Lights Out and Shoot Up The Station 5 of ?
Title: Lights Out and Shoot Up The Station 5 of ?
Pairing or Characters: Slight Ebony/Slade, Slight Ram/Ruby
Word Count: 1,681
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine, all feedback is welcome.
Lost between the pages of her book, Ruby only half hears the question.
"What is it, this week?" Glancing up over the pages, she sees Slade propping up the bar in front of her.
Ruby smirks, angling the spine.
"Jane Austen," Slade observes with marked amusement. "Are you going to start parading around New Liberty in a bonnet, drink tea?"
She rolls her eyes, with an indulgent chortle.
"It's a good book. For a start, I've already learned, that 'it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' Ruby concludes rather triumphantly, impressed by her own apparent powers of memory.
Slade seems to take on-board her comment for a moment, before saying.
"I did not know that, but maybe that's why, I've never been married." His face creases into a teasing grin.
Ruby studies him in silence for a moment, the combination of time and Ebony haven't been kind to him. His features, which were never conventional enough to be classed as handsome are weather beaten, the lines across his forehead, and around his mouth are deep.
Slade casts a look behind him, calling... "Estelle!"
The girl appears reluctantly next to him, in an ever present haze of floral perfume, feathers, and glittery hair clips. Her hair frames her pretty face in a messy tangle of caramel afro curls. She's the antithesis of her Mother Ebony. Pampered, and adored by her Father.
"Morning, Estelle." Ruby acknowledges the girl, having always felt more than a little sorry for the young girl. Ebony has never been what anyone would ever class as 'parenting' or even 'human' material, it's always fallen to Slade to make-up for the maternal shortcomings of his partner.
"Bonjour Madame, Ruby." Estelle greets Ruby with a wave of precocious confidence.
Her French rusty from secondary school, Ruby is unsure exactly how to reply, so instead she simply asks "French now, what happened to the Spanish?"
Slade proudly wraps one arm around his daughter's narrow shoulders.
"We learned almost everything there was to know about Spanish, a long time ago, didn't we Princess? Now it's all about the French." Slade informs, Ruby hasn't failed to notice how he puffs out whenever discussing his children.
"Oui." Estelle nods emphatically in agreement.
"I think, I might have liked to see Paris." Ruby admits wistfully, deciding against better her judgement to open up her internal box marked things I wish I'd done.
"I will!" Estelle announces excitedly, one long pink nail trailing along the scared surface of the bar. Slade looks less than delighted by the prospect of his only daughter braving the wilds of the world outside the protective bubble of their island home.
"Well, good for you. I wish I'd been a bit more focused, when I was you're age." Ruby abandons the faded pages of her book for a nearby tea towel, beginning the task of rubbing down the bar from the spillages of the previous night.
There's probably more to life than this, and she had once been a girl with ambition that had extended past owning her own Saloon, but Ruby had stopped being a child, a girl the moment the virus had claimed her parents. Survival had been a preoccupation for so long, that she now revelled in the simple pleasures that went hand-in-hand with a settled life.
"So, what can I do for you two, anyway?" Ruby queries, with one half of her brain already considering the lunch special for the day, and if she really could squeeze a third day out of her crab cakes.
"I've come to see, Ram." Slade says, eyeing his daughter briefly.
"Of course, I can't remember the last time I had a visitor who didn't show up for my booze, or my husband." She laments cheerfully, knowing what a motivator guilt has always been to the man in front of her. Ruby watches his eyes roll.
"Ram's out the back having breakfast, there's a fresh pot of coffee on the stove." She gives in reluctantly, taken aback as Slade hops over the bar, joining her on the other side.
"Daddy!" Estelle exclaims with delight.
Slade is all slightly breathless smiles.
"Now, what was the need for that?" Ruby says experted, one hand on her hip.
"Fun." Slade shrugs, planting a quick peck on the side of her cheek.
Ruby turns to Estelle... "Before you get any ideas, and start flinging yourself across the room, there's a door there." She points a the small varnished piece of driftwood separating Ruby's side of the bar, from basically Lex and KC.
"No Princess, you stay with Ruby, me and Ram have got a couple of things to discuss, it won't take long."
The expression that runs briefly over the girl's face is one Ruby recognises a little too well, a potent mixture of loneliness, and the bitter sting of rejection. She can't help but pity the kid.
"Alright, Daddy."
Apparently satisfied, Slade pushes through the beaded curtains into the Saloon's kitchen.
"You know your brother stayed over here last night, with Theo." Ruby informs the girl softly.
"Why don't you go upstairs, and see what the boys are up to?" Her comment is greeted by a look of surprise.
"That would be, okay?"
"Of course, Theo's is the third door on the left."
On her way up the stairs, Estelle pauses briefly catching the sound of her name, and her Father's voice floating up from the floor beneath her feet.
She bends slightly at the knee straining to hear.
"...she's clever, really clever, she reminds me of," Her Father pauses.
"Well, you know who she reminds me of."
Estelle doesn't.
"She just needs someone to push her, to give her a little focus. I can't do it, I don't even know where to start, but you could Ram. All I'm asking, is that you find something for her to do at the television station."
"And what does Ebony say about this?"
Estelle doesn't wait to hear any more, at the mention of her Mother's name she makes short work of the rest of the stairs, at the top she finds a narrow oddly shaped corridor, lined with numerous pictures of flowers in mismatched frames. The repetitive one note gallery ends with a rusty old sign advertising something called Guinness Time.
She twists the stiff brass handle of the third door on the left, and is greeted immediately with a terse shout of... "No Mum go away, we don't want any more food!"
Pushing the door open, Estelle reveals the sight of her younger brother kneeling on the floor, busily engaged in rolling up his sleeping bag, while Theo slouches across his single bed strumming away on his beloved, dented guitar.
"Oh, that's so sweet, does Mummy serve you on a special tray?" She sneers, barging unceremoniously into the room, the door slams pleasingly behind her.
"What are you doing in here?" The lanky, brown haired boy on the bed questions her furiously.
"Your Mum said it was, okay."
Her brother bobs her a cursory glance before turning back to his task at hand.
"Well, it isn't!" Theo spits back at her.
Theo and Violet are the chief antagonists of Estelle's life, and she knows exactly what she's done to offend them both. For instance with Violet it's because Estelle is a girl, a proper one, not a proto-boy. She takes pleasure in all the things that annoy, and enrage Violet, like fashion, and boys.
And Theo hates her, because she's always been the third wheel in his dynamic with her brother.
"Look, I know having a woman who isn't your Mother in your bedroom is a new experience for you, Theodore, but try to adjust." Her comment is met with a snort of laughter from her brother, she grins back at him.
"Josh!" Exclaims the boy on the bed, seemingly betrayed by her brother's snigger.
"Well, she's not exactly wrong." Josh concedes with a shrug of his shoulders.
Seizing the advantage of her brother's rare solidarity, Estelle takes a seat on a stool abandoned behind the now closed door.
"Don't get comfortable!" Theo warns her darkly, his eyes narrowing.
Estelle studies the boys in front of her.
Her brother Josh like her is small for his age, and just like her, he also resembles their Mother more than their Father. His skin is dark, his hair short, black and curly. Josh's face is open, kind, and at the moment grinning back at her.
Theo on the other hand is in Estelle's opinion ridiculously tall, all arms and legs, his primary function seems to be continuously slumping on various items of furniture.
"Why, don't you show her the song Theo?" Josh slips his tapped up glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.
Theo's face almost folds in on itself at the suggestion.
Only now does Estelle notice the tangle of scraps of paper littering the bed.
"We found a suitcase washed up on the beach, most of it was useless, old CD's and the like, but at the bottom was this." She smiles slightly at her brother's use of the word we.
Leaning up on his knees Josh pulls a piece of paper roughly, from underneath his best friend's leg, handing it to her. Estelle dutifully peers down at the sheet of music.
"This Charming Man by The Smiths, imaginative name." Her tongue trips over the title emblazoned across the top.
"There's a couple of difficult cord changes, it needs a girl on the vocal." Josh leans across her, jabbing at the thick black notes across the page.
She flicks over a couple of the lines, noting..."I think, this song is about gay sex."
Neither boy responds to her comment, and Estelle's large grey eyes run over the various images of sweaty looking boys with guitars, for once she decides to keep her thoughts to herself, plucking at the neon sugar skulls wrapped around her slim wrist.
I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear.
Pairing or Characters: Slight Ebony/Slade, Slight Ram/Ruby
Word Count: 1,681
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine, all feedback is welcome.
Lost between the pages of her book, Ruby only half hears the question.
"What is it, this week?" Glancing up over the pages, she sees Slade propping up the bar in front of her.
Ruby smirks, angling the spine.
"Jane Austen," Slade observes with marked amusement. "Are you going to start parading around New Liberty in a bonnet, drink tea?"
She rolls her eyes, with an indulgent chortle.
"It's a good book. For a start, I've already learned, that 'it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' Ruby concludes rather triumphantly, impressed by her own apparent powers of memory.
Slade seems to take on-board her comment for a moment, before saying.
"I did not know that, but maybe that's why, I've never been married." His face creases into a teasing grin.
Ruby studies him in silence for a moment, the combination of time and Ebony haven't been kind to him. His features, which were never conventional enough to be classed as handsome are weather beaten, the lines across his forehead, and around his mouth are deep.
Slade casts a look behind him, calling... "Estelle!"
The girl appears reluctantly next to him, in an ever present haze of floral perfume, feathers, and glittery hair clips. Her hair frames her pretty face in a messy tangle of caramel afro curls. She's the antithesis of her Mother Ebony. Pampered, and adored by her Father.
"Morning, Estelle." Ruby acknowledges the girl, having always felt more than a little sorry for the young girl. Ebony has never been what anyone would ever class as 'parenting' or even 'human' material, it's always fallen to Slade to make-up for the maternal shortcomings of his partner.
"Bonjour Madame, Ruby." Estelle greets Ruby with a wave of precocious confidence.
Her French rusty from secondary school, Ruby is unsure exactly how to reply, so instead she simply asks "French now, what happened to the Spanish?"
Slade proudly wraps one arm around his daughter's narrow shoulders.
"We learned almost everything there was to know about Spanish, a long time ago, didn't we Princess? Now it's all about the French." Slade informs, Ruby hasn't failed to notice how he puffs out whenever discussing his children.
"Oui." Estelle nods emphatically in agreement.
"I think, I might have liked to see Paris." Ruby admits wistfully, deciding against better her judgement to open up her internal box marked things I wish I'd done.
"I will!" Estelle announces excitedly, one long pink nail trailing along the scared surface of the bar. Slade looks less than delighted by the prospect of his only daughter braving the wilds of the world outside the protective bubble of their island home.
"Well, good for you. I wish I'd been a bit more focused, when I was you're age." Ruby abandons the faded pages of her book for a nearby tea towel, beginning the task of rubbing down the bar from the spillages of the previous night.
There's probably more to life than this, and she had once been a girl with ambition that had extended past owning her own Saloon, but Ruby had stopped being a child, a girl the moment the virus had claimed her parents. Survival had been a preoccupation for so long, that she now revelled in the simple pleasures that went hand-in-hand with a settled life.
"So, what can I do for you two, anyway?" Ruby queries, with one half of her brain already considering the lunch special for the day, and if she really could squeeze a third day out of her crab cakes.
"I've come to see, Ram." Slade says, eyeing his daughter briefly.
"Of course, I can't remember the last time I had a visitor who didn't show up for my booze, or my husband." She laments cheerfully, knowing what a motivator guilt has always been to the man in front of her. Ruby watches his eyes roll.
"Ram's out the back having breakfast, there's a fresh pot of coffee on the stove." She gives in reluctantly, taken aback as Slade hops over the bar, joining her on the other side.
"Daddy!" Estelle exclaims with delight.
Slade is all slightly breathless smiles.
"Now, what was the need for that?" Ruby says experted, one hand on her hip.
"Fun." Slade shrugs, planting a quick peck on the side of her cheek.
Ruby turns to Estelle... "Before you get any ideas, and start flinging yourself across the room, there's a door there." She points a the small varnished piece of driftwood separating Ruby's side of the bar, from basically Lex and KC.
"No Princess, you stay with Ruby, me and Ram have got a couple of things to discuss, it won't take long."
The expression that runs briefly over the girl's face is one Ruby recognises a little too well, a potent mixture of loneliness, and the bitter sting of rejection. She can't help but pity the kid.
"Alright, Daddy."
Apparently satisfied, Slade pushes through the beaded curtains into the Saloon's kitchen.
"You know your brother stayed over here last night, with Theo." Ruby informs the girl softly.
"Why don't you go upstairs, and see what the boys are up to?" Her comment is greeted by a look of surprise.
"That would be, okay?"
"Of course, Theo's is the third door on the left."
On her way up the stairs, Estelle pauses briefly catching the sound of her name, and her Father's voice floating up from the floor beneath her feet.
She bends slightly at the knee straining to hear.
"...she's clever, really clever, she reminds me of," Her Father pauses.
"Well, you know who she reminds me of."
Estelle doesn't.
"She just needs someone to push her, to give her a little focus. I can't do it, I don't even know where to start, but you could Ram. All I'm asking, is that you find something for her to do at the television station."
"And what does Ebony say about this?"
Estelle doesn't wait to hear any more, at the mention of her Mother's name she makes short work of the rest of the stairs, at the top she finds a narrow oddly shaped corridor, lined with numerous pictures of flowers in mismatched frames. The repetitive one note gallery ends with a rusty old sign advertising something called Guinness Time.
She twists the stiff brass handle of the third door on the left, and is greeted immediately with a terse shout of... "No Mum go away, we don't want any more food!"
Pushing the door open, Estelle reveals the sight of her younger brother kneeling on the floor, busily engaged in rolling up his sleeping bag, while Theo slouches across his single bed strumming away on his beloved, dented guitar.
"Oh, that's so sweet, does Mummy serve you on a special tray?" She sneers, barging unceremoniously into the room, the door slams pleasingly behind her.
"What are you doing in here?" The lanky, brown haired boy on the bed questions her furiously.
"Your Mum said it was, okay."
Her brother bobs her a cursory glance before turning back to his task at hand.
"Well, it isn't!" Theo spits back at her.
Theo and Violet are the chief antagonists of Estelle's life, and she knows exactly what she's done to offend them both. For instance with Violet it's because Estelle is a girl, a proper one, not a proto-boy. She takes pleasure in all the things that annoy, and enrage Violet, like fashion, and boys.
And Theo hates her, because she's always been the third wheel in his dynamic with her brother.
"Look, I know having a woman who isn't your Mother in your bedroom is a new experience for you, Theodore, but try to adjust." Her comment is met with a snort of laughter from her brother, she grins back at him.
"Josh!" Exclaims the boy on the bed, seemingly betrayed by her brother's snigger.
"Well, she's not exactly wrong." Josh concedes with a shrug of his shoulders.
Seizing the advantage of her brother's rare solidarity, Estelle takes a seat on a stool abandoned behind the now closed door.
"Don't get comfortable!" Theo warns her darkly, his eyes narrowing.
Estelle studies the boys in front of her.
Her brother Josh like her is small for his age, and just like her, he also resembles their Mother more than their Father. His skin is dark, his hair short, black and curly. Josh's face is open, kind, and at the moment grinning back at her.
Theo on the other hand is in Estelle's opinion ridiculously tall, all arms and legs, his primary function seems to be continuously slumping on various items of furniture.
"Why, don't you show her the song Theo?" Josh slips his tapped up glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.
Theo's face almost folds in on itself at the suggestion.
Only now does Estelle notice the tangle of scraps of paper littering the bed.
"We found a suitcase washed up on the beach, most of it was useless, old CD's and the like, but at the bottom was this." She smiles slightly at her brother's use of the word we.
Leaning up on his knees Josh pulls a piece of paper roughly, from underneath his best friend's leg, handing it to her. Estelle dutifully peers down at the sheet of music.
"This Charming Man by The Smiths, imaginative name." Her tongue trips over the title emblazoned across the top.
"There's a couple of difficult cord changes, it needs a girl on the vocal." Josh leans across her, jabbing at the thick black notes across the page.
She flicks over a couple of the lines, noting..."I think, this song is about gay sex."
Neither boy responds to her comment, and Estelle's large grey eyes run over the various images of sweaty looking boys with guitars, for once she decides to keep her thoughts to herself, plucking at the neon sugar skulls wrapped around her slim wrist.
I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear.