Drabble Dump (Animorphs, BBC Sherlock, Firefly, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Castle)
Fandoms:
Animorphs/BBC Sherlock (1)
Animorphs (5)
Firefly (2)
Doctor Who (4)
Harry Potter (1)
Castle (1)
Fandom: Animorphs/BBC Sherlock
Characters: Tobias!John, briefly Mycroft
Spoilers: Vague for A#54 and BBCS1x01, AU
Rating: PG
Summary: After Jake and the others go after Ax and leave Tobias behind, he decides he'd rather nothlit as a human than die of old age. So he moves to England, becomes an army doctor and changes his name to John Watson.
It takes years.
He doesn’t really keep track of the date, but it takes a long time to get papers, to falsify records, to decide what he’s going to do now.
When it’s all done, he takes his new identity and boards a plane. Human. His hawk body has grown old and he’s too frightened to die alone in the woods. (Coward, he thinks, and remembers swirling hair in a toilet bowl in the junior high boys’ room from so long ago.)
His faked birth certificate says he’s fifteen. His body is thirteen. He’s closer to thirty.
He chooses his new name quickly, at the last minute. John. It’s such a common, boring name. Like John Doe. Just another average human being.
He’s been practicing facial expressions for a while now, and he thinks he has them down. Most of the time he hardly needs to think about them. He goes to England for no particular reason and the accent is smooth, nearly effortless. Maybe he should have been an actor instead of a hawk. Maybe it’s just that he’s spent so long away from real speech that before he morphed (demorphed?) he didn’t have any accent at all.
He remembers his friends in his own private ways. For Ax, he watches the stars every night. For Cassie, he enrolls in medical school, intending to drop out until a passion for healing takes over him with an unexpected fervor. For Marco, he isn’t sure what to do - develop a sense of humor? Well, he’s working on that. Then he joins the army. He became a soldier for Jake, but every time he pulls the trigger and watches a man bleed and writhe and die, he does it for Rachel.
Maybe it’s not the most romantic way to remember a lost love, but she would have appreciated it.
(He has a hard time holding onto her, to his memories, to the way the sun glinted off golden hair and how her laugh was like wind chimes in a storm, but when he kills for her he can see her, just for a moment.)
And then he gets shot.
“You’re not haunted by the war, Dr. Watson. You miss it.”
Yes, he thinks, sliding into the backseat of the car. Just not that one.
*
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Simon, Reavers, unknown
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Dark: Firefly, Simon, Reavers
"Simon?"
Skin ripping, tearing, blades and teeth and nails slicing through flesh
"Simon, where are you?"
Blood on your fingers, on your face, hot, choking on the stench and you can't breathe
"Simon!"
You're a doctor, you want to fix them but you can't, their lives slipping through your hands like the blood falling to the floor
"Simon, can you hear me?"
Screams, pleas, falling across your eardrums again and again until it's like rain, a soothing rhythm that makes you want to tear your own ears off
"Look at me!"
Can't look away, can't close your eyes because it's beautiful, what savagery the human race is capable of, like animals but worse
"Simon, please."
They take the people one by one, one by one, one by one, but they never take you and please just let it end . . .
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Eleven/Canton
Spoilers: a little for 6x01 and 6x02
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, Eleven/Canton, once upon a time...
Once upon a time, there was a man.
This man was no ordinary man. He wore a bowtie and braces and tweed and occasionally a fez. He talked too much and somehow managed to never really say anything at all, but that was just part of his charm. He looked normal, sort of, except he was anything but: he was an alien.
And once upon a time there was another man.
This man was also no ordinary man, but in a different way. He wore a plain black suit and tie and carried a gun and occasionally shot people. He didn't talk much, but he was honest. He looked normal, was normal, but aliens were better accepted than he was.
"The problem with the Doctor," Canton still has to explain to himself sometimes, on days that he has to try not to check every phone booth on every corner, "is that he always leaves. And once he's gone you never really stop waiting for him to come back."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias, unnamed Yeerk, briefly the rest of the team
Spoilers: None, AU
Rating: PG
Prompt: Any, any, So this is how the world ends?
< So this is how the world ends? > He feels remarkably calm, almost serene. Maybe, maybe if he'd been in control he might be screaming, crying, something. But he's not at the wheel, he's tied up in the trunk.
< Your world, > the Yeerk says, equally calm. < There are others. >
< Not to me. >
< No, > the Yeerk agrees thoughtfully. < I don't suppose there would be. >
Tobias thinks that maybe he should count himself lucky that his Yeerk ( < You're mine, not the other way around, > it corrects absently ) is so apathetic. It’s not helping the humans ( < As if! > ) but it’s not cheering on its fellow Yeerks either, not plunging into the fray itself and staining Tobias' hands (talons?) with human blood. ( < Like you haven't done enough of that for yourself already. > )
< I really wish you'd stop commenting on my thoughts, > Tobias says, more irked than angry.
The Yeerk hums inattentively, adding a brief, < If wishes were fishes. >
He hears Cassie sob softly as she watches Jake thrash against his Hork-Bajir captor, unable to morph in time, his head forced into the sludge and raising moments later oddly vacant. His expression twists for a moment as the Yeerk gains control and then he steps away to join Tobias, Rachel, and Ax. Two to go. Marco is next, slumped in defeat.
Tobias is reminded of a song he heard once, or was it a poem? This is the way the world ends, it went. Not with a bang but a whimper.
< "The Hollow Men," > the Yeerk names the poem without much thought. < By T.S. Eliot. > There's a long silence. < There's not much to do as a slug, > the Yeerk says finally, and Tobias feels his face muscles shift into a sheepish grin, earning him an odd look from Rachel Rachel's Yeerk. < I spent the time learning about humans. Your culture is repulsive, but oddly fascinating. >
Tobias doesn't think the Yeerk meant to let that last part slip.
< I wish you'd stop calling me "the Yeerk", > the Yeerk says. < I have a name. >
< To be honest, I don't really care. > Easier to think of the thing in his head as an alien slug. He doesn't need to think of it as a sentient being that has rights and needs and desires just like he does did. Easier to hate it if he doesn't know its name.
< As you wish, > the Yeerk says, and together they calmly watch the beginning of the end of the world.
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Severus, Neville
Spoilers: Vague for DH, AE
Rating: PG with a warning for violent threats
Prompt: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and Neville Longbottom, "I understand you, Professor." postwar AU, Snape lives
Severus eyed Longbottom with distaste. The boy had grown, he would give him that. He had held his own admirably against the Carrows, and he had survived the battle, which was more than many could say.
Just last year, the boy would have been quaking under Severus's sharp gaze. Now he stood tall, calm, a vicious gash down one cheek, waiting patiently for an answer.
"Let me make one thing clear, Longbottom," the professor said finally, his top lip lifting slightly in the merest hint of his old sneer. "I do not like you. You may have led your own private army under my nose this year, but you are still a bumbling, incompetent fool."
Still the boy (or was he a man?) said nothing.
"I will agree," Severus acquiesced, "to one lesson. Whatever you manage to learn in the course of that hour, you may use how you like. I will not teach you again, for any reason."
Severus didn't apologize for ten months of Cruciatus and detentions. Longbottom didn't apologize for ten months of running the staff ragged with optimistic graffiti and nighttime capers.
"And," Severus added, "if you ever speak a word of this to anyone I will personally oversee your living disembowelment and pickle your organs to restart the collection that was regrettably destroyed earlier this evening. Do you understand?"
Just last year, Longbottom would have been blubbering on his knees. Now he smiled calmly, drawing his wand from his sleeve. "I understand you, Professor."
"Fine." Severus copied the younger man's movements, readying his own wand for the first spell. "Then let's begin."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Jake
Spoilers: #54, AE
Rating: PG-13 for suicide
Prompt: Sad Song: Any, Any, And he was laying in an overflowing bathtub of red water
The first and the last time he ever relaxed
And they said, he had a smile on his face
His final offer, the steam on the mirror said
I got one more thing to say
For someone who's the biggest war hero since Patton, it's surprisingly difficult to get his hands on a gun.
He manages it, though. He doesn't even have to morph. Turning it over in his hands with a sort of morbid fascination, he examines the rubber grip, the rounded barrel, the curve of the trigger. It's a Magnum pistol, single-shot. He only needs one.
He tried, he really did. Tried to find a life after the war. But the guilt is there like a ball and chain looped around his head and chest and neck, forcing him to stoop to accommodate it, and it tugs at him whenever he tries to recover and stand tall.
His bare feet are silent on the stairs, and he sheds his clothes as he walks, stripping down to his morphing outfit. It seems fitting, to die in the clothes he used to fight in.
He goes into the bathroom, shuts and latches the door, and the windows too, as if someone's going to fly in at the last moment and stop him. Stupid. No one knows what he's about to do, not even Marco, spying on him. (He's depressed but not stupid; he's far too attuned to animals to dismiss the osprey that tends to perch in his yard or fly high above his car.)
He starts the water, as hot as it'll go, and as he waits for the tub to fill he watches steam collect on the mirror, traces in it with a finger like he used to do as a child. When he steps back he realizes he's written a good-bye.
He shuts off the tap and sinks into the bath, morphing suit and all, and feels six years of guilt and responsibility slip off him like a blanket. He picks up the gun, careful to keep the barrel dry, and looks at it for a long, wondering moment before bringing it to his temple. He breathes in, out, lungs expanding, heart beating. He's startlingly calm, his hand steady on the grip, no second thoughts. In, out, lungs expanding, heart beating.
He breathes in and pulls the trigger. The gun falls from his fingers as Jake Berenson, war hero, slides beneath the reddening surface. No in, no out, lungs stilled, heart silent.
*
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Simon, River
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt:
Sad Songs: Firefly, Simon (/or& any), This is not the way you should see me This is not the face I recognize Could I lay my head down here for a moment ("Make it Go Away" by Holly Cole)
The night Simon received River's letter, one of his colleagues had a blind date set up for him. At the end of his shift, he tore open the envelope, read it through once, and cancelled his date, instead spending the evening decoding the hidden message.
They're hurting us.
And he couldn't ignore it, couldn't ignore the pain that seeped through the sculpted words and pretended memories. He gave up everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd worked for.
He would never resent River for it, not ever. He could hold a grudge against the Alliance for holding her, and he could be angry at his father for disbelieving him, but he couldn't resent his baby sister for needing his help.
That didn't mean he couldn't get angry about it every once in a while.
He wasn't the type to throw things, or to scream curse words out at the top of his lungs. That had been trained out of him with his baby fat. Childish behavior, he'd been told.
Back home he could take his anger out in his work, in stitches stabbed through raw flesh and scalpels opening patients for surgery, or occasionally on nurses who didn't know how to do their jobs. But out here in space, on the Serenity? Well, he could see why the crew loved their guns so much.
"Simon?"
River stood in the doorway, her weight balanced gracefully on one foot as if poised to flee.
"Hey." He smiled, carefully, his gut still boiling with the emotion he needed to find a new outlet for.
"I don't recognize you," she said, her head tipped to one side. "Anger clouds your features, Simon."
He kept his expression purposefully vague, used to River's insights. "Okay."
"I'll come back when I can see you." And just like that, she was gone.
He stepped across the room and closed the door behind her. Sitting down on the bed, he buried his face in his hands and cried.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias
Spoilers: End of #1
Rating: PG
Prompt: Sunshine
When Tobias emerges from the Pool, the first thing he notices is the sunshine. It occurs to him that it was dark when he went down, and shouldn't he be worried about that? But after the hours spent trapped underground, with the hawk brain panicking about the lack of flying space and his own mind fluttering with all the possibilities of what could happen to him if he can't get out (killed, infested, forced to betray the others), he thinks he's probably lost all capability for rational thought. He retreats into the passenger seat, surrendering the wheel and letting hawk instincts drive. The sun feels so good, warming his back, and in the brightness he can see every detail of what's happening below, like the little girl stopped on the sidewalk with her head tilted back to watch him. He laughs in private thought-speech at the envy and awe on her face as he soars away. Swerving away over the town, he swoops in his bedroom window and lands on the bed.
When Tobias emerges from the Pool, the second thing he notices is that he's stuck.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Loren, Chapman, Elfangor, Tobias
Spoilers: Andalite Chronicles
Rating: PG
Prompt: Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time, not too far out from the place humanity calls Pluto, an ordinary girl and an ordinary boy met on a Skrit Na freighter, bound for either a long, miserable life in an alien zoo or a short, painful one in an alien lab, though of course neither one of them knew that at the time. The ordinary boy is, in fact, unimportant to our tale, but the ordinary girl might just be the most important girl of all. Because out there, in the depths of space with a captured weapon clutched in her strong human hands, she met a not-so-ordinary boy who wasn't really a boy at all, but in fact another alien of a race known to the galaxy as Andalites.
Neither one found a full happily ever after, but they were happy together for a time, and their story found new being in a boy/hawk/Andalite called Tobias. He never got his happily ever after either, but maybe that's just life.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias/Rachel
Spoilers: Nothing specific
Rating: PG
Prompt: author's choice, author's choice, the horse nobody could ride
Rachel was like a fashion model. Calm, gorgeous, impeccable. The balance beam was her runway and the school hallways were her red carpet.
Rachel was like a knight in shining armor. Strong, brave, a warrior. She swooped in to save the dudes in distress more than once.
Rachel was like a goddess. Revered, respected, unreachable. She passed through life unfazed and untouched by the disorder around her. Mere mortals had no effect on her outer shell.
Maybe what she really needed was someone to need her. She didn't want a big, strong man to protect her. She'd never wanted that. But somewhere in the chaos of war she found that holding Tobias down when he flew too high and forgot himself, maybe that was what she needed too. To glue herself together she had to reassemble someone else's pieces first, instead of tearing them apart with claws and fangs and blood.
Tobias, the bully magnet. Tobias, the orphan. Tobias, the hawk. Tobias, the only one who knew how to touch the goddess's heart.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Martha, Rory
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, Martha and Rory, they meet at a medical conference, one slips something about alien physiology, and they discuss their mutual acquaintance
If there's one thing Martha has learned from the Doctor, it's that there's no such thing as coincidence.
So when she drops her bag in the crowded lobby of a medical conference and her things (including several sensitive pieces of equipment belonging to UNIT) start going in all directions, and the young nurse she sat next to at her last lecture appears out of nowhere and helps her to gather her belongings, she decides just to roll with it.
"Thanks," she says, snapping the bag shut firmly. "I think that's the last of it. I'm Martha Jones, by the way."
"Rory Williams. Er, I am." He has one arm half extended as if he isn't sure whether to shake her hand or not so she takes pity on the poor boy and finishes the gesture on her own.
"I assumed." She smiles. "So, Dr. Williams-"
"Rory," he says quickly. "Just Rory, please. I'm not a proper doctor, just a nurse."
"All right then. So, Rory, you're interested in unique cardiovascular structure?" He seems surprised for a moment, before he recalls the topic of the lecture they've just sat through.
"I suppose so," he replies. "I don't have much experience in the field, so . . . But it all went a bit over my head."
"Maybe I can help?" she offers. "I've done some work with interesting heart systems."
"That would be great, thanks. Er, do you want to go sit down or something?" He gestures vaguely to his left. "There's a nice cafe over there, I think."
"Sounds lovely."
--
They discuss the circulatory system over coffee and biscuits (low sugar; it is a medical conference after all), and when Martha begins discussing the merits and mechanics of a binary vascular structure in great detail, Rory's metaphorical ears seem to prick up.
"You almost sound like you've actually been able to study one," he says carefully.
"Oh?" She smiles and takes a sip of her coffee. "But that would be impossible, wouldn't it?"
For the first time he smiles back, not a nervous smile but a genuine one. "Not impossible. Just a bit unlikely.”
--
"So how did you meet him?" she asks, out of the blue, as they split the bill. “The Doctor.”
Something like surprise flickers briefly across his expression before settling into a sheepish sort of grin. "He crashed in my wife's front yard when we were seven."
She laughs. "That sounds like the Doctor, all right. Here." She pulls a moleskine out of her bag and scribbles out a phone number and email before tearing out the sheet and handing it to him. "It's always good for his friends to keep in touch. You never know when you might need some help. I'll see you around."
"Right," he tells her retreating back, pocketing the paper. "Bye."
If there's one thing they've learned from the Doctor, it's that there's no such thing as coincidence.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor/TARDIS
Spoilers: Vague for 6x04
Rating: G
Prompt: author's choice, author's choice, Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it. (Richard Siken)
Together they dance across the stars. The dance itself doesn't matter, waltz, hip-hop, swing. They twirl and they run and they love, shining and beautiful, never alone.
Seven hundred years they've danced together, but there's always something new. Traditional dances from Earth, Ronane, Exeter VI. Their light burns across the universe, leaving cheerful hearths and smoldering ruins behind them.
She learns to speak, and then forgets, but still she dances with him, step for step. Gallifreyan ritual dances: births, deaths, weddings. It reminds them of home, of that shining world with her shining suns, but that's all gone now, so together they dance across the stars.
*
Fandom: Castle
Characters: Beckett, Castle
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13 for blood and language
Prompt: Tropes: Castle, Beckett(Castle/Beckett), a good way to die
Her hands are red.
She holds them under the faucet, watching with detached interest as the distilled scarlet swirls down the drain with soap and foam. She wrinkles her nose, whether at the sharp blood or the vaguely floral-scented soap she isn't sure.
"You fucking idiot," she says. The concrete is cold against her knees as she tears away the expensive coat, the pressed blue shirt. "You don't ever take a bullet for me, not ever, clear?"
Blinking, she realizes the tap has been running for ten minutes now and she should probably open the drain. She holds her hands up to the light, checking for any last specks of red.
"Sorry, Detective." His head lolls, a dazed echo of his usual grin lingering in the slack muscle. "But who else will?" The bullet is still in the wound, she thinks, but he's gushing blood. That's the priority. Come on, Kate, think!
She reaches for the paper towels, forgetting all about her new ecology-friendly attitude as she scrubs and scrubs and scrubs.
Those might be sirens in the distance, but at this rate he'll have bled out before help arrives. Her fingers tremble as she strips away what's left of his coat, folding the heavy fabric and pressing it over the wound. "Don't you fucking die on me, Rick," she mutters, hardly aware she's saying it out loud.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
She throws the paper towels into the trash, the skin on her hands red and raw as she exits the ladies' and emerges back into the hallway. There's still blood down her front but she doesn't care. She drifts down the hall, stops outside room 264. She doesn't knock.
"How are you feeling, Castle?"
"Never better, Detective."
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rose, Master (non-specific regeneration), briefly Nine
Spoilers: None, AU
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, Rose/Any, having a wicked or evil character; morally reprehensible // "Trust" for docwholand Big Bang
"Did I mention, it also travels in time," he says, leather jacket creased just so across broad shoulders. He stands with one foot on the pavement and the other in the box, as if to remind her that it really isn't just a box at all.
"Sorry," she says. "I don't think so."
--
The first time he sees Rose Tyler, he knows in an instant that she's been inside a TARDIS. It wasn't his, unless it hasn't happened yet, and the Doctor does so like his little pets.
But the energy around her, the very thing that marked her apart from all the other apes on this rock, is faded, as if it's been a very long time, or more likely that there simply wasn't much of it to begin with. Just one or two small trips, he estimates, within the last few years.
Oh, yes. This could be exactly what he needs.
--
From that day on, she's always watching the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the little blue box that means so much more. It's not that she's regretting the decision not to come; of course she isn't.
It's just that jobs are hard to come by in this economy and she'd really like some of that compensation now.
And then, out of the corner of her eye, something changes.
It's not a blue box like the Doctor's, and it doesn't make the same sort of wheezy mechanical noise, but it fades in and out of view just the same and hope flares in her gut for a moment until the door opens and a head pops out: a head that definitely does not belong to the Doctor.
"Hello," he says, and his accent is more south than north. "I'm a friend of the Doctor's, in need of some assistance . . . He said you were good in a pinch? It's not far, just the other side of the Milky Way."
"Yes," she says without a second thought. "Yes, please."
--
It's not hard to bend Rose Tyler to his will. He's expecting to have to use at least a little hypnotism to convince her to come with him, but she follows him inside his TARDIS without hesitation.
Humans. So gullible.
"I'm Rose," she says, as if he doesn't know. "Rose Tyler."
"The Master."
"That's an interesting name." But she doesn't sound interested, instead admiring the TARDIS interior, the console and rotor. "Why is your ship different from the Doctor's, though?"
"Personal preference." He grimaces behind her back. That's one thing he never could stand, damn curiosity. Probably why he'd never bothered with picking up strays like the Doctor does. Until now.
She turns to him suddenly and he smooths out his expression. "So you said you needed help with something?"
--
Before they leave the ship he explains what they're doing.
"They're a scavenger race," he tells her. "They're cruel, vicious, and quick. They arrived here a few centuries ago and they've been lording it over the natives ever since, stealing the best crops, technology, you name it. Lately they've been reaching out, stole some things from friends of mine in the next system. You might need this." He hands her a gun.
Her expression twists. "I can't use this."
"Sure you can. Just aim and press."
"But it's a gun," she protests.
"Oh, don't worry." He laughs, and the sound of it makes her go a little fuzzy, makes her want to trust him. He continues, "It knocks them out for a while, that's all. It's just a little sonic pulse."
"Like . . . the Doctor's screwdriver?"
He snaps his fingers, and she blinks. "Exactly," he agrees, but she can't quite recall what he's agreeing to. "Just like that. Completely harmless."
"Well. All right, then."
She doesn't realize that he's lying.
--
It takes a long time and a lot of hypnotism, but gradually he corrupts her, earns her trust so that she'll do what he says without question. It gets to the point where he doesn't even have to fabricate new excuses for his plans, doesn't have to say things like, "It's harmless, I promise," or "It's okay, they're just bad people," or even, "We have no choice."
He makes sure to bring up the Doctor often, pretend to slip up and accidentally mention a wrong he's committed or tell her stories about their Academy days and how the Doctor was really always the worst of the lot. He's subtle about it at first, stressing the fact that the Doctor is his friend and she can trust the Master, honest, but the Doctor simply isn't perfect. And then as her heart grows darker he tells her more, turns her against the other Time Lord until that one shining adventure she had with him once is rusted, tarnished, nearly blotted out of her memories altogether.
He's put a lot of work into her, but it'll be worth it once he sees the look on the Doctor's face.
Animorphs/BBC Sherlock (1)
Animorphs (5)
Firefly (2)
Doctor Who (4)
Harry Potter (1)
Castle (1)
Fandom: Animorphs/BBC Sherlock
Characters: Tobias!John, briefly Mycroft
Spoilers: Vague for A#54 and BBCS1x01, AU
Rating: PG
Summary: After Jake and the others go after Ax and leave Tobias behind, he decides he'd rather nothlit as a human than die of old age. So he moves to England, becomes an army doctor and changes his name to John Watson.
It takes years.
He doesn’t really keep track of the date, but it takes a long time to get papers, to falsify records, to decide what he’s going to do now.
When it’s all done, he takes his new identity and boards a plane. Human. His hawk body has grown old and he’s too frightened to die alone in the woods. (Coward, he thinks, and remembers swirling hair in a toilet bowl in the junior high boys’ room from so long ago.)
His faked birth certificate says he’s fifteen. His body is thirteen. He’s closer to thirty.
He chooses his new name quickly, at the last minute. John. It’s such a common, boring name. Like John Doe. Just another average human being.
He’s been practicing facial expressions for a while now, and he thinks he has them down. Most of the time he hardly needs to think about them. He goes to England for no particular reason and the accent is smooth, nearly effortless. Maybe he should have been an actor instead of a hawk. Maybe it’s just that he’s spent so long away from real speech that before he morphed (demorphed?) he didn’t have any accent at all.
He remembers his friends in his own private ways. For Ax, he watches the stars every night. For Cassie, he enrolls in medical school, intending to drop out until a passion for healing takes over him with an unexpected fervor. For Marco, he isn’t sure what to do - develop a sense of humor? Well, he’s working on that. Then he joins the army. He became a soldier for Jake, but every time he pulls the trigger and watches a man bleed and writhe and die, he does it for Rachel.
Maybe it’s not the most romantic way to remember a lost love, but she would have appreciated it.
(He has a hard time holding onto her, to his memories, to the way the sun glinted off golden hair and how her laugh was like wind chimes in a storm, but when he kills for her he can see her, just for a moment.)
And then he gets shot.
“You’re not haunted by the war, Dr. Watson. You miss it.”
Yes, he thinks, sliding into the backseat of the car. Just not that one.
*
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Simon, Reavers, unknown
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Dark: Firefly, Simon, Reavers
"Simon?"
Skin ripping, tearing, blades and teeth and nails slicing through flesh
"Simon, where are you?"
Blood on your fingers, on your face, hot, choking on the stench and you can't breathe
"Simon!"
You're a doctor, you want to fix them but you can't, their lives slipping through your hands like the blood falling to the floor
"Simon, can you hear me?"
Screams, pleas, falling across your eardrums again and again until it's like rain, a soothing rhythm that makes you want to tear your own ears off
"Look at me!"
Can't look away, can't close your eyes because it's beautiful, what savagery the human race is capable of, like animals but worse
"Simon, please."
They take the people one by one, one by one, one by one, but they never take you and please just let it end . . .
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Eleven/Canton
Spoilers: a little for 6x01 and 6x02
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, Eleven/Canton, once upon a time...
Once upon a time, there was a man.
This man was no ordinary man. He wore a bowtie and braces and tweed and occasionally a fez. He talked too much and somehow managed to never really say anything at all, but that was just part of his charm. He looked normal, sort of, except he was anything but: he was an alien.
And once upon a time there was another man.
This man was also no ordinary man, but in a different way. He wore a plain black suit and tie and carried a gun and occasionally shot people. He didn't talk much, but he was honest. He looked normal, was normal, but aliens were better accepted than he was.
"The problem with the Doctor," Canton still has to explain to himself sometimes, on days that he has to try not to check every phone booth on every corner, "is that he always leaves. And once he's gone you never really stop waiting for him to come back."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias, unnamed Yeerk, briefly the rest of the team
Spoilers: None, AU
Rating: PG
Prompt: Any, any, So this is how the world ends?
< So this is how the world ends? > He feels remarkably calm, almost serene. Maybe, maybe if he'd been in control he might be screaming, crying, something. But he's not at the wheel, he's tied up in the trunk.
< Your world, > the Yeerk says, equally calm. < There are others. >
< Not to me. >
< No, > the Yeerk agrees thoughtfully. < I don't suppose there would be. >
Tobias thinks that maybe he should count himself lucky that his Yeerk ( < You're mine, not the other way around, > it corrects absently ) is so apathetic. It’s not helping the humans ( < As if! > ) but it’s not cheering on its fellow Yeerks either, not plunging into the fray itself and staining Tobias' hands (talons?) with human blood. ( < Like you haven't done enough of that for yourself already. > )
< I really wish you'd stop commenting on my thoughts, > Tobias says, more irked than angry.
The Yeerk hums inattentively, adding a brief, < If wishes were fishes. >
He hears Cassie sob softly as she watches Jake thrash against his Hork-Bajir captor, unable to morph in time, his head forced into the sludge and raising moments later oddly vacant. His expression twists for a moment as the Yeerk gains control and then he steps away to join Tobias, Rachel, and Ax. Two to go. Marco is next, slumped in defeat.
Tobias is reminded of a song he heard once, or was it a poem? This is the way the world ends, it went. Not with a bang but a whimper.
< "The Hollow Men," > the Yeerk names the poem without much thought. < By T.S. Eliot. > There's a long silence. < There's not much to do as a slug, > the Yeerk says finally, and Tobias feels his face muscles shift into a sheepish grin, earning him an odd look from Rachel Rachel's Yeerk. < I spent the time learning about humans. Your culture is repulsive, but oddly fascinating. >
Tobias doesn't think the Yeerk meant to let that last part slip.
< I wish you'd stop calling me "the Yeerk", > the Yeerk says. < I have a name. >
< To be honest, I don't really care. > Easier to think of the thing in his head as an alien slug. He doesn't need to think of it as a sentient being that has rights and needs and desires just like he does did. Easier to hate it if he doesn't know its name.
< As you wish, > the Yeerk says, and together they calmly watch the beginning of the end of the world.
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Severus, Neville
Spoilers: Vague for DH, AE
Rating: PG with a warning for violent threats
Prompt: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and Neville Longbottom, "I understand you, Professor." postwar AU, Snape lives
Severus eyed Longbottom with distaste. The boy had grown, he would give him that. He had held his own admirably against the Carrows, and he had survived the battle, which was more than many could say.
Just last year, the boy would have been quaking under Severus's sharp gaze. Now he stood tall, calm, a vicious gash down one cheek, waiting patiently for an answer.
"Let me make one thing clear, Longbottom," the professor said finally, his top lip lifting slightly in the merest hint of his old sneer. "I do not like you. You may have led your own private army under my nose this year, but you are still a bumbling, incompetent fool."
Still the boy (or was he a man?) said nothing.
"I will agree," Severus acquiesced, "to one lesson. Whatever you manage to learn in the course of that hour, you may use how you like. I will not teach you again, for any reason."
Severus didn't apologize for ten months of Cruciatus and detentions. Longbottom didn't apologize for ten months of running the staff ragged with optimistic graffiti and nighttime capers.
"And," Severus added, "if you ever speak a word of this to anyone I will personally oversee your living disembowelment and pickle your organs to restart the collection that was regrettably destroyed earlier this evening. Do you understand?"
Just last year, Longbottom would have been blubbering on his knees. Now he smiled calmly, drawing his wand from his sleeve. "I understand you, Professor."
"Fine." Severus copied the younger man's movements, readying his own wand for the first spell. "Then let's begin."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Jake
Spoilers: #54, AE
Rating: PG-13 for suicide
Prompt: Sad Song: Any, Any, And he was laying in an overflowing bathtub of red water
The first and the last time he ever relaxed
And they said, he had a smile on his face
His final offer, the steam on the mirror said
I got one more thing to say
For someone who's the biggest war hero since Patton, it's surprisingly difficult to get his hands on a gun.
He manages it, though. He doesn't even have to morph. Turning it over in his hands with a sort of morbid fascination, he examines the rubber grip, the rounded barrel, the curve of the trigger. It's a Magnum pistol, single-shot. He only needs one.
He tried, he really did. Tried to find a life after the war. But the guilt is there like a ball and chain looped around his head and chest and neck, forcing him to stoop to accommodate it, and it tugs at him whenever he tries to recover and stand tall.
His bare feet are silent on the stairs, and he sheds his clothes as he walks, stripping down to his morphing outfit. It seems fitting, to die in the clothes he used to fight in.
He goes into the bathroom, shuts and latches the door, and the windows too, as if someone's going to fly in at the last moment and stop him. Stupid. No one knows what he's about to do, not even Marco, spying on him. (He's depressed but not stupid; he's far too attuned to animals to dismiss the osprey that tends to perch in his yard or fly high above his car.)
He starts the water, as hot as it'll go, and as he waits for the tub to fill he watches steam collect on the mirror, traces in it with a finger like he used to do as a child. When he steps back he realizes he's written a good-bye.
He shuts off the tap and sinks into the bath, morphing suit and all, and feels six years of guilt and responsibility slip off him like a blanket. He picks up the gun, careful to keep the barrel dry, and looks at it for a long, wondering moment before bringing it to his temple. He breathes in, out, lungs expanding, heart beating. He's startlingly calm, his hand steady on the grip, no second thoughts. In, out, lungs expanding, heart beating.
He breathes in and pulls the trigger. The gun falls from his fingers as Jake Berenson, war hero, slides beneath the reddening surface. No in, no out, lungs stilled, heart silent.
*
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Simon, River
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt:
Sad Songs: Firefly, Simon (/or& any), This is not the way you should see me This is not the face I recognize Could I lay my head down here for a moment ("Make it Go Away" by Holly Cole)
The night Simon received River's letter, one of his colleagues had a blind date set up for him. At the end of his shift, he tore open the envelope, read it through once, and cancelled his date, instead spending the evening decoding the hidden message.
They're hurting us.
And he couldn't ignore it, couldn't ignore the pain that seeped through the sculpted words and pretended memories. He gave up everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd worked for.
He would never resent River for it, not ever. He could hold a grudge against the Alliance for holding her, and he could be angry at his father for disbelieving him, but he couldn't resent his baby sister for needing his help.
That didn't mean he couldn't get angry about it every once in a while.
He wasn't the type to throw things, or to scream curse words out at the top of his lungs. That had been trained out of him with his baby fat. Childish behavior, he'd been told.
Back home he could take his anger out in his work, in stitches stabbed through raw flesh and scalpels opening patients for surgery, or occasionally on nurses who didn't know how to do their jobs. But out here in space, on the Serenity? Well, he could see why the crew loved their guns so much.
"Simon?"
River stood in the doorway, her weight balanced gracefully on one foot as if poised to flee.
"Hey." He smiled, carefully, his gut still boiling with the emotion he needed to find a new outlet for.
"I don't recognize you," she said, her head tipped to one side. "Anger clouds your features, Simon."
He kept his expression purposefully vague, used to River's insights. "Okay."
"I'll come back when I can see you." And just like that, she was gone.
He stepped across the room and closed the door behind her. Sitting down on the bed, he buried his face in his hands and cried.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias
Spoilers: End of #1
Rating: PG
Prompt: Sunshine
When Tobias emerges from the Pool, the first thing he notices is the sunshine. It occurs to him that it was dark when he went down, and shouldn't he be worried about that? But after the hours spent trapped underground, with the hawk brain panicking about the lack of flying space and his own mind fluttering with all the possibilities of what could happen to him if he can't get out (killed, infested, forced to betray the others), he thinks he's probably lost all capability for rational thought. He retreats into the passenger seat, surrendering the wheel and letting hawk instincts drive. The sun feels so good, warming his back, and in the brightness he can see every detail of what's happening below, like the little girl stopped on the sidewalk with her head tilted back to watch him. He laughs in private thought-speech at the envy and awe on her face as he soars away. Swerving away over the town, he swoops in his bedroom window and lands on the bed.
When Tobias emerges from the Pool, the second thing he notices is that he's stuck.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Loren, Chapman, Elfangor, Tobias
Spoilers: Andalite Chronicles
Rating: PG
Prompt: Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time, not too far out from the place humanity calls Pluto, an ordinary girl and an ordinary boy met on a Skrit Na freighter, bound for either a long, miserable life in an alien zoo or a short, painful one in an alien lab, though of course neither one of them knew that at the time. The ordinary boy is, in fact, unimportant to our tale, but the ordinary girl might just be the most important girl of all. Because out there, in the depths of space with a captured weapon clutched in her strong human hands, she met a not-so-ordinary boy who wasn't really a boy at all, but in fact another alien of a race known to the galaxy as Andalites.
Neither one found a full happily ever after, but they were happy together for a time, and their story found new being in a boy/hawk/Andalite called Tobias. He never got his happily ever after either, but maybe that's just life.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Tobias/Rachel
Spoilers: Nothing specific
Rating: PG
Prompt: author's choice, author's choice, the horse nobody could ride
Rachel was like a fashion model. Calm, gorgeous, impeccable. The balance beam was her runway and the school hallways were her red carpet.
Rachel was like a knight in shining armor. Strong, brave, a warrior. She swooped in to save the dudes in distress more than once.
Rachel was like a goddess. Revered, respected, unreachable. She passed through life unfazed and untouched by the disorder around her. Mere mortals had no effect on her outer shell.
Maybe what she really needed was someone to need her. She didn't want a big, strong man to protect her. She'd never wanted that. But somewhere in the chaos of war she found that holding Tobias down when he flew too high and forgot himself, maybe that was what she needed too. To glue herself together she had to reassemble someone else's pieces first, instead of tearing them apart with claws and fangs and blood.
Tobias, the bully magnet. Tobias, the orphan. Tobias, the hawk. Tobias, the only one who knew how to touch the goddess's heart.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Martha, Rory
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, Martha and Rory, they meet at a medical conference, one slips something about alien physiology, and they discuss their mutual acquaintance
If there's one thing Martha has learned from the Doctor, it's that there's no such thing as coincidence.
So when she drops her bag in the crowded lobby of a medical conference and her things (including several sensitive pieces of equipment belonging to UNIT) start going in all directions, and the young nurse she sat next to at her last lecture appears out of nowhere and helps her to gather her belongings, she decides just to roll with it.
"Thanks," she says, snapping the bag shut firmly. "I think that's the last of it. I'm Martha Jones, by the way."
"Rory Williams. Er, I am." He has one arm half extended as if he isn't sure whether to shake her hand or not so she takes pity on the poor boy and finishes the gesture on her own.
"I assumed." She smiles. "So, Dr. Williams-"
"Rory," he says quickly. "Just Rory, please. I'm not a proper doctor, just a nurse."
"All right then. So, Rory, you're interested in unique cardiovascular structure?" He seems surprised for a moment, before he recalls the topic of the lecture they've just sat through.
"I suppose so," he replies. "I don't have much experience in the field, so . . . But it all went a bit over my head."
"Maybe I can help?" she offers. "I've done some work with interesting heart systems."
"That would be great, thanks. Er, do you want to go sit down or something?" He gestures vaguely to his left. "There's a nice cafe over there, I think."
"Sounds lovely."
--
They discuss the circulatory system over coffee and biscuits (low sugar; it is a medical conference after all), and when Martha begins discussing the merits and mechanics of a binary vascular structure in great detail, Rory's metaphorical ears seem to prick up.
"You almost sound like you've actually been able to study one," he says carefully.
"Oh?" She smiles and takes a sip of her coffee. "But that would be impossible, wouldn't it?"
For the first time he smiles back, not a nervous smile but a genuine one. "Not impossible. Just a bit unlikely.”
--
"So how did you meet him?" she asks, out of the blue, as they split the bill. “The Doctor.”
Something like surprise flickers briefly across his expression before settling into a sheepish sort of grin. "He crashed in my wife's front yard when we were seven."
She laughs. "That sounds like the Doctor, all right. Here." She pulls a moleskine out of her bag and scribbles out a phone number and email before tearing out the sheet and handing it to him. "It's always good for his friends to keep in touch. You never know when you might need some help. I'll see you around."
"Right," he tells her retreating back, pocketing the paper. "Bye."
If there's one thing they've learned from the Doctor, it's that there's no such thing as coincidence.
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctor/TARDIS
Spoilers: Vague for 6x04
Rating: G
Prompt: author's choice, author's choice, Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it. (Richard Siken)
Together they dance across the stars. The dance itself doesn't matter, waltz, hip-hop, swing. They twirl and they run and they love, shining and beautiful, never alone.
Seven hundred years they've danced together, but there's always something new. Traditional dances from Earth, Ronane, Exeter VI. Their light burns across the universe, leaving cheerful hearths and smoldering ruins behind them.
She learns to speak, and then forgets, but still she dances with him, step for step. Gallifreyan ritual dances: births, deaths, weddings. It reminds them of home, of that shining world with her shining suns, but that's all gone now, so together they dance across the stars.
*
Fandom: Castle
Characters: Beckett, Castle
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13 for blood and language
Prompt: Tropes: Castle, Beckett(Castle/Beckett), a good way to die
Her hands are red.
She holds them under the faucet, watching with detached interest as the distilled scarlet swirls down the drain with soap and foam. She wrinkles her nose, whether at the sharp blood or the vaguely floral-scented soap she isn't sure.
"You fucking idiot," she says. The concrete is cold against her knees as she tears away the expensive coat, the pressed blue shirt. "You don't ever take a bullet for me, not ever, clear?"
Blinking, she realizes the tap has been running for ten minutes now and she should probably open the drain. She holds her hands up to the light, checking for any last specks of red.
"Sorry, Detective." His head lolls, a dazed echo of his usual grin lingering in the slack muscle. "But who else will?" The bullet is still in the wound, she thinks, but he's gushing blood. That's the priority. Come on, Kate, think!
She reaches for the paper towels, forgetting all about her new ecology-friendly attitude as she scrubs and scrubs and scrubs.
Those might be sirens in the distance, but at this rate he'll have bled out before help arrives. Her fingers tremble as she strips away what's left of his coat, folding the heavy fabric and pressing it over the wound. "Don't you fucking die on me, Rick," she mutters, hardly aware she's saying it out loud.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
She throws the paper towels into the trash, the skin on her hands red and raw as she exits the ladies' and emerges back into the hallway. There's still blood down her front but she doesn't care. She drifts down the hall, stops outside room 264. She doesn't knock.
"How are you feeling, Castle?"
"Never better, Detective."
*
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rose, Master (non-specific regeneration), briefly Nine
Spoilers: None, AU
Rating: PG
Prompt: Doctor Who, Rose/Any, having a wicked or evil character; morally reprehensible // "Trust" for docwholand Big Bang
"Did I mention, it also travels in time," he says, leather jacket creased just so across broad shoulders. He stands with one foot on the pavement and the other in the box, as if to remind her that it really isn't just a box at all.
"Sorry," she says. "I don't think so."
--
The first time he sees Rose Tyler, he knows in an instant that she's been inside a TARDIS. It wasn't his, unless it hasn't happened yet, and the Doctor does so like his little pets.
But the energy around her, the very thing that marked her apart from all the other apes on this rock, is faded, as if it's been a very long time, or more likely that there simply wasn't much of it to begin with. Just one or two small trips, he estimates, within the last few years.
Oh, yes. This could be exactly what he needs.
--
From that day on, she's always watching the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the little blue box that means so much more. It's not that she's regretting the decision not to come; of course she isn't.
It's just that jobs are hard to come by in this economy and she'd really like some of that compensation now.
And then, out of the corner of her eye, something changes.
It's not a blue box like the Doctor's, and it doesn't make the same sort of wheezy mechanical noise, but it fades in and out of view just the same and hope flares in her gut for a moment until the door opens and a head pops out: a head that definitely does not belong to the Doctor.
"Hello," he says, and his accent is more south than north. "I'm a friend of the Doctor's, in need of some assistance . . . He said you were good in a pinch? It's not far, just the other side of the Milky Way."
"Yes," she says without a second thought. "Yes, please."
--
It's not hard to bend Rose Tyler to his will. He's expecting to have to use at least a little hypnotism to convince her to come with him, but she follows him inside his TARDIS without hesitation.
Humans. So gullible.
"I'm Rose," she says, as if he doesn't know. "Rose Tyler."
"The Master."
"That's an interesting name." But she doesn't sound interested, instead admiring the TARDIS interior, the console and rotor. "Why is your ship different from the Doctor's, though?"
"Personal preference." He grimaces behind her back. That's one thing he never could stand, damn curiosity. Probably why he'd never bothered with picking up strays like the Doctor does. Until now.
She turns to him suddenly and he smooths out his expression. "So you said you needed help with something?"
--
Before they leave the ship he explains what they're doing.
"They're a scavenger race," he tells her. "They're cruel, vicious, and quick. They arrived here a few centuries ago and they've been lording it over the natives ever since, stealing the best crops, technology, you name it. Lately they've been reaching out, stole some things from friends of mine in the next system. You might need this." He hands her a gun.
Her expression twists. "I can't use this."
"Sure you can. Just aim and press."
"But it's a gun," she protests.
"Oh, don't worry." He laughs, and the sound of it makes her go a little fuzzy, makes her want to trust him. He continues, "It knocks them out for a while, that's all. It's just a little sonic pulse."
"Like . . . the Doctor's screwdriver?"
He snaps his fingers, and she blinks. "Exactly," he agrees, but she can't quite recall what he's agreeing to. "Just like that. Completely harmless."
"Well. All right, then."
She doesn't realize that he's lying.
--
It takes a long time and a lot of hypnotism, but gradually he corrupts her, earns her trust so that she'll do what he says without question. It gets to the point where he doesn't even have to fabricate new excuses for his plans, doesn't have to say things like, "It's harmless, I promise," or "It's okay, they're just bad people," or even, "We have no choice."
He makes sure to bring up the Doctor often, pretend to slip up and accidentally mention a wrong he's committed or tell her stories about their Academy days and how the Doctor was really always the worst of the lot. He's subtle about it at first, stressing the fact that the Doctor is his friend and she can trust the Master, honest, but the Doctor simply isn't perfect. And then as her heart grows darker he tells her more, turns her against the other Time Lord until that one shining adventure she had with him once is rusted, tarnished, nearly blotted out of her memories altogether.
He's put a lot of work into her, but it'll be worth it once he sees the look on the Doctor's face.