Fluff, Relationships, and Traditions
This entry is part 52 of 52 in the series 365 Challenge
So characters have habits, ways they interact with certain people and situations, things they do and like to do, stories and histories together. I've known a lot of my characters' for a long time but getting them all into fic is interesting, particularly for the ones I don't know that for.
I've ( Read more... )
Watcher made her way through her ranks frequently. There was training to do, punishments to mediate, rules to enforce... Leaders played nice with them far more than the other children. Watcher was beginning to realize that she played nice far more than the other leaders ( ... )
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Flow was a bloody-minded, reckless genius for strategy and getting her own way. The girl's body barely ever held still, constantly sliding from one form to another in a blurred inability to control it, but she was learning fast and snapped to bodies devised perfectly toward the impression she needed to give. Flow had charisma and the willingness to dive headlong in the way of anyone trying to punish a fellow team member.
Kilter was quieter, calmer, and all cool calculation. He took care of his own, offered comfort, and provided the logical counterpoint to Flow's anger. Where Flow was an unguided missile, chafing at her bonds, Kilter was a focused weapon aimed squarely at surviving with the least sins on their conscience. It hadn't taken long to realize they were being trained to kill.
Watcher needed both of them, so she let them argue out their points of view, let them fight each other with his ability to send the world sideways and her ability to send ( ... )
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They stopped calling him Reserve. The name melted away under the hardness that entered his bearing after that day. He had been soft before, given to recoil and hunching away from pain. Now, he was a small, immovable rock.
"No," he said with clear, fearless eyes when they told him to do the exercise again ( ... )
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The red-headed woman cursed in surprise. "You trying to give me a heart attack?" she demanded. Then, she looked at her, realized that the intruder was less than ten years old with the dark eyes of a hardened warrior. The director stilled. "What do you want?" she asked, voice gentle. Too gentle. Watcher didn't believe in it.
"Meld won't kill with his power."
A tight inhale. Sheridan shook her head. "I'm sorry, but there are rulesThey couldn't let the children go free, knowing they might kill innocent civilians. It didn't matter that Internal Investigations had been horrified at the initial handling of them and cleaned out almost anyone who had abused the kids. It didn't matter that the program had been sold to the Department of Defense as something other than what it had been, that nobody realized that the process was experimental, that almost all the children would die, or even that only children could ( ... )
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Poor Meld.
And poor Watcher.
And Shift is more noble than she admits, too, since she took the fall for Meld more than once.
This piece explains sooo much...
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Writing Watcher at that young was interesting because she's softer here than later, less sure of herself. After this, the team really starts to solidify.
Shift has always said, "I'm not good, just loyal." She took a whole lot more falls than that one. Sear would literally follow her anywhere.
Glad it helped. That was the goal.
I also tried to work in some of the other historical details that were fighting me to stay out: like the fact that the Department hadn't intended for the Projects to be so horrible. And I have deliberately not introduced you to the worst of the team operatives, but they existed, and between the powers not yet mastered and the pure hatred some of those kids had for anyone not in the teams, it became very difficult to try and change things right away. Shift for example would have been a nightmare to let loose.
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That was part of what Ilsa was investigating when she quit, then, the projects.
It had to figure that there would be some that would be uncontrollable and full of hate and loyal only to those like them.
I figured there were more like Shift, even worse ones, but I didn't really want to read about them.
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