Tag: au: nos

Put Yourself In the Story, Part 3

This has been a year and more in getting it to a point where I have a scene with an end point. Because fucking brain weasels. But I have it! 😀 (And I am about to start another rewatch of DS9, so it’ll be a bit before I get to where I need to, but still.)

@norcumi @theotherguysride @peachesandscream56 @nyxserpent @booksaresacredspew @aniseandspearmint @queenkit @the-vagabond-tabby

Untitled

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | more to come?

Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
AU: NOS
Word Count: 1933 (6071)
Characters: Me, Elim Garak, Julian Bashir, Benjamin Sisko, Kira Nerys

Breakfast, questions, and the start of answers.

I wake up in the same place I fell asleep, which shouldn’t be a surprise. I’d almost hoped I’d wake back home, with this all having been something between a dream and a nightmare. For a moment, until I rolled over to look where I’d put my backpack the night before, there was a fear – pointless, silly – that while I was here, what I’d had with me when I arrived was not.

It’s still there, everything is still in it, my bear is still in my arms. My tunic is draped over the chair where I’d put my backpack, and the trousers with it. I needed to ask someone about how to get new clothes, so I could have at least two sets. And where to wash my clothes. They had to have laundry facilities somewhere, didn’t they?

For now, hopefully airing it out would be enough.

I’d only just gotten dressed and ventured out into the main room, bear under my arm, to see what sort of breakfast I could get from the replicator when a chime sounded, loud and slightly discordant, as if it were meant for different ears. It took a moment to realize it was the door chime.

The door controls work well enough without having to speak, although I’m not sure I’m so glad to be this close to the person on the other side without more warning than the door chime. Garak is the same height as my brother, but substantially broader, and a good deal more intimidating in person than on the screen.

He smiles almost immediately, taking a half-step backward. “I hope I didn’t wake you, and I am quite sorry for doing so if I did.”

I shook my head, taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment. Words. I need to use words. “I was already awake. Getting breakfast.” I keep my attention on his face for the moment, hyperaware of relative position and my own vulnerability. “Never used a replicator before.”

“If you’re in need of assistance, I’m more than willing to offer mine.” Garak isn’t quite looking straight at me, head tilted just slightly in a manner that I recognize, that puts me ever so slightly at ease. Probably shouldn’t. It is Garak, after all.

I chew on my lip a moment before nodding, stepping back and aside to let him in. Not taking my attention off him, though. Even if he does react in ways that make me think I should be safe, my brain will not stop screaming at me about danger. And I don’t have any anti-anxiety meds with me; they’d all been back at the RV before this happened.

“Just want some bacon and water.” I shift my grip on my bear, hugging him as I watch Garak over my bear’s head. I know it makes me look younger, makes me look more vulnerable, but right now, the comfort is more important.

Garak doesn’t fully turn his back on me, either, moving around to the replicator in a way that allows him to face me when he stops. “It will need a little more information than that, if it’s to provide you with a satisfactory meal.”

“Room temperature water. Crispy, hot bacon in strips. No more than four strips.” I circle around to the small table, so Garak doesn’t have to face away from the replicator. Listening as he tells the replicator what to make – the bacon and water for me, something I don’t recognize the name of for himself.

“So.” Garak sets the plates down, settling across from me with a brief smile. “I understand you have some information you want to share with me regarding a war that hasn’t even begun.”

“Not just you.” I pick at the bacon with one hand, though it’s just a little too hot to eat yet. It smells like bacon, if an unremarkable sort. “Kira and Sisko and Julian, too.”

Garak tilts his head, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little with what I thought was amusement. “I wasn’t aware you and the good doctor were so well acquainted.”

I hug my bear closer, reaching for my water to take a sip. I can feel my cheeks heating, and I want to curl up and hide. I have to work to think of Julian as Bashir, if I’m not writing from the point of view of someone who would think of him so. “Not.”

“If you aren’t, than I find it curious why you would use his given name, rather than his family name.” Garak takes a bite of his food, watching me intently.

Picking up a piece of the bacon, I nibble at it rather than answering, keeping my attention ostensibly on the plate. Aware of the slow movements of Garak eating his bite, taking up the napkin the replicator had given him with his food to wipe his lips.

“The show. Julian, Jadzia, Ziyal, Jake, Keiko. Sisko, Kira, O’Brien, Wynn, Eddington, Sloane, you. Never learned anything but family names for some people. Opaka, Damar, Bariel.” I pause, setting the rest of the slice of bacon down. “Dukat.”

Garak reaches for his own drink. “I am afraid he is quite the annoyance at the moment.”

“Dangerous, foolish, desperate.” I grimace, shaking my head. “Not annoying. Annoying are ignorable. Ignore Dukat, and he does horrible things.”

“Oh?” Garak looks only mildly curious, which either means he isn’t terribly interested, or he’s very interested and is hoping that by downplaying his curiosity, he’ll get me to tell him more.

I just stare at him a moment before looking back down at my bacon, picking up the piece I’d started eating, and nibbling at it again. I’m never very hungry this soon after I wake up, and the few pieces of bacon I have will be enough for now. If I can eat them all, with the worries about everything starting to circle again. How much to tell, how much to keep secret. How much I’ve already revealed with the list of names, though that at least probably isn’t much.

The silence draws out, waiting patiently for either of us to break it – Garak waiting for an answer to his question, while I just bask in the quiet that doesn’t require any filling. And the brain weasels running in circles over things I cannot do anything about yet.

It’s the computer that breaks the silence, requesting connection for Julian Bashir.

I flinched at the sudden sound, and carefully set down the last piece of bacon half-eaten. “Yes.”

“Leri? Are you awake?”

“And almost done breakfast.” Whatever the current meal time is, I have only just gotten up, so mine is breakfast. Thank you.

“Would you mind a visitor?”

“I already have one.” I glance at Garak a moment, who is doing his best to look harmless and innocent. I’m not sure it suits him, though he does a very good impression. “Garak wasn’t polite enough to ask first.”

“You could always have not answered the door.” He smiles genially, and I bury my face in my bear a moment, letting rude words run through my head.

“Visitor. Yes. Bring Sisko and Kira?” I ask after I look up again, glaring at Garak for a long moment. “Only have to answer questions once that way.”

“Of course.” I can all but hear Julian’s smile, the amusement, and wonder how much of it is of the long-suffering sort, knowing Garak for several years already as he has. “Bashir out.”

I pick up my bacon again, nibbling at it slowly to forestall any question Garak might ask now. Or at least to give me an excuse not to answer right away.

I’ve finished breakfast, and returned the empty plate and glass to the replicator for recycling when the door chime sounds again. It still sounds off, and too loud, and I can’t help flinching even as I go to the door. Keeping turned enough to see Garak, who is sitting at the table still, his hands visibly resting on it.

I smile, brief and hopefully cheerful, when I see my expected guests, waving them in, and taking a moment to figure out how to lock the door behind them. I don’t want anyone else to show up and sneak in. This is already enough people to have to talk to.

Turning around, I look at them, Garak standing now as the rest of them are. He’s still smiling, careful and neutral, and Julian is too, trying to be encouraging, I think. Sisko and Kira are both more stoic, though I think Kira is maybe a little puzzled.

“I hope you slept well.” Julian’s smile widens just a little, and I nod. “Did you get enough to eat?”

“Enough of breakfast.” I try to smile again, but I think it’s more a grimace. “Let me go get my laptop.”

I hope there’s enough charge in it to show more than a couple episodes, because I don’t know how to transfer the information off otherwise. And doing that would probably involve telling more people, and I don’t know if I can manage that. Not right now.

I move around the edge of the room to get to the doorway to the other room. Doorway, not a proper door, and I don’t really turn my back on it, either, as I fetch my laptop out of my backpack, juggling it and my bear. Maybe, eventually, I will be able to do that, but not yet, not when I don’t really know anyone, and don’t know the place.

“Doctor Bashir tells me that you have information about a war coming.” Sisko is watching me as I come back out into the main room, glancing briefly at my laptop. His voice is even and steady enough to sound gentle, though I’m not sure if that’s because he’s trying to be gentle or because I need to hear it that way.

“Dominion War.” I set the laptop on the table, dragging the chair I’d used earlier around so I’m facing them while I get it turned on and put the episodes in order. “Soon, I think. Months, maybe, at most.”

I don’t think I’d be able to tell even if I had mapped out the time between episodes and within episodes on a timeline. There’s just too many variables, and it feels like my thoughts are starting to run in circles again, and there’s not enough time and too much information and just.

“Morgyn. Breathe.” Julian is crouching next to me, his voice grounding me in the here-and-now, but not reaching out to touch, same as he had last night. “What’s wrong?”

“Too many things, not enough time.” I rub my fingertips over the edge of my laptop, following it from the dip in the middle of the front to the hinge and back again, over and over. Letting the familiar motion and sensation soothe.

“We don’t have to know everything. Just what you can show us.” Julian smiles, meeting my gaze for only a brief moment before he glances away, up at my laptop. “How does it start?”

“Mines at the wormhole entrance to keep the Jem’Hadar in the Gamma Quadrant, and Dukat promising to take back everything the Cardassians once ruled. Including Bajor and DS9.”

I have the episode on my laptop, and it’s the first one in the player’s queue. It takes only a couple clicks on the trackpad to start it, and I scoot back from the table to let them all watch without being behind me.

Put Yourself In the Story, Part 2

morgynleri:

This is not first-person POV, but then, it’s not a part where I’m physically present, even if I am the topic of conversation. It is also much shorter. Part three will be posted when I figure out how to get past breakfast and attempting to avoid answering questions from Garak.

@norcumi @theotherguysride @peachesandscream56 @nyxserpent @kediil-eperu @booksaresacredspew @aniseandspearmint @queenkit

Untitled

Part 1 | Part 2 | more to come?

Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
AU: NOS
Word Count: 633 (4139)
Characters: Julian Bashir, Benjamin Sisko, Kira Nerys, Elim Garak

There is a discussion among four people about the station’s newest visitor.

“I don’t think there’s any way to have a clear and coherent conversation in a way we would normally interpret it as such until our guest has had a chance to rest.” Julian tilts his head back against the wall, wishing he’d had a chance to get more rest than he had before Odo’s too-early call to the Promenade. “Even then, I’m not certain what will happen. Especially not after even those brief video clips they shared, or Leri’s certainty that there will be a war, and sooner than later, unless I’m completely wrong.”

“And you’re certain Leri is willing to share this information?”

“Only with the four of us.” Julian looks up, giving his audience a wry smile. Sisko is stoic as he has been of late, though Julian can see the worry in his captain’s eyes. Not to be remarked upon, though. Kira looks frustrated, if as worried as Sisko.

Keep reading

Reblogging because I’m going to post the third part shortly.

Put Yourself In the Story

morgynleri:

For those who said they’d read, and offered encouraging words.

@norcumi @theotherguysride @peachesandscream56 @nyxserpent @kediil-eperu @booksaresacredspew

Untitled

Part 1 | Part 2 | more to come?

Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
AU: NOS
Word Count: 3506
Characters: Me, Odo, Julian Bashir

Content Notes: There are parts of this that aren’t written from my POV, but anything where I am present is. This is a me who is unmedicated, at the end of a long, stressful day, at a point where my hormones are fucking with my brain chemistry. (See the end for more notes, as I didn’t want to get very long-winded here.)

Just a fan, taking a step from one world to another, and having a very hard time coping with that.

This is not where I was a moment before. A step before. I feel a little lighter, though the unwanted desire to fling flaming rocks at the planet still eats at the back of my mind. It’s also a little brighter here, even with ambient lights turned low. They’re not as dim as starlight.

I recognize where I am, though it can’t be real. It can’t be real, cannot be what I think it is, just an unexpected break with reality. A hallucination, though I’ve never had any this immersive before, and have no idea what could have caused it.

I turn in place, looking all around me, trying to find some break in the illusion, something I can use to break free of this. It still looks as real and solid and perfect as it had before. The walkways above, the great oval windows that looked out on blackness scattered with stars, the Replimat and Quark’s, the security office, the directory now behind me.

Keep reading

Reblogging because I’m going to post the third part shortly.

ladyvean:

Tell me about your Star Trek OCs.

*sees this cross their dash via @guljerry* Oooh. An excuse to babble about everyone.

Mm. Where to start.

Eka Ke

An OC from an original species, specifically written for A Galaxy Away From Home. Ne/nir/nem pronouns because four-gendered species, who follows Garak when Garak escapes from the being who thought xir owned him. (And then followed him when Garak went into a zone interdicted by Eka’s species, and effectively got nirself exiled because Eka was curious about Garak’s ability to lie and get away with it.)

Every other OC is Cardassian, so far. Most of them Obsidian Order or relatives of those in the Obsidian Order because of what I’ve been writing them in.

Nadya Gennel

A field operative only a little older than Garak, who has a penchant for long-term assignments, and following up on interesting bits of information independently. No interest in a spouse, and has an adopted son, which makes her something of an oddity.

In Children of the Order, her adopted son is a teenage Julian Bashir who she first met when his parents took him to Adigeon Prime for genetic resequencing. (Sometimes she thinks it might have been a mistake to take a long-term assignment to Earth after that netted her a son and little else, but on the other hand, Julian’s been an exemplary field operative following in her footsteps, so she’s really quite proud of him.)

Any other AU she shows up in, her son is Jakel, who is 8 at the end of the Dominion War, and I haven’t decided yet if he’s one of the war orphans left on Bajor and adopted at some point after the Occupation, or is a mixed Cardassian-Bajoran infant she adopted just at the end of the Occupation.

She lives in Lakarian City, and because I stubbornly headcanon that no matter what they want to claim, the Dominion did not succeed at killing everyone in Lakarian City, she’s one of the survivors. Even if she did lose most of her family who’d not moved elsewhere on Cardassia.

Salen Gennel

Nadya’s mother, and the doctor who Julian joins – and eventually takes over from – in Burning Bridges. I haven’t actually done anything to develop her in Children of the Order, and in the only other story I have in progress, she’s one of the dead in Lakarian City, as she never made it out of the hospital she works in (or runs).

Aerit Milar

An Obsidian Order surgeon, who tends to call herself a sculptor of new truths. She is justifiably proud of her skills, and is willing to accept favors as payment for doing work.

She lives in Lakarian City, though she wasn’t born there, and though when the Obsidian Order was officially dissolved, she took up a job as an archivist – officially – she’s never bothered to stop doing what she does best. I still haven’t figured out what she owes Garak that she does the work on Julian in Burning Bridges.

I also tend to headcanon her as the surgeon who Damar sends Dukat to for altering Dukat’s features so he appears Bajoran. What exactly the transaction was that allowed that to happen, I have no idea, but she’s annoyed that her work was used thoughtlessly and carelessly, found out, and as far as she’s concerned, utterly wasted.

In Children of the Order, she’s Julian’s primary physician, as well as the surgeon who has altered him multiple times. She’s mostly proud of him for his ability to readily adapt to whatever truth she’s been instructed to craft for him, and only mildly annoyed he was found out by the Bajorans and the Federation, since it wasn’t carelessness on his part.

The rest of my Trek OCs aren’t very developed yet, though eventually. I’ve a good half dozen I’m poking at for a post-canon story that only tangentially involves canon characters. Because I can, and because it’s worth exploring what happens when the only survivors of the destruction of Lakarian City (as Nadya puts it “a place of leisure, religious fanatics, and retired Obsidian Order families”) are those retired and not-so-retired Obsidian Order operatives and their families, and that because paranoia and building for that paranoia.

Mini Nano Day 7

Today’s writing is all notes, so I really don’t know how to snippet it. But I have figured out how to map siblings to cousins and everything else. And I only had to change one person’s death date, extrapolate the existance of another person, and outright create a third to make it all work.

*lets head thump onto the desk*

I am just really, really glad that Muzio Sforza had so damned many known offspring. It made it so much easier to figure the whole mess out.

Ok, that’s just to make the Sforzas work as they do in the show. Then there was working out how to make things work for the OC, and for one of the relationships to make sense. And I have thirty years worth of plot figured out, so I have plenty of stuff to play with once I actually get to this particular story. If I get to it as more than notes.

So. No snippet today, but there’s the spoiler-free ramble about the newest addition to the spreadsheet of doom.

Harry Potter: AU NOS: Wrong Side of Life

Fandom: Harry Potter
AU: NOS
Word Count: 1140
Characters: Alastor Moody | Mad-Eye Moody, Alexander Nott (EC), Hepzebah Morgan | Hepzebah Nott, Severus Snape
Ships: Severus Snape/Hepzebah Nott, Hepzebah Nott/Alexander Nott

Warnings: Emotionally abusive relationships

Two people thought dead dance in a Muggle club under the eyes of a madman and a paranoid retiree.

Notes:

The characterization of Nott and Snape are taken from the characters as played by R. in a long-dead game, as are the relationships between Nott, Snape, and Hepzebah. The lyrics that head each POV segment are from the Abney Park song The Wrong Side, as is the title. Yes, a song-fic.

Utterly ignores anything about Moody being dead. Does reference Snape’s death.

I dance where the darker crowds dance
In the pitch black clubs in the clove-stained trance

Watching the couple in the center of the dance floor, Alastor was almost tempted to think someone had actually managed to get a drug of some sort into his flask, no matter how vigilant he prided himself on being. Certainly if anyone else had told him who they were, he’d never have believed them. Never mind that both of them were supposed to be dead, and the dancers he was watching were nothing like any ghost he’d ever met. That they’d managed to fake their deaths, in fact, came as no surprise when one knew their abilities and personalities.

Nor was it the same instant denial that he knew the man’s former students would have, that Snape could possibly have a relationship of any sort with a woman. Or that the woman had to be drugged or cursed. Not if Snape valued his life, which Alastor had no doubt was his most precious possession.

He would have, at least, before he’d caught a stray scrap of conversation that had brought him here. The expression on the normally saturnine man’s face, along with the body language that practically screamed that anyone who wanted the woman would have to go through him made him re-evaluate that assessment.

Snorting quietly, Alastor reached for his flask, taking another sip, continuing merely to watch from his relatively safe vantage point at one end of the bar. To the wizarding world, the two dancing in the middle of a Muggle club were dead, and so long as they didn’t hurt anyone, he wasn’t inclined to tell anyone he’d found them.

Even if anyone would believe him.

This our time, the nights our day
We’ll dance this fading life away

“We’re being watched.” Hepzebah tilted her head back against Severus’ shoulder, baring the line of her throat to his appreciative gaze. “He’s back again.”

“He won’t tell anyone what he knows,” came the murmured reply, his lips brushing the curve of her ear. His voice as much felt in the rumble against her back as heard.

“I wouldn’t imagine anyone would believe him.” Hepzebah rolled her shoulders, her hips twisting in small movements in time to the music around them. “Anymore than they’ll believe our other lurking observer.”

“He won’t take it on himself to do anything, either.” Snape chuckled, a dark and amused sound that made her lips curl in a delighted smile. “You know me better than that, Eris.”

She laughed aloud, no less dark in her amusement than he in his, and twisted in his arms to twine her hands together behind his neck. Pressed as close to him as robes and their constant audience would permit as she smiled up at him. “You are a delightfully vicious man, Severus. What did you do to the poor sod?”

“Nothing I’ll tell you with an audience.” Severus smirked as she pouted, his fingers digging into her hips as he kept them in the center of the dance floor, safely away from those who might do something foolish if they were permitted to do more than watch. He leaned down to whisper in her ear, barely audible over the music that pounded around them, “Perhaps when we find a subject for you, I’ll show you.”

Eyes bright with delight, Hepzebah used her grip on his neck to pull herself up on her toes, kissing him fiercely. Feeling the impotent rage from her own pawn in their game at the back of her mind as she did, and merely laughing as she pulled away, letting herself get lost in the music once more.

I’ve been to the darker side of hell
Played with your fear and enjoyed it well

He hated watching them, no matter where it was, but he didn’t dare let her out of his sight, not again. She’d died once, and she was back, and he wouldn’t make the mistake of letting her die again. He didn’t like letting Snape have her, but she’d not given him a choice. His angel and his demon, all wrapped up in a dark shell that he’d always thought fragile. Still did, even if she looked less so than when she’d lived her first life with him.

No, his precious, beloved wife had changed since her resurrection, become stronger. He knew she’d told him she’d never died, but he’d seen it. He’d buried her, went to her grave every night while she was dead. Slept there sometimes, simply to be closer to her. Watched her ghost at her writing desk every day, and mourned that he couldn’t have saved her.

But still she was his, still haunted him even though she was alive again, still played with him as she always had. Wrapped him around her dainty fingers, and he let her. He was nothing without his dark angel, his delicate demon. No matter what games she played, pretending to belong to someone else. She would come back to him, he had simply to wait and cherish her as he always had, and she’d come back to him.

She had to. After all, hadn’t she come back to life for him?

I run on the wrong side of life
I’m the one you feared when you wooed your wife

It hadn’t been his ideas that had saved his life in the end, and Severus knew that well as he pulled Hepzebah close to him, hiding them from any prying eyes simply by doing as those around them were. It didn’t make him any less smug about having fooled the entire wizarding world, bar two, into thinking him dead, sacrificed to defeat the Dark Lord. Not when it left him free to indulge in the darker nature he’d had to hide ever since he had been caught by Dumbledore and his precious Order.

A soft hum drew his wandering thoughts back to his dance partner, the woman who’d made the Dark Arts more than simply a tool to him. More than something to be used to achieve his goals, but an end in themselves, a pleasure and an addiction like nothing else. Encouraged him to explore them to their fullest extent – coercion, pain and death. Perhaps simplified for the hurried artist in the Unforgivables, but that wasn’t the end of them, or even the beginning. Not for true artistry.

True artistry took time and an appropriate canvas. One like Alastor Moody, entirely paranoid, refining security to as much an art as Severus had refined his own use of the Dark Arts. Or like Nott, as Hepzebah had chosen for her own masterpiece. Impotent to stop them, in the end, the both of them. One raging in silence and madness, the other so utterly obsessed and paranoid that he might as well be mad.

Originally Posted: 21 March 2012

AO3 | DW

Harry Potter: AU NOS: Respectable

Fandom: Harry Potter
AU: NOS
Series: Fireside Tales
Word Count: 243
Characters: Draco Malfoy
Ships: Draco Malfoy/Blaise Zabini/Pansy Parkinson

There are days when Draco really wishes that Blaise would be jealous of his being the one to marry Pansy, if only because it might make him feel less miserable about it. Not that he doesn’t want to be married to Pansy – he’d sooner declare himself a fervent supporter of revealing the Wizarding World to Muggles than try to tear himself away from Pansy and Blaise…

And that’s really it, right there. It’s not just Pansy he wants. And he knows Blaise is as invested in him as Blaise is invested in Pansy.

But no one can know. That Pansy has a lover, or that Draco might have a mistress, those are deviances that can be tolerated. Even the idea that Draco and Blaise might fuck on occasion, or all three might be in bed together, that’s not entirely out of the realm of what society will overlook.

That all three of them are more than that? No. They cannot know. No one can know. Draco isn’t Harry Potter, and his lovers aren’t Hermione Granger or Padma Patil. They aren’t the darlings of the world who can get away with anything because they destroyed a Dark Lord. They’re heroes, perhaps, but they’re Slytherin heroes, they’re proper young men and women. Respectable.

Even when Draco really wants to tell the world to fuck off, and wants to be the unrespectable, irresponsible, flagrantly improper man in love with both his wife and his male lover.

Originally Posted: 24 December 2013

AO3 | DW

Harry Potter: AU NOS: More Personal

Fandom: Harry Potter
AU: NOS
Series: The Travel Collection
Word Count: 427
Characters: Millicent Bulstrode

The house is nestled in a garden grown riotous first with the lack of attention, and then by deliberate design, and all around, the plants drip with damp from the fog that had rolled in that morning. It suits Millicent just fine, and allows her the illusion that she’s far from civilization, hidden in a forest or mountain valley. Or indeed, anywhere but in England, in the home she’d not particularly cared for growing up.

At least her parents are dead, and she doesn’t have to listen to her mother scold her for her lack of marriage prospects, or endure her father’s patient lectures on how she just needs to apply herself more to learning a trade, since she’s clearly not going to be able to catch a man who’ll provide for her properly.

A soft snort escapes her, and the cat in her lap looks up for a moment before butting her hand in demand for her to continue petting it. She has the house, owned by her family for generations, and she has enough money in the vault to live modestly with a few cats. The one neatly-kept garden on the property provides enough for potions and vegetables, and sometimes even some spare to sell to the local Muggles or wizards.

Some of her classmates might wonder at that, and ask where the Slytherin ambition was in her. But they assume ambition for power is the only ambition that a Slytherin will ever show – much to the annoyance of some of her former House-mates, and Millicent herself. Her ambition isn’t for power, isn’t for glory, but for a life outside of a traditional role of a pure-blood woman.

And so she spurns marriage offers or a Ministry career. She disdains motherhood or society life. She lives quietly in her house, keeps her cats, and grows herbs and vegetables. She goes out from the wizarding world into the Muggle one to sell her produce, and to attend a Muggle university, and to learn what she can of how their society works. And then she brings some of the good ideas she sees home, and she does what she can – a little at a time, and without the oversight of the Ministry, thank you – to help those who cannot help themselves for trying.

There’s a satisfaction there, to change the world, to make sure that she will be remembered well, and that maybe it will help people remember that Slytherins aren’t inherently evil, but just motivated by something more personal than the “greater good”.

Originally Posted: 23 May 2013

AO3 | DW

Harry Potter: AU NOS: A Cure

Fandom: Harry Potter
AU: NOS
Series: The Travel Collection
Word Count: 302
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Dudley Dursley

Dudley looked out over the sea from the top of the cliff, unconcerned by the moonlight pouring over him, though most in his position would be worried by the fact of the full moon. The only werewolf nearby, after all, was welldosed with wolfsbane, and content to drowse in the cottage behind him.

A pop announced the arrival of the man who’d approached him with the idea  the dream  that has him out here watching over Lupin.

“How is Professor Lupin doing?” Draco Malfoy hadn’t exactly been friendly at Hogwarts, but that perhaps made them good allies for their little project. It certainly made it simpler to keep others from guessing what they’re up to, since no one expected them to work together wilingly.

“Sleeping. Probably will all night.” Dudley shrugged, turning his back on the ocean. “He didn’t so much as whimper during the transformation, so at least there’s that working.” It wasn’t what they had hoped for, but it was better than the setbacks they’d had at some points in this project.

“He still changed.” Draco grimaced, and ran a hand through his fair hair. “Is there any other change that can be made to the potion itself?”

“Not without killing Professor Lupin.” Dudley had refined the potion under Snape’s watchful eye during his last year at Hogwarts, as far as it could be without destroying it’s effectiveness as a treatment. “And I can’t safely combine any other potions with it that might ameliorate other symptoms, either.”

Which left them still searching for the refinement of spellwork that would achieve at least the goal of preventing the transformation altogether, without sacrificing the mental faculties of a werewolf. It might not remove the curse, it might not prevent the transmission of it, but their hope is to find a cure, eventually.

Originally Posted: 23 May 2013

AO3 | DW

Jupiter Ascending: AU NOS

Four snippets of different AUs, all with the same characters. @koiotchka​, if you’re up for reading it (it makes more sense if you’ve seen the movie, but hopefully isn’t entirely confusing if you haven’t). Also, @elegantmess-southernbelle, the story thing I actually got words for at Gulf, if you want to see the (mostly) finished product.

Untitled

Fandom: Jupiter Ascending
AU: NOS (4 different)
Word Count: 1480
Characters: Stinger Apini, Taylinn Adonai (OC), Kiza Apini (peripherally)
Ships: Stinger/Taylinn

Four lives that Stinger Apini never lived, with a woman he never met.

The Beloved Lord of Death

He’s a young Legionnaire, assigned to guard the alcazar of an Entitled for a rotation. Handsome, temperamental, and a little too observant for his charge’s taste. Willing enough to tryst when he’s technically off-duty, and she stops pretending not to be the Lady she is by right.

She’s on her seventh millennium of her second Recurrence, arrogant, intelligent, and ruthless. Amused by those who do not see as much as they think, if more than most. A confined murderer and manufacturer of death, who is comfortable with lying by omission to her jailor and lover.

A rotation after he’s on his next assignment, an ursine splice brings a tiny, barely-weaned child to him. Stinger names the child Kiza, and finally thinks to look up the Entitled he’d been guarding before.

No one reprimands him for what he had done – indeed, he doubts they even care, since the paperwork for Kiza had been all taken care of before she was brought to him. No one comments on his daughter over the years, and no one asks about her mother. If they assume she’s dead, all the better. She has nothing to offer his daughter save notoriety and a short life.

Heir To Her House

They meet when he’s in charge of security for a party full of Entitled, and she’s hiding from her peers and their scorn. When the system is compromised, he’s too busy deploying his men to protect those still in the ballroom to notice she’s slipped away. It takes four hours to find her, and the system returns as he does so.

She’s happier with her hands elbow-deep in one or another piece of technology, constantly improving what others have made, and designing her own. A friend to the Aegis, and the Legion, who seems never to care if a person is technically her peer or not. Who treats the Splices who work for her family as if they are family, even though it annoys her cousins and uncle.

When he wants a daughter, a child to raise of his own, she’s the one he goes to when he cannot get the necessary permits or permissions on his own. That she decides the best means of doing so is to bully her way through the requirements to marry him seems odd, until she lays out her reasons. His daughter will have all the Gyre at her fingertips, if she so desires, all for one Entitled to never have to see any part of the process of making a child. Making an Heir.

He can’t bear to ask her aid again when he loses everything defending Caine, not even when she offers him whatever he desires. Later, he wishes he had taken her up on that, if only so Kiza wouldn’t have turned her down when they found the Bug. It would have left Titus without anything to bribe him with to betray his queen and his friend.

Of course nothing settles down after that, and when a familiar ursine splice comes bearing Taylinn’s death certificate and her will, he longs for the simple days when all that could happen is an Entitled bribes him to betray others. Splices are not meant to be Heirs, and he cannot help but wonder why it’s him who’s supposed to take over, and not Kiza as had been negotiated.

Three years, two assassination attempts, one suicide, and one person back from the dead later, and he still doesn’t know if Taylinn underestimated Kiza’s strength, or wanted to protect her the only way she had left. But he cannot return the Title he does not want, or the estates that Taylinn was protecting as much as she was protecting Kiza. Only leave the bulk of the work to her in repayment for what she gave him.

Bitter After the Sweet

He’s on leave, exploring the open park of a planet full of flowers. Relaxed and enjoying the company of the bees that dance iridescent around him with tales of the best flowers and good honey and strong hives.

She’s on a forced sabbatical, bereft of her research and frustrated with the lack of what she wants to do. Far from her hostel, utterly exhausted when she all but trips over him in the tall grass of a meadow.

Conversations about genetics, social strata, and the general unfairness of how the Gyre works turn into long walks and laughing kisses and trysts that end when his leave is over.

Kiza is two when her mother sets her in his arms, and walks away. She writes, but he doesn’t see her again until his wings have been taken, and he’s not sure what to do next. Shared bitterness over the sentence is not the best recipe for a good reunion. Nor does her evasiveness over what she has been doing since she brought Kiza to him.

The time after that, he’s pacing the hallway of his own home, while a doctor tries to keep her from bleeding out, one enemy too many catching up with her when she’s too far from her supplies to have ready healing. She refuses to let him take her to an Earth hospital, to put anyone beyond them in danger if her enemies dare to come here.

There will be no more sabotaged factories or poisoned RegeneX or murdered Entitled, trying to drive custom to her own product. Stinger gives Jupiter the sheaves that are all the inheritance Taylinn has to offer, with formulae and plans for vat-grown regen serum, and hopes that Jupiter will manage it better.

“I Will Not Be Denied”

He’s still in the custody of his Splicer when he meets her, and almost asks if she’s looking to purchase Splices for her service. She’s all laughter and bright smiles like flowers and honey, and it makes him wonder for a little while if maybe he might not fit best with the Legion.

She’s looking for a different sort of Splice, and hides her secrets behind cheerful flirting with the prettiest of Marcellian’s creations. He’s young, and sweet, and attentive, and all the things she hasn’t been in a long time. He almost makes her regret leaving without him.

When he meets her again, he’s in the Legion, and she’s asked for a security escort while she surveys her estates. Still the brightest light in the room, undimmed by time or faulty memory, and with a sweet smile when she recognizes him.

She thinks he’s as handsome as before, and is glad her purchase from Marcellian is currently on the long assignment she picked the Splice for. No need for that poison to be used against someone who she will have to let go again anyway. For all that she regrets to do so.

A third meeting leaves him with a ring on a chain, because she does not trust her peers not to have a screaming fit about the one etched around his finger. Fear well founded, because they have it stripped from him when it is found, though it takes his defense of Caine for anyone even to look.

They do far worse to her, though the tale spun through the Gyre for exiling an Entitled beyond the border of the Commonwealth is that she’s responsible for 214 deaths of Entitled or their family members. No one wants to acknowledge that she married him as if he were another Entitled, to share in her wealth, if nothing else.

Kiza adapts to life with him well enough, though it is perhaps because Taylinn always makes sure she can contact them, no matter how dangerous that might be to do.

Contact that nets her an official invitation to Earth from Jupiter, however heavily restricted her movements are while there, or how deeply obvious it is that no one wants her near Stinger.

Sweet smiles, kind words, and bright sunshine, and every bit the delight he remembers. He knows that it’s not all she is, that those deaths were real and at her instigation, if not at her hand, but those shadows seem to fall away when she’s near. How, he’s never figured out.

She knows exactly what she wants out of this chance, so innocently offered by a young Reccurence who does not know as much as she should. Allows the family she’d taken with her into exile to give her all the tools she needs to get it. Once she is returned to her exile, all is over but waiting.

Her son is six when the Commonwealth first becomes aware of him. Bearing his own seal, the paperwork quietly filed by her agents on Orous to ensure legitimacy of the claim. Announced across the Gyre as Miere Adonai, Heir to Taylinn Adonai, First Primary of that House, and son of Captain Stinger Apini, Skyjacker of the Legion.