Tuesday - Redemption
Dec. 1st, 2009 05:36 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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comment_ficHi, everyone! I'm ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
milleniumrex, and I'll be your guest host this week!
Tuesday's theme will be Redemption.
Today's about showing the best in everyone, even those we normally think of as the bad guys. It can be a villain taking a rare turn towards the side of the angels, an antihero deciding to make a go at being a good guy, or one of the heroes atoning for past mistakes. You can even work three ghosts in there somehow, if that's what you want!
As always, remember the rules of the comm:
■ Don’t prompt more than 5 prompts in a row or 3 prompts per fandom. When someone has answered your prompt, you can prompt again.
■ No spoilers in your prompt until at least 1 week after the original airing or publication date. If there are spoilers in your fic, you must warn in bold and leave at least 3 spaces.
■ Thank your fic providers they thrive on feedback.
■ For the sake of the code monkeys’ sanity remember to format your prompts correctly.
Formatting examples:
X-men, Magneto, He would never allow a fellow mutant to be die needlessly
DC Universe, Kara Zor-El/Owen Harkness, getting to play the hero for once.
DC Universe, Cassie Sandsmark/Cissie King-Jones, "I'm sorry I let you slip away."
None of today's prompts interest you? Make someone’s day and answer one of the myriad of Lonely Prompts.
Have fun!
tag=redemption
milleniumrex, and I'll be your guest host this week!Tuesday's theme will be Redemption.
Today's about showing the best in everyone, even those we normally think of as the bad guys. It can be a villain taking a rare turn towards the side of the angels, an antihero deciding to make a go at being a good guy, or one of the heroes atoning for past mistakes. You can even work three ghosts in there somehow, if that's what you want!
As always, remember the rules of the comm:
■ Don’t prompt more than 5 prompts in a row or 3 prompts per fandom. When someone has answered your prompt, you can prompt again.
■ No spoilers in your prompt until at least 1 week after the original airing or publication date. If there are spoilers in your fic, you must warn in bold and leave at least 3 spaces.
■ Thank your fic providers they thrive on feedback.
■ For the sake of the code monkeys’ sanity remember to format your prompts correctly.
Formatting examples:
X-men, Magneto, He would never allow a fellow mutant to be die needlessly
DC Universe, Kara Zor-El/Owen Harkness, getting to play the hero for once.
DC Universe, Cassie Sandsmark/Cissie King-Jones, "I'm sorry I let you slip away."
None of today's prompts interest you? Make someone’s day and answer one of the myriad of Lonely Prompts.
Have fun!
tag=redemption
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:37 am (UTC)Honor [Xmen, Magneto]
Date: 2009-12-17 11:35 pm (UTC)The only thing his honor dictates he must do is make sure that his fellow mutants' sacrifices are never made in vain.
Re: Honor [Xmen, Magneto]
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:37 am (UTC)I had to write this! I miss Owen. ;-;
Date: 2010-04-12 05:06 am (UTC)“Kara, what the hell?” he asked, but being in Kara's body and using her voice to say that was kind a weird.
Owen's head looked up, and Kara smiled a super smile that looked almost out of place on Owen's roguish face. “You just let it all...hang! It was so weird!” she exclaimed, a bit flushed.
Kara's voice groaned as Owen scrubbed at his temporary body's face. “Did you have to get changed?” he asked exasperatedly before pausing. “Wait, I thought we promised not to check each other out! I didn't look at your body naked!”
Owen had never seen his face flush that much in his life, and he wasn't fond of it, but it was Kara, and he was okay with her being flushed and flustered. “It's not my fault! Your body is weird! I took a nap and woke up all sticky!”
“What do you mean stic-” he cut himself. “Oh.”
Kara nodded Owen's head. “Does that always happen? How do you sleep?”
“It doesn't happen all the time,” he stated then a smirk came onto Kara's face. “You were having a wet dream, weren't you?”
“I was not!” she shouted indignantly, Owen's voice almost cracking.
Kara's laughter filled the room. “You totally were, or you wouldn't have woken up sticky,” he stated, still grinning with her face. “Who were you dreaming about, huh? Ooh, was it that Amazon?”
With Owen's complexion, Kara's flush wasn't going away anytime soon. “No! It wasn't Wonder Girl, and don't be crude about my friends!” she shouted.
Owen sat next to her, hands up in defense. “Sorry, sorry. This body swap's weird for both of us,” he murmured, trying to calm her down.
She rubbed at Owen's eyes before looking at Owen in her body. “Sorry about looking at your body when I promised I wouldn't,” she muttered quietly. “If you looked at mine, I wouldn't be pissed.”
“Nah, if I'm gonna see you naked, it won't be because I'm in your body.” He paused. “Well, not this way, anyway.” He paused again. “I mean! Uhh... I didn't say that!”
It was really weird to have his own body staring at him, but he'd been dealing with weird things all day. Though, the hug then kiss was rather unexpected, but he went with it. It was even weirder when the kiss broke, and was back in his own body. Owen just gave Kara his own grin, and she gave one back before pulling him into another kiss, in the right bodies this time.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-06 08:51 am (UTC)Enjoy!
---
He’s in a diner, wearing a face of a waitress from a similar establishment two thousand miles away. No one notices, they’re not supposed to; he isn’t even quite sure why he decided on hers, only knows he couldn’t look like himself, well, look like the vessel he wears.
He doesn’t bother hiding himself, eating pancakes with strawberry syrup in the booth behind theirs. They’re not going to care about some questionably dressed old woman. He listens and eats, waiting for some slip, some moment where he feels their souls leaking out of their mouths and spiraling in their breath. But today there’s none of that. Today all he’s heard is shoot downs of movie plans, where to find the cheapest laundry detergent, and whether or not they should stay in town long enough to try the dinner specials of this diner. Dean vetoes those last plans with gusto, eyeing the French fries his order came with, saying McDonald’s could do better.
He continues listening when they leave and he doesn’t.
He dresses differently the next day in a new town. Follows them into a new diner and orders the halved fried chicken, he’s wearing a trucker.
The next day he’s wearing a nurse, and orders a salad but what it lacks in flavor he makes up for in the use of blue cheese dressing.
He follows, keeps listening. Each day follows another, and he’s soon stringing along weeks into whole months. He never wears the same face twice.
He keeps listening, waiting for those moments. When he sees them, spies on what they fight so hard to shelter from each other and everyone else, he always is in awe. They are familiar and foreign, a combination that would stutter his heart if he had one.
After months of nameless faces and listening in secret, he walks into a diner one last time, wearing only his well loved vessel and plops down in the booth with the brothers.
“Alright, fine. You got me.”
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 01:10 am (UTC)"I know."
"You didn't give a fuck, did you?"
"At the time, no."
"Then why are you here, Christian? Why should I even let you in after what you did?"
Chris' knees gave out and he knelt at Steve's feet.
"Because," tears slipped down his cheeks, cold and cleansing, he was where he needed to be. Begging for forgiveness. "I can learn to say I'm sorry."
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 10:53 am (UTC)thirty-two seconds ; [lightman/foster, g]
Date: 2009-12-02 05:31 am (UTC)It's the lights that get to him.
Vibrant, neon shimmers that dance across velvet tabletops, broken dreams and wasted lives. Flecks of colour that attract and whisper in your ear, give you the false hope that feeds your soul like crack. Humans are at ease when they're pretending to be something they're not, and tense when they're faced with the reality of what they are (what we all are).
Foster's dress is tight, wrapping around her body like a beautiful shadow (always reaching out to touch, but never making contact). She doesn't approve of things she can't understand, things she can't control; but her warmth is bleeding onto his right arm and her eyes are brighter than the promise of stars behind the sea of Vegas.
There's a swick (scalding and sinfully sweet, overwhelming) akin to the flame from a lighter, the twitch of fingertips spilling silent words like a fountain for the dying and Cal knows, he knows.
It's not about the money. Flimsy slips of printed green are useless in a democracy no one has order over. It's not about the thrill (the exhilaration of flirting with the unknown) or the abandon. They're not $100's he's laying down on the table (they're mistakes, dirty and ragged at the edges, mistakes he couldn't put into a vending machine without having them spit back out at him).
(There's a silver coin across the table, shiny and innocent in its temptation, and inside of the reflection on the surface is a locket that his mother used to wear.)
There are sounds and people and life, clustering together like barnacles under the sea in a city no less filthy than they are. The road sign to Vegas says, "Welcome to Las Vegas, Nevada!" in decorated letters, but really all you read is, "Welcome to existence." There's a sense of freedom scattered in the sands of the Nevada desert that everyone crawls on their knees to find; the weight of your life like a ticking pendulum that never shuts up and you can only drown out the sounds in the mouth of the streets.
It takes thirty-two seconds for the ball to land on a number in the roulette wheel. Thirty-two seconds to either lose your money or double it. Thirty-two seconds to either ruin your life or make it (thirty-two seconds to gamble away the lifetime of your years).
(Seconds used like currency, paid in full to a bank that never accepts withdrawals.)
When the ball lands on 00, there is an explosion of praise across the room that resounds like fireworks. Foster's mouth says she isn't happy, but her eyes and cheeks and hands and throat say she's lying. She shakes her head at him, all silky hair and bristling dress, but when Cal lifts an eyebrow and watches her (catches the sparkles off of her lips, eyelashes and sequins) she follows him, thick wad of cash in his hands, to the buffet.
On a stool with a metallic support pole that creaks under pressure, Lightman watches the lights dancing in a martini glass create ripples of doubt.
On a stool painted in snakeskin leather to his right, Foster asks him questions that never see the light of day. Why do you do it?
For my thirty-two seconds of redemption.
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From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-12-01 11:18 am (UTC)For A Living
Date: 2009-12-02 03:21 pm (UTC)Sam knows, better than most people, how true that is, he's been shovel deep in a grave a hundred times.
Of course he's currently the only person who's actually doing any work.
Gabriel's sat on one of the gravestones, hands stretched out behind him like he has nothing better to do. He's supposed to be showing he can be trusted not to mess with them when they're on a hunt, but he seems to have taken that to mean 'do absolutely nothing at all.'
"Maybe you could- oh, I don't know- help?" Sam says tightly.
"And miss the sight of you getting all sweaty and annoyed," Gabriel's voice is drawling and lazy. "You're giving menial tasks layers here that I didn't even know existed."
Gabriel gets the next shovel full of dirt in the face.
"That was totally uncalled for."
Sam ignores him and goes back to digging.
Gabriel is suspiciously quiet for a long minute.
"Stop looking at my ass," Sam says eventually.
"How did you know I was looking?"
"You're predictable, and annoying."
"What else am I supposed to look at? The dirt, the gravestones, the creepy graveyard trees?"
"Something that isn't my ass," Sam huffs. Because seriously, seriously? Dean gets the angel that makes cow eyes and rebels against heaven and explodes for him and Sam gets-
This is completely unfair.
"Yeah, but the sex is fantastic," Gabriel points out, like Sam hasn't told him not to read his mind a thousand times.
"It is not," Sam protests, slamming the shovel into the ground hard enough to vibrate soft agony all the way through his shoulder.
"Last night I think you actually cried." Gabriel looks smug, he always looks smug.
"Shut up," Sam tells him, and fumes quietly while another six inches disappears from the grave. Because that's not the point, absolutely not the point.
Even if it's completely true.
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From:No fic yet but...
Date: 2009-12-01 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-16 05:40 am (UTC)Logan would always tell him "None of that matters anymore. That wasn't the real you."
Alec would smile slightly and go back to what he was doing. And Logan felt satisfied that he was able to offer some small comfort, some small alleviation for Alec, after all he had been through.
Alec never told him what he was really afraid of: that no matter how terrible his crimes, Logan would always find a way to excuse him from them. That Logan's love for him made them both blind.
Alec thought that by being with Logan - not just working with Eyes Only but really being with him, by proving to himself that he could love and be loyal and honest and caring and everything else people were supposed to be able to do - that Alec was on the way to redemption.
Instead, Alec feared that Logan's love would make him forget his sins rather than atone for him.
But he never told Logan. It was just one more secret after all.
One of a thousand.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-16 05:46 am (UTC)But then Peter noticed on his computer screen where the bracelet locator was.
Not within the radius.
In Peter's apartment. Probably, if it was precise, the bedroom. He went over as fast as he could.
As he walked into his bedroom, Peter saw Neal lying on it naked.
"Bet you thought I ran"
"I did."
"You should have a little faith."
"That you're no longer a criminal?"
That grin. "That I would never skip town without a goodbye kiss."
"A kiss, huh?" Peter smiled. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Come to bed, Peter. Let me show you where I mean."
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:31 am (UTC)Point (PG-13)
Date: 2009-12-06 12:55 am (UTC)Angels and Demons walk the earth wearing human form.
This world is theirs. Once --
Once, they were engaged in open warfare. For territory, for souls, for a absent Father in the sky and a imprisoned son under the earth. Now, there are nothing more the skirmishes. An easy truce reigns on earth.
Humans to them are pets, playthings, canon fodder, vermin. Carefully regulated. Many are still free men and women.
Some are not.
They are sold in the marketplace, in private sales, in underground auctions.
In household of one of the great Angels, the Archangel Gabriel welcomes his newly come to earth brother Castiel, and his favorite sister Anael --
Gabriel rubs his temples and looks at his younger siblings. Castiel looks back with intensity all younger angels have when in their first vessels, Gabriel's body might be his own but he remembers first being encased in flesh.
"Gabriel," Anael, or Anna as she insists on being called these days, says. "Please. You know I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important."
"What happened to the allowance Zachariah gave you?" Gabriel asks. He snaps his fingers, and takes a long drink of the glass of scotch that appears in his hand.
Anael frowns at him, tossing her red hair. "There were children, Gabriel, and Lilith was bidding."
Oh. Gabriel can't say he wouldn't have down the same. "What's so important about this auction then? You can't save them all. It's pointless to try. It pointless in fact to do anything but wait for this show to finally get on the road, so we can all go home."
"Gabriel," her tone is sharp and she glances in Castiel direction. Gabriel sighs.
Castiel is frowning at the TV screen behind Gabriel but shifts his gaze back to his elder brother at the noise. "The Winchesters."
"The Winchesters," Gabriel repeats. The Winchesters, the mortals whose destiny was once written in the stars and now the Host had no use for. "Shit."
Castiel blanches at the language.
"We can't let the demons have them," Aneal insists.
Gabriel presses his lips together. "You mean we can't let them have him."
Castiel looks confused.
***
It's Castiel that winds up buying the older Winchester, the brother they want, a young man name Dean. Lean, strong, marked by scars from a life has a hunter.
Gabriel worries at the speed at which Castiel bid when he'd laid eyes on Dean.
He turns to tell Anael that they should go, they have what they came for, when they bring the other Winchester out.
Samuel.
He's young, scared looking, and even with the demon blood flowing in his veins --
Gabriel looks and see's his whole life.
He raises his hand and bids.
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From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 11:34 am (UTC)Everything (Castiel/Dean, G)
Date: 2009-12-03 03:45 pm (UTC)Dean had called him from a gas station somewhere in Washington. He'd sounded tired, heartsick, but he'd called to see how Castiel was, to ask him about his search, to encourage him. As if Dean's cares and worries, and the threat of Castiel's brother taking Dean's were secondary to Castiel's.
But Dean sounds tired.
And Dean likes coffee.
So he goes to Dean.
There's a coffee shop just across the street from the gas station where the Impala sits, Dean leaning against the metal in the early morning sun. Castiel knows Dean will purchase the coffee from the gas station instead.
Castiel wishes to buy him coffee. Because he likes - wants - desires to see Dean smile -and Dean's smiles are everything and he wishes to taste them straight from Dean's mouth.
His father is sitting at a table in the corner. A cup of coffee in his left hand and a battered, well worn book in the other.
Castiel makes a sound and his skin feels too tight. He doesn't - this isn't --
The noise in the coffee shop fades away. Time holds its breath.
"Castiel, stop gaping like a fish," his father says. It's a fond voice, it reminds him of Ellen speaking to Jo, of Bobby to Dean and Sam, of Jimmy to Claire. "Come sit down."
Castiel obeys. The book is called the Hobbit. He can smell the coffee his father drinks. "Father."
There a soft chuckle. "You don't know what to do know that you found me do you, son?"
"I-Gabriel said-I did not expect to find you so soon," Castiel says and is horrified at the words he's let spill from him. This is God. This is his Father who saved him from death and remade him.
"Gabriel says a great many things. Some of them are even true, he doesn't always remember which ones though." His father shakes his head. "You want to know why I saved you, I suspect?"
Castiel nods.
His father takes a drink of coffee.
"Tell me Castiel, if you could go back to Heaven with your brothers and sisters, all of them - Gabriel, Anael, Uriel," - there is a pause and Castiel can almost see it, his family almost whole again - and he wants that like a ache he didn't know he had until he'd seen Gabriel - "Lucifer, would you desire that? Or would you stay at Dean Winchester's side and face what is to come?"
Castiel's face is wet. He doesn't speak. He can't.
His Father smiles. "There is no sin in love, my son."
He touches Castiel's forehead with two fingers.
Castiel brings the coffee to Dean. A whips of steam rises from the lid. There is another cup for Sam still asleep in the car and a cup of hot chocolate for Gabriel who will be there as soon as Sam opens his eyes.
Later, Castiel will find a battered copy of the Hobbit in his coat. A note in the front cover reads 'to make up for all those bed time stories I didn't tell you kids'. Castiel will not know where the book came from.
Now, Dean leans against the Impala and takes a long drink of the coffee. He smiles at Castiel.
It's real and warm.
It's worth everything.
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From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 12:13 pm (UTC)All She Can Give Him [Star Trek XI,Gen,Jim and Winona,G]
Date: 2009-12-01 04:29 pm (UTC)When she comes to get him from the detention center she still doesn't look him in the eye or even speak to him. It's not till their riding away in Winona's hovercar that she says anything and all she says is "I forgive you."
Maybe she thinks that redemption is what he is looking for or maybe not. Perhaps she want's to think that he feels as guilty for his father's death as she does and this was his way of seeking forgiveness.
He wants to scream that he wasn't looking for forgiveness but instead he bites his lip until it bleeds. This is the closest she's come to caring about him in a long time and he doesn't want to mess it up.
She returns to space the next day barely stopping to tell Jim goodbye and still unable to look him in the eye. Jim isn't as mad about that as he thought he would be, but maybe that just because he knows he'll see her again a year from now when he pulls his next big stunt. Because if forgiveness is the only thing she can give him then he's going to soak up every ounce of it and use it to fill the gaping hole in his life where Winona should be.
Re: All She Can Give Him [Star Trek XI,Gen,Jim and Winona,G]
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 08:01 am (UTC)Wilson thinks he is handling everything just fine. He's kept busy, organising their move, planning everything down to the last minute. House hasn't lifted a finger to help of course, his only input being to allocate a space for his piano. Wilson has to arrange to get the thing moved from House's apartment.
Wilson has made lists of things to do, things to pack, calls to make. Wilson has arranged for cleaners and movers. He hasn't let himself think of what he is leaving behind. Hasn't dwelt on the fact that this was where he lived with Amber, that when he leaves this place he will be leaving Amber behind forever.
Now though he is packing up her things. Most of it is going to charity. All he is keeping is his precious photos of her. Those he intends to wrap up carefully himself. He will put one or two up in their new place.
His fingers falter as he reaches for the first glass frame. He stares down at her. Across the room he can see House watching. Staring at him. Wilson looks up, blinking away tears and puts the photo down.
House comes over, the familiar limping footsteps echoing on the empty boards. Wilson braces himself for the mockery, for the taunts about his dead girlfriend - cut throat bitch. He tries to summon up the will not to care what House will say. He fails.
House picks up the photo and Wilson flinches, he is sure that House will smash it, throw it or otherwise destroy it. Instead House brushes his fingers over it, picks up the newspaper and begins wrapping. Carefully. Gently he puts in the box and reaches for another. Wilson blinks away more tears and swallows the lump in his throat.
Together they finish the packing, load up the box and leave the empty apartment. Time to start over and start fresh.
When Wilson opens the door to their new place he is happy to hear the limping footsteps follow him in.
It wouldn't be home if House wasn't there.