One Of These Has A Scene Break. That's How Bad I Am At Sticking To Three Sentences.
I've slowed down a little on writing these, but I'm up to twenty fills for the 2025 Three-Sentence Ficathon! I'm still having such a blast with this event. You can find the current prompting post here.
Death Note, Light, 470 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'antagonist time travels back to the start'. (I realise Light is technically the protagonist, even if he's also the villain, so I'm cheating slightly here!)
Light wakes gasping for breath, fighting off hands. He grabs for his wrist, his watch, his concealed piece of Death Note - he doesn’t even know who he has to kill to escape this situation, he can’t think clearly, his entire body screaming get out get out get out get out - and-
“Yagami-kun! Yagami-kun, what’s wrong?”
It takes him a moment to make sense of the scene. He’s in - is this a classroom?
The realisation hits him an instant later: this is the classroom, this is where everything started. He glances out of the window, almost on reflex.
Something dark falls past.
Is his life flashing before his eyes as he dies? Is Ryuk playing some sick joke on him? What is this?
“Yagami-kun?” the teacher asks. The same teacher from back then. He doesn’t look like he’s aged; if anything, he looks younger. Light can’t remember his name. “Are you all right? Do you need the infirmary?”
Ridiculously, Light finds himself frustrated with himself for making a scene, even in this situation that can’t possibly be real. “I’m sorry. I stayed up late preparing for exams. I think I must have drifted off for a few seconds.”
“Sleeping in class?” the teacher asks, raising his eyebrows. “That’s not like you. I know you’re a serious student, so I’ll overlook it just once, but keep the nightmares to your bed, okay?”
He sounds real, he looks real. When Light sets a hand on the smooth surface of his desk, it feels real. His classmates are whispering; it makes him tense up, and that feels real as well, the reaction of his body.
He can’t stop thinking about the Death Note. Was that it, falling past the window? Is he really back here? How?
“Actually,” Light says, “maybe I should visit the infirmary, just to be safe.”
-
Light barely manages to keep himself from running down the stairs, out into the open. The Death Note is lying there on the grass, just as he remembers it.
He stands there for a long moment, just staring down at it.
Is this real? Have the last six years somehow been undone? All his work, all that he achieved-
But picking up the Death Note set him on a route to choking on his own blood on the floor of a warehouse. Maybe this is an opportunity to do things differently.
Is Light’s father at work? Is his sister a kid at school again; is she happy? If Light never becomes Kira, will they live out normal lives?
Does that mean Light will have a normal life, too? Someone dull, someone ordinary, someone who’ll live an unremarkable, unchallenged life and die unremembered in a world that never changes.
Is L alive out there, somewhere?
Light picks up the Death Note and tucks it into his bag.
Death Note, L/Light, 290 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'Night by night, I let you eat me alive.'
“I assumed I would die at your hand, you know,” L says. “When you were Kira.”
There’s a long pause, and then the metal around L’s wrist shifts as Light turns in the bed to face him. “You thought that Kira would beat you?”
“I thought you could beat me,” L corrects him. “I don’t have any fear of dying to the current Kira.”
Light doesn’t like this kind of talk, L knows: when you were Kira. But he likes the praise. Even in the dark of the room, it puts a kind of brightness into his eyes.
Light liked praise when he was Kira as well, of course. He was always more careful to keep it hidden, then.
“Or, to be more accurate, I thought we would beat each other,” L says. “I wasn’t going to lose. But I might die in the course of winning.”
“I don’t think you can call it winning if you die,” Light says.
That was going to be my weapon against you, L thinks. If you’re not prepared to die, there are risks you can’t take. That’s your weakness.
“I thought about it every night,” L says. “Have I given too much away? Could it happen at any moment; is it going to happen now? Will I know what’s happening? How much will it hurt? Will I see you at the end, somehow, even if I know you can kill from a distance? Will it be different for you, killing me, or will I just be another of Kira’s hundreds of victims?”
“What do you think about now?” Light asks.
L studies his face. Light’s expressions are so open, now. It doesn’t feel right.
“I think about how much I miss it, sometimes,” he says.
Ace Attorney, Apollo/Athena and Apollo/Clay, 540 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'Apollo/Athena+Clay, Clay's spirit follows them on their dates to give Apollo advice.'
Apollo excuses himself to the bathroom before their food’s arrived. Stands there for a moment, gripping the sides of the sink, breathing hard.
He was hoping Clay wouldn’t be reflected in the mirror. Some kind of concrete sign that this isn’t real. But he can still see Clay in the reflection, over his own shoulder.
It still isn’t real. It can’t be real. Clay is dead, and Athena obviously couldn’t see him.
Apollo wishes he could convince that stupid part of his own mind, the part going you’re alive, you’re back, you’re here.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Oh,” Clay says, “you’re talking to me now?”
His own hallucination of his dead friend is getting snippy with him for being rude. How did he reach this point in his life?
“I couldn’t exactly say anything in front of Athena,” Apollo says. “I don’t want her to think I’m losing my mind.” Maybe know would be a better word than think. “So what are you doing here?”
Clay shrugs. “I just thought you could use some dating advice.”
Apollo turns from the mirror to stare at him. “It’s not a date.”
“You watched a romantic comedy together,” Clay says. He’s leaning against one of the cubicle doors; he looks unbearably solid, unbearably real. “Now you’re buying her a meal at a restaurant. It’s not her birthday, so it’s a date.”
It doesn’t seem right that a conversation with someone who isn’t even there could make him blush like this. “It’s not - you used to do that with me!”
Clay smiles at him: a fond, familiar smile that makes Apollo’s chest ache with the knowledge that he’ll never really see it again. “I did, didn’t I?”
Perfect. He’s apparently been obsessing so much about what his relationship with Clay used to be, about what his relationship with Athena is now, that he’s given himself hallucinations about it. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think that way about me.”
“And what way do you think about her?” Clay asks.
He wishes he could talk through this with the real Clay. He’s not going to do it with a figment of his own imagination. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m just saying,” Clay says. “She came here with you. It’s probably at least crossed her mind that this is a date. Maybe it’s worth taking a chance.”
Apollo closes his eyes. Takes a slow, deep breath in and out, trying to settle himself down.
It’s true that Athena got a little... stuttery and red-faced, when Apollo invited her out with him. It had nearly made him lose his nerve himself. But she’d said yes; she’d rearranged her plans so she could say yes. If this is a date, it’s possible that she doesn’t hate the idea.
“Thanks,” he says at last, opening his eyes.
The door Clay has been leaning against opens, and he falls through it with a squawk.
It’s deeply embarrassing to lose it laughing in front of a stranger in the bathroom, especially when you’re laughing at your own hallucination; it’s not like Apollo can explain himself. But it gets some of the selfconsciousness out of Apollo’s system, at least, so he can return to Athena with a little more confidence.
And, finally, a Severance ficlet! It's set in the first season and has no spoilers for the second, but please be aware that it contains, uh, severe and malicious misuse of tampons.
Severance, Helly, 260 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'within you'.
Around the twentieth day of Helly’s existence, she gets into the elevator feeling kind of uncomfortable and sweaty. Maybe she’s getting ill.
She hopes she’s getting ill; it’d serve her fucking outie right. She’s been sticking intentionally close to Mark whenever he’s been sniffing.
Something... changes, in the elevator: something more than the new clothes, the sudden uptick of alertness after a night of sleep. There’s-
There’s something inside her.
Her first thought is that, holy shit, her outie’s sent her to work wearing a sex toy. She’s trying to humiliate Helly in front of her colleagues. Honestly, as much as Helly hates that bitch, a part of her is kind of impressed by her own deviousness.
It must be pretty small. Maybe she’ll see if she can swallow it, force her outie to explain that in surgery.
On her way to the bathroom to take it out, she notices she’s wearing a skirt with pockets; that’s unusual. She puts her hand inside, looking for some kind of wordless ha ha, fuck you message from her outie, and brings out a small case: clear, unmarked plastic, full of little white cylinders.
Oh. She knows what these are. Her outie actually isn’t trying to screw with her; Helly’s just having her first period.
When it’s time to leave the office, Helly detours to the bathroom on her way to the elevator. She takes a seat and methodically inserts as many tampons as she can physically fit inside herself.
She never finds herself at work during her period again, which she guesses is a bonus.
I was so thrilled to see a prompt for Apollo/Athena specifically! It's my favourite Ace Attorney pairing, and it's a relatively small ship within the fandom, so seeing that really took me by surprise.
Death Note, Light, 470 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'antagonist time travels back to the start'. (I realise Light is technically the protagonist, even if he's also the villain, so I'm cheating slightly here!)
Light wakes gasping for breath, fighting off hands. He grabs for his wrist, his watch, his concealed piece of Death Note - he doesn’t even know who he has to kill to escape this situation, he can’t think clearly, his entire body screaming get out get out get out get out - and-
“Yagami-kun! Yagami-kun, what’s wrong?”
It takes him a moment to make sense of the scene. He’s in - is this a classroom?
The realisation hits him an instant later: this is the classroom, this is where everything started. He glances out of the window, almost on reflex.
Something dark falls past.
Is his life flashing before his eyes as he dies? Is Ryuk playing some sick joke on him? What is this?
“Yagami-kun?” the teacher asks. The same teacher from back then. He doesn’t look like he’s aged; if anything, he looks younger. Light can’t remember his name. “Are you all right? Do you need the infirmary?”
Ridiculously, Light finds himself frustrated with himself for making a scene, even in this situation that can’t possibly be real. “I’m sorry. I stayed up late preparing for exams. I think I must have drifted off for a few seconds.”
“Sleeping in class?” the teacher asks, raising his eyebrows. “That’s not like you. I know you’re a serious student, so I’ll overlook it just once, but keep the nightmares to your bed, okay?”
He sounds real, he looks real. When Light sets a hand on the smooth surface of his desk, it feels real. His classmates are whispering; it makes him tense up, and that feels real as well, the reaction of his body.
He can’t stop thinking about the Death Note. Was that it, falling past the window? Is he really back here? How?
“Actually,” Light says, “maybe I should visit the infirmary, just to be safe.”
-
Light barely manages to keep himself from running down the stairs, out into the open. The Death Note is lying there on the grass, just as he remembers it.
He stands there for a long moment, just staring down at it.
Is this real? Have the last six years somehow been undone? All his work, all that he achieved-
But picking up the Death Note set him on a route to choking on his own blood on the floor of a warehouse. Maybe this is an opportunity to do things differently.
Is Light’s father at work? Is his sister a kid at school again; is she happy? If Light never becomes Kira, will they live out normal lives?
Does that mean Light will have a normal life, too? Someone dull, someone ordinary, someone who’ll live an unremarkable, unchallenged life and die unremembered in a world that never changes.
Is L alive out there, somewhere?
Light picks up the Death Note and tucks it into his bag.
Death Note, L/Light, 290 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'Night by night, I let you eat me alive.'
“I assumed I would die at your hand, you know,” L says. “When you were Kira.”
There’s a long pause, and then the metal around L’s wrist shifts as Light turns in the bed to face him. “You thought that Kira would beat you?”
“I thought you could beat me,” L corrects him. “I don’t have any fear of dying to the current Kira.”
Light doesn’t like this kind of talk, L knows: when you were Kira. But he likes the praise. Even in the dark of the room, it puts a kind of brightness into his eyes.
Light liked praise when he was Kira as well, of course. He was always more careful to keep it hidden, then.
“Or, to be more accurate, I thought we would beat each other,” L says. “I wasn’t going to lose. But I might die in the course of winning.”
“I don’t think you can call it winning if you die,” Light says.
That was going to be my weapon against you, L thinks. If you’re not prepared to die, there are risks you can’t take. That’s your weakness.
“I thought about it every night,” L says. “Have I given too much away? Could it happen at any moment; is it going to happen now? Will I know what’s happening? How much will it hurt? Will I see you at the end, somehow, even if I know you can kill from a distance? Will it be different for you, killing me, or will I just be another of Kira’s hundreds of victims?”
“What do you think about now?” Light asks.
L studies his face. Light’s expressions are so open, now. It doesn’t feel right.
“I think about how much I miss it, sometimes,” he says.
Ace Attorney, Apollo/Athena and Apollo/Clay, 540 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'Apollo/Athena+Clay, Clay's spirit follows them on their dates to give Apollo advice.'
Apollo excuses himself to the bathroom before their food’s arrived. Stands there for a moment, gripping the sides of the sink, breathing hard.
He was hoping Clay wouldn’t be reflected in the mirror. Some kind of concrete sign that this isn’t real. But he can still see Clay in the reflection, over his own shoulder.
It still isn’t real. It can’t be real. Clay is dead, and Athena obviously couldn’t see him.
Apollo wishes he could convince that stupid part of his own mind, the part going you’re alive, you’re back, you’re here.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Oh,” Clay says, “you’re talking to me now?”
His own hallucination of his dead friend is getting snippy with him for being rude. How did he reach this point in his life?
“I couldn’t exactly say anything in front of Athena,” Apollo says. “I don’t want her to think I’m losing my mind.” Maybe know would be a better word than think. “So what are you doing here?”
Clay shrugs. “I just thought you could use some dating advice.”
Apollo turns from the mirror to stare at him. “It’s not a date.”
“You watched a romantic comedy together,” Clay says. He’s leaning against one of the cubicle doors; he looks unbearably solid, unbearably real. “Now you’re buying her a meal at a restaurant. It’s not her birthday, so it’s a date.”
It doesn’t seem right that a conversation with someone who isn’t even there could make him blush like this. “It’s not - you used to do that with me!”
Clay smiles at him: a fond, familiar smile that makes Apollo’s chest ache with the knowledge that he’ll never really see it again. “I did, didn’t I?”
Perfect. He’s apparently been obsessing so much about what his relationship with Clay used to be, about what his relationship with Athena is now, that he’s given himself hallucinations about it. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think that way about me.”
“And what way do you think about her?” Clay asks.
He wishes he could talk through this with the real Clay. He’s not going to do it with a figment of his own imagination. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m just saying,” Clay says. “She came here with you. It’s probably at least crossed her mind that this is a date. Maybe it’s worth taking a chance.”
Apollo closes his eyes. Takes a slow, deep breath in and out, trying to settle himself down.
It’s true that Athena got a little... stuttery and red-faced, when Apollo invited her out with him. It had nearly made him lose his nerve himself. But she’d said yes; she’d rearranged her plans so she could say yes. If this is a date, it’s possible that she doesn’t hate the idea.
“Thanks,” he says at last, opening his eyes.
The door Clay has been leaning against opens, and he falls through it with a squawk.
It’s deeply embarrassing to lose it laughing in front of a stranger in the bathroom, especially when you’re laughing at your own hallucination; it’s not like Apollo can explain himself. But it gets some of the selfconsciousness out of Apollo’s system, at least, so he can return to Athena with a little more confidence.
And, finally, a Severance ficlet! It's set in the first season and has no spoilers for the second, but please be aware that it contains, uh, severe and malicious misuse of tampons.
Severance, Helly, 260 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'within you'.
Around the twentieth day of Helly’s existence, she gets into the elevator feeling kind of uncomfortable and sweaty. Maybe she’s getting ill.
She hopes she’s getting ill; it’d serve her fucking outie right. She’s been sticking intentionally close to Mark whenever he’s been sniffing.
Something... changes, in the elevator: something more than the new clothes, the sudden uptick of alertness after a night of sleep. There’s-
There’s something inside her.
Her first thought is that, holy shit, her outie’s sent her to work wearing a sex toy. She’s trying to humiliate Helly in front of her colleagues. Honestly, as much as Helly hates that bitch, a part of her is kind of impressed by her own deviousness.
It must be pretty small. Maybe she’ll see if she can swallow it, force her outie to explain that in surgery.
On her way to the bathroom to take it out, she notices she’s wearing a skirt with pockets; that’s unusual. She puts her hand inside, looking for some kind of wordless ha ha, fuck you message from her outie, and brings out a small case: clear, unmarked plastic, full of little white cylinders.
Oh. She knows what these are. Her outie actually isn’t trying to screw with her; Helly’s just having her first period.
When it’s time to leave the office, Helly detours to the bathroom on her way to the elevator. She takes a seat and methodically inserts as many tampons as she can physically fit inside herself.
She never finds herself at work during her period again, which she guesses is a bonus.
I was so thrilled to see a prompt for Apollo/Athena specifically! It's my favourite Ace Attorney pairing, and it's a relatively small ship within the fandom, so seeing that really took me by surprise.