advent drabbles--it will never never stop
The thin, nervously handsome man is sweating through his dapper white suit. “I only want it clear that this is not my fault.”
“Indeed,” the Merlin says, dryly. “Master Carnahan, I believe I told you the last time you raised Imhotep that the cursed were meant to stay cursed.”
“Oh, he’s still cursed,” the thin man volunteers, hopefully. “I think. I didn’t raise him.”
“You think,” the Merlin repeats, and sighs.
“He did fall into a pit of hellfire.” Never has there been a more reasonable voice.
The Merlin pinches the bridge of his nose. Really, the Carnahans cause more trouble than the Germans.
When no reprimand is forthcoming, Jonathan Carnahan cheers up a bit. “You know,” he says, bright and helpful, “why don’t you get Evy up here, she knows much more about it than I do, and why don’t I go and get us all a dash of port while we wait…”
With an air of extreme patience, the Warden on guard grabs Carnahan’s collar as the man makes a run for the door, turns him around, and sets him gently on his feet back in front of the Merlin.
This is going to be a long night.
After the smoke cleared and she’d finished coughing, Margaret Dresden looked up to find an auburn-haired woman staring at her with narrowed brown eyes. She looked from the woman (who bore a strong and uncanny resemblence to her mother), down to her own bare feet planted in mud, and back up.
“What?” she asked, as innocently as she could.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” she demanded.
Yep. Her mother with a dye job. “Maggie,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Dedicate Rosethorn.” She paused, then added with delicate menace, “The owner of the garden you’re standing in.”
“Totally not my fault,” Maggie said, breezily, even though it kind of was. “I’ll be off.” She started to pick her way out of the plant bed.
“Freeze!” Dedicate Rosethorn barked.
Maggie froze. That voice was hardwired into her soul.
The woman came closer. “Don’t walk over there or you’ll step on my plants. What are you doing here?”
“Practicing,” Maggie said. She watched her feet carefully on the way out, and wondered distantly where her shoes had gone. “Why? Where’s here?”
Rosethorn ignored the question. “You’re not a novice.”
“Am so,” Maggie said, brightly. “Novice wizard. Don’t tell me… I’m not in Kansas anymore.”
Rosethorn’s brows came together with a nearly audible click. Oh dear.
That expression was familiar, too. “You are,” the dedicate said, enunciating each word in a peculiar way that sounded to Maggie like trouble, “in Winding Circle, near Discipline Cottage, in the middle of my garden. What are you looking at?”
Maggie had lost track of the conversation entirely, staring up at the tall, slender spire to the west. “Oh, you’re joking,” she breathed. “No
fucking way.”
“Excuse me?”
She’d fallen through the Nevernever to meet some strange clone of her mother.
She was
so fucked.
Contrary to popular belief, Captain Jack Harkness loves happily married couples, even when he can’t talk his way into their beds. They’re just so cute, with the snuggling and the private smiles and loving looks. So happy that they radiate contentment, so happy he feels only vaguely uneasy about trying to leech some of that happiness for himself. Anyway, most of them love to share.
This one is cuter than most, in a remarkably understated way. He can understand that; they had survived a Dalek invasion that had been defeated by the Doctor (and Jack, of course, working undercover on the other side of the planet). Dark-haired, both of them, he conventionally handsome and she with the face of a pleased pixie. Beautiful, and beautifully happy, both of them.
She looks familiar. He cannot say where from.
Jack puts on his most handsome smile and approaches them, his hand out. “Captain Jack Harkness,” he says.
The man shakes his hand, firm and hearty but not overly hard. “David Campbell,” he says.
Jack turns to her, and she presents her hand to be kissed with a whimsical delicate flair, and suddenly he knows her.
“Susan Campbell.”
“Susan,” he repeats, and smiles.
“This isn’t a good idea,” says one, with deep disapproval in his voice.
“You have not supplied a better,” snaps another, packing the skull in a heavy wood box, nesting it carefully among the sawdust and straw. “Besides, there is no caretaker better than a coward. He will see to it that the punishment is not undone.”
The one snorts, but does not speak, and pastes the label on when the other demands. He is subordinate, after all, and his not to question why.
But it will not end well.
----
Jonathan is accustomed to getting mysterious boxes from the Council, but a skull is a new one.
He stares at the skull in its nest of packaging, then picks it up, and tosses it up and down experimentally. An old skull, though the hieroglyphics look new. He tries a spot of translating, gives up. Hieroglyphics are Evy’s specialty. He’ll ask her for a translation later. For now, he’ll puzzle out why the Council would send him a skull. He doesn’t think they’d give him a paperweight.
He holds the skull out at arm’s length, dramatically, and declaims, “Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio…”
The skull opens its mouth and
roars, a strange and terrifying sound he’s heard only once before in his waking hours, underground in Hamunaptra, and then innumerable times in his dreams. The face from those nightmares materializes, twisted with rage and pain, roars again.
Should anyone ask, the scream Jonathan utters at that moment is an attempt to frighten the thing away, and not a remarkably good imitation of a schoolgirl confronted with a snake.
He drops the skull (which, improbably, bounces).
Imhotep settles, glares at him, and rolls his eyes. “Not
you! Ai, gods!” he exclaims, and stalks into the corner to sulk.
Jonathan faints.
Captain Jack Harkness leaned forward onto the dirty, scarred table of a Tortuga tavern, stared meditatively into his cup of deep amber whiskey, and said, to his drinking companion, “So... I gotta ask. Why the dreads?”
Captain Jack Sparrow, equally enthralled by his alcohol, shrugged. “Easy to keep clean, mate.”
Harkness eyed the dreadlocks in question. “Uh. Well, for a given value of ‘clean,’ I guess.”
Sparrow snorted. “Clean isn’t me first worry, nancy boy.”
“Oooh, harsh words for your whiskey supplier,” Harkness said, and poured Sparrow another drop or two. He sat back then and eyed Sparrow critically. “Seriously, though, you could be really good-looking.”
Sparrow flipped a hand dismissively and slightly drunkenly. “Don’t need any help with the ladies.”
“So the girls slapping you were…”
“Running joke. Bad one.”
Harkness choked, and clapped a hand over his nose. “Ow! Dammit, Sparrow! Whiskey in the sinuses
hurts.”“Well, it’s true.” Sparrow flipped a hand again, then said, “All right, come clean. Why d’you want me ship?”
Harkness made a face— caught— and replaced it with a cocky grin. “I’ve lost my own shipmates somewhere. Last I heard they were looking for the Isla de Muerta. Seems the Doc’s got an appointment he can’t miss there. I was hoping you could give me a ride.”
Sparrow frowned, and lifted his chin, looking down his nose at Harkness. “Bit of a problem, mate. No one can find the Isla de Muerta except by those who already know where it is.”
Harkness grinned. “Fortunate that I know where it is, then, isn’t it? Here.” He took a piece of paper from his pocket and spread it out on the table. “Here’s Port Royal, and here’s us, and the Isla de Muerta…” He stopped, as a shadow fell over the table.
“There you are!” the Doctor said, irritably. “We’ve been looking for you nearly an hour. What happened, you get distracted by the whores?”
Harkness looked past the Doctor to Rose, currently trying to blend into the Time Lord’s leather jacket, and gave her a reassuring and slightly flirtatious grin. “Hey, darling, hope I didn’t cause you too much worry.”
The Doctor snorted. Rose gave him a shy smile. Sparrow straightened.
“No,” Harkness and the Doctor said in unison. Sparrow slumped.
“Come on, Captain,” the Doctor added, laying a slight sarcastic emphasis on ‘Captain’ in that dead sexy way of his. “We’re off.”
“Anything you say, Doc.” Harkness got up and winked at Sparrow. “Sorry about that. Maybe some other time.”
Sparrow, who had taken advantage of Harkness’s distraction to spirit the whiskey bottle under the table, lifts his glass. “Til then,” he said, and as Harkness and company walked off, smiled at the map he had
also spirited under the table. “And thanks, mate,” he murmured, running a hand over the painted Isla de Muerta. “Much appreciated.”
The Gatekeeper has in his home a labyrinth, molded into the walls; it is a meditation tool, an aid to his peculiar Sight. He runs his fingers over the ridges, contemplatively, and lets the images flow.
The White Court, crippled, possibly dying; unable to aid the Council, but similarly unable to aid the Red Court. It is amazing what one man can do, should he set his heart to it; amazing, and a little horrifying. One Warden severely injured, one in a… worrying state of mind. But Dresden has always worried the Council.
The Gatekeeper smiles. This will be
fun. The beads are slick and cool against her breasts, the cloth rough to the touch, abrasive, even. She focuses on those feelings, on his gentle hands.
They are quiet and careful with each other, so quiet and careful that sometimes she thinks she is dreaming. Maybe she is dreaming. She can’t be sure.
She never lets herself think about the others, or the consequences that might result. Only him, only his hands and his body and the beads, slick and cool on her skin.
In the morning, she notes with a tiny smile that he doesn’t ask that question anymore.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kiddin’ me,” Donna says, holding up the sheer linen stola the TARDIS has provided her.
The Doctor, geekily suave in his usual pinstriped suit, grins madly at her. Wanker. “Not at all. It’s summer in Rome, Donna! You’ll shock the inhabitants in that.” He nods at her perfectly servicable shirt and trousers. “Put on the stola and let’s go.”
“You’re not changin’, neither am I.” She folds her arms and glares. “It’s bloody
see-through.”“Isn’t.” Once again, the Doctor demonstrates a magnificient failure to grasp the obvious. “It’ll be just like that dress of yours. Let’s go! People to see, cities to watch burn!” He taps his wrist, exactly where he doesn’t wear a watch.
She rolls her eyes. “It’s nothin’ like. It’s see-through. I’m not goin’ out there in it. What d’you mean, cities to watch burn?”
Again that mad grin, the one that makes her simultaneously want to pat him and slap him silly. “I’ve been here before,” he explains. “Nero burns the city down today. And look, if Barbara could wear the stola then so can you. She was from 1963 and didn’t have quite your… er…” He gestures vaguely in the direction of his chest.
Donna smirks. “Breasts. They’re called breasts. Go on, you can say it.”
He gives her a Look (not as good as hers, in her objective opinion) and says, “Go on and change, will you?”
Fifteen minutes later, they emerge from the Tardis, Donna triumphantly still in shirt and trousers and the Doctor, grumpy, in a toga.
Murphy took a careful, uneasy glance over her shoulder, to make sure that no one was around. If anyone caught her doing this… she swallowed, then turned her attention back to the shelf in front of her and frowned at the books.
Read that one, she thought, sliding her finger along the outward-facing spines. And that one, and that… She paused. This one was new. She’d never read a cowboy romance novel before, but… She pulled the book out, and stopped dead, staring at the cover in amazement.
It was weeks before she could look at Finn Sullivan without giggling.
When he was Two, younger and more flexible than One, he decided he needed a tool. It was small and shabby like himself, and it wore out, but not before he was Three.
When he was Three, he made it a little more sonic, a little more flashy, to reflect himself. That one broke, and then he was Four, and he added a bobbly bit, because everyone knows that bobbly bits improve things, or at least that’s what he thought when he was Four. But that one was destroyed, and then he had none.
When he was Seven, he discovered that he missed the tool. He’d fancied himself rather dapper as Seven, and so he made it sleek and simple, with a focusing ring on the top that was rather out-of-date, but the more lovely for being so.
And then he used it to destroy his home, and he destroyed it too, because he was Nine, and Nine did not appreciate reminders. It had proven itself too useful, though, so he made another, with a flashy blue light to remind him of his Tardis.
As Ten, he taps it against his lips, and wonders how the
next one should look.
