nearly too clever by three-quarters.

fic: the frozen hours (doctor who, g)

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 04:29:17 GMT

Martha, seeing the world. (Or universe, rather.)

(Should point out that virtually all of this was written before Last of the Time Lords aired, and also holds to some of my personal theories (viz. it is All About Gallifrey Really, And Martha > You). & yes, I am being surprisingly productive lately, for the simple reason that I'm trying to get things finished before I pop off for a month.)

She's re-starting a little girl's heart on Galanthranos, and climbing mountains on one of Jupiter's moons, and watching the red sea (red not just in name: a deep vibrant scarlet like wine or blood) crashing against rocks on a planet whose name is almost completely impossible to transcribe. She's being shot at and threatened and sentenced to execution, and she's running and the stars are wheeling past her as though she's the only fixed point in a universe of moving infinities, and it's wonderful. It's so very wonderful. Wonderful and a little bit terrifying, and -- she's beginning to lose track of the number of days.

That tends to happen.

"See, the point. The point. The point is, right, that people are unpredictable and small and enormous and it's better that way, because there are some things you aren't supposed to think and also because everyone's sort of their own universe. Keeps it interesting, doesn't it? If I knew exactly what you were going to say and what I was going to say back, and -- what do you mean, what's that thing on the console? That's the gravitic anomaliser, it -- oh. That thing. That's the kettle."

"Gallifrey? That's in Ireland, isn't it?"

And so he does what he always does: makes it up as he goes along. Which is probably why they're currently experiencing the myriad wonders of the Glorious Traxan Empire ('no, really, Martha, it's wonderful. Well, when you aren't in here, anyway. They really do pave the streets with gold, you know.') from within a prison cell whose appearance can really only be described as 'dank'. And 'dark'. And 'replete with unpleasant shadows, dubious-looking metallic implements, and strange noises in the nebulous gloom which suggest that vermin are currently discovering all this cell has to offer'. Unfortunately, 'comfortable' and 'cosy' and 'lit by the wonderfully warming wood-fire' are not, in this case, applicable.

The Doctor, most annoyingly, is humming.

"You've been locked up lots before, then."

"Loads of times." He grins. "Insane dictators, evil empires, cops of all sorts, ordinary run-of-the-mill madmen. I get around."

"What about this one, then?"

"Ah--" he grimaces slightly, and waves his hands around a bit to suggest eloquence; "Just grumpy palace guards. With a spot of existential angst. Incurable halitosis. The universe isn't falling to bits around our ears, so I've been in worse."

She makes a small noise of disgust, although this is not so much to do with the eventual heat death of the universe as it is to do with the fact that something ominously slimy has just crawled over her foot.

"I resent that. My fashion sense is excellent. You're just saying that because it hasn't caught on yet."

"--this room didn't always look like this, you know. Before the -- well, a while ago, anyway, it was all very nineteenth-century. There was a skeleton just there, lovely chap, can't seem to remember what for, not all that good for conversation anyway. And I did have a strange thing for chandeliers. But I do like this one because if you stand just there your face is half green and half orange, and no that's not a metaphor for anything but it's amusing isn't it."

She's met a man who survived the Holocaust (two floors down and the door on the right; she visited him, sometimes, just to talk, because he was old and tired and lonely and she wasn't) and there was always something about his eyes. Oh, he'd laugh and laugh, and he was polite and gentle and pleasant in a mildly absent-minded way (he tried his very best to blur out little corners of an accent to his speech, she'd noticed, and it was at once endearing and terribly sad); but behind his eyes, somewhere, someone was screaming.

See, what she doesn't want to admit to herself is that sometimes the Doctor's eyes look like that. And she hates the comparison, but it's true.

(People don't win wars. Wars win wars.)

"Are you all right?"

"I always am."

"You always say that."

"Then it's probably true, don't you think?"

"You can't be serious, Doctor."

"Yes I can. For minutes at a time. Managed a couple of hours, even. Once. Somewhere." He's on the other side of the console banging on things which should probably not actually be banged upon, which naturally means that he's hidden behind a gigantic rotor and she can't tell what he looks like, but she has a horrible suspicion that he's grinning his head off.

"Doctor."

"Yes. Yes, Martha, we have just arrived on the planet of the lizard-librarians. This is me being serious." He ducks out from behind bits of console and gives her a pleased glance. "Look, not smiling. Much."

"Should I even ask what the lizards want it for?"

" Martha, a little species tolerance here?"

" It's just -- when you imagine the wonders of the universe, giant lizards with a taste for Kafka don't really come to mind."

He frowns. She's missing the point, he informs her, though he doesn't elaborate.

--And here they are in a library-- the library, the Doctor explains, wild-eyed and alien in the diffuse light-- and bizarrely enough no-one's trying to kill them or tie them up or do any sort of nasty thing at all, which makes a nice change. So then they're wandering around rooms of books with vaulted ceilings and ornate doors with the sort of strange handles that were never really made to be used by a humanoid hand, and Martha's just drifting about trying to take it all in; the Doctor's already settled down in a corner with a towering stack of books and a vague mumble about how terribly charming it is not to be at the receiving end of any death threats for a change, and he's whistling tunelessly: a song he can't forget but doesn't quite remember.

"--surrealism. It's either surrealism or madness, not sure which -- Dali was like that, actually, at least if you hadn't met him, and -- want to? Spain's nice this time of year. Not that we need to go this time of year. A lot of planets don't measure time in years, you know. It's horribly primitive trying to measure anything at all by the orbital period of a lump of rock around a medium-sized star, I'm surprised the trend didn't die out sooner -- anyway. Where was I. Dali. And the surrealists. Not a bad name for a band. So, then--"

(And what she doesn't ask him is what his people, his vanished people, what they measured their time by, though she wants to know; she imagines the turn of a galaxy (and do galaxies turn? Do they spin and whirl about some greater centre?) or the shift of a continent or the beat of a butterfly's wing. And she wonders whether they measured time at all; perhaps they didn't need to. Perhaps. Perhaps a lot of things.)

How many miles to Gallifrey? Can I get there by candlelight? Starlight? Moonlight?

--it's night, and the Doctor's there in the shadows, shadows which are also the orange skies that he dreams about, and when he looks at her it's a little bit like burning (except that his eyes look exactly the same), and: "A pair of ragged claws," he says, out of nowhere. "Claws. Scuttling across the floor of silent seas." There's a look on his face that's old and terrified and terrifying and she doesn't know what it is, doesn't know anything except that she never wants to see it again (silver trees, he says, and she says -- what? what?) and then she wakes up--

It doesn't make sense and nothing makes sense and she's butchering Eliot anyway. And so she forgets about it. Forgets about it. Easy when you know how. (But see, the problem is, you hear about a war, and you don't forget about that, not even when it was a million light-years away and a universe ago. It's just not done -- no, not that. You just can't do it. And it lingers, lingers, malingers.)

"Basic political theory, Martha. Very fundamental. Never -- I mean, never. Never never. -- annoy the large bodyguard in the tight suit. Specially not when he has enough weapons to power a small nuclear war -- what do you mean, I was annoying him? I was only being friendly. As one does. Hello there, how do you do, there's a good chap, excuse me a moment while I disable all your security systems with my sonic screwdriver --"

So he takes her to a planet of ice, a sparkling frost-world. Her breathing forms little clouds of steam like it might on a snow-covered winter street in the evening, and she looks at the ragged mountains of ice and thinks of the crash of icebergs brushing impatiently past each other in the night. The cold is very full of memories.

And he takes her to the Eye of Orion, which is, perhaps, also the eye of the storm: peaceful and gentle and existing only to let everything else roil around it like angry thunderclouds. It hangs still, quiet, caught in what might be a neverending moment.

And he takes her to a planet which has no name because it has never needed one, and the sky is dark and boiling green, and the tempest is all around them singing strange songs about the universe and howling with ceaseless ferocity, and the dark oceans are roaring, waves capped with white foam. At the heart of it all she can see a single seagull flying into the heart of the thunder.

And--

She dreams that she stayed at home, dreams of exams and a cup of tea and the positioning -- the allure of ordinary things. She dreams that she left him on a space-station a million light years and five thousand chronological ones from where she was born: and that she didn't regret it, not for an instant. She dreams that she's flying, flying, falling. She dreams that everything's burning.

Sometimes she can't tell the nightmares from the rest, and that frightens her.

"--It's mad, this thing, this enormous crazy wonderful universe thing. Universe. Reverse. Just verse. Freeverse. Rhymingverse. No, that isn't it. Adverse. No, no, no, where was I? --it's brilliant, isn't it? Brilliant."

The Doctor sets the coordinates for Barcelona ("the planet, not the city. You'll love it, really, they have dogs with no noses and the best quiche this side of the Mutter Spiral--"), but somehow contrives to bungle it up in a marvellous manner and land on what he later discovers is Balanus Minor. It's a world of giddy rock-spires and dazzling shafts of light and lost cities carved in ice; the air feels cool and clear, almost crystalline in a strange sort of way, and Martha can almost taste the delight of it like something smooth and delicate on her tongue. Right at the foot of the highest mountain, there's a little rambling marketplace in incongruous reds and golds tinted with smoke and spice, and since there doesn't seem to be any political uprising or bloody battle or cosmic unfairness in evidence, Martha slips away from the Doctor and wanders through the labyrinth of stalls. They're makeshift things, but surprisingly lovely, dark hangings low overhead and brushing against her with the scent of something wild and strange; and all around is the sound of haggling and laughter.

She runs into the Doctor just as she's beginning to find the heat and light oppressive; he's grinning, and almost drags her into the open to show her an armoury of coloured silks (or something softer than silk, airy and translucent and featherlight) stretched onto elaborate frames. "Look," he says, delighted, "kites." They swoop and dive and pirouette in the frost-clear air, tugging at the light strings that tether them to the ground, and Martha wants for a moment to be among them: suspended in the sky.

"You're completely mad."

"Only when the wind's north-north-west."

It's not Earth: the sun is too red, too cold, and the seas are the wrong shade of blue, and the sand on the beach is a strange shade of silver like an ocean of glass; but it doesn't need to be Earth, does it. The sky is bright, and the waves are breaking upon the shore with a sound like the quivering hum of strings, and it's not going to last but just for a moment it's perfect.

Note: near the end, in 'Universe. Reverse. Just verse. Freeverse. Rhymingverse.' & etc., the Doctor is taking off on himself, specifically himself in the Eighth Doctor novel 'City of the Dead' (which is fantastic and which you might want to read). Context and phrasing are, I fancy, sufficiently different, though.

fic: into the silence (hp, g-ish)

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:55:27 GMT

hp_summergen reveals are out, & since I am a complete and total narcissist (irredeemably), I insist on reposting things with ridiculous speed. This was written for rosivan, beta-read (as usual) by avendya (who also provided the title) & egged on rather by faeriemaiden, who is terribly encouraging. (Originally posted here; as usual, apologies if you see this twice.)

Summarised very tritely: Sirius faces the realities of war.

"Do you understand the sadness of geography?"
Michael Ondaatje, 'The English Patient'

In the evening it is almost as though Sirius is folding in on himself, crumpling inward and buckling like delicate old paper, collapsing into the hollows at the ends of his bones, slackening into something unreal and forlorn. The air is still and heavy, oppressive. There's something of the surreal about it all, and the dark descends in a sidling sort of way that is somehow imprecise -- things are defined about the corners and blurred in the middle, and everything's shades of grey and dust, and perhaps if he listens hard enough he might be able to hear the things the shadows are muttering inarticulately to each other in their sleep.

It's always different, and always the same; sometimes he goes out into the street to watch the night settle round the city (or the city settle about the night; it might be the same thing, and it might not). The spent embers of a day. The roads and footpaths feel neglected, lost, because there is a sense of the times and a sense of desperate clinging to them; in the orange glow of the streetlights, they look as though they might lead into different places and lifetimes, as though they are something more than what they are in daylight. No-one's ever walked down them, and no-one ever will, but they're waiting.

He doesn't go down them, and in the morning it is almost all of it gone; the sky and streets are bright and newly-made and for a moment or two it is though the world has untilted its axis, which of course it cannot do.

(This isn't the way things were supposed to be; life was meant to be more glorious and more wonderful and it wasn't meant to be the sort of thing that you don't even want to face when you struggle out of bed in the morning. And damn, but that's a pretentious thought. A whole slew of pretentious thoughts. Life's ugly sometimes but there are things in it worth fighting for even when the fight wants everything you have to give: friends. Ideas. Justice. Free will. Those moments in the dead of night when you wake up and everything clicks and it's like you've always known exactly how everything in the world fits together.

And he thinks: this isn't the way things were supposed to be, but this is the way they are, and that's it, you live with them and you set them right, isn't it? Isn't it.)

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then the bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,
and that grass died.
Philip Levine, 'You Can Have It'

London in the early morning is crisply white, frosted over, a monochrome study in geometry and angle and shadows like lace or like shutters across the icing-sugar snow (falling gently, even now). For a few minutes it's pristine, undisturbed, unstirred; carte blanche, tabula rasa. The sky's grey like steel or someone's eyes or memories, contemplative and silent; the leafless trees lie flat against it, branches meandering across in organised asymmetry. It's all very stark, outlines defined and definite. Then something shatters, and it might be because of an impudent robin twittering to himself in the bare branches of an apple-tree, or a yellowing sheet of ragged newspaper fluttering across the street caught in a breeze, or the creak of someone's front door being dragged open slowly. The city comes to life only ponderously, drawn into words and existence and gleaming with forgotten light about the edges. Everything's disturbingly bright; the fog has not yet settled itself about the buildings, and the people on the streets are defined only by their hats and overcoats and the way they drift across the footpath like leaves blown over a leafless plain.

Sirius feels washed out by the snow, overexposed, reduced to an outline of himself, or a cipher, or a silhouette. It's all a bit unreal, a bit like a scene from a book that he's inadvertently stepped into and become a part of, as though an author paused for a moment and then wrote a figure and footsteps into a pristine snow-scene. If he were in his flat he'd be cursing and stumbling over piles of old books and discarded clothes on the floor, and trying very desperately to coax the old oven into producing a sputtering flame; because he's outside he's watching the world being tossed by him, and listening for something that he cannot quite name, and brushing the snowflakes impatiently from his hair.

In December, he dreams.

----

order (n):
1. the arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular pattern.
2. overall state or condition.
3. a state in which everything is in its proper place. (antonym: chaos)

Minerva McGonagall to Albus Dumbledore, February 1978:
-- I should hope that this proposed Order will rise to become something more than an inadequate band of vigilantes, for that is all too easy, and in these days something more is required; the general apathy towards recent attacks is unconscionable. With that said, since you mentioned a possible interest in recruiting some of our graduating students -- they are far too young in all reality, but this is, as you said, going to turn into a full-fledged war at some point -- I ought of course suggest James Potter and Sirius Black --

Albus Dumbledore to Peter Pettigrew, May 1978:
Dear Mr. Pettigrew,
The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is located at --

Lily Evans to Remus Lupin, in conversation, March 1979:
"Honestly, I'm not even sure that we can do anything. We're trying to fight something that the Ministry won't even believe exists."

Sirius Black to Remus Lupin, October 1979:
-- it's not just political. No-one wants to think that there's something out there, so they won't, and all they'll do is keep ignoring it all and sit by and watch the count of bodies rise, and they'll lock themselves in their homes and bar the windows and hope that it isn't going to be them next, and they'll have nightmares about all the possible ways someone could kill their families slowly, but they're not going to do anything.

Damn them, Moony. Damn them all.

The Daily Prophet, February 1980:
While we do not wish to take the side of the conspiracy-theorists, the madmen and the doomsday-prophets, it seems that the time has come for our society to acknowledge that a war of sorts is upon us, and that it is now our duty to choose sides...

James Potter to Sirius Black, December 1980:
They're planning something Dumbledore said. Islington. Tomorrow or
the day after. Talk about it later -- tea at four?

Remus Lupin, in private writing:
o tempora! o mores!

o tempora. o tempora.

----

Marlene McKinnon's funeral is a pitiless thing; there's a straggling group of mourners blending into one indistinguishable creature of black velvet and white lace handkerchiefs and bow-ties and elegant gloves, but for all that it's almost impossible not to feel bitterly alone, abandoned.

Remus is twirling a half-hidden sprig of something green between his fingers; he looks up, flashes something that could be a grin or a grimace. "Rosemary. For remembrance." It's fitting in a quiet sort of way, and it smells delicate and sombre. The sky is grey and overcast, boiling with the masked light behind the looming clouds. There should be music, there should be something trembling and sad and haunting on the violin to provide a glistening counterpoint to the universe, but the only sounds that can be heard are the rustling of the wind and the vicar's halting diction; he pauses and falters with apparent irregularity, and it's a little jarring. He's stumbling over the words, trying to reconcile a prepared pastiche of euphonious clichés with the fact of a girl's mother frozen still at her grave (she was very young, after all), and as charming and beloved and dearly missed float into the air, it is almost difficult to imagine that she was ever really alive --

-- Marlene McKinnon was twenty-one and had short dark hair and a very wide mouth that laughed often and too long. She was fascinated by Muggles, and watched their films and smoked long cigarettes and wore a leather jacket dragged from a half-off sale whenever she was down at the pub; sometimes she took the Tube, though she confessed that she didn't really understand it and usually had to Apparate back to the place she was intending to reach, but she loved the feel of the crowds around her and the way the trains whistled through the tunnels. She lived alone in Notting Hill, in a flat with a red door surrounded by people and streets. She'd walk into a pub all elegance and flair, and she'd turn heads with the quirk of an eyebrow. She did undercover work, and dived deeper and deeper until she was surrounded by cobwebs of her own creation, carefully gleaning snippets of information -- a meeting here, a comment there, the faintest shards of a potential plan -- until there was nothing left to find; in the end she was careless just for a moment, and they came after her with calculated efficiency. She went very quickly, outnumbered eleven to one in an alley, but she was proud and unyielding and there are very few people alive who understand exactly why it was she died when she did, and what it was she died for --

The point isn't supposed to be that she's dead; the fact that she lived is meant to be the glorious overriding truth. But she's going into the dark and into dust, and it's pointless. It's so very pointless.

(In the evening, the candle-light and the wine flicker in Lily's eyes; the conversation is not so much harsh as stuttering, abrupt and awkward and uncertain, interrupted by tension-ridden silences, and Sirius wonders how they have let themselves reach this. Remus's hand trembles very slightly as he reaches for his glass, but his voice is steady as he says: sooner or later, we might all have to give up. We might not even have the chance to go down fighting.

Sirius will remember very little of the evening, later, but he will remember the way he now slams his hand onto the table and announces that he intends to go out and get himself 'thoroughly plastered' at every single pub in the greater London area, when what he's really thinking is this shouldn't be happening, and maybe we shouldn't exist.)

----

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
T. S. Eliot, 'Preludes'

Now it's raining with a sort of impotent fury, as though the sky is hurling itself at the ground; the sky is dark with the weight of the clouds, piled into a tower of old memories. The streets are damp and glistening brightly in the orange glow of the streetlamps, water pooling itself in the pits of old scars in the asphalt; the buildings cast crooked, rippling shadows, shifting with the trickle of water into the storm-drains.

This is how you survive: one foot before the other, settling into an orchestrated rhythm; one, two, one, two. You exist because you have to, not cogito ergo sum but simply sum. Ergo sum. Perhaps you could have had a different life; it might have been a better one, might have been gentler, more beautiful, less tempestuous. It might not. Either way, the world would keep on inexorably turning, and you would keep on walking; one, two, one, two, straight on into the sunset or the ending of the world.

fic: turn left for the sunrise (supernatural, g-ish)

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 14:20:55 GMT

Massively, massively delayed spn_gaiman entry. Gack.

Title: turn left for the sunrise
Author: noldo_/ressie_noldo
Crossover: The Facts in the Case of the Disappearance of Miss Finch, from 'Smoke & Mirrors'
Rating: G
Recipient: mithborien
Author's Notes: Strictly speaking, this isn't as much of a crossover as it should have been -- it takes off on the premise of Neil Gaiman's brilliant short story 'The Facts in the Case of the Disappearance of Miss Finch', makes a couple of wrong turns and goes completely insane somewhere along the way. Any actual Good Bits were probably due to wanderlight's beta job, avendya's strange ideas, or such_heights's cheerleading; the strange bits are probably due to the (prescription, for the record) drugs I was taking at the time.

1.
From what Sam's read on the Internet and in the dusty archives of five libraries in three states, the thing doesn't really have a neat classification: circus, tableau, collection of naff incongruities, exhibition of horrors. 'Circus', then, for the sake of narration. The current address and almost-illegible directions he wrote on a diner napkin lead to a tiny building in a back-alley, crammed between an antique store and a shuttered house-for-sale, almost unnoticeable, not quite there. It's dilapidated, ramshackle, a whole host of other adjectives; nothing dramatic or remarkable, just a gradual deterioration into something inconspicuous and forlorn: 'fits the pattern,' Sam mutters, shuffling the papers in his lap, perhaps ticking something off on a mental checklist. --that's what it does, see: London, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Madrid, now New Orleans and Chicago and D. C.; it's always tucked into a shadowy corner in the poorer quarters and only stays long enough for someone to vanish, and then it's gone in the blink of an eye leaving only ragged posters behind, as though it has simply turned on its heel in the middle of the night and collapsed into dust. Something about it all's almost as though the whole structure's held together only by the loosening glue on the long-forgotten now-unreadable flyers plastered all over the walls.

The night is warm, slightly foggy in an oppressive way; it smells incongruously of woodsmoke and spices. Dean drops the handwritten directions into the gutter and curses, then shrugs. They're superfluous anyway. It's starting to rain, gently; the streetlight glints, and the door creaks in an almost deliberately ominous way as Dean pushes it open with the flat of his hand. Sam pauses for a moment to watch the dust-motes drifting in the beam of the streetlight, and think.

2.
When they're inside, just two more faces in a straggling crowd, the lights snap off with a hiss; there's a faint creak of machinery, a hollowed-out deep-down rumble of grinding metal, and something dark swoops overhead with a little twang of wires as it glides past; Dean mumbles something indistinct and presumably sardonic that Sam doesn't quite catch. There's a flourish of recorded trumpets punctuated by static crackles and hisses and leaps -- 'here come the clowns,' mumbles a woman in front of Sam (she's all heavy perfume and ostentation, and her fake furs tickle Sam's face every time she deigns to throw her husband a remark). A few seconds later a door concealed in the corner swings open (managing somehow to scrape and screech raspingly, so very obviously that it can hardly be an accidental sound); there's a ragged mimicry of applause--

--and then Sam looks up into the ring and it's a memory, a ghost, a localised delirium, a hallucination, a twist of the light; the ringmaster has a plum-coloured shirt and trailing coat-tails and untidy blonde hair and and a lazy smile, head tilted, and -- Jess, and Sam's not even sure if he's saying things aloud or just dreaming. He wants to run and cry and laugh and punch the wall till his knuckles bloody over and shout and do all of it at once or none of it at all; and he's telling himself it's a trick, and he's telling himself this is what they came looking for, but across the room Jess is waving a hand in exaggerated gesture and Sam can't bring himself to move. And he can't understand why the crowd is still talking, why this doesn't seem to make a difference to anyone but himself. His fingernails are biting into his palm; everything's awkward and unreal, like a story where nothing's right and nobody knows what to do with their thoughts or their hands, but it's all Sam can do to stop himself thinking about Jessica's eyes and writing papers in the rain. (And somewhere he might be laughing, because he knows: people go missing at that circus, they said. People walk in and vanish. It's not difficult to guess.)

There's a roll of drums punctuated with the hacking skips of an old tape, and something in a back room is probably burning because the air smells of smoke and fire and is full of strange sounds; Sam wonders if he might be dreaming, but he isn't, except that Dean isn't saying anything when he calls his name, and there's a sort of light quaver to the air, and he's still wondering whether he should run or shoot or laugh. --And Jess is right in front of him now -- he doesn't know how, one moment she's on the makeshift stage describing a pantheon of horrors, and the next she's near enough to whisper into his ear; she smiles warm honey and silk. 'You're not real', he says, because she isn't and she can't be and he left her on a ceiling in Palo Alto.

--and then she's gone.

And something's shuddering back into normality, and when he looks around again all he can see is the run-down raftering and the slightly naff velvet hanging forlorn from the walls. An overdressed Marilyn Manson lookalike is slouching in the ring, the cynosure of all eyes, and when Dean looks up inquiringly Sam doesn't say a word.

3.
Later on, the rooms will only be a blurred memory, indistinct and smeared with dust; Sam's stumbling through them in a sort of haze. The lighting is terrible and the makeup is wildly unconvincing, and by the time Dean's rolled his eyes through five different acts (rubber-masked 'werewolves' and blood that looks suspiciously like tomato sauce and sullen green-haired pseudo-punks with fangs and a hugely unconvincing beheading and 'the magical Marvin on his flying trapeze') Sam's almost ready to believe that there's no truth to it: nobody ever disappeared here, unless they died of the boredom. But he can still see Jess's smile, and when Dean mumbles something about how he's wasting his time here and a bar would be great, Sam shakes his head.

--that's when the roof cracks open; the sky spreads like an inkstain across the rafters, dissolving them away into shavings and sawdust, and Sam watches. Watches. He can hear, incongruous, someone's voice announcing that tonight, tonight, for one night only, one person will have their dearest wish fulfilled, and trailing off into an incomprehensible spew of ponderous Gothicism. But that's irrelevant; the ceiling's completely gone, the stars precarious overhead. And he's almost unsurprised that Jess is next to him, her hair tickling his chin, caught in a breeze he can't feel, and she's whispering something he can't quite make out, but then does it matter? It could be stay, stay here, stay now, or I love you, or I'm sorry, and perhaps he's going mad but reality's a subjective thing when you really get down to it, just an aggregation of things that don't even have to be true. Now the ceiling's a delicate yellow just shy of white, and there's a tap in the corner that's dripping as if to remind him that movement exists, and he's taking the stairs two at a time and tucking someone into bed and watching the sunrise through the window; he looks into the mirror, thinks surely his hair was always shot through with grey. There's a note pinned to the fridge; his handwriting's impeccable, small, worryingly neat, and Jess is smiling (surely she always had the faintest crow's-feet around her eyes?), and he knows without looking that if he goes into the living-room the fireplace will be warm and absurdly bright. Sam, he's driving to his office in a car that costs more than a small country, or he's walking the dog in early autumn, companionable silence not broken by the pleasant crunch of fallen leaves under his shoes, or he's waking up five-thirty in the morning to watch the sun rise. He let his hand linger a second too long on the warming stove, and the burn's stinging like days he doesn't even remember. He rolls over in bed and silences the alarm clock by knocking it off the table. There's a pair of starlings flying past the window, which is only a white square containing the black outlines of birds, and he watches the white leak out and bleach everything into invisibility, and he hears someone saying--

--and after that it's down to belief: he's somewhere underneath the world or just at right angles to it and his arm's around Jessica's shoulders. Or he's out of that room and into another, in the middle of a congregation of empty chairs and dusty flyers and rags, and Dean has his gun out and he's shouting though his eyes say something else, and then he's in the alleyway, looking at the moon, tracing the fading ring of a burn on his palm till the wind blows even the memories away, and wondering.

fic: princess leia does not care about you (hp, pg-13ish)

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:55:15 GMT

Princess Leia Does Not Care About You, by such_heights and noldo_

Gen, mostly involving Sirius Black and other assorted bods, 5076 words, PG or PG-13 for some appalling language and innuendo of a slashy nature.

To summarise: In which Sirius is a Doctor Who fanboy, James gets progressively more arseholed as the night progresses, and sanity is conspicuous by its absence.

Notes on the existence of: A collaborative effort brought to you by the addled lunacies of the excellent such_heights and yours truly, written entirely in parentheses during a marathon IM conversation. Please blame her for the funny bits and blame me for the less-funny more-misguided ones.

Any personal injury incurred while reading this is Not Our Faults. You probably won't need to know all that much about Doctor Who to read this, but it might or might not help.

Drat you, drat you all. Obviously I have been extremely stupid about choosing friends somewhere along the line though SADLY I am THOROUGHLY UNABLE to do anything about this short of hunting the Doctor down but seeing as how you ungrateful bastards won't even help me I should have to do it all myself which is DEFINITELY NOT ON.

What do you mean, 'what are you going to do now', Moony? OBVIOUSLY I am going to sit here and throw Cockroach Clusters at James's head, because I have already put up my signs about how the TARDIS should LAND HERE RIGHT NOW - PRONGS, are you eating those? Disgusting creature. Hopefully the TARDIS will land here because heaven FORBID the Doctor get it wrong and land in BLOODY SLYTHERIN clearly that would never do so we shall have to prevent this -- WHAT THE HELL PRONGS HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU EAT THOSE NO THEY DO NOT TASTE LIKE PEANUTS! Anyway, see, we have Snivellus dressed up like an alien and if we truss Peter up somewhere in mortal peril the Doctor will think there is something funny going on and APPEAR. OH WHAT SNIVELLUS LOOKS LIKE AN ALIEN ANYWAY - OH GIVE ME THOSE, PRONGS, CATCH ME LENDING YOU MY TOOTHBRUSH EVER AGAIN.

On second thoughts it's actually more interesting if GIRLS are in danger, do you think we can get hold of Evans? No? Ah well, we'll just have to get Peter in a wig instead MGHFMFFF MHGFF BLEAH I DIDN'T MEAN 'PUT THOSE IN MY MOUTH' YOU TOSSER. Peter looks pretty damned hilarious with blonde curly hair so that's almost worth it alone - now come on Wormtail, admit it, you look ravishing! And OH MERLIN'S BALLS STOP SCRABBLING ALL OVER ME YOU FILTHY DEGENERATE.

Now all that's left is to go out and wave lights around and shriek about how aliens have taken over Hogwarts and WE NEED A DOCTOR NOW go on Moony, you do that. Also no, Wormtail, that dress does not make you look fat, stop being a big girl -- oh wait, carry on. And OH GOD OH GOD GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM ME YOU BIG PERVERTED SOD WHO DO YOU THINK I AM, EVANS? And some high-pitched shrieks would be just the ticket - no, Wormtail, I did not just pinch you, don't be ridiculous, but that squawk there was just lovely so do carry on PRONGS YOU ARE FIRED FROM THIS ENDEAVOUR STOP DEFACING THE SIGN YOU ARE THE REASON WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. Ahah. Now that time, I did pinch you. And that was excellent, can we have that one again PRONGS IF YOU MOVE ONE MORE INCH I WILL FEED YOU TO THE GIANT SQUID STOP WRITING 'I LOVE LILY' ON THE SIGN YOU PONCY PRAT THIS IS NEITHER THE PLACE NOR TIME--

Moony, get that sign out of his way and wave it around a bit, there's a good chap - JAMES GO MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND GET US THOSE FIREWORKS FROM THE DORMITORY, BECAUSE OTHERWISE I'M GOING TO HAVE TO THROW YOU OFF THE TOWER AND YOU DON'T WANT THAT.

Ah, excellent. Now, can anyone hear a noise? It should sound like 'GRRGH MRPH SWOOSH SWOOSH GRRGH' --- I SAID FIREWORKS PRONGS NOT FIREWHISKY ALTHOUGH THAT ISN'T TOO BAD I SUPPOSE GIVE THAT HERE STOP HOGGING THE BOTTLE YOU GIT. Yes, that's a PERFECTLY sensible noise for a spaceship to make, shut up the lot of you and pass that bottle over. YOU DRANK HOW MUCH? YOU WANTON WENCH. I think I can hear something what is that oh it's just Peter snoring BUGGER YOU DON'T FALL ASLEEP JUST YET you're still sober you can't be allowed to fall asleep sober PRONGS HAD YOU CONSIDERED POSSIBLY LEAVING A DROP OR TWO OF BOOZE FOR THE REST OF US? NO? Pull your socks up, all of you! Jump higher, Moony! Look innocent, Wormtail! And POTTER, YOU LIGHTWEIGHT, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'VE FALLEN OVER ALREADY.

Perhaps we should all do the theme tune. DA DA DA DAAH DA DA DA DAAH PRONGS YOU IDIOT GET UP OFF THE FLOOR AND STOP SAYING 'EVANS' INTO THE STONES WHAT DID THEY EVER DO TO DESERVE IT? What do you mean you don't know how it goes have you not been paying attention to a WORD I've been saying - THE STONES DO NOT LOVE YOU, JUST LIKE EVANS DOES NOT LOVE YOU. I'll tell you what, how about I do the theme tune and you useless lumps do the percussion or something. NO, THE STONES ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS --OH BUGGER IT STOP CRYING ON THEM THEY DEFINITELY AREN'T YOUR FRIENDS NOW.

Just - that's it, thwack your legs a bit, very good, ok, now then - YOU WANT WHAT? NO I AM NOT HUGGING YOU, YOU WILL ONLY MOLEST ME. WHAT, SORRY, DIDN'T QUITE CATCH THAT - I'M YOUR BEST FRGG MMPH? Oh for heaven's sake, c'mere. There there. It's all right. KEEP GOING, THE REST OF YOU! AND NOT A WORD FROM YOU MOONY I CAN SEE YOU SMIRKING -- what was that? Yes, yes, you're my best friend too KEEP DRUMMING YOU TWO AND STOP TRYING TO SNEAK AWAY SNIVELLUS. PETRIFICUS TOTALUS! -- what do you mean, 'you're trying to dump me for the Doctor' SLAND'ROUS INFAMY YOU DRUNKEN SOT.

Ok ok we can all have a good cuddle later, just keep going! NOT YOU, SNAPE, JUST STAY THERE. Oh, that's right, you can't move! Shame. Prongs, you are my only love, don't be ridiculous! But you're going to run off and have red-headed babies one day and I've got to keep my options open. SOD OFF THE REST OF YOU OUR LOVE IS NOT YOUR CONCERN. All right, Prongs, you can stop snuggling into my elbow now, you're drooling on it and it isn't pleasant STOP SMIRKING MOONY YOU PRAT AND WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT 'CRAZED POOFTER' WORMTAIL I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT OUR LOVE IS BEAUTIFULLY PLATONIC AND ALL THAT. JUST KEEP DRUMMING NOW please stop sobbing into my robes, Prongs. No, I don't care that they're tears of joy SNAPE WHO ARE YOU TO LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT JUST THINK OF YOUR OWN NOSE oh right, you can't actually look any other way, tough luck I guess KEEP DRUMMING YOU BUGGERING BUGGERS.

OH SILENCE, I LOATHE YOU ALL. Not you, Prongs, never you, not even after that one time at the Christmas party, not even after you stole all my underwear - yes, yes, I forgive you for landing me in the hospital wing in Second Year, too, now just stop crying! Yes, Prongs, it's quite all right -- bloody hell you're a big girl's blouse when you're drunk -- it's fine it's fine. Yes, I know I said I was going to kill you for that thing about the secret passage in fourth year but I can hardly do it now while you're sopping all over me so let's just call it quits OH JUST GO AWAY ALL OF YOU I HAVE HAD IT WITH THIS BLOODY ENDEAVOUR not you Prongs, you can stay if you want as long as you don't mess up my robes any more, go wipe your face on Snivellus FINE GO IF YOU WANT I'M JUST GOING TO WAIT HERE FOR THE DOCTOR ALL BY MYSELF.

Oh. Oh I see. That's all right, it's fine, I can just sit here and wait. He'll come. He will. [whistles tunelessly] Seriously, you've all gone? Psh, some friends I've got. Yeah. See if I wait around with you lot next time you want something waited for. Pfft. At least I have Prongs and Snivellus to keep me company, and that is a sentence I never thought I would actually say. You hear that?

Prongs, Prongs, what are you doing. GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM, LOOK, HE'S TWITCHING, HE'LL HEX YOU - PETRIFICUS TOTALUS AGAIN, SNIVELLUS, SEE IF I LET YOU GET AWAY WITH ANY OF THAT. Prongs, no, he is absolutely not Evans, HOW ADDLED ARE YOU OH GOD OH GOD NO DON'T DO IT STEP AWAY! Prongs, Prongs, I really hope you aren't going to remember this when you're sober DON'T YOU SNEER AT ME SNIVELLUS. OH RIGHT YOU CAN'T HELP THAT. WELL THAT DOESN'T ACTUALLY EXCUSE YOU really, Prongs, Evans has red hair and Snivellus does not and also Evans's nose is not actually classified under 'mountains, medium to large' -- OH BOLLOCKS GET OFF MY FOOT. OWFUCK I AM GOING TO HAVE TO HOP EVERYWHERE NOW. Snape, I'm going to Obliviate you in a sec, you know, now come on, Potter, if you're going to have to grope someone - well, as a good friend, I suppose it'd better be me than him. I'm Obliviating you too, though, then only I will have to deal with the trauma of this evening. DAMN DAMN DAMN bloody foot.

Fine, Obliviated you, Snape, so you can just -- well, thank you ever so much, Snivellus, see if I ever help you get out of a well in which you are drowning miserably. Your death will no doubt be a source of joy to children and small animals. ANYWAY come on Prongs and stop groping me there you twit. NOBODY should have to live with the memory of doing that to Snivellus, not even you.

BOTH OF YOU, SHUT UP. Ok. Snape, bugger off now, no one likes you, go garrotte yourself with your own hair or something. Prongs, Prongs Prongs Prongs - no, I did not send him away so we could get some 'alone time' WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU My God we have got to get you shagged this is obscene. Oh COME ON Prongs and stop looking mournful NO I AM NOT DESPERATE TO SHAG YOU, YOU REPROBATE, BUT I HOPE FOR YOUR SAKE SOMEONE IS BECAUSE THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE oy Evans EVANS.

Lily. Ah, Lily my sweet, my dear, would you be so kind as to give me a hand? I have in my possession one James Potter, house-trained, good with children, who is currently utterly at our mercy and also rather unmanageable just at the moment. PRONGS GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME RIGHT NOW. Yes, contrary to all appearances, he actually is housetrained, only that doesn't seem to be particularly in evidence right now STOP THAT THIS INSTANT YOU DEBAUCHED MISCREANT STOP IT and, um, and, you can probably see where I'm going with this can't you? Please, Evans, I'm begging you here - he looks so sad, and I'm about this far away from losing all dignity. PRONGS. LOOK. EVANS. HERE.

I resent that remark. I do indeed possess dignity. IN BAGFULS. I POSSESS DIGNITY IN BAGFULS. You wound me, Evans, wound me to the core. NO PRONGS I AM NOT EVANS EVEN A LITTLE BIT THIS ONE IS EVANS THE ONE WHO IS A GIRL. Oh, don't lump me in with him, it's not my fault he hasn't been able to leave me alone for the last six years! I'm a perfectly respectable human being, and much more handsome than this idiot anyway, but come on, look at him - not even a bit endearing? YES THAT'S RIGHT, A GIRL, WITH BREASTS - THINGS I DO NOT POSSESS NOW GET OFF ME. What do you mean, 'you're responsible for the things he does'. I assure you, madam, I have nothing to do with the stuff he gets up to. THE LOVE POEMS ARE ALL HIM. ONE HUNDRED AND TEN PERCENT JAMES POTTER ESQUIRE. But honestly, look at his little face, doesn't it strike you as even a little bit appealing? YES. GIRL. GIRL. ONE OF THOSE. YOU LIKE GIRLS. YOU DO NOT FANCY BLOKES. GET OFF ME THERE'S A GOOD CHAP.

Lily, my sweet, if I'd written any of that poetry you'd have swooned at my feet by now. But I vouch that when he's not wankered on firewhisky he does actually have his moments and isn't quite such a sloppy kisser - DO NOT ASK HOW I KNOW THAT - and it is not the embodiment of evil. DON'T BRING REMUS INTO THIS, PRONGS, HIS DEVIANCIES ARE IRRELEVANT TO THE CURRENT DISCUSSION. Oof, you're heavy, now come on, stand up. Evans? Give us a hand here. Look, Evans, my knowledge of iambic meter is NOT RELEVANT to the situation at hand, the situation at hand being the fact that James Potter is about two seconds away from MOLESTING ME if we don't do something about it -- WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'LL SIT THERE AND WATCH, EVANS. HMPH -- and look, just help me get this plastered bastard into bed will you NO I DID NOT RHYME ON PURPOSE SHUT UP PRONGS. ALSO I DO NOT FANCY REMUS. WANKER. THAT'S YOU NOT HIM. OR IF THAT IS HIM I REALLY REALLY DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT.

You are a terrible, terrible creature, Evans - OH YOU DID NOT JUST IMPLY THAT ME AND JAMES - NO, NO, I PROTEST! Wait, hang on, Prongs - Remus said what? LALALA NOT LISTENING. What happened to the time when men were men and didn't fawn all over each other as soon as they got a drop of booze inside them - thank you, thank you, Evans, now come on, up you get. There - see? Both of us helping you down the stairs, that's nice, isn't it. Yes. There you go. WHAT WAS THAT? MERLIN'S BEARD NO. I AM NOT SHAG--I AM NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION. Prongs, Prongs, please stop breathing into my ear. Go breathe in Evans's ear for a change, equal-opportunity molestation -- sorry, Evans, didn't mean it. Really. PRONGS YOU ARE A WANTON HARLOT yes Evans I do know that's not a term commonly used for blokes, but come on look at him. PRONGS YOU PLONKER IF YOU DO THAT ONE MORE TIME --

I AM NOT HAVING IT OFF WITH ANYBODY AT ALL, AS A MATTER OF FACT - don't really see the need, because would you just look at the chaos this has wrought? PRONGS GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER. Well, that's a little more par for the course, he must be sobering up. OH WOULD YOU JUST WALK IN A STRAIGHT LINE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD. YES I AM PERFECTLY AWARE THAT THESE STAIRS ARE SPIRALLING AND SO ONE CAN'T WALK IN A STRAIGHT LINE, EVANS. I WAS SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY RATHER THAN GEOGRAPHICALLY -- no, Prongs, Prongs, Prongs, not that. OH GOD MINE EYES. PRONGS GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM THERE well this does seem a bit more like him, he's not usually trying to have it off with me-- I HEARD THAT, EVANS. I'll have you know I am exceedingly pleased with my personal life as of this minute EXCEPT FOR THE BASTARD LEANING ON MY SHOULDER WHO SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN WHICH BITS OF THE BODY ONE USES FOR WALKING.

Ok, fine, let's just stop here for a second - yes, Prongs, that suit of armour is looking at you a bit funny, don't worry, I'll sort it out! Evans, it's a bit rich you making snide remarks about the state of my love life considering it's been how long now since you've had a boyfriend? Yes I thought so. PRONGS WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST STAY STILL. Now then, are you going to help me get him back or not? I can't promise you won't get felt up on the way - AHA I SAW THAT LOOK YOU MINX. Well then. Onwards! Now, look, Prongs, there's a nice straight corridor here. Reckon you can manage it without knocking every portrait off the walls? Marvellous! I had plans this evening, you know. WHAT WAS THAT, EVANS? NO, as a matter of fact, my plans did not involve ingesting a great deal of chocolate and mourning my utter lack of sensible friends and love life. Although I'll grant that that might actually be appealing after all this. ANYWAY THAT IS NOT THE POINT. Prongs, Prongs, the shadows are not actually trying to get you, I don't care what you saw. Yes, I do in fact possess the patience of a saint, Lily, I am glad you noticed.

PRONGS WHAT THE HELL no that is not a Lethifold in the corner, not even a little bit STOP THAT YOU SHAMELESS RAKE. THE SHADOWS ARE PERFECTLY HARMLESS AND THERE IS DEFINITELY NOTHING TRYING TO HURT YOU THAT YOU COULD POSSIBLY NEED TO SEARCH FOR THERE. What did I do to deserve this? DON'T ANSWER THAT ONE, EVANS. In fact, I would much rather just get drunk only SOMEONE drank our entire supply which you are paying me back for in the morning, by the by, and you see, Lily - he managed to pick up one decent friend along the way, he has good taste if nothing else.

YOU AND YOUR PARANOIA, I SWEAR TO- will you shut up for a second I can hear Filch and that really, really is the one thing I do not need right now. Evans, you too! Just shut up. Now hang on, where's the Map - ok, ok, over into this classroom, QUICKLY. Prongs, SHUT UP. SHUT UP. Unless you particularly want to be eviscerated by Filch -- NO IT WILL NOT BE 'MOST EXCELLENT' STOP SAYING THAT YOU ADDLED TWONKER. Evans, I'd love to explain this map to you -- no no, I tell a lie, I don't think I actually would -- but this is not the place and this is definitely not the time. I need a bloody drink, I can't deal with this. SHUT UP BOTH OF YOU FOR MERLIN'S SAKE. HAVE NEITHER OF YOU ANY SENSE AT ALL? Do I have to yell to get it into your head, Prongs, because I really don't want to do that and -- WHAT THE HELL NOT NOW THIS IS NOT A QUIDDITCH PITCH YOU ABSOLUTE LUNATIC.

SILENCIO! Oh thank Christ. Evans, don't give me that look, it's for your own good. Now then. Prongs, sit down there. Fine, yes, ok, have a look here - see, there's Filch, there, and Mrs Norris too. YES OK STOP GIVING ME THE DOE EYES YOU BERK YOU KNOW I CAN'T RESIST THEM. I will un-silence you as soon as they're gone, all right? Now STAY STILL. PRONGS IF YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT ONE MORE TIME I WILL STICK MY WAND IN YOUR EYE AND YOUR OWN ONE UP YOUR NOSE SO THERE. Come on, Filch, you bastard, turn around and go down the corridor. GO. SHOO. Evans, Evans, please do not poke me in the arm like that, it is exceedingly worrying and if you make me jump right now I'll probably knock something over loudly and then where would we be? OK, stop looking at me like that, Prongs, I know we'd still be here. That's what you were wanting to say, isn't it. See, I can make your snarky retorts for you, you really have no need for your vocal chords. Ohhh come on just bugger off - why did you forget the Cloak, why? No, Evans, not explaining what that is I'm afraid. There we go! He's turned! Ok, just wait here five more minutes and we go out. I'm very, very tempted not to un-charm either of you, just so you know. OW THAT WAS NOT NECESSARY, PRONGS.

Shut up, Evans, do. It would be stupid if we ran out right now and Filch came back round the corner -- WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR. I AM THE VOICE OF INTELLIGENT REASON. PRONGS YOU ARE A PLONKER AND A GIT OF FANTASTIC PROPORTIONS LIKE A GIT-COATED GIT WITH GIT STUFFING SORT OF GIT. BOTH OF YOU. YOU'RE ALL FIRED. I do believe you two deserve each other.

Right, right, ok, I think we can make a break for it now - IF YOU BRING FILCH DOWN UPON US I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO EITHER OF YOU AGAIN, GOT THAT? Right then. I suppose you can talk again now, there you go. OH SHUT IT, PRONGS. If you don't quit that I'll Silence you again. CAN WE PLEASE JUST GET BACK TO GRYFFINDOR TOWER NOW I never thought I'd say this but SLEEPING would be infinitely better than you two. Please do not invite me to the wedding, it will be unbearable, especially since you will both be pie-eyed naturally. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF MERLIN EVANS THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO LECTURE ME ON MY SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES. Anyway, Evans, what were you doing out this time of night, hmm? Yes, NO GOOD, I'm sure. So don't you take a swipe at us, I know your secrets.

PRONGS NO YOU CANNOT GO TO SLEEP NOW ESPECIALLY NOT ON ME OH ARE WE BACK TO THIS AGAIN? I SEE THAT WE ARE. THIS IS NOT GOOD. THIS IS SO EXTREMELY NOT GOOD THAT I DO NOT HAVE WORDS FOR HOW PARTICULARLY NOT GOOD IT IS. Evans, you can stop looking at me like that, you know. I'm not actually out to kill anyone except possibly this prat. PRONGS YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER CAD IF YOU DO THAT I SHALL BITE YOU -- oh no Evans that does not mean what you are suggesting it means NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT bloody hell. MY REPUTATION IS SULLIED FOREVER - WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS IS MY REPUTATION ANYWAY SHUT UP EVANS.

Prongs, Prongs, I am never letting you get drunk again without more agreeable feminine company this is ridiculous. Actually I think I may just never let you get drunk again because right now the only situation in which I would even consider it would be one involving about a hundred dewy-eyed eager-to-please maidens and me being approximately ten thousand miles away from you EVANS STOP SNICKERING. THIS IS NOT FUNNY I AM DEADLY SERIOUS -- NO PRONGS THAT IS NOT MY 'NINJA NAME', WHAT THE HELL IS A NINJA NAME ANYWAY. HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH THESE THINGS. HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING MUGGLE FILMS AGAIN I TOLD YOU THAT WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA - last time, Evans, he went around with his hands on his head for a month impersonating a shark - CAN WE JUST GO HOME PLEASE.

I SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT I NEVER, EVER WANT TO HEAR THE WORDS 'FIREWHISKY' AND 'JAMES POTTER' IN THE SAME SENTENCE AGAIN. OR SEE THE OBJECTS CONCERNED IN THE SAME ROOM. PLEASE JUST KILL ME NOW -- no that was NOT an invitation Prongs if you DARE try doing it -- what was that, Evans? Star Wars? OH GOD PLEASE DO NOT REMIND HIM HE'S GOING TO GO OFF ON -- NO JAMES THERE ARE NO DROIDS HERE AND WE ARE NOT ON TATOOINE BLOODY HELL IS THIS HOW YOUR MOTHER FEELS ALL THE TIME? I now have previously unplumbed depths of sympathy for her.

NO SERIOUSLY SHUT UP PRINCESS LEIA DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU.

Psh. American sci-fi. Doctor Who is far superior in every sense. What's that, Lily? DON'T YOU DARE LAUGH AT ME. DOCTOR WHO IS INFINITELY SUPERIOR TO ANYTHING THOSE YANKS COULD COME UP WITH. Shut up, Evans. TOM BAKER IS UNTO US AS GOD. OR SOMEONE OF THAT SORT. As whoever it was who started Honeydukes, presumably a Mr. Honeyduke of some description I would presume.

What's that, Prongs? NO, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SARAH-JANE SMITH. SARAH-JANE DOES NOT COME INTO IT AT ALL. I am expressing my CRITICAL APPRECIATION for an EXCELLENT work of television EXCELLENCE. This has nothing to do with anything involving that Smith woman. Though having said that she is beyond compare and you are not to say a WORD against her! STOP THWACKING ME YOU KNOB. NOT A WORD, PRONGS. NOT A WORD. Also you can stop dangling off my neck because clearly if you can hang around ribbing me about Sarah-Jane you are not all that drunk SO THERE YOU TWERPING TWERP--what? NO PRINCESS LEIA IS NOT MORE APPEALING BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION honestly Prongs you are blinder than I thought, are you sure your glasses are on? SHE HAS PASTRIES AROUND HER EARS, SHUT UP. Sarah-Jane is heroic and has travelled in the TARDIS which instantly makes her better and- oh shut up. Evans, your objective opinion?

WHAT. What do you mean, 'neither of them'. The whole point was to pick one, and -- OH GOD PRONGS STOP FANTASISING YOU'RE DROOLING ON MY SHIRT. What do you mean, Han Solo? Han Solo is NOTHING, NOTHING compared to an alien from Gallifrey who can travel through SPACE AND TIME, d'you hear me? Would you please stop laughing and help me carry him - though watch out, I think he's close to hurling now. But yes. SPACE AND TIME, EVANS, SPACE AND TIME. AND REALLY COOL ALIEN RACES. AND -- what do you mean, 'Star Wars is more convincing'. DOCTOR WHO IS ART, I SAY. ART SIMPLY IS. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE CONVINCING. No, that was not 'very existential of me', what is wrong with you. Drunkenness isn't contagious, is it? I HOPE IT BLOODY ISN'T -- OH GODRIC, PRONGS, IF YOU SPEW NOW I SHALL GAROTTE YOU WITH MY TIE.

ANYWAY Star Wars is all big poncey effects with no SOUL - I mean, have you listened to the dialogue? Tom Baker speaks the words all humanity needs to hear. EVANS WHY ARE YOU GIGGLING ARE YOU PISSED AS WELL PRONGS FOR THE LOVE OF- DON'T- Oh. You did. That's vile. Evanesco. Where do things go when you vanish them, anyway? I hope it's in Snivellus's shoes -- oh don't look at me like that, Evans, he's a bloody git and not even you can deny it-- what do you mean, 'you're worse'. I RESENT THAT. I RESENT THAT VERY MUCH. BUT ANYWAY MOVING ON FROM THIS SORDID SUBJECT CAN WE PLEASE GET THIS MAN BACK TO THE DORMITORY BEFORE HE DECORATES THE ENTIRE CASTLE WITH HIS SPEW?

EVANS, DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON SNIVELLUS? IS THAT WHAT THIS IS? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE DISGUSTING, GET OUT OF MY SIGHT. Oh, ok, put the wand down, there's a good lass. Prongs, are you still so sure she's the love of your life? There's evil in those eyes... OK OK LET'S JUST GO. Prongs, you are to keep all inner contents inner, understood?

Why does trying to get back to Gryffindor bloody tower feel unpleasantly like trying to WALK from here to London-- WHAT THE HELL NO PRONGS THAT SUIT OF ARMOUR DOES NOT LOVE YOU IT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR NEEDS AND INNERMOST SORROWS PLEASE GET AWAY FROM THERE YOU SAD DERANGED LOON. ALSO STOP WEEPING OVER IT, PRONGS, YOU WILL CAUSE IT TO RUST AND IT WILL PROBABLY NOT BE PLEASED. WHY ARE YOU SO NEEDY, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? No, no, you're getting confused, it's MY mother that never loved me as a child, yes that's right. OH THANK GOD I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS STAIRCASE now up you get, NOT through the trick stair oh you idiot - help me haul him out of it?

That's it. Please, Prongs, try not to accost anything else while we go upstairs? I wouldn't want you to dash your questionable brains out attempting to declare your true feelings for an INNOCENT CANDELABRA which really NEVER DID ANYTHING TO DESERVE THIS why yes I am hinting at him, Evans, how did you ever guess -- what was that? No, I don't want to discuss my mother, the old bat. CAN WE PLEASE MOVE ON. HOW ARE YOUR FINGERS SO STUCK INTO THE CARPET THAT IS RIDICULOUS. Don't make me break them to get them off - oh I'd do it, I'm a man much abused! What? Evans, you are in no way well-adjusted, I do not care about your upbringing, look at the anarchy you've descended into now! Prongs, please. You can make sweet, sweet love to your bedpost all night long - ACTUALLY WAIT I TAKE THAT BACK NO YOU CAN'T - but can we please just keep going? Yes, good, very good.

What was that? No, Evans, I can't say I'm particularly in the mood to talk about my childhood problems -- NO THIS DOES NOT MEAN I NEED PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP, PLEASE KEEP YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. Oh MERLIN why have we not REACHED YET --shut up Evans this is in no way 'inappropriate behaviour'. I think I am behaving EXCEEDINGLY RATIONALLY in TRYING CIRCUMSTANCES. Bloody stairs. Bloody blasted stairs -- PRONGS SHUT UP IT WOULD NOT BE A GOOD IDEA TO BLOW THE STAIRS UP. BLOWING YOU UP IS ABOUT THE BEST IDEA I CAN THINK OF RIGHT NOW. But seeing as you have uses occasionally when you're not off your face - EVANS WILL YOU STOP MAKING THOSE LEWD FACES AT ME - I shall refrain. OH FAT LADY, THOU GLORIOUS DAMSEL OF THE NIGHT, NEVER HAVE I BEEN SO GLAD TO SEE YOU IN ALL MY DAYS. No that was not a proposition --EVANS SHUT UP. Password? Password. What is the bloody password. Treacle tarts. No, that wasn't it. Oh, Godric's balls. --THAT WAS THE PASSWORD WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SOME KIND OF CRUEL CRUEL JOKE? WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS CHANGE?--oh, that's right, me. Damn. I forgot about that.

ANYWAY Evans can you help me haul this bugger up the stairs, I don't want to do it alone--STOP GIVING ME THOSE LOOKS I SAY. THIS WAS NOT MY FAULT. Oh come on, that password's funny, don't deny it! JUST WHERE ARE YOU GOING OH NO YOU DON'T. Help him all the way to the dorm, please? Surely you don't dare leave him alone with me. PRONGS. PRONGS. YOU ARE NOT A GIRL THIS IS THE RIGHT STAIRCASE THERE WE GO. Please just try to climb up it without embarassing anyone it is now arse o' clock in the bloody morning and even the greatest of us must GET SOME SLEEP before McGoogles gives us YET ANOTHER TRANSFIGURATION TEST so there you go. Easy. Easy. OH GOD PRONGS THAT ISN'T YOUR BED THAT'S WORMTAIL'S BED PLEASE DON'T FALL ASLEEP ON WORMTAIL -- THERE. Goodnight, you great bloody tosser. REMUS, ARE YOU STILL AWAKE AND GIGGLING?

I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU ALL.

a kinder cartography (doctor who, g)

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:39:38 GMT

Wrote this a while ago at a completely godawful hour of the morning. I am still not entirely sure where it came from or why I even wanted to write it (though then again, my motivations in the wee hours are always a bit suspect), but I think on the whole I like it well enough.

Anyway. Describing this is going to be hard to grapple with; suffice it to say that it involves the Doctor and all (or most at any rate) of his companions, and was written well before the S3 finale was on the cards. Et cetera.

---

They are etched onto the map that is his life and his memory, traversing uncharted continents and deep waters; some of them are coastlines and some of them are cities inked into a delicately-positioned dot and some of them are --

-- here is the island that was Susan, and here are Ian and Barbara side-by-side, and then over here things are all out of order, so here is the little islet that would be Zoe (all science but not the slightest taste for people) and here is the desert of Leela (full of thorns), and here the coastline of Romana, neat and straight and marked out very clearly beginning-and-end with a little notch in the middle (he would draw a little image of her leaving, all colourful sashay into the distant grey, but there is no room and in any case that is hardly the sort of thing that belongs on a map) though perhaps she should be Romana-the-ocean --

(He goes to their funerals; sometimes. Occasionally he's a hundred years too late, or ten light-years off, but: if you see the little man in the fur coat in the corner, or the Byronic one with curls and frock-coat and languid smile, or the ginger one all crooked teeth and angularities, or the one in the pin-striped suit who won't sit still and won't pay attention and practically has to be hustled away from the mourners to prevent them from leaving in outrage, but who's probably defused two bombs and stopped three alien invasions by the time he's allowed back in; well. It doesn't matter where it happens, whether it's at the little cemetery in the sleepy English village, or at the long-gone battlefield on the Scottish highlands, or somewhere out among the stars, a planet you'll never understand, or six million years ago where the dinosaurs died -- that's him. It's always him. He's good at rememberances when he remembers them.)

-- Sarah-Jane: she has a section to herself here, all crooked outlines and parameters crossing almost into words. And to the right is the speck which is a town which is Adric-who-died and on the left there is a little archipelago in the middle of which is an active volcano which might possibly be Ace, and here is the city with sprawling suburbs that is probably Rose Tyler. He has no compass for this map, no north-south-east-west or directions of any kind, because it represents nothing but the untramelled continents of his existence; here are the blank ones, where he was alone. And the other ones, wavery and indistinct, might-have-beens all (he never left Gallifrey. He never found his way to Earth. Earth was destroyed. Gallifrey wasn't. He took the wrong exit at the Cambridge roundabout. It's easy enough.), and then--

(Sometimes there are lists on the side, bullet-pointed chronicles of worries and needs: 'must fix dimensional stabiliser.' 'planet vapourised.' 'toaster!'. And so if one were to attempt to list:

1. It is an enormous map, spanning lifetimes and galaxies, and so it goes: on and on and on, fantastical.
2. If it were real, which it is not, it would be watermarked and etched with a blue box which would also be stylised in the corner and a recurring ornamentation and hovering at the back of his mind like a caress. Of course. It couldn't possibly be any other way.
3. Sometimes when he's not paying attention he gets the numbering on his lists wrong. And he has terrible trouble paying attention.

and then:)

-- range of mountains. Savannah. Small landlocked nation hemmed in by sand and lack of imagination --

Here is an extended metaphor which doesn't always work, because sometimes they aren't right for a map or they can't really be drawn out and started-and-finished in ink: so here is Sarah who is probably some sort of book or maybe a verse collection, and here is Susan who is like one of the beloved trinkets one stows away for safekeeping close to one's heart whether it is tawdry or brilliant, and here is Rose who is a slipping tourniquet (there is something dark and disquieting underneath the perfect knot) falling away to uncover --

The pen is resting, the inkwell dry. Here is Martha waiting, poised, ready to be written into being. And there will be others after her, and they'll come alive, slowly, on a map which may or may not exist, but which defines them as this: both very small and very large.

fic: plains distant and remote (remus, sirius, g)

Tue, 22 May 2007 05:11:55 GMT

This was written for wanderlight, in this year's springtime_gen (hurrah, I get to reveal my Secret Identity! Not that it was particularly inconspicuous, really, but.); feel free to skip on by this if you've read it already, of course.

Thank-yous to avendya and allie_meril for reassuring me that this wasn't complete and total rubbish, and for helping me actually finish it in a marginally-on-time manner. ♥ Title shamelessly nicked from a translated Rilke poem.

plains distant and remote

i.
Summer is unusually cold and filled with regrets that Remus ignores, and the streets are drab, grey, piled with dust which the street-sweepers will never be able to completely remove even though they are at it all day – swish-swish, empty sounds. The lamplight is yellow and swallowing the air around it into a sort of bright stillness, and when suddenly the smoke and dust are sliced through by a sharp summer-rain, quick-brisk and oddly featherlike (drifting, a little, and catching on eyes and nose and mouth and eddying its way down), he thinks -- for no reason at all, or for entirely too many that he cannot name -- of Sirius again as he saw him last.

(There was a letter, a few months ago, a hasty upward-tending scrawl on old parchment that smelt faintly of sun and salt and sand, with rips in it where Sirius’s quill stabbed savagely through and mutilated words beyond all recognition. And it talked about a lot of things, some of which were happening and some of which had happened and a fair few of which were thoroughly inconsequential, but what it really said was sorry, over and over, though not in ink.)

He reaches home, innumerable street-corners later under an iron-grey, faintly raining sky (it has lightened now, although the water has seeped into the roads and footpaths and pooled itself uncomfortably in his shoes), and climbs the long, weary staircase to his flat. Sirius is waiting at his door, leaning against the wall in a manner which attempts careful unremarkability -- only eyes visible, amused, above the upper edge of a Muggle newspaper (Israel and Jordan sign treaty, it says, on the front) -- but suggests, somehow, nervousness and a touch of the fear of discovery which Remus supposes has become almost customary. Sirius smiles brilliantly, looks twenty years younger, almost not-changed, although only for a moment and not about the eyes.

"Are you going to let me in?" he asks. "Or am I going to stand here for ever and drip all over your unfortunate doormat?" It’s certainly the beginning of something.

ii.
Remus makes tea for both of them (to steady his nerves, although he’s not entirely able to explain to himself why they ought to need steadying at all) in old enamel mugs that used to be his mother’s, liberated from their long and joyless sentence to a dusty row along the kitchen shelf. He slides one of them across the worn dining-table to Sirius, who is sitting with his elbows on the table in direct contravention of anything polite society approves of (which is really more than a little familiar) and his dark head in his hands (Remus wonders how he feels to look at himself and remember); Sirius picks the mug up, stares at it as though he has never seen its like before, his finger idly tracing around its rim and catching in the little chink of missing china; it’s part scientific examination and part idling concentration like an old oriental painting -- almost-careless brushstrokes more than just lines, the whole thing a careful depiction of absorption in the completely trivial. He looks up, tilts his head, raises an eyebrow.

"Four sugars," Remus says, oddly defensive of his tea and his ceramics. "That was how you used to like it, wasn’t it? And more cream than tea, although how you can actually drink it that way I’ll never know."

Sirius gives him a long, slow look, curious and questioning and possibly even half-amused; he picks up his mug of tea and walks over to the window, peering through the dust-freckled glass, and after a moment Remus realises that Sirius’s shoulders are shaking with laughter.

iii.
This was the last time they met, properly, not counting harried moments in the Shrieking Shack and a couple of ragged letters which completely failed to explain anything at all: the twenty-ninth of October, 1981. Dinner at James and Lily’s, of course, because that’s the way it always was back then, and the night outside was cold and howling but for all that more hospitable than the conversation -- there wasn’t much of it, and what there was merely punctuation for the long meaning-ridden silences. But most of it was about war, and about blood, and Remus remembers the dying orange-red firelight and the single candle at the centre of the table and Sirius’s mouth stained red with wine.

After that they were all ghosts and memories: two gravestones and a sunken-eyed photograph and a finger in a box, and the image of a glass slammed down hard enough for the wine to spill over the sides and stain the tablecloth a morbid sort of crimson and someone saying see, that’s the trouble with battles. They all tell the same story.

Some of it’s a little garbled with time, but most of it is not; the telling thing is the way the edges of their conversations are fragile, rubbed red-raw by doubt and years.

iv.
It’s evening, lazy and dimly-lit. Sirius has usurped the only comfortable chair and is leaning back in it at an alarming angle; he’s reading the Weekly World News with an expression that straddles the great divide between excitement and alarm in a dodgy sort of equilibrium. There’s a breeze tugging at the window-frames, just strong enough to set them into a gentle clatter, almost in time with Sirius’s page-turning and the fire’s faint crackle. And in the moody twilight (the sky a murky sort of grey-purple which is at once filthy and serene and furious and utterly self-contradictory), the shadows in the corner seem to lengthen, until they are more real than the unornamented angle of the ceiling’s corner.

And they’re settling into a sort of rhythm, almost, slipping into little quirks of conversation and gesture all too familiar, although roughened into uncertainty around the edges; but there’s more to say than will fit within the structure that words impose, and it’s between fragmentary conversations (Order business, mostly, but the occasional cheap jibe or Muggle newspaper quote insists upon surfacing) that contrition or nostalgia or loneliness slip into the air. And nothing’s perfect, not really, because they’re lacking a thousand things (idealism, Remus thinks; idealism and social utopia and a cause to fall in love with and James and Lily and -- ), but it might just be enough for a while, enough to tide them over through this intermission of sorts (although it isn’t entirely clear what it exists to divide: eras, friendships, lifetimes).

And the evening stretches around them, warm, like a benediction.

An application to the Auror Department.

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 13:31:32 GMT

Er. Yes. Fake!college-application by one Sirius Black. I have absolutely nothing to offer in my defence, except for the mitigating factors of being a) severely bored and b) close to breakdown due to eating-my-head college-application work. (Yes, it is possible to be both at the same time.)

Also, it is worth noting that Sirius is trying very hard to be a Communist, poor lad. (Come on, you know he's the type!)

(Two .jpgs, about 500 KB each. Might not be worth the wait if on dial-up.)

fic: predetermination (HP, Sirius, G)

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 16:51:19 GMT

Oddish short-fic. Not my best work and I know it - more of an exercise in writing and an attempt to get my brain into something vaguely resembling a sensible state of mind (for various reasons. one of which is fanfic, and one of which is college.), but I remain strangely fond of it for whatever reason.

December 1979 (?). Sirius moves into a flat.

Yes, that is the sum total of its plot. Very self-explanatory.

yesterday:

It was almost evening (but not quite; a late, sleepy sort of winter afternoon) by the time you'd moved the last of the boxes into the dusty flat, and you stood there and watched dust drifting in the sunlight near the window; you were leaning back against the wall, with the palm of your right hand pressed to the peeling paint. There wasn't much in the room; just a stack of cardboard boxes in a corner and furniture (a bed; a table teetering on three-and-a-half legs; a chair or two) which looked both unfortunate and desolate; a grimy, fingerprint-smeared print of some forgettable landscape hanging askew on the wall; dust, dust, dust. You'd kicked your old school trunk (knife-scratches across the lid where you'd tried to dig out a family crest and failed) into the corner in a fit of pique, and it lay there, open and slightly forlorn and spilling rolls of parchment onto the sawdust-laden wooden floor. The whole place was unfinished, all creaking beams and splinter-ridden planks, lit by the dim and slightly hazy glow of a single Muggle lightbulb swinging from the ceiling.

It was still light when you'd started unpacking, and so instead of continuing you pulled on your jacket and wandered around the streets watching the shadows getting longer. The hallway outside your door which you'd passed through on leaving was shadowed, brown, cobwebbed; it smelt of gravy and cigarette-smoke, and the floorboards creaked noisily as you walked over them. You didn't know the people behind the identical locked doors along the corridor, but as you passed by you could hear conversations and laughter and snatches of distorted music.

Outside, the sky was grey and gloomy and it looked like it was about to rain, but there was no wind and no movement and nothing except for the sound of your own footsteps and your own breathing. The air was bitter, bitter cold, and you turned up your collar. You hadn't realised that you were laughing, but you were; a lonely sound.

today:

It's still dark when you wake up, and you wonder for a moment whether you had even slept at all; you miss your footing as you clamber out of bed, and crash to the floor in an inelegant tangle of gravity and limbs. Waking at unearthly hours is a trait you can't entirely rid yourself of; in your parents' house you'd sit by the window and wait for daylight; a muffled thump on the ceiling would mean that Regulus had fallen out of bed again. Occasionally you'd fall asleep again before the sun had even begun to rise, but most of the time you'd sit very still and listen to what you imagined might be the sound of a city awakening.

Today, the sky is bleached-grey, water-coloured, and the streets are cold and quietly frosted-over; the morning is still in the way that a tense breath held is still, and you like it and you don't like it. It's a waste of a morning which could have been much more alive.

The afternoon is dust-filled and slightly sombre, and the wind idly rattles the windows in their wooden frames, punctuating the silences with creaks and bangs. You're balancing (slightly precariously) in the three-legged chair, half-in and half-out of a beam of light from the window. It's not the most sensible thing you could be doing, but it presents itself and that's enough.

Then: it's evening, and you've lit three candles because you can't quite figure out how the lightbulb works. It's dark, so very dark. James arrives with a lopsided grin and a long lecture-by-proxy from Lily and a large bottle of Firewhisky; he claims use of your sole unbroken teacup by guest's right, and you drink from a cracked saucer and later from the bottle.

By the time the moon is fully out, you are both exceedingly drunk, and for a surprisingly long while it is neither winter nor wartime.

tomorrow:

Tomorrow doesn't exist yet, or perhaps it does: some vague, unformed blur of city-streets-people-life-death waiting to be given life and shape. Either way, you can't know or define or characterise it; perhaps you'll track in muddy water from the rain-soaked streets or perhaps you'll watch the sun set through the fingerprint-smeared window, or perhaps you'll laugh, or shout, or hunt for a job, or stand outside in the biting cold until your fingers are completely numb. They're all disparate events that thrown together make a day of sorts, but trying to see them now would unmake them, nothing slipping past the imposition of unwanted structures.

At least you know this much: the sky will probably be grey, overcast. The city will probably be cold. The streets will probably be lonely. The world will probably be falling apart, inside.

Fic: Ad Infinitum (Doctor Who, G)

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:21:37 GMT

Erm. First ever Doctor Who fic, which makes me a bit jumpy about posting this. This was my entry for the femgenficathon, and features post-Time War Romana (a. k. a. the 'Romana Lives!' theory, which is definitely my favourite piece of fancrack), and is generally very disjoint and peculiar and I will not be extremely surprised if it causes a severe keyboardsmash.

Thank you, as usual, to avendya for beta-ing this thing.

i.
She doesn't remember much; or maybe she remembers everything all the time, and that is the problem.
And there's a rush of time through her thoughts, something at once wildly strange and painfully familiar, and it doesn't bother with subtlety but sweeps through her mind in more or less the same way as it sweeps through the Universe; and there's the feeling of everything she has ever known or been or said or done coming unravelled like so much string (but that's the way time is; it comes undone, and then it fixes itself, or we tie it up – but then, sometimes the knots slip) and it's a feeling at once like death and flying (and they're not as different as they seem, not really, because they're both a triumphant sort of way to fall).

She's not sure where she came from (or when she came from, now or yesterday or a million years ago all tangled up in her thoughts) and she's not sure where she's going, or why; but she remembers inconsequential things – the feel of cracking cobbles under her feet. The sound of running water. Someone laughing. Some history. Some temporal physics. They're probably the things which make her who she is, although that person isn't someone she knows; and there's a stream of numbers running across her mind which she follows, one-one-two-three-five-eight-thirteen - and even though it doesn't take her more than a fraction of a fraction of a second to see what it is, by the time she thinks about it properly it has already wandered away.

She thinks about probabilities and the laws of time and space and basic physics and notices purely as an aside that the probability of her existence is almost zero; but it's only an observation on the way to an unknown end; and she's thinking purely for the sake of thought now, for the way it burns unconsumed. (And that's a thought either brilliant or insane or completely irrelevant. She can't decide which. In the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't matter.)

And the world's just a vague tangle of trees and rain like feathered bird's-wings and earth and grass and sky (which world? She remembers more than one; more than ten, more than a hundred), but it's also a story which began before she was even aware of it, and it's teetering backwards and forwards in time, empires rising and falling and rising and falling in some sort of staccato rhythm; ending and beginning and lingering somewhere in between. She remembers tomorrow when yesterday hasn't happened yet, and, although she doesn't sleep much, she dreams when she does - and in dreams it's all sweepingly disjoint, everything coming together (or coming apart, perhaps) in a huge birdlike swish-throbbing (it's a meaningless phrase, but she likes it, the play of word against word and the way it suggests a sort of breathless fragility, something of a great death not quite written in), and she dreams of burning.

She wakes with the word 'Gallifrey' on her lips.

ii.
A memory –

She's walking across a courtyard which is both shaking uncontrollably and not really here, and it's crashing about her until it's either a study in angle and perspective or an impersonation of the collapse of history, or possibly both, or neither.

And then

– she's standing in the middle of a street and watching the crowd being tossed past her like so many leaves on a sharp breeze; they're hurrying past (not looking at each other or the city or her, caught in their disparate, private universes) and merging together until they're just an ill-defined blur in her mind, a melange of hats and overcoats and faces and voices. It's morning, white and cold, and the city is grey and blurred slightly at the edges. She can feel cobblestones under her feet, raised and slightly cold through the thin soles of her shoes; there's a streetlantern right beside her, lit (somewhat strangely for the time of day), and there are grey-black stormclouds looming overhead like great smudges across the sky. There's a tree crookedly bending over her, flower-heavy branches filling her vision with blurs of white and pink.

Someone's grinning at her from a few feet away. She can't remember his face or anything about him except the outline of a long scarf and the tilt of his head and the way he smiles. He's almost completely gone, except for a barely-defined impression against the sky.

There's more to the memory, but it's missing. What she does remember: life is very long.

iii.
When she crash-lands her TARDIS it's Earth, England, 1986; the names mean something to her, but she isn't sure what. The ship is quite dead, wheezing rotors and groaning parts arrested and unmoving; she's outside, on the grass and underneath the stars, waiting for something she cannot now name.

(Later, she realises that the face she's wearing isn't the one she remembers.)

Before:

- this is the way the world ends; the very idea is impossible and unthinkable, but there it is, painfully real, boiling away in a splay of gold-orange-white across the sky; and the universe is falling all to jagged pieces and reassembling itself imperfectly with a hole in it where a world and a race and a million intertwined timelines ought to be (she can feel every single one, almost; she can feel them rip apart and break and burn and dissolve into something less substantial than a vacuum, and it's almost breaking her). And the fact that she isn't burning with it is one of the greatest ironies she's ever been offered; but perhaps someone has to be left behind to watch the fall of empire.

She's half-unconscious in an old Type 40 (she might have appreciated the irony once, long ago, but right now she's uncertain and confused and possibly more than a little lost); it's veering terribly out of control and she's cut and bruised from falling and stumbling and shattered glass; but she doesn't notice, because this is the end of the world.

fic: fragmentary (HP, G; Regulus)

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:04:01 GMT

At last.

This is a very belated birthday fic for dory_the_fishie, whose birthday was actually on June 16 and who has therefore probably given up all hope of ever seeing this thing. And it's completely insane and desperately odd and I think I've probably forgotten all the grammar I ever knew to begin with. (Anyone who writes a fic in present continuous tense needs serious mental help - viz. me.)

There is some mild AU in here, too. Because. Regulus lives. You know it to be true, yeah?

--

Somewhere (somewhere and somewhen; now, or a year ago, or ten, or a hundred), there’s a little boy crouching at the foot of his mother’s chair, and he’s looking up at her, watching the way the half-light plays across her face and the glass in her hand – red-luminous wine casting suggestions of its own colour onto her sharp profile – and he’s waiting for the warmth of her palm, resting for a moment on his head in approving caress, and then gone.

Somewhere else, his parents died when he was not quite a year old.

-

Somewhere he’s the second son, the child doomed to a lifetime in the murky depths of someone else’s shadow. Somewhere he’s wearing green, and somewhere he’s wearing red, and the difference between them is a hundred years of tradition and a trunk full of inherited robes (and family photographs, cuffs of green silk spilling untidily past the bounds of his father’s cloak), and to another person it might have made an interesting dichotomy, this juxtaposition of colour-tones and ideas and worlds.

And somewhere-sometime he’s a little older, skulking half-hidden in the shadows at the foot of the stairwell, watching them, unalike and alike in unyielding pride, and he’s watching the way his mother’s face twists and watching his brother, the way he shouts, shaking in impotent fury, the way laughs (something painful and intangibly ugly, almost; and there’s a cruel twist to the corner of Sirius’s mouth that he’s never seen before) and the way the dying sunlight silhouettes him sharply against the window (the glass crystal-sparkling in the sunset); but he’s seeing something else overlaid across them, an ambiguity of sorts, something he can’t quite describe or explain, like a half-realised feeling of dread. And he doesn’t quite understand what he’s thinking-seeing-feeling and he understands it all too well; it’s a dream of sorts, lost midway in the translation to waking, and existing only in a sort of half-recognition. And he doesn’t want to put it to words; wouldn’t, even if he could. It’s something foreboding, certain and inexplicable; the harbinger of the storm.

But while he’s watching Sirius go, he’s thinking about the way that brilliance goes with rashness (and that’s the way Sirius is, all intelligence and explosive temper and quite possibly madness), and the way he looked, paused for a moment and framed in twilight at the very edge of the threshold; and he’s thinking about the way the blue-grey sky and clouds and rain make the slow-moving figures in the street waver into nothingness, seeming less substantial than their own shuddering afterimages.

-

Somewhere he’s the recalcitrant recruit, and the tortured torturer (caught in a labyrinth of things far more powerful than he, unable to do more than be tossed along, and yield unquestioning in the path of the storm). And somewhere he’s stepping into a cave, listening to the way his footfall shatters the stillness around him, and the way the water quietly chafes at the edges of its territory; green light glows at the middle of the lake (he cannot stop himself from imagining a passage across the Styx, a coin over each eye insufficient price for a fragment of a soul) and there are white shapes beneath the surface of the murky water, and he has never been more tempted to run.

Somewhere, sometime, he’s the grey-eyed boy who died too young, and died alone.

And somewhere else, he’s nineteen-twenty-twentyone-twentytwo, and he has a new name (but the same face, in a concession to inherited vanity) and a collection of ties and shirts and slightly-dusty trenchcoats and even a jumper which he has long sworn to abandon but somehow never does, and he’s never in one place or one job or one life for very long; he’s always running from a million past-ghosts and from his family and from his life and possibly from himself. And he’s standing in a city square, half the world away from everything he’s ever really known or understood or loved (or perhaps he’s standing in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and sometimes it’s exactly the same thing and sometimes not at all; but he tries, he honestly does, to see the interest in the ordinary and the excitement in the superlatively commonplace, and sometimes he can and sometimes he can’t and it’s always different), and he’s looking up at the sky (watching the trajectory of a bird across it, just a black speck sweeping huge curves across a blue canvas, impossibly high), and he’s not really Regulus Black any more, not really, but it might just be worth it.

Or it might not. It’s a contrast which interests him, for somewhere he has all the world, and somewhere he has none, and the difference isn’t really in the stories; it’s in the way the stories are told.

Fic: How Icarus Drowns (HP) (G)

Sat, 13 May 2006 16:56:35 GMT

Regulus. On Daedalian imitation, and ink; and, eventually, the end of things.

More or less pretentious!fic; written in an attempt at sounding literary, wound up sounding both whiny and confused, but I like it anyway. (Inexplicably.)

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

William Carlos Williams

i.

This is how it feels, to fly featherlight, in a sort of Daedalian imitation of movement; that strange-familiar sense of watching from above, sunlit and golden and triumphant, and then slow, deliberate plummet downwards, hurtling in a controlled dive of feather and wing and wax towards the ground –

But you can never really shake the feeling of being a traitor cruelly conspiring at your own suicide, the feeling of being caught relentlessly between scorching sun and crashing sea and watching, helpless, as they collapse inward on themselves – on you – as they grow nearer and nearer and nearer –

ii.

Everything in these days has begun happening so much more quickly, grey-time double-stepping, go go go, until you can no longer tell which of these things are hours, and which are minutes, and which are speeding seconds; you can no longer tell fire from ocean-foam, light-rain from blood, and your days are only quick-phrased sentences punctuated by darkness (moments of blue-black, but days the colour of dust, and that only in good light; brown-fading-to-black, in the atmosphere of a house which is equal parts tradition and torture).

And in a slower world. you might have been surprised by the way you can no longer find the words you need. You sit near the window as the shadows stretch across the room, quill poised perfect at your fingertips motionless and ready, until with a sudden sharp sound a drop of ink splashes itself onto the parchment, spreads shapelessly outward; you carefully trace meaningless slow black-blue spirals, until the parchment is dappled twice with stiff black lace, once in ink and once in shadow.

But still the words, taunting things, refuse to come.

iii.

The world as Sirius sees it, you think, is a network of sharp angles in contrasting monochromatic splendour, black-and-white and sketched in broad sweeping lines and quick upward strokes, straight-then-bent like the way he stands, or the way he laughs, sound arcing downwards like some sort of jagged lightning; brilliant and, for a moment, blinding. And there is only room for one meaning of right, and one of wrong; things diametrically opposite, you have thought, and idealistic, and crazy.

(You watched Sirius writing, in the evening, once, quill scratching across parchment in a manner both impatient and perfectionistic, biting on its end while hunting for words until the ink pools and shadows the corner of his mouth; then, staring at the parchment for a moment before brushing it roughly off the table, and slamming the door of his room on his way out.

The next day, he left. Perhaps you should have known.)

You have always seen the shades in between, the precepts which defy classification into the moral and the amoral, and fall instead into the realm of the accepted and the unaccepted and the well-believed. You have known the hundreds of cast-shadows and tones, and the way one grey fades, slowly, to another; but now you are beginning to find that the world and the things within it fall regimentally into place, bounded by stark harsh reality in a painful either-or.

You don’t like this world – this new, strange, unambiguous thing. You just want it to be the way it was before.

iv.

There were, you remember, so many of those moments, the seconds at the beginning of the world’s end.

It is a thought at once frightening and satisfactory and carries with it a feeling of being something already well-known, one of those thoughts which you know nothing about and do not understand and yet cannot but think; somewhere, in the twilight, in the half-light on the edge of memory, one of those screamed arguments or those whispered words or those orders (obeyed, not-obeyed) – one of those seconds, you think, although you are not sure which one it was – one of those seconds was the moment when the world began to fall to pieces and crumble to dust between your fingers.

And this is how the rain and the wind go; tremulously, whispering, empty slow sounds.

v.

You wonder what it must feel like to be Icarus, to be silhouetted for a moment, triumphant and glorious against the sun, and then feel the searing trickle of melting wax down your back and smell burning feathers (acrid, you think, and bitter on the tongue); but you know how it feels to watch yourself falling -

The worst thing about Icarus's fall was that he fell unnoticed. Or so you would have said, perhaps, further away from the end.

But this is not really the end, you think, this hush (the still point, perhaps, in a turning world) not the last still-silence, because in it there is still room for a heartbeat, and one more, and -

(fall)