drabbles: "Leverage", SGA, SN, Tracks - PG
Title: you’ll spend your last heartbeat chasin’ after rainbows
Fandom: “Leverage”
Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun. Title from Big&Rich.
Warnings: spoilers for season finale
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 455
Point of view: third
We made a difference. Remember that.
He’s got Nate listed as his emergency contact, but that’s only if he’s in the US and found under his own name. Considering his profession and proclivities, that’s not too likely. But he needed to put someone down, and since his sister had kicked him out of her life, he figured Nate-responsible and respectable-was better than anyone else he knew.
He is in the US, and he is using his own name. Actually, he’s three blocks from where their headquarters used to be, on vacation as a civilian. Nearly a year since they all went their separate ways. He hasn’t heard from any of them or called any of them, and it’s good being on his own again. Really. No one to count on, no one to watch while waiting for a knife in the back. Just himself, like it should be. He works better alone.
Last he heard, Nate had gotten back together with Maggie, Sophie was down in Australia conning some rich cowboy, Parker was in South America, and Hardison was living like a geek god in New York. And him, he’d gone back to retrieving. He just couldn’t not do something, and it was the only thing he’d ever been good at besides riding horses.
But he’s on vacation, using his own name, in Los Angeles. It’s all legal. Rented a car, a hotel room, checking out all the touristy sights he missed when he lived there. It’s… nice. He’s a civilian, like the millions of other people in the city.
That’s his mistake, he realizes instantaneously, the second the bullet hits him. He feels it, then he hears it, and then he goes down.
Fuck, he hates guns. They’re cheating. Cowardly. Too easy. Anyone can use a gun. Screaming, panicking-he’s at the La Brea Tar Pits and he’s bleeding all over it.
“Got him,” he hears. “Yeah, okay.”
He’ll remember that voice. He’ll remember the hands that patted him down, that stole his five knives and left him there. He’ll remember the eyes and mouth that smirked as a stranger’s face said, “Vic sends his regards, fucker,” and then spit on him.
He’s in the US and using his own name. And someone had to’ve called 911, so he’ll survive this. He’s survived worse. And they’ll call Nate. And Nate-responsible, respectable, the best man Eliot has ever known-will come, and Eliot’ll heal, and he remembers that face, so he’ll find the guy-that’s what he does, after all-and he’ll make the guy pay.
Fuck, it’s cold. Summer in LA, it shouldn’t be cold. He’s had worse and he’ll survive until the ambulance shows up. He’ll survive.
It’s what he does.
Title: to be of mud instead of stars
Fandom: “Stargate: Atlantis”
Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun. Title from Shana Abe.
Warnings: AU
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 340
Point of view: third
Notes: part of the elemental!AU
Atlantis is strange. Nowhere else she has ever been, has Teyla felt so… adrift, away from sure and steady ground. The dirt is deep, far beneath the ocean. She can barely hear it, and should she have need of it, Teyla is uncertain if she has the strength to call it to her aid.
The Alantians-Earthlings, one of the soldiers said-also have Ancestral gifts. All of them. At about two hundred, that amount nears how many Teyla has seen in all her travels. Her father, too, had been a GroundSpeaker, but no other Athosian in her clan.
All four of the elements are represented on Atlantis. The power-it sings. The leader, Dr. Weir, is like Teyla. After she catches her breath, Teyla is happy to speak with Dr. Weir(“Call me Elizabeth.”), to share history and lore.
Teyla feels slightly guilty for her bit of relief that Colonel Sumner did not survive. He was quick to anger, quick to act-he had no time for reflection, no time to consider other paths. Like all FlameSpeakers Teyla has met, he flared and burned all obstacles, but that is not a leader’s way.
Major Sheppard, on the other hand-Teyla is not sure he’ll do any better. And Dr. McKay-he is impatient and loud. The power between them… Teyla is glad they seem to on her side.
They have the makings of a great people, the Atlantian-Earthlings, but they are so very young. She will do what she can to help them find their place in this new land-the Pegasus Galaxy, they call it. Elizabeth had explained the legend of a winged horse. It seems very apt, considering Major Sheppard’s gift, the most powerful SkySpeaker she has ever heard tell of.
At night, Teyla listens hard, straining to hear past Atlantis’ creaks and groans, for the lullaby of the ground. It is so very far away.
Often, she dreams of her father and the games they played when he taught her what it meant to be a GroundSpeaker.
Title: Despair behind, and death before
Fandom: “Supernatural”
Disclaimer: not my character; just for fun. Title from Donne.
Warnings: spoilers for aired season four; takes place during 4.3
Pairings: John/Mary
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 500
Point of view: third
Notes: thanks to tigris_lilsis for reading over every version of this.
He is older than his father, taller and broader. Dad seems so young. It’s just wrong, Dad being innocent and Mom being a hunter-his worldview is completely tossed upside down. Dad’s got no clue what’s out there, and Mom… she’s not the angel he’s always pictured, remembered her as. She’s just a girl, rebelling against her parents, wanting out of the life. She’s Sam, ten years before Sammy even exists.
They’re so young. He towers over Dad, practically, and he could break Mom in half. He knows more than both of them put together-Mom may’ve been hunting from the cradle(and Grandpa sure is one scary bastard), but she’s barely eighteen. She’s a kid. Dad’s been to war and come back, but he’s still just a boy. He’s still shy and awkward, stumbling through a courtship with the woman he’d spent over twenty years getting vengeance for.
Dean can’t catch his breath. His parents, his grandparents, Azazel-all twisted together, blood and even more fucking deals with fucking evil. Even going thirty-six years into the past, to back before November, isn’t enough to escape. Azazel’s there, fucking with his family, killing his family… Dean’s hands itch for the demon-killing Colt, the shining blade. He’s the one that killed Azazel, Mom and Dad’s murderer, and now his grandparent’s killer, too. He’s the one that got Sam killed, which made him responsible for Dean’s deal-and he killed Dad twice over. He killed Dad to get Mom’s deal, and he killed Dad as part of Dad’s debt for Dean’s life, and Dean wants to strangle the fucker with his bare hands, to rend him and tear him. Dean learned a lot in Hell, and he really really wants to put it to use almost-forty years in the past but Castiel’s hand is warm on his shoulder and he’s waking up in now.
He didn’t change a thing except for the worse.
Dad was so young, so naïve, so hopeful. Mom saw a way out, a way into the life Sam still dreams about sometimes, the life none of them ever seem able to have.
“Why did you even send me back?” he demands. He wants to hurt Castiel like he hurts now, wants to make the angel cry-if angels can cry. He never played with an angel in Hell. Demons can sob oceans, if twisted the right way, and he found hundreds.
Castiel has no meaningful answer. His eyes are sad, unfathomably deep, with knowledge Dean will never be able to grasp. His eyes are holy, God’s light shining out of the human vessel-a man who prayed for this. Does he regret it now?
The angel offers platitudes, the words with slightly wrong inflections, and Dean’s anger just keeps spiraling. He gets so angry with no reason, and he can’t lash out at Sam. Not at Sammy.
“If you don’t stop him,” Castiel says gently, “we will.”
Dean misses the clarity of Hell. Life was so much easier there.
Title: while the spirit wings away
Fandom: Tracks by Louise Erdrich
Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun. Title from Browning.
Warnings: takes place during chapters 6-7
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 167
Point of view: third
Her faith in herself died with her second baby, and with that faith went her power. She had always walked a different road, unknowable, full of power and wonder. She had never feared the path until the way left her with the breath of her child.
The knowledge abandoned her; her dreams began to lie. Her family looked at her with pity and sorrow where once there had been awe and fear.
She was broken. She could not let Lulu out of her sight. She listened, as she always had, but the voices only jeered instead of singing.
Once, she had summoned a ferocious storm for vengeance. Now, she could only chase her daughter and whisper useless words, mute to the power she once commanded. She knew the way back: reclaim her faith in herself.
But the baby died. The baby died and the path was closed-and yet, in the dark of night, through the trees, on the shores of the lake, the voices still screamed.