anstaar

[List] Fanfiction

anstaar — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 14:27:34 GMT

Comment Fic
what people know (lives entwined) (Clamp | 262 words | G | Fai & Yui, both Fai and Yui leave the tower (AU))
...and they will ride forth (DCU | 1,828 words | G | Bruce, there's an apocalypse, Batman doesn't really notice)
one moment (DCU | 230 words | G | Cissie/Kon/Tim, perfect happiness)
long worn steps in the dance of love (Fairy Tales | 305 words | G | Cinderella/Prince, now, they dance)
what is left (Firefly/Serenity | 593 words | G | OCs, Wash's ghost never truly leaves Serenity)
fake sword fight from the heart (Harry Potter | 146 words | G | James/Sirius, why use wands properly for a grown-up duel when you can clash them together in a fake-sword fight)
in inches (Harry Potter | 307 words | G | Hermione/Ron, some things change but others don't (and that's okay) (gender-swap))
in another life (Hunger Games | G | Prim/Rue, in another life (AU))

Doctor Who
of this and that
moments (in time)
missing, flying object (209 words | G | 3rd Doctor & Jo, the TARDIS goes missing)
local flora (294 words | G | 5th Doctor, Adric, Nyssa & Tegan, Tegan is starting to have issues with snakes)
close to home (325 words | G | Donna, the thing is, a new appreciation for everyday life only lasts for so long)
How Do You Know (585 words | G | Barbara/Ian, a love story in reverse)
Links (524 words | G | 6th Doctor & Mel, most people don't understand)
answer to existence (611 words | G | Companion & Doctor, you need them)

Echo Bazaar
or leave it (1,295 | G | exiles from the far east, the implacable detective & urchins, a tough shares their story (Yuletide 2011))

Naruto
Unknown Relations
Looking the Wrong Way (1,771 words | G | Fugaku, Hiashi, Jiraiya & Minato, Hiashi's first real mission with his team reveals several unappreciated facts (AU))
Looking Underneath (583 words | T | Fugaku, Hiashi, Jiraiya & Minato, in which Jiraiya introduces his students to his newest literary masterpiece and the phrase, looking underneath the underneath is coined (AU))
Five Times Minato Ate Tempura (903 words | G | Fugaku, Hiashi, Jiraiya, Kakashi & Kushina/Minato, taste memory is very strong)

Terry Prachett
moving sidelong (2,421 words | G | Bigmac, Johnny, Kristy, Wobbler & Yo-less, now, he doesn't know if he is a boy dreaming of being a man or a man dreaming that he is a boy)

Vorkosigan Saga
becoming habit
first contact (780 words | G | Ro & Xav, Xav meets his future wife for the first time)
becoming habit (6,403 | T | Lucy/Ro/Xav, in which a life is lived (more or less))
i. in which Xav Vorbarra learns to live in sin (or how to move in without meaning to)
ii. how to woo lovers and influence them
iii. don't you know there's a war on?

five things (G | Gregor)

measured by success (2,479 words | T | Ivan & Miles (slight Ivan/Miles), Ivan takes a trip and doesn't deal with the two sides of his cousin (set before Brother in Arms))

Playing the Wall (904 words | G | Aral & Miles, how Miles learned to swim)

Quinn of Athos (1,230 words | G | Ethan/Terrence & OC, the first time Quinn saw a woman he was eleven years old)

Respiciō (1,622 words | T | Miles & OCs, a classmate's opinion of Miles; any time from grade school through the academy)

serious injury report (June 12th -16th) (955 words | G | Bothari, Elena, Gregor, Ivan & Miles, they only go camping once)

well said (1,553 words | G | Ivan, in which Ivan goes on an unwanted quest and gets waylaid (fantasy AU))

when the door opens
Honor's Worth (310 words | T | Aral & Tolya, Aral, his brother and duels)
In Sickness (400 words | T | Aral & Tolya, Aral's sister died before Yuri's massacre)
Growing Saplings (853 words | G | Aral & Ges, Aral and a Vorrutyer cousin climb a tree)
what we keep (331 words | G | Aral & Tolya, Aral and his art)
three moments suspended in time (551 words | T | Aral/Nina, Aral and his first wife: before, during, and after the disaster)
a collection of memories (879 words | T | Aral, Tolya & Vera, four memories Vera doesn't have of her childhood and one she does)

Young Justice
ashes, ashes
pocket full of posies (2,220 words | T | Alfred, Bruce, Dick, Leslie, Martha Wayne, Philip Wayne & Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne loses his parents when he's eight years old, he's never been any good at letting things go)

[Vorkosigan Saga] becoming habit [3/3] - 3,182/6,403

anstaar — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 04:57:34 GMT

Rating: T
Summary: in which a life is lived (more or less)

iii. don't you know there's a war on?

For the first month after the invasion (after the war started, Xav insisted) they barely saw Xav. There was that first manic morning when he spun his determination into a reality they could create and then he was gone. Occasionally, he came back to sleep (probably because the owners of the rented embassy started turning off the temp vents at night) but he was gone by the morning with new clothes and most of Ro's coffee. The new was completely useless since it could only tell them that the Cetagandan fleet was still blocking the wormhole. Then Xav didn't show up for four days. Lucy, when Ro finally got worried enough to wonder out loud, simply shrugged and said that he needed time.

Ro and Lucy had two very different ways of dealings with things. It was what made them work so well together, Lucy said (it was the only reason they could live together without Ro strangling Lucy, Marc said). After a first meeting, most people could guess that they would react differently to events. Most people, if forced to guess, would also be wrong about where the differences lay. Lucy could speak her mind clearly, and would, while Ro preferred to keep her quiet. However, after speaking her mind Lucy was content in the knowledge that she had done her part and was fine with leaving the next move up to the other person, or persons. Ro, on the other hand, tended to keep shoving through if she felt something was wrong enough for her to speak. This was probably why she found herself, yet again, standing outside the door to the Barrayaran Embassy.

From the outside, not much appeared to have changed. Derik, who had been assigned to semi-permanent desk duty after a particularly embarrassing moment with the honorable herm Tori, still sat at his console but his uniform had lost the crispness that always marked Barrayarans to Ro. He had even allowed himself the beginnings of a scruffy beard and the bags under his eyes were almost as deep as Xav's had been the last time she had seen him. He waved her through after a halfhearted scan (and skipping entirely his usual lecture on propriety and Xav's busy schedule. Ro didn't let herself wonder about what loved ones his mind might be full of at a time like this). After that she just followed the sound of raised voices.

After the departure of the former head of the Barrayaran Embassy (accompanied, Xav had told them in his flattest voice, by several subordinates who wished to attempt to reunite themselves with their families) seven Barrayarans, including Xav, were left on Beta Colony. This left it the largest group of Barrayarans off Barrayar (and certainly the only group with such a high ranking member of the royal household) and therefore responsible for working together to help their beleaguered planet. At the moment, they seemed rather more concerned with yelling at each other.

Xav sat behind his desk, looking rather worse than death warmed over. His chin was resting on top of his folded hands and Ro was sure that they were the only thing keeping his head upright. Philip, the only one of Xav's co-workers that she had been formally introduced to, was gesturing to a map of Barrayar while yelling at a red haired man (she could only assume that he was the Vorsmythe Xav had occasionally mentioned) who was yelling back just as fiercely while gesturing pointedly at a map of the wormhole route from Eta Ceta to Barrayar. The last man was leaning against the wall and loudly interjecting his own comments into the others' fight. Well, she had to assume it was a fight. In some desperate nod to the complete lack of security, they were all talking in what she recognized as Barrayar's ancient, bastardized Russian dialect.

Philip was the first one to notice that Ro had entered the room. He stopped in the middle of a sentence with the, hopefully, uniquely Barrayaran expression of man suddenly confronted with an unwelcome reminder of the existence of women when suddenly presented with one outside of her 'proper place.' Vorsmythe quickly spoke, loud in Philip's sudden silence, before he noticed Ro and also fell quiet. The stranger leaning against the far wall followed his compatriots gaze and stared blankly at her as though, in this month of horrible events, this was possible the worst. Even Xav managed to turn his head enough to look at her without collapsing on his desk. The overall effect was deeply unnerving.

"Ro," Xav said finally, with the careful pronunciation that came with drunkenness or complete exhaustion, "what are you doing here." Ro paused. The truth, that she was there to make sure he got some sleep before he fell into a disused lift shaft, wouldn't work. She could just imagine the sneers she would receive at the implication that a Barrayaran soldier could feel such a paltry thing as exhaustion. If Xav did go with her he would lose the respect of the men to whom the idea of common sense plus a woman resulted only in weakness. Usually those were the type of men whose respect she wouldn't care about but Barrayar placed a dangerous power in honor. On the other hand, she was very bad at lying. Even lies of omission at birthdays tended to leave her red in the face. Still. Barrayarans weren't the only ones to understand duty.

"I came looking for you," Ro could already feel her face flushing and that was true, "you have an ambassadorial dinner tonight that you seem to have forgotten and I was sent to make sure you'll be ready and you're obviously not so we'll have to go back home." Vorsmythe looked like he was about to protest but Ro was the only one in the room who had gotten a good nights sleep and she had already grabbed Xav and had started propelling him toward the door before she had even managed to stop babbling. The sight of their half-collapsed Captain and a vaguely official sounding excuse was enough to keep them quiet long enough for Ro to get Xav shambling away under his own power (and the fact that he hadn't said anything about the 'dinner' excuse was reason enough to have grabbed him). Derik opened the door for them which might be signaling the start of the coup but she suspected the true reason was much more likely to involve some Barrayaran law about guards not sleeping while their commander was in residence.

Ro called Lucy in the tube. Lucy, unsurprisingly, found the whole story hysterically funny and actually tipped her chair over at one point in the midst of a spasm of laughter, briefly disappearing from view, but she promised to return home as fast as she could. Xav drifted off as the drifted down; with a swiftness that made Ro sure that he had been using some sort of stimulant to keep himself awake. When they stopped she was glad of their apartment's closeness to the tube and of Xav's uneven childhood diet that had left him small enough for her to drag him behind her. Ro only had to wait ten minutes or so in the doorway before Lucy arrived, panting from having taken the stairs at a run. Together, they managed to wrestle Xav onto the couch.

It took eight hours for Xav to wake up but when he did he sat up with a jolt and fell off of the couch. Lucy, whose timing was annoyingly good, entered three seconds later. Ro had been working nearby (occasionally checking on Xav to make sure whatever he had taken hadn't made him stop breathing) but she shut down her paper and turned to watch him. He stood up, realized he was standing in his underwear and grabbed the fallen blanket from the floor. For twenty four seconds, as measured by the smiling cat clock Marc had bought them as an apartment warming gift, they stood at an impasse: Ro behind the desk, Lucy in the doorway and Xav standing in the middle of the room, staring back and forth.

"Well," Lucy said finally, "you missed it. In those eight hours you just wasted sleeping Barrayar fell and was named the latest outpost of the Cetagandan Empire. If you had only been awake you could have stopped it from happening with the psychic energy that was obviously the only thing stopping Barrayar from being completely overrun." Xav sighed and collapsed back onto the couch.

"As always, Lucy, you make your points most elegantly," he said. "I'm sorry I haven't been around -"

"You're sorry you haven't been around!" Lucy cut in with an gesture so violent that Ro was surprised she didn't accidentally hit the wall.

"Yes," Xav offered hesitantly, obviously completely unprepared to face Lucy's quickly rising temper.

"Don't you dare act like we're upset because you have been around!" Lucy snarled. "What, we're so sad that no one is around to make sure the sex is reasonably simple for our old age. No one's there to eat half a piece of bread and then leave the rest sitting on the counter like someone would want to eat your half chewed remains." Lucy was quickly approaching a full blown rant and, Ro felt, forgetting the main thrust of the argument as she did so, so Ro quickly cut in.

"What Lucy means to say is that we aren't concerned with the state of our relationship -"

"Damn right, you know on some planets you can get a divorce without have to recite the whole legal code in four languages and adding proof that your spouse has killed your father-"

"But more for your health," Ro continued quickly, "the destruction of which will not help anyone at all."

"You're right," Xav said. He sank down into the cushions, looking on the verge of tears. "There's just so much to do. We're getting reports from all our embassies, and from a few other places, about what we know and that's turning out to be practically nothing. The Cetagandans' have blockaded the wormholes and we've gotten nothing from Komarr. I've been trying to figure out how to get supplies through and I'm not even sure what's needed most, not to mention I'm not sure how we're going to get any of these supplies. We were supposed to start drawing up plans for building out own embassy and now I'm not sure we'll have enough funds to pay off the rent beyond next month."

"Look," Lucy said, setting down on the couch beside him, anger completely gone. "Just do one thing at a time or nothing will get done. The rent is easy; declare the Embassy a government in exile or something and the president will fund your stay as long as you need."

Xav stared at her in horror. "'Government in Exile,' that's the last thing I should, or could, do. That's practically treason. Actually, I think it is treason."

Ro spoke, Lucy's eyes were starting to roll dangerously again. "Not government in exile then, but it's the right sort of idea. You're not a ruling body separate from you country, or planet, but you are a cut off group that serves as a representative of an attacked planet and there'll be some sort of support. It's not like Cetaganda is particularly popular. 'Poor' Barrayar is getting a nice showing right now. Plus, it's an election year." She took their smiles at that as a victory. "We'll help you but you have to promise to sleep."

Xav did sleep. He slept and ate full meals and crammed in work every second he could. He brought home data chips and drew ever more complex lines on the planetary map place-mat that Lucy had bought for the table. "I could have never done this before," he told Ro late one night as he piled up napkins to represent the Dendarii Mountains, "for the first time in my life Barrayar isn't watching."

"Beta Colony could be," Ro suggested and he grinned, looking younger than he has for a long time.

"Doesn't matter, this is what I want them to know."

They went to dinners and balls and events that Ro always thinks of as cocktail parties, even if they probably have some other, official, name. They go together in a way they didn't before and Xav wears his long hair and sarong and, very rarely, body paint like he was born to it, Betan to the inch (another gift from Barrayar's bleeding). Lucy hunted down an uncle who designed flighers and they have him round to dinner ever week. Ro determinedly crammed down the history of every planet in the Cetgandan Empire and talks lightly with various disgruntled groups and drops in on merchants who have traveled the important supply routes. Xav hunted down every export and import of Barrayar and wrote careful letters about the wide reach of Cetagandan power and the technological competition it provided ("now that will hit them right in the conscience," Lucy muttered) to whatever political party will speak to him.

Two years into the war Xav came home with a report of an explosion set off in an occupied portion of Vorbar Sultana. It started a fire that took three days to extinguish. Flash bombs aren't exactly the cutting edge of technology but it was a sign that the message had gotten through and they celebrated that night with drinks and a brief break from the all consuming purpose. "I'm glad," Lucy whispered later, Xav breathing deeply beside her, "I'm glad that she won't be able to go to Barrayar." Ro held her wife and thought of a burning city and was glad too.

Xav had been ecstatic at the news. In quiet moments following his face would break out into a smile and he spent an inordinate amount of time staring at Lucy's stomach until she hit him with a pillow and said that she would be sure to inform him of any changes but it's a pretty certain thing that he'll notice. For awhile, the work of the war was almost a relief in that it kept him too busy to spend too much time pulling out measuring tape, organizing dietary plans and reading every parenting book he can find at them (as if they hadn't all passed the test). He made time to go to the nurturing classes and it took several strong words from Lucy to get him to stop trying to cut her out entirely from everything that was going on with the war. In comparison, Ro liked to think that she was very sensible abut the whole thing.

It was quite nice when Lucy's maternal leave kicked in. Lucy had picked up a volume of Barrayaran epic poetry and split her time between checking in on their ever growing network and being utterly appalled at Barrayaran literature. Ro did her work with only brief bouts of obsessive baby proofing and some very minimal soppy smiling at Lucy. Xav could easily stop in with the latest carefully balanced meal and a stack of files (the rest of the embassy took his visits to his unborn offspring with much greater enthusiasm than they had greeted his trips to see his wives but Ro was happy that there were parts of the Barrayaran psyche that remained a mystery).

Olivia's birth didn't lower Xav's interest at all (not that Ro had really thought it would except during some of the bad times after she's read a bit too much about Barrayar and couldn't help wondering if he'll disappear with the arrive of his daughter). Lucy said it was remarkable that Olivia learned to crawl at all considering the amount of time she spent in her father's arms but, truthfully, they're all rather typically clingy first time parents and the only times you can't find Olivia in her father's arms you can be almost sure it's because she' with her mothers.

The invasion was heading towards the start of its fifth year when they get their first big break. The Cetagandans had agreed to let a vid crew though the blockade to show the universe that they were keeping within the boundaries of acceptable warfare. Derik had spent years memorizing technical plans and some basic propaganda. They all went together to watch his shuttle take off. that night, like every night, Xav tucked Olivia into her bed with stories of Barrayar to fill her dreams and then they curled together and the couch and try to breathe. The footage returned to a disinterested populace (five years in, most Betans barely remembered that Ceteganda had invaded some planet) but Derik was replaced by a different young man with fresh scars beneath his shirt and true stories of the war and for a week Xav walked on air.

Still, the war went on. They got images now, of varying quality and focus. Xav sat with Olivia on his lap and showed her pictures of his home and then, later, scanned the footage for any trace of someone he might know. Stephan's information was added to the collection. The mountains were death traps fro Cetagandans and hid many civilians. There had been some rough winters (but worse for them than for us, sir). Prince Yuri leads daring raids against the Cetagandan homes that are being built in the middle of the city. The modification of lightflyeres and the building of zap bombs had already begun by the time he had left.

Xav celebrated fifteen years on Beta Colony and they started working for their second child permit. Olivia was six years old and every bit her father's daughter and the Cetagandan ambassador to Beta Colony made pointed remarks about mercenaries wile Xav offered up his blandest smile. Ro worked on her book and thought that it was a better life than she could have imagined.

By the time Sonia was born the Barrayaran resistance had struggled along for thirteen years longer than anyone had ever imagined it could. Xav received regular reports (and doesn't bring them home) and tells Olivia about everything he will show her when they can go back home. Lucy sighed at this but they've all poured too many years of their lives into Barrayar to not go and see. Still, Ro understood Lucy's hesitation, as she hugged their daughters she shared in it fully.

The day the war ended Xav bought five tickets to Escobar. As they waited for the jump he practiced Barrayaran pronunciation with Olivia as Sonia dragged Philip into a complex card game of her own devising. Ro leaned her head on Lucy's shoulder and thought of the wounded planet whose struggle she had steeped herself in and yet had never visited. That night, after Olivia had fallen asleep and Lucy had zipped herself up with Sonia to hold back nightmares, Xav held her hand and whispered of their son running beneath the open sky.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

[Vorkosigan Saga] becoming habit [2/3] - 1,856/6,403

anstaar — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 03:07:45 GMT

Rating: T
Summary: in which a life is lived (more or less)

ii.how to woo lovers and influence them

They had sex for the first time a little after Xav's twenty-third birthday. Afterwards they curled together on the bed and Ro mentally sighed at the fact that Xav was still tense, even then.

"Well," Lucy said, "it's a good thing we waited two years. Now we're really sure we like you, even if you are completely terrible in bed." This, for some twisted reason that Ro didn't particularly want to contemplate, actually made Xav relax.

"Hey," he said, trying to sound offended but not bothering to stop stroking Ro's hair, "I went to that class, even if I still can't believe you got me that for my birthday. Ro laughed because Xav's face at the sight of the chip marking his enrollment in 'Fun Sex for Foreigners' was still in the running for the funniest face she had ever seen him make.

"Seriously, if you had to be all Greek and abandoning defenseless children to the wilderness about life, you could of at least brought in a little bit of the sexual training idea," Lucy continued.

"Only a Betan would know the sexual practices of an Earth culture that has been gone for centuries," Xav said.

"Only a Barrayaran would memorize every battle from a world and not even know how to say hello in their main language," Lucy shot back and Ro drifted off to sleep to the sound of their familiar arguments.

In reality, not much had changed. Xav moved from the couch to the bed. They started to seriously discuss whether they could afford, or needed, a larger apartment. Xav's stunner went into the second draw and his knife (it turned out to have taken him five hours to get it through customs) was tucked away on the bookshelf next to Lucy's old school data chips (she always protested that she might need them some day when Ro tried to clean up). A picture of two solemn little boys joined ones of Lucy laughing with her parents and Ro standing with her uncle at her cousins' graduation on the bedside table. Xav swept the apartment for bugs three times a week and sometimes laughed at Lucy's more ridiculous jokes about Barrayaran culture.

Sometimes, though, everything felt very different. It could have just been the passage of time. Xav's hair had grown out to almost Betan normal (incredibly self-indulgent for a Barrayaran) and he moved as quickly as any Betan when the storm warnings started blaring. He could joke about property takes and rolled his eyes in unison with Ro at the over dramatic headlines covering various political scandals. Still, he reached out for them now, instead of curling further into himself, and told stories about his childhood and could laugh while he said, 'I love you.'

Ro liked sex. She liked it quite a lot, actually, and it was even better, in her opinion, with people who knew and loved her. It was still just sex. She had loved Joni and had been loved in return without the fact that the other woman didn't have, and never would, any interest in having sex with her ever coming up. She had also spent the last eight years or so of her life arguing philosophic concepts (something she was no longer allowed to do in the apartment). She had taken up her professor's challenge and spent three hours talking with complete strangers about million year old ideas. She still wouldn't try explaining this to Xav. She loved him but there were certian thing she wasn't sure that he would ever truly understand, however Betan he got. She loved him, though, so it was okay.

A few months before Ro was set to graduate Xav was called back to Barrayar. Ro kissed him goodbye at his shuttle (Lucy had wished him a good trip that morning with a laughing reminder that one of them had to work) and didn't ask when he was coming back. They had never really talked about what would happen if Xav had to return to Barrayar forever. It had been five years since Barrayar regained contact with the outside world. Things could change in five years but Ro doubted that Barrayar would have changed enough. He had left behind most of his things in the apartment and they let them stay without a word.

Ro loved Lucy. She loved her and could live with her alone but it was different without Xav and she missed him. He wasn't the only one who had changed. Their lives fit together now. With him gone there was no one to talk with early in the morning as she prepared for class and he straightened his clothes for his embassy's inspection. Lucy didn't have someone who enjoyed getting into pointless arguments that held no real heat. Even the shopping schedule felt wrong without him there to complain about the expense of fresh fruit and mutter about the lack of meat.

Xav came back in a little over eight week (this left only a few days on Barrayar but then his stories had never included much mention of friends or family). They both met him at the shuttle port and he was the one to initiate their three-way kiss. He showed off his Captain tabs and Ro teased him about missing her exciting new work. They went to lunch and Lucy watched them, strangely quiet. That night as they lay together in their bed Xav glanced over at her, "I was sure you would say something about how nice it was to have a bit more room." Ro smiled into the pillow. It was always nice to have someone who cared as much as you did.

"Let's get married," Lucy said. Ro propped herself up on one arm and Xav's mouth actually dropped open but Lucy just gave them her brightest (scariest) smile. In that moment Ro knew that she had already said yes. Xav didn't say anything that night and he left early the next morning but he returned that evening with a smile and a pierced ear so all they had to do was figure out how.

Ro didn't really believe in anything (apart from brief flings with Platonism) and Lucy just wanted something meaningful so they turned to Xav for inspiration. It couldn't be a Barrayaran wedding (especially not the wedding of a prince but none of them mentioned that) or even particularly close but it was nice talking about what they could keep. In the end, the official who married them sighed a lot as they drew the three connecting circles and threw handfuls of groats into the air (and he made sure that they picked all of them up afterwards) but they were happy. Then the war came.

Lucy and Ro had been talking about children while waiting for Xav to return home. They both looked up in surprise when he slammed through the door, face sickly pale. He didn't tell them what had happened. He only announced that he would be busy for a few days and would be staying in his quarters at the embassy for a while. They didn't need to wait for his explanation. The news channels were blaring with the invasion. 043 talked about the cruel attack on a helpless planet by the overwhelming Cetagandan force. 334 played endless documentaries on the history of the spread of the Cetagandan Empire, interspersed with a discussion by several experts on its treaty with Komarr. 641 archly commented about the likelihood of an independent Komarr lasting for very long while blocking access to Eta Barrayar. Ro held Lucy's hand they watched it all together.

In the end, it was a full five days before Xav returned home. He didn't appear to have slept, or washed, the entire time. Ro shoved him into the fresher, watching carefully to make sure he didn't fall asleep. The bathroom felt oppressively silent and she wished that Lucy was there to start talking about anything. After, Xav sat at the table with a cup of coffee that was rapidly getting cold, staring down blankly at the plastic surface.

"You've heard," Xav said finally. Ro thought about saying, hard not to, but she isn't particularly good at lighthearted so she simply nodded. "I'm in charge of the embassy now," he continued tonelessly, "I sent Vorramnis to try to get back to Barrayar, told him to see if he could get any orders back to us."

"The Cetagandans have blocked the wormhole," Ro said because she can't say 'that's a suicide mission.' Xav was already well aware of that.

"Yes," Xav said. His face was as blank as his voice. He drank some of the cold coffee. "He said we should all go back, all the Vor. It is our duty, apparently, to throw ourselves at the blockade with the knowledge that if we succeeded we could grant the ground forces all the power of a team of diplomats."

"Doesn't seem the wisest choice of actions," Ro said, trying to keep her voice as calm as his.

"No, but he called me a coward. Said I had become weak and Betan." He carefully didn't look at her.

"I'm surprised he thought there was any difference between weak and Betan."

He smiled crookedly at that, "Hidden depths. I suppose I have some too. A man disagrees with me and I send him to die. There are those in my family who would approve," he stood then and started to pace the kitchen. "I had to, though. We can help but they need to follow me and Vorramnis never would and they would take their lead from him." He looked at her then and she met his eyes evenly. They both knew she wasn't the one he needed to convince.

"Do you think there'll be enough time to send help? She asked quietly.

"I'm sure of it. I've been looking over all the records. Even watched some news. The Cetagandans always work the same way to take over a new planet. Massive ecological destruction or carpet city bombing just means more work for them in the long run. They target transportation systems, government buildings, communications systems; all the things poor, backwards Barrayar doesn't have." He sat back down at the table, his hands tracing an invisible map. "We don't have trains and, believe me, we have no air or traffic controllers. The Emperor is used to moving about with his army. Communications on a major scale are practically nonexistent. The Counts are used to war and so are the people. More than that, we're all used to famine and disease and all those other things the civilized worlds of the Cetagandan Empire don't have to worry about.

"I'm where I can do the most good. Here on Beta Colony: the cutting edge of technology across the galaxy."

"I don't know," Lucy drawled, "after your stirring speech I have a hard time imagining what this Noble Barrayar could possibly need from us over-civilized lumps of flesh." She stood in the doorway, smiling at them, and for a moment Ro knew that it was going to be okay.

Chapter 1
Chapter 3

[Vorkosigan Saga] becoming habit [1/3] - 1,367/6,403

anstaar — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 01:55:30 GMT

Rating: T
Summary: in which a life is lived (more or less)

i. in which Xav Vorbarra learns to live in sin (or how to move in without meaning to)

The first time Xav visited their apartment it was two days after Ro skipped class to show an awkward foreigner in a coffee shop how to catch his train. It wasn't a class that she had enjoyed very much but she still hadn't been be that surprised when she found herself lurking outside the very new Barrayaran Embassy (a few cramped rooms on level fifteen with a hastily attached sign wasn't even the worst embassy she'd seen). After all, lying to your, even lies of omission, wasn't very Betan. Xav looked a lot more surprised to see her but also rather pleased and faintly red (and not just from his sunburn) and very cute in his uniform. She looped an arm around his waist and announced that he was coming back to her place for some lunch. He held himself stiffly, walked weirdly and his uniform was far too thick for comfort but he followed and he smiled and that was good enough for a second meeting.

By the time they had arrived at the apartment, Lucy had already picked up a pizza. That first afternoon Xav stood in the doorway and examined everything. He looked at the cramped apartment saw the piles of data chips and the disorganized stack of boxes and Lucy. Later (after she learned a lot more about Barrayar and Xav and their certain expectations of Beta Colony) she realized that he had thought they were going to have sex. This is such a ridiculous idea that when she first understood what his confusion had meant she almost out loud. She hadn't known anything about him then. He could have liked men or hermaphrodites or no one or just not been into her. Beyond that, he was a Barrayaran and as such unlikely to have taken even the most basic class. Still, they ate pizza (which Xav had never seen before and insisted on slicing into thin strips with his belt knife, Ro thinking of how hard it must of been to get that through customs) together. Lucy told funny stories about her customers, Ro defended philosophy as a major and Xav managed to ask whether they would both like to go out to dinner someday soon with only the slightest hint of awkwardness.

Food became a theme for their meetings. They went out to dinner the next day and ended up laughing so hard that Xav accidentally spat out some of his wine and they staggered out of the restaurant choking and spluttering. Ro took him to her favorite coffee shop (three levels lower than the one they'd first met in and with much better lighting) and taught him how to read earrings without blushing. Lucy carried him off for several hours on each of her days off and on Ro's birthday she was surprised with a hand cooked breakfast in bed which they ate together in their pajamas. They went for a picnic at the zoo and Xav told them what it was like to stare out over unlimited stretches of water. Food was also why Xav's things began to show up in their apartment.

First to arrive was the apron. Ro had found it in a bazaar and she bought it because it was decorated with giant pink hearts and Barrayaran ideas of masculinity always made her laugh. She liked Xav because he laughed too and he wore the apron, even if he left it hanging on the back of the kitchen door when he left the apartment. The he brought over a change of clothes because Lucy insisted that however well he filled out his uniform it was not the proper outfit for eating curry, especially for someone with as bad hand eye coordination as Xav (which led to a pillow fight for Xav's honor and then to the three of them lying together, exhausted, on the carpet) and student loans meant they shouldn't be wasting money on the absurd cleaning fees of ancient garments. It didn't get serious until the uniform.

Xav had a strange relationship with Barrayar. Personally Ro thought that everything to do with Barrayar, especially the people, was strange and Xav represented the strangeness at its utmost. They had known each other for five months for five months before he had even told them who his father was. They had been relaxing in the living room when Lucy had asked why Xav was part of the diplomatic envoy to one of the more important planets. Ro had been the one to wonder about it first. Xav was nice but even a newly rediscovered planet had to have some actual diplomats. Ro had mentioned her thought to Lucy who had, as always, gone for the direct approach and just asked him. Finding out they had barbarian royalty in their living room was made much funnier with the direct application of alcohol, followed by half an hour of listening to Xav trying to explain his family tree. It was still slightly odd. Ever stranger were Xav's self-deprecating remarks about diplomats versus soldiers and bastards and his 'Betan habits' (a comment she had a sneaking suspicion she should smack him for). It would take far more than the basic required therapy classes to try to figure out his issues, even if at times they seemed rather obvious, but it would take a lot of effort to miss how important the uniform was to him.

Lucy had suggested that it was because the uniform was representational of everything that made what should have been simple about their relationship complex. That had been after Ro had suggested that they set fire to the uniform. Of course, the whole line of their conversation had been prompted by the not-argument with Xav. That had started when Ro had pointed out that it had been a year since they met. Lucy had, of course, suggested (only half jokingly) that the one year anniversary was the perfect time for him to move in. Xav had then told them a long and involved story that basically boiled down to that fact that if he was on Barrayar, which was obviously the right place to be, his marriage would probably be arranged at that very moment to a woman who would never even talk a male unless five other women (and possibly her mother) were present. That had been when Ro had suggested that it was time for him to go back to work.

Xav had said many stupid things before that argument. Most of the time, Ro was just glad he said stuff to them instead of to, for example, the president (sometimes she was pretty sure he knew exactly what they would think about what he said but still wanted to get a Betan reaction). Occasionally it was worth it for the pure ridiculousness of his statements, like when he had seriously assured them that Barrayar just didn't have lesbians or, in fact, any women with sexual interests that didn't dovetail with tall men in very snazzy uniforms. Still, it was very hard to have a relationship argument with someone who seemed half in denial to the fact that they were in a relationship. Burning the uniform wouldn't really have helped but Ro thought it might at least make her feel better. Then Xav had brought it over.

It was about a week after they hadn't had the argument (a week where they just happened not to talk with Xav or eat with him or even seen him) and Ro was considering the cost of kicking down the door versus the fact that her day had been far too long to deal with their ancient lock. That was when Xav appeared and opened the door for her, making him a semi-hero in her eyes despite the fact that he was still wearing a shirt and pants under his sarong. He was also toting a cart with a large wrapped object and several parcels. He never ended up apologizing but the parcels turned out to contain his uniform (and an ironing board which he insisted was better than the crisper) and a spare pillow for the sofa, so this time they let it go unsaid.

Chapter 2

[Naruto] Looking the Wrong Way - 1,771 words

anstaar — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:17:13 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: Hiashi's first real mission with his team reveals several unappreciated facts

No one understood just how hard it was to be the heir of the noblest clan in Konohagakure (not that anyone ever seems to try to understand). Most of the time, Main House Hyuuga did not join 'teams.' It was a well acknowledged fact, among the members of the clan, that their skill (born from the unity of the purity of their bloodline and the perfection of their style) was so far beyond genin level that it would cause pain and jealously to their non-Hyuuga teammates and could not, of course, benefit by instruction from a non-Hyuuga teacher. During this time of warfare, however, Hiashi had nobly sacrificed himself for the cause of unity by joining a team. It had been wholly unappreciated.

It was bad enough that he had been assigned to Jiraiya, the least of the third Hokage's students, who was well known for his complete lack of respect for the clans. It was worse that one of his teammates was the second son of the Uchiha clan head. It was a sad fact that neither of the two founding clans of Konoha were made up of the type of people it was appropriate to associate with. Actually, the Senju weren't that bad, they merely had been ninja before the founding of the hidden villages had allowed the term 'ninja' to gain some respect when several of the more honorable clans permitted some of their members to be trained in the arts. There was nothing 'not that bad' about the Uchiha. They were sneaks and thieves who had no compulsion against stabbing a man in the back as soon as he went to sleep. Fugaku was a perfect representation of their usual degradation of spirit. When Hiashi had entered the room on their first meeting, Fugaku had actually laughed and asked how many times he had failed the genin test! Yes, Hiashi was slightly older (and much more mature and skilled) than a brat like Fugaku but had never failed! Namikaze, however, was the worst.

If someone had told Hiashi that when he first received his team assignment he would have laughed (or, more properly, raised a delicate eyebrow of condescension at them). The boy was a foreigner but quiet and well behaved, for a commoner. Heading home after his sensei's infuriating test, Hiashi had already constructed the future workings of his team. He could see himself rescuing his teammates from whatever trouble Fugaku would, invariably, land them in. Fugaku would apologize and learn to follow his orders, Minato would give him a grateful smile, all he had heard of the Hyuuga clan confirmed. They could even train together, occasionally. As senpai, and far superior ninja, it was his duty to help his less fortunate teammates develop whatever paltry skills they might possess (far away from Fugaku's family's corrosive influence). It took less than five minutes for these happy dreams to shatter completely.

The mission had gone completely wrong. It was their first C-ranked mission. They had received it much sooner than was usual but there was a war on, even if Konoha had yet to become officially involved, and anyway, they had a Hyuuga, a Sannin and two adequate genin. In the description the mission had sounded simple enough. There were poachers on one of the grand estates who had been able to avoid capture by the groundskeepers. Jiraiya had declared it the perfect opportunity to work on their teamwork and had left the planning and execution of the mission to them while he cheerfully partook in wine and the company of their client's daughter.

Hiashi was the team leader, self-elected, true, but the only real option, but Fugaku refused to listen to him. They fell to arguing, which Hiashi knew was beneath his dignity, and in the end they both stomped off through the forest in different directions, leaving Minato behind. That was the first mistake. The second was that he didn't activate his Byakugan. His night vision was god and using his eyes too freely gave him migraines. Anyway, he thought, the poachers were most likely a couple of half-starved peasants who would quail at the sight of his headband. Of course, 'most likely' wasn't 'are' and he didn't even sense a presence until a rough cloth was wrapped roughly around his eyes the world went completely black.

It was his every nightmare come true and he was frozen, unmoving. Unseeing. He was tied up and rolled down into a shallow pit. His captors were talking but he couldn't listen; he was too busy trying to activate his Byakugan and failing and he couldn't see and couldn't see and. He had never been truly blind before. They said that a Hyuuga's eyes were never really closed. Uncle Hikaru said that even without the Byakugan their eyes are different, allowing them to see when so many others are blinded. Hizashi said that a true Hyuuga's eyes worked even in death and so when a Branch House Member died and their eyes were burned away they came looking for living Main House eyes to take over so they could see again. Whatever the truth was, it had never been so dark that Hiashi couldn't see something.

He knew, in the small part of his mind that wasn't panicking, that the blindfold must have seals inscribed on it and it was his duty to escape so that he could regroup and lead an attack against this group of dangerous foreign ninja. Still, his body remained frozen. He only 'woke up' when another body was rolled down on top of him.

"Hell," Fugaku muttered, then hisses, "can you move? The knots are good but I think if I roll over and you wiggle up a bit I could manage to untie yours. I was best at traps," Hiashi could almost see Fugaku's smug smile and it was almost as comforting as was the weight of his teammate on his back and the slight smell of hair jell in his noise. Hiashi breathed in a deep breath full of the scent of fresh turned soil and breathed out.

"I can move. They have training, though, and a seal master." Fugaku nodded, his hair prickling against Hiashi's neck, his breath warm on his shoulder.

"Yeah, but I don't think they're watching up that closely. I was watching them, before they grabbed me: they know we have a teammate and a teacher still out there. The good ones have gone back out to find sensei and Minato-kun. Besides, I'll need less than a minute." He was as good as his word and soon Hiashi could feel the pain of blood rushing back to his fingers. He wanted to rip his blindfold off but he was a ninja and a Hyuuga and he would not let his self-control be shattered again. Besides, Fugaku was balanced precariously as it was.

Their weapons had been removed and Hiashi was, slightly, less capable at untying knots and it felt like months passed before he was sure that his teammate's hands were free. Fugaku rolled off him and they lay side by side, waiting for any response from their captors. When none came he whispered, "Untie my blindfold." Thankfully, Fugaku didn't argue, even if it seemed to take him an excruciatingly long time to undo the knot that kept Hiashi imprisoned. His eyes ached from the sudden arrival of light, but even from behind the film of tears he could see. Fugaku was carefully patting himself down, searching for any weapon that might have escaped notice. Hiashi glanced up and realized why their captors don't seem that bother with keeping a close eye on them. The opening of their earthy prison is covered by glowing chains of charka, completely impervious to hand or blade.

Hiashi blinked and the world unfolded for him. Nearest were their two guards, both of whose moderately developed chakra systems were flowing with a very odd chakra. He paused a second trying to work out who, or what, they might be before starting to stretch his vision out further when he got a flash of a familiar system. Minato was heading toward them, fast, not even bothering to try to hide his presence.

Minato didn't have a lot of chakra. He was ten years old, young even for a Konoha starting to gear up for war. He ran very fast and was capable in all of the basic skills. Hiashi had never seen him really fight. Minato had come to Hiashi for a plan for the Bell Test and had seemed happy to set up several basic traps. Now he stood on a tree branch and stared down into the clearing, face missing his slight smile for the first time since they met.

The guards attacked first. They were good. Hiashi would estimate high genin level (embarrassing but he was sure these weren't the one that had grabbed him) with skill gained more from fighting than Academy classes. They'd worked together before too, knives interspersed with a twisted spin of chakra that reminded Hiashi of a chakra thread. Minato moved. Events looked different when Hiashi watched like this, the world couldn't like to his eyes, but he couldn't quite believe it when Minato shoved his chakra out, like a shield, like a Hyuuga, and smashed through. He was between the two men and he was small and up close and Hiashi could see his hands flash.

The chakra chains vanished and they climbed out of their makeshift prison. Hiashi saw, eyes relaxed, Minato kneeling on top of one of the guards. It was a frozen tableau, for a moment, and then Fugaku laughed and punched Minato on the shoulder.

"What happened to the other thieves?" He asked.

"They won't be a problem," Minato said and his smile was back but neither of them doubted him for a moment.

They returned to the house where they found Jiraiya sitting on top of the bound bodies of their other attackers. Fugaku told the story, a story he doesn't even know. Minato accepted Jiraiya's praise with his little 'I'm nothing special' laugh that only infuriated Hiashi now that he realized it wasn't true.

The team returned to Konoha slowly. Jiraiya's pouch was full of money and he hummed cheerfully while sampling some of the wine the Lord gifted them with after he had realized the true extent of the danger he had been facing. Minato was the undisputed team leader and Fugaku accepted this with obnoxious good grace and seemed to have no problems bouncing along behind a younger boy. All Hiashi could see was Minato's back.

[Young Justice] pocket full of posies - 2220 words

anstaar — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 18:32:30 GMT

Rating: T (character death, blood, absent guardians)
Summary: Bruce Wayne loses his parents when he's eight years old, he's never been any good at letting things go (prequel/companion to ashes, ashes, we all go on)

Martha and Thomas Wayne die in a moment. A gun is held in unsteady hands. A move is made to protect their young son. Unsteady nerves break and two shots ring out. Bruce Wayne sobs in a dark alley. His parents were taken from him in an instant. It takes much longer to get them back.

&

Bruce Wayne is eight years old and believes in magic. Two days ago he hadn't. He's a precocious child, far more interested in science than flights of fancy. He runs around the garden dreaming of commanding rocket ships or snakes with exaggerated caution through the halls on a super-secret spy mission. Dreams change. He wakes up, truly alone for the first time in his life, and knows he believes in magic because it's the only thing that can bring his parents back to him.

Bruce had grown up on stories of the Justice Society of America. He would beg for a tale of their exploits at every bedtime. He would make his mother tell him the story of how she had actually met the Green Lantern over and over. He would flip through his father's old scrapbooks for hours, memorizing each picture. He had never been particularly interested in Doctor Fate (his stories tended to lack a certain amount of violent heroism) but his picture stood with the rest of them.

Now, Doctor Fate is the prize of Bruce's new collection. He carefully cuts out the articles describing 'Earth's Sorcerer Supreme' and pastes them on the first pages of his new book. The rest of the book quickly fills up with reports of other mystics and notes in Bruce's careful hand on everything else he can find about magic and unexplained events. He sleeps with it besides his bed. The book shows that anything is possible. It has to be.

Gotham is cursed. It's an old story. The accounts Bruce finds differ with one another: in some, the land itself is under a curse far more ancient that the foundations of the city. In others, the fist act of building brought down a blood debt upon all of the cities inhabitants, present and future. In a few, the darkness was brought down much later under satisfyingly blood curdling circumstances. Whatever the truth, Bruce decides it makes things convenient. A cursed city is the perfect place to call back the dead.

&

(Philip Wayne is not a bad man. He loved his brother and sister-in-law and he loves his young charge. He tends to Bruce's fortune with scrupulous honesty and he tries carefully to meet all of the child's needs. He is not a man at home with children. With Thomas' death he became the guardian of a traumatized child whose will more than outmatched his own. He brings Bruce to therapy but the boy won't talk and he won't move. He tries his awkward best to connect but is met with a black wall. He embraces Bruce's interest in the supernatural as the first signs of interaction with the outside world. He is happy at every smile, at every moment spent scribbling away instead of staring at the wall. He presence is obviously viewed as an interruption, he tells himself there is no need to impose where he's not wanted. He walks away with a little too much relief.)

&

"Magic can't bring people back," Zatara tells the sharp faced boy standing outside his dressing room (he's too tired to find softer words), "not really." By then it's far too late.

&

Bruce is eleven years old when he gets his parents back. After all the books full of arcane rituals, painstakingly memorized, and all the grizzly warnings, promptly ignored, from the true practitioners he had hunted down, the event could almost be seen as anticlimactic. He sits in the dimly lit attic and waits. There were words he had needed to know to open the breach and materials to help the process and there were the other futures that he'd sacrificed (if you do this, the woman says, there is no letting go, no moving on, time won't heal this wound, and he says, it will never heal, and she shakes her head but goes on and inwardly he embraces the burning coal of his pain because he never wants to let go). But, in the end, he had already had the most important aspect of the spell.

There is blood on the floor. Bruce's blood carefully spilled in patterns soaking into the wood (the knife is carefully sterilized, the cut is nowhere near a vein, because his parents will see him, they'll know that he remembered their lessons). Blood calls to blood. He remembers the blood flowing sluggishly from the bullet holes, falling on the dirty ground (like he has fallen, unmoving, uncaring). The anguish reechoes within him and he falls flat on the floor because it's not the remembered pain it's every moment fresh and it's not just his but his parents dying breaths as they leave the world, leave their son (if you do this, the woman says, you will take their pain, spirits cannot hold such emotion and you will always have their pain, and he says, for eternity).

Bruce's parents are upset. He put himself in danger ('and just where did you learn to do this,' Martha says sternly but her hand is gently caressing his forehead) and the had wanted him to be happy (they have no idea what he's truly done). That night he's tucked into bed for the first time in years and as he drifts off to sleep to the sound of the rocking chair creaking after so many years sitting unused, Bruce doesn't regret a thing.

&

(Leslie Thompkins always wishes she had more time to give. Running one of the few (one of the very few) free medical clinics in Gotham isn't a job with set hours. The doors can never close and it's so hard to tear herself away when she might be needed. Not to mention all the paperwork that needs to be filled out to keep things organized and running smoothly. There's more fund raising to do now a days, too. The Wayne money always comes in but Martha was the one who used to set up the parties. She made everything seem so simple. The money would flow freely. Thomas always used to say that it was her charm that lured donors in and her steel trap of a mind that kept them. Leslie misses them. Every year it seems like she has fewer friends left. However busy she is, though, she always makes time to check up on Bruce. It's a hard trip. The shy, sensitive little boy that used to solemnly tell her that he was going to be a doctor so he could help people just like his Aunt Leslie is gone or hidden far from her reach. She does what she can. He's in good health, even if he doesn't seem particularly interested in his food. He's quieter than he was but he'll answer questions about his school (it's fine), his guardian (he was fine) and the scar on his arm (caught in a fence, it was fine). He even seems animated about some of the tricks he's learned. She walks away and wishes there was more she could do.)

&

Bruce loses them day by day.

&

Even in the beginning, they aren't strong manifestations. They come through on the power of Bruce's love and pain (and rage) but however strong his feelings are they are just those of one boy. Voices are softer than those that rang so loud in his memory. Limbs are cooler and weaker. They love him, though. Whatever might have been lost their love burns strong and as he rests in their arms nothing else matters.

No one else can see his parents. Bruce decides he's glad. There would have been too many questions. Things might have gotten troublesome. He regrets their sorrow as people who they once knew walk by without a glance but then they smile at him and he knows that it's okay. All they really need is each other. Their sorrow fades over time. He tells himself that they've just adjusted to their new existence. Pain fades (his pain never fades but it's not important because he can open his eyes and they're there).

Bodies fade, too. Bruce refuses to notice. He has his training. He brought his parents back. He is determined to stop anyone else from having to go that extra step. His mother kisses his forehead (light as a whisper) as he bends over his work and points out mistakes in his equations with a light finger. His father frowns at his bruises and flips emphatically to pages on proper muscle growth. They don't talk much, anymore.

&

(Alfred Pennyworth is employed to look after a manor full of ghosts. He's happy to take the job. He had known the Waynes', once. He might wonder whether a guardian really needed to travel halfway around the world from his fourteen year old charge but butlers know when to speak. The time is definitely not when their new employer is muttering things about taking care of foreign interests while looking nervously over their shoulder. Despite his brief worries, on the the whole Master Bruce is exceedingly easy to deal with. The boy is polite (if cold), intelligent, driven and can be surprisingly empathetic. Alfred quickly learns that, if allowed, he will spend most of his time in solitude. Alfred quietly resolves not to let him draw too far away. He offers light conversation while he drives Bruce to school or when dropping him off at his various athletic enterprises. He goes to all the award ceremonies and sits in the mansion's gym while Bruce is exercising and carefully arranges the newspapers with the articles of the most interest displayed. Alfred brushes up on his lab safety and makes sure to bring in trays of food and drink when he's studying. Bruce mutters that there's nowhere he can go to escape but he's smiling. Alfred walks away with a smile on his own lips and if he was a different sort of man he would have sworn a ghostly hand grasps his shoulder in thanks.)

&

Bruce grows up, his parents never age.

&

Every time Bruce returns hope from a trip abroad, the first thing he does is look in on his parents. He never has to search to find them. They don't leave the attic (they don't leave the room whose floor bares stubborn stains even Alfred can't clean away). The windows are left closed. In direct sunlight, even Bruce's eyes have a hard time seeing them. They never speak, at least not on a level that he can hear. Every time, Bruce tells himself that their presence is enough.

On Bruce's twenty-first birthday he officially gains his entire inheritance. Philip awkwardly claps him on the back (it's the first time they've seen each other since Bruce returned to Gotham several weeks back). Alfred dryly suggests his 'first taste of alcohol' should wait until he stops needing pain killers (of course, Alfred had been present at Bruce's first hangover). Bruce already announced that he had come home for good. Philip leaves quickly, not even bothering to ask about the cut on his face.

As the sun sets, Bruce makes his way up to the attic room. There are new blood stains on the floor. All the broken glass has been cleared up but Alfred hasn't had time to put a board up across the window yet ('ah, Master Bruce,' he'd said, 'I am so glad to see that you felt strong enough to attempt to bleed out in the attic instead of lurking around in the foyer like some common ruffian'). The dying light casts long shadows, his parents cast none. That night, for the first time, Batman flies.

&

(Bruce Wayne is twenty eight years old and he's attending a circus. The seats are full that night. Outside, the air is cold but inside it's warm with people and excitement. Each act is greeted by louder cheers than the one before. Everyone is watching. The Flying Graysons are the stars of the show. They stand together, waving, as a roar of noise greets them. Six athletic forms stand out against a backdrop of stars. They fly. Every eye is on them. Every heart is lodged in a throat. The audience is linked together, pulses pounding with agreeable fear, the joy of disaster narrowly averted. Not all disasters can be averted. It happens so fast, there's no time to help, no time to look away. No one wants to see a child fall. Batman takes it all in. No operation of this level would allow equipment to fail like this. He needs answers. He knows just who he can get them from.)

&

They never find out exactly how many people were sitting in the audience that night, Dick doesn't like to remember and it's not really important. It's the feelings that matter. Thousands of people's fear and horror is a powerful brew, especially with a little help to channel it into a form. Bruce takes Dick's hand (it almost feels real in his) and refuses to wonder how long it can last.

[Doctor Who] moments (in time) [4-6] - 1730 words

anstaar — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 19:43:11 GMT

Title: How Do You Know
Rating: G
Summary: a love story in reverse (Barbara/Ian)

"To fifty years," Tory says, raising her glass. The table raises their glasses to her toast and they drink. The whole family's there: John and Ila are holding hands under the table like teenagers instead of a couple heading toward their fifteenth year of marriage. Kavi and Anuj, obviously resigned to their parents' refusal to agree to not touching in public, have cornered Davis and are conducting an intensive interrogation, for two eleven year olds, on his latest paper. Davis is holding up quite well, despite his preference for mixing chemicals to talking to people. Tory is sharing a story with her brother, but she keeps one eye on where Sophie is standing, holding Susan up to see the collection of wooden animals. Barbara looks at Ian and he smiles.

It's Christmas. Ian cooks, humming under his breath, and Barbara makes sure to invites Davis, who would otherwise spend the holiday holed up in h is lab. John is back from America and he's finally brought Ila with him. Barbara smiles at her welcomingly and starts calculating how long it will take until Ian will start teasing their son about how often he's mentioned the 'amazing woman' he's been working with for the last two years. There's a knock on the door. Barbara opens it to find Tory standing there, defiantly, with the girl Barbara had seen her eating lunch with the last time she had visited her at university. She welcomes them in.

Children grow up. John leaves school to play his music. Barbara and Ian worry together about how he'll live but they let him go. They both know how pointless it is to try to steer children into careers a parent might see as appropriate. They leave the relationship open and hope. Tory is brilliant and passionate and when she asks why Barbara is almost overcome with memories of Susan. Each day follows one after the other and there is joy in knowing that tomorrow is coming.

John writes songs about worlds with three moons which reflect in the sapphire oceans. Tory sings along, dancing around the kitchen. Barbara leans against a counter with an arm wrapped around Ian's waist. She doesn't have to look in his eyes to feel her love reflected in his soul.

Ian teaches science at university. Barbara writes. She reads out bits of history to Ian and he tells her stories about his students. At night, she sends John off to bed with tales of great civilizations rising and falling but always living, while Ian shares the stories of the strange worlds they visited and the friends they made there.

They come back changed. You don't notice growth when you're always together but then they step back into their old worlds and realize they've grown together. Barbara is glad. She's glad to be home, happy to have traveled and changed, happy to greet all that's waiting for her: the familiar and the new. She looks into Ian's eyes and knows he's glad too.

Barbara and Ian, the only thing the other can be sure of in this vast, uncertain universe. Between aliens and history and a mysterious old man and his granddaughter they hold on to each other. Sometimes, maybe, even when you step upon solid ground it's still nice to have a familiar hand to hold.

Barbara Wright meets Ian Chesterton when he's backing out of his classroom, arms full with a large box, and almost smashes into her. She helps him up and he smiles.

Title: Links
Rating: G
Summary: most people don't understand (6th Doctor & Mel)

The Doctor is lounging on the blanket, there's no other word for it. Mel wishes there were, she's the one with the eidetic memory. He's propped up on one elbow, flicking through a book in a way she would call idly if she didn't know how fast he could read, clad in a bathing suit which makes his normal outfit look subdued. It's the first time she's seen quite so much of the Doctor and it's odd. By most standards, including those of the rest of the beach goers, it's amazingly conservative, but there is something strange about seeing the Doctor out of his coat.

There's something even stranger in seeing the Doctor relaxing. He often claimed that he enjoyed relaxing pursuits and occasionally landed the TARDIS in places he swore were the most peaceful in the galaxy. On the other hand, he seemed to actually prefer desperate pursuits, usually at high speeds, and the phrase 'most peaceful place in the galaxy' often needed extra description words like, 'were,' 'will be' and 'except for those mind eating worms,' to be entirely correct.

When the Doctor had announced his desire for a nice beach holiday, jabbing at the ceiling with his umbrella to make his point, Mel had nodded and smiled and gone off to fetch a swim suit and a good pair of shoes. She had been absolutely sure that even if they did manage to reach a beach, which was not a particularly high probability, it would be a private beach of angry nobleman/royalty/dictators/other who would have them arrested, or they would be attacked by invading aliens, or dragged into some ones personal problems which would inevitably lead to the overthrow of some corrupt government/monarchy/etcetera.

Yet, it's just a beach. The TARDIS had landed behind a confectionery stand from which the Doctor had bought them both candy floss. He had then proclaimed that it was early 21st century, spread out the blanket on the sand and started to read a thick novel (the title of which, Mel notices with some slight horror, was something along the lines of 'Burning Passions') with the determined sort of enjoyment the Doctor brought to pretty much everything he did.

The beach is loud and crowded but peaceful just the same time. Mel watches the Doctor read. The Station of Titus 3 had blown. She'd watch it happen from where the TARDIS hung in space. They'd barely made it out of there in time, some of the other people hadn't made it at all. The Doctor hadn't said anything about it, had looked away uncomfortably from her tears, as he always did. He had started declaiming about beaches like they were his true home, one that he was pulled away from only by the TARDIS and the lure of the wider universe. The Doctor is prickly and soft hearted, overly verbose and too loud in all situations, brilliant, occasionally cruel, and her best friend. Mel doesn't thank him, but she sends him her brightest smile as she goes to join a group of college students playing beach volleyball. She never has to worry he won't get her message.

Title: answer to existence
Rating: G
Summary: you need them (Companion & Doctor)

New Beijing, mid 25th century, there's a woman. An old fashioned artist in a time where beauty is found in the swooping silver lines of robots and a cityscape of vast skyscrapers linked together by a multitude of bridges that sway with the earthquakes. She uses watercolors. She paints people; the two old men from three rooms down with their grandchild, the mass of faces staring out from train windows, lines of school children making their way to the park. Humanity captured in broad strokes across white walls.

If she had been born three hundred years later she could have been someone. The importance of art will rise, after the revolution, the war, the horror and the blankness that makes them remember how important it is to do more than just exist. Her paintings could have captured a whole generation with their simple elegance, the obvious love the artist has for her subjects and for the world. As it is, the robotic-landlord charges her for marking up her walls and she goes to work in a factory everyday as she will until she dies, unknown. That's important.

You wonder if that's the next step in your addiction: the justification. No one who would have been important someday without you, no one important, at all, except that they are but isn't keeping you sane necessary to the universe? You know it's a problem, the need you have to have someone there, watching you, loving you, the pleasure cells build and it takes more and more to fill them. You used to be able to let them go, you knew you could give it up any time you wanted, you traveled alone for hundreds of years until you just couldn't. Now you bargain with the universe, no one important, no one's getting hurt. They just die.

It's funny. You've smoked and gotten drunk and done an amazing range of recreational narcotics and even, occasionally, had sex but this is the only thing that's got you snared. Of course, those are human things, addictions. You don't remember if that sort of thing happened on Gallifrey, it's been so long and you were so young when you left. But that's not the point. The point is that you can't let them go anymore and so you hold them too tight until they are ripped away (or just can't stand it anymore and run but don't think about that) and it hurts them and it hurts you so you know you should stop. Not forever, just step back a bit until it doesn't feel like you're Schrodinger's cat with no one watching every time they look at someone else.

But, there's a woman. New Beijing, mid 25th century. She paints on her walls because there is no paper and visits the museum to look at pictures of animals and nature and how the world used to be. You're at the museum and maybe the history you remember doesn't always line up with what's printed on the walls but that's practically part of human history in itself, reality and remembrance lying at odds to one another. There's an attack: maybe from the ghosts in the machine who want to step out from being crushed between the gears but they're hurting people (it's not their time year) and you don't let that happen so you run at them. She comes with you, ready to help, and you know that you should ignore her or thank her and then hurry away before she can ask any of the questions that hover at the tip of her tongue. You should leave before anything more can happen. You aren't going to.

[Doctor Who] moments (in time) [1-3] - 828 words

anstaar — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 18:27:42 GMT

Title: missing, flying object
Rating: G
Summary: the TARDIS goes missing (3rd Doctor & Jo Grant)

"Well, this is a bit typical," Jo said. Without looking, the Doctor knew that her hands were on her hips. "You could say very typical, even," she continued. "You might even say that this seems to happen every time we leave the TARDIS for a bit of a look around the nice, peaceful planet of plants, or whatever, she goes missing!"

"My dear Jo," the Doctor said, carefully adjusting his lace cuffs, "you will find that the Phinlorines have a lot more natural curiosity than your Earth military types, not that that is particularly difficult. I'm sure we will find her in one of their labs. Which are this way, I believe," he held out his arm with his most charming smile.

Jo looped her arm in his with a sigh, "I suppose, still, it would be nice to know exactly where we're going to have to run to when we have to make a dash for our lives." The Doctor just snorted in reply but he had to admit, several hours later, as they 'hoofed it' down one of the echo filled corridors with troops of plague ridden Phinlorines pounding after them that, occasionally, it would be quite a nice change to know where the TARDIS was stashed.

Title: local flora
Rating: G
Summary: Tegan is starting to have issues with snakes (5th Doctor & Adric & Nyssa & Tegan)

"You said it would be safe to eat," Tegan hisses. It's a literal hiss. Her tongue, constantly flickering over her lips, is now long and thin and dark and, yes, clearly split at the tip. She's perfectly still apart from her mouth. Nyssa can't help thinking that she's poised to strike. The Doctor, she suspects, senses the same coiled anger in their friend. He appears to be inching ever-so-slightly to the side and his hand is clamped firmly around Adric's, well the only word for it is, muzzle.

"Ah, well, it is safe." Tegan growls deep in her throat, the sound is slightly louder than, though just as intimidating as, normal. The Doctor gives Tegan a wary look as he quickly goes on, "that is, not poisonous, the residents of this planet find the effects to be a very interesting learning experience."

"Learning. Experience," Tegan says quietly. Nyssa is grateful she's standing far to the side. Adric stops looking like he wants to say something and starts backing away from the Doctor.

"A temporary learning experience," the Doctor says, trying to smile reassuringly. "Just a little walk in a different skin. They're actually quite surprised at the effect it's had on you two. I suppose Adric's Alzarian adaptability made him particularly susceptible and, of course, your recent experiences..." Tegan lunges, hissing loudly, and falls back only after she's hit against the glass several times. Her eyes are snake slits, practically glowing in anger, and Nyssa hopes that the Doctor's estimation for how long it will take for the meat to leave her system is correct. Privately, between Tegan's unsettled mind and the fact that Adric presently looks like an odd combination of lizard and Earth dog, she's very glad she decided to skip dinner.

Title: close to home
Rating: G
Summary: the thing is, a new appreciation for every day life only lasts for so long (Donna)

Donna is halfway around the world from home. Or, at least, it feels like she'st raveled long enough to have gone that far what with the waiting around for your transportation and all those buses, when they arrive, are just so uncomfortable and noisy (honestly, Donna likes children but how are you supposed to have a meaningful moment with history or whatever when some kid is screaming in your ear, answer that one Mister Oh-So-Smart-Tour-Guide). Plus, she has words for those hotel rooms, especially considering how much this whole thing cost. And don't think she didn't notice I'm-A-Surgeon staring at her chest when she got that new shirt with all those patterns on it that disguise how low cut it is until you put it on, he'll be feeling the flat of her hand if he tries that one on again.

These aren't the main problems, though. Donna is halfway round the world from home (possibly, she was never the best at geography) an it doesn't really mean anything. She lives in London; it isn't exactly shocking to see all sorts of people speaking all sorts of languages. Even not understanding doesn't mean she doesn't know what people are saying. Families are shouting at one another, idiot teenagers are bragging, kids are playing games, humanity just goes on, in foreign and with unacceptable plumbing.

It's not that Donna enjoyed almost being sacrificed to an alien that looked like a giant spider by her fiance who was actually evil, but it was something different. She was kidnapped from her wedding party. She was terrified. She was angry. She was really angry. She met an over dramatic alien with relationship problems. Nothing in her life should have ever been the same. Which is silly, really, because she was the one who said no, who went back to what regular life should be. Still, Donna figures, when she gets back home she won't unpack her luggage too quickly.

[Hunger Games] in another life - 386 words

anstaar — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 03:20:34 GMT

Rating: G (major character death, violence)
Summary: Rue/Prim - in another life

in another life, there is no one to volunteer to take Prim's place (a sister too old, a sister long dead, no sister at all but a brother lunging forward to stand at her side. there are a lot of maybes for a child of the seam and in the end maybe it doesn't matter why when television sets across Panem show a little girl hugging her goat goodbye)

in another life, two young girls wrap their arms around each other as they huddle together (run, they told her, and she ran without looking back and they know how to forage but, really, how long could anyone expect them to last. and maybe a revolution starts with the picture of the two dead children curled together permanently etched in the mind of a boy who refuses to play by the Capitol's rules and in that of a girl who has no reason to ever stop burning)

in another life, when the Victory Tour is about to leave Twelve a girl runs out of the crowd. Rue's seen the pictures, she sought out the pictures, but she never expected to see the girl in person. she had thought that they might give her that much at least. the cameras pan eagerly. you can never tell with relatives - there have been physical attacks, breakdowns and even, only once, thanks. Prim simply takes her hand (and maybe this is an attack that Snow didn't even imagine, the pin goes straight into his eye and through. but what can you expect when you teach your children to kill)

in another life, two young women meet at University. Rue drops her books as she stumbles over a carelessly tossed bag. Prim helps her pick them back up and a friendship is born. they're in classes together, they're both studying to become doctors. they walk together back to the dorms, hand in hand, and neither of them stop smiling (it's not a perfect life: Prim's father is still long dead, her mother still scarred, her childhood still full of hunger and cold. Rue still had to find a job far too early, she still spent years worrying over her younger siblings, she still understands terror far too well. and in the end maybe it doesn't matter because in another life, they live)

[Terry Prachett] moving sidelong - 2421 words

anstaar — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:02:07 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: now, he doesn't know if he is a boy dreaming of being a man or a man dreaming that he is a boy

If you stand between two mirrors you can look out at a thousand, million other yous stretching out into the distance, forever. This is a useful way to introduce someone to the concept of infinity, as it places you squarely in the middle of the universe. Of course, then a certain type of person might start to wonder whether they were the one looking in the mirror or were they a reflection.

***

Captain John Maxwell sits on the uncomfortable plastic chair in the med-center (there’s always an uncomfortable plastic, or nearest equivalent material, chair in these sorts of places. There’s probably a zlug on planet Zeta 4 waiting to get his twisted psued looked at wondering why the sloshbog was so uncomfortable. You can only assume that after having to spend a great deal of time sitting on a chair which, though never very comfortable, has grown to torturous levels of pain with only long out of date magazines, with all the interesting articles ripped out, to distract you, merely being sick doesn't seem that bad.). It used to just be Pilot Maxwell but after the military tribunal he had ended up a captain and cashiered out of the fleet.

(What he had said was this: do you know that the scree-wee’s own name for themselves is human? We made an agreement, a long time ago, that there are things that people don’t do to one another. We didn't do that because people won’t do awful stuff to each other but because they do, all the time. People have to care about people. Mostly, we’re not really any good at it but if not us, then who? I think that the trouble is we’re actually really good at hurting each other but civilization means not always doing what’s easy. If those choices don’t matter when we’re at war then when do they matter? War is the most important time for us to remember stuff we've made up about what’s right because that’s when it’s easiest to forget. It’s not just dots on the screen. You can’t kill people who've surrendered; it doesn't matter if they look like giant crocodiles.)

(In all honesty, the reason he wasn't spending the rest of his days living on an asteroid was probable more to do with the fact Sigourney had spoken up for him. You couldn't ignore Sigourney. Sigourney won things. Sigourney didn't understand how to lose. John knew a lot about losing. In the end, when they had smiled, because the war was over and it didn't really matter to them anymore, and shaken his hand before he was sent away, John suspected Sigourney didn't understand that they had still lost.)

John hadn't even really intended to join the fleet in the first place. There had just been the signs, ‘You Could Save Mankind,’ and his instructors had remarked on his capability in G-Space. John had gone where he was told, he usually did. The problem was he was told a lot of things.

The med-center is cold. It felt like the plastic is leeching the heat out of his legs. John sits as the Doctor bustles around him, checking on the machines and chatting lightly. The man’s serious, dark face is familiar. John has never seen him before in his life. They were told this might happen. Well they weren't really told. The people in charge said that moving through g-space could give you a new perspective on life. The old hands said that it could drive you mental. That’s why most people were so rubbish at it, they said, the brain’s defense against you going totally round the bed. You just had to look at the screen in front of you and not think about it. John had thought about it.

“You've been having strange dreams, then,” the (not) familiar doctor says with a smile, “not to worry. Useful things, dreams, they help you process what’s happened to you. Sort out your experiences.”
John considers this, “I don’t think so,” he says carefully, “I think I’d remember.”

***

For most people, the universe is a very small place. It’s a protection measure, of sorts. As it has been said, if a person could see, if they experienced even a tiny fraction of all the truly amazing events that are constantly occurring all around them (the majestic life of trees, the shine of dew drying on a new butterfly’s wings, the mathematical arc of a birds flight) they would most likely get hit by a car. The human mind’s remarkable capacity for boredom might be the only thing that keeps human civilizations from crumbling. It’s like space, wonderful and awful all wrapped into one. There’s something to be said, for example about the similarities between Gods and aliens. Both tend to care about humans. Johnny often thought that, considering how big the universe was, aliens would have a few more interesting things to do then go about caring what humans were doing. Of course, Johnny’s universe was unusually large.

***

“What do you reckon it means, you know, to be grown up?” Johnny said interrupting Yo-less and Wobbler’s rather half-hearted argument on the merits of the latest Alabama Smith film (Bigmac had rated it very highly on his personal scale of ‘number of heads blown off’).

“What do you mean, what does it mean,” Wobbler asked, “What do you think? It’s being old and going on about stuff.” He waved a vague hand.

“Having a job,” Yo-less suggested.

“Or not having a job,” said Bigmac, “round here it’s mostly not having a job.”

“I don’t have a job,” Wobbler pointed out.

“Yeah, but, no one cares about you not having a job, everyone goes on about grownups not working.”

“My grandma goes on about me not working,” Wobbler said, “she says young people used to be employed and the world was a lot better.”

“Yeah, well, that’s your gran, the world always used to be a better place to grandmas. Didn't she also say the world used to be better when everyone had to do National Service?”

“Besides,” Yo-less said, “didn't you listen in assembly; getting an education is our job.”

They all considered this. “It’s not a very good one,” Wobbler ventured finally.

“Yeah, the bosses are rubbish,” Bigmac agreed.

Wobbler took another chip. “It’s pretty pointless anyway, especially maths. What’s the point of needing to pass all those tests; I have practical experience.”

“Wrecking your dad’s computer isn't practical experience,” Bigmac paused, “not good practical experience, anyway.”

“Yeah, if wrecking things was good practical experience Bigmac would stop driving cars into walls.”

“I almost had it,” Bigmac said defensively.

“You almost had it off the road into the pond.”

“Yeah, well, I figure they should build cars a bit more sturdily,” Bigmac paused a second, “and walls too. It had no right to just go falling apart like that.”

“I think,” Yo-less interrupted, I think it’s when people start listening to you.”

“Yeah,” Wobbler nodded, “when you’re grown up people don’t go around saying ‘you’ll understand when older,’ when you try to tell ‘em something.” Johnny considered. Personally, he believed that most people, whatever the age, never really listened at all. They just didn't listen differently.

***

A useful way to understand the difference between awful and wonderful is to imagine a waterfall. Standing, looking up at a raging waterfall a person is stricken with wonder at its might roar and the fine rainbow of simmering mist that lend a delicate beauty to this raging of unstopped nature. Stuck in a barrel, seconds from going over the top of the waterfall, on the other hand, the person finds themselves full of awe at the true strength of the water and at the remembrance of just how sharp and numerous those rocks at the bottom of the falls are. The problem with life is most of the time you can’t tell whether you’re watching or in the barrel.

***

Private Jackie Maxwell dreams of silence. It’s not proper sleep. Hunkering down in a bloody, muddy hole, knowing exactly what else was down there. Hearing the rats chewing through something (bloody well fed rats, Oliver says, bloody is right, Paul says (George used to glare at them for saying things like that and Tommy would say he was trying smoke his damn cigarette in peace and if they wanted one they’d all better shut up and little Smith would offer a quote and they’d all tell him to shove it. Now George is in hospital, if it was just his leg that’d been hit, and Tommy was gone and Smith didn’t say anything anymore)). This wasn’t living. Dying was just like going to sleep a mate had told Jackie once and he figured that if that was true you had to be alive before you could sleep.

Still, Jackie dreams. They’re silent. The roar of the guns and the screams and the talk is all gone. It’s completely still. The quiet of space, he would say, but he’s never thought of space like this. He’s watching a screen covered with moving dots of light. It should be a peaceful dream. He knows enough of his fellows can’t escape the fight, however tightly closed their eyes. Somehow, though, it’s horrible because Jack knows that every dot is hundreds of people, more, and every time he looks there are less of them.

***

The thing about history is that, when you look at it properly, everything is history, even things that haven’t happened yet. And, and this is the important bit, therefore history can never really be looked at properly until you find how everything ends up and then, as it were, it’s probably too late to bother caring.

***

“You dreamin’ again, Johnny,” Wobbler asked.

“Everyone dreams,” Johnny said.

“Yeah, well,” Wobbler said, “when you dream, sometimes things get weird.”

“I heard somewhere,” Bigmac said, “where this man didn’t know if he was dreaming about being a butterfly or if he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man.”

“I think I’d know the difference,” Wobbler said, “it seems to me that there is a pretty clear difference between being a butterfly and being a man. Like, if you were a butterfly you would think ‘that was a bloody weird dream I just had about being a human’ because you wouldn’t be able to think.”

“That’s only philosophy. Dreams are just the minds way of processing events,” Yo-less said.

“Huh,” said Bigmac, “then what’s up with tap dancing elephants? I’ve never seen any tap dancing elephants.”

“They’re a metaphor, for something else.”

“I can’t think of what sort of metaphor a tap dancing elephant would be, doesn’t seem much like anything to me.” They paused.

“Maybe you’re really a tap dancing elephant dreaming of being Bigmac.”

“Maybe it means just that something weird happened, that you’re processing” Yo-less suggested, having not yet reached the elephant portion of dream psychology.

“Yeah well, if I’m having a dream about dancing animals, that’s something pretty weird that’s happened.”

Johnny considered dreams as his friends argued. The problem was, he suspected, that he was processing events that had happened to other people. He sighed.

***

If you open yourself up to the universe, the universe might come in. It’s a dangerous prospect. When you pour red dye into a glass of water the water turns red. When you pour red dye into the ocean the ocean washes it away. All a person has is locked inside them, but sometimes it’s okay to open a window for a little while.

***

“It’s happening again, isn’t it,” Kirsty snapped, her hands on her hips. Johnny blinked; he had almost forgotten he was sitting on the wall outside her house. “I recognize that look.”

“What look,” Johnny asked.

“That weird look you get when you’re thinking about strange things.”

“Just thinking about school, I guess.”

Kristy raised an eyebrow (Kristy could raise one eyebrow, Johnny always ended up with a weird squint), “finally thinking about your future?” When people say they’re thinking about the future, Johnny thought, it really means they’re trying not to think of the future. The real future isn’t passing exams and getting jobs, that’s just your future.

“um, a future.”

Kristy sighed, “I thought it might be something a little stranger.” She glared at the distance. “Why is it that in books people always stop having adventures when they get older, just in time for them to learn how to do it right?”

“um, I dunno, they get too sensible, I suppose.”

“I have always been very sensible, actually. I think they’re just not trying hard enough.”

“Well, I guess you have less time when you’re older.”

“The way you organize yourself I’m surprised you ever have any time to do anything.”

Johnny shrugged. The purpose of real life was to build up barriers to stop your mind from being steamrolled by the universe. Stuff like hanging around the mall, going to school, every little pointless thing that gave your life meaning as something separate from just the vast rush of pure life. You didn't need time to do things, they just happened.

Things could never stay the same. But then, what was wrong with that. Johnny knew quite a lot about history. One of the best things about time was that every second was taking you farther away from the past, however bad the future might be at least you didn't know for sure.

Johnny sat; the future and the past spinning behind his eyes. You could always tell the difference, even if it was only that in one you hadn't been born and in the other you were already dead. Tomorrow was another day and, when you thought about it, so was yesterday. Considering everything it was most likely a bad idea to go down to the old quarry, where they said people had seen weird lights, with his luck he would end up in the middle of something difficult and strange. Sometimes, Johnny decided, growing up was to know something would be hard, and doing it anyway. He wondered if Kristy would like to come too.

***

In a hall of mirrors, surrounded by your reflections, it’s almost impossible to grasp infinity. You might, though, understand a little bit about reality.

(In a future that may never happen a single man speaks out and in a past that might never have existed a young soldier puts down his gun)

(now) Johnny Maxwell dreams.

[Vorkosigan Saga] well said - 1553 words

anstaar — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:40:35 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: In which Ivan goes on an unwanted quest and gets waylaid (for the prompt: Ivan, trolls)

On the second day of the blizzard, Ivan took up his sword and traveled to the mountains. This was not his choice. His choice would’ve been to pull out the spiced brandy and to sit around the fire telling funny stories to fill up time until the snow melted enough for them to return to court. True, it was late in the year for such a fierce storm but stranger things had happened, especially this near to the mountains, for reasons completely unrelated to the workings of the spirits. Besides, even it was the spirits, had had never seen a point in attempting to interfere with their choice of temperatures, however inconvenient some found them. It wasn’t his choice, though. Miles, his infuriating, genius, spirit cursed cousin, had been left twisted and shaking from the pain of the rampant magic in the storm looking both younger and older than Ivan had ever seen him. He hadn’t needed his mother’s sharp words or Elena’s piercing stare to know what he had to do.

Ivan set out firmly, despite the blasting winds and whirling snow. He had his cloak and hat and sturdy boots stuffed with his thick wool socks (which matched his thick new woolen underwear; curse all Royal Seers and Aunt’s gifts). He kept his knife tucked under his tunic to keep the steel from freezing and pretended the howling wind was a bard singing the tales of his heroic deeds for a continually ungrateful cousin. He was walking straight up into the mountains, towards the highest peaks where the Winter Spirits lived and fought all year long.

Two days after he had set out, Ivan got lost. He couldn’t understand how it had happened. The snow was deep but his legs were long and strong and he had found a good stick with which he tested the snow drifts ahead to make sure that none were too deep. The snow came down fiercely and got into his eyes but it was a mountain and he was sure that he been going up. He realized he was lost when, peering between his cupped hands to shield his eyes from the snow, and saw that the shape of the rising peaks ahead of him were wrong.

Ivan had spent a childhood scrambling after his cousin across the foothills of the mountain. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed the experience but it was their land and he knew it as well as he knew the streets of the capitol (rather better, in fact, as he tended to be drunk on his more elaborate explorations of the capital). The sharp crag they had always called Matvey’s nose was nowhere in sight. Neither were the deceptively easy looking foothills where he had broken an arm.

The shock made Ivan forget his footing. He stumbled and slipped backward into a pile of snow. He beat his arms wildly as the covered his face, hoping to swim up, but he kept going down until he cracked his head on a rock. He lay there, head pounding, choking on the snow with his knife and icy fire against his chest struggling desperately until it all went dark.

Ivan woke up in a cave. His stomach was sloshing unpleasantly (barely masking the burning hunger, jerky was not enough to sustain a man and it felt like weeks since had even had that) and his head pounded, radiating fire from the back of his skull, but otherwise he felt much better than he had expected. He hoped he wasn’t dead. If his head hurt this much in the afterlife, someone was going to pay. He opened his eyes a crack but the swimming blur only resolved itself into the dank grayness of a cave wall. He felt, however, pleasantly warm and the smell of a fire made him almost sure that it wasn’t from frostbite. He turned his head slightly to the left, firmly ignoring the spinning sensation and saw his outer clothes drying above a merry fire. He also saw his hosts.

Ivan knew about trolls. The lived in the mountains and could perform great magic and possibly didn’t actually eat human flesh. As a child, he had listened to Miles’ grandfather’s tales of the twenty years war and the friendship he had forged with several of the Troll Queens. His rescuers didn’t look like Queens. The smaller one, which was no large than Miles when he stood his straightest and only twice as wide as a grown man, almost faded into the cave wall except for its glittering eyes, which shown like fragments of ice. The other was taller than the Emperor and four times as wide (maybe four and a half times, Gregor was far too thin) but shared the same inhuman gaze.

Ivan knew he should get up: to run, to bow, to make a desperate grab for his knife. On the other hand, he was still alive for the moment and he would prefer to remain that way. Besides, he had yet to manage to move his legs. He suspected that the larger troll knew this, he would swear that it was smiling (could trolls read minds, that had never shown up in the stories), but it was the smaller one who spoke first.

“Greetings, human, I am glad to see that you have awakened from your long slumber. Do you suffer any lasting pains from your sojourn in the ice?” The voice was surprisingly soft, though raspy.

“I am fine,” Ivan assured it, trying not to smile at the formal words, “I give my thanks to you.”

“Enough,” rumbled the other troll, “if our strength was not enough to cure the small damage the cold caused your human frame then we would have much more to worry about then the sprites petty squabbling. I am Brynja,” it – she – continued, shifting her body towards Ivan, “that one is my companion, Stigr. We found you drowning in our cousins’ snow and brought you here to rest. There is no need for thanks, for a grandchild of prince Xav we would do much more.” She settled back, having said her piece and now content.

“None the less, I still give my thanks,” Ivan replied, trying to keep his tone formal. There was no point in wondering how they knew about his grandfather. “I am Lord Ivan of Vorpatril house, sent to check upon the doings of the Winter Spirits which have brought this could down upon family lands.” The last bit didn’t sound quite right but he wasn’t the one who spent hours reading ancient books.

Again, it looked as if Brynja was smiling. “You will have to tarry a while with us, Patril Vor, my cousins’ tempers have been greatly roused. There will be no traveling on this day nor on any other soon to come. Share our fire and hear our tales. If we must wait for very long you might even share the tale of why a human felt such a great need to seek out the spirits in weather that is so harsh on your flesh.”

Ivan considered saying no. He thought that it might be the right thing to do. He could still see Miles’ crumpled form, trembling from the pain (Miles, who hated to show any sign that he could be hurt or need help) but then he could also hear Miles’ voice calling him an idiot for freezing to death after such a narrow escape the first time. The entrance to the cave was protected by an overhand and troll magic but he could still see outside and the snow was piled higher than his shoulder. “I accept your kind offer,” he said, quietly choosing sense over honor, “My personal honor is due to you.”

“No trouble has befallen us,” Stigr assured him, “it is good to have new tales to fill up the long winter days.”

They spent four together. Eating moss and snow rabbits and sharing stories. It was almost a mockery of Ivan’s dreams (and there wasn’t a touch of mead to be found) but he held in heart a little, shameful, relief that he had not had to face the capricious spirits by himself. Midway through the fourth day Brynja finished her story of the ice queen and gestured towards the entrance.

“The snow has stopped, Patril Vor, our cousins’ anger has abated. You may depart.” It was an abrupt dismissal but it was soften when both the trolls escorted him down, through the melting snow, to the easier trails where he recognized where he was and could make his own way. He headed homeward with their almost fond farewells echoing in his ears and his shoulder aching where Brynja had clapped him on the shoulder. He wondered how exactly he was going to explain his venture.

(He ended up not having to offer any explanations. As it turned out, Elena had carried Miles up to the peak of the mountain. There, alone, they had dealt with the spirits on their own terms, leading to a fraction throwing their allegiance behind Miles’ banner. Of course, this was treason against the emperor. The whole state of affairs did not improve his mood, especially as he was ordered to go back up the mountain after them, but that was a different story)

[Echo Bazaar] or leave it - 1295 words

anstaar — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:22:35 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: a tough shares their story

'It's like this, right. Me ma got in wiv the Ring after she dealt wiv this bludger who thought that wot with her man off still in the stretch she wouldn’t mind a couple visits from a pushy cove. He learned right quick and headed off sharpish but she took his ribbon as a prize and next thing claymen was breakin’ down the doors and glim was comin’ from knocking heads. Back then I was still goin’ to school, learnin’ good speakin’ an’ all so when she went down in the Roses and it was me trying to keep toe in boot and throat safe from one of Jack’s smiles I didn’t know where to run.

Only things I knew was I weren’t planning on heading for the colonies and they were gonna bung me in the Poor House only when there weren’t any where else to run. I fell in with the Crosses ‘cause they ran my patch and t’weren’t bad at first learnin’ to talk right and collectin’ rags from gentlemen’s back pockets and even runnin’ messages for the crazies aint that bad if you know where to duck when the rats start flying an’ when you collect ‘em later there’s good eating, so not bad work. Then me mate Billy got nabbed on the docks to work on one of those ships and the boss started callin’ me to do the surveying lark cause I could still talk all posh and I weren’t real keen on putting the old skirts on to sneak into Naughts’ houses.

Billy, she were real smart and she tol’ me that if you go somewhere you need runnin’ you don’t go wiv your legs all tied up in skirts, however stupid the cops might get when they see the proper gloves and all. Plus, I’d seen Marky-boy after he tried to get to the Naughts scurf-man and yer ears aint fit for that stuff, gov, true enough for me to be going the other way. I was gettin’ too big and wiv all the good ettin’ I got Flash was startin’ to say I was turnin’ into a right Judy and I got ‘im for that but our boss started sayin’ that there t’weren’t any place for that sort of thing in ‘er gang an’ I was always a bit out wot wiv forgettin’ an’ usin’ grammar or some say I was counting on more than my share so I got shoved.

It were getting’ where it wasn't good there anyway cause of all the bodies hanging from the lamps by their little organ things and the Fishers sellin’ any body that’d lie still a mo’ to the Crow’s and wot wiv me bein’ alone and not wantin’ anythin’ to do wiv nobody my hut was right off an’ so I called in wiv the Orientals cause I was the one who’d been carrin’ their messages cause they like a bit class an’ all and the little lady had a bit of a spot for me wot wiv her bein’ in the way of things and havin’ a heart for a some who might be down on her luck but had also laid a right good collection of glim by ‘cause I aint stupid either.

She got me to Ladybones for a good price and didn’t say nuffin’ either so I figure foreign or what doesn’t mean she aint a good mate so I send a bag now and then to make sure no one’s messin’ wiv her or the kid with ma not bein’ the only one who can throw a punch when someone tries to mess with a mate no matter what weird name they got and she got me a real nice coat for when I’m checkin’ somefing out so I figure that makes her closest of any now that Billy’s a zailor who you can never be up wiv cause if they’re not in the lush their wiv their mates who aint so keen on re’pecting a lady or drownies and I got connections now.

Anyway, I took kip on the Detective’s roof which some might say weren’t the best idea I’ve ever got what wiv the cops getting’ keen on given’ me a bruisin’ now that I’m older like but Shivering Jenny was watching all down and her and me had a bit of a miss-understanding way back wiv a couple of candles that maybe weren’t all they should be and wot with her havin’ very nearly the same miss-understanding wiv the Lady I figured it’d be safer than houses.

The Detective caught me straight on, though. Turns out she goes a lurkin’ on her roof searching for clues or what. I know, guv. I thought she was a real Lady, like, but there she was sittin’ cool as any an’ a skirt short enough I could see that she had the kind o’ boots that could deliver a real kickin’ if she got a mind to. I figured she was going to bang me straight down to the coppers and stay for tea while they had a bit of inquires on me ‘ead about wot gone missin’ lately with me havin’ a rep and all from when I was fresh and then later when things got bit bloody and they could always spot me in a crowd wiv my hair and such.

There was me plannin’ on a jump straight out even though there aint good paths down there with the clear path to the gallows and all and little houses whose allies I hadn’t gotten all acquainted in yet and she just looks at me clear as class an’ invites me down to tea. Thought ‘stead she might take me for a blower an’ was waitin’ for me to spill on me chums, not somethin’ I do, guv, no matter wot trouble I was in wiv ‘em but she ‘ands me tea and talks weather an’ all like I was some fine lady she was entertainin’ wiv.

She lets me kip up on the roof and calls me in for tea and nosh now and then when she’s ‘ome. Gives me work too and not all that sneakin’ stuff which I weren’t ever any good at wot wiv not havin' the right constitution for peepin' in the windows for the silver but real good stuff like protectin' the house for when she goes up to 'see' the dutchess on personal information sharin' or to protect her back 'cause people aint so fond of a Lady who don't give up, though I suppose yer well on that, guv, what wiv you tryin' to stab 'er in the back jus' so she wouldn't be tellin' the Dutchess wot you've been up too wiv her cat.

Tell you wot: even if I hadn't grabbed you that knife would've been bouncin' off 'er pure metal corset an' like I said she got good kickin' shoes. Fact is, yer a bit lucky I was there. She don't like people messin' wiv her mates’ vicious little friends an' the cops would be happy enough to sling wot ever was left of ya back in Newgate. Really, I think she enjoys it a bit but she's headin' off to one of her saloon meetings an' I weren't gonna let you interfer wiv that. Suppose no tongue will give you a bit of a problem next time yer thinkin' of takin' secrets that a cat don't want to give. Enough for now for a warnin’, if someone else’d tried such a d-mn small bribe I'd relieve them of their hand as well, thief hands get a good price some places in the bazaar. But I suppose even enforcers have to be a bit soft wiv their own pa.

[Vorkosigan Saga] Quinn of Athos - 1230 words

anstaar — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:58:19 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: the first time Quinn saw a woman he was eleven years old

The first time Quinn saw a woman he was eleven years old. He was dawdling outside his fathers' study, reluctantly thinking about handing them the note his teacher had sent home and was considering how much trouble he would be facing if he just destroyed it and they found out about it later. He wasn't thinking about it, seriously, because Jani was a telltale of untold proportions and, anyway, dad could always tell when he was lying, but thinking about it was a fun delaying tactic. He didn't want to have to explain why he punched Simon. If he told the truth he would have to deal with their apologies. If he stayed quiet he would receive another lecture on the importance of controlling his temper and how he had to be an example for his brothers.

Eventually, he slid the door open and slipped through. His parents didn't see him at first. Father was sitting in front of the consol, leaning back against dad, whose arm was wrapped loosely around his shoulders. It froze Quinn for a moment, watching that. He knew his parents loved each other (a disgusting amount in his opinion seeing as they had been together for thirteen years now and father still smiled sickeningly when dad got back from work) but this casual contract was still something new.

Quinn could still remember back (long ago, way before Eli and Eric came home) when father would still stiffen slightly whenever he hugged him. Back then, father had actually looked older than he did now and he would be gone for long hours during the day. Quinn knew that this was because father was one of the rare off-worlders that had come to live on Athos (which was something even Jani didn't know because dad had told his, alone, when he had asked why father could be so different sometimes and Jani was still too young to ask) and he thought that off-world must be a hard place to make someone so sad. Then father had started to create art and he stayed home, except sometimes when he went to the hospital with dad, and had also started to sometimes hug Quinn first, without prompting, (and even now when he was really too old to be hugging his father all the time he didn't wriggle away when father held him in a tight embrace).

Dad noticed him first, of course, and smiled. "Come look," he said and Quinn did, not even dragging his feet, eager to catch a look at the console. Getting in trouble was far more common than getting a good look at dad's work.

"Your youngest brother," father said, with his rare smile. Dad wrapped an arm around Quinn shoulder and they stood there for a few minutes, linked together, watching the twisting gene map.

"Is he going to have another E name?" Quinn asked cunningly (soppiness was always a good bet for avoiding getting into trouble) but dad only laughed and father shook his head.

"No names until we bring him home, as you well know. Now, what's happened?" Father always knew when something had happened, he was even better than dad. There was even less of a point in lying to him.

"I hit Simon," Quinn muttered and handed over the note. Father scanned it and dad sighed, taking his hand.

"Another fight?" Quinn shifted because there wasn't anything he could say in answer to that tone and his dad's smile had faded into his disappointed look that there was no escaping. Surprisingly, he didn't ask what happened.

"I think it's time we showed you something," he said. Quinn had no idea what he could want to show him but anything was better than trying to explain his actions to dad. Dad never understood why he fought. Sometimes, Quinn thought, father understood but it was always dad he had to explain himself to. Dad leaned over father's shoulder and clicked on a few symbols, pulling up a picture of a rather elegant youth.

"Are you sure?" Father asked quietly, Quinn didn't recognize the tone. Dad nodded.

"We agreed and I think Quinn is old enough to understand, now." The look he gave Quinn then was even worse than his disappointed look, it held far more trust. "You know about women," he said and Quinn almost choked at hearing his dad say the word. Of course he knew he had even before his teacher’s bland religious lesson. There had always been the other boys' horror stories about what made the outside so outside (and other stories about men who had escaped but, now a days, they didn't tell those sorts of stories when he was within earshot).

He looked again at the picture and his view shifted. He stared in astonishment at this first, forbidden, glance; a smooth face, dark shiny eyes and a thick head of dark hair. The picture could have almost been of a young man but even imagining a father's beard on the chin didn't make it quite right. He knew the face was completely foreign. The eyes, though, he almost recognized and the hair. Very familiar, dark thick hair. Quinn did choke then and he gasped in horror. He knew that his dad had gone outside and that he had brought father back home, but this! He had never imagined something like this.

"Y-you," he stuttered, "knew her?"

"Yes," dad agreed, and then caught sight of his face, "not like that!" His own face turned bright red and father actually chuckled. "She helped me, as a friend, and I took some...samples before returning home."

"Is that why," Quinn asked, feeling fear boiling up inside of him, "I get in so many fights?"

"Because she's a woman?" Dad smiled comfortingly, "No, every culture came from a woman." Quinn felt himself gaping again, mind almost overloading at this new shock. "Women aren't like the stories you've heard from your friends. They're as different from one another as one as one man is different from another." Father was nodding but he was from outside, dad was from Athos but what he was saying...

"Why are you showing me this," Quinn asked finally.

"Because I think you're old enough now to understand what your father and I are trying to do, no matter how uncomfortable it makes others."

"Simon said you loved women and wanted to live with them," Quinn muttered. Father laughed again.

"I loved a woman, before, and I lived with her as Ethan and I do, though she was very different than he is. We just want them to teach the truth, without truth there can't be any understanding" for a moment he looked sad, "that is always the hardest battle." Dad rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.

"Not that that is any reason to hurt someone," Dad added firmly and Quinn scuffed his feet on the floor and promised to apologize to Simon first thing the next day and agreed that he would try to solve his disagreement in nonviolent ways from then on.

That night, just before he pulled his covers over his head, Quinn thought about the woman who gave him his genes (fleet commander, which was just so cool) and the woman who his father had loved (dead but never forgotten, remembered in the lines of his brothers' face) and wondered at all the mother's of Athos.

[Naruto] Five Times Minato Ate Tempura - 903 words

anstaar — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:23:37 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: taste memory is very strong

One

Kaoru asked the woman, with a voice that quavered ever-so-slightly, what she's selling. She confided in a small whisper that they'd never seen anything like the food before. Minato widened his eyes, per previous orders, and Yasu even managed to smile in vaguely the right direction. The woman rolled her eyes and muttered about beggars and thieves and all the things that were wrong with children today, but she handed over two sticks. The tempura burned his mouth but, as they race down the street, hunger temporarily assuaged, he was sure that it was the most delicious food in the world.

(It was a long time till he saw his sibling again. When they do meet again they are forever separated by time and new loyalties and his mouth burned but he still felt empty)

Two

After their first mission, Jiraiya brought them out to lunch at a restaurant that he swore had the best karaage-fried chicken in the whole of Konoha, along with the prettiest waitresses they would find. He was the only one who ordered the chicken. Fugaku got ramen because he had been warned about the horrors the food contained from his brother at least a hundred times. His first slurp alerted him to how hot the bowl was and he accidently dropped it, splashing Hiashi (who had been loudly complaining about the dinginess of the restaurant and the cheapness of the food since they entered) and his rice. Minato sat back and ate his tempura with a slight smile. Sometimes he thought they were assigned to three men cells purely for the comedic situations that were sure to ensue.

(Jiraiya ran away, Fugaku grew cold and Hiashi lost what sense of humor they had teased him into gaining. The restaurant went out of business long before Minato realized he wanted his team to go there again)

Three

Two weeks after he had helped bring Uzumaki Kushina back to Konoha he found her standing in the hallway outside his door. Hesitant wasn't a word readily associated with Kushina. She tended to run into, or through, thing with little forethought and a lot of violence. Most of the time, when Kushina and Minato happened to run into each other he would stand quietly as she yelled at him, continuing her side of the argument she seemed to believe they were having about whether or no they could achieve their dreams. Never before had she shown up at his apartment with a bag of fresh, if slightly squished, tempura. "I heard you like them," she muttered and he smiled and he invited her in. They sat his table ("you're so girly," Kushina said, with an eye roll for his vase of carefully arranged flowers) sharing the tempura and stories and he thought that this was the best meal he had ever had.

(Kushina lay dead and he stood with their child cradled in his arms preparing to sacrifice them both for the village in the way she had always accused him of wanting to and he tried to think of the name of the flowers she had always liked despite her frequent protests to the contrary)

Four

Minato was seventeen and had no idea what to do with a traumatized six year old. He had sat the boy down on his couch three hours ago and the kid had yet to move. He wished that Kushina was there. She would say something loud and cheerful and completely inappropriate under the circumstances. He even (almost) wished that his team was there. They would be arrogant and perverted and completely the wrong thing to expose his new student to. Instead it was just him, Kakashi and a plate full of quickly congealing tempura that he had gotten because he had no idea what Kakashi might want to eat. Finally, the boy reached out and took a piece. Minato immediately followed suit. It was cold and the vegetables had lost their crispness but it was the first sign, however slight, of life in his charge so it tasted like a victory.

(Kakashi was fourteen and just as traumatized as he had been at five. Minato wondered if he had ever helped the boy at all, sometimes it seemed that all he had done was teach him how to kill off whatever was left of who he could have been, and now he was leaving him alone with no one left to even swing by his apartment on a bad day)

Five

Three days before Kushina was due to give birth (three days until he gave up his life to give his son the only advantage he can to face the dangerous future stretching ahead of them all) he bought some tempura on his way to the Hokage tower. He didn't have any specific reason in mind. He wasn't in a rush and he was a bit hungry and he liked tempura so he did something impulsive (Kushina always told him to try doing something impulse, sometime when he wasn't on a mission). The owner offered it to him for free, but then, Minato was known for always paying (soon no one would remember that he always expected favor in exchange for picking up the bill). Konoha had managed to almost completely disentangle itself from the war and today he could make the last modifications to Kushina's new seal. Rarely had he felt this happy.

[Vorkosigan Saga] Serious Injury Reports (June 12th - 16th) - 955 words

anstaar — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:00:58 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: they only go camping once

2778, June 12 (0800)
Camp in Lower Hills
Broken Arm (0500, in Tent)
Miles Naismith Vorkosigan & Ivan Xav Vorpatril

Our first day had passed without incident so it was no real surprise that our first night could not boast the same. It was agreed when we set up the tents (or, to be more accurate, when Sergeant Bothari and I set up the tents while Miles, who had declared the camp an old stomping ground of Vortala (the one with the theme song that's impossible to get out of your head), had Elena and Ivan searching for evidence) that I would share one with the boys while Elena would get the small tent to herself and Bothari would sleep outside. I would have preferred it if I could have also slept out in the elements, even if there happened to be a raging blizzard. After an argument about who had won our game of cards a fight broke out over who was to sleep on the inflatable mattress. Miles was supposed to sleep on it because of his back but point that out just led to them both protesting even more vigorously against him sleeping there. I finally told them to put their sleeping bags together and share the bed. Things went as well as could be expected after that, considering they refused to go to sleep, until approximately 0500 when a particularly vicious pull on the blanket caused Miles to fall off the bed, breaking his arm, which had gotten caught on Ivan's pillow, on the way down. Not the most auspicious of omens for the first day.

2778, June 14 (2000)
Camp in Lower Hills
Burn (First Degree, camp fire)
Ivan Xav Vorpatril

Sometimes I worry that my dear cousin might be half as stupid as he occasionally acts. Such a state of affairs would lead, once and for all, to unanimous adoption uterine replicators with full gene scanners and mass marriages to the non-Vor classes. Tonight, for no reason I can even begin to guess at, he decided to grab his dropped meat from the fire with his bare hand! I grabbed him back as fast as possible but his hand is already red and throbbing. It turned out that Bothari had packed burn cream, which was lucky as Ivan refused to return home until our trip is over (no doubt following Miles incredibly stubborn lead). Miles is alarmingly good at rolling his eyes for a seven year old.

2778, June 15 (1300)
Camp in Lower Hills
Itch Weed
Elena Bothari

By this point, I wasn't even surprised when Elena ended up stuck in a batch of scratch-weed, even though it isn't really fair to her to say that as she's usually the most sensible one, when she's not listening to Miles. It happened like this: we were out on our post-lunch hike towards the caves where Cordelia and I had hid during the war (absolutely no going in, under her direct orders). I was walking with Bothari, identifying the plants that I had learned about in school, when I saw her in the middle of a giant clump of the weeds attempting to reach the tree. Apparently, Miles had thought I had said that one was safe and, caught up in their game; they had been trying to figure out if there were laser burns on the branches. We're probably lucky that I didn't see her already halfway up the tree. This trip is turning out to be far more stressful then the Summer War Games.

2778, June 16 (0900, we're in the 'speeder, heading back home)
Leaving the Camp of Vortala the Bold
Possible Concussion (couldn't follow my hand when I waved it real slow and Bothari said, after breakfast)
Gregor Dorca Vorbarra

We walked to the stream this morning. My arm was in the cast so I couldn't go near the water even though I'm the best swimmer. Ivan is scared of the water so he said he couldn't get his pants wet cause he doesn't have any more even though auntie always packs him tons of clothes but he said I got blood over them plus his hurt even though I didn't and his hand is his fault, anyway. Bothari said Elena couldn't go, either, even though she's almost as good as me cause me and Ivan were staying with him and so he would be able to watch for her. We were going to play Cross Threes and Ivan asked Gregor to play on his team so we would be even but he wouldn't and wouldn't and he went to the river instead to see if there was anything interesting stuck in the bottom like a broken stunner or maybe one of those old knives like the one gran'da has to purify the family. Bothari said "be careful," and Gregor said he would be but then he saw the stones in the river and he thought he could make it across cause he was being careful. It was Elena's turn so I saw him slip and then he banged his head and Bothari was there really, really fast and pulled him out and said he probably had a concussion (which is when your brain hits the edge of your skull and if your skull is made proper then it's hard bone so your brain gets bruised and hurts and sometimes you might die but it doesn't go slopping out on the floor like an egg cup you hit way to hard like it did in Vortala and the Lady when the twisted giant smashed through the Lady's brother's head) and now we're going home because Gregor is a prince.

[Vorkosigan Saga] first contact - 780 words

anstaar — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:18:31 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: Xav meets his future wife for the first time

Ro was halfway to the university when she met him for the first time. She should've been a lot closer but her first class was Physics, which she had only taken because of Toni which wasn't a good way to structure her class schedule and, besides, hadn't worked. So, she was halfway to the university and halfway late to class but popped into the coffee shop anyway because Physics was pass-fail and a caffeine addiction was forever. The place was mostly empty. The bored teen behind the counter fiddled with his handhold. A night security guard was dozing over a sandwich. Three students cuddled in a booth. It was rather, soothing, all in all. Ro was seriously considering following the guard's example (she may have been up to three the night before, footnoting her paper) when the off-worlder walked in.

It was odd to see an off-worlder. The shop was four levels down from the station and far away from anything anyone not from Beta colony might want to see (there wasn't anything someone from Beta colony would want to see either, but at least it was on their route) but Ro knew he was an off-worlder from his walk. It was a man, probably younger than he looked to her Betan eyes, with thick, dark hair cut very short and eyes that squinted in the dim light. His face was a bit sand burned; his clothes were a lot thicker than was usual wear this season and she couldn't see the familiar glinting in his ears. All that could've just been a kid with bad luck and weird tastes. His walk, though, was wrong. It was cautious, like he hadn't been in a hundred coffee shops before he could walk, and a bit shuffling, like he was unused to the smooth metal of the floors and underneath that there was a hint of a march to his steps.

The man scanned the whole shop before he approached the counter and ordered a bun in a low voice marked with an accent Ro had never heard before. Then he stood there, bun in hand, staring at the tables at the tables and she knew for sure that he couldn't be much older than her, whatever the lines on his face said to her. His eyes darted toward the guard's uniform and he looked almost afraid of the giggling students so Ro ignored her practical knowledge of the problems in dealing with off-worlders and waved him off with a smile.

He came over and stood by her table. He wasn't that tall but he still managed to project a loom, Ro took a sip of coffee and suppressed her unease, "are you going to sit down, or what?" She asked after almost thirty increasingly awkward seconds passed. He tugged at a sleeve before sitting down across from her.

"Sorry," the accent was still untraceable, "do you want something?"

"Well, I did have a free seat I wanted you to take," she said and hid a smile at his flush; he was definitely younger than her.

"Thank you. There wasn't as much room in here as I believed there would be."

"It's no problem, we're used to crowding. Must be a bit more open where you come from." Ro barely managed to restrain herself from touching his arm. She was flirting rather freely considering he had no earring and it was doubtful that he could read hers. Still, that was half the fun of strangers.

"Yes, and we have a lot more sky. It's hard spending most of the day underground," he said, eyes flashing toward the ceiling for a moment.

"Are you part of the new embassy?" She asked and he blinked in open surprise. She grinned, "There aren't that many other reasons to find an off-worlder down here."

His shoulders relaxed slightly. "Oh. Yes, I am. Honestly, though," he rubbed the back of his head, "I'm actually a bit lost. I was hoping to find a map or get directions." Ro laughed and this time took his hand.

"Don't worry about it, I'll take you. There's no way you're going to understand the system from any map you find round here, if you could even find one. Most people use their Comms."

"There is really no need," he said. He looked rather adorably flustered so she doesn't let go of his hand, instead pulling him up after her.

"No worries, it's practically my civic duty. I'm Ro, by the way."

"Oh, sorry," he flushed again, "right, I'm Xav. It is nice to meet you. Thank you so much for your help." She was so bringing him home to meet Lucy.

[DCU] one moment - 230 words

anstaar — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:08:40 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: Cissie/Kon/Tim - perfect happiness

Tim doesn't believe in perfect happiness. There's always a scale. There's always something to remind you that nothing is truly perfect. The world still needs a Batman (even if The Bat is no longer a man). If he said that out loud Cissie and Kon would share an eye roll.

They're crowded together in the reinforced hammock Kon had bought, despite the fact they didn't have anywhere to hang it. A problem he'd fixed by jamming to metal poles into their front yard. None of them had either the ability or inclination to start a garden but Cissie kept waiting for the neighbors to come yell at them for creating an eyesore. They don't have anywhere they need to be. The sky stretches out above them, a limitless blue.

Tim doesn't say a word. He knows them. Kon would say that was totally true. A life as epic as theirs was couldn't be described by a world like 'perfect.' Super mega awesome or I'm with Superboy (a sentiment that could be found on tee-shirts) joy were way more accurate descriptions. Cissie would nudge him and point out that, seeing as he couldn't take in any earthly pleasure, there was a bunch of laundry to fold and, no, they were not going to FedEx it to Alfred. Tim doesn't believe in perfect happiness, but in moments like these he doesn't have to.

[Batman] ...and they will ride forth

anstaar — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:19:37 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: there's an apocalypse, Batman doesn't really notice

On Monday there was a triple breakout. Firefly, Calendar Man and Firebug all disappeared from prison at three hour intervals. It appeared to be a literal disappearance, too. For all three, one moment the video feed saw them sitting in their cells in the next they were gone. Despite himself, Bruce found he was enjoying the mystery. It had been easy enough to find where the videos had been looped but just how the men had gotten out of the cells, and out of the prison, remained hidden.

More importantly, Batman didn’t know why. It was obvious that all three had been sprung by the same hand, but whose hand? They shared no connections to one another. Firefly and Firebug had both been involved in arson but they had fought each other. There was no record of either of them having even met Calendar Man. If someone was organizing a team they seemed like three of the worst candidates for working together. It could be a distraction. Maybe only one of them was necessary, maybe all three were merely being used to draw attention away from some deeper plan.

It was snowing. Bruce could feel the different weight it gave to the world even from the cave. The thick, quiet sensation of looking out his window as a child and seeing the world coated in white. It was likely a psychological reaction: he knew it was snowing and he carried the knowledge and his assumptions with him. Even to a place that remained unchanged, whatever the weather.

Patrol was quiet that night. Snow coated the city even as it continued to fall. It was inaccurate to say it rarely snowed in Gotham. The city received the average amount of snowfall for a coastal city in the north-eastern part of the United States. More accurately, rarely did snow stick in Gotham. It could blanket the roofs of the buildings like icing on a gingerbread house but in the smoke from the factories and in the streets filled with cars and in the paths trodden by countless feet it melted and turned to yellow-brown slush and sad piles of ice strewn with garbage. Privately, Gotham reminded Bruce of a dead deer he had once seen lying in the snow. Across the clearing, it had appeared beautiful, almost asleep in a drift of snow. It had only been when he’d gone closer that he’d seen the rotten flesh hidden below. The thought made his lips quirk upward. Despite what some thought, he was aware that at times he thoughts could turn to the melodramatic. He could just imagine Dick’s face at the idea of the city as a deer.

Street crime always decreased with harsh weather. Those people who could had sought refuge from the storm. Those that couldn’t had huddled in whatever protection they could find. Batman patrolled the abandoned buildings carefully on these nights. He made sure that no crimes were being planned but he would not evict anyone who had come for shelter.

Bruce was always caught in the dichotomy of the weather. He remembered happy days as a child playing in the snow. He had lived through snow storms a world away from his city, storms whose depths and ferocity had made him wonder if he had ever truly experienced snow before them. There had been snow days with Dick where he had found himself awkwardly watching another child’s joy in the snow and the nights on snowy roof tops. He had experienced the painful numbness of freezing and had seen people dead in the ice. He tried to have places where people could go for warmth.

Batman retired early. He had not been called. Any crimes being committed within the shelter of a home were lost for him at the moment. It pulled at him sometimes: how much of the law would he break, how much privacy had to be kept, how did you keep hope that people would change. How could many times could you hope that this would be someone’s last arrest, that they would find a new way. For now he could keep to the balance.

On Tuesday Bruce scanned through prison footage. There were no instances of the escaped men meeting with each other that he could find. There had been no glimpse of what they were doing now, yet, either. He looked up which holidays were approaching. He stretched while listening to the recording of the latest psychology journal that had been recommended. He checked the cameras at Arkham and the prisons.

The wind had taken on an icy edge by the time he went out for patrol that night. Alfred had dryly suggested he make sure that Freeze was securely locked away. Batman moved carefully across the roofs and double checked each jump. He was well aware of the dangers of slipping or falling. He spent some time lurking in warehouses that were often used for drug deals but it seemed that the addicts would be left to deal by themselves for one night. He stopped a girl from breaking a window with a rock but ended up escorting her to a nearby shelter, she was just a kid seeking a place indoors. He watched a car skid but there was nothing he could do.

On Wednesday Bruce Wayne had a fundraiser to go to. Bruce rarely enjoyed the parties but they were useful. Bruce Wayne had a reputation as someone who liked to give – when he had a good time. When his outside activities were already being curtailed by the weather his frustration was lowered. Besides, Gotham fundraisers were often host to crime. They were frequent targets of criminals looking for large amounts of cash and an obviously drunk idiot could learn quite a bit about certain unsavory practices of the ‘upper crust’ of the city. Bruce Wayne smiled as he swayed drunkenly toward the bathroom and added another name to the mental checklist of those involved in the Elbridge scam.

On Thursday he found both the escape method and the man who’d helped them. In truth, he likely could have solved the problem much faster if he had dedicated more time to searching. None of the three prisoners, however, were that dangerous and they hadn’t committed more crimes and as much as he hated it the Batman had to prioritize his time. He had been going through his correspondence (rote acknowledgements from Bruce Wayne, housekeeping on pseudonyms, a discussion with several psychologists on OCD) while watching the feed. The same guard left the prison twice, once driving a truck. The same guard who was near all three cells before the disappearances. Batman pulled up the plans of the prison and the escape came together. During the missing time the men had been released and hidden in a camera blind spot (which there were far too many). Later, they had received disguises and been smuggled out in the food vans.

The man who had done the smuggling, and no doubt the bribing of the guards who were supposed to check the vehicle, was named Nate Silvers. He had been a guard for several years with a clean record. He was also gone. His apartment had been found completely empty by an elderly neighbor who, apparently, often brought over food in return for Silvers taking care of errands for her. From all appearances, the man appeared to have vanished in the night, taking all his belongings with him.

This only added to the mystery. While it seemed to be out of character for Silvers to aid criminals the sudden disappearance suggested that a great deal of money had probably been involved. Yet whose money was behind everything remained confusing. After examining the evidence, there didn’t appear to be anyone who would spend that much money on even one of the escapees, let alone all three.

On Friday there was a fire. It was a bonfire set on the second floor of a derelict factory. The walls were solid and despite the sleet that poured down outside the flames danced merrily. Even with a mask, Batman found it hard to breathe. The coiling smoke stung his eyes as he was forced to fight off Firebug and Firefly while dismantling the series of explosives that the demolitions expert and former pyrotechnic expert had rigged up.

It was the girl who had found them. The same girl he had directed to the shelter days before. She had climbed up the iced over fire escape that was still attached the squatter filled building that he had been checking on while the cold continued. She had sat waiting for him, shivering but determined. She had been spending her days hiding in the old factory and had seen the men in costume setting up.

Batman had cleared two of the buildings before he had run into Calendar Man. That fight had been easy enough and the man’s garbled explanation (he was really reaching for this holiday) had helped clear things up. It was another clearance scheme. Have the building burned, and burned by criminals known for pyromania, and clear the space much more quickly than it would take for the city to move. Firebug and Firefly had been chosen for their proficiency with fires. Calendar Man, Batman suspected, had been an attempt to throw investigators off the sent. The fact he was generally regarded as a joke had helped.

Batman managed to pull open the window. He breathed in the cold and let it cool his face, ignoring the groans from the two arsonists. No names had been provided for those who had hoped to benefit most from this little venture and he doubted any of the three had any idea. He had called the police and would have to wait until they arrived to depart as the not entirely cleared roads would, no doubt, slow them down. He had an investigation to conduct, starting with looking into the owners of the factory and at the names of those people who had lobbied the mayor for contracts. Before that, though, he had winter clothes to buy and a girl to find.

On Saturday there was a meeting. Batman didn’t always attend the Justice League gatherings but unless there was immediately pressing business he did try not to avoid them. It was necessary to know if anything was affecting the world that he would have to take part in dealing with. Besides, while the sun was shining, the sun remained thick on the ground and its staunching effects on crime would likely continue. Batman had to admit to himself, even if he would never say it out loud, that he had been rather startled to learn that the Ice Giants, bringers of the Apocalypse, had risen and been fought back until they had returned to their rest to wait until it was there time again. On the other hand, it did explain the relatively early snow fall.

[Vorkosigan Saga] measured by success - 2,479 words

anstaar — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:47:52 GMT

Rating: T (slight incest)
Summary: Ivan takes a trip and doesn't deal with the two sides of his cousin (set before Brother in Arms)

Ivan was supposed to be going on vacation; he had a date and everything. However, when Simon Ilyan mentioned that maybe you could spend your (well earned) break visiting Illyrica, you nodded and smiled and were glad of the suggestion of an extra free day 'when you get back.' After he had called Gina he had even started to look forward to the trip, a little bit. A, supposedly, uncomplicated journey that would be fully paid for and which would last significantly longer than his original break wasn't something to be sneezed at. The fact that it concerned some information he cheerfully knew nothing about didn't bother him. His mother would be satisfied (how his mother was aware of classified ImpSec missions was yet another mystery that Ivan was sure he was much happier not knowing) and you never knew when a pretty girl would suddenly appear and want company for the long, tiring ride.

Indeed, the first three stop were actually very enjoyable. Ivan had a talent for picking up women, but even he had to admit that finding Natasha and Bee and Tiff was a sign that his good luck was working full force. Possibly, he should have wondered what it was making up for. The trip to Tau Verde was going to be longest and, Ivan hoped, most enjoyable stretch of his trip seeing as a Betan tour group had come on at Escobar. Ivan had quite a few traumatizing memories associated with his Betan aunt (that his mother had allowed him to get a sex talk from Auntie Cordelia was the ninety-fourth miracle of the greater galaxy - and not one that Ivan appreciated) but he was sure that most Betans didn't pop from the canister fully formed and ready to lecture on the inadequacies in teenage sex education on Barrayar. In fact, he was just inching an arm around the shoulders of a girl, called Sky he assumed for her dark blue hair, with only an estimated twenty-seven percent chance of rejection, when the Mercenaries attacked.

According to the official reports, the Batavia Mercenary Fleet took over their ship at nine standard Escobaran time. Ivan could have translated that to Barrayaran time but his head hurt too much. Actually, the takeover was quite smooth. There were only five injuries (the pilot, the captain, Ivan, a Cetagandan and an older Betan) with no deaths. This was mainly because the captain had been stunned immediately (his unconscious fall resulting in a bruised spine) and after a little arm twisting (or arm breaking, to be exact) the pilot agreed that his contract definitely didn't include dealing with attackers and handed over control of the ship. The other three injuries, in order, occurred when Ivan smashed his head into a door, when the Cetagandan's pride led him to receive a fist to the face and the when the excitement led to a flare up in the Betan's heart condition.

Ivan smashed his head when he had tried to walk through a door that had been, seconds before, open and yet was then definitely closed. The only comfort was the quite a few people had been watching him and had agreed that the door really had been open mere seconds before he had tried to walk through it to fetch some water. That didn't stop the mercenary medic from smirking when Ivan had to explain what had happened. He was sent to sit next to the sulking Cetagandan, who luckily ignored him, while the Betan grumbled about the expense of replacement hearts.

Truthfully, they were very lucky. The mercenaries (who turned out to be a rather talkative bunch) had not captured their ship to kill them all and then send the dead ship floating through space to start rumors that would chill the spine of the brave man. In fact, they didn't even really have any interest in possible ransoms for the passengers (apparently, between the risk and reward, there were rarely good rates). Reading between the Medic's words, Ivan guessed that they had been hired to jack up insurance rates by disrupting orderly travel on the Indigo Lines.

If Ivan had been just an ordinary vacationer he would have been torn between annoyance at the delay, relief at their relative safety and hope that this might prove to be a bonding experience between himself and the, likely terrified, Sky. As it was, he spent half his waking moments hoping that they wouldn't get bored enough to start scanning the passenger for anything besides their ready cash which had been 'voluntarily' donated to the Batavian cause. The other half of his time he spent cursing his overachieving cousin. In most families, he was sure; coming home with stories of the hostile takeover of your ship by mercenaries would be greeted with condolences and pride in your ability to keep calm in the face of danger. In his family they would probably ask why he hadn't taken over the damned fleet.

It was during one of the times Ivan was cursing his maniac, little cousin that Ivan first met Admiral Miles Naismith. It had been years since Ivan had found himself sitting next to the hospital bed where Miles had lain with a new stomach listening as Miles told him off-handily that he was in control of a fleet of mercenaries who viewed him as their admiral. It hadn't been the first or the last impossible thing that Miles had done, but that one always stuck in Ivan's brain. Lying in a hospital bed with a hole in his stomach (and probably in his brain) announcing something that just shouldn't have happened. That was when Ivan realized that in certain ways, Miles was completely insane. When Naismith's voice boomed out over the loudspeakers, announcing that they were now in the hands of the Dendarii Mercenaries, daring rescues their specialty, and Ivan decided it was much worse than that.

Miles had always gotten really into his role of make believe. As kids, they had spent a lot of time together playing games of imagination and Miles had always been the best and the last to break character. Ivan's ma ran the social scene of Vorbarr Sultana and some of his earliest memories were of sitting, listening to an immobilized Miles while Gregor did homework and Bothari, and other armsmen, lurked in the background. Back then, Miles' stories had been intense but after he had learned to walk there was something different about everything.

Aunt Cordelia, looking frighteningly maternal, had shown him an old 'holo she'd found of one of their childish games of pretend. From a clear perspective it was rather ridiculous. A twisted homunculus of a boy with a broken shoulder and a high pitched voice announcing (ordering into being) to two other children his plan to rescue Vortala's Emperor from the enemy counts' clutches (Gregor's eleventh birthday party was a long lasting memory). In truth it was then that Ivan had first wonder insanity was transmittable because even just watching the shaking 'holo he knew he would still follow Miles, even when the consequences shifted from a ruined cake to dancing along the precarious balance of power between two empires.

The Dendarii were all the proof Ivan would ever need to make his case for transmittable insanity. He followed in the Admiral's wake (old friend, Naismith had said, helped me out of a bind, awhile back) and watched everyone turn toward the Admiral like a Burnflower slid toward the sun. He followed Naismith into his cabin and then Miles grinned at him and the world seemed wrong.

Miles was not Naismith. Miles was his cousin. Miles was smart and sarcastic and bitter and defensive and walked like he was going to vanish into himself. Miles got Ivan in and out of trouble about a million times a second and had an annoying talent with horses. Naismith wasn't Miles. He was smart and sarcastic and open and walked like he had already taken over the world and was deciding what to do after lunch. Naismith was responsible for his fleet and came up with mad idea (that worked) to get them out of the trouble they hired into and acted like he'd lived half his life in the desert. Everyone loved Naismith.

Ivan was easily led. He would argue (not with his mother) that it was how he was brought up to be. You followed what the men in uniform said, even if they were holding the uniform on the inside. As he saw it, one could logically see how being told to obey his uncle Aral would lead to him following Thomas 'the Tack' Vormalle in removing every desk from the history classroom. More generally, it most times it was simply easier to go along with things and Ivan liked easy and there was never anything wrong (well, some of Miles' adventures had pushed it a little bit) with the things he went along with so why bother fighting against the grain? Still, the basic fact was that he was rather easily led and therefore someone else should have noticed what a bad idea it was to put him on a ship with a bunch of people in love with someone who wasn't really his cousin. Besides, Naismith was easier.

Ivan had chosen never to think about Miles', often twisted, feelings toward him. That wasn't because he couldn't. Ivan was sure that, if he made himself, it would be easy enough to delve into the mess of jealousy, love and affection that he wasn't even sure that Miles himself could fully articulate (not that Ivan would be able to accurately pin down his own feelings toward his cousin). On the other hand, Ivan was also sure that, if he made himself, it would be easy enough to stick his hand into a pile of broken glass and rusty nails and about as much fun. Ivan wasn't a psychologist but he doubted if Miles would even admit to some of the feelings that Ivan could easily see in retrospect. They had been born mere months apart. They were Vor cousins which meant that they were a bit more closely related than most cousins. Remove a lifetime of medical complications brought on by prenatal poisoning and they would most likely look a lot alike. That, of course, was the problem. Miles saw in Ivan everything he could have been and somewhere, deep in his twisted soul, Ivan had no doubt that he hated him for that, even if it was just a little bit. Even now, Miles would give up everything he had to get back what he had lost before he was born. Ivan didn't know if he would be happy if he got it but that wasn't important. Miles will never acknowledge that jealousy and Ivan was totally okay with that. He liked the friendship they had formed as adults, well, older adolescents at least, which was slightly less encumbered by their childhoods. Miles Naismith carried none of those feelings.

That was why he kissed Miles. Ivan was sitting in Miles' room, partly so he wouldn't say something that could hurt Miles' cover and partly so he wouldn't be beaten up in a dark corridor by Miles' fan club, which pretty much included every member of the ship (Ivan liked to think that he could lie to himself well enough to hide how uncomfortable he felt switching between Miles teasing him about being caught by mercenaries and Naismith's efficient command). He was lounging on his cousin's bed (which was far too comfortable to sustain a proper mercenary attitude in his opinion) remembering. Once, a little while before they had headed off to different prep schools, the two of them had gone off exploring 'the castle depths' as Miles had put it. It had started as them just wandering about trying to find Gregor, but without any real urgency. If they had really wanted to find the Emperor they could have asked anyone. They were truly alone together, in a way they never really were, because Bothari was sick (Ivan was sure that Borthari couldn't really be the terrifying giant of his memory but the fact that he could only remember Bothari getting sick twice during their childhood did add to his frightful air). After Bothari, the palace guards were easy enough to avoid, or at least ignore.

("I don't really need a lot of protection, anyway," Miles had told him once. "After gran'da no one's really tried. I think they figure that the first one took care of things okay. Bothari is just so I don't fall down the stairs and break all my bones again." Miles said things like that)

They were almost at the wine cellars when it really became a game. "We could be lost down here, forever," Miles had said, looking rather pleased at this idea. They couldn't so Ivan joined in.

"We could live on wine and rats."

"Exactly," Miles said, "and we'd spend our days looking for a way out and avoiding traps left behind by the false king." That meant they were playing Vortala the Bold so Ivan started pretending to look around for traps. Miles was still caught up in the moment, though, and when Ivan looked over he was just standing there but Ivan and knew that it was Miles-the-general, without a word. They were found a few hours later by an irate guard, covered in cobwebs and tipsy on wine drunk to 'slacken their thirst.' Ivan got into trouble for hiding and ruining his clothes and so that adventure with Miles ended like they always did, with his mother's scolding. Years later, spending his days watching Miles slide back into his twisted body, that moment of seeing something outside itched at the edges of Ivan's mind and he almost recaptured that feeling for the first time in a long time.

Ivan was remembering that day when Naismith stepped through his cabin door and Ivan was sitting up and Naismith turned toward him and the room wasn't that big and Ivan kissed him. Sometimes he like to think that it was a just a brush in a small cabin that turned into something more because he hadn’t seen a girl (who didn't have a thing for his cousin) in three weeks. Ivan has the family memory, though, and he's not that good at lying to himself and he knows what happened. It was just a kiss because Naismith became an extremely awkward Miles and Ivan ran away to the gym and when he returned, much, later they both pretended that nothing had happened, just an accident brought on by cabin fever. Late at night, Ivan thought about Miles (sometimes) and Naismith and family issues he wished he didn't have to ever think about and then goes back to pretending nothing happened.

[Vorkosigan Saga] Playing the Wall - 904 words

anstaar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:56:32 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: How Miles learned to swim

Miles saw the lake from the hovercraft as they swirled down toward the big house. Gregor had said he would see the lake, said that was what Negri had seen which let him (three quarters dead, Gregor doesn't say, but Miles was very good at listening) know that this was where his Emperor would be safe. He saw the stables (he knew about horses from pictures and vids and he could see himself in a picture-that-isn't riding as big and good as anyone) and fields, too, but it was the lake he saw first.

When they set down, they found the old man, Miles' grandfather, standing waiting for them. He greeted his parents colder then Count Vorhalas when he thought he was alone with da. Bothari kept a grip on his shoulder, even though Miles knows how to be polite with company and wouldn't be running from his granda (even though he had heard his ma mutter, maybe you should, when he'd said that) and there wasn't anything he could 'destroy with his ravaging curiosity.'

Miles was very good throughout the whole greeting, even though his granda didn't even look at him. He was good when they went down to the village, too. He'd met Elena before but it was nice 'cause she twitched less than Ivan and wasn't nearly as stupid and wasn't allowed almost as many things as are on his list so when they play he wasn't always lagging behind or hurting and hearing the old lecture once again. But she could swim.

Miles found out she could swim very cunningly. They were playing Vortala the Bold, even though there are only two of them so they each have to play about a billion roles and it's hard to be Vortala and his loyal lieutenant and the evil spy and the engineer and tons of others all at the same time. Elena was good, even if she spent most of the time giving him the stare (like he's spontaneously gonna break apart) and she did sometimes look surprised that he was walking. Anyway, he was being the spy and she was a loyal corporal and he said (in his best, most evil, voice, ever), "if you don't tell me what I want I shall throw you into the lake!"

"I would never break the solemn trust that my leader has placed in me," she declared, then, with her bright, rare smile, "'sides, I can swim, anyway." Then she broke away and he went to chase after her (she flashed like silver to his dull, plodding tread) but all the time he was knowing that he couldn't swim and would drown if a spy threw him in the lake when he wouldn't give up his word.

Miles wasn't allowed to swim. He wasn't sure if it was on the 'list of things that will send him to the hospital' that Vaagen had given everyone but he could just see his ma's eyes if he suggested it. She's probably say something about how he could beat his arms to fragments in the water or he's get sick or maybe, worst of all, it'd be that she grew up on a planet without swimming and really it was okay and not another sigh you're a useless mutie who has to be carried through life because you can't do anything and even if you could you'd be useless at it.

That was why Miles did something he shouldn't have. They were down by the docks and Bothari was telling them about fishing and Elena was staring up at her father and Miles already knew about fishing so he jumped. He didn't jump straight up and down 'cause he did that off his bed once and broke both his legs and Vaagen asked whether maybe he should be put back in the binder (each morning they had to come in and lift him down and sometimes Miles wondered if one day they wouldn't come and he would just stay there, forever) for everyone's good health. Instead, he sort of rolled/jumped and then he was in the water without breaking anything, which was sort of a victory.

Then, Miles thrashed about like he'd seen swimmers do in 'holos but it was a lot harder than it looked but then so was walking and he'd done that but his chest was starting to hurt and then he was grabbed. He sat coughing on the deck while Elena stared at him and Bothari veered back and forth between yelling at him and using his com and Miles huddled and shivered despite the jacket that had been quickly wrapped around him.

His da looked sad when he saw him (his da always looked sad when he saw Miles) and stopped the sergeant's yelling. He sat down beside Miles and said to him, like it was just the two of them, "Why did you do that?" For a long time, Miles couldn't figure out what to say. It was hard talking to da, knowing that he was barely human and an anchor that won't ever be got rid of.

"I just wanted to swim," he mumbled finally. Da smiled, though he still looked sad, and picked him up.

"We'll get you different clothes and a 'tube, and have a little talk about following rules, and then I'll teach you how to swim, alright?" And Miles nodded, even though it wasn't.

[Vorkosigan Saga] Growing Saplings - 853 words

anstaar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:24:13 GMT

Rating: G
Summary: Aral and a Vorrutyer cousin climb a tree

Most of the time, Aral obeyed his brother's instructions. That was how it worked. The Emperor took the Counts' hands between his and promised to protect them from their enemies in the wider galaxy, and occasionally brother Counts, while in return the Counts promised their obedience. Then the Counts take their districts' hands and promised to protect them in return for their obedience to him and to the Emperor. Tolya was Lord Vorkosigan which meant he would become Count and therefor in their household, when their father-the-Count was away, he spoke with the Count's voice which Aral obeyed like he would the Voice of his Count or Emperor. Sometimes, Aral could almost see the lines that tied them together and then bound them all in the body of the Emperor. Plus, Tolya wanted what was best for him because he was his older brother, so most of the time Aral listened.

Still, Tolya had forbidden him from going into the forest alone. He had also said that didn't like Aral to spend time with their cousins without him present. However, he had never said that Aral couldn't go into the forest accompanied by his cousin. Especially if it was only the one his age who even Aral could beat in a fight. Even so, Aral couldn't help but feel slightly guilty, even if Ges had dared him. He could just see Tolya's glare when he found them out.

Ges, on the other hand, appeared completely fearless. He stared around in fascination at the surrounding tress. "We don't have anything like this at home in the capital," he said. Aral nodded, feeling awkward. He didn't spend a lot of time with people not part of his direct family. He didn't really know what to say to his spirited cousin. Not that his silence seemed to affect Ges. "Could you climb this tree," he asked, pointing up at the towering tree in front of them.

"Yes," Aral said, wincing internally at how stupid that sounded.

"Good," Ges smirked in satisfaction, "then you can go first and then help me up."

"It's a bit windy," more like it was incredibly windy. Aral had been climbing for years and he could recognize the creak of the wind through the trunk of the tree.

"That's what will make it fun," Ges said with a flash of his cheeky grin and somehow Aral found himself clinging to a low hanging branch with his knees as he helped the other boy pull himself up onto the branch. Eventually, they both sat panting on the broad limb. Aral hoped that this would be enough but Ges shucks off his shoes, sending them spiraling down to the ground beneath the tree, and stood, one arm wrapped tightly around the trunk.

"Where are you going?" Aral asked, hoping he sound unconcerned rather than worried.

"Higher up, I want to see if I could catch a bird."

"What would you do with a bird?"

Ges shrugged, "bring it back for dinner, maybe."

"There aren't any birds good for eating in the trees," Aral said, feeling uncomfortable, "we get some grouse, but only down in the bushes."

Ges was still a moment and Aral wondered if he was upset at being corrected but then his cousin beamed. "Good to know. If Cetagandans attacked you could keep us safe with your wood knowledge." Aral couldn't hold back a small laugh at the idea of the two of them living off grouse and running from invaders.

"I think my brother would be kind of upset if I was in the woods when the Cetagandans attacked."

Ges laughed, too, and Aral felt a warmth rise inside of him. "I can imagine," he adopted a rather good imitation of Tolya's disapproving voice, "Vorrutyer, can you not keep control of your brother? This will disrupt the checklist."

"Checklist," Aral responded, in a much less impressive imitation of Joz, "what checklist."

Ges gestured sternly with his free hand, "the checklist of what to do during a Cetagandan invasion, of course. Making sure your younger siblings haven't run off is number five. Your sister better have a Vorfemme knife or we're going to have to improvise," Aral laughed again, slightly guiltily, at the tone of shocked horror and Ges continued in his normal voice, "by the time they'll have finished arguing about stuff we'll have already chased the Ghem off with rot bark." He swung his arm out grandly, "In times to come we shall come back to this tree and say, 'here, this is the mighty tree where we first came up with the plan to fight off the second invasion."

He removed a knife from his pocket and dug it into the bark, "and then," he said, "I'll say, 'it's marked with an A so we could remember which tree we were talking about.' I would do a G, too, but those are hard to do one handed." He looked so annoyed that Aral felt himself start to giggle. Ges smirked up at him and they say in that three, together, until the sun started to lower beyond the horizon.

[Vorkosigan Saga] a collection of memories - 879 words

anstaar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:28:00 GMT

Rating: T (canonical character death)
Summary: four memories Vera doesn't have of her childhood and one she does (AU)

Birth

Vera was born in winter. 'Middle of a winter storm,' Tolya always starts (started) the story (even after Aral looks it up and it turns out it was actually quite a warm day, for winter), with a gentle tug on her braid. From there the story always changed. When she was five, the tale was that the power had shorted out and Tolya had had to make a desperate run through the snow to the village to find a doctor. At six, he claimed that, despite being stricken with pneumonia, he had built a fire in the dining hall, using the wood from the older chairs, and stood at the door with a lighted torch to guide Aral home from where he had been sent out to gather sticks to keep the fire going. She spent the night she turned seven sitting on the floor of the medic's tent. Aral was awake (he hadn't taken the sleeping drugs when they had had enough and by that point even the half-burned man was left to deal with what consciousness he had left by himself), if dazed, and he held her hand tightly, even though he eyes were half closed. Vera knew then, whatever the day of her birth had been like, her father hadn't been there.

Fever

When Vera was three she had gotten sick. 'Very sick,' Aral had said, once. Tolya had said nothing and her mother only wrapped her in a tight hug and said, 'you're better now." Vera got sick a lot. Tolya was rarely ill, though he suffered awfully when he did get sick. Aral had seasonal allergies that left him curled up and wretched on his bed. Vera watched her siblings and her mother's fears and wondered if she was seeing a reflection of the illness that left her still coughing years later and her mother always reaching for her forehead to check for sudden fevers. Vera pulled away until she had no hand to pull away from and Aral's face showed much more pain than he had ever received from his allergies.

Horse

Vera was terrified of horses. Mother said, once, that it must be some sort of maternal gene because, in truth, all three of them are afraid of the beasts. Father loved them. He had given Vera a book on horses. It wasn't a birthday and Count Vorkosigan wasn't the sort of man who just gave random gifts so she treasured it, even if just looking at the pictures could make her feel sick with fear. She might have treasured it a bit too much, as it turned out, because one day her father took her to a stable with him. It was owned by a friend of her father's, a man she didn't recognize, who stared up a heated debate about the best Earth breeds. Vera wandered away from them and toward the smell of the stables. She climbed on top of the fence and sat on the green field, staring up at the sky. When she woke up she was in a hospital room, the sound of her mother's low and angry voice telling her she was listening to one of her parent's rare arguments. She never remembered the fall or being trampled by the wild horse. Later, when she's wrapped in a blanket with only the buzzing in her ears to distract her from what happened she realized she had lost her fear. There was a limit to what a horse could do to her.

Gran

Vera was six the first time she went to a funeral. She had a new dress, which was a bit too big, and shiny shoes, which pinched her toes, and absolutely no idea what was going on. After, Tolya was being grownup and standing with their mother and Aral had run away with their cousins so she just wandered away through the stones, wondering what had happened. She didn't know what to do when she ran into the old man (her grandfather, prince Xav, a stranger) standing in front of a grave. "Do you remember her?" He'd asked, not looking at her. "She visited you, three years ago, now." Vera didn't remember. Vera remembered the picture of the woman in her mother's room and she saw the new picture that hung above the lit offerings but she knew nothing else. After the war, at the dedication, Vera landed against her grandfather, who looked so much older than he should. This time neither of them had anything to say.

Mother

They were eating breakfast. Aral was dreaming, only half-awake and lost in thought. Vera was telling a story (a friend of hers had broken an arm doing an elaborate backwards twist, she would always remember) and her mother had been listening with a small smile. The door shattered open. The soldiers moved and Vera sees the smash of her mother against the wall. Aral leaped forward (in front of her) and is knocked down. The guns were aimed and Vera clutched at her brother's sleeve. She would always remember the feel of his shirt under her and hands and the tight terror that blocked her throat, like a cough that wouldn't come out. Father came then and they were saved but never forget.

[Vorkosigan Saga] three moments suspended in time - 551 words

anstaar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:47:29 GMT

Rating: T (canonical character death)
Summary: Aral and his first wife: before, during, and after the disaster

before.

"It's been a long time," Nina says. She's beautiful (she's always beautiful) and he can feel a bubble of joy and longing and rightness. He told Ges, once (drunk and halfway toward unconsciousness, with one arm wrapped tightly around his friend's shoulders), that Nina is the living force of Vor womanhood (Ges had laughed and rested his cheek against Aral's and murmured, 'then she'll go perfectly with you, my living honor,' and Aral didn't remember any of it in the morning). It's not exactly her appearance. She's tall (as tall as him, actually) and striking, but her hair is short enough to make the elderly Vor click their tongues at the follies of youth and her build is more along the lines of formidable than slender. She has killed a man (a soldier), though. Eleven years old when Ezar's army took the capital, she was there, a prisoner in her father's house. She stabbed her guard through the stomach with her Vorfemme knife when he tried to use her as a hostage against her family. Aral has read the report and he remembers seeing her, standing by Ges, the day they watched as Ezar took their fathers' oaths and end a war.

"Too long, my lady," he says, with a kiss on her hand that is only faintly ironic. This will work.

during.

Dinner is silent that night. He canceled the party that she had set up and ignored the reproachful stare of the armsman he had set outside to make sure no one could get in. The meal is soup but Nina eats like she's slicing a piece of meat into tiny pieces. Before, he might have joked (or tried to joke) that the soup was supposed to be hot and probably didn't need half an hour of being waved in the air. Before, her righteous anger at his lateness and his temerity in interfering with her carefully balanced schedule would have been well deserved and he would've apologized. Before, she might've relented with a mock-stern demand for stories about his duties and a kiss of forgiveness that he would've returned with passion. Now, all he can think about when he looks at her is Ges' hands and, 'if it's just then that's just sad,' and the grooves his fingernails have dug in the palms of his hands. She's angry but he can feel the icy rage (dishonor) burning through his veins and they both know who would win. That evening, he leaves her locked in the house; one hand is wrapped so tightly around the hilt of his sword that the imprint lasts through her funeral.

after.

On the last day of leave before he's to report to Kyril Island he visits Nina's grave. The last time he was there was at the funeral. He spent the day drunk enough that he's surprised his breath didn't catch on fire as he burned his death offering. It's been a long while but the grave is as neat as it was then (there's a man, he learns later, a forty years man, who deals with unruly grass, overzealous burnings and gravestone repairs), neater, actually, because the earth has settled and the grass grown. She could have laid there forever. He lays his hand gently on the stone and feels empty.

[Vorkosigan Saga] Respiciō - 1,622 words

anstaar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 05:00:13 GMT

Rating: T (ableism)
Summary: A classmate’s opinion of Miles; any time from grade school through the academy

Alexis was halfway to school when Jean, red faced and panting, caught up to him. Alexis' jaw almost dropped open in surprise. In the preceding semester, Jean had earned many misconduct marks for his tendency to show up late and disheveled, ho matter when, and in what state, his parents had sent him off. "You'll never guess what's happened," he panted, stumbling to keep up with Alexis' smart march.

"I know it's not that you realized that all those extra laps you earned really didn't you any fitter and decided to start up an exercise regime over break," Alexis said, easily ignoring Jean's less-than-potent glare. Unusually, his friend did jump on him and attempt to wrestle him to the ground (a task Jean consistently failed to achieve, despite his height advantage).

"No, con, we're gonna get a mutant in our class!" At that declaration Alexis had to stop, even though showing shock was a sure way to leave Jean smug.

"No chance."

"Totally true, I heard pa talking." Jean used his ability to pack smugness into every syllable to its fullest extent. "It was supposed to start last semester but had a 'medical emergency' and then the parents didn't want to shove it in during the middle so it's starting now."

Alexis shook his head, "I can't believe Leclair would do that." Amazingly, Jean managed to look even smugger.

"Believe away. The parents are some sort of super Vor, apparently, what they say goes. Plus, Ab told me that in the capital they're trying to show all-encompassing mutant love cause of those new laws that they shoved through and Leclair could lose his job of he didn't accept it. Besides, everyone knows he wants to go back into the government and he thinks this will give him some credit."

Alexis continued walking, though at a slower pace, considering this new information. Jean's brother was an ensign posted to the capital and an usually reliable source of information. "What type of mutie?" He asked, fascinated despite himself.

"Don't know," Jean admitted, "Pa siad that they had to set things up special cause of its 'needs,' but then he saw I was there and started going on about not bother the mutie, like I would go near. Ab said there was a big argument 'bout whether or not he could get his own special uniform but they argued it down cause Leclair said he wasn't changing the code short of an imperial command." Jean grinned again, "Probably has three arms."

"Probably has three eyes," Alexis retorted, "They'll have to set up special cheat sheets so he can't be looking at our answers with the one on his neck."

Jean laughed, "Probably has four legs. You'll have to watch out to defend your time on the track." Jean demonstrated his version of how a four legged boy would run and then mimed the fit Volkov would have if he had to put a mutie's face up for best runner." Alexis laughed again but he couldn't help the icy shiver down his spine when he imagined actually having to see the mutant.

Still, he craned his neck just as much as Jean when he saw the unfamiliar hovercar that was sure to indicate the presence of Vormutie, as Jean had dubbed him. The desire to see even surpassed the temptation of tweaking Reg, who had no idea what they were waiting for. First to emerge from the craft was a hawk faced man with a military bearing that would live up to even Volkov's ironclad standards. With a stiff turn he lifted something from the 'car and placed in on the ground. For the second time that day, it was only Alexis' training that stopped him from gaping.

The...boy was barely bigger than his baby sister. The cadet uniform fit him worse than it did even leggy Reg. The uniform pants were bunched up at the knees over two shining metal braces and the shirt was draped awkwardly over the hunched, spindly frame ('like Vorschlimme,' Jean muttered, 'in Sixteen West'). The head was large and face twisted, though Alexis suspected that the twist was an expression, not another sign of mutation. At Alexis' side, Reg made the sign against even and he definitely wasn't alone in doing so. Alexis could feel his own fingers twitch. This was supposed to joint them?

"He looks like on hit would kill 'im," Jean said, voice full of the fascinated horror Alexis shared, "guess you're gonna stay number one after all, Lex. Leclair is gonna throw an even bigger fit, though."

"You knew about this," Reg spluttered, finally pulling his eyes from the mutie and his bodyguard, who were cutting a wide swath through the students as they headed toward the school building.

"Course," Jean said, "I told you I got connections." This sort of statement would have usually spiraled into an argument but today everyone had more interesting things to talk about.

"I wonder if it can talk," Reg said.

"Probably," Jean said knowledgeably, "Vorschlimme could and he had the hunch and everything."

"Vorschlimme was a Vor, too," added Marco, who had drifted over in the confusion, "My granma says that the Vor used to be all proper-like and would have never allowed something like that to survive, unlike in these degenerate times." Alexis carefully avoided eye contact with Jean. That did sound like Marco's gran, a woman whose fervent opinions had sparked conflict between the friends before.

"Vorschlimme did trick his way in," Reg pointed out and the discussion turned to the likelihood of an actual Vor being tricked by one of Vorschlimme's fiendish plots. Aleix, who preferred Be True, wondered what the mutie would be like in class.

As it turned out, it was weirder than he could have guessed. The first shock had come when the boy was announced as Vorkosigan, to Marco's stunned disbelief. A shock which only grew when they were informed that, yes, it was that Vorkosigan, grandson to Marco's hero. The second shock cam with the boy's sharp answers and high test grades. He certainly fit with the 'holos portrayal of muties as possessing lots of devious cunning. The third shock, though, was something Alexis had never expected. As he had realized the first time he saw the boy, the mutie couldn't join the exercises properly, not that anyone would have wanted him on their team or running beside (behind) them. On the days when he wasn't laid up with one problem or another, he just thumped around the track, one shoulder rising even higher than usual.

That day, Alexis was tidying up the equipment area to avoid the dangerous fight that had started when Marco had told them that his gran had said that the Vorkosigan's were keeping the mutie (apart from the lack of a good Vorfemme was countess) cause he was a punishment for the Lord Regent's 'carrying on,' to which Reg had replied that Marco's gran was a treasonous old bag and, unsurprisingly, quite a bit of violence had ensued. Alexis' da had always warned him to get out of fights that got political; a good soldier didn't talk politics.

The Vormutie usually regained his fearsome bodyguard shadow as soon as he wasn't being watched by a teacher but today the bodyguard had been called in for a talk, probably about Zeph and his friends' habit of 'accidentally' banging into the fragile boy (Alexis couldn't imagine how they could stand actually touching him). The mutie had been left on the empty exercise grounds, where through the window he would be protected by Volkov's absent minded, but fearsome, gaze. The boy stood, unaware of Alexis presence in the shadow of the shed. Alexis continued to clear things away but he moved slowly and silently, he wondered what the mutie would do when he thought he had no watchers. Maybe he would start cackling evilly, like in the 'holos. Any knowledge would be good to settle Jean, who was still acting pretty smug about his early info.

The boy didn't start cackling, instead, he slowly bent down and removed his leg braces, letting his pants fall down over his shoes and stood up straight. It was the first time Alexis had seen him without the braces or casts. The slight hunch remained but, for the first time, he could have almost been a normal kid. Alexis was reminded again of his sister. When you couldn't see his face the mutie looked uncomfortably young. The boy bent his knees a few times and then started to run. He wasn't particularly fast and he moved at a weird gait, what with one leg being obviously longer than the other, but he moved fast enough. For the first time, Alexis saw his face relax into a smile. It was a strangely wondrous moment that Alexis felt almost part of. The feeling was broken when the boy tripped over a flapping pants' cuff and fell badly to the ground. He lay there, clutching at his obviously broken leg.

Alexis was frozen, unsure of what to do. He was grateful when the choice was taken from him with the arrival of the bodyguard, no doubt summoned by Volkov. The man picked the boy up with a grunt that couldn't be from the effort of lifting his tiny charge. With several low words, he produced a plastic sleeve which he applied to the leg. The man shook his head with a look that appeared almost long suffering. Much later, lying in bed, staring at the model of the empire that swung gently above, Alexis found his mind turning back to the fact that in the whole time he lay there, Miles never made a sound.

[Naruto] Looking Underneath - 583 words

anstaar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 03:52:38 GMT

Rating: T
Summary: In which Jiraiya introduces his students to his newest literary master piece and the phrase looking underneath the underneath is coined

It should be made clear that Team Jiraiya (also known in various circles as Team Awesome, Team Asshole, and, in very limited circles, Team Four) had gotten quite good at dealing with their sensei's 'quirks.' Their mouth's no longer dropped open at his fighting style, they always kept their money carefully hidden away and they never accepted, or listened to, any of his lengthy advice about women. All in all, they had survived three years under his tutelage not too much more twisted than they had been at the start. The books, however, were new.

"Sensei," Minato said slowly (much in the same tone one would use on an injured animal you knew could kill you with distressing ease), "I thought you said you were writing a masterpiece on the human condition that would change the world with its deep insights and unparallelled acceptance of the foibles of human nature." Jiraiya felt his the vein in his forehead starting to twitch. That was the problem with geniuses (beyond the unstated fact that they had a worrying tendency to go completely insane), they had annoyingly good memories. Sure, Tsunade could remember every single time he had made an ass out of himself over the last twenty sum years, but Orochimaru remembered everything he said and loved to point any contradictions. Minato was the exact same and, as with Orochimaru, the best thing to throw him off the trail was to obfuscate.

"Are you claiming that this isn't?" He huffed. "I notice you haven't even opened your copy. Really, Minato-kun, judging a book by its cover, for shame. One of the worst things a shinobi can do is to fail to look underneath." Sadly, Minato looked unconvinced, despite this genius rebuttal.

"It says pretty clearly that you have to be eighteen to start looking underneath this cover," Fugaku snorted. Personally unfazed by the warning sticker he had already cheerfully dived into his own copy. "Anyway, the only underneath I see looks a lot like porn."

"With inaccurate illustrations," Hiashi added from where he was crouched behind his rival, peering avidly over Fugaku's shoulder (when offered his own copy he had refused on the grounds that no honorable Hyuuga would ever be caught possessing such trash). "I would ask whether you've never had the opportunity to see an actual woman's breast, but I've seen your 'moves.'"

Fugaku blinked, "But how do you know it's all that inaccurate, I'm pretty sure you said that 'no honorable Hyuuga would degrade his power by using in that manner.'" Jiraiya quickly smashed his fist into the ground, letting the earth tremors to shake apart the heirs of Konoha's two most prominent clans, who were rolling around in the dirt attempting to land a good a good punch (he noted with pride that the book had been set out of harms way).

"Idiots, that's not the type of underneath I was talking about," he waved an arm, "I meant the deeper underneath." His students stared at him. Hiashi dabbed his bleeding nose with his handkerchief (as he had informed his teammates many times, 'no honorable Hyuuga spent their time fighting with their fists, like commoners,' Fugaku had been known to suggest that this was because they sucked at it). Fugaku looked blank. Minato smirked.

"You mean we have to look underneath the underneath?" He suggested.

That was the real worst problem with geniuses, from Jiraiya' perspective, their stupid ability to say what he wanted to say, but make it sound cool.