Fic: Three Sentence Ficathon Fills, pt 2 (Various)
Well, the Three Sentence Ficathon has come to a close at last. Until next year, beloved ficathon!!
Here are my last ten fills, bringing me to a total of seventy-two altogether...
Like Birds Around the Grave
Prompt: Ancient World History, Cleopatra (& Hypatia, if you don't mind the timey-wimey-ness), “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
“This is not entirely what I'd expected from the afterlife,” Cleopatra says, looking around the lush garden, covered in a riot of colors, with the soft sounds of running water and birdsong playing in her ears.
From her couch, Hypatia laughs, and gestures languidly towards the walls surrounding the greenery, lined with scrolls and books beyond count, and says, “With all this beauty around us, and knowledge of the ages at our fingertips, what more could you desire?”
Cleopatra stretches, and thinks, feeling the blood shift under her skin, and says thoughtfully, “Men?” and delights at Hypatia's clear, sweet laughter, and at her response of, “Oh, don't worry about them, darling - they'll be along just as soon as they finish their favorite activity of congratulating one another on their illustrious lives.”
All the Very Best of Us
Prompt: The Mummy, Evelyn(Nefertiri) & Imhotep, I knew you once
She feels it, whenever she looks at him, at his smooth, oiled skin, his flat, dark eyes, whenever his voice creeps across her skin like a moth fluttering against the glass of a lamp.
She knows him, as she has always known him, as she will know him again and again, wherever she might meet him, throughout time and lives as yet unknown; she knows this like she knows her own skin, feels the cords binding them together, though he never touches her with more than his eyes, never sets a foot wrong or speaks an impolite word to her.
“I know you,” she says once, as they pass in a corridor late at night, a corridor neither of them has any business being in at that hour; he understands it for the threat it is, and smiles, the shadows changing and swallowing his face, leaving her alone in the darkness.
Float By Your Side
Prompt: Narnia/Silmarillion, Susan/Maglor, Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope
Sometimes it's easy for him to forget what the stars mean, to forget their names and stories; to forget even the map that they are, to those who can read it, the guide to the Undying Lands.
Then one day he watches her as she laughs, and touches the fine lines fanning from the corners of her eyes, and remembers that she is mortal, that she is of something beyond this world, yet is not bound to it, and will fade and crumble away to ash in time, if he does nothing.
She comes upon him the next night, as he begins carving by starlight; never before has he carved an object not meant to make music, but for her, he will learn a shipwright's trade, and a sailor's, and beg the Valar for forgiveness; he looks up at the stars, shining bright in the sky and thinks if Luthien could make her trade, so too might he.
The Night Is Dark
Prompt: Narnia/Silmarillion, Susan/Maglor, the sun goes down, the stars come out, and all that counts, is here and now
He laughs when she confesses, late one night after too much wine, that she was afraid of the dark as a child.
"I was born in the light," he says, "and lived my whole life in it, with darkness never falling, until that day - imagine then, how frightened I was, and I was a man full grown."
She thinks of bombs falling from the London skies, of wolves howling in the black of a Narnian night, of fleeing a desert city by the light of the moon - and then she turns to him, and sees the starlight reflected in his eyes (that constant light that he speaks of, that she imagines must have looked like the light in Aslan's mane), and knows that darkness can hold no terrors for them, not any longer.
Now Is All We Have
Prompt: Silmarillion/Narnia, Susan/Maglor, the sound of raindrops, a rippling stream
When the spring rains begin (it rains all the time here along the Cornish coast, really, but this is different, this is spring rain, soft and warm and sweet), she laughs and runs out into it on impulse, leaving him leaning in the doorway, watching her with a fond smile.
"Join me!" she calls, holding out her hand as the surf foams about her feet (she hears Lucy's giggles of delight, feels the tug of Peter's arm around her waist, sees Edmund's expression in Maglor's raised eyebrow), rain streaming down her face like tears.
It shocks her, but he does; the waves sweep her feet from beneath her as he takes her hand, and they go down together, with seafoam in her hair and his laughter in her ears.
We Were Half Crazy
Prompt: Greek Mythology, any, “sympathy for the devil” [Cassandra & Agamemnon]
She unnerves him, she knows, with her constant staring, even after he threatens her with fists, with knives, with rape.
"Her shade drapes over you like a cloak," she says, as the ship sails closer and closer to the shores of Greece, to the wife he left behind, to the crimes he had committed to ease his path to her city, to its destruction.
"Soon you will feel her bite," Cassandra whispers; over Agamemnon's shoulder, Iphigenia's shade smiles, and Cassandra shivers, and is sorry still, so sorry, that no one ever hears.
Maybe They'd Learn Latin by Osmosis
Prompt: West Wing, any, zombie hunters AU
"These people don't vote, do they?" the president asked, peering over the top of a wall at the approaching horde.
"Well, sir," Toby responded, reloading his gun, "even if they did, I think we'd come out on top, seeing as how you've got the biggest, juiciest brain in DC."
"Fair point," Bartlet admitted, "now where the hell is Leo with that fighter jet?"
Turning in Revolutions
Prompt: Silmarillion, Maglor, any well-known historical event
He watches them pour over the shores of Britain, these Romans, and feels something tug inside himself; they remind him of his own people, with their urge to organize and build and order, to shape the world to their whims.
He sees their leader once, the man called Caesar, and is reminded of his father, the same strength and purpose, the same will capable of holding thousands of individuals, of making them into one driving force.
He flexes the fingers of his burned hand, and takes up his ancient sword once more; when Caesar and his Romans are driven from the shores, he stands alongside the cheering Britons, and is not sorry to see them leave.
Don't Believe Me When I Say I Don't Care
Prompt: Medieval History, Richard III/Anne Neville, modern AU
They'd known each other forever (he remembers her from family gatherings as a little girl with huge eyes, a kitten in one arm and a book in the other), but when he met up with her again in college (of course she wrote poetry, and he cringes to remember how he'd laughed at that, secure in his poly sci program) it was different somehow, and soon he'd been spending more time in her room than his apartment.
But that was years ago now (years that seemed like decades), and now that he's face to face with her for the first time since, backstage at the second debate while his brother crushes her husband in front of the crowds, he can think of only one thing to say: "Why, Anne, just tell me why."
Her eyes are still huge, even as they won't quite meet his, but her voice is steady enough as she says, "My father...after yours died, and you had to run, we thought you'd never come back from that, and I was..." she shakes her head and bites her lip before going on, but her hand drifts over her abdomen, and there's no way, he thinks, but some part of him knows it could be, "it doesn't matter now, but Edward, he was willing, and my father said I would be ruined, I didn't have a choice..."
Everything in Richard hardens, and his fingers curl into a fist as he says, "My brother will wipe the floor with the Lancasters, and when we've won this election, I'll take care of your father," and then he leaves her before he can say more, before the rage in him can spill over onto her; the York brothers have learned the lessons the Lancasters and Warwicks have taught them all too well, and he has a few calls to make, deals to broker; maybe he doesn't have time for it now, but he'll get Anne back in the end, at any cost.
We Are All Breakable
Prompt: Narnia/Silmarillion, Susan/Maglor, the Red Book of Westmarch
He tells her the story of the children he stole, and who stole his heart in return (her face hardens at that, and he remembers too late her feelings on children taken from their rightful places), and lets their names fall from his lips for the first time in years.
“Elrond?” she asks, surprised, the anger falling from her face (and oh, he is grateful for that, for already he knows he couldn't bear it if she were to scorn him, this mortal Queen out of time), and she continues, “But how strange, I read a story when I was a little girl with a wise elf lord named Elrond, and dwarves and a hobbit too!”
He thinks back to the gunfire, and the trenches, the screaming horses and the seemingly endless wounds he'd patched up, both not so long and a lifetime ago, and says mildly, “Did you think you were the only one I had ever thought to share my tales with?”
Here are my last ten fills, bringing me to a total of seventy-two altogether...
Like Birds Around the Grave
Prompt: Ancient World History, Cleopatra (& Hypatia, if you don't mind the timey-wimey-ness), “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
“This is not entirely what I'd expected from the afterlife,” Cleopatra says, looking around the lush garden, covered in a riot of colors, with the soft sounds of running water and birdsong playing in her ears.
From her couch, Hypatia laughs, and gestures languidly towards the walls surrounding the greenery, lined with scrolls and books beyond count, and says, “With all this beauty around us, and knowledge of the ages at our fingertips, what more could you desire?”
Cleopatra stretches, and thinks, feeling the blood shift under her skin, and says thoughtfully, “Men?” and delights at Hypatia's clear, sweet laughter, and at her response of, “Oh, don't worry about them, darling - they'll be along just as soon as they finish their favorite activity of congratulating one another on their illustrious lives.”
All the Very Best of Us
Prompt: The Mummy, Evelyn(Nefertiri) & Imhotep, I knew you once
She feels it, whenever she looks at him, at his smooth, oiled skin, his flat, dark eyes, whenever his voice creeps across her skin like a moth fluttering against the glass of a lamp.
She knows him, as she has always known him, as she will know him again and again, wherever she might meet him, throughout time and lives as yet unknown; she knows this like she knows her own skin, feels the cords binding them together, though he never touches her with more than his eyes, never sets a foot wrong or speaks an impolite word to her.
“I know you,” she says once, as they pass in a corridor late at night, a corridor neither of them has any business being in at that hour; he understands it for the threat it is, and smiles, the shadows changing and swallowing his face, leaving her alone in the darkness.
Float By Your Side
Prompt: Narnia/Silmarillion, Susan/Maglor, Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope
Sometimes it's easy for him to forget what the stars mean, to forget their names and stories; to forget even the map that they are, to those who can read it, the guide to the Undying Lands.
Then one day he watches her as she laughs, and touches the fine lines fanning from the corners of her eyes, and remembers that she is mortal, that she is of something beyond this world, yet is not bound to it, and will fade and crumble away to ash in time, if he does nothing.
She comes upon him the next night, as he begins carving by starlight; never before has he carved an object not meant to make music, but for her, he will learn a shipwright's trade, and a sailor's, and beg the Valar for forgiveness; he looks up at the stars, shining bright in the sky and thinks if Luthien could make her trade, so too might he.
The Night Is Dark
Prompt: Narnia/Silmarillion, Susan/Maglor, the sun goes down, the stars come out, and all that counts, is here and now
He laughs when she confesses, late one night after too much wine, that she was afraid of the dark as a child.
"I was born in the light," he says, "and lived my whole life in it, with darkness never falling, until that day - imagine then, how frightened I was, and I was a man full grown."
She thinks of bombs falling from the London skies, of wolves howling in the black of a Narnian night, of fleeing a desert city by the light of the moon - and then she turns to him, and sees the starlight reflected in his eyes (that constant light that he speaks of, that she imagines must have looked like the light in Aslan's mane), and knows that darkness can hold no terrors for them, not any longer.
Now Is All We Have
Prompt: Silmarillion/Narnia, Susan/Maglor, the sound of raindrops, a rippling stream
When the spring rains begin (it rains all the time here along the Cornish coast, really, but this is different, this is spring rain, soft and warm and sweet), she laughs and runs out into it on impulse, leaving him leaning in the doorway, watching her with a fond smile.
"Join me!" she calls, holding out her hand as the surf foams about her feet (she hears Lucy's giggles of delight, feels the tug of Peter's arm around her waist, sees Edmund's expression in Maglor's raised eyebrow), rain streaming down her face like tears.
It shocks her, but he does; the waves sweep her feet from beneath her as he takes her hand, and they go down together, with seafoam in her hair and his laughter in her ears.
We Were Half Crazy
Prompt: Greek Mythology, any, “sympathy for the devil” [Cassandra & Agamemnon]
She unnerves him, she knows, with her constant staring, even after he threatens her with fists, with knives, with rape.
"Her shade drapes over you like a cloak," she says, as the ship sails closer and closer to the shores of Greece, to the wife he left behind, to the crimes he had committed to ease his path to her city, to its destruction.
"Soon you will feel her bite," Cassandra whispers; over Agamemnon's shoulder, Iphigenia's shade smiles, and Cassandra shivers, and is sorry still, so sorry, that no one ever hears.
Maybe They'd Learn Latin by Osmosis
Prompt: West Wing, any, zombie hunters AU
"These people don't vote, do they?" the president asked, peering over the top of a wall at the approaching horde.
"Well, sir," Toby responded, reloading his gun, "even if they did, I think we'd come out on top, seeing as how you've got the biggest, juiciest brain in DC."
"Fair point," Bartlet admitted, "now where the hell is Leo with that fighter jet?"
Turning in Revolutions
Prompt: Silmarillion, Maglor, any well-known historical event
He watches them pour over the shores of Britain, these Romans, and feels something tug inside himself; they remind him of his own people, with their urge to organize and build and order, to shape the world to their whims.
He sees their leader once, the man called Caesar, and is reminded of his father, the same strength and purpose, the same will capable of holding thousands of individuals, of making them into one driving force.
He flexes the fingers of his burned hand, and takes up his ancient sword once more; when Caesar and his Romans are driven from the shores, he stands alongside the cheering Britons, and is not sorry to see them leave.
Don't Believe Me When I Say I Don't Care
Prompt: Medieval History, Richard III/Anne Neville, modern AU
They'd known each other forever (he remembers her from family gatherings as a little girl with huge eyes, a kitten in one arm and a book in the other), but when he met up with her again in college (of course she wrote poetry, and he cringes to remember how he'd laughed at that, secure in his poly sci program) it was different somehow, and soon he'd been spending more time in her room than his apartment.
But that was years ago now (years that seemed like decades), and now that he's face to face with her for the first time since, backstage at the second debate while his brother crushes her husband in front of the crowds, he can think of only one thing to say: "Why, Anne, just tell me why."
Her eyes are still huge, even as they won't quite meet his, but her voice is steady enough as she says, "My father...after yours died, and you had to run, we thought you'd never come back from that, and I was..." she shakes her head and bites her lip before going on, but her hand drifts over her abdomen, and there's no way, he thinks, but some part of him knows it could be, "it doesn't matter now, but Edward, he was willing, and my father said I would be ruined, I didn't have a choice..."
Everything in Richard hardens, and his fingers curl into a fist as he says, "My brother will wipe the floor with the Lancasters, and when we've won this election, I'll take care of your father," and then he leaves her before he can say more, before the rage in him can spill over onto her; the York brothers have learned the lessons the Lancasters and Warwicks have taught them all too well, and he has a few calls to make, deals to broker; maybe he doesn't have time for it now, but he'll get Anne back in the end, at any cost.
We Are All Breakable
Prompt: Narnia/Silmarillion, Susan/Maglor, the Red Book of Westmarch
He tells her the story of the children he stole, and who stole his heart in return (her face hardens at that, and he remembers too late her feelings on children taken from their rightful places), and lets their names fall from his lips for the first time in years.
“Elrond?” she asks, surprised, the anger falling from her face (and oh, he is grateful for that, for already he knows he couldn't bear it if she were to scorn him, this mortal Queen out of time), and she continues, “But how strange, I read a story when I was a little girl with a wise elf lord named Elrond, and dwarves and a hobbit too!”
He thinks back to the gunfire, and the trenches, the screaming horses and the seemingly endless wounds he'd patched up, both not so long and a lifetime ago, and says mildly, “Did you think you were the only one I had ever thought to share my tales with?”