[fic] all ella's fault forever
Title: Only One Way Up
Pairing: Dan/Cher
Rating: PG for violence
Notes: This is set post-apocalypse, in which Dan and music star Cher are the only people left. It is all Ella's fault. 890 words.
For all Daniel Faraday knew about the vast, cold darkness of space, he never thought he would experience any of it outside of his dreams. The stars, pinpricks and pixels in the sky and on the screen and in textbooks, were-for the most part-safely nestled millions of miles away from him and his world. He never feared them and their immense power, for he never had reason to.
To worry about such a thing would be silly.
And yet.
He glances at his watch, which has long since stopped working, out of habit. The display is unreadable, the digital numbers lit in a garbled mess of nothing.
A barely audible sigh escapes his lips. To say that it’s cold out here is a gross understatement, and not a day passes (not that he can measure the days as he once knew them anymore) when he doesn’t wake with a shock to find that he hasn’t yet frozen to death. Or starved. Or suffocated, or been hit with a comet, or thrown into the orbit of the Sun, or any number of terrible ends.
He’s pretty sure this is some kind of purgatory.
Or, he thinks, he may be in a coma.
“Daniel!” A woman floats toward him, black hair suspended around her head like a halo, some weird substance floating around her cheeks. He thinks they’re implants of some kind, but he is a gentleman and knows better than to ask.
He spins to face her, brushing his tie out of the way. “What?”
“I still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do about this,” she says, voice lilting in a way Dan’s grown accustomed to.
When they first met, he had said (without thinking), “Oh, I didn’t know your voice did that naturally.”
Dan may be a genius, but he is not always smart.
He shrugs a shoulder at her. “Look, I don’t know, either. Just-why don’t you go learn how to flip or something? It’s fun. See?” He leans forward and propels himself backward with a jerk, successfully completing a flip. The lack of gravity is, occasionally, nice.
She fixes him with a displeased look, as far as he can tell. Another thing he’s learned about his companion is that the only way to decipher her mood is to pay attention to things like her barely-there eyebrow movements and the twitches of her puffed up lips.
“For the hundredth time, I don’t want to learn how to flip. Don’t you care? Don’t you even care? We’re the only ones left! How many times do I have to say that until you get it?”
He counts in his head. “This… would be the thirty-first time, if I remember correctly.”
She throws her hands into the air that is space and huffs. “You’re impossible.”
“Look, Cher, I don’t like this anymore than you do, but we have to deal with it until I figure something out, okay?” Dan tries a pleading look, and it seems to work. The angry look on her face softens back to stiff neutrality.
“Fine.”
To pass the time, she sings. It starts with a hum and eventually builds to a volume that Dan’s convinced must damage any nearby satellites.
His eyes widen. “Not that one again, please not that one again-”
She stops humming and smiles-sort of-then floats toward him. “Through the darkest night, see the light shine bright…”
He cringes and tries to get away.
“When heroes fall, in love or war, they live forever!”
“No!”
“THIS IS A SONG FOR THE LONELY, CAN YOU HEAR ME TONIGHT?”
He can. Dan is pretty sure all of fucking space can. And it is then that he begins paying much closer attention to the space around him and forms a plan.
Some weeks later, after enduring countless Cher classics (he does not, for the record, believe in life after love), his plan comes to beautiful fruition.
The world may have ended and he, Cher, and some cockroaches may have been the only ones left, but the cockroaches-smart bastards-have long since departed, but Daniel Faraday still has one more trick up his sleeve before giving in to forever on his own.
He waits patiently, counts the seconds in his head to drown out his companion’s wailing, then swims his way over to her.
And nudges her, not so gently, with his foot. Too startled to react, she glides backwards, away from him, with a stunned look on her face. “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Ignoring her cries, he flips forward and begins to stroke with his arms and legs as though swimming in an Olympic race, and stops only after he sees something massive streak past out of the corner of his eye. The sounds of Cher’s cries are drowned out by the loud howling of the comet, and when Dan is met with silence, he stops his escape and relaxes.
He’s fairly certain she wasn’t hit by it-after all, his plan was only to get her caught in its gravitational pull-but he finds that the thought of killing Cher doesn’t weigh so heavily on his conscience. He leans back and places his hands behind his head, imagining a beach chair underneath him, and drifts through the universe in perfect, Cher-free silence.
Pairing: Dan/Cher
Rating: PG for violence
Notes: This is set post-apocalypse, in which Dan and music star Cher are the only people left. It is all Ella's fault. 890 words.
For all Daniel Faraday knew about the vast, cold darkness of space, he never thought he would experience any of it outside of his dreams. The stars, pinpricks and pixels in the sky and on the screen and in textbooks, were-for the most part-safely nestled millions of miles away from him and his world. He never feared them and their immense power, for he never had reason to.
To worry about such a thing would be silly.
And yet.
He glances at his watch, which has long since stopped working, out of habit. The display is unreadable, the digital numbers lit in a garbled mess of nothing.
A barely audible sigh escapes his lips. To say that it’s cold out here is a gross understatement, and not a day passes (not that he can measure the days as he once knew them anymore) when he doesn’t wake with a shock to find that he hasn’t yet frozen to death. Or starved. Or suffocated, or been hit with a comet, or thrown into the orbit of the Sun, or any number of terrible ends.
He’s pretty sure this is some kind of purgatory.
Or, he thinks, he may be in a coma.
“Daniel!” A woman floats toward him, black hair suspended around her head like a halo, some weird substance floating around her cheeks. He thinks they’re implants of some kind, but he is a gentleman and knows better than to ask.
He spins to face her, brushing his tie out of the way. “What?”
“I still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do about this,” she says, voice lilting in a way Dan’s grown accustomed to.
When they first met, he had said (without thinking), “Oh, I didn’t know your voice did that naturally.”
Dan may be a genius, but he is not always smart.
He shrugs a shoulder at her. “Look, I don’t know, either. Just-why don’t you go learn how to flip or something? It’s fun. See?” He leans forward and propels himself backward with a jerk, successfully completing a flip. The lack of gravity is, occasionally, nice.
She fixes him with a displeased look, as far as he can tell. Another thing he’s learned about his companion is that the only way to decipher her mood is to pay attention to things like her barely-there eyebrow movements and the twitches of her puffed up lips.
“For the hundredth time, I don’t want to learn how to flip. Don’t you care? Don’t you even care? We’re the only ones left! How many times do I have to say that until you get it?”
He counts in his head. “This… would be the thirty-first time, if I remember correctly.”
She throws her hands into the air that is space and huffs. “You’re impossible.”
“Look, Cher, I don’t like this anymore than you do, but we have to deal with it until I figure something out, okay?” Dan tries a pleading look, and it seems to work. The angry look on her face softens back to stiff neutrality.
“Fine.”
To pass the time, she sings. It starts with a hum and eventually builds to a volume that Dan’s convinced must damage any nearby satellites.
His eyes widen. “Not that one again, please not that one again-”
She stops humming and smiles-sort of-then floats toward him. “Through the darkest night, see the light shine bright…”
He cringes and tries to get away.
“When heroes fall, in love or war, they live forever!”
“No!”
“THIS IS A SONG FOR THE LONELY, CAN YOU HEAR ME TONIGHT?”
He can. Dan is pretty sure all of fucking space can. And it is then that he begins paying much closer attention to the space around him and forms a plan.
Some weeks later, after enduring countless Cher classics (he does not, for the record, believe in life after love), his plan comes to beautiful fruition.
The world may have ended and he, Cher, and some cockroaches may have been the only ones left, but the cockroaches-smart bastards-have long since departed, but Daniel Faraday still has one more trick up his sleeve before giving in to forever on his own.
He waits patiently, counts the seconds in his head to drown out his companion’s wailing, then swims his way over to her.
And nudges her, not so gently, with his foot. Too startled to react, she glides backwards, away from him, with a stunned look on her face. “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Ignoring her cries, he flips forward and begins to stroke with his arms and legs as though swimming in an Olympic race, and stops only after he sees something massive streak past out of the corner of his eye. The sounds of Cher’s cries are drowned out by the loud howling of the comet, and when Dan is met with silence, he stops his escape and relaxes.
He’s fairly certain she wasn’t hit by it-after all, his plan was only to get her caught in its gravitational pull-but he finds that the thought of killing Cher doesn’t weigh so heavily on his conscience. He leans back and places his hands behind his head, imagining a beach chair underneath him, and drifts through the universe in perfect, Cher-free silence.