[Alias] The One Little Duck
Title: The One Little Duck
Fandom: Alias
Author: kawaiispinel
Feedback: ... Is loverly.
Word Count: 773
Rating: PG
Characters: Sydney, Sark
Summary: "I think if one is going to put a bomb inside a wooden duck, they'd at least have the good sense to make it a good one."
Disclaimer: Alias is JJ's and I claim no right to it even if half the characters live in my headspace. Not my fault they moved in without my permission.
Author's Note: This was written because while I was laying in bed, sleeping in because I have been sick all day, I was thinking of weird prompts and the prompt "wooden duck" came up and I was wondering how I would write a fic with a wooden duck in, and.... This happened. Also written for itsproductivity.
Sydney emerged from the pond, clutching an ornamental wooden duck (of the sort that people leave in ponds to simulate the appearance of real ducks when real ducks could not be found or, more appropriately, of the sort that hunters leave in ponds to lure other ducks within shooting range) to her breast as if it were a bomb, which it was. Of course it was, because apparently she was dealing was someone who was, for all practical purposes, fond of jokes and making agents wade through ponds to retrieve their bounty. There had been a moment where she was concerned that there might be a remote trigger that would cause the duck- the bomb- to explode if it were lifted out of the water, but the scans revealed nothing and she was permitted to wade back to shore with it without incident, unless you count having to unexpectedly go swimming an incident.
She was soaked from the waist down and it wasn't exactly a warm and pleasant night, but she'd worked under far less ideal conditions and didn't let either bother her. Carefully, she pried off the panel on the bottom of the duck and frowned at the bomb nestled inside as if it had done her a great wrong in the past.
"What do you make of that?" She asked, adjusting her comm.
"I think if one is going to put a bomb inside a wooden duck, they'd at least have the good sense to make it a good one."
"You're not helpful," she growled back into the comm, wondering who the hell would ever think it was a good idea to put Sark on point (evidentaly Sloane, but Sloane also thought it would be nice to hire the known terrorist in the first place- apparently sticking him on point when one of his top operatives was stuck in the field alone with a bomb hidden inside an ornamental duck was just another one of those brilliant ideas he often has).
The bomb still had ten minutes left to detonation. Sydney studied it thoroughly, accessing each wire trigger and checking to make sure there weren't any trick wires. Satisfied that she might have figured out the correct method to disarm it, she grounded one wire and pulled out her pliers, wondering if maybe she should warn Sark that if she was about to clip the wrong wire and he knew it, she would find some way to come back from the grave and make his miserable life a great deal more miserable, but decided against it.
She clipped the wire. The bomb went from ten minutes to twenty-five seconds. Sydney swore extremely loudly several times in rapid succession. She thought Sark might have said something, but she was too busy trying to figure out how to fix this in twenty-five seconds, which, unfortunately, took twenty-five seconds and then....
But the one little duck with the feather in his back- he led the others with a quack, quack, quack....
Sydney returned to base a few minutes later, still soaked to the bone from the waist down and somehow wishing she had exploded, even if dying in an explosion caused by a wooden duck would have been a most humilating way to die- that was preferable to the alternative at this point. The duck was being held by its throat as if she was trying to crush the life out of its windpipe, despite the fact that it neither had a windpipe or lungs- after all, its only innards were a now useless bomb that wasn't really a bomb at all- all it did was play that stupid song over and over again until she finally made it stop in ways that were probably unbecoming of a serious agent. (Sydney, of course, would argue that if one is presented with a discarded hammer in a situation where a discarded hammer might be needed, one should use it with extreme force.)
Sark looked at her and she looked back, her expression full of so many threats of what she'd do to him if he even dared to laugh at her that a lesser man would have cowered. Sark, apparently, either had no fear or a death wish, because he eventually broke into a rather sadistic laugh.
Well, she couldn't say she didn't warn him.
Later when the two of them were back at SD-6 for the debrief, Sark was sporting a rather epic bruise on one side of his face and Sydney looked unreasonably smug even as Sloane lectured her on why it's inappropriate to beat other agents unconscious with ornamental water fowl.