AU Meme continued
3 more AU meme results!
For
elen_nare: The House of Eliott, Bea & Evie
Wild West
Beatrice surveyed the ruined workroom in silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Evie, making a start on righting chairs, and picking up torn silks. It was a mystery to her, but somehow every single guy she dated turned out to be an outlaw on the run, or an inventor with theories about flight or combustion engines, or something equally disastrous. The Eliott Sisters’ Fashion Emporium had been forced to move up and down Main Street at least five times by now as a result.
Bea merely glared. It was clearly going to take a while to win her over again. “I suppose at least this one didn’t shoot the dressmaker’s dummy or blow the place up on his way out!”
Coffee Shop
“She’s being unreasonable again,” said Evie. “Can’t you tell her, Jack? I mean, here I am, working on the perfect new holiday flavour and she never seems to understand that it’s an art. It takes time! She’s always going on at me for not serving the customers, and I can’t do both.”
Jack backed away. “I think you two need to sort it out between you.”
“Coward,” said Evie, but she grinned. “Oh, I expect you’re right, but sometimes she’s impossible!”
Shapeshifters
From a very young age, Mother had impressed upon Beatrice the need to keep their abilities secret. Looking back, she thought she had not ever truly needed telling. She had made Evie promise the same, although secrecy came harder for her younger sister. If Father knew, though, there would be no more escape in midnight adventures, slipping through the undergrowth. A hedgehog and black cat weren’t the most powerful alternative shapes, but it was freedom of a sort, and Bea couldn’t have lived without it.
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
Evie lay awake at nights, fantasising about the two of them running away from their father’s grim castle. From the window of their tower, she and Bea could see the carriages going to and from the palace every time the King held a ball. One day, they’d escape - one day they’d make the ball gowns for princesses themselves. Maybe one day, Evie thought, although she kept this dream private, she’d even get to dance with a prince herself.
But of course, sometimes princes came in strange guises, and this one wasn’t meant for her…
. . . In SPACE!!
“Are you sure about this?” said Bea, drawing back from hugging Evie at the spaceport.
Evie nodded and hugged Bea again. “Stop worrying, Bea. It’s all settled - there is going to be a new branch of the House of Eliott on board that space station - and, what’s more, it’s going to be a huge success!”
Apocalypse
Sheltered as they were, Bea had never even heard of Mr Wells’s tales, let alone contemplated the ridiculous idea that they could be based on reality. It seemed that was a mistake a lot of people had made. Now, she and Evie watched the smoke of the city burning from the windows, while Father barred the doors downstairs. Evie filled her notebooks with sketches of the fire’s glow, the silhouettes of alien creatures framed amongst it. Bea helped her smuggle them out and bury them in the garden in a tin.
“Maybe,” said Evie, “it’ll be something left for someone. Some day. Maybe it’ll be all right, after all. Maybe they won’t bother with us here.”
Bea could hear the earth shaking. She held onto Evie, and prayed that the end would not be too long in coming.
Schoolfic
“Arthur Eliott,” said Beatrice, “if you sneak on Evie one more time, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“I see what you mean,” said DI Beatrice Eliott of the Metropolitan Fashion Police, on the subject of their latest case. “Those trousers! How did he ever think he was going to get away with it?”
“I know,” said DS Eliott. “I mean, orange - it’s almost impossible to pull off even at the best of times. But if it hadn’t been for Miss Watkins here making a citizen’s arrest, we might never have found him in time.”
Tilly Watkins beamed. “Oh, it was nothing, Sergeant. I mean, he couldn’t go wandering around like that, could he? It’d have been violet crimes next or something even worse. Somebody had to stop him.”
“Quite, Tilly,” said the DI, and gave her an honorary Fashion Police badge in reward.
Supernatural
Ever since she was little, Evie had claimed that the attic rooms were haunted. Bea had thought it was only a story - Evie was always far too imaginative for her own good - but even when Evie got older, she still insisted the ghost story was true.
One night, when Evie had been more than usually upset by a row with Father, Bea had stayed with her, till she fell asleep, when she heard something like footsteps above. There were no servants in the house, only the family. Father didn’t run to such luxuries as housemaids - only Molly who came in daily to cook and clean. Bea held her breath and listened. Whatever it was sounded far too heavy to possibly be mice. Could it be possible there was a ghost?
Bea picked up her candle and set out to find out. Whatever it was, it was soon going to regret bothering her young sister, that much she could promise…
Regency
Wherever society portrait painter Jack Maddox went lately, people kept talking to him about a couple of exquisite new modistes. It was very tiresome, and they weren’t even French, which might have at least piqued his interest for a short while.
“They’re all the rage,” the Hon Daphne Haycock assured him.
He removed her glass of wine. “And you’re drunk.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” said Daphne, looking faintly surprised that he should comment on the fact. “But they’re both charming and so highly talented! You should paint them as Muses and hang them in - well, in some stuffy gallery or other. It’d make your fortune.”
“I doubt it,” said Jack. “Besides, I’m tired of painting portraits. I’m thinking of giving it up. And I’m not interested in lady milliners!”
A resolution he was sure he would have kept, had it not been for his sister’s interference. Penelope arrived on his doorstep at some unearthly hour very next morning with a face as long as a wet winter.
“Oh, Jack. Hello,” she said, pushing past him as he opened the door, paying not attention to his dishevelled state. He doubted that even if he’d told her he’d barely been home for three hours, if that, she’d only tell him that was his own fault. “Much as I hate to admit it, I need your help. As it seems I am obliged to attend this appallingly wasteful charity ball, I suppose I must have something suitable to wear!”
“Anything for the orphans of Whitechapel,” Jack said. It seemed he would be investigating the Sisters Eliott, after all.
“Fallen women,” said Penelope with a glare. “Not orphans.”
***
For
jaxomsride: Blake's 7, Cally
Wild West
One lone rider on a white horse pulled up as she reached the outlaws’ hideout. There was no chance of escape, but she was not looking for one. Her fellows had been murdered by these villains, and now, she thought, drawing her gun and setting her face, she would have companions for her death.
Coffee Shop
(I thought about this for ages, and then thought that it is pointless writing B7 coffee shops when
still_lycoris’s The Coffee Shop Liberator exists. You should just go read that; it is the best.)
Shapeshifters
“Where’s Cally?”
Midway through the undignified hunt over the flight deck, Avon came in. “Ah,” he said. “Looking for Cally again? I believe she is currently a vase of begonias in her cabin. She said something about meditating on the fragility of existence. I gather it’s easier in non-sentient forms. If you can call any life-forms around here sentient.”
Sometimes Blake wished Aurons had any other super-human ability other than the ability to shape-change at will.
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
“I don’t think,” said Cally to Avon afterwards, “that the prince is supposed to kiss the princess in order to kill the wicked witch.”
Avon merely shrugged. “Funny how life works out. And I never said I was a prince.”
Apocalypse
The nameless entity that had reached into and taken control of this slight form through Orac smiled to itself. Now it could bring this whole universe into darkness like its own…
Schoolfic
“You’re a prefect, though, I bet you could get me off.” Vila gave her his best pleading look.
Cally glared back. “That would be wrong.”
“Would it? I wouldn’t think so.”
“No, Vila!”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“I’m worried about Avon and Jenna, sir. They’ve been undercover for too long, don’t you think?”
Blake shrugged. “This is Special Branch. It happens.”
“Well, we don’t want them getting tempted, do we? That information could be worth a lot in the wrong hands.”
He merely smiled. “Come on, Cally - don’t be cynical!”
Supernatural
The medium eventually withdrew from the circle with a sigh, and looked around at them all. “Is there anyone here,” she asked, “who isn’t a sceptic?”
There was a resounding silence. It was, Cally decided, going to be a difficult session.
Regency
Cally dived behind a rocky outcrop as the French rifleman fired, only to discover someone waiting there. She jumped, having been sure she was alone, the remainder of her group of guerrilla fighters having been killed in their last encounter with the French.
“You look as if you could use a hand,” said the man, holding his out as he spoke. “I’m Blake, by the way. And the fellow out there who’s taking care of that inconvenient Frenchman of yours is Avon.”
She stiffened. “You are English? Here with the army?”
“Not precisely,” said Blake. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but let’s say I’m interested in justice and liberty. I’m here to help.”
The other man, Avon, crossed to join them. “He actually is, you know. It’s intensely annoying.”
***
For
persiflage: Doctor Who, Liv Chenka
Wild West
“They’re not shooting again, are they?” said Nurse O’Sullivan, helping the surgeon with the operation.
In answer, a bullet smashed the window and thudded into the wooden wall in the space between them.
“I think we can take that as a yes,” said Surgeon Chenka. “Still, nothing we can do about it, let’s just try and get this patient through the amputation alive. Not that he deserves it…”
Coffee Shop
The small guy with the Scottish accent kept looking at Liv. She mostly glared back, since encouraging customers rarely went well. Eventually, to her dismay, he came over to speak to her.
“Have you ever looked closely at the cappuccino machine?” he asked in a dark whisper, after a shifty glance about him.
Liv found herself inevitably looking at the cappuccino machine. She could have sworn it was looking right back. “Uh, now that you mention it -”
“Splendid,” he said, doffing his hat. “I’m the Doctor - I’m here to fix it. In a manner of speaking.”
Shapeshifters
“Well, I think it’s fun,” said the Doctor, who was still engaged in investigating his own tail.
“It’s interesting,” said Molly. “That I’ll grant you, but not in the good way, not in my book!”
Liv, even in this form, was contriving to glare. “Doctor, we’re rats. In a lab. In cages. How do you not see the problem here?”
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
“When you’ve had the final battle and conquered the Dark Lord,” said Liv, “I thought that was supposed to be it. Then you could go home in peace, or start clearing up the mess. That was what the prophecy said, wasn’t it?”
The magician shrugged. “Prophecies, prophecies - so unreliable!”
“Instead,” Liv said, “we just get another one to defeat.”
“Ah,” said the magician. “That, I fear, is life.”
. . . In SPACE!!
Liv waited out in the lobby following her job interview. She had a feeling she probably shouldn’t have been rude to Chairholder Uvanov. Well, actually, more than a feeling since she could hear him still shouting about it through the dividing wall.
“Chenka,” said Uvanov, unexpectedly emerging from the other room. “Congratulations, you’ve got the job as Company MedTech.”
She blinked. “I have? I mean, thank you!”
“Well, you may be insolent, your CV has more holes in it than Cotton’s brain, but you’re the only one of the candidates who doesn’t want to kill me and isn’t a robot. You can start first thing tomorrow.”
Apocalypse
“And this is my planet?” said Liv, looking around at the barren world, the black desert, and volcanic mountains. “It’s certainly gone downhill, and I can’t say it was all that impressive to start with. What the hell happened?”
The Doctor paused for a moment and then opened his mouth to launch into one of his usual long explanations and then paused again, and said, “Well, actually, that’s something of a mystery. I think someone let a rather nasty genie out of a bottle.”
“And you put it back, did you?”
He gave her a sheepish smile. “Somebody had to.”
Schoolfic
Liv glanced surreptitiously at her fellow sufferers in detention: Helen Sinclair, and Molly O’Sullivan. A further stretch enabled her to see Helen’s lines: I will not correct the teacher, they read, one hundred times. Molly was in front, and sneaking a peak at her writing was even easier: I will be quiet in class. I will not pull hair. I will not call people names.
Liv sighed and concentrated on writing I will be respectful to my form mistress at all times.
And to think she’d thought boarding school might be fun.
Police/Firefighters/Medical
Dr Chenka shut her locker, only to find Dr Smith at her side. She jumped violently. “Did you want something or are you just trying to kill me?”
“The reverse,” said Dr Smith. He held up the small bottle of tablets. “You let these fall out earlier. When were you going to tell me?”
Liv shrugged. “Not much point, is there? Give them back.”
Dr Smith handed them over. “Well, actually, you know that I’ve been involved with some pioneering new research…”
Supernatural
Dr Smith smoothed out the morning paper over the breakfast table. “I see there’s been another of those mysterious deaths in Wimbledon. Are you sure I can’t enlist you to my investigations, Miss Chenka?”
“Look, if you want to stand around in graveyards all night, that’s your funeral,” she said, eating her toast and carrying on skimming through the newly arrived medical journal. “It’s just that in my experience, where there’s a mysteriously dead body, there’s usually some bloke with a knife or a bottle of arsenic somewhere close by.”
“The unfortunate victim,” he read aloud, giving her a pointed glance, “hovered three feet above the air, before dropping to the ground where she expired, gasping out a warning about the ‘Malevolent White Hand.’”
“Yes? And your point is?”
Regency
“You want to help?” said Victor Frankenstein, after a long pause. “Are you sure?”
Liv nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t very ladylike, but when had she ever achieved that in any case? “Anything that allows me to practice science, doctor!”
“Because,” said Dr Frankenstein, still wary, “it’s usually about now that people start running away. They often come back with a mob.”
“Just me,” Liv said. “I brought my own scalpel.”
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments:
For
elen_nare: The House of Eliott, Bea & Evie
Wild West
Beatrice surveyed the ruined workroom in silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Evie, making a start on righting chairs, and picking up torn silks. It was a mystery to her, but somehow every single guy she dated turned out to be an outlaw on the run, or an inventor with theories about flight or combustion engines, or something equally disastrous. The Eliott Sisters’ Fashion Emporium had been forced to move up and down Main Street at least five times by now as a result.
Bea merely glared. It was clearly going to take a while to win her over again. “I suppose at least this one didn’t shoot the dressmaker’s dummy or blow the place up on his way out!”
Coffee Shop
“She’s being unreasonable again,” said Evie. “Can’t you tell her, Jack? I mean, here I am, working on the perfect new holiday flavour and she never seems to understand that it’s an art. It takes time! She’s always going on at me for not serving the customers, and I can’t do both.”
Jack backed away. “I think you two need to sort it out between you.”
“Coward,” said Evie, but she grinned. “Oh, I expect you’re right, but sometimes she’s impossible!”
Shapeshifters
From a very young age, Mother had impressed upon Beatrice the need to keep their abilities secret. Looking back, she thought she had not ever truly needed telling. She had made Evie promise the same, although secrecy came harder for her younger sister. If Father knew, though, there would be no more escape in midnight adventures, slipping through the undergrowth. A hedgehog and black cat weren’t the most powerful alternative shapes, but it was freedom of a sort, and Bea couldn’t have lived without it.
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
Evie lay awake at nights, fantasising about the two of them running away from their father’s grim castle. From the window of their tower, she and Bea could see the carriages going to and from the palace every time the King held a ball. One day, they’d escape - one day they’d make the ball gowns for princesses themselves. Maybe one day, Evie thought, although she kept this dream private, she’d even get to dance with a prince herself.
But of course, sometimes princes came in strange guises, and this one wasn’t meant for her…
. . . In SPACE!!
“Are you sure about this?” said Bea, drawing back from hugging Evie at the spaceport.
Evie nodded and hugged Bea again. “Stop worrying, Bea. It’s all settled - there is going to be a new branch of the House of Eliott on board that space station - and, what’s more, it’s going to be a huge success!”
Apocalypse
Sheltered as they were, Bea had never even heard of Mr Wells’s tales, let alone contemplated the ridiculous idea that they could be based on reality. It seemed that was a mistake a lot of people had made. Now, she and Evie watched the smoke of the city burning from the windows, while Father barred the doors downstairs. Evie filled her notebooks with sketches of the fire’s glow, the silhouettes of alien creatures framed amongst it. Bea helped her smuggle them out and bury them in the garden in a tin.
“Maybe,” said Evie, “it’ll be something left for someone. Some day. Maybe it’ll be all right, after all. Maybe they won’t bother with us here.”
Bea could hear the earth shaking. She held onto Evie, and prayed that the end would not be too long in coming.
Schoolfic
“Arthur Eliott,” said Beatrice, “if you sneak on Evie one more time, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“I see what you mean,” said DI Beatrice Eliott of the Metropolitan Fashion Police, on the subject of their latest case. “Those trousers! How did he ever think he was going to get away with it?”
“I know,” said DS Eliott. “I mean, orange - it’s almost impossible to pull off even at the best of times. But if it hadn’t been for Miss Watkins here making a citizen’s arrest, we might never have found him in time.”
Tilly Watkins beamed. “Oh, it was nothing, Sergeant. I mean, he couldn’t go wandering around like that, could he? It’d have been violet crimes next or something even worse. Somebody had to stop him.”
“Quite, Tilly,” said the DI, and gave her an honorary Fashion Police badge in reward.
Supernatural
Ever since she was little, Evie had claimed that the attic rooms were haunted. Bea had thought it was only a story - Evie was always far too imaginative for her own good - but even when Evie got older, she still insisted the ghost story was true.
One night, when Evie had been more than usually upset by a row with Father, Bea had stayed with her, till she fell asleep, when she heard something like footsteps above. There were no servants in the house, only the family. Father didn’t run to such luxuries as housemaids - only Molly who came in daily to cook and clean. Bea held her breath and listened. Whatever it was sounded far too heavy to possibly be mice. Could it be possible there was a ghost?
Bea picked up her candle and set out to find out. Whatever it was, it was soon going to regret bothering her young sister, that much she could promise…
Regency
Wherever society portrait painter Jack Maddox went lately, people kept talking to him about a couple of exquisite new modistes. It was very tiresome, and they weren’t even French, which might have at least piqued his interest for a short while.
“They’re all the rage,” the Hon Daphne Haycock assured him.
He removed her glass of wine. “And you’re drunk.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” said Daphne, looking faintly surprised that he should comment on the fact. “But they’re both charming and so highly talented! You should paint them as Muses and hang them in - well, in some stuffy gallery or other. It’d make your fortune.”
“I doubt it,” said Jack. “Besides, I’m tired of painting portraits. I’m thinking of giving it up. And I’m not interested in lady milliners!”
A resolution he was sure he would have kept, had it not been for his sister’s interference. Penelope arrived on his doorstep at some unearthly hour very next morning with a face as long as a wet winter.
“Oh, Jack. Hello,” she said, pushing past him as he opened the door, paying not attention to his dishevelled state. He doubted that even if he’d told her he’d barely been home for three hours, if that, she’d only tell him that was his own fault. “Much as I hate to admit it, I need your help. As it seems I am obliged to attend this appallingly wasteful charity ball, I suppose I must have something suitable to wear!”
“Anything for the orphans of Whitechapel,” Jack said. It seemed he would be investigating the Sisters Eliott, after all.
“Fallen women,” said Penelope with a glare. “Not orphans.”
***
For
jaxomsride: Blake's 7, Cally
Wild West
One lone rider on a white horse pulled up as she reached the outlaws’ hideout. There was no chance of escape, but she was not looking for one. Her fellows had been murdered by these villains, and now, she thought, drawing her gun and setting her face, she would have companions for her death.
Coffee Shop
(I thought about this for ages, and then thought that it is pointless writing B7 coffee shops when
still_lycoris’s The Coffee Shop Liberator exists. You should just go read that; it is the best.)
Shapeshifters
“Where’s Cally?”
Midway through the undignified hunt over the flight deck, Avon came in. “Ah,” he said. “Looking for Cally again? I believe she is currently a vase of begonias in her cabin. She said something about meditating on the fragility of existence. I gather it’s easier in non-sentient forms. If you can call any life-forms around here sentient.”
Sometimes Blake wished Aurons had any other super-human ability other than the ability to shape-change at will.
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
“I don’t think,” said Cally to Avon afterwards, “that the prince is supposed to kiss the princess in order to kill the wicked witch.”
Avon merely shrugged. “Funny how life works out. And I never said I was a prince.”
Apocalypse
The nameless entity that had reached into and taken control of this slight form through Orac smiled to itself. Now it could bring this whole universe into darkness like its own…
Schoolfic
“You’re a prefect, though, I bet you could get me off.” Vila gave her his best pleading look.
Cally glared back. “That would be wrong.”
“Would it? I wouldn’t think so.”
“No, Vila!”
Police/Firefighters/Medical
“I’m worried about Avon and Jenna, sir. They’ve been undercover for too long, don’t you think?”
Blake shrugged. “This is Special Branch. It happens.”
“Well, we don’t want them getting tempted, do we? That information could be worth a lot in the wrong hands.”
He merely smiled. “Come on, Cally - don’t be cynical!”
Supernatural
The medium eventually withdrew from the circle with a sigh, and looked around at them all. “Is there anyone here,” she asked, “who isn’t a sceptic?”
There was a resounding silence. It was, Cally decided, going to be a difficult session.
Regency
Cally dived behind a rocky outcrop as the French rifleman fired, only to discover someone waiting there. She jumped, having been sure she was alone, the remainder of her group of guerrilla fighters having been killed in their last encounter with the French.
“You look as if you could use a hand,” said the man, holding his out as he spoke. “I’m Blake, by the way. And the fellow out there who’s taking care of that inconvenient Frenchman of yours is Avon.”
She stiffened. “You are English? Here with the army?”
“Not precisely,” said Blake. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but let’s say I’m interested in justice and liberty. I’m here to help.”
The other man, Avon, crossed to join them. “He actually is, you know. It’s intensely annoying.”
***
For
persiflage: Doctor Who, Liv Chenka
Wild West
“They’re not shooting again, are they?” said Nurse O’Sullivan, helping the surgeon with the operation.
In answer, a bullet smashed the window and thudded into the wooden wall in the space between them.
“I think we can take that as a yes,” said Surgeon Chenka. “Still, nothing we can do about it, let’s just try and get this patient through the amputation alive. Not that he deserves it…”
Coffee Shop
The small guy with the Scottish accent kept looking at Liv. She mostly glared back, since encouraging customers rarely went well. Eventually, to her dismay, he came over to speak to her.
“Have you ever looked closely at the cappuccino machine?” he asked in a dark whisper, after a shifty glance about him.
Liv found herself inevitably looking at the cappuccino machine. She could have sworn it was looking right back. “Uh, now that you mention it -”
“Splendid,” he said, doffing his hat. “I’m the Doctor - I’m here to fix it. In a manner of speaking.”
Shapeshifters
“Well, I think it’s fun,” said the Doctor, who was still engaged in investigating his own tail.
“It’s interesting,” said Molly. “That I’ll grant you, but not in the good way, not in my book!”
Liv, even in this form, was contriving to glare. “Doctor, we’re rats. In a lab. In cages. How do you not see the problem here?”
Fantasy/Fairy Tale
“When you’ve had the final battle and conquered the Dark Lord,” said Liv, “I thought that was supposed to be it. Then you could go home in peace, or start clearing up the mess. That was what the prophecy said, wasn’t it?”
The magician shrugged. “Prophecies, prophecies - so unreliable!”
“Instead,” Liv said, “we just get another one to defeat.”
“Ah,” said the magician. “That, I fear, is life.”
. . . In SPACE!!
Liv waited out in the lobby following her job interview. She had a feeling she probably shouldn’t have been rude to Chairholder Uvanov. Well, actually, more than a feeling since she could hear him still shouting about it through the dividing wall.
“Chenka,” said Uvanov, unexpectedly emerging from the other room. “Congratulations, you’ve got the job as Company MedTech.”
She blinked. “I have? I mean, thank you!”
“Well, you may be insolent, your CV has more holes in it than Cotton’s brain, but you’re the only one of the candidates who doesn’t want to kill me and isn’t a robot. You can start first thing tomorrow.”
Apocalypse
“And this is my planet?” said Liv, looking around at the barren world, the black desert, and volcanic mountains. “It’s certainly gone downhill, and I can’t say it was all that impressive to start with. What the hell happened?”
The Doctor paused for a moment and then opened his mouth to launch into one of his usual long explanations and then paused again, and said, “Well, actually, that’s something of a mystery. I think someone let a rather nasty genie out of a bottle.”
“And you put it back, did you?”
He gave her a sheepish smile. “Somebody had to.”
Schoolfic
Liv glanced surreptitiously at her fellow sufferers in detention: Helen Sinclair, and Molly O’Sullivan. A further stretch enabled her to see Helen’s lines: I will not correct the teacher, they read, one hundred times. Molly was in front, and sneaking a peak at her writing was even easier: I will be quiet in class. I will not pull hair. I will not call people names.
Liv sighed and concentrated on writing I will be respectful to my form mistress at all times.
And to think she’d thought boarding school might be fun.
Police/Firefighters/Medical
Dr Chenka shut her locker, only to find Dr Smith at her side. She jumped violently. “Did you want something or are you just trying to kill me?”
“The reverse,” said Dr Smith. He held up the small bottle of tablets. “You let these fall out earlier. When were you going to tell me?”
Liv shrugged. “Not much point, is there? Give them back.”
Dr Smith handed them over. “Well, actually, you know that I’ve been involved with some pioneering new research…”
Supernatural
Dr Smith smoothed out the morning paper over the breakfast table. “I see there’s been another of those mysterious deaths in Wimbledon. Are you sure I can’t enlist you to my investigations, Miss Chenka?”
“Look, if you want to stand around in graveyards all night, that’s your funeral,” she said, eating her toast and carrying on skimming through the newly arrived medical journal. “It’s just that in my experience, where there’s a mysteriously dead body, there’s usually some bloke with a knife or a bottle of arsenic somewhere close by.”
“The unfortunate victim,” he read aloud, giving her a pointed glance, “hovered three feet above the air, before dropping to the ground where she expired, gasping out a warning about the ‘Malevolent White Hand.’”
“Yes? And your point is?”
Regency
“You want to help?” said Victor Frankenstein, after a long pause. “Are you sure?”
Liv nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t very ladylike, but when had she ever achieved that in any case? “Anything that allows me to practice science, doctor!”
“Because,” said Dr Frankenstein, still wary, “it’s usually about now that people start running away. They often come back with a mob.”
“Just me,” Liv said. “I brought my own scalpel.”
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments: