difficult to me, in a way, than writing something in two. There's much more opportunity to second-guess yourself.
Anyway. Farscape, set at the end of the first season. The word for the week is given at the end; I'm putting it behind the cut tag in case anybody reading this wants to play and doesn't want to see the word in advance.
**
Language Lessons
Redemption is not a Peacekeeper concept. Peacekeepers understand punishment for transgressions. They understand the concept of re-proving one's loyalty after it has been cast into doubt. They understand the concept of paying for one's mistakes. But redemption... There is no word for it in the Peackeeper dialect.
Sometimes, when Crais closes his eyes, he can see Lieutenant Teeg's face. She looks at him with loyalty in her eyes, or reproach, or simple incomprehension. And, over and over, he relives the moment of snapping her neck. He would like to think that his time in the Aurora Chair was punishment enough for that crime. Would like to believe that that mistake has been paid for. But somehow, it isn't enough. Never enough. Just as nothing he did for Tauvo was ever enough.
What he has done, what he has been... It can't be changed. No superior will ever record a punishment on his record. There is no longer any record to be altered.
And he sees only one thing to do, one way to make things better. He must borrow words from alien languages. He must redeem himself. He must atone.
He only wishes he had the faintest idea how to go about it.
**
(And the word, in case you hadn't guessed it, was "redeem.")
Anyway, here's my first attempt at it. I'm not sure how happy I am with it... Oddly, writing something in 15 minutes seems much more difficult to me, in a way, than writing something in two. There's much more opportunity to second-guess yourself.
Anyway. Farscape, set at the end of the first season. The word for the week is given at the end; I'm putting it behind the cut tag in case anybody reading this wants to play and doesn't want to see the word in advance.
**
Language Lessons
Redemption is not a Peacekeeper concept. Peacekeepers understand punishment for transgressions. They understand the concept of re-proving one's loyalty after it has been cast into doubt. They understand the concept of paying for one's mistakes. But redemption... There is no word for it in the Peackeeper dialect.
Sometimes, when Crais closes his eyes, he can see Lieutenant Teeg's face. She looks at him with loyalty in her eyes, or reproach, or simple incomprehension. And, over and over, he relives the moment of snapping her neck. He would like to think that his time in the Aurora Chair was punishment enough for that crime. Would like to believe that that mistake has been paid for. But somehow, it isn't enough. Never enough. Just as nothing he did for Tauvo was ever enough.
What he has done, what he has been... It can't be changed. No superior will ever record a punishment on his record. There is no longer any record to be altered.
And he sees only one thing to do, one way to make things better. He must borrow words from alien languages. He must redeem himself. He must atone.
He only wishes he had the faintest idea how to go about it.
**
(And the word, in case you hadn't guessed it, was "redeem.")