First "Six Degrees" meme ficlet
For honorh. Three (or four) degrees of separation from Claire Bennet (Heroes) to Jack Harkness (DW and Torchwood). Spoilers for Heroes for something in 2.02 and an implication from 2.07, a very vague one for the Torchwood season 2 opener.
I.
Most children have an invisible friend. Claire doesn’t remember too much about hers; he liked her teddy bears, she thinks, he smelled funny, and he knew some songs she later figured she must have heard on tv when one of her parents was watching Monty Python, because that was where they were from. (Neither of her parents is the Monty Python type, but maybe they decided to give it a try one day in Claire’s early childhood, who knows?)
Her invisible friend disappears when she is eight, which means she’s a big girl and knows she’s not supposed to mention something like this to her parents. But one day, when her mother is paying a visit to the vet and Lyle is in kindergarten, she finds her father staring in the air, and for a heartbeat, she wonders. Then she shakes her head. Of course not. She doesn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, either.
II.
After he got the Company on his trail again thanks to bloody Peter Petrelli, Claude decided to call it quits with the colonial cousins. At least he could steal marmite at home. It used to be London and the north all the way for him in the old days, so he went to memory-free Wales and ended up in Cardiff. Reading the obituary for Kaito Nakamura in someone’s stolen New York Times surprised him enough to get visible for a while - especially the byline which said that Angela Petrelli, mother of the quondam Congressional candidate and widow of the well known lawyer, admitted to killing Nakamura “for sex and money”.
“I knew that entire family was bonkers,” Claude said to no one in particular and went invisible again. To his misfortune, the entire interlude had been observed.
“Gwen,” Andy said, talking in his cell phone, “I think I got something for you.”
III.
Being tasered and finding himself tied up in an underground lab somewhere came close to being Claude’s second favourite nightmare. (The all time number one hit still belonged to Bennet and the bridge. Bastard.) On the bright side of things, it was pretty obvious that the bunch of wide-eyed kids of both genders around him weren’t with the Company. Their leader, a good looking guy who immediately made Claude want to punch him on that manly chin, maybe; the rest simply was too talkative.
On the downside, they suspected him of being an alien. Or of being possessed by one. Since they all wore infra-red glasses and made no move to untie Claude, his advantage was gone, and the talk of electro shocks to find out which species he was wasn’t that inspiring, either, so Claude turned visible, in the vague hope of demonstrating humanness long enough to get untied and get a hand on one of those weapons. This had an interesting effect on Mr. Cleft Chin in the WWII coat, who stared at him.
“Can’t be,” he said, then leaned forward and kissed Claude on the lips. As interrogation methods went, that one was decidedly not one they had practiced back at the Company. “And it isn’t,” the leader continued, sounding half disappointed, half amused. “Guys, I think that one is human. And unpossessed.”
“Oh, you can tell by snogging them now?” the small, wiry kid in the lab coat said archly.
“You bet,” his boss replied. “Aliens are much better at it.”
IV.
Claire has red hair by the time she visits India for the first time, and her passport assures sceptical custom officers she’s 22. In reality, she’s over 60, but she can still pass as a teenager if she wants to.
She’s walking on the overcrowded beach in Bombay - Mumbai, she corrects herself - and buys some mango slices from a vendor; it’s not like she can get an infection. Another hawker, as the beach vendors are called here, sells teddy bears, and she finds herself thinking of her childhood for the first time in years. Just then, someone walks by her, singing “Always look on the bright side of life”. He has a good voice, but it’s the coincidence of the teddy bears combined with the song that makes her turn around.
“Hey,” she says to the stranger, who happens to be tall, dark and handsome, and she’s long past being embarrassed about having a type. Ah, the privileges of age. “There aren’t many Monty Python fans around anymore.”
The man gives her a smile that has a twinkle and a promise in it, and replies: “True. But I met one, a long time ago, and you know, that tune stuck with me ever since.”
I.
Most children have an invisible friend. Claire doesn’t remember too much about hers; he liked her teddy bears, she thinks, he smelled funny, and he knew some songs she later figured she must have heard on tv when one of her parents was watching Monty Python, because that was where they were from. (Neither of her parents is the Monty Python type, but maybe they decided to give it a try one day in Claire’s early childhood, who knows?)
Her invisible friend disappears when she is eight, which means she’s a big girl and knows she’s not supposed to mention something like this to her parents. But one day, when her mother is paying a visit to the vet and Lyle is in kindergarten, she finds her father staring in the air, and for a heartbeat, she wonders. Then she shakes her head. Of course not. She doesn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, either.
II.
After he got the Company on his trail again thanks to bloody Peter Petrelli, Claude decided to call it quits with the colonial cousins. At least he could steal marmite at home. It used to be London and the north all the way for him in the old days, so he went to memory-free Wales and ended up in Cardiff. Reading the obituary for Kaito Nakamura in someone’s stolen New York Times surprised him enough to get visible for a while - especially the byline which said that Angela Petrelli, mother of the quondam Congressional candidate and widow of the well known lawyer, admitted to killing Nakamura “for sex and money”.
“I knew that entire family was bonkers,” Claude said to no one in particular and went invisible again. To his misfortune, the entire interlude had been observed.
“Gwen,” Andy said, talking in his cell phone, “I think I got something for you.”
III.
Being tasered and finding himself tied up in an underground lab somewhere came close to being Claude’s second favourite nightmare. (The all time number one hit still belonged to Bennet and the bridge. Bastard.) On the bright side of things, it was pretty obvious that the bunch of wide-eyed kids of both genders around him weren’t with the Company. Their leader, a good looking guy who immediately made Claude want to punch him on that manly chin, maybe; the rest simply was too talkative.
On the downside, they suspected him of being an alien. Or of being possessed by one. Since they all wore infra-red glasses and made no move to untie Claude, his advantage was gone, and the talk of electro shocks to find out which species he was wasn’t that inspiring, either, so Claude turned visible, in the vague hope of demonstrating humanness long enough to get untied and get a hand on one of those weapons. This had an interesting effect on Mr. Cleft Chin in the WWII coat, who stared at him.
“Can’t be,” he said, then leaned forward and kissed Claude on the lips. As interrogation methods went, that one was decidedly not one they had practiced back at the Company. “And it isn’t,” the leader continued, sounding half disappointed, half amused. “Guys, I think that one is human. And unpossessed.”
“Oh, you can tell by snogging them now?” the small, wiry kid in the lab coat said archly.
“You bet,” his boss replied. “Aliens are much better at it.”
IV.
Claire has red hair by the time she visits India for the first time, and her passport assures sceptical custom officers she’s 22. In reality, she’s over 60, but she can still pass as a teenager if she wants to.
She’s walking on the overcrowded beach in Bombay - Mumbai, she corrects herself - and buys some mango slices from a vendor; it’s not like she can get an infection. Another hawker, as the beach vendors are called here, sells teddy bears, and she finds herself thinking of her childhood for the first time in years. Just then, someone walks by her, singing “Always look on the bright side of life”. He has a good voice, but it’s the coincidence of the teddy bears combined with the song that makes her turn around.
“Hey,” she says to the stranger, who happens to be tall, dark and handsome, and she’s long past being embarrassed about having a type. Ah, the privileges of age. “There aren’t many Monty Python fans around anymore.”
The man gives her a smile that has a twinkle and a promise in it, and replies: “True. But I met one, a long time ago, and you know, that tune stuck with me ever since.”