Fire Sale (all fic must go)

[kangeiko]

I can't sign up for any challenges other than yuletide . This is for my sanity. BUT. wingsmith is trying to make sure I write something every week, as this will help with the not!crazy. So, ficlets are on offer for those who fancy something. No real fandom preference, so try your luck with anything I've written before, or any new fandom you'd like me to have a go at. Character/pairing, fandom and prompt of some kind, please.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marcelo/]

Hmmm. What about River Tam during Simon and Kaylee's weeding? *g*

[kangeiko]

Is that 'wedding' or 'weeding'? :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marcelo/]

Oops! 'Wedding', sorry.

Firefly ficlet: Dajin

[kangeiko]

Kaylee looks full and ripe in her bridal finery. There is a heavy curtain of thick, creamy beads hanging free in front of her face, framed by dark hair and red flowers. She has been wrapped in all of Inara's red silks and they trail, over-long and awkward-looking, as she walks carefully down the length of the cargo-hold. There aren't enough guests to make this a wedding, not really; still, River knows her part. She follows the bride respectfully, parasol extended over Kaylee's beribboned head to shield her from any vengeful demons that may take it in themselves to look down and snatch her. She understands her duty in this, symbolic though the protection may be, and will fulfil it down to the letter. She cannot risk any other option; they are too few of them left, in any case.

Re: Firefly ficlet: Dajin

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marcelo/]

Yay! This is beautiful; I love River's watchfulness, it's both very in character and very logical, given their lives.

Re: Firefly ficlet: Dajin

[kangeiko]

Thank you! Glad you liked it.

[bluerosefairy.livejournal.com]

I'm on a total Alias kick - watched some of S3 and am attempting to convert carla_scribbles with pretty pictures of Lena Olin (has begun to work mwahahaha).

So, could I please have Jack/Irina, with the prompt "queen"?

Alias ficlet: Ode to Normalcy

[kangeiko]

More Irina than Irina/Jack, and it's been a while since I wrote them, but, anyway -

*

Ode to Normalcy

When you were a child, you lived on the fourth floor of a ten-storey apartment block in one of the newer areas of the city, above an incontinent woman and a man with only one leg. You think that perhaps the first floor was occupied by the caretaker and his family, but you don't really remember ever actually seeing the caretaker around. Like most of the men, he was present only through photographs on immaculately clean shelves and tables and a toddler eating warm bread on the block steps. His wife - caretaker in all but name - was the one that took care of the communal garden and of the stairways, and she was the one that organised all the block's children into a team of caterpillar-exterminators. At that tender age, you did not yet know about caterpillars and butterflies; all you knew was that the prized magnolia tree was being devoured by an infestation and so you - like all the rest - would have to shimmy up and across the thin branches, picking off the wriggling things and throwing them on to the ground for the other children to stomp on. You don't really remember an adult watching you during this time, but they must have: climbing trees is a dangerous business, quite unlike normal playtime activities.

You preferred the times you were on the tree, legs wrapped tightly around the branch and feeling vertiginous and oddly triumphant as you picked all the caterpillars off, to the times spent below it, stomping on the green things and watching, fascinated, as they turned to mulch beneath your feet.

Your success at curbing the caterpillars was noticed and soon the caretaker's wife set you to other tasks, each more complex than the rest: weeding the garden and sweeping the walkways and queuing for milk and taking the younger children across the pitted fields to reach morning shift at the local school. Later, you attended the political meetings as expected and all the other meetings, too - not the local ones but those far away from your home city, travelling with a gaggle of school friends and starching your collars the night before to make sure that you are clean and prepared and presentable before this, the endless juries of your political peers.

You are a worker, a necessary, hard-working member of the proletariat, you were told, and it had the ring of praise to it. No one works as hard as you do to ensure the success and health of the body-politic. You are the backbone of the Union, the worker upon whose weary backs the dream of socialism moves ever forward. You are one of thousands, millions of other teenaged girls, identical but for their dedicated to the Union. There is no contest here; only that of who will sacrifice the most.

This particular sacrifice, your superior tells you, will be great. This sacrifice will require you to give up your home, and your family, and all you hold dear. It will sap your strength and eat up your sanity and you will hate yourself, you will not be able to stand yourself in the end - who could, to live such a life? - but you must persevere. For the Union.

And so, you will be introduced to your terrible sacrifice, your terrible duty, and he will smile when he meets you and say that his name is Jack. He'll take you to the movies, and will win things for you at a fairground, and will tell you look amazing in that new dress, bright and beautiful and lit up, like a queen. You will smile and nod and wonder why you ever wanted to be a worker at all.

Sometime later, you will turn to Jack, warm and cushioned in his arms, and tell him, you're the reason I took it up, you know. You're the reason I stopped being an obedient little worker, safe in the knowledge that he won't believe you.

In the morning, you will dress and be gone before he wakes up.


*

fin

Re: Alias ficlet: Ode to Normalcy

[bluerosefairy.livejournal.com]

*flails* Oh, thank you! This is gorgeous, the layers you've given Irina here. Caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, stomped into the ground by a child without the slightest idea of what would happen.

Absolutely lovely.

Shall use my icon of another dangerous Russian named Irina, as do not have an Irina Derevko icon. Hmm, must remedy that.

Re: Alias ficlet: Ode to Normalcy

[kangeiko]

I'm so glad you liked it! I haven't written Irina for so long, so it was a bit of a challenge. And my Soviet history isn't what it used to be, so I'm plundering my own upbringing for source material harder than ever.

Shall use my icon of another dangerous Russian named Irina, as do not have an Irina Derevko icon. Hmm, must remedy that.

Yes, you must! There are a squillion brilliant icons of Irina out there, although I warn you that quite a few are spoilery if you haven't seen past S3. How are you liking it, btw? S2 and S4 are my favourite. :)

Re: Alias ficlet: Ode to Normalcy

[bluerosefairy.livejournal.com]

Well, you managed beautifully. I adored it!

I warn you that quite a few are spoilery if you haven't seen past S3. How are you liking it, btw? S2 and S4 are my favourite.

Oh, don't worry, I've seen the entire thing. I watched it when it first aired - I was SUCH an Alias fangirl. I shipped Syd/Sark and Jack/Irina like no one's business, and I lurked around SD-1.net a lot. S2 and S4 were my faves, too. I'm in the middle of attempting to convert Em by tempting her with pretty Lena pics.

Re: Alias ficlet: Ode to Normalcy

[kangeiko]

I shipped Syd/Sark and Jack/Irina like no one's business, and I lurked around SD-1.net a lot.

queenspanky wrote lots of Syd/Sark, I am given to understand, should you still feel that way inclined. *g* I liked Jack/Irina myself, and also Jack/Sloane and Jack/Sloane/Irina. And Syd&Francie gen makes me ridiculously happy. Which is why I also like S1 quite a bit, before we lose Francie. The only ones I didn't like are Sark and Vaughn, really. :)

I'm in the middle of attempting to convert Em by tempting her with pretty Lena pics.

A sound strategy!

[watergal.livejournal.com]

Wow! You're fast!

Deadwood? Anything here that strikes a chord: Jane gen, Jane/Alma fascination, Jane/Bill worship, Seth/Sol, Seth/temper, Jane & Charlie on each others nerves with love, Jane & Doc one each others nerves almost as bad.

Not that I like Jane much...

[kangeiko]

*g* It is 1am here, so I shall have to head to bed as it is a school night - but will write you some Deadwood fic tomorrow, I promise. :) *note to self: rewatch Deadwood tomorrow, must not embarrass self*

Deadwood Ficlet: Blind Faith

[kangeiko]

OK. You, uh, ended up with a mix of a whole bunch of those, in the end, but it's nominally Jane/Bill worship.

Blind Faith

Jane ain't been to church any place like for a fair few years now. She don't see the occasion for it and will put in his place any man that sees it different. Bill and Charlie'd agree with her if she ever asked them, not that she would, mind you, 'cause she don't need no man's permission for not likin' that sorta thing, but supposin' she did, they'd agree. And if Bill's opinion is enough for her on some matters, well, havin' Charlie agree would just about clinch the deal.

Not that she'd ask, o'course.

And it ain't 'cause she don't feel clean enough for it, or cocksucking bullshit like that. Them whore over from that limey bastard's place like the good Reverend well enough to traipse on over it between fuckings, and it's not like they're kept clean, now, is it? Likely Jane is a lot cleaner in the eyes of the Lord, should the bastard care to look, than those dozy-headed cows.

Thing is, Jane never had no need for church, not since she was a girl and church failed her just like every other fucking thing. And who cares who's in charge, anyhows, whether it's a Reverend or a whoremonger or bent sheriff; bastards are all fucking cocksuckers out to fuck with her.

Not Bill, though, and not Charlie, either, though she'd rather bite off her own hand than say that out loud. She don't need no communion bread or watered-down wine to have faith in them, and no protection from all them other cocksuckers that don't come from her own guns. Jane ain't no little slip of a girl anymore, not like that poor waif still kept huddled in the rich widow's arms, sweet and helpless and just waiting to be fucked over, if anyone could reach her for long enough. No, Jane'll do right by her, like Bill did for her, and Charlie, though she'll never the bastard that, and will deny it if he asks.

Save Bill (and Charlie, but he ain't to hear it from her), Jane don't need nobody but herself. She ain't no little girl no more.

"I didn't see the service," Charlie says softly, later. "I wouldn't have left if I'd known, Jane, don't look at me like that. I wouldn't have left. And I didn't see the service, I wasn't there, I found out from Bullock and a bunch of bastards down Chayanne way."

Jane wants to punish him for that, for trying to excuse what he did, even though he didn't do nothing. What would he have done, anyhows, if he'd been there? Jane had been there, and she hadn't saved him. She wasn't no little girl no more, and she'd that limey bastard past her to the sweeping girl, and she'd let the coward Jack past her to Bill.

"It were a right lovely service," she said finally. "You'd'ave been proud of it, Charlie. That Reverend knows his stuff, and everyone there, paying their respects and weepin' and wailin' and carryin' on. It were right lovely."

Charlie's hand is tentative on her sleeve. "Tell me about it," he said.

And Jane takes a deep breath.

*

fin

[watergal.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeeee! Thank you! This is wonderful, and so much of what I love about Jane Deadwood rolled up into one package.

Jane calling the Lord a bastard...not exactly in a bad way, her complete disregard for social conventions of what is clean and unclean.

And the understated Bill & Charlie, and Jane & Bill, and Jane & Hard Knocks, and the almost blink-and-you-miss it Seth/Sol...just gah!

And Charlie sounds just perfect--awkward, uncomfortable--not even sure if he's wanted--yet determined to do the right thing regardless.

Really, really delightful, though it makes me homesick for Deadwood in the best possible way.

[kangeiko]

I'm so glad you like it! (Although, reading it over, I now see all the typos - curses, lj and it's lack of auto-correct!!)

And I'm now rewatching Deadwood as a result of this.