from the WIP archives....
Huh. So I was backing up my files this evening, and decided to poke around through my Stories folder for a while, just to see what sort of things I've got sitting around in limbo. Some of it's fannish, and some of it's original, and-- I'm actually pleasantly surprised to find that most of it doesn't suck that much. So here, have a few excerpts:
Huddling-for-warmth SGA team!fic
(tentatively titled, Three fairy tales, one nightmare, and how John Sheppard fell asleep.)
"After the beginning and before the end," said Teyla, "there was a man on Athos."
"Oh, please, you're joking, right?" McKay interrupted, still sharp and panicky with left-over adrenaline. "The colonel's bleeding out and we're going to freeze to death in a hole in the ground on-- on planet Erhenrang, and you want to tell stories?"
"McKay," Ronon said. It was an efficient threat, containing a multitude of very unpleasant things in one growl. Teyla just closed her eyes and took a deep breath, very obviously counting to ten or twenty or three hundred and sixty-two in her head in an effort to keep from beating McKay with an icicle.
"Hey," protested the Sheppard-shaped lump by Ronon's feet. "I'm not bleeding out. I'm fine."
"No," McKay corrected him, "I'm fine, and you're the idiot who sliced his leg open trying to scale a cliff without a rope during an ice storm."
"How I was I supposed to know they've got freaky glass rocks on this planet?" Sheppard asked. "Most places, rocks don't just crack like that. That's why they're rocks. Besides," he said, petulant, "Erhenrang's the city, not the planet. And I am not bleeding out."
"No-- no, of course you're not. You're just impersonating Jackson Pollack during his rose phase," said McKay, shooing away pesky facts with his hand. "And I can't help that LeGuin stuck to blindingly obvious planetary nomenclature. But! Funnily enough, none of that changes the fact that Teyla thinks it's appropriate to have, jesus, I don't know, hypothermic story hour over here while we freeze ourselves solid and wait for you to finish gushing everywhere."
"I had thought," Teyla said, raising her voice over the wind and Sheppard's annoyed, "I am not gushing, McKay," and a snort of laughter that probably came from Ronon, "that a story might be a pleasant way to pass the time until the storm has gone. However," and that was never good-- Teyla's reasonable howevers had a tendency to herald things like extra stick practice and the Pegasus version of cottillion and deportment lessons -- "however, Rodney, if you had rather sit quietly, perhaps we might use the time for some meditation. I believe Dr. Keller has suggested that such activity might help to prevent many stress-related illnesses."
"Ommm," hummed Sheppard from his spot on the floor, and McKay said, "Shut up, I hate you," and threw a clod of dirt at his hair.
It was cold in the shallow cave-- unpleasantly muddy and damp with dangling root threads everywhere-- but at least they were out of the worst of the wind and freezing rain. It was another ten or twelve klicks to the gate, more than Sheppard could probably handle in this weather without going shocky on them all, even if they rigged up some kind of stretcher. But even if the cave was cold and wet and miserable and smelled like the inside of one of Lorne's combat boots, it would, McKay conceeded, probably take a very long time for them to freeze to death. And if there was one thing McKay did not want to have to do in the last hours of his life ever again, it was meditate.
"All right," Rodney gave in. "You win. Go for it. Tell your story. As long as there aren't any giant white whales."
"There are not," Teyla promised.
"What about clowns?" said Sheppard. "Clowns aren't too good, either."
"There are no clowns in this story," Teyla said, her voice fond.
"That's good," Sheppard said. "No clowns is good. Hey. Hey, do we have a blanket?" he asked. " 's cold in here."
Teyla exchanged a glance with the others. "No, John," she said. "We do not. But if we gathered closer together, I am sure we would all be warmer," she said, suiting her actions to her words and sliding so that Sheppard's head rested on her thigh. McKay and Ronon both moved closer, bracketing his sides.
Ronon flipped a corner of his long coat over Sheppard's chest. "Better?" he asked.
"Better," Sheppard agreed.
"Good," said McKay, pulling his jacket collar up higher and burrowing down until his ears were covered. He looked like a turtle with fluffy hair. "I have a feeling you'd be even more annoying as a corpse, so let's try to avoid that, shall we?"
Sheppard smiled. "You're a funny guy, McKay," he said, and patted McKay's kneecap.
"Yes, thank you," Rodney said, scooting a little so his butt wouldn't go numb. "And you're probably brain-damaged."
"What about Wraith?" asked Ronon abruptly. On the other side of Sheppard, McKay jerked, fumbling for his sidearm. "In the story," Ronon clarified. "Are there Wraith in the story?"
Teyla paused. "There are always Wraith," she said at length. "Even when the story is not about them."
Ronon nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Okay. Let's hear it."
That one's supposed to have four follow-up stories: one told by Teyla, one by Ronon, one by Sheppard, and the last by McKay. I've got the first two half-written, but I don't think I ever tried to write John and Rodney's parts. I'm-- actually kind of tempted to go back and finish this, sometime.
In which Tosh and Ianto are awesome and don't need any help, thanks.
(tentatively titled, Penny Dreadful.)
"I think he's going to do it this time," Tosh said, her voice low. There was a narrow alley between the two brick warehouses ahead, a clumsy shadow darkening the far wall.
Ianto nodded. "I think you're right," he said, equally low, and then tapped his comm. "Jack," he said at normal volume, his voice echoing off the brick, "can you hear us all right?" He waited a moment, then said, "No, no problem-- there's just some static on this end. A bit annoying, that's all. Tosh reckons we might be getting interference from some sort of shortwave tech. There's a big rummage sale up by the docks, and you know how that--" He smirked and gave Tosh a thumbs-up. "We'll go have a look, sir. Mind if we go off-comm for a while? The static's getting worse."
Tosh shot him a warning glance; the shadow had edged further toward the mouth of the alley. Ianto nodded, and then said lightly, "We'll give you a ring when we know what it is, sir. If you don't hear from us by five, go ahead and release the hounds." He rolled his eyes as Jack said something smart, and then tapped off.
"Do you think he heard you?" Tosh asked quietly, her voice at odds with her relaxed smile. She took off her comm and slid it into her bag.
"Dunno," Ianto said, matching her tone. "I hope he did. If he's smart, he'll have us check in by four." He grinned widely before muttering, "I'm going to have to fight him a little, I think."
Tosh laughed; she was much better at subterfuge than Ianto had thought she would be. "Yeah," she agreed, still smiling, still relaxed. "Try not to hurt him, though," she said.
"That's right," Ianto said, and this time the smile reached his eyes. "don't worry about me, or anything."
Tosh's eyes crinkled up. "All right, then," she said, and offered Ianto her arm, "I won't." She pointed in the direction of the docks, where there was indeed a large rummage sale taking place. "Shall we?"
"Might as well," Ianto said, and they walked calmly towards the shadow.
I have... quite a bit of this one done, actually. But I'm off my Torchwood stride; I'd need to sit down and mainline most of series two, I think, before I could get myself back into the swing of things.
A totally Jossed account of how Ianto met the Doctor.
(tentatively titled, White Shoes after Labor Day, Although That Will Never Actually Work, Because Labor Day in Britain Isn't the Same Day as it is Here, And I Don't Even Know if that Fashion Guideline Exists in the UK.)
Barring the occasional end of the world, Tuesday mornings were blessedly quiet at the tourist office. Ianto spent most of his time straightening the postcards and Welsh phrasebooks, rereading Joy in the Morning for the umpteenth time, and idly giving thanks that Jack-- for all his other eccentricities-- was unlikely to give up his greatcoat in favor of something a little more chartreuse.
This particular Tuesday, Ianto had just settled back with his fifth coffee of the morning (a deliciously dark roast with just enough cream to bounce off the bottom of the mug in a perfect milky bloom) when the tourist office door opened and a man's head poked inside.
"Tourist information, are you?" asked the head, which was topped off by some very enthusiastic hair.
"We are, yes," Ianto said as the head gave way to a skinny set of shoulders in a nattily tailored brown suit. "May I help you?"
The man sidled inside the office, ignoring Ianto entirely. "Huh," he said, glancing about with wide, interested eyes. "Huh! Well, points for verisimilitude, I suppose."
"Sir?" Ianto said in his best the management respectfully requests that patrons indulge their neuroses off the premises voice; it was one he had long practice with, given his co-workers, and it never failed to impress.
"Not very flash, though," said the man, oblivious. He tilted his head back to look at the water-stained ceiling. "I think I was expecting something a little more antiseptic. And chrome. Still! It's almost a little shop, isn't it?" he said happily, and wandered over to a shelf littered with cheap plastic snow globes and commemorative teaspoons.
Ianto glanced down at the man's shoes and winced. Incoherence and dirty white trainers. Tuesday mornings weren't meant to be such a shock to the system.
"Oh, will you look at this!" said the man with the inappropriate shoes, pouncing on a particularly garish spoon and waving it in Ianto's face. "Did you know that no matter where in the universe you go, you lot will always make some sort of commemorative cookware? Dinner plates with portraits of the Queen, salt shakers with the skyline of Neptune-on-Mars, engraved chopsticks on Hydra Six, shot glasses in New New York... you wouldn't happen to know why, would you?" he asked, looking at Ianto searchingly. "I've given it a lot of thought, you know, and I still haven't a clue. And that's saying something, considering that it's me we're talking about."
Ianto blinked once and slowly slid his left hand beneath the desk to feel for the silent alarm button. This... was sounding more Torchwoodian by the minute. White trainers. A man wearing a suit with trainers. There was something exceedingly familiar there.
"Mind you," the man continued, seemingly unaware of Ianto's movement, "as far as societal compulsions go, creating collectable flatware isn't too bad. The Orulka, now, they're a bit strange. Do you know, they spend their whole lives building these enormous card houses, with card walls and little card chairs and card toaster ovens, even, and then when they--"
"Sir." Ianto interrupted politely but firmly, his finger hovering lightly over the alarm. He was fairly certain now that he didn't need press it, but he'd only ever seen the man on a few seconds of grainy London CCTV footage, running down an alleyway with two familiar figures close on his heels. It paid to be cautious. "Pardon me, but was there something in particular I could help you with?"
The man laughed delightedly. "Oh ho, you are sort of fantastic," he said. "Jack usually exagerates something terrible, but this time-- here I am, saying, Hallo, did you know they've tea kettles with Elvis Presley's head printed on them twenty-six thousand light-years away in the Bluebeard system, and you've just gone all unflappable and Jeeves-ish on me." He looked Ianto up and down and grinned, his eyes crinkling up at the corner. "I can see why he likes you."
"It's the suit," Ianto said absently, moving his hand from the alarm button. Jack. White trainers. Right. "You'd be Jack's Doctor, then," he guessed.
"Yep," said the Doctor, bouncing on his toes. "Well. No. Well. Not any more than you're Jack's Ianto, but yes: the Doctor. That would be me." He stuck out his hand. "Ianto Jones, I presume?"
Totally, totally jossed and overly verbal, but-- fun! Maybe someday I'll finish it, I don't know.
So I have this thing where I'd like to write a YA novel someday, and this is part of a Rather Long Something that I've been working at, off and on, for about two years.
It happened like this:
“So you see,” said Dr. Audett, “we would be more than happy to act as a foster family for Thomas, but we would like to make the arrangement more permanent.” She smiled winningly, her toothpaste-ad teeth shining in the afternoon sun. “My husband and I would like to go ahead and start drawing up the adoption papers, with your permission.”
“Oh,” said Miss Andersen. “Well, that’s wonderful,” she said, but her mouth pursed in a way that said it wasn’t. “However, I’m afraid that there might be a slight complication.” Dr. Audett raised her eyebrow. “Thomas is a lovely, dear boy,” Miss Andersen said hurriedly, “and I’m certain that you and Mr. Striker would be admirable parents-- but there are some-- irregularities-- with his paperwork.”
“How so?” Dr. Audett asked, feeling rather relieved. Running her own orthodontia practice, Dr. Audett knew that there are always irregularities in paperwork: sometimes the names don’t fit into the spaces given, sometimes people forget to sign the little important bits at the bottom, and sometimes it is impossible to Check One Box Only! as directed, because two-- or maybe even three-- boxes really do apply. There had been some sort of paperwork irregularity with all of the Audett-Striker children at some point, and so the prospect of a few problematic forms was nothing Dr. Audett couldn’t handle.
Miss Andersen sighed and said, “Well, for starters, he doesn’t have any papers. They’ve all gone missing.” She slumped morosely behind her desk.
Now, while one might not think it, children actually come with quite a lot of paperwork attached. Not immediately, of course-- babies are quite small and wrinkled when they first get here, and they are usually much too concerned with the business of wailing loudly at the world to bother with nonsense like passports or library cards or showing proper legal identification. But shortly afterwards there are all sorts of papers to consider-- birth certificates, doctors’ records-- pages and pages of endless forms, all of which are important, and very tedious, and also very hard to replace if one loses them.
“We don’t know how it happened, really,” Miss Andersen explained. “We don’t even know where Thomas came from-- Mrs. Valle opened the door to the nursery one morning, and there he was, sitting on the rocking horse and sucking his thumb, calm as you please. We still haven’t figured out how he managed to get inside,” she said. “He’s not nearly tall enough to have turned the doorknob himself.”
“I’m sure that must have been very strange,” said Dr. Audett, “but this is an orphanage. Perhaps someone left him here, hoping you could take better care of him. But I don’t understand,” she said, vexed, “why would the fact that Thomas was found on a rocking horse cause a problem in the paperwork? Don’t you have forms for babies left on the doorstep, and that sort of thing?”
“Of course we do!” snapped Miss Andersen. “We have a whole room full of those sorts of forms. I filled out the YC04-27 and YC08-34 in triplicate myself, that very morning.” Then she seemed to deflate. “But they’ve all gone missing.”
“Why don’t you just fill out another set, then?” suggested Dr. Audett. This seemed eminently sensible to her.
Miss Andersen deflated further, wrinkling down into her chair like a leaking balloon. “I did. But a week later, the water cooler tipped over and flooded the filing cabinet, and everything in it turned to mush. After we cleaned up the office, I filled out a third set of forms for Thomas-- but one of the three-year-olds found them on my desk that afternoon and finger painted all over them. Actually,” she said, brightening a very little bit, “it’s part of quite an intriguing series. Katya did a remarkable job conveying her frustrations with the limitations of the primary color palette, I think. Your husband might find it interesting.”
“I’m certain he would,” said Dr. Audett, her patience wearing thin. “But the paperwork?”
“Ye-es,” replied Miss Andersen with a sigh. “After the finger paints, I filled the forms out again. But just as I finished signing my name, a squirrel darted in through the open window and ran off with them.” She looked a little wild as she said this.
Dr. Audett squinted, incredulous. “A squirrel?”
Miss Andersen grimaced. “Nasty little tree rats,” she muttered, “stealing my nice paperwork. I can’t imagine why they wanted it in the first place.” She looked pained. “Dr. Audett,” she continued, “I have submitted Thomas’s forms thirty-seven times in the last two months. They have been pulped, lost, stolen by vicious rodents, made into kites, eaten by a goat, burnt to ashes, painted over, shredded, glued together, covered with glitter, used to make a paper mâche globe, and-- on one memorable occasion-- incorporated into a tossed salad. Believe me,” she told a rather stunned Dr. Audett, “we have tried. But Thomas’s paperwork simply does not exist. Moreover,” she concluded, rubbing at the creases between her eyebrows, “it doesn’t seem to want to exist.”
There is a lot of this. I haven't worked on it in a long while, but it makes me happy whenever I do.
And a version of Cinderella I rewrote for my sister.
(You see, we had this picture book of Grimm's Fairy Tales growing up-- like, the real Grimm's tales, the kind where the Evil Queen eats Snow White's heart, and where Disobedient Children refused to stay buried. My sister had been lamenting the fact that, somewhere along the line, we lost it-- or maybe one of our dogs ate it? we couldn't remember-- so I rewrote Cinderella for her for Christmas one year, and illustrated it. This is some of the text.)
In order for a story to begin, there must first be some compelling event, some rupture in the status quo. Sometimes it's a war, or a famine; sometimes a declaration of peace after a long period of unrest, and sometimes it's something smaller. A birth or a marriage will do nicely, but a death-- that is always the best sort of beginning.
*
The girl's mother died one autumn.
The girl's father-- this is a story about a girl, although she never even has her own name-- the girl's father was a rich man, perhaps a merchant or a lower sort of noble. Perhaps not. But he was a rich man, and a callous man, for he married again not four months after the death of his first wife, his daughter still in mourning and holding vigil over her mother's bare grave.
(Perhaps he was not callous. Perhaps he was distressed by his daughter's unrelenting grief, and wanted to comfort her with another mother. Perhaps he himself was lonely, and wanted the company. Perhaps the house was too big and empty for only two people, an over-sized rattle. It is possible.)
The rich man's second wife was a widow-woman, stately and scheming, with two daughters of her own. The man's new step-daughters were lovely creatures, long-limbed and fair-haired, and as vain and lively as peacocks. They curtsied and danced and laughed like silver bells, and lived only for fine things. They easily out-shone the man's own daughter, who was silent and spent hours sitting in the spring mud by her mother's grave, and they were nothing so much as disgusted by the girl's solemn ways and desire to be left alone.
"If you cannot dance, and you will not laugh," said one of the step-daughters, "you should not eat with the rest of us."
"We are the daughters of a rich man," said the other, "and we earn our keep through gaiety. If you cannot, then you shall earn your keep some other way."
And with this, the step-daughters stripped the girl of her fine warm clothes, and gave her dirty rags to wear. "This is your kingdom," said one of the step-daughters, and brought the girl into the kitchen. "These, your subjects," she said, and showed the girl the mountain of dishes and brushes and cakes of lye soap.
"This is your castle," said the other step-daughter, pulling the girl towards the great fireplace. "There is your throne." She pointed to an ash-covered blanket crumpled on the hearth. She dipped a white handkerchief into the ashes, and rubbed a dark smudge on the girl's forehead. "And that, Cinderella," said the step-daughter, "was your coronation."
Going through the archives can be sort of fun. :D
Huddling-for-warmth SGA team!fic
(tentatively titled, Three fairy tales, one nightmare, and how John Sheppard fell asleep.)
"After the beginning and before the end," said Teyla, "there was a man on Athos."
"Oh, please, you're joking, right?" McKay interrupted, still sharp and panicky with left-over adrenaline. "The colonel's bleeding out and we're going to freeze to death in a hole in the ground on-- on planet Erhenrang, and you want to tell stories?"
"McKay," Ronon said. It was an efficient threat, containing a multitude of very unpleasant things in one growl. Teyla just closed her eyes and took a deep breath, very obviously counting to ten or twenty or three hundred and sixty-two in her head in an effort to keep from beating McKay with an icicle.
"Hey," protested the Sheppard-shaped lump by Ronon's feet. "I'm not bleeding out. I'm fine."
"No," McKay corrected him, "I'm fine, and you're the idiot who sliced his leg open trying to scale a cliff without a rope during an ice storm."
"How I was I supposed to know they've got freaky glass rocks on this planet?" Sheppard asked. "Most places, rocks don't just crack like that. That's why they're rocks. Besides," he said, petulant, "Erhenrang's the city, not the planet. And I am not bleeding out."
"No-- no, of course you're not. You're just impersonating Jackson Pollack during his rose phase," said McKay, shooing away pesky facts with his hand. "And I can't help that LeGuin stuck to blindingly obvious planetary nomenclature. But! Funnily enough, none of that changes the fact that Teyla thinks it's appropriate to have, jesus, I don't know, hypothermic story hour over here while we freeze ourselves solid and wait for you to finish gushing everywhere."
"I had thought," Teyla said, raising her voice over the wind and Sheppard's annoyed, "I am not gushing, McKay," and a snort of laughter that probably came from Ronon, "that a story might be a pleasant way to pass the time until the storm has gone. However," and that was never good-- Teyla's reasonable howevers had a tendency to herald things like extra stick practice and the Pegasus version of cottillion and deportment lessons -- "however, Rodney, if you had rather sit quietly, perhaps we might use the time for some meditation. I believe Dr. Keller has suggested that such activity might help to prevent many stress-related illnesses."
"Ommm," hummed Sheppard from his spot on the floor, and McKay said, "Shut up, I hate you," and threw a clod of dirt at his hair.
It was cold in the shallow cave-- unpleasantly muddy and damp with dangling root threads everywhere-- but at least they were out of the worst of the wind and freezing rain. It was another ten or twelve klicks to the gate, more than Sheppard could probably handle in this weather without going shocky on them all, even if they rigged up some kind of stretcher. But even if the cave was cold and wet and miserable and smelled like the inside of one of Lorne's combat boots, it would, McKay conceeded, probably take a very long time for them to freeze to death. And if there was one thing McKay did not want to have to do in the last hours of his life ever again, it was meditate.
"All right," Rodney gave in. "You win. Go for it. Tell your story. As long as there aren't any giant white whales."
"There are not," Teyla promised.
"What about clowns?" said Sheppard. "Clowns aren't too good, either."
"There are no clowns in this story," Teyla said, her voice fond.
"That's good," Sheppard said. "No clowns is good. Hey. Hey, do we have a blanket?" he asked. " 's cold in here."
Teyla exchanged a glance with the others. "No, John," she said. "We do not. But if we gathered closer together, I am sure we would all be warmer," she said, suiting her actions to her words and sliding so that Sheppard's head rested on her thigh. McKay and Ronon both moved closer, bracketing his sides.
Ronon flipped a corner of his long coat over Sheppard's chest. "Better?" he asked.
"Better," Sheppard agreed.
"Good," said McKay, pulling his jacket collar up higher and burrowing down until his ears were covered. He looked like a turtle with fluffy hair. "I have a feeling you'd be even more annoying as a corpse, so let's try to avoid that, shall we?"
Sheppard smiled. "You're a funny guy, McKay," he said, and patted McKay's kneecap.
"Yes, thank you," Rodney said, scooting a little so his butt wouldn't go numb. "And you're probably brain-damaged."
"What about Wraith?" asked Ronon abruptly. On the other side of Sheppard, McKay jerked, fumbling for his sidearm. "In the story," Ronon clarified. "Are there Wraith in the story?"
Teyla paused. "There are always Wraith," she said at length. "Even when the story is not about them."
Ronon nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Okay. Let's hear it."
That one's supposed to have four follow-up stories: one told by Teyla, one by Ronon, one by Sheppard, and the last by McKay. I've got the first two half-written, but I don't think I ever tried to write John and Rodney's parts. I'm-- actually kind of tempted to go back and finish this, sometime.
In which Tosh and Ianto are awesome and don't need any help, thanks.
(tentatively titled, Penny Dreadful.)
"I think he's going to do it this time," Tosh said, her voice low. There was a narrow alley between the two brick warehouses ahead, a clumsy shadow darkening the far wall.
Ianto nodded. "I think you're right," he said, equally low, and then tapped his comm. "Jack," he said at normal volume, his voice echoing off the brick, "can you hear us all right?" He waited a moment, then said, "No, no problem-- there's just some static on this end. A bit annoying, that's all. Tosh reckons we might be getting interference from some sort of shortwave tech. There's a big rummage sale up by the docks, and you know how that--" He smirked and gave Tosh a thumbs-up. "We'll go have a look, sir. Mind if we go off-comm for a while? The static's getting worse."
Tosh shot him a warning glance; the shadow had edged further toward the mouth of the alley. Ianto nodded, and then said lightly, "We'll give you a ring when we know what it is, sir. If you don't hear from us by five, go ahead and release the hounds." He rolled his eyes as Jack said something smart, and then tapped off.
"Do you think he heard you?" Tosh asked quietly, her voice at odds with her relaxed smile. She took off her comm and slid it into her bag.
"Dunno," Ianto said, matching her tone. "I hope he did. If he's smart, he'll have us check in by four." He grinned widely before muttering, "I'm going to have to fight him a little, I think."
Tosh laughed; she was much better at subterfuge than Ianto had thought she would be. "Yeah," she agreed, still smiling, still relaxed. "Try not to hurt him, though," she said.
"That's right," Ianto said, and this time the smile reached his eyes. "don't worry about me, or anything."
Tosh's eyes crinkled up. "All right, then," she said, and offered Ianto her arm, "I won't." She pointed in the direction of the docks, where there was indeed a large rummage sale taking place. "Shall we?"
"Might as well," Ianto said, and they walked calmly towards the shadow.
I have... quite a bit of this one done, actually. But I'm off my Torchwood stride; I'd need to sit down and mainline most of series two, I think, before I could get myself back into the swing of things.
A totally Jossed account of how Ianto met the Doctor.
(tentatively titled, White Shoes after Labor Day, Although That Will Never Actually Work, Because Labor Day in Britain Isn't the Same Day as it is Here, And I Don't Even Know if that Fashion Guideline Exists in the UK.)
Barring the occasional end of the world, Tuesday mornings were blessedly quiet at the tourist office. Ianto spent most of his time straightening the postcards and Welsh phrasebooks, rereading Joy in the Morning for the umpteenth time, and idly giving thanks that Jack-- for all his other eccentricities-- was unlikely to give up his greatcoat in favor of something a little more chartreuse.
This particular Tuesday, Ianto had just settled back with his fifth coffee of the morning (a deliciously dark roast with just enough cream to bounce off the bottom of the mug in a perfect milky bloom) when the tourist office door opened and a man's head poked inside.
"Tourist information, are you?" asked the head, which was topped off by some very enthusiastic hair.
"We are, yes," Ianto said as the head gave way to a skinny set of shoulders in a nattily tailored brown suit. "May I help you?"
The man sidled inside the office, ignoring Ianto entirely. "Huh," he said, glancing about with wide, interested eyes. "Huh! Well, points for verisimilitude, I suppose."
"Sir?" Ianto said in his best the management respectfully requests that patrons indulge their neuroses off the premises voice; it was one he had long practice with, given his co-workers, and it never failed to impress.
"Not very flash, though," said the man, oblivious. He tilted his head back to look at the water-stained ceiling. "I think I was expecting something a little more antiseptic. And chrome. Still! It's almost a little shop, isn't it?" he said happily, and wandered over to a shelf littered with cheap plastic snow globes and commemorative teaspoons.
Ianto glanced down at the man's shoes and winced. Incoherence and dirty white trainers. Tuesday mornings weren't meant to be such a shock to the system.
"Oh, will you look at this!" said the man with the inappropriate shoes, pouncing on a particularly garish spoon and waving it in Ianto's face. "Did you know that no matter where in the universe you go, you lot will always make some sort of commemorative cookware? Dinner plates with portraits of the Queen, salt shakers with the skyline of Neptune-on-Mars, engraved chopsticks on Hydra Six, shot glasses in New New York... you wouldn't happen to know why, would you?" he asked, looking at Ianto searchingly. "I've given it a lot of thought, you know, and I still haven't a clue. And that's saying something, considering that it's me we're talking about."
Ianto blinked once and slowly slid his left hand beneath the desk to feel for the silent alarm button. This... was sounding more Torchwoodian by the minute. White trainers. A man wearing a suit with trainers. There was something exceedingly familiar there.
"Mind you," the man continued, seemingly unaware of Ianto's movement, "as far as societal compulsions go, creating collectable flatware isn't too bad. The Orulka, now, they're a bit strange. Do you know, they spend their whole lives building these enormous card houses, with card walls and little card chairs and card toaster ovens, even, and then when they--"
"Sir." Ianto interrupted politely but firmly, his finger hovering lightly over the alarm. He was fairly certain now that he didn't need press it, but he'd only ever seen the man on a few seconds of grainy London CCTV footage, running down an alleyway with two familiar figures close on his heels. It paid to be cautious. "Pardon me, but was there something in particular I could help you with?"
The man laughed delightedly. "Oh ho, you are sort of fantastic," he said. "Jack usually exagerates something terrible, but this time-- here I am, saying, Hallo, did you know they've tea kettles with Elvis Presley's head printed on them twenty-six thousand light-years away in the Bluebeard system, and you've just gone all unflappable and Jeeves-ish on me." He looked Ianto up and down and grinned, his eyes crinkling up at the corner. "I can see why he likes you."
"It's the suit," Ianto said absently, moving his hand from the alarm button. Jack. White trainers. Right. "You'd be Jack's Doctor, then," he guessed.
"Yep," said the Doctor, bouncing on his toes. "Well. No. Well. Not any more than you're Jack's Ianto, but yes: the Doctor. That would be me." He stuck out his hand. "Ianto Jones, I presume?"
Totally, totally jossed and overly verbal, but-- fun! Maybe someday I'll finish it, I don't know.
So I have this thing where I'd like to write a YA novel someday, and this is part of a Rather Long Something that I've been working at, off and on, for about two years.
It happened like this:
“So you see,” said Dr. Audett, “we would be more than happy to act as a foster family for Thomas, but we would like to make the arrangement more permanent.” She smiled winningly, her toothpaste-ad teeth shining in the afternoon sun. “My husband and I would like to go ahead and start drawing up the adoption papers, with your permission.”
“Oh,” said Miss Andersen. “Well, that’s wonderful,” she said, but her mouth pursed in a way that said it wasn’t. “However, I’m afraid that there might be a slight complication.” Dr. Audett raised her eyebrow. “Thomas is a lovely, dear boy,” Miss Andersen said hurriedly, “and I’m certain that you and Mr. Striker would be admirable parents-- but there are some-- irregularities-- with his paperwork.”
“How so?” Dr. Audett asked, feeling rather relieved. Running her own orthodontia practice, Dr. Audett knew that there are always irregularities in paperwork: sometimes the names don’t fit into the spaces given, sometimes people forget to sign the little important bits at the bottom, and sometimes it is impossible to Check One Box Only! as directed, because two-- or maybe even three-- boxes really do apply. There had been some sort of paperwork irregularity with all of the Audett-Striker children at some point, and so the prospect of a few problematic forms was nothing Dr. Audett couldn’t handle.
Miss Andersen sighed and said, “Well, for starters, he doesn’t have any papers. They’ve all gone missing.” She slumped morosely behind her desk.
Now, while one might not think it, children actually come with quite a lot of paperwork attached. Not immediately, of course-- babies are quite small and wrinkled when they first get here, and they are usually much too concerned with the business of wailing loudly at the world to bother with nonsense like passports or library cards or showing proper legal identification. But shortly afterwards there are all sorts of papers to consider-- birth certificates, doctors’ records-- pages and pages of endless forms, all of which are important, and very tedious, and also very hard to replace if one loses them.
“We don’t know how it happened, really,” Miss Andersen explained. “We don’t even know where Thomas came from-- Mrs. Valle opened the door to the nursery one morning, and there he was, sitting on the rocking horse and sucking his thumb, calm as you please. We still haven’t figured out how he managed to get inside,” she said. “He’s not nearly tall enough to have turned the doorknob himself.”
“I’m sure that must have been very strange,” said Dr. Audett, “but this is an orphanage. Perhaps someone left him here, hoping you could take better care of him. But I don’t understand,” she said, vexed, “why would the fact that Thomas was found on a rocking horse cause a problem in the paperwork? Don’t you have forms for babies left on the doorstep, and that sort of thing?”
“Of course we do!” snapped Miss Andersen. “We have a whole room full of those sorts of forms. I filled out the YC04-27 and YC08-34 in triplicate myself, that very morning.” Then she seemed to deflate. “But they’ve all gone missing.”
“Why don’t you just fill out another set, then?” suggested Dr. Audett. This seemed eminently sensible to her.
Miss Andersen deflated further, wrinkling down into her chair like a leaking balloon. “I did. But a week later, the water cooler tipped over and flooded the filing cabinet, and everything in it turned to mush. After we cleaned up the office, I filled out a third set of forms for Thomas-- but one of the three-year-olds found them on my desk that afternoon and finger painted all over them. Actually,” she said, brightening a very little bit, “it’s part of quite an intriguing series. Katya did a remarkable job conveying her frustrations with the limitations of the primary color palette, I think. Your husband might find it interesting.”
“I’m certain he would,” said Dr. Audett, her patience wearing thin. “But the paperwork?”
“Ye-es,” replied Miss Andersen with a sigh. “After the finger paints, I filled the forms out again. But just as I finished signing my name, a squirrel darted in through the open window and ran off with them.” She looked a little wild as she said this.
Dr. Audett squinted, incredulous. “A squirrel?”
Miss Andersen grimaced. “Nasty little tree rats,” she muttered, “stealing my nice paperwork. I can’t imagine why they wanted it in the first place.” She looked pained. “Dr. Audett,” she continued, “I have submitted Thomas’s forms thirty-seven times in the last two months. They have been pulped, lost, stolen by vicious rodents, made into kites, eaten by a goat, burnt to ashes, painted over, shredded, glued together, covered with glitter, used to make a paper mâche globe, and-- on one memorable occasion-- incorporated into a tossed salad. Believe me,” she told a rather stunned Dr. Audett, “we have tried. But Thomas’s paperwork simply does not exist. Moreover,” she concluded, rubbing at the creases between her eyebrows, “it doesn’t seem to want to exist.”
There is a lot of this. I haven't worked on it in a long while, but it makes me happy whenever I do.
And a version of Cinderella I rewrote for my sister.
(You see, we had this picture book of Grimm's Fairy Tales growing up-- like, the real Grimm's tales, the kind where the Evil Queen eats Snow White's heart, and where Disobedient Children refused to stay buried. My sister had been lamenting the fact that, somewhere along the line, we lost it-- or maybe one of our dogs ate it? we couldn't remember-- so I rewrote Cinderella for her for Christmas one year, and illustrated it. This is some of the text.)
In order for a story to begin, there must first be some compelling event, some rupture in the status quo. Sometimes it's a war, or a famine; sometimes a declaration of peace after a long period of unrest, and sometimes it's something smaller. A birth or a marriage will do nicely, but a death-- that is always the best sort of beginning.
*
The girl's mother died one autumn.
The girl's father-- this is a story about a girl, although she never even has her own name-- the girl's father was a rich man, perhaps a merchant or a lower sort of noble. Perhaps not. But he was a rich man, and a callous man, for he married again not four months after the death of his first wife, his daughter still in mourning and holding vigil over her mother's bare grave.
(Perhaps he was not callous. Perhaps he was distressed by his daughter's unrelenting grief, and wanted to comfort her with another mother. Perhaps he himself was lonely, and wanted the company. Perhaps the house was too big and empty for only two people, an over-sized rattle. It is possible.)
The rich man's second wife was a widow-woman, stately and scheming, with two daughters of her own. The man's new step-daughters were lovely creatures, long-limbed and fair-haired, and as vain and lively as peacocks. They curtsied and danced and laughed like silver bells, and lived only for fine things. They easily out-shone the man's own daughter, who was silent and spent hours sitting in the spring mud by her mother's grave, and they were nothing so much as disgusted by the girl's solemn ways and desire to be left alone.
"If you cannot dance, and you will not laugh," said one of the step-daughters, "you should not eat with the rest of us."
"We are the daughters of a rich man," said the other, "and we earn our keep through gaiety. If you cannot, then you shall earn your keep some other way."
And with this, the step-daughters stripped the girl of her fine warm clothes, and gave her dirty rags to wear. "This is your kingdom," said one of the step-daughters, and brought the girl into the kitchen. "These, your subjects," she said, and showed the girl the mountain of dishes and brushes and cakes of lye soap.
"This is your castle," said the other step-daughter, pulling the girl towards the great fireplace. "There is your throne." She pointed to an ash-covered blanket crumpled on the hearth. She dipped a white handkerchief into the ashes, and rubbed a dark smudge on the girl's forehead. "And that, Cinderella," said the step-daughter, "was your coronation."
Going through the archives can be sort of fun. :D