Multi-fandom drabble dump!
This is mainly just to prove that I am still, in fact, alive and writing.
It includes everything I wrote for the drabble war we did a couple months back, as well as the latest stuff I've been jotting down. So far, nothing with major plot has surfaced, and everything I already have with plot is as dead as a doornail, which is sad, because some of it I was really eager to share.
So this is mostly just a bunch of little snapshots. Because I can.
[ 4 ] The Kite Runner
[ 1 ] Animorphs
[ 1 ] Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
[ 1 ] Firefly/Serenity
[ 4 ] Leven Thumps and the Eyes of the Want
[ 2 ] The Mortal Instruments
[ 10 ] Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice for All
[ 1 ] Avatar: The Last Airbender
The Kite Runner
1.
"Ali," said the little boy, mouth soft and mushy and barely moving from the weight of pride. "Ali, I missed lunch today."
Ali laughed something in Arabic which might have been a prayer, might have been an insult, might have been a euphemism for chicken legs, he didn't know, but his eyes were warm and knowing when he said, "Of course I will share my food with you. I will share everything I have, agha. You needn't ask."
This isn't what he meant, though, this isn't what he meant, cries the little boy from inside the older man; her painted lips pant wide and he sucks at them, hands sliding up the accordian of her back and Sanaubar laughs, feet slipping from her sandals when he lifts her up, bracing her against his wife's library (he'll never look at her books the same way again) and she captures his naked mouth with hers, unashamed.
This isn't what he meant.
2.
He takes a criminology course, and while he's not paying attention he gets a case profile tried by the UN international court of justice. He'll ask the girl sitting behind him before class ends what the assignment's supposed to be.
Sohrab makes to tuck the handout underneath his folder and continue his doodling when a cursory glance at the front page makes him stiffen like wax the instant it hits cold air. Afghanistan. Taliban. War crimes. Ethnic cleansing. Called One-Eyed Assef by his inferiors. Executed April 2002.
He smiles before he can stop himself, thinks maybe he'll ask the girl what the assignment is, and to dinner while he's at it.
3.
Soraya's startled by the thin flame of hatred that flickers hot inside of her throat as she puts the phone back into its cradle. Fear, redemption, double standards race across her mind, and there was simply no room for this secret and its jagged edges in her puzzle of a husband.
He got away with his crime, she tells her reflection, jealous. She stops braiding, understands; her lover escaped scot-free while she served the sentence, and the difference was that Amir repented, every minute of every day, in the quiet of his heart where no one could recognize him.
Just like that, her hatred goes out.
4.
It begins, if that's even the right word, the day he came home from school to find nobody home but his German aunt and the Hazara servant. He systematically searched every room, like he'd been told, and when he came back downstairs he almost ran into the servant when he came through the parlor door.
They looked at each other coldly and reached an understanding. Assef darted around him and into the room.
His aunt didn't bother to cover herself; she wiped the blood from her lip and touched each scratch mark on her neck with a detached curiosity. She held her ripped dress together with one hand, and the other rummaged in a drawer at her elbow.
"Come here, Assef," she said without bothering to see who came in. She removed an object from the drawer. "Come here, and I will show you what to do the next time that filthy Hazara man lays a hand on you."
The brass knuckles she holds up glint strangely in the sunlight, and Assef watches them like a magpie watches salvation.
Animorphs
1.
He'd been there when the wild West was tamed; nobody important, not a gunslinging hero on the back of a chestnut stallion. Just a man, sitting with other men and hoping and dreaming so hard it cracked their chests right down the middle.
Humans, curious creatures, creating comfortable niches for themselves and then reaching farther out, outracing even themselves.
Erek stands with them, nothing more important than a man, and although he is not wearing a Stetson and there are no spurs on his boots, it's the same feeling -- hope, bubbling up inside of his chest, stretching the heartstrings he doesn't possess -- the day Earth reaches into space with the Animorphs as their big damn heroes.
Potc:AWE
1.
It's about five years before she remembers the most important part; Davy Jones had never been a pirate. He'd never lost his sense of fair price, but with time, he'd forgotten. So had the rest of the world.
"I was wondering when I was going to see you," Charon laughs in her face, but she says, William, because that is how she remembers him and he shuts up. She flips him a golden coin and goes to stand at the prow with head held high because she is a goddess and Davy Jones has already taken that from her once.
"You know, my sweet," says Hades dryly in response to her request. "I am awfully tired of doing you favors."
Firefly/Serenity
1.
Thisbe has a cousin who married a girl whose personal seamstress came from the border planets and had a brother who trafficked brides and sometimes got news, but not the kind of news that the Alliance usually doesn’t acknowledge. It’s through this cousin, who on a good day has the tact of a rhino with gastrointestinal difficulties, that Thisbe first hears of Malcolm Reynolds and his unusual cargo.
She sits with this news for a couple days before she says to her husband, "I think I found them."
Richard Tam looks at her, guesses what she's going to say, and gives his head one short, sharp shake. Thisbe doesn't mention it again.
Leven Thumps
1.
Foo was a little peeved the day the lithen king married a nit.
After all, it's not like lithens and nits could spawn -- lithens tended to grow their children in cultivated gardens high in the airless mountains of Fte, although lately the farms had been left to grow a little wild and unweeded and everybody agreed that's what caused bad seeds like Azure. As far as anyone knew, nits were more mammalian, which was an even stranger way of going about it; most inhabitants of Foo couldn't imagine carrying their offspring inside their own, overheated, smelly flesh; that'd be like torturing your child before it was even born!
But these days, there were so few nits left. Those that hadn't been drawn in by the promise of being reunited with the Reality they'd been so unfairly snatched from were mostly senile and rather useless. And with all the cogs and rants who'd been sucked into the nothingness, youth in Foo was a little thin on the ground.
And the lithens! There were, what, only ten of them left unburied?
So, frankly, a marriage with no chance of producing more life to help unburden overworked Foo was simply irresponsible!
Although, as far as the latter went, there probably wasn't a whole lot to worry about, because nits only lived about a hundred and fifty years and Geth had centuries after the death of his pretty white-haired wife to find a she-lithen.
2.
The purple streaks in Ezra's hair were the only way to tell them apart. There should have been something in their faces -- the way they smiled; Geth benevolent, Ezra malicious -- or how they held their bodies, something to prove they were the other's antithesis, but they were both smooth, arched in tone and feature, and impossibly beautiful (in a masculine way.)
Geth and Ezra knew who started it; who exactly pushed who up against the wall, eyes charged and challenging, pressing hard into long hip bones and bisecting lines, and who responded. Even if no one else did.
3.
"I don't know," stated Winter. "It was very clear in the beginning that the villain we were fighting was Sabine. Now," she shakes her head. "It's hard to imagine there's someone out there who's more misguided and evil."
All it took was one look at Geth's expression -- which on anyone else would have been crestfallen, except his face wore it so infrequently that it didn't quite know what to do with it -- to know that she had said the wrong thing. "Forgive me," he said upon being caught. "It's painful to hear that from you. We all used to be really good friends, you, Sabine, and I."
"So everyone keeps telling me," she mumbled, turning her head away to hide how unsettled she must look.
4.
It always seemed to go like this: they'd get separated through no fault of their own (in the beginning, it was Geth and the twenty years he'd spent as a tree; then it was Winter, but she doesn't remember this very well since she spent most of it unconscious, and then it was Leven and wouldn't you know, he swanned off and became the Want.) and it seemed to her that they spent more time trying to reunite themselves than actually working towards a particular goal.
"But that is our goal," Geth said simply in that isn't-the-weather-nice tone of voice that makes her want to smack him. "We're supposed to be there for Leven. He's the one who knows what we're going to do."
"Shame on me for hoping that somewhere in between, we could save the world," she replied in little more than a growl, and gave up trying to be in a bad mood, because he just laughed at her.
The Mortal Instruments
1.
"What I don't understand," says one Lightwood sibling to another, mouth trembling with emotion. A spoon is waved with agitation, and the peanut butter clings to its surface for dear life. "Is how he refuses to even consider one of us or the other romantically," and the other sibling startles, muscles twitching like a bird's and scars surfacing to the skin the way it does with fight and flight, because this is the first time it has been acknowledged out loud by either, "Because we're like family to him. But Clary -- no, he'll screw her. After all, she's only his biological sister."
2.
"You don't have to keep coming, you know, since you obviously hate it so much."
Jace just grunted.
"Do you think she's going to get better?" From the inflection in her voice, however, it was plain the real question was, do you want her to get better?
"I don't know. Let's ask," he swung on her abruptly, chair legs screeching against the linoleum in protest. Clary tensed almost imperceptively, but he just held out his hand. Wordlessly, she tipped a handful of the M&Ms she just got from the vending machine into his upturned palms. He cupped them and shook them, them tossed them across his mother's bedspread.
From where she stood, Clary couldn't see the outcome, but Jace's expression didn't change. "Hm," he went noncommittally, and picked up an M&M and popped it into his mouth. "Runes never bother to give clear yes-or-no answers anymore."
Phoenix Wright: JFA
1.
The instant Phoenix disappeared back into the courtroom, Edgeworth asked with a flat tone and pinpoint accuracy, "Why do you love him?"
Maya blinked at him, having forgotten he was there; one hand propped up on his hip and his shoulders cocked back like he was about to break into a strut. He regarded her coolly, waiting for her answer, and she felt a smile curve her lips without conscious direction from her brain.
"Same reason you do," she folded her arms underneath her chest. "It's the only thing I do in this profession that I don't need an excuse for."
2.
Their cab gets stuck in traffic half-way past five, and he heaves a sigh, slumping in his seat and leaning his head against the windowpane. In the seat next to him, Maya props her feet up on the back of the seat and starts painting her toenails. Rap music drifts to them from someone nearby despite the closed windows.
"Is it just me," he begins, feeling the cab vibrate against his ear. "Or does nobody uphold the ethics of being a lawyer, a judge, a witness, or a whatever anymore? Edgeworth, von Karma, even myself to an extent -- it's all about winning. Not whether somebody is actually guilty (don't let the heated arguments fool you.) It's not about bringing peace of mind to the family of the victims. It's about being ... being clever and one-upping each other in court. I'm twenty-four, and already I'm jaded about it all."
"Hey now," goes Maya, sounding worried. Smart he might be, but deep was most definitely a side he didn't show very often -- or, indeed, possessed. It didn't escape his notice that she tried to tuck her legs up underneath her like they were at a slumber party, but thankfully, her seatbelt restrained her. "Hey, Nick. Don't be like that. Besides! You've gotten lucky! You've never opted to defend someone who was genuinely guilty!"
He opens his mouth to object automatically, but Maya doesn't wait for him (she knows better.) "Hey! My sister wasn -- isn't like that! There's still hope."
Phoenix smiled wanly. "Your sister's dead, Maya. She doesn't have to worry about reputations or money."
"She didn't worry about them when she was alive, either!" she says hotly. "And that's why you started working for her, remember? Geez, Nick, I'd never peg you as ... as ... as ungrateful!" Unable to storm away due to being confined in a moving vehicle, she folds her arms, puffs out her cheeks, and refuses to speak to him for the rest of the drive. Phoenix doesn't bother telling her that her toes are only half-painted.
3.
"And this from the mouth of a man whom I rarely see without the company ... ah. Er, assistance, of a young, impressionable girl."
"Impressionable!" Maya exclaimed, insulted. Then her face fell. "Oh, dear. Does he mean that?" she said, more to herself than to them.
"Says the man with a big, foufy cravat!" Phoenix fires back, smirking. "Seriously. How long does it take you to put that on in the morning? And how ever do you manage not to spill on it?"
Edgeworth examined the ends of his fingernails. "It does take a particular amount of talent and finesse," he admitted humbly.
"Obviously," Phoenix's tone was sarcastic.
Maya looked around helplessly, as neither of them had any attention for anyone other than each other. She got the vague, unsettled feeling they weren't really talking about cravats. Or her.
"I think this is something you'll just have to let them work out on their own, pal," Gumshoe said sympathetically.
4.
It was in that moment of "... oh! OH MY GOD!" thunderbolt of realization -- one of the ones that made her so glad she was working for a defense attorney -- that Maya flung her arms around Phoenix's neck and kissed him square on the mouth.
Having had no practical experience in the field, she wouldn't be able to tell you if he responded or not -- his lips kind of twitched under the pressure of hers, but that didn't tell her anything, one way or another.
She pulled away, throwing a cursory glance at his face and hoping her expression was schooled into ... something that wasn't the usual naked betrayal of everything she was feeling, and knowing full well that it was not. Phoenix looked right back, read everything, and smiled. But it wasn't the kind of smile that Maya was used to seeing on television or in the movie theaters, the one that warned of an upcoming feel good moment.
No. This was the smile of someone who was about to deliver some bad news and hoped to God you were a gracious loser.
It wasn't the last time she kissed him -- there were more victories and dares and New Years parties -- but it was the last time she thought it would mean something.
5.
"Are they ..." for the first time yet, Sway found himself at a loss for words. He didn't know why it was important, but he gestured after them. "Do they...?"
Puzzled by his client's sudden change of tone, Edgeworth looked up, lowering his eyepiece. "Hm? Oh them?" Outside the door and out of earshot, Maya held her cell phone up to the window, scowling and waving it around like she was hoping it would get her a better reception. Wright said something in a low, dry rumble and it earned him a shriek of laughter and a solid smack on the shoulder. "To my knowledge, no." Edgeworth looked down at his papers again.
Sway assumed that was the end of that, and lowered his eyes in silence. Moments ticked by, accompanied by snatches of conversation drifting to them from the waiting room as the defense lawyer and his assistant waited for Sway to be free so they could question him. But even that died out.
Then, suddenly, Edgeworth dropped his fist on the desk, picking at some nonexistent spot on his lapel.
"They do love each other, though," he stated with an offhand shrug, oblivious to Sway's eyebrows hitting his hairline: Edgeworth came off as the kind of man who'd rather die than admit 'love' was in his vocabulary. He glanced over his shoulder again: Maya (he found it impossible to call her Fey, even though it was the polite thing to do) had given up with her cell phone and sprawled out across the sofa, leaving only half a cushion for Wright. She played with her massive beads, and every time she jingled her foot in tune to something that was only in her head, she bumped Wright in the thigh, but he didn't seem to mind.
"After everything they've been through together, I think I would be more surprised if they didn't." Edgeworth put one finger to his temple. "But if there's anything more to it, it's really not my business," he said with finality, and Sway never asked again.
6.
"What? What are you smirking at me for?" von Karma asked testily.
"That thing you're doing with your sleeve," he nodded to where she had her fist clenched around her costume. "Your dad used to do that all the time, whenever he was impatient or someone had thrown him off guard."
Her arms instantly dropped to her sides, and Phoenix swallowed the urge to look away quickly, as if he had witnessed something shameful. Or maybe it was the most telling action she'd ever committed in front of him.
7.
It wasn't that hard to get him to respond -- he kissed him once, twice, hands holding him solidly behind the ears, thumbs crooked into his pulse, and the third time, Edgeworth's center of balance shifted so that he wasn't leaning as wildly away as possible. The fourth kiss, which had lost the tempting and the playfulness of the first few and had become lingering and, yes, a little desperate, had Edgeworth's hands moving, ghosting across his shoulder blades. They hesitated there, and then settled, warm and heavy. For Phoenix, who had been expecting a long and probably bloody battle, this was all the encouragement he needed. It was, after all, the creed he'd clung to since the very beginning: no matter what, Edgeworth always cracked.
8.
She flounced in, and Phoenix barely had the time to notice she had taken more care in her costume today than usual before she put both her hands on her hips and demanded, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Urk?" said Phoenix, because she was one of the few people that had the unique ability to throw him completely off guard. He waved the phone receiver at her. "Ordering Chinese? Gumshoe recommended this place -- he hinted he would never speak to us again if we didn't try the Mongolian Beef."
She snatched the phone from him and put it back in its cradle. "No Chinese. Get up. We're going out to eat. And for gods' sake, do something about your hair." Licking her palms, she swiped ineffectually at his sideburns.
"We are?" he went, dodging. "Since when?"
"Ugh!" she said emphatically. "Weren't you even paying the slightest bit of attention in court today? The Judge has a reservation for four at the Grill. And its not like he has any friends. At least, none who aren't currently incarcerated. So I went up to him and, using my formidable powers of persuasion, managed to get us in. Oh, this will never do," and with one swift, expert tug, she took his tie off.
Trying not to feel violated, Phoenix protested, "But! He's the Judge! I don't even know his real name! Besides, we're ... we're lawyers! Isn't there some kind of rule against us fraternizing, or something?"
Maya rummaged around in his desk drawers (he genuinely did keep his ties in the closet, on the hangars next to the few remaining scarves of Mia's he hasn't removed yet, but he wasn't about to tell her that.) and looked up, rolling her eyes. "Just call him 'Your Honor,' like always," she said, because she did have a rather bad case of selective hearing.
"Hang on," said Phoenix in a stroke of genius, as Maya held up a crumpled tie to his suit. The color worked, but it would probably take a good half hour of ironing to get it to lie flat. "If the reservation is for four, then who else is coming?"
"Oh, I invited Larry. I figured it would be the first time he's eaten there without having to foot the bill. I hope that's all right," she shoved a better tie through his collar, beaming.
He stared at her, and it occurred to him that not only did he have to figure out his witnesses' ulterior motives, he had to figure out his assistant’s.
*&*
The Judge put his fork down, and asked incredulously, "Why are you all friends?"
It cut right through their chatter, and the defense lawyer, his bubble-headed friend, and the spirit medium all looked in his direction like they'd forgotten he was there. "Huh?" they said in one breath, with the same degree of confusion.
Considerately, he gave them a few more moments to process the question. Maya caught on first, and laughed, "Oh, no. We have plenty in common! Right, guys?"
"Uhhh," said Phoenix brilliantly. His attention shifted back to them, getting that look on his face he had when he was running through a dozen case files and a dozen evidence claims in his head, trying to find the one story that would piece it all together.
"That's easy!" said Larry without apparently thinking at all. He winked. "We've all been on trial for murder! That kind of experience tends to bring people together."
9.
The first time she met Orvheulte von Karma, it was, naturally, in court.
She was in the middle of giving a testimony (granted, a false one, but the only person who was going to know that was dead. Hence why she, a spirit medium, even had a testimony at all.) when a gasping murmur from the audience interrupted her rather (she thought) stirring, horrifying portrayal of the crime scene.
With a bang of her gavel, the Judge ordered silence.
"Sorry, Your Honor!" said someone. "A woman up here just fainted."
"Call an ambulance!" said someone else.
"Oh, honestly!" snapped Misty Fey, shoving her giant, ballooning sleeves up to her elbows. Ignoring the protests of both the Judge and the defense, she got down from the witness stand with some difficulty and waddled on over. "The only thing wrong with her is you lot. Shoo! Give her some air!"
Sure enough, as soon as she got a little breathing room, the woman who'd fainted began to mutter and come to. She was a beautiful thing, with glossy brown hair, thin, aristocratic eyes and an even thinner body. She made the mistake of trying to sit up, and when her face went the gray of porridge, Misty pushed her firmly back down. At the contact, a jolt shivered through her aura, highlighting everything for her to see as clearly as a splash of blood must be to a detective. She turned to Mia and gently ordered her to go ask the bailiff for a glass of water and some wafers for the mistress von Karma.
The prosecutor appeared at her elbow, looking three-parts annoyed at the interruption when he'd been on a roll and one-part embarrassed at the sight of his wife blinking up at the bright courtroom lights with a distinctly confused air. Misty heaved herself to her feet, ignoring the screaming protests of her swollen ankles.
"Hmph," said Manfred, folding his arms. "You'll have to excuse my wife," he said to the courtroom at large. "She's been a little weak on her feet these days. I don't think the air of this country agrees with her very much."
Misty scoffed. Loudly. "You buffoon," she said, jamming her hands on her thick waist. "It's got nothing to do with the air around here. She's fainting because she's pregnant!"
Before either von Karma had a chance to respond, the bailiff appeared with the requested food and drink in hand and a satisfied-looking Mia in tow. He handed the water to the stunned Orvheulte, who smiled weakly and pulled herself into a sitting position, sipping with a strained kind of daintiness. Her other hand crept to her belly. Manfred fell to his knees beside her.
"Stay there," Misty told him, earning her a small smile from the wife. "And look after her. I think you forget, prosecutor, that when you married her, you vowed to put her before all else. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get that man convicted."
.....
The second and last time she saw Orvheulte von Karma was several months later, in a hospital down the street from the combined police precinct and prosecutor's offices. She was alone in a room on the third floor; someone had positioned her wheelchair by the window and forgotten her there, but she didn't look as if she minded.
Her face, when she turned it towards the sound of Misty's footsteps, was softer and fuller than it had been that day in the courtroom, and a great deal more colorful.
"I had hoped I vould see you again," she said sincerely, in her old, comfortable accent like a bedtime story. "I have a question I vould like to ask of you, Misty Fey."
Misty didn't bother to ask how she knew her name. She told Mia to go pester one of the nurses about a sucker (she felt bad, somewhere inside of her, that she was always telling her oldest daughter to leave the room: I need to channel, Mia, go ask Aunt Morgan to make you strawberry custard. This is grown-up talk, Mia; go play. No, Mia, Mommy and Daddy aren't mad at each other. Why don't you check up on the baby? She'd feel worse, if only Mia hadn't developed a demure little smile and mature eyes so early.) and gently set the carseat she'd been holding down on the windowsill, so as not to wake the sleeping Maya.
"What is it?" she asked.
Orvheulte looked down at the newborn infant she cradled in her arms. "Do you think, Miss Misty Fey, that someday, in a garden not unlike that one," she nodded out the window. "That your Maya and my dear little Franziska vill play together? As friends?"
Misty stared at her. "I don't rightly know," she said. "I'm a medium, von Karma, not a fortuneteller."
"I am not so sure," Orvheulte rejoined. "It is the vay I feel in court sometimes too, yes. That there is alvays more to the story than is sometimes presented. Life is not vhat is told to you and vhat is 'decisive evidence,' and they are not the lines that divide people. Do you understand?" Misty just blinked.
Franziska yawned, turning her head to nuzzle into her mother's breasts. Orvheulte smiled wistfully, sadly, and turned her daughter away.
10.
He found both Wright and Edgeworth by the drinking fountain, arguing in low voices. This was nothing new, so he strode forward to interrupt them and inform them that recess was over before either of them could fix him with that baleful glare that did funny disintegrating things to his backbone.
Suddenly, Wright slammed his palm down on the fountain's rim, snarling. "You can't do that! It's diabolical!" His eyes sparked. "It'll turn you into a fraud! It'll make you everything you've been trying to dispute!"
Edgeworth stepped forward, his hand pressing into the wall by Wright's hip and effectively trapping him up against the fountain, moving in so close that, dumbstruck, the Judge stopped dead in his tracks. Neither man took notice of him standing there. It had never really dawned on him before that Wright was the taller man; even when he was suffering a humiliating defeat, Edgeworth always had managed to look like he had something over his opponent.
When he spoke, his voice was so soft that it could have been the rustle of his own clothes, except for the very real evidence of Edgeworth's lips moving, of Wright's eyes darting down to watch them. "And you?" He whispered. "Screwing the prosecution? What does that make you?"
The Judge made some kind of noise in the back of his throat, but fortunately, he was covered up by the extremely loud squeak of a sneaker from further down the hall.
A:tLA
1.
She wets the tip of the paintbrush between her lips to make a fine point, ponders the question, and makes one minute change in detail on the vase before her.
Nobody says it to her face -- she'll have to change this, she thinks, because a nation cannot be built on whispers traded like sweets behind turned backs -- but she surprises them, simply by nature of being a woman. Plotting to overthrow the government is understood to be a masculine profession; men are usually the only ones dense enough to try it. It's refreshing, she decides.
She settles for smiling, because to her, it's not plotting to overthrow the government; it's plotting to overthrow a husband, and that is a trade every Fire Nation wife is familiar with.
It includes everything I wrote for the drabble war we did a couple months back, as well as the latest stuff I've been jotting down. So far, nothing with major plot has surfaced, and everything I already have with plot is as dead as a doornail, which is sad, because some of it I was really eager to share.
So this is mostly just a bunch of little snapshots. Because I can.
[ 4 ] The Kite Runner
[ 1 ] Animorphs
[ 1 ] Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
[ 1 ] Firefly/Serenity
[ 4 ] Leven Thumps and the Eyes of the Want
[ 2 ] The Mortal Instruments
[ 10 ] Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice for All
[ 1 ] Avatar: The Last Airbender
The Kite Runner
1.
"Ali," said the little boy, mouth soft and mushy and barely moving from the weight of pride. "Ali, I missed lunch today."
Ali laughed something in Arabic which might have been a prayer, might have been an insult, might have been a euphemism for chicken legs, he didn't know, but his eyes were warm and knowing when he said, "Of course I will share my food with you. I will share everything I have, agha. You needn't ask."
This isn't what he meant, though, this isn't what he meant, cries the little boy from inside the older man; her painted lips pant wide and he sucks at them, hands sliding up the accordian of her back and Sanaubar laughs, feet slipping from her sandals when he lifts her up, bracing her against his wife's library (he'll never look at her books the same way again) and she captures his naked mouth with hers, unashamed.
This isn't what he meant.
2.
He takes a criminology course, and while he's not paying attention he gets a case profile tried by the UN international court of justice. He'll ask the girl sitting behind him before class ends what the assignment's supposed to be.
Sohrab makes to tuck the handout underneath his folder and continue his doodling when a cursory glance at the front page makes him stiffen like wax the instant it hits cold air. Afghanistan. Taliban. War crimes. Ethnic cleansing. Called One-Eyed Assef by his inferiors. Executed April 2002.
He smiles before he can stop himself, thinks maybe he'll ask the girl what the assignment is, and to dinner while he's at it.
3.
Soraya's startled by the thin flame of hatred that flickers hot inside of her throat as she puts the phone back into its cradle. Fear, redemption, double standards race across her mind, and there was simply no room for this secret and its jagged edges in her puzzle of a husband.
He got away with his crime, she tells her reflection, jealous. She stops braiding, understands; her lover escaped scot-free while she served the sentence, and the difference was that Amir repented, every minute of every day, in the quiet of his heart where no one could recognize him.
Just like that, her hatred goes out.
4.
It begins, if that's even the right word, the day he came home from school to find nobody home but his German aunt and the Hazara servant. He systematically searched every room, like he'd been told, and when he came back downstairs he almost ran into the servant when he came through the parlor door.
They looked at each other coldly and reached an understanding. Assef darted around him and into the room.
His aunt didn't bother to cover herself; she wiped the blood from her lip and touched each scratch mark on her neck with a detached curiosity. She held her ripped dress together with one hand, and the other rummaged in a drawer at her elbow.
"Come here, Assef," she said without bothering to see who came in. She removed an object from the drawer. "Come here, and I will show you what to do the next time that filthy Hazara man lays a hand on you."
The brass knuckles she holds up glint strangely in the sunlight, and Assef watches them like a magpie watches salvation.
Animorphs
1.
He'd been there when the wild West was tamed; nobody important, not a gunslinging hero on the back of a chestnut stallion. Just a man, sitting with other men and hoping and dreaming so hard it cracked their chests right down the middle.
Humans, curious creatures, creating comfortable niches for themselves and then reaching farther out, outracing even themselves.
Erek stands with them, nothing more important than a man, and although he is not wearing a Stetson and there are no spurs on his boots, it's the same feeling -- hope, bubbling up inside of his chest, stretching the heartstrings he doesn't possess -- the day Earth reaches into space with the Animorphs as their big damn heroes.
Potc:AWE
1.
It's about five years before she remembers the most important part; Davy Jones had never been a pirate. He'd never lost his sense of fair price, but with time, he'd forgotten. So had the rest of the world.
"I was wondering when I was going to see you," Charon laughs in her face, but she says, William, because that is how she remembers him and he shuts up. She flips him a golden coin and goes to stand at the prow with head held high because she is a goddess and Davy Jones has already taken that from her once.
"You know, my sweet," says Hades dryly in response to her request. "I am awfully tired of doing you favors."
Firefly/Serenity
1.
Thisbe has a cousin who married a girl whose personal seamstress came from the border planets and had a brother who trafficked brides and sometimes got news, but not the kind of news that the Alliance usually doesn’t acknowledge. It’s through this cousin, who on a good day has the tact of a rhino with gastrointestinal difficulties, that Thisbe first hears of Malcolm Reynolds and his unusual cargo.
She sits with this news for a couple days before she says to her husband, "I think I found them."
Richard Tam looks at her, guesses what she's going to say, and gives his head one short, sharp shake. Thisbe doesn't mention it again.
Leven Thumps
1.
Foo was a little peeved the day the lithen king married a nit.
After all, it's not like lithens and nits could spawn -- lithens tended to grow their children in cultivated gardens high in the airless mountains of Fte, although lately the farms had been left to grow a little wild and unweeded and everybody agreed that's what caused bad seeds like Azure. As far as anyone knew, nits were more mammalian, which was an even stranger way of going about it; most inhabitants of Foo couldn't imagine carrying their offspring inside their own, overheated, smelly flesh; that'd be like torturing your child before it was even born!
But these days, there were so few nits left. Those that hadn't been drawn in by the promise of being reunited with the Reality they'd been so unfairly snatched from were mostly senile and rather useless. And with all the cogs and rants who'd been sucked into the nothingness, youth in Foo was a little thin on the ground.
And the lithens! There were, what, only ten of them left unburied?
So, frankly, a marriage with no chance of producing more life to help unburden overworked Foo was simply irresponsible!
Although, as far as the latter went, there probably wasn't a whole lot to worry about, because nits only lived about a hundred and fifty years and Geth had centuries after the death of his pretty white-haired wife to find a she-lithen.
2.
The purple streaks in Ezra's hair were the only way to tell them apart. There should have been something in their faces -- the way they smiled; Geth benevolent, Ezra malicious -- or how they held their bodies, something to prove they were the other's antithesis, but they were both smooth, arched in tone and feature, and impossibly beautiful (in a masculine way.)
Geth and Ezra knew who started it; who exactly pushed who up against the wall, eyes charged and challenging, pressing hard into long hip bones and bisecting lines, and who responded. Even if no one else did.
3.
"I don't know," stated Winter. "It was very clear in the beginning that the villain we were fighting was Sabine. Now," she shakes her head. "It's hard to imagine there's someone out there who's more misguided and evil."
All it took was one look at Geth's expression -- which on anyone else would have been crestfallen, except his face wore it so infrequently that it didn't quite know what to do with it -- to know that she had said the wrong thing. "Forgive me," he said upon being caught. "It's painful to hear that from you. We all used to be really good friends, you, Sabine, and I."
"So everyone keeps telling me," she mumbled, turning her head away to hide how unsettled she must look.
4.
It always seemed to go like this: they'd get separated through no fault of their own (in the beginning, it was Geth and the twenty years he'd spent as a tree; then it was Winter, but she doesn't remember this very well since she spent most of it unconscious, and then it was Leven and wouldn't you know, he swanned off and became the Want.) and it seemed to her that they spent more time trying to reunite themselves than actually working towards a particular goal.
"But that is our goal," Geth said simply in that isn't-the-weather-nice tone of voice that makes her want to smack him. "We're supposed to be there for Leven. He's the one who knows what we're going to do."
"Shame on me for hoping that somewhere in between, we could save the world," she replied in little more than a growl, and gave up trying to be in a bad mood, because he just laughed at her.
The Mortal Instruments
1.
"What I don't understand," says one Lightwood sibling to another, mouth trembling with emotion. A spoon is waved with agitation, and the peanut butter clings to its surface for dear life. "Is how he refuses to even consider one of us or the other romantically," and the other sibling startles, muscles twitching like a bird's and scars surfacing to the skin the way it does with fight and flight, because this is the first time it has been acknowledged out loud by either, "Because we're like family to him. But Clary -- no, he'll screw her. After all, she's only his biological sister."
2.
"You don't have to keep coming, you know, since you obviously hate it so much."
Jace just grunted.
"Do you think she's going to get better?" From the inflection in her voice, however, it was plain the real question was, do you want her to get better?
"I don't know. Let's ask," he swung on her abruptly, chair legs screeching against the linoleum in protest. Clary tensed almost imperceptively, but he just held out his hand. Wordlessly, she tipped a handful of the M&Ms she just got from the vending machine into his upturned palms. He cupped them and shook them, them tossed them across his mother's bedspread.
From where she stood, Clary couldn't see the outcome, but Jace's expression didn't change. "Hm," he went noncommittally, and picked up an M&M and popped it into his mouth. "Runes never bother to give clear yes-or-no answers anymore."
Phoenix Wright: JFA
1.
The instant Phoenix disappeared back into the courtroom, Edgeworth asked with a flat tone and pinpoint accuracy, "Why do you love him?"
Maya blinked at him, having forgotten he was there; one hand propped up on his hip and his shoulders cocked back like he was about to break into a strut. He regarded her coolly, waiting for her answer, and she felt a smile curve her lips without conscious direction from her brain.
"Same reason you do," she folded her arms underneath her chest. "It's the only thing I do in this profession that I don't need an excuse for."
2.
Their cab gets stuck in traffic half-way past five, and he heaves a sigh, slumping in his seat and leaning his head against the windowpane. In the seat next to him, Maya props her feet up on the back of the seat and starts painting her toenails. Rap music drifts to them from someone nearby despite the closed windows.
"Is it just me," he begins, feeling the cab vibrate against his ear. "Or does nobody uphold the ethics of being a lawyer, a judge, a witness, or a whatever anymore? Edgeworth, von Karma, even myself to an extent -- it's all about winning. Not whether somebody is actually guilty (don't let the heated arguments fool you.) It's not about bringing peace of mind to the family of the victims. It's about being ... being clever and one-upping each other in court. I'm twenty-four, and already I'm jaded about it all."
"Hey now," goes Maya, sounding worried. Smart he might be, but deep was most definitely a side he didn't show very often -- or, indeed, possessed. It didn't escape his notice that she tried to tuck her legs up underneath her like they were at a slumber party, but thankfully, her seatbelt restrained her. "Hey, Nick. Don't be like that. Besides! You've gotten lucky! You've never opted to defend someone who was genuinely guilty!"
He opens his mouth to object automatically, but Maya doesn't wait for him (she knows better.) "Hey! My sister wasn -- isn't like that! There's still hope."
Phoenix smiled wanly. "Your sister's dead, Maya. She doesn't have to worry about reputations or money."
"She didn't worry about them when she was alive, either!" she says hotly. "And that's why you started working for her, remember? Geez, Nick, I'd never peg you as ... as ... as ungrateful!" Unable to storm away due to being confined in a moving vehicle, she folds her arms, puffs out her cheeks, and refuses to speak to him for the rest of the drive. Phoenix doesn't bother telling her that her toes are only half-painted.
3.
"And this from the mouth of a man whom I rarely see without the company ... ah. Er, assistance, of a young, impressionable girl."
"Impressionable!" Maya exclaimed, insulted. Then her face fell. "Oh, dear. Does he mean that?" she said, more to herself than to them.
"Says the man with a big, foufy cravat!" Phoenix fires back, smirking. "Seriously. How long does it take you to put that on in the morning? And how ever do you manage not to spill on it?"
Edgeworth examined the ends of his fingernails. "It does take a particular amount of talent and finesse," he admitted humbly.
"Obviously," Phoenix's tone was sarcastic.
Maya looked around helplessly, as neither of them had any attention for anyone other than each other. She got the vague, unsettled feeling they weren't really talking about cravats. Or her.
"I think this is something you'll just have to let them work out on their own, pal," Gumshoe said sympathetically.
4.
It was in that moment of "... oh! OH MY GOD!" thunderbolt of realization -- one of the ones that made her so glad she was working for a defense attorney -- that Maya flung her arms around Phoenix's neck and kissed him square on the mouth.
Having had no practical experience in the field, she wouldn't be able to tell you if he responded or not -- his lips kind of twitched under the pressure of hers, but that didn't tell her anything, one way or another.
She pulled away, throwing a cursory glance at his face and hoping her expression was schooled into ... something that wasn't the usual naked betrayal of everything she was feeling, and knowing full well that it was not. Phoenix looked right back, read everything, and smiled. But it wasn't the kind of smile that Maya was used to seeing on television or in the movie theaters, the one that warned of an upcoming feel good moment.
No. This was the smile of someone who was about to deliver some bad news and hoped to God you were a gracious loser.
It wasn't the last time she kissed him -- there were more victories and dares and New Years parties -- but it was the last time she thought it would mean something.
5.
"Are they ..." for the first time yet, Sway found himself at a loss for words. He didn't know why it was important, but he gestured after them. "Do they...?"
Puzzled by his client's sudden change of tone, Edgeworth looked up, lowering his eyepiece. "Hm? Oh them?" Outside the door and out of earshot, Maya held her cell phone up to the window, scowling and waving it around like she was hoping it would get her a better reception. Wright said something in a low, dry rumble and it earned him a shriek of laughter and a solid smack on the shoulder. "To my knowledge, no." Edgeworth looked down at his papers again.
Sway assumed that was the end of that, and lowered his eyes in silence. Moments ticked by, accompanied by snatches of conversation drifting to them from the waiting room as the defense lawyer and his assistant waited for Sway to be free so they could question him. But even that died out.
Then, suddenly, Edgeworth dropped his fist on the desk, picking at some nonexistent spot on his lapel.
"They do love each other, though," he stated with an offhand shrug, oblivious to Sway's eyebrows hitting his hairline: Edgeworth came off as the kind of man who'd rather die than admit 'love' was in his vocabulary. He glanced over his shoulder again: Maya (he found it impossible to call her Fey, even though it was the polite thing to do) had given up with her cell phone and sprawled out across the sofa, leaving only half a cushion for Wright. She played with her massive beads, and every time she jingled her foot in tune to something that was only in her head, she bumped Wright in the thigh, but he didn't seem to mind.
"After everything they've been through together, I think I would be more surprised if they didn't." Edgeworth put one finger to his temple. "But if there's anything more to it, it's really not my business," he said with finality, and Sway never asked again.
6.
"What? What are you smirking at me for?" von Karma asked testily.
"That thing you're doing with your sleeve," he nodded to where she had her fist clenched around her costume. "Your dad used to do that all the time, whenever he was impatient or someone had thrown him off guard."
Her arms instantly dropped to her sides, and Phoenix swallowed the urge to look away quickly, as if he had witnessed something shameful. Or maybe it was the most telling action she'd ever committed in front of him.
7.
It wasn't that hard to get him to respond -- he kissed him once, twice, hands holding him solidly behind the ears, thumbs crooked into his pulse, and the third time, Edgeworth's center of balance shifted so that he wasn't leaning as wildly away as possible. The fourth kiss, which had lost the tempting and the playfulness of the first few and had become lingering and, yes, a little desperate, had Edgeworth's hands moving, ghosting across his shoulder blades. They hesitated there, and then settled, warm and heavy. For Phoenix, who had been expecting a long and probably bloody battle, this was all the encouragement he needed. It was, after all, the creed he'd clung to since the very beginning: no matter what, Edgeworth always cracked.
8.
She flounced in, and Phoenix barely had the time to notice she had taken more care in her costume today than usual before she put both her hands on her hips and demanded, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Urk?" said Phoenix, because she was one of the few people that had the unique ability to throw him completely off guard. He waved the phone receiver at her. "Ordering Chinese? Gumshoe recommended this place -- he hinted he would never speak to us again if we didn't try the Mongolian Beef."
She snatched the phone from him and put it back in its cradle. "No Chinese. Get up. We're going out to eat. And for gods' sake, do something about your hair." Licking her palms, she swiped ineffectually at his sideburns.
"We are?" he went, dodging. "Since when?"
"Ugh!" she said emphatically. "Weren't you even paying the slightest bit of attention in court today? The Judge has a reservation for four at the Grill. And its not like he has any friends. At least, none who aren't currently incarcerated. So I went up to him and, using my formidable powers of persuasion, managed to get us in. Oh, this will never do," and with one swift, expert tug, she took his tie off.
Trying not to feel violated, Phoenix protested, "But! He's the Judge! I don't even know his real name! Besides, we're ... we're lawyers! Isn't there some kind of rule against us fraternizing, or something?"
Maya rummaged around in his desk drawers (he genuinely did keep his ties in the closet, on the hangars next to the few remaining scarves of Mia's he hasn't removed yet, but he wasn't about to tell her that.) and looked up, rolling her eyes. "Just call him 'Your Honor,' like always," she said, because she did have a rather bad case of selective hearing.
"Hang on," said Phoenix in a stroke of genius, as Maya held up a crumpled tie to his suit. The color worked, but it would probably take a good half hour of ironing to get it to lie flat. "If the reservation is for four, then who else is coming?"
"Oh, I invited Larry. I figured it would be the first time he's eaten there without having to foot the bill. I hope that's all right," she shoved a better tie through his collar, beaming.
He stared at her, and it occurred to him that not only did he have to figure out his witnesses' ulterior motives, he had to figure out his assistant’s.
*&*
The Judge put his fork down, and asked incredulously, "Why are you all friends?"
It cut right through their chatter, and the defense lawyer, his bubble-headed friend, and the spirit medium all looked in his direction like they'd forgotten he was there. "Huh?" they said in one breath, with the same degree of confusion.
Considerately, he gave them a few more moments to process the question. Maya caught on first, and laughed, "Oh, no. We have plenty in common! Right, guys?"
"Uhhh," said Phoenix brilliantly. His attention shifted back to them, getting that look on his face he had when he was running through a dozen case files and a dozen evidence claims in his head, trying to find the one story that would piece it all together.
"That's easy!" said Larry without apparently thinking at all. He winked. "We've all been on trial for murder! That kind of experience tends to bring people together."
9.
The first time she met Orvheulte von Karma, it was, naturally, in court.
She was in the middle of giving a testimony (granted, a false one, but the only person who was going to know that was dead. Hence why she, a spirit medium, even had a testimony at all.) when a gasping murmur from the audience interrupted her rather (she thought) stirring, horrifying portrayal of the crime scene.
With a bang of her gavel, the Judge ordered silence.
"Sorry, Your Honor!" said someone. "A woman up here just fainted."
"Call an ambulance!" said someone else.
"Oh, honestly!" snapped Misty Fey, shoving her giant, ballooning sleeves up to her elbows. Ignoring the protests of both the Judge and the defense, she got down from the witness stand with some difficulty and waddled on over. "The only thing wrong with her is you lot. Shoo! Give her some air!"
Sure enough, as soon as she got a little breathing room, the woman who'd fainted began to mutter and come to. She was a beautiful thing, with glossy brown hair, thin, aristocratic eyes and an even thinner body. She made the mistake of trying to sit up, and when her face went the gray of porridge, Misty pushed her firmly back down. At the contact, a jolt shivered through her aura, highlighting everything for her to see as clearly as a splash of blood must be to a detective. She turned to Mia and gently ordered her to go ask the bailiff for a glass of water and some wafers for the mistress von Karma.
The prosecutor appeared at her elbow, looking three-parts annoyed at the interruption when he'd been on a roll and one-part embarrassed at the sight of his wife blinking up at the bright courtroom lights with a distinctly confused air. Misty heaved herself to her feet, ignoring the screaming protests of her swollen ankles.
"Hmph," said Manfred, folding his arms. "You'll have to excuse my wife," he said to the courtroom at large. "She's been a little weak on her feet these days. I don't think the air of this country agrees with her very much."
Misty scoffed. Loudly. "You buffoon," she said, jamming her hands on her thick waist. "It's got nothing to do with the air around here. She's fainting because she's pregnant!"
Before either von Karma had a chance to respond, the bailiff appeared with the requested food and drink in hand and a satisfied-looking Mia in tow. He handed the water to the stunned Orvheulte, who smiled weakly and pulled herself into a sitting position, sipping with a strained kind of daintiness. Her other hand crept to her belly. Manfred fell to his knees beside her.
"Stay there," Misty told him, earning her a small smile from the wife. "And look after her. I think you forget, prosecutor, that when you married her, you vowed to put her before all else. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get that man convicted."
.....
The second and last time she saw Orvheulte von Karma was several months later, in a hospital down the street from the combined police precinct and prosecutor's offices. She was alone in a room on the third floor; someone had positioned her wheelchair by the window and forgotten her there, but she didn't look as if she minded.
Her face, when she turned it towards the sound of Misty's footsteps, was softer and fuller than it had been that day in the courtroom, and a great deal more colorful.
"I had hoped I vould see you again," she said sincerely, in her old, comfortable accent like a bedtime story. "I have a question I vould like to ask of you, Misty Fey."
Misty didn't bother to ask how she knew her name. She told Mia to go pester one of the nurses about a sucker (she felt bad, somewhere inside of her, that she was always telling her oldest daughter to leave the room: I need to channel, Mia, go ask Aunt Morgan to make you strawberry custard. This is grown-up talk, Mia; go play. No, Mia, Mommy and Daddy aren't mad at each other. Why don't you check up on the baby? She'd feel worse, if only Mia hadn't developed a demure little smile and mature eyes so early.) and gently set the carseat she'd been holding down on the windowsill, so as not to wake the sleeping Maya.
"What is it?" she asked.
Orvheulte looked down at the newborn infant she cradled in her arms. "Do you think, Miss Misty Fey, that someday, in a garden not unlike that one," she nodded out the window. "That your Maya and my dear little Franziska vill play together? As friends?"
Misty stared at her. "I don't rightly know," she said. "I'm a medium, von Karma, not a fortuneteller."
"I am not so sure," Orvheulte rejoined. "It is the vay I feel in court sometimes too, yes. That there is alvays more to the story than is sometimes presented. Life is not vhat is told to you and vhat is 'decisive evidence,' and they are not the lines that divide people. Do you understand?" Misty just blinked.
Franziska yawned, turning her head to nuzzle into her mother's breasts. Orvheulte smiled wistfully, sadly, and turned her daughter away.
10.
He found both Wright and Edgeworth by the drinking fountain, arguing in low voices. This was nothing new, so he strode forward to interrupt them and inform them that recess was over before either of them could fix him with that baleful glare that did funny disintegrating things to his backbone.
Suddenly, Wright slammed his palm down on the fountain's rim, snarling. "You can't do that! It's diabolical!" His eyes sparked. "It'll turn you into a fraud! It'll make you everything you've been trying to dispute!"
Edgeworth stepped forward, his hand pressing into the wall by Wright's hip and effectively trapping him up against the fountain, moving in so close that, dumbstruck, the Judge stopped dead in his tracks. Neither man took notice of him standing there. It had never really dawned on him before that Wright was the taller man; even when he was suffering a humiliating defeat, Edgeworth always had managed to look like he had something over his opponent.
When he spoke, his voice was so soft that it could have been the rustle of his own clothes, except for the very real evidence of Edgeworth's lips moving, of Wright's eyes darting down to watch them. "And you?" He whispered. "Screwing the prosecution? What does that make you?"
The Judge made some kind of noise in the back of his throat, but fortunately, he was covered up by the extremely loud squeak of a sneaker from further down the hall.
A:tLA
1.
She wets the tip of the paintbrush between her lips to make a fine point, ponders the question, and makes one minute change in detail on the vase before her.
Nobody says it to her face -- she'll have to change this, she thinks, because a nation cannot be built on whispers traded like sweets behind turned backs -- but she surprises them, simply by nature of being a woman. Plotting to overthrow the government is understood to be a masculine profession; men are usually the only ones dense enough to try it. It's refreshing, she decides.
She settles for smiling, because to her, it's not plotting to overthrow the government; it's plotting to overthrow a husband, and that is a trade every Fire Nation wife is familiar with.