7 drabbles | THG, Amazing Spider-Man, The Hour, Avengers, Merlin, Skyfall, TDKR
I wrote drabbles for fandomverse's Rainbow challenge, and now it's over I'm popping them over here, because I actually quite like them. All are 100 words long, PG, general spoilers.
Red
The Hunger Games
It lingers, years later, in the bare bones of the future. When Katniss cooks dinner and juice spills across the countertop, or when Johanna visits, eyes distant, lip-paint smudged absently on her thumb; another cheap piece of the disintegrating Capitol, something for everyone.
It’s even in Peeta’s eyes some days, his mouth against her throat, fingertips shivering against sheets. They’re careful, always, in how they move. They can’t not be, when their lives will always be on a knife-edge of things that didn’t happen, things that really fucking did.
And, knives, well, that’s a story they’ll never tell the children.
Orange
The Amazing Spider-Man
Gwen falls in love with the boy who works in the all-night laundromat in the early hours of Thursday morning, six cups of coffee down with three papers due.
(She’s procrastinating.)
The boy is frowning at a textbook, casually dispensing quarters. His hair needs flattening, he’s wearing an ugly hoodie and Gwen can’t judge him because she’s washing every sweater she’s ever owned as an avoidance technique.
(She regrets this when she opens the washer to find everything’s been stained orange, but then the boy is standing behind her smiling, saying can I help? Gwen thinks: oh, and: silver linings).
Yellow
The Hour
Cigarettes and idle shreds of sympathy. Freddie’s life often amounts to more, but it usually boils down to this.
There’s usually an after in most things, in any case, and the after is like having his kneecaps broken. He smothers that thought - too lurid for journalism, surely - with a mouthful of scotch.
Bel isn’t here, but her presence drapes.
“It’s funny,” Freddie remarks, smoke spilling out, “I never thought I’d turn out to be the vulnerable one.”
It’s a dare, a regret, and bait, and Hector isn’t a lot of things but he is too smart to rise to it.
Green
Avengers
The monster still behind Bruce Banner’s eyes is what interests Natasha. It probably shouldn’t, but she never learned what was good for her - just look at the way she’s never managed to jettison Barton - and she spends so much time looking at the ugly pieces of humanity that something made of such pure emotion is almost beautiful.
He could’ve killed her once, and that fascinates her too because not many people get that close nowadays. It’s a badge of honour, but it’s dull.
Sometimes, you want something you don’t stand a chance against. It puts things in perspective, at least.
Blue
Merlin (Imaginary future, based on season five so far)
“Does it get better?” Gwen asks, voice cracking in the middle, and for a moment Merlin remembers her as the girl she was, not the static queen she is now, black mourning gown whipping around her legs in the breeze.
The sky is the same as it always was, bright and clear above Camelot, and it feels a lot like a curse.
“Of course it gets better,” he lies, and thinks about reaching for her hand, but his fingers stay where they are.
There’s a lot of blame flickering everywhere in these uncertain days. Not all of it is founded.
Indigo
Skyfall
There’s a bloodstained shirt in the hotel room sink, a cut-throat razor lying like an afterthought next to a suspiciously bare patch of carpet. The minibar is empty - of course - and there’s an earpiece sitting conspicuously next to the television, playing Q branch a half-muted repeat of some American cop show Eve can’t identify.
“He was here,” she says softly, glass breaking under her shoe, streetlights filtering through the drawn curtains. When Eve places her hand against the bed, the sheets are still warm.
Bond’s always a step ahead of everyone. It’s not as funny as it used to be.
Violet
The Dark Knight Rises (set post-movie; spoilers)
He counts the days in split lips and bruises on his ribs, in cracking joints and grazed knees and rope-burned hands, in endless cups of shitty coffee and icepacks to his jaw, in gashes and scrapes and the wrists and ankles he wraps up tight to pretend they aren’t sprained.
Alfred sighs and brings him cups of coffee and sandwiches and never says anything concrete, which Blake is thankful for, head tipped back in another educational nosebleed, eyes swelling purple and closed.
It’s a learning curve. He’ll be perfect, or he’ll die trying.
Most days, it looks like the latter.
Red
The Hunger Games
It lingers, years later, in the bare bones of the future. When Katniss cooks dinner and juice spills across the countertop, or when Johanna visits, eyes distant, lip-paint smudged absently on her thumb; another cheap piece of the disintegrating Capitol, something for everyone.
It’s even in Peeta’s eyes some days, his mouth against her throat, fingertips shivering against sheets. They’re careful, always, in how they move. They can’t not be, when their lives will always be on a knife-edge of things that didn’t happen, things that really fucking did.
And, knives, well, that’s a story they’ll never tell the children.
Orange
The Amazing Spider-Man
Gwen falls in love with the boy who works in the all-night laundromat in the early hours of Thursday morning, six cups of coffee down with three papers due.
(She’s procrastinating.)
The boy is frowning at a textbook, casually dispensing quarters. His hair needs flattening, he’s wearing an ugly hoodie and Gwen can’t judge him because she’s washing every sweater she’s ever owned as an avoidance technique.
(She regrets this when she opens the washer to find everything’s been stained orange, but then the boy is standing behind her smiling, saying can I help? Gwen thinks: oh, and: silver linings).
Yellow
The Hour
Cigarettes and idle shreds of sympathy. Freddie’s life often amounts to more, but it usually boils down to this.
There’s usually an after in most things, in any case, and the after is like having his kneecaps broken. He smothers that thought - too lurid for journalism, surely - with a mouthful of scotch.
Bel isn’t here, but her presence drapes.
“It’s funny,” Freddie remarks, smoke spilling out, “I never thought I’d turn out to be the vulnerable one.”
It’s a dare, a regret, and bait, and Hector isn’t a lot of things but he is too smart to rise to it.
Green
Avengers
The monster still behind Bruce Banner’s eyes is what interests Natasha. It probably shouldn’t, but she never learned what was good for her - just look at the way she’s never managed to jettison Barton - and she spends so much time looking at the ugly pieces of humanity that something made of such pure emotion is almost beautiful.
He could’ve killed her once, and that fascinates her too because not many people get that close nowadays. It’s a badge of honour, but it’s dull.
Sometimes, you want something you don’t stand a chance against. It puts things in perspective, at least.
Blue
Merlin (Imaginary future, based on season five so far)
“Does it get better?” Gwen asks, voice cracking in the middle, and for a moment Merlin remembers her as the girl she was, not the static queen she is now, black mourning gown whipping around her legs in the breeze.
The sky is the same as it always was, bright and clear above Camelot, and it feels a lot like a curse.
“Of course it gets better,” he lies, and thinks about reaching for her hand, but his fingers stay where they are.
There’s a lot of blame flickering everywhere in these uncertain days. Not all of it is founded.
Indigo
Skyfall
There’s a bloodstained shirt in the hotel room sink, a cut-throat razor lying like an afterthought next to a suspiciously bare patch of carpet. The minibar is empty - of course - and there’s an earpiece sitting conspicuously next to the television, playing Q branch a half-muted repeat of some American cop show Eve can’t identify.
“He was here,” she says softly, glass breaking under her shoe, streetlights filtering through the drawn curtains. When Eve places her hand against the bed, the sheets are still warm.
Bond’s always a step ahead of everyone. It’s not as funny as it used to be.
Violet
The Dark Knight Rises (set post-movie; spoilers)
He counts the days in split lips and bruises on his ribs, in cracking joints and grazed knees and rope-burned hands, in endless cups of shitty coffee and icepacks to his jaw, in gashes and scrapes and the wrists and ankles he wraps up tight to pretend they aren’t sprained.
Alfred sighs and brings him cups of coffee and sandwiches and never says anything concrete, which Blake is thankful for, head tipped back in another educational nosebleed, eyes swelling purple and closed.
It’s a learning curve. He’ll be perfect, or he’ll die trying.
Most days, it looks like the latter.