Alternate History
May. 11th, 2011 06:19 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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comment_ficToday's theme is going to be 'alternate history'. Ever wonder what it would be like if your favorite character's world was not quite the one they are used to? It could be something simple- from just one decision made differently in their own world that changed the course of their lives or it could be something on a wider scale.
Use today's prompts to put your favorite characters in an altered timeline- either personal or more global.
To make it easy on our hardworking code monkeys, please format your posts like so:
Castle, Castle/Beckett, Inspector Rick Castle meets a plucky female reporter, Kate Beckett, who seems to be one step ahead of him on this investigation
or
Firefly, Mal/Zoe, the Alliance lost
or
Fringe, William Bell, the dog did hunt
Use today's prompts to put your favorite characters in an altered timeline- either personal or more global.
To make it easy on our hardworking code monkeys, please format your posts like so:
Castle, Castle/Beckett, Inspector Rick Castle meets a plucky female reporter, Kate Beckett, who seems to be one step ahead of him on this investigation
or
Firefly, Mal/Zoe, the Alliance lost
or
Fringe, William Bell, the dog did hunt
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 12:01 am (UTC)The Secrets of Skipping Stones, PG-13, Part 1/3
Date: 2011-05-22 04:04 pm (UTC)Michael lies his way into a gala held on the target's property in order to get a lay of the land. He nearly walks into a waiter when he sees Fiona hanging off his target's arm.
Her dress is emerald green and well-tailored to her hips and tucking up high on her thighs. Her smile is huge and her laugh almost genuine. Michael is instantly transported back to the weeks they spent together in Ireland, working hard and fucking with every spare minute.
When Fiona takes a breath, she spots him, too. She widens her eyes at him and waits a few seconds to excuse herself from the conversation. She glides toward Michael on delicate heels, then passes by with a curt, "East wing, linen closet, ten minutes." Four more steps bring her into a new cluster of guests, where she can completely ignore him.
Michael concedes to her order, because she's clearly been on the scene longer. It takes some poking around and looking lost, but he finds the closet and waits.
A half minute late, Fiona swirls through the door and jumps him. They're kissing before Michael can begin a sentence.
He kisses her back, obviously. He slides his hand from her waist to her shoulder to her jaw. When he touches the ludicrously expensive diamonds in her ears, she bites his lip. Hard.
"How dare you just show up like this?" she demands in a whisper. Her Irish accent from their first mission seems to have disappeared, replaced with something generically upper-class British.
He presses his tongue to his bleeding lip. "I know I left without saying goodbye..."
"Yes. You did."
"...And I'm sorry for that. But if you're here for the IRA, you need to tell me about it, because we have a kill order on your boy over there."
Fiona leans her weight into him, soft breasts and low hum of reluctance both clear against his chest. She admits, "I'm not with them anymore. Think of me as... a free agent." The more she speaks, the stronger her native accent becomes. He prefers it.
Michael presses his hand to her back and discovers that her gown dips all the way to her tailbone. He tries to stay focused. "Then what are you doing here?"
"I planned to steal as much of that old bastard's fortune as I could get my hands on," she says, as though it's the most obvious conclusion. She's pressing her nose into the skin over his carotid, nibbling in a moderately threatening way.
"Well, you don't have time to marry him--" A horrible thought strikes Michael, and he asks, "You're not married to him, are you?"
He can feel her smirk against his throat. "No. Haven't talked him out of the pre-nup."
"Good."
She laughs and runs her hands down until her fingers rest just above his trousers.
He catches them with his own hand and holds them there. "I'm here to assassinate him. Tomorrow morning, 2am. Get what you're here for and get out."
"How about," she purrs, "I slit his throat when he tries to sleep with me tonight, and you help me carry out the pile of money in his safe."
He sighs and lets her fingers dip beneath his clothes. "That sounds like a workable plan."
--
They run into each other one month later in Montreal, of all places.
Fiona's French is not up to par, so she's going about as an English tourist. She's been hired to 'sabotage' - read as, demolish - a company's main information storage servers.
She's trying to work her way down to the black market, because she'll need a better grade of plastic explosives for this job. She casually mentions the alias Michael had given her the last time; they both have unpredictable schedules, but messages can be passed discretely.
The connection says, "Oh, yeah. He was in town."
Fiona tries not to strain forward too eagerly. "When?"
"Couple days. A week, at most. You can try to find him at Le Tabouret, if he is here."
She nods and leads the conversation back to wares. She'll try to find him, certainly.
--
Four months after Montreal, Michael hears that he's a week behind her in Venice. He wraps up his simple exchange as fast as decorum requires and nearly tips off airport security in his haste to catch up with her.
--
The Secrets of Skipping Stones, PG-13, Part 2/3
Date: 2011-05-22 04:05 pm (UTC)She and Michael are tangled together in Fiona's matchbox Toyko flat, the neon signs outside turning the sheets pink and yellow and blue.
Fiona has never been accused of having a long attention span. In general, she takes a lover long enough to learn too much about them and then walks away bored.
But this time... it's been two years since Michael loved her and left her in a muddy Irish village. It's been more than one since they took up again.
They undoubtedly work well together. Michael is always willing to help her measure out fertilizer and chemicals. She's never hesitated to go along on a con and distract.
He's never turned the conversation to personal matters, never attempted to trade histories. When they're together, they talk exclusively in present facts; Michael wants this, Fiona wants that. And those wants tend toward the bedroom in all situations.
She'll probably never know enough about him to walk away. Hell, she doubts that the surname he originally gave her was real.
But this works.
--
--
Ten months pass with no word.
Michael refuses to worry, even though Fiona seems to have dropped off the map after leaving Tokyo. He leaves short messages in each city he visits, makes inquiries in a level, half-interested tone. If someone asks why he needs to find her, it's just for a job.
He might be losing his mind.
"How long's it been? Nine months?" Sam, a half-retired friend, asks him over the phone. "I'm pretty sure at this point the only logical conclusion is pregnancy."
Michael holds his cell at arms' length, takes a deep breath, and then brings it back to his ear. "What."
"Sure, man. Saw it all the time with female operatives. They get knocked up, make themselves scarce, then show up again a little out of shape and mean as mama bears."
"Why would you even--" Michael presses the heel of his palm into one eye. Then he says, "That is not what is going on." He adds, "And you are an asshole," for good measure.
Sam is quiet for a few too many seconds. Neither of them say what the real logical conclusion is.
Sam, voice becoming gruff, tells him, "Look, I met this lady, okay? She was making deals with dictators."
"We all do things we'd rather not think about."
"I'm just saying, Mike. If there's a karmic scale in our business, she's at the wrong end of it."
"Sam."
Sam sighs. Michael thinks he can hear him decide to start in on the harder stuff early, today. "Look. I hope she's okay."
"Bye, Sam."
--
Things go south and Michael has to get out of Armenia in a hurry. For ten days that should count as a renewal of his SERE certification, he doesn’t have time to think about Fiona.
When he makes it someplace with running water and a single arthritic telephone, Michael checks in with the agency and then dials up Sam. “You wouldn’t believe the week I’m having,” is his opening line.
“Yeah, uh, me too, buddy,” Sam says, with such apprehension in his voice that Michael assumes he has a gun to his head.
A scornful, “Who is it now, one of your ‘sugar mommas’?” comes from the background.
Michael nearly drops the receiver. “Is that--?”
Sam is deeply uncomfortable with his answer. “Yep.”
Then Michael’s running towards whatever transportation he can find.
--
Fourteen hours later, he’s touching down in Miami. Sam’s there with a horrible shirt, a mean grin, and a sign with ‘MIKE’ in uneven letters.
Even after all the sleep he could manage on the plane, Michael isn’t functioning at full capacity. “Where’s…?”
“Oh, she’s fine,” Sam says. “I left her with your mother.” He opens his car door with a flourish.
Michael simply climbs in and rests his forehead on the dash.
Sam recounts the events on the drive home: “So Fiona, okay, she’s got to infiltrate a South American revolutionist camp. Won’t go into more detail, but how much detail d’you need, right? She knows she can’t enter as a bottom-level female soldier and get access in any meaningful time frame, so instead she goes for a long con. Gets the second lieutenant to propose, man, can you believe that? Women get all the fun cons, I am telling you.”
The Secrets of Skipping Stones, PG-13, Part 3/3
Date: 2011-05-22 04:06 pm (UTC)“Well… she got the access she needed and got out. But she sort of got caught? The point is, they were on the verge of civil war anyway, so it’s not like it’s completely her fault.”
Michael prays for patience. “And how did she get here?”
Sam coughs. “Apparently, in certain circles it’s not a secret that we’re pals. She made it up through Central America with some underhanded back-alley strategies, and then didn’t have any solid contacts in the States besides you, through me.”
Michael prompts, “How long ago did she contact you?”
“About a week.”
A week. She was crossing the border while he was trying to decide between Turkey and Azerbaijan. He blows out a long breath and says, “I should have been here. Thanks for taking her in.”
“No prob.” Sam thumps his hand down on Michael’s back. “I know she means a lot to you, man.”
Michael sits up and squints out at the Miami sun. And he realizes that she really, really does.
“Oh! Good news. I’m something of a connoisseur, and I can tell you that she is not post-natal in any way.”
So Michael smiles at Sam with all his teeth and says, “You are a complete asshole.”
--
When Sam gets him to his mother’s house (and stops making ‘yo momma’ jokes), Michael climbs out of the car feeling like a piece of wetted paper that dried out wrinkled and useless.
Fiona opens his mother’s front door, and then calls inside. His mother shows up next, looking about ready to cry.
Michael goes through the standard hugs and reassurances with his mother. He keeps his eyes on Fiona, trying to anticipate her next move.
After all, using those closest to him as her own contacts was presumptuous on a level far beyond the fucking-on-an-occasional-basis style they had adopted. In a way, it made their relationship about as official as it could be, considering their lifestyles.
“Look at this, you brought half of Iraq back with you,” his mother is saying, brushing sand out of the creases of his clothes.
“You’re fishing again, Mom,” he points out.
She shrugs. “Worth a try.”
“Mom, can I just have a second?”
She raises her hands in surrender and steps out of his way with an ominously knowing smile.
Michael walks up to the door of his childhood home, where Fiona is leaning in the doorway. She’s thin but clean, clearly on her way to full strength. He says, “Hey, Fi.”
Her lips, which have so far managed to stay fixed in a frown, curl up slowly. “Hello, Michael.”
He stays a few feet away, but touches two fingers to her wrist – not holding, exactly. He says, “I hear you had a nice vacation in the jungle.”
“And you went to play in the sand,” she answers.
He closes his eyes, acutely aware of Sam and his mom watching all this. “You could have sent me a note, at least.
He smiles, just barely. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
She nods and comes closer, slips her arms under his. She tilts her face for a kiss. Halfway through, with their mouths resting together, she starts to laugh. “I can’t believe you gave me your real surname! What kind of idiot are you?”
“A huge one,” he answers, and kisses her again.
Re: The Secrets of Skipping Stones, PG-13, Part 3/3
Date: 2011-05-26 12:06 am (UTC)I love that Sam and Mike are still best friends. AND all the loveliness of Mike and Fi's relationship. And that Sam and Fi found one another and became partners in Florida and Mike ends up where he was supposed to be after all. Glorious.
Re: The Secrets of Skipping Stones, PG-13, Part 3/3
Date: 2011-05-26 06:30 am (UTC)Re: The Secrets of Skipping Stones, PG-13, Part 3/3
Date: 2011-05-26 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 12:07 am (UTC)Destiny - Buffy/Evil Dead Trilogy, Ash and Buffy, PG
Date: 2011-05-12 03:01 pm (UTC)Buffy turned around to see the school's head janitor drop a heavy book onto his cart. It was cracked, aged, with gilt letters that spelled out "Creatures Of the Nyght," on the spine. An ancient book. A Watcher's book for a Slayer.
Currently nestled between Windex, 409, toilet cleaner, and a roll of garbage bags.
She looked up at the tall, dark-haired guy, a little cute, and little younger than she'd been expecting, but definitely more gym teacher and less librarian. She'd been expecting tweed suits and glasses, not a jumpsuit and a mop.
"Um... no?" she said tentatively, not at all desiring to get back into her "destiny," no matter who was going to be helping her with it.
"Let's try that again. Yeah, this is what you're looking for, chickie."
Buffy flushed with anger at the nickname, and her Watcher, if that was who he really was, smirked.
"This town's in a bad way. Lots of dead on streets. Only one person to take them out. Your kinda odds. Slayer's odds. And I can make 'em better. Made up a few new toys out in the groundskeeper's shed that can take a few heads off. And put a few extra books in the library under lock and key." He jangled the large bunch of keys at his waist. "And I got them all. Full access."
"I thought you were just supposed to, you know, watch," Buffy said finally, taken aback.
"Where's the fun in that?" he asked, grinning widely.
Buffy bit back a grin of her own. If she was going to do this, and she wasn't sure if she was yet, no matter what he said, at least this guy wouldn't be dull.
"So, who are you?"
"Name's Ash," he said, pulling a stake out of his capacious pockets and flipping it in his hands. "Sanitation."
Buffy reached out and took the book, laughing.
Re: Destiny - Buffy/Evil Dead Trilogy, Ash and Buffy, PG
Date: 2011-05-15 04:26 am (UTC)This is FABULOUS and everything I could've asked for with this prompt!
Re: Destiny - Buffy/Evil Dead Trilogy, Ash and Buffy, PG
Date: 2011-05-15 09:06 am (UTC)Re: Destiny - Buffy/Evil Dead Trilogy, Ash and Buffy, PG
Date: 2011-05-19 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 01:01 am (UTC)The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind - pre-Gabriel/Sam, PG
Date: 2011-05-13 02:05 am (UTC)Coyote shrugs. "Some of us are more," he says, which doesn't explain a thing. "Me and Loki and Anansi--we're the big boys."
0o0
When Azazel's game almost kills Sam, Coyote yanks him away.
When Sam tries to go after Lilith, Coyote convinces him there isn't a single worse idea in the world.
When some douchebag angel of all things goes after Sammy, Coyote meets him head-on and the angel recoils.
"No mere trickster," the angel hisses, "could have so much power."
And Coyote... he looks cold. Dangerous. And he says, "Hello, Uriel," in a voice neither of the Winchesters has ever heard before.
"I am Coyote," their trickster says, standing in front of them, arms spread like wings. "I am Anansi. I am Loki. These boys are mine."
"No," Uriel murmurs. "It cannot be."
Coyote swings his arms in, hands slamming together in thunderous clap. Uriel howls, wind whipping into a frenzy around him, and when it dies down, the angel is gone.
"Holy fuck," Dean mutters, and Sam gingerly reaches out to touch Coyote’s shoulder.
“s’alright,” Coyote tells them quietly. “We need to go.”
The brothers share a look. Coyote waits, staring into the distance. Dean nods and Sam smiles. “No mere trickster, huh?” Sam says.
Coyote says nothing. Sam uses his grip on Coyote’s shoulder to gently turn him, and once their eyes meet, Sam says, “I’ll ask again later. Will you answer?”
After a moment, Coyote nods.
“Good,” Dean says. “Let’s shag ass, get some ground between us and that douchebag.”
Coyote smirks. Both Winchesters pretend not to notice how sad it looks, or the shadow of wings arching overhead.
Re: The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind - pre-Gabriel/Sam, PG
Date: 2011-05-13 08:07 am (UTC)The boys could've needed an ally like that.
Re: The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind - pre-Gabriel/Sam, PG
Date: 2011-05-13 02:52 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading!
Re: The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind - pre-Gabriel/Sam, PG
Date: 2011-05-13 09:29 am (UTC)Re: The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind - pre-Gabriel/Sam, PG
Date: 2011-05-13 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-12 03:43 am (UTC)