Crossover - Small Talk Between Heroines

Jun 06, 2008 21:33

Title: Small Talk Between Heroines
Author: clair-de-lune
Fandoms: Prison Break, The Pretender, The West Wing, Sex & the City, The Avengers
Characters: Sara Tancredi, Miss Parker, CJ Cregg, Carrie Bradshaw, Mrs. Peel
Genres: Gen, Crackfic, Crossover
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: Depending on their availabilities, they meet at each other’s place to spend the night together, chat and have a drink.
Notes: Thanks to slysionnachnano for her help with the translation. Any remaining mistakes are mine. ( Original version)


Depending on their availabilities, they meet at each other’s place to spend the night together, chat and have a drink. Champagne for Emma Peel. Vodka for Miss Parker. Cosmopolitan for Carrie Bradshaw. Cabernet Sauvignon for CJ Cregg. Lemonade for Sara Tancredi.

Sara’s the last one and she’s still a bit shy, but since the other women quickly welcomed her, she feels totally accepted in their weird little club. They can talk about everything and anything, sometimes late in the night, laugh, argue, and every now and then, fight. But they always promise to meet soon again when they part.

Tonight, Mrs. Peel wants to try something different and she asks for a tea. “I’m British...” CJ casts a glance at Parker, who’s checking the number of bullets in her Smith & Wesson.

“No way,” she definitely refuses. “Parker wouldn’t stand it.”

“She already broke two of my teapots,” Sara confirms, sotto voce.

“She made a waiter cry last month because of that,” adds Carrie.

With a patient sigh, Mrs. Peel pops her bottle of champagne open.

* * *
“The worst thing that have ever happened to you?” Carries asks.

Mrs. Peel sets her glass on the coffee table and starts with a, “Well...” to be immediately interrupted

“You can’t play,” Carrie tells her.

“And why is that?”

“You’re Secret Service. Getting into trouble is your job.”

“I’m a perfectly regular citizen who sometimes helps her government to fight diabolical masterminds.”

“You’re just the kind of person I need,” Sara points out.

“Secret Service,” CJ agrees, “and I should know. I’ve met them. Same thing for you, Parker: you’re Centre’s material.”

“I... evaluate risks.”

“You create risks,” Sara shoots back. “The worst thing that have ever happened to me... The last months haven’t been a bed of roses.” Mrs. Peel sympathetically pats her hands. “But I think that being locked in a small room with a half dozen of convicts craving for blood on the other side of the door... I think it took the cake. CJ?”

“Rosslyn shooting. The President could have been killed.”

“Wouldn’t happen in my reality,” Sara says with a hint of regret.

Carrie ponders the question.

“Someone stole my shoes right in Manhattan and I had to go back home wearing oversized loafers.”

The four women look down at the fancy and pretty Manolo Blahnik she’s wearing tonight. In the end, CJ (who’s quite big on fashion herself and would almost, almost, be okay to let Josh Lyman brief the press again in exchange for three Vera Wang dresses) acknowledges, “You win.”

* * *
Barefoot and with a peacock blue body-suit hugging her curves, Mrs. Peel is perched on a massive marble block in the middle of her living room, hammer and chisel in her hands.

“You’ve been sculpting this thing for almost two years,” Parker points out. “It’s still useless.”

She’s sure that she can’t be the only to be exasperated. Can she? She can’t be the only to be exasperated. Maybe it’s the jet lag between Delaware and Great Britain that pissed her off. Not that she needs more reasons to be pissed off, she already has quite a few ones at her disposal.

“It’s a hobby,” Mrs. Peel protests. “Don’t you have a hobby?”

“After the meetings, the press conferences and the international summits,” CJ says, a bit brash, “I like to sleep four or five hours in a row.”

“I get into the details of my patients’ files,” Sara says. Her confession elicits four perfectly synchronized smirks. “What?”’

“Nothing. It’s just that you seem to focus on one of them,” Parker retorts. “But hey, if I were you, I would totally get into the details of my patients’ files too. Just let me know if you need any help.”

“I label and organize my shoes boxes. It relaxes me,” Carrie explains. “And the rest of the time, Big and I...”

Mrs. Peel very handily starts chiseling her marble block in a riot of tick tick tack that covers Carrie’s words.

* * *
“Did you know that Jarod made a pretend at Joliet?” Parker asks to Sara.

“No, really?”

“Yeah! To get a guy out of the death row.”

Sara sips her lemonade. She’s starting to think that maybe something stronger would have been nice. Well, beer at least.

“You know,” she tells Parker, “back then, chances were I was a con in there, not a doctor.”

Once again Mrs. Peel kindly pats her hand.

* * *
“Everybody wonders about Steed and I.”

Mrs. Peel is lazily stretched out on the almond green couch of Parker’s cozy living room, and she smiles with satisfaction.

“Honey,” Carrie gently tells her, “nobody wonders about Steed and you. Everybody knows about Steed and you.”

Mrs. Peel lifts her head to look at the other women, a bit disappointed.

“Really? But we never even kissed. Well... maybe when those Russian spies stole our bodies and swapped them with their own.” She doesn’t pay attention to the eyes rolling in their orbits and eyebrows arching up. She’s used to such reactions. But really, she works on almost science-fiction files as much as on murder and spying ones! “And when my husband was found alive and I left, but it wasn’t actually a...”

“Believe me,” Sara tells her with a tad of bitterness, “beware of the guys kissing you.”

“I thought it was real between the both of you?” CJ says, but Sara shrugs and (not so) accidentally drinks Parker’s vodka.

“Beware of the guys trying to kiss you”, Parker adds.

“Big and I...”

Carrie is stopped by a loud bang bang bang: Parker’s forehead hitting the chimney piece.

* * *
“Oh, Sara! Sara, I’ve got a question for you,” Carrie says, shifting excitedly on the couch. She sports a wide smile and almost claps her hands.

They’re, quite exceptionally, in CJ’s office in the west wing of the White House, none of them really impressed by the decorum. They’re not the kind of women to be impressed by the decorum. Well, maybe Carrie would be, but Carrie is currently drinking her fourth Cosmopolitan.

“How low does the tattoo exactly go?” She wickedly arches an eyebrow and waits.

Sara can feel four pairs of eyes trained on her with an unashamed interest. Nothing surprising from Carrie or Parker, but she thought that CJ or Mrs. Peel would have been more sensible.

“I...,” she stutters, her cheeks suddenly very red. “How would I know?”

Mrs. Peel wraps a protective arm around her shoulders.

“You were his doctor, weren’t you?” she says, offering her a helping hand.

“Oh, right.” She beams at them. “Sorry. Privileged Doctor/Patient information.” And then, because Mrs. Peel really deserves it, she leans into her, murmurs something in her ear, and...

“Wow!” Emma breathes out, kind of impressed.

* * *
They’re in CJ’s office all over again. Not their favorite place to meet (no way to be left alone, there’s always so much fuss around here), but as CJ told them, it’s an election week, so they meet at her office or don’t meet at all.

“You know these parties we have always elicit fits of jealousy,” Carrie says.

“From Big?”

She frowns with surprise. “No! From Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. Oh by the way, Samantha wanted me to ask you a medical question, Sara.”

Sara rolls her eyes.

“I’ve already told her that the medium circumference of my patients’ penises is not a medical question.”

Mrs. Peel chokes a bit on her champagne. But Carrie is really not impressed and she throws her hands in the air, palms turned upwards.

“You can say ‘penis’ in front of everybody, sitting ten feet away from the Oval Office, but you won’t tell us how low the tattoo goes?”

* * *
Sara is sitting cross-legged on the floor of her living room, her chin resting on her closed fists, and wondering if she’s been drinking too much of Carrie’s Cosmopolitans.

No, she knows that she’s been drinking too much of Carrie’s Cosmopolitans - but still... not enough to see double, huh?

“You look exactly the same,” she tells Mrs. Peel and Miss Parker with a slightly sluggish voice. Same hairdo, same make-up, their resemblance enhanced by the fact that Mrs. Peel is wearing a purple emmapeeler, and Miss Parker, a suit of the same color.

“Don’t mention it,” Parker sighs. “If you knew how often I’ve been told that...”

* * *
“They wouldn’t let me in the United States!” Mrs. Peel reminds them.

“You were wearing a corset, a spiked dog collar, leather boots and... nothing else,” Carrie points out.

“So what?”

“You had a python wrapped around your forearm.”

“So what?”

“You were the Queen of Sin in the Hellfire Club!”

“So what?”

“It was in 1966!”

Mrs. Peel thinks about the aforementioned outfit and smiles fondly. “Yes... I was quite ahead of my time, wasn’t I?”

Parker lets a finger trail along the seam of her very mini-skirt and casually asks, “And do you still have the corset and the collar?”

Sara, who’s been lying on the carpet between the fireplace and the small couch of her apartment in Chicago, lifts her head and looks up.

“Um... you want to bait Jarod to catch him?”

“Jarod? No. I want to play a joke on Broots.”

* * *
“The dumbest thing I’ve ever done?” CJ says. “Sleeping with the Vice-President.”

Sara chokes on her lemonade, spatters it right in front of her - Carrie has barely the time to move and avoid being spayed - and coughs. Mrs. Peel pats her back.

Parker carefully looks at her black painted nails. She has to admit - but only inwardly - that sleeping (the second time) with Michael Patrick hadn’t been her most considerate idea. On the other hand, when she discovered who he actually was, she squashed him. She means, she literally squashed him: it’s not so sure now that there will ever little Patrick Jr. This idea makes her smile with satisfaction.

“What?” Sara stammers when she’s caught her breath. CJ and her look at each other for a few seconds and then CJ understands and, with a shocked wince, shakes her head.

“No! God, no! My Vice-President. Not yours. Eww.”

She’ll have vodka rather than Cabernet Sauvignon tonight.

* * *
“I fell off my treadmill in the middle of the gym,” CJ says.

“CJ...”

“What? It was painful! I’ve also been shoved into a swimming pool by Robero Benini. And the first time I shot a gun? I fell backwards. Literally. I’m against firearms, of course.”

“No surprise here,” Parker grumbles.

“I’m against firearms too,” Sara stands, supporting CJ.

“Tell us that again after you’ve not shot someone with a gun,” Parker replies. “I dislocated my thumb to free myself of handcuffs.”

“I cut my arm when I jumped from the second floor of a hotel to escape from a guy who wanted to drown me. Or electrocute me.” Sara ponders. “Or both. And I stitched my arm myself,” she says.

“You should have used...” CJ starts.

“... a bit of morphine?”

The other women shake their heads - sometimes she really has a weird sense of humor.

Mrs. Peel thinks for a while, her chin elegantly resting on her folded hands.

“I was kidnapped by a mad movie director who wanted to set up and film my death. And reality shows didn’t even exist back then,” she points out with an eloquent nod.

“Samantha had to retrieve my diaphragm because it was stuck in...” Carrie starts.

“Arghh!” CJ protests. “Emma, you win. Carrie, shut up.”

* * *
“I made the Rabbit famous,” Carrie slowly enunciates with a blatant proud.

“The Rabbit?” Mrs. Peel asks.

Carrie goes get the Rabbit and sets it, pink and white and shiny, on the coffee table, right between Mrs. Peel’s Taittinger, Miss Parker’s Absolut and a few empty glasses.

“How does it...” Mrs. Peel extends her hand, pushes at a button and... “Oh, all right.”

CJ watches the small object, her lips pursed with resignation.

“There was a time when I could have used the Rabbit.”

“If things keep going on like that, I’ll need the Rabbit,” Sara adds.

Mrs. Peel helps herself another glass of Champagne.

“We established that everybody knows about Steed and I, but I wonder nonetheless if...”

She turns her head to notice that the Rabbit has disappeared from the table. All gazes converge to Parker, and Carrie tells her, “You understand this thing has already been used, huh?”

Parker stretches her long legs in front of her, stilettos scraping the floor. “You cleaned it, didn’t you?”

“Arghh!” CJ protests again.

* * *
They’re in Carrie’s apartment, looming over the magnificent box of chocolates that has just been delivered. The chocolates have carefully been arranged to form the words Mrs. Peel, we’re needed, and a Pez dispenser is neatly lay in the box. Sighing faintly, Mrs. Peel hands the dispenser to Miss Parker (who takes it with a frustrated groan) then reaches for a chocolate.

“What...?” she starts, intrigued when she notices a blue paper sheet. She delicately pulls on the sheet and... Origami. Crane. “Sara, I think this is for you.”

“I don’t get it,” CJ says, popping a chocolate in her mouth. “Do they work together or something like that?”

She has no time to extrapolate on that. She gets on her highly secured phone a text message (no need for a pager anymore, times have changed) concisely informing her POTUS in a bicycle accident.

“Again!” Mrs. Peel grumbles.

“Maybe the Secret Service should lend him a hand on that,” Sara suggests.

“Or put back the training wheels on his bike” Carrie offers.

“Just forbid him to ride the fucking bicycle,” Parker concludes.

CJ finishes off her glass of wine and gets to her feet.

“Same hour next week?” she suggests.

Carrie looks at them while they quickly collect their stuff. Emma Peel nimbly slips back in her leather boots. Miss Parker checks that there are bullets in her Smith & Wesson. CJ Cregg puts her files back in her attaché-case. Sara Tancredi shoves her cell phone and origami cranes into her giant purse.

They say good bye to each other and promise to meet again very soon. Before she can realize what’s going on, Carrie is alone in her living room with empty bottles and a missing Rabbit for all the memories. She studies the room around her and shrugs. She’ll tidy up later. It's will disappear as if by magic.

She sits with her laptop on her knees and starts to type: Small talk between heroines: mere slumber parties or manifestations of sorority?

-END-
Comments are always welcome.

End notes:
- Miss Parker and the tea: Parker and Jarod were about to kiss when a nice old lady interrupted them and offered them some tea. Shippers were not happy ^^
- Sara and the tattoo: Oh, come on!
- Carrie and the Rabbit: Oh, come on!²
- You can see Mrs. Peel's special outfit here.
- When saying she was denied entry into the USA, Mrs. Peel refers to the episode A Touch of Brimstone.

fanfic: english, category: crackfic, fandom: the avengers, fic: one shot, fandom: pretender, fandom: prison break, category: x-over, fandom: sex and the city, fandom: the west wing

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