(very) brief complaints and a set of comment-fic
I'm finding this new system really hard to use, most prominently because the 'enter' key does not appear to do anything in 'visual editor' mode (wat? Seriously). Still, if you're seeing this, it means that I figured things out somehow, so here's my new batch of comment_fic:
Title: She Craves
Fandom: Carmilla
Word count: 558
Warnings: Horror themes, hints of femslash
Prompt: any vampire fandom, any,
Sweating
And shaking
Lying with her hands across her chest
She wakes with
Her cravings
Laura wakes with tears in her eyes, trembling all over, a name falling plaintive and desperate from her lips.
Carmilla, Carmilla, my dearest friend, where are you?
No, not Carmilla. Countess Mircalla is dead, she is gone forever and ever. She was a monster and I was her unfortunate victim.
"Carmilla," she whispers, and sobs.
She is sweating, shaking, weeping. Every night has been like this, since the monster (her dearest friend) was ended. She feels...
Of late, she has been languid all through the daylight hours. Of late, she has carefully avoided all expressions of divine faith; she finds they make her uncomfortable.
If Father is content to ignore these things, she certainly will not say anything of the things she feels in the deep dark of night. Sometimes she dreams of Carmilla... stabbed over and over, screaming until her head is ripped from her shoulders, twitching even after as flames engulf her.
Tonight, she did not have that dream, but she feels... it, more strongly than ever.
Tonight, she can hold herself back no longer. It is time.
She pads silently down the halls, blending in with the shadows. Father is awake, contemplating a knife in his hand, but she passes without him noticing. Finally, she slips outside. She feels...
She runs barefoot through the forest, taking no notice of the sticks and stones that penetrate her feet. She needs...
She finds a small cottage with a thatched roof and dim windows. There is an axe and a pile of wood just outside. She steps up to the door, and knocks.
The man who answers has dark eyes and a bushy black beard. She stumbles and clings to the doorframe, and looks at the man with beseeching eyes. "There's something out there. A... a demon! Y-You have to believe..."
He looks at her dirty, bleeding feet. He ushers her inside. She hesitates, frozen still and trembling until he says, "Quickly now, get in."
He has a daughter, vibrant and beautiful, sitting by the fire and knitting. She almost looks like Carmilla, this girl, although the look in her eyes is different.
Laura sinks down onto the rug beside the fire, still shaking while her eyes remain wide as though with terror. The other girl looks at her with open curiosity, but neither of them say anything.
"Stay here," commands the man with the bushy black beard. He walks outside with a determined stride, pausing only to pick up a rifle by the door.
"Hello," says the girl who almost looks like Carmilla, smiling tentatively. "I'm Ruth."
"I'm Alura. I..." She looks down, anxiously tangles her hands in her skirt.
"That's pretty. Ah... Alura, are you alright?"
"Yes," she whispers. "I just... you remind me of someone. I miss her dearly, but I haven't been able to tell anyone."
"Really? Why...?"
"She was my dearest friend in all the world, even though she frightened me sometimes. Even now, when I know I can never see her again, she commands my fate."
"Alura?" The girl sounds concerned. Laura studies her hands closely, refusing to look at anything else.
The girl kneels down beside her and slowly wraps her in a tentative embrace. Laura rests her head on the girl's shoulder and breathes a tormented sigh. "I'm afraid. I need her so much, but she cannot...
Help me, please."
Title: The Lonely Pokémon
Fandom: Pokémon
Word count: 308
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon
Warnings: Ritualistic corpse mutilation, generally very dark little thing, kind of a false end/five-line gap partway through for experimental artistic reasons
Prompt: any, any, skin and bones.
The first thing Cubone ever hears is a crooning lullaby. It calls to her, coaxing her to push that little bit harder, and there. The shell is broken and everything is so much brighter than she has ever known. The moon gazes down, and so does Mama.
Content and beloved, Cubone lies still and listens.
Mama gives her food, Mama cradles her until she sleeps, and Mama croons the lullaby. It really is the most wonderful sound.
Mama's lullaby tells Cubone what she must do. Mama will be dead soon, and then Cubone must take all the tools she needs to survive.
Mama's lullaby is the most wonderful sound.
What is dead like?
Oh.
So that is what dead is like.
Cubone is a good child. She must do as she has been told.
She gets to work, using the small sharp rocks piled nearby, and sometimes her claws and nails as well. She slices open Mama, just like Mama told her. She carefully peels away the skin at the neck, working to separate the skull.
Eventually it comes loose, but there is more still to be done. She scratches inside, and digs with one of Mama's ribs. It is slow work; there is much flesh and brain to remove from the skull. Her breaths are short and shallow, and every now and then she can't help but stop, and wail to the smiling moon.
Cubone toils day and night, determined to complete her duty. She cleans and polishes the skull carefully, once everything inside has been taken out, and then...
and then...
and then she picks up the skull, places it carefully over her head. It is her skull now, that's what Mama told her. She picks up Mama's leg bone as well, and keeps it in her hand as she walks away into the tall grass.
Title: Darkness and Magic
Fandom: Hansel and Gretel + Avengers movieverse
Word count: 756
Disclaimer: The Avengers franchise belongs to Marvel. I don't know who owns Hansel and Gretel, if anyone does, but its not me.
Warnings: Implied patricide and mention of intended cannibalism
Prompt: Loki + Hansel, He's the first man-witch Hansel has ever seen and he's willing to teach.
Some people have started saying that the horse is a faerie or a witch's familiar. She is a lovely dappled grey mare, the finest beast many of them have ever seen. She emerges out of the twilight, leading a merry chase before she disappears just as quietly and abruptly as she appeared. Almost every man in the village has tried to catch her, but she always manages to slip away.
"It's like she's laughing at us," grumbles a man nursing a beer in the tavern, and his two companions nod agreement.
The next table over, a man laughs.
"What do you think, Gretel?" he later asks his sister. "Is our dear elusive horse a familiar? Is there a witch in our midst?"
She continues working her loom and says nothing.
Later still, indeed so much later that it might seem a non sequitur, she breaks her silence. "Not amidst us, and not a familiar."
Hansel thinks about that for several long moments. "The horse herself, then?"
"Himself indeed."
Hansel raises his eyebrows and nods. After all, Gretel has had a knack of knowing things ever since she shoved a witch inside a heating oven and closed the door tight.
"You can own what you kill," she told him once, in a time when they were still children and their father still lived.
Sometimes he wonders at the suddenness and convenient timing of Father's illness, but he has never said anything to indicate this. After all, that man once abandoned them to all the meager mercy of the wilderness. Forgiveness does not come as easily as he might have thought.
The next dusk, Hansel appears with the band of aspiring horse-catchers for the first time. Anton grins and claps him on the back. "Here I was thinking you'd never join us."
Hansel shrugs. "Well, I have a plan now."
"What's your plan?" Anton inquires as the small band rides through the ill-lit, mist-shrouded forest. His voice and eyes are bright with curiosity.
"I'm going to ask him for an audience."
"Him...?"
"Yes, him. The horse."
Anton stares, an uncertain grin half-forming. "What? The horse? You're so strange, Hansel. Isn't it a she anyway?"
Hansel gives a noncommittal shrug. "Mm."
"Uh, you don't think she's a faerie, do you?"
"No."
Anton never asks the right questions. No one does.
And then they hear the sound of muffled hoofbeats that seems to come from all around. Hansel watches as his companions look around wildly. "Where...?" Gilbert mutters, but then cuts himself off.
"Are you going to try your plan, Hansel?" says Anton in an attempt at a teasing tone, but he seems unable to wholly hide his unease.
"Mister Witch," Hansel calls out. "I'd like to talk to you about some things, if you so please."
The hoofbeats fall silent. Everyone is staring at him, so he gives an appeasing smile and laugh. "What? It's worth a try."
"A w-witch?" stammers Gilbert.
"You've heard the rumours too, haven't you?" It is not an answer, not really, but none of them seem to notice.
Later, when Hansel is alone, a man emerges from the dark and walks silently alongside him. The man is a stranger, tall and dark-haired with vivid green eyes and a smirk that gives away nothing, of regal bearing and wrapped in a deep green cloak of obvious quality and expense.
Hansel smiles. "Thank you for coming," he says, vaguely and deliberately deferential.
The man says nothing, but Hansel thinks his smirk might be a little deeper.
"I met a witch once, when I was a child," Hansel continues. "She wanted to eat me."
"What did you do about that?" There are hints of amusement lacing the man's voice.
"Well, her eyesight wasn't very good, so whenever she came to check if I was plump enough to make a good meal, I held out a bone instead of my finger."
The man in green laughs, a sound at once both mocking and approving.
"Later, my little sister pushed her inside an oven and left her to cook." Hansel does not try to hide the pride he feels for Gretel.
The man laughs again, that same mocking and approving sound. "Now then, tell me what you want, Hansel."
"I'd like a teacher." Immediate and sure, without hesitation.
The man gives him a sharp look, but he does not appear displeased. He looks thoughtful and searching, and then he grins. It isn't a kind expression, but it isn't cruel either.
"Yes," he says slowly. "Yes, this idea pleases me."
Title: Dust Thou Art
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Word count: 573
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Warnings: Implied violence, sort-of major character death (major character vamping?)
Prompt: Drusilla+Buffy, The Slayer stole all the hearts of those Dru loved; it was time to pay her back for it.
Valentine's Night, the night for lovers. Drusilla frowned, her face shifting as a low growl rose in her throat.
"No one loves Princess anymore," she said softly, mournfully. "The nasty Slayer stole away all of the dark Princess's hearts." Her voice rose in volume, transitioning from mournful to outraged. "All of my hearts..."
Where was Daddy? Where was her darling, deadly boy?
Why didn't they love their dark plum anymore?
It was all because of the Slayer. Why, why? It was like courting sunlight.
She supposed they always had been at least a little bit in love with danger, the both of them. Still... sunlight. How unnatural, how disgusting.
She knew that Grandmummy would agree. She missed Grandmummy too, every now and then.
Why was Grandmummy dust in the wind?
The answer was the same; the Slayer, always the Slayer, the Slayer like sunlight.
Drusilla laughed, heartbroken and vindictive. "I'll steal your heart, Slayer," she muttered. "They left me for the sunlight, so I'll take away the sunlight."
~
The Slayer was strong, Drusilla could not deny that, but strength does not necessarily win a war. Applied correctly, cunning and the element of surprise can be just as deadly, if not more so.
All it took was one little dart. The Slayer went up against the usual parade of supernatural enemies, and maybe there were more of them than usual, but Drusilla had never been disinclined to stacking the deck in her favour.
The enemies were dust, or whatever the final fate of their kind might be. The Slayer was not expecting the small dart that flew from the darkness and embedded itself in the side of her neck as the faint whistle prompted her to turn. She was not expecting Drusilla.
The Slayer crumpled. Drusilla sang as she picked up the sunlight girl.
"For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
It might have been a funeral hymn.
~
Spike was a bad, bad boy. He should not have interrupted Mummy before she was finished.
"Don't, Spike," she cried, her eyes wide and damp. He stopped, just a moment before the stake he held would have entered her heart.
His gaze flicked to the Slayer, and then back to her. "Why shouldn't I?" he snarled, his fists clenching.
"It would have been a present, my knight," she half-wailed. "For you, this Valentine, a heart."
Her boy's lips drew further up from his teeth. He looked like nothing so much as a starved wolf preparing to rip out her throat.
A sudden surge of fury surged through all her veins. How dare he do this, he who had promised to love her forever and ever? "You can't save her," she hissed, grinning wide, satisfied, unhappy. "Murder me or don't, she dies either way."
They stood locked in place, like sandcastles on a windless night. Spike's fists clenched further, the stake splintered in his grasp.
Abruptly, he opened his palm so that the broken wood fell down. She watched without speaking or moving as he dashed to kneel by the Slayer's side.
He bit into his wrist, and then shoved the open wound into the Slayer's mouth. Drusilla stared, wide-eyed.
"Spike," she wailed. "Spike, why?"
"Shut up," he snarled. "I can't let her..."
She was just about to scream her protest, but instead she stumbled, eyes wide and blank. She whimpered, loud and plaintive, and then...
she blinked out of her vision. She smiled.
Title: She Craves
Fandom: Carmilla
Word count: 558
Warnings: Horror themes, hints of femslash
Prompt: any vampire fandom, any,
Sweating
And shaking
Lying with her hands across her chest
She wakes with
Her cravings
Laura wakes with tears in her eyes, trembling all over, a name falling plaintive and desperate from her lips.
Carmilla, Carmilla, my dearest friend, where are you?
No, not Carmilla. Countess Mircalla is dead, she is gone forever and ever. She was a monster and I was her unfortunate victim.
"Carmilla," she whispers, and sobs.
She is sweating, shaking, weeping. Every night has been like this, since the monster (her dearest friend) was ended. She feels...
Of late, she has been languid all through the daylight hours. Of late, she has carefully avoided all expressions of divine faith; she finds they make her uncomfortable.
If Father is content to ignore these things, she certainly will not say anything of the things she feels in the deep dark of night. Sometimes she dreams of Carmilla... stabbed over and over, screaming until her head is ripped from her shoulders, twitching even after as flames engulf her.
Tonight, she did not have that dream, but she feels... it, more strongly than ever.
Tonight, she can hold herself back no longer. It is time.
She pads silently down the halls, blending in with the shadows. Father is awake, contemplating a knife in his hand, but she passes without him noticing. Finally, she slips outside. She feels...
She runs barefoot through the forest, taking no notice of the sticks and stones that penetrate her feet. She needs...
She finds a small cottage with a thatched roof and dim windows. There is an axe and a pile of wood just outside. She steps up to the door, and knocks.
The man who answers has dark eyes and a bushy black beard. She stumbles and clings to the doorframe, and looks at the man with beseeching eyes. "There's something out there. A... a demon! Y-You have to believe..."
He looks at her dirty, bleeding feet. He ushers her inside. She hesitates, frozen still and trembling until he says, "Quickly now, get in."
He has a daughter, vibrant and beautiful, sitting by the fire and knitting. She almost looks like Carmilla, this girl, although the look in her eyes is different.
Laura sinks down onto the rug beside the fire, still shaking while her eyes remain wide as though with terror. The other girl looks at her with open curiosity, but neither of them say anything.
"Stay here," commands the man with the bushy black beard. He walks outside with a determined stride, pausing only to pick up a rifle by the door.
"Hello," says the girl who almost looks like Carmilla, smiling tentatively. "I'm Ruth."
"I'm Alura. I..." She looks down, anxiously tangles her hands in her skirt.
"That's pretty. Ah... Alura, are you alright?"
"Yes," she whispers. "I just... you remind me of someone. I miss her dearly, but I haven't been able to tell anyone."
"Really? Why...?"
"She was my dearest friend in all the world, even though she frightened me sometimes. Even now, when I know I can never see her again, she commands my fate."
"Alura?" The girl sounds concerned. Laura studies her hands closely, refusing to look at anything else.
The girl kneels down beside her and slowly wraps her in a tentative embrace. Laura rests her head on the girl's shoulder and breathes a tormented sigh. "I'm afraid. I need her so much, but she cannot...
Help me, please."
Title: The Lonely Pokémon
Fandom: Pokémon
Word count: 308
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon
Warnings: Ritualistic corpse mutilation, generally very dark little thing, kind of a false end/five-line gap partway through for experimental artistic reasons
Prompt: any, any, skin and bones.
The first thing Cubone ever hears is a crooning lullaby. It calls to her, coaxing her to push that little bit harder, and there. The shell is broken and everything is so much brighter than she has ever known. The moon gazes down, and so does Mama.
Content and beloved, Cubone lies still and listens.
Mama gives her food, Mama cradles her until she sleeps, and Mama croons the lullaby. It really is the most wonderful sound.
Mama's lullaby tells Cubone what she must do. Mama will be dead soon, and then Cubone must take all the tools she needs to survive.
Mama's lullaby is the most wonderful sound.
What is dead like?
Oh.
So that is what dead is like.
Cubone is a good child. She must do as she has been told.
She gets to work, using the small sharp rocks piled nearby, and sometimes her claws and nails as well. She slices open Mama, just like Mama told her. She carefully peels away the skin at the neck, working to separate the skull.
Eventually it comes loose, but there is more still to be done. She scratches inside, and digs with one of Mama's ribs. It is slow work; there is much flesh and brain to remove from the skull. Her breaths are short and shallow, and every now and then she can't help but stop, and wail to the smiling moon.
Cubone toils day and night, determined to complete her duty. She cleans and polishes the skull carefully, once everything inside has been taken out, and then...
and then...
and then she picks up the skull, places it carefully over her head. It is her skull now, that's what Mama told her. She picks up Mama's leg bone as well, and keeps it in her hand as she walks away into the tall grass.
Title: Darkness and Magic
Fandom: Hansel and Gretel + Avengers movieverse
Word count: 756
Disclaimer: The Avengers franchise belongs to Marvel. I don't know who owns Hansel and Gretel, if anyone does, but its not me.
Warnings: Implied patricide and mention of intended cannibalism
Prompt: Loki + Hansel, He's the first man-witch Hansel has ever seen and he's willing to teach.
Some people have started saying that the horse is a faerie or a witch's familiar. She is a lovely dappled grey mare, the finest beast many of them have ever seen. She emerges out of the twilight, leading a merry chase before she disappears just as quietly and abruptly as she appeared. Almost every man in the village has tried to catch her, but she always manages to slip away.
"It's like she's laughing at us," grumbles a man nursing a beer in the tavern, and his two companions nod agreement.
The next table over, a man laughs.
"What do you think, Gretel?" he later asks his sister. "Is our dear elusive horse a familiar? Is there a witch in our midst?"
She continues working her loom and says nothing.
Later still, indeed so much later that it might seem a non sequitur, she breaks her silence. "Not amidst us, and not a familiar."
Hansel thinks about that for several long moments. "The horse herself, then?"
"Himself indeed."
Hansel raises his eyebrows and nods. After all, Gretel has had a knack of knowing things ever since she shoved a witch inside a heating oven and closed the door tight.
"You can own what you kill," she told him once, in a time when they were still children and their father still lived.
Sometimes he wonders at the suddenness and convenient timing of Father's illness, but he has never said anything to indicate this. After all, that man once abandoned them to all the meager mercy of the wilderness. Forgiveness does not come as easily as he might have thought.
The next dusk, Hansel appears with the band of aspiring horse-catchers for the first time. Anton grins and claps him on the back. "Here I was thinking you'd never join us."
Hansel shrugs. "Well, I have a plan now."
"What's your plan?" Anton inquires as the small band rides through the ill-lit, mist-shrouded forest. His voice and eyes are bright with curiosity.
"I'm going to ask him for an audience."
"Him...?"
"Yes, him. The horse."
Anton stares, an uncertain grin half-forming. "What? The horse? You're so strange, Hansel. Isn't it a she anyway?"
Hansel gives a noncommittal shrug. "Mm."
"Uh, you don't think she's a faerie, do you?"
"No."
Anton never asks the right questions. No one does.
And then they hear the sound of muffled hoofbeats that seems to come from all around. Hansel watches as his companions look around wildly. "Where...?" Gilbert mutters, but then cuts himself off.
"Are you going to try your plan, Hansel?" says Anton in an attempt at a teasing tone, but he seems unable to wholly hide his unease.
"Mister Witch," Hansel calls out. "I'd like to talk to you about some things, if you so please."
The hoofbeats fall silent. Everyone is staring at him, so he gives an appeasing smile and laugh. "What? It's worth a try."
"A w-witch?" stammers Gilbert.
"You've heard the rumours too, haven't you?" It is not an answer, not really, but none of them seem to notice.
Later, when Hansel is alone, a man emerges from the dark and walks silently alongside him. The man is a stranger, tall and dark-haired with vivid green eyes and a smirk that gives away nothing, of regal bearing and wrapped in a deep green cloak of obvious quality and expense.
Hansel smiles. "Thank you for coming," he says, vaguely and deliberately deferential.
The man says nothing, but Hansel thinks his smirk might be a little deeper.
"I met a witch once, when I was a child," Hansel continues. "She wanted to eat me."
"What did you do about that?" There are hints of amusement lacing the man's voice.
"Well, her eyesight wasn't very good, so whenever she came to check if I was plump enough to make a good meal, I held out a bone instead of my finger."
The man in green laughs, a sound at once both mocking and approving.
"Later, my little sister pushed her inside an oven and left her to cook." Hansel does not try to hide the pride he feels for Gretel.
The man laughs again, that same mocking and approving sound. "Now then, tell me what you want, Hansel."
"I'd like a teacher." Immediate and sure, without hesitation.
The man gives him a sharp look, but he does not appear displeased. He looks thoughtful and searching, and then he grins. It isn't a kind expression, but it isn't cruel either.
"Yes," he says slowly. "Yes, this idea pleases me."
Title: Dust Thou Art
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Word count: 573
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Warnings: Implied violence, sort-of major character death (major character vamping?)
Prompt: Drusilla+Buffy, The Slayer stole all the hearts of those Dru loved; it was time to pay her back for it.
Valentine's Night, the night for lovers. Drusilla frowned, her face shifting as a low growl rose in her throat.
"No one loves Princess anymore," she said softly, mournfully. "The nasty Slayer stole away all of the dark Princess's hearts." Her voice rose in volume, transitioning from mournful to outraged. "All of my hearts..."
Where was Daddy? Where was her darling, deadly boy?
Why didn't they love their dark plum anymore?
It was all because of the Slayer. Why, why? It was like courting sunlight.
She supposed they always had been at least a little bit in love with danger, the both of them. Still... sunlight. How unnatural, how disgusting.
She knew that Grandmummy would agree. She missed Grandmummy too, every now and then.
Why was Grandmummy dust in the wind?
The answer was the same; the Slayer, always the Slayer, the Slayer like sunlight.
Drusilla laughed, heartbroken and vindictive. "I'll steal your heart, Slayer," she muttered. "They left me for the sunlight, so I'll take away the sunlight."
~
The Slayer was strong, Drusilla could not deny that, but strength does not necessarily win a war. Applied correctly, cunning and the element of surprise can be just as deadly, if not more so.
All it took was one little dart. The Slayer went up against the usual parade of supernatural enemies, and maybe there were more of them than usual, but Drusilla had never been disinclined to stacking the deck in her favour.
The enemies were dust, or whatever the final fate of their kind might be. The Slayer was not expecting the small dart that flew from the darkness and embedded itself in the side of her neck as the faint whistle prompted her to turn. She was not expecting Drusilla.
The Slayer crumpled. Drusilla sang as she picked up the sunlight girl.
"For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
It might have been a funeral hymn.
~
Spike was a bad, bad boy. He should not have interrupted Mummy before she was finished.
"Don't, Spike," she cried, her eyes wide and damp. He stopped, just a moment before the stake he held would have entered her heart.
His gaze flicked to the Slayer, and then back to her. "Why shouldn't I?" he snarled, his fists clenching.
"It would have been a present, my knight," she half-wailed. "For you, this Valentine, a heart."
Her boy's lips drew further up from his teeth. He looked like nothing so much as a starved wolf preparing to rip out her throat.
A sudden surge of fury surged through all her veins. How dare he do this, he who had promised to love her forever and ever? "You can't save her," she hissed, grinning wide, satisfied, unhappy. "Murder me or don't, she dies either way."
They stood locked in place, like sandcastles on a windless night. Spike's fists clenched further, the stake splintered in his grasp.
Abruptly, he opened his palm so that the broken wood fell down. She watched without speaking or moving as he dashed to kneel by the Slayer's side.
He bit into his wrist, and then shoved the open wound into the Slayer's mouth. Drusilla stared, wide-eyed.
"Spike," she wailed. "Spike, why?"
"Shut up," he snarled. "I can't let her..."
She was just about to scream her protest, but instead she stumbled, eyes wide and blank. She whimpered, loud and plaintive, and then...
she blinked out of her vision. She smiled.