OMG SO MUCH FIC MY HEAD IT EXPLODES!!
So, as people might have gathered, I have been obsessively writing and prompting for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon (which has been amazing and prompted some brilliant, brilliant ladyfic), and am currently working on an Arcadia/Doctor Who crossover for the not!comment!fic portion of the ficathon. Anyway (i) go and read all the awesome fic and write some if a prompt catches your eye; (ii) I will be reccing a load of it in due course, especially the beautiful things that have been written for my prompts; and (iii) here is most of the fic I've written.
I remember, I remember, the house where I was born
STXI; Joanna and Jocelyn McCoy; PG; for helly_uk
When she's fifteen, Jo has a (massive) argument with her mom. It's about school or who she's allowed to date or when curfew is or all of these things. Whatever, it doesn't matter; the argument isn't the point. She's fifteen: arguing with Mom is practically a hobby.
They scream at each other for a while, until Jo can tell Mom has remembered dire blood pressure warnings and backs off (and she feels kinda guilty that she took it that far, and then feels pissed cuz she feels bad), and Jo goes stamping off to her room.
So far, so normal. The McCoy household, Jo's always thought, isn't complete without at least two people in a state of armed warfare (seriously: it's amazing what you can do with a fork. Or, that one Thanksgiving, a plastic turkey). Mom takes "high strung" to a whole new meaning (Jo can never look a member of the PTA in the face. Well, OK, she totally does but she puts it down to having no shame), and Dad's preferred method of communication has always been SHOUT TILL EVERYONE IS FORCED INTO SUBMISSION THROUGH ACTUAL DEAFNESS. And Jo... well, Jo likes to think she has a talent for debate that will take her far in life.
Anyway, so that's all clear, right? McCoy household = crazy C23rd no man's land.
Except when she's fifteen, Jo has an argument with her mom and goes stamping off to her room. She slams the door. (A clichéd gesture of defiance, sure, but you can't beat the classics.) And something falls off the top of her closet.
It's a bear.
She bends down, curious, because wtf is a bear doing on top of her closet. It's covered in dust, and as her fingers touch the faded yellow ribbon, she remembers.
This is Mr Dumbledore. Mr Dumbledore the bear, that Mom and Dad bought for her to save her from thunderstorms, because Mr Dumbledore the bear was a wizard who always saved little girls from lightning.
And Jo thinks, Jesus H Christ, how did I forget that? She had loved Mr Dumbledore; had clutched him tight when it rained and thundered.
And she remembers the morning after the thunderstorm, when she was so excited because Mr Dumbledore had saved her, and she had sat in the kitchen drawing a picture of Mr Dumbledore fighting off the lightning with his sword while Mom and Dad drank coffee and laughed at each other as they did the crossword. Dad made pancakes, Jo remembers, and tried to do one shaped like Mr Dumbledore, only it looked sorta like a tomato, and Mom had ruffled his hair, and laughed, and said Don't worry, baby. They'd been smooching and hugging too, but Jo hadn't paid attention, because that's just what moms and dads did.
Jo wonders why she hadn't remembered this. Sitting here, in the room she's had since she was a little kid, she's always remembered the arguments. Dad's been spending too long at the hospital. Why did Mom take her to Atlanta when she knew he'd arranged a day out for them? Why hadn't Dad picked her up from school? Why won't Mom listen?
She's always remembered the arguments, and that's how she's always defined her parents and their marriage and her relationship with them. She's never remembered, before, that there were times when they didn't argue at all.
Jo isn't quite sure what to do with this new-found knowledge. She rubs her finger along Mr Dumbledore's dusty fur, and decides she'll have to think about it. (But she goes and apologises to Mom, because it must be shit to always be arguing and have no-one else remember that you used to be happy.)
murder is no place for metaphor
The Mentalist; Teresa Lisbon; G; for etoilefilante
You will be the death of me.
In the recess of Teresa Lisbon's mind, she remembers her mother saying those words: sometimes angrily, sometimes ruefully, sometimes with a laugh. Sometimes it was Teresa herself who would be her mother's death. Sometimes one of her brothers, her father, her aunt.
It's a metaphor, of course.
Jane - Jane's not a metaphor. He will be the death of her. Lisbon is under precisely zero illusions about that. At the very least, he will be the death of her career. He is frustratingly brilliant, and she can't deny he helps solve cases, but one day he'll go to far, and it'll be sayonara, Lisbon.
And she's resigned to that. OK, so she has the odd sleepless night over it, and she's not going to stop riding him over it, and she's going to try and protect Cho and Rigsby and Van Pelt from the fall-out (and there will be fall-out), but the guy catches murderers, and she can't argue with that.
Then there's the possibility that he will actually cause her death (or his death, or one of the others'). He won't mean to, and it'll haunt him forever, one more added to his greek chorus of grief, but it could happen.
She's not resigned to that. No-one gets to be resigned to that. But the job is about risk, and it's a risk she takes. It's a risk they all take.
There's a third possibility, that lies between words unsaid and thoughts unshared, but Lisbon knows that neither she nor Jane is ready to go there.
I could have danced all night (but only whilst high)
STXI; Winona Kirk; PG; for kitausu"So," says Robau, leaning back in his seat as Odembe flies the shuttle back to the Kelvin, "anyone want to explain what happened back there?"
There is a studied lack of anyone trying to explain what happened back there.
"Because we're going to need a report of some kind," he carries on.
"I heard the Enterprise went to this planet that had spores," says Odembe, not taking her eyes off the viewscreen. "Total amnesia. They didn't remember a thing."
"We can go with amnesia," says Winona. "Amnesia has a long and valued history in the annals of space exploration."
"I had an aunt once who had amnesia for a whole year," adds Kitajewski.
Everyone groans. "Kit, what have we said about your aunt?" asks Winona. Kitajewski considers this.
"That there is no time that's appropriate for an anecdote about her?" He grins. "Sorry. Amnesia."
"Assface."
"Lieutenant," warns Robau, but he's grinning (hey, after what happened planet-side, they're all still grinning).
"Well, whatever you want the story to be, you better get it straight now," says Odembe, starting to flick at the controls. "We're docking in the Kelvin."
"At least we got some good samples," offers Winona. "Scientific value. Starfleet'll appreciate that."
"Maybe," replies Robau, his voice wry, "but I doubt they'll look as fondly on four of their officers getting high on local fruit and joining a conga line that turned out to be the indigenous population's method of effecting a political coup."
There is silence.
"Hey, look, that totally happened to my aunt once."
oOo
Back on the Kelvin, the landing party go their separate ways, and Winona ends up meeting George outside the door to their quarters.
"Miss me?" asks George, and Winona rolls her eyes.
"With a whole new planet to explore?"
George grins, and presses his thumb to the door pad. "Learn anything fun?"
"Only that a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having." She pats him on the cheek and sashays past as the door swooshes open.
George watches her go.
"You what now?"
Her voice sings out into the corridor, laughing and fond. "Forget it, babe. What happens on Eraldis Prime stays on Eraldis Prime!"
It all makes sense in the end
Doctor Who; Amy Pond; G; for ldkirby
In the moment before she's truly awake, in the moment before she automatically positions herself in time and space, Amelia Pond is a child being woken by her mother's hand on her shoulder (which feels unfamiliar though it shouldn't). And then, wait, no, she doesn't have parents. And there are no stars. Or she's dead. (That's unsettling.) Or is it her wedding morning, except she's been putting that off one adventure at a time, but her mum's there now. No, wait...
"Oh, the Orient Express is brilliant," someone's saying. "After we've dealt with this little... well, no-one likes to point fingers at how something like this happens, but afterwards we can go to this moon a couple of thousand light years past the Milky Way, if we head right at Alpha Centauri, that has an Orient Express. Well, not entirely like the Orient Express, of course, they don't have the Orient there. Or... trains, actually. But the principle's the same. Is she awake yet?"
Oh, she's awake. Amy Pond is definitely, beautifully, gorgeously awake, in her time, in her reality, with her husband and her (ha, take that everyone!) unimaginary friend.
"Morning, Doctor," she says, presenting herself in what passes for a doorway in the TARDIS, and slinking over to Rory. "Morning, Mr Pond."
"Amy, I don't really--"
She kisses him, and he kisses her, and names don't matter to time travellers. "So, what's all this about an Egyptian goddess, then?"
Willow of Sunnydale, California
BtVS; Willow; PG; for lar_laughs
Willow Rosenberg could write a book about her relationship with magic. Not one of those epic small-town girl discovers mysterious magical power and sets off on epic quest to slay demons and defeat trolls and recapture the wonderful light of the universe where it was kept by an evil wizard up a mountain kinda books. Don't get her wrong, she is totally in favour of those, and there's sort of a possibility that she might have started writing something similar when she was thirteen (ooh, it was so much fun and had this heroine called Rowan who met a guy Alex and they went on these adventures and... so, yeah. In retrospect kinda lame). Whatever; she's fine with fantasy.
But that was before magic.
Now the book would be a Bildungsroman. As they learnt in Lit 101, that's a book that focuses on a character's growth, psychologically and morally. Well, Willow already knew that. Buffy learnt it in Lit 101, and didn't look it up for a while so thought it had something to do with Romans and toilets. Anne of Green Gables is a Bildungsroman. Willow loves that book. Um, so, anyway, drifting from the point.
The point: the story of Willow and magic is more about Willow's psychological and moral growth than it is about magic (though magic is beautiful and bright and deserves a thousand books when each is more lavish than the last). Magic is a tool, she gets that. (Magic is alive.) She can't let it control her; it's for her to control it. (You get swept along, and together they're so powerful, like being alive in a million dimensions all at once when everyone else is in Flatland.) Magic is dangerous. (Magic is everything in the world.)
Um. Heh.
The story of Willow and magic is more about Willow's psychological and moral growth.
It's a work in progress.
blow me bluebell bubbles
Harry Potter; Alice Longbottom; PG; for j_lunatic
This is how it works. Listen carefully. It's important.
She has bluebell bubbles the boy brings (he's a sweet boy). She blows them, big and round, and fills them with the noises in her head. Do you understand? They aren't filled with air, like normal bubbles, they're filled with sounds and pictures and things she doesn't think about (they aren't there; they aren't there).
She once blew a bubble that a had a man in a woolly jumper screaming Alice, which is her name, she's told, and she thought, as she blew it, what a strange coincidence it was.
There's another bubble that has a woman laughing. She doesn't like that one at all.
One bubble has a baby that wobbles and laughs. People like babies (she thinks), but that bubble hurt, and she cried.
She has lots of bubbles, because the boy comes often (he's a sweet boy). There's a stuffed vulture in one; a screaming skull in another; a phoenix in the one she blew yesterday - or was it years ago?
Have you heard all that? Keep listening, because this is the important part. She pops all the bubbles: pop, pop, pop. Then they're all gone, until the boy bring her more (he's a sweet boy).
So she starts again.
OK. Bored now. More later.
I remember, I remember, the house where I was born
STXI; Joanna and Jocelyn McCoy; PG; for helly_uk
When she's fifteen, Jo has a (massive) argument with her mom. It's about school or who she's allowed to date or when curfew is or all of these things. Whatever, it doesn't matter; the argument isn't the point. She's fifteen: arguing with Mom is practically a hobby.
They scream at each other for a while, until Jo can tell Mom has remembered dire blood pressure warnings and backs off (and she feels kinda guilty that she took it that far, and then feels pissed cuz she feels bad), and Jo goes stamping off to her room.
So far, so normal. The McCoy household, Jo's always thought, isn't complete without at least two people in a state of armed warfare (seriously: it's amazing what you can do with a fork. Or, that one Thanksgiving, a plastic turkey). Mom takes "high strung" to a whole new meaning (Jo can never look a member of the PTA in the face. Well, OK, she totally does but she puts it down to having no shame), and Dad's preferred method of communication has always been SHOUT TILL EVERYONE IS FORCED INTO SUBMISSION THROUGH ACTUAL DEAFNESS. And Jo... well, Jo likes to think she has a talent for debate that will take her far in life.
Anyway, so that's all clear, right? McCoy household = crazy C23rd no man's land.
Except when she's fifteen, Jo has an argument with her mom and goes stamping off to her room. She slams the door. (A clichéd gesture of defiance, sure, but you can't beat the classics.) And something falls off the top of her closet.
It's a bear.
She bends down, curious, because wtf is a bear doing on top of her closet. It's covered in dust, and as her fingers touch the faded yellow ribbon, she remembers.
This is Mr Dumbledore. Mr Dumbledore the bear, that Mom and Dad bought for her to save her from thunderstorms, because Mr Dumbledore the bear was a wizard who always saved little girls from lightning.
And Jo thinks, Jesus H Christ, how did I forget that? She had loved Mr Dumbledore; had clutched him tight when it rained and thundered.
And she remembers the morning after the thunderstorm, when she was so excited because Mr Dumbledore had saved her, and she had sat in the kitchen drawing a picture of Mr Dumbledore fighting off the lightning with his sword while Mom and Dad drank coffee and laughed at each other as they did the crossword. Dad made pancakes, Jo remembers, and tried to do one shaped like Mr Dumbledore, only it looked sorta like a tomato, and Mom had ruffled his hair, and laughed, and said Don't worry, baby. They'd been smooching and hugging too, but Jo hadn't paid attention, because that's just what moms and dads did.
Jo wonders why she hadn't remembered this. Sitting here, in the room she's had since she was a little kid, she's always remembered the arguments. Dad's been spending too long at the hospital. Why did Mom take her to Atlanta when she knew he'd arranged a day out for them? Why hadn't Dad picked her up from school? Why won't Mom listen?
She's always remembered the arguments, and that's how she's always defined her parents and their marriage and her relationship with them. She's never remembered, before, that there were times when they didn't argue at all.
Jo isn't quite sure what to do with this new-found knowledge. She rubs her finger along Mr Dumbledore's dusty fur, and decides she'll have to think about it. (But she goes and apologises to Mom, because it must be shit to always be arguing and have no-one else remember that you used to be happy.)
murder is no place for metaphor
The Mentalist; Teresa Lisbon; G; for etoilefilante
You will be the death of me.
In the recess of Teresa Lisbon's mind, she remembers her mother saying those words: sometimes angrily, sometimes ruefully, sometimes with a laugh. Sometimes it was Teresa herself who would be her mother's death. Sometimes one of her brothers, her father, her aunt.
It's a metaphor, of course.
Jane - Jane's not a metaphor. He will be the death of her. Lisbon is under precisely zero illusions about that. At the very least, he will be the death of her career. He is frustratingly brilliant, and she can't deny he helps solve cases, but one day he'll go to far, and it'll be sayonara, Lisbon.
And she's resigned to that. OK, so she has the odd sleepless night over it, and she's not going to stop riding him over it, and she's going to try and protect Cho and Rigsby and Van Pelt from the fall-out (and there will be fall-out), but the guy catches murderers, and she can't argue with that.
Then there's the possibility that he will actually cause her death (or his death, or one of the others'). He won't mean to, and it'll haunt him forever, one more added to his greek chorus of grief, but it could happen.
She's not resigned to that. No-one gets to be resigned to that. But the job is about risk, and it's a risk she takes. It's a risk they all take.
There's a third possibility, that lies between words unsaid and thoughts unshared, but Lisbon knows that neither she nor Jane is ready to go there.
I could have danced all night (but only whilst high)
STXI; Winona Kirk; PG; for kitausu"So," says Robau, leaning back in his seat as Odembe flies the shuttle back to the Kelvin, "anyone want to explain what happened back there?"
There is a studied lack of anyone trying to explain what happened back there.
"Because we're going to need a report of some kind," he carries on.
"I heard the Enterprise went to this planet that had spores," says Odembe, not taking her eyes off the viewscreen. "Total amnesia. They didn't remember a thing."
"We can go with amnesia," says Winona. "Amnesia has a long and valued history in the annals of space exploration."
"I had an aunt once who had amnesia for a whole year," adds Kitajewski.
Everyone groans. "Kit, what have we said about your aunt?" asks Winona. Kitajewski considers this.
"That there is no time that's appropriate for an anecdote about her?" He grins. "Sorry. Amnesia."
"Assface."
"Lieutenant," warns Robau, but he's grinning (hey, after what happened planet-side, they're all still grinning).
"Well, whatever you want the story to be, you better get it straight now," says Odembe, starting to flick at the controls. "We're docking in the Kelvin."
"At least we got some good samples," offers Winona. "Scientific value. Starfleet'll appreciate that."
"Maybe," replies Robau, his voice wry, "but I doubt they'll look as fondly on four of their officers getting high on local fruit and joining a conga line that turned out to be the indigenous population's method of effecting a political coup."
There is silence.
"Hey, look, that totally happened to my aunt once."
oOo
Back on the Kelvin, the landing party go their separate ways, and Winona ends up meeting George outside the door to their quarters.
"Miss me?" asks George, and Winona rolls her eyes.
"With a whole new planet to explore?"
George grins, and presses his thumb to the door pad. "Learn anything fun?"
"Only that a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having." She pats him on the cheek and sashays past as the door swooshes open.
George watches her go.
"You what now?"
Her voice sings out into the corridor, laughing and fond. "Forget it, babe. What happens on Eraldis Prime stays on Eraldis Prime!"
It all makes sense in the end
Doctor Who; Amy Pond; G; for ldkirby
In the moment before she's truly awake, in the moment before she automatically positions herself in time and space, Amelia Pond is a child being woken by her mother's hand on her shoulder (which feels unfamiliar though it shouldn't). And then, wait, no, she doesn't have parents. And there are no stars. Or she's dead. (That's unsettling.) Or is it her wedding morning, except she's been putting that off one adventure at a time, but her mum's there now. No, wait...
"Oh, the Orient Express is brilliant," someone's saying. "After we've dealt with this little... well, no-one likes to point fingers at how something like this happens, but afterwards we can go to this moon a couple of thousand light years past the Milky Way, if we head right at Alpha Centauri, that has an Orient Express. Well, not entirely like the Orient Express, of course, they don't have the Orient there. Or... trains, actually. But the principle's the same. Is she awake yet?"
Oh, she's awake. Amy Pond is definitely, beautifully, gorgeously awake, in her time, in her reality, with her husband and her (ha, take that everyone!) unimaginary friend.
"Morning, Doctor," she says, presenting herself in what passes for a doorway in the TARDIS, and slinking over to Rory. "Morning, Mr Pond."
"Amy, I don't really--"
She kisses him, and he kisses her, and names don't matter to time travellers. "So, what's all this about an Egyptian goddess, then?"
Willow of Sunnydale, California
BtVS; Willow; PG; for lar_laughs
Willow Rosenberg could write a book about her relationship with magic. Not one of those epic small-town girl discovers mysterious magical power and sets off on epic quest to slay demons and defeat trolls and recapture the wonderful light of the universe where it was kept by an evil wizard up a mountain kinda books. Don't get her wrong, she is totally in favour of those, and there's sort of a possibility that she might have started writing something similar when she was thirteen (ooh, it was so much fun and had this heroine called Rowan who met a guy Alex and they went on these adventures and... so, yeah. In retrospect kinda lame). Whatever; she's fine with fantasy.
But that was before magic.
Now the book would be a Bildungsroman. As they learnt in Lit 101, that's a book that focuses on a character's growth, psychologically and morally. Well, Willow already knew that. Buffy learnt it in Lit 101, and didn't look it up for a while so thought it had something to do with Romans and toilets. Anne of Green Gables is a Bildungsroman. Willow loves that book. Um, so, anyway, drifting from the point.
The point: the story of Willow and magic is more about Willow's psychological and moral growth than it is about magic (though magic is beautiful and bright and deserves a thousand books when each is more lavish than the last). Magic is a tool, she gets that. (Magic is alive.) She can't let it control her; it's for her to control it. (You get swept along, and together they're so powerful, like being alive in a million dimensions all at once when everyone else is in Flatland.) Magic is dangerous. (Magic is everything in the world.)
Um. Heh.
The story of Willow and magic is more about Willow's psychological and moral growth.
It's a work in progress.
blow me bluebell bubbles
Harry Potter; Alice Longbottom; PG; for j_lunatic
This is how it works. Listen carefully. It's important.
She has bluebell bubbles the boy brings (he's a sweet boy). She blows them, big and round, and fills them with the noises in her head. Do you understand? They aren't filled with air, like normal bubbles, they're filled with sounds and pictures and things she doesn't think about (they aren't there; they aren't there).
She once blew a bubble that a had a man in a woolly jumper screaming Alice, which is her name, she's told, and she thought, as she blew it, what a strange coincidence it was.
There's another bubble that has a woman laughing. She doesn't like that one at all.
One bubble has a baby that wobbles and laughs. People like babies (she thinks), but that bubble hurt, and she cried.
She has lots of bubbles, because the boy comes often (he's a sweet boy). There's a stuffed vulture in one; a screaming skull in another; a phoenix in the one she blew yesterday - or was it years ago?
Have you heard all that? Keep listening, because this is the important part. She pops all the bubbles: pop, pop, pop. Then they're all gone, until the boy bring her more (he's a sweet boy).
So she starts again.
OK. Bored now. More later.