The Borgias: Secrets in Crimson: Unburied Trouble

Thank you to @jabberwockypie for cheerleading this AU’s beginning, and to @empresslucrezia for inspiring where this AU is going to go and this is the first necessary prequisite to get to.

AO3 | DW

Fandom: The Borgias (Showtime)
AU: Secrets in Crimson
Word Count: 1645
Characters: Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza, Guiliano della Rovere | Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II would be having a better day if Ascanio Sforza had had the grace to just stay dead.

“Cardinal Sforza.”

The voice is flat, disbelieving, and Ascanio lets himself smile a moment before he turns away from the windows of the papal apartments to face della Rovere.

“Your Holiness.”

Ascanio makes a proper bow, coming forward to kneel and kiss the ring extended to him automatically. Though it is snatched back as his lips brush it, as della Rovere recalls that Ascanio should be dead. Has, in fact, been dead and buried for weeks now. Possibly months. Time passes differently when one is dead.

“You were buried. Died of plague.”

Della Rovere is watching him with a horrified fascination, and Ascanio allows himself another sardonic little smile. It had been worth the effort to sneak into the papal apartments, if only to see the expression on della Rovere’s face.

“I remember.” Ascanio returns to the window he’d been looking out of, settling on the wide ledge beneath it. “I hear whispers that you plan to build me a mausoleum as part of your expansion of the basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo. I’m almost flattered.”

“You were a worthy and honest opponent.” Della Rovere moves to sit in the straight-backed chair near the cold hearth that Ascanio remembers him having brought in after he’d had the papal apartments stripped of the Borgia finery and decoration. “It’s the least I can do.”

Ascanio tilts his head in acknowledgement of that. It is nice, to know that he hasn’t been entirely forgotten already, for all that he had failed in his final years to maintain his influence after the fall of his cousins, one by one.

“How are you here again, if I might ask?” Della Rovere is watching him with sharp eyes and the carefully bland mask that Ascanio knows well from consistory and conclave.

“You would have to ask my patron about the how. I declined to ask exactly what is required for him to ressurect someone he chooses to bring back.” Though he does expect that if they opened his grave, they would find the remains of his decaying body. He hadn’t woken up in his grave, after all.

“So you are more than a mere apparition. Who is your patron?”

“I didn’t ask his name.” Ascanio had not felt that the being was evil, and it had been hard enough to look at him when Ascanio felt he was looking into a warped mirror. Himself, in the black robes of a Dominican monk. “Only the cost of what he offered.”

“And what was that cost?”

“Never to die, even if I should wish an end.” Never to enter Heaven, though it also promised he would never be condemned to Hell, either. Ascanio isn’t entirely sure either exists in the first place, though it makes less difference now than it did when he had lived and died.

“Nothing more?” Della Rovere raises an eyebrow, and Ascanio smirks in return, if only for a moment.

“If there is to be more, he has yet to tell me.” Ascanio will not share that he had asked for this because there were still Borgias left in the world whose ambitions he worried for. Never mind that Cesare Borgia was locked away in Spain, or that Lucrezia Borgia seems to have settled happily into the role of wife and mother and duchess. So long as they live, he would not ask to be released from this bargain.

“And why are you here?” The small gesture della Rovere makes could indicate the apartments, the Vatican, or Rome herself. Perhaps all of them.

“I did not cease to be Cardinal Sforza simply because I died, Your Holiness. I still hold those oaths sacred. What use you would choose to make of a Cardinal who was dead and now cannot die, I cannot say.” Ascanio studies the ring he still wears on his finger. It had been the one thing he wore when he woke, since apparently even his patron has limits to his power. “I will need a new hat, and new robes, however. I’m afraid they did not survive my ressurection.”

Della Rovere’s face goes through an interesting contortion, as if he is envisioning how Ascanio might have woken into this new life, and isn’t certain if he regrets it or not.

“I think it would be inadviseable to bring your continued existence to the knowledge of your brother Cardinals.” Della Rovere smiles, thin and mirthless. “I would not wish to have a consistory full of Cardinals that will never die.”

Ascanio chuckles a moment, shaking his head. “I do not think most of them would be offered this bargain, Your Holiness.”

“Too much of God, or too little?”

“Both, I think, if not necessarily in the same person.” Ascanio shrugs, leaning back a little in the embrasure, feeling the press of the wall against his shoulders. It’s nice that such things are solid again, rather than something he could drift through without truly noticing. “Most are content enough to die when it is their time, and ascend to Heaven as they’re certain is their right. I was not.”

“Afraid you might find yourself in Hell, rather than Heaven?” Della Rovere is still watching him closely, and Ascanio finds the continued scrutiny amusing. He’s not going to vanish, or suddenly become some hellish creature to torment his former rival.

“No. I was never concerned about the disposition of my immortal soul.” He laces his fingers together around his knee, watching della Rovere in turn. “I had more worldly concerns when I was alive, and I could not let them go when I died.”

Della Rovere scoffs, shaking his head. “I will not return to you your Cardinal’s hat if all you plan to do is return to the petty intrigues and acquisition of power that plagues all men.”

“Those are not the concerns which kept me here.” Ascanio refrains from smiling at the disbelief on della Rovere’s face. “I was Vice Chancellor to a Pope with acknowledged children, Your Holiness. There are still three of those children living.”

One of them without any evident ambition, but Ascanio will not entirely discount Gioffre Borgia until he is certain the young man is dead, buried, and passed on to whatever might await him. It is Cesare Borgia – even imprisoned, he will never be truly rendered harmless save by a lasting death – and Lucrezia Borgia who concern him most.

“You wished to return for the Borgia family.” There is venom in della Rovere’s voice, as well as a wealth of disgust, but both are expected. Ascanio knows just how much della Rovere despises the Borgias.

“How else am I to be certain that they don’t cause further harm in their ambitions?” Ascanio gives della Rovere a bland smile. “They have few enough people who are willing to do such a thing.”

“You don’t intend to assist them?”

“At the moment, I am in no position to truly assist any of them. I am a Cardinal without income or influence, unless Your Holiness chooses to return some of the benefices which were mine in life.”

Della Rovere is silent a moment, finally looking away from Ascanio to study the summer sky outside the window instead. “If I were to gift you such benefices again, would you use the money to aid Cesare Borgia?”

“He is currently imprisoned in Segovia, is he not?” No doubt plotting escape, but Ascanio no longer has the ability to drift where his thoughts take him to see what Cesare is currently up to. “Your Holiness has only to ensure that I must remain in Rome to be certain I can do nothing to provide him assistance.”

Return to him his Cardinal’s hat and robes and place in the consistory. Let someone else be Vice Chancellor, he doesn’t care, but for all that he would see that the Borgias that live have a minder, he is still a Prince of the Church, and has no wish to leave that behind.

“And what do I get in return for your continued presence in Rome? Besides knowing that you will not go directly to whoever might aid Cesare Borgia in escaping his just imprisonment?”

“An ally in your consistory, no matter how much your other Cardinals protest what changes you might deem appropriate for them and our Holy Mother Church. Both now, and in conclave once you have departed this world.” Ascanio meets della Rovere’s gaze steadily. “Someone who can be relied upon not to assist you in departing this world, no matter what enemies you might make.”

“Not even if you’re asked to do so by a Borgia?”

“I have a vested interest in being certain you’re content in your death when the natural course of the world brings it, Your Holiness. To aid in your assassination would be against my best interests.”

“And if nothing else, I can trust you to act in your own best interests.”

That was not a question, and Ascanio does not feel the need to reply. Della Rovere knows full well that Ascanio will act in his own – and his family’s, what’s left of it – best interests. That his best interests may also encompass what is best for those Borgias that still live also needs not be spoken to be known. Pope Alexander had seen to that years ago.

“Very well.” Della Rovere straightens a little in his chair. “I would keep your renewed life a secret from the College of Cardinals at the moment, and put your talents to use elsewhere. When I deem it the proper time, then you will rejoin your brother Cardinals to continue the work of our Holy Mother Church.”

It will suffice, for now, even if it isn’t entirely what Ascanio wants. And if della Rovere proves to be a fool, Ascanio can tell the consistory himself of his continued existence.

“As you wish, Your Holiness.”

Criminal Minds: A Darker Twist: Safe

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Criminal Minds
AU: A Darker Twist
Word Count: 100
Characters: Spencer Reid, Maeve Donavon
Ship: Spencer/Maeve

Warnings: Dark AU

She’s warm and welcome in his arms. Safe. Beloved. Here, she’ll stay safe, high above the noise and fume of the city. Spencer smiles to himself as he dances slow circles with Maeve. It’s been nearly a year since he’d eliminated the threat of her stalker, to keep his muse safe. A year of peace, so she can see that she is safe. That he keeps his promises. Even, that he can keep his promises without bloodshed or death.

Perhaps he can do this forever, to keep her happy. If it keeps her safe, he thinks he can do anything.

Star Wars: All Her Daughters: Home

AO3 | DW

For @theotherguysride, because you sparked this.

@norcumi, @lilyrose225writes, @queenkit

Fandom: Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy
AU: All Her Daughters
Word Count: 500
Characters: Tree | CC-0623 (OC)

Tree takes a moment to watch the sun set and the stars come out, and to reflect on the unexpected direction life has taken.

The house is a sprawling thing of interconnected rooms and large windows and skylights, difficult to defend but full of sunlight and the bright laughter of small children. On top of a hill next to a small lake, with trees that come just too close for an ex-soldier’s comfort. Nothing like they’d thought they’d have after the war.

Of course, they never thought they’d be alive at the end of the war.

Tree sits on one of the flat sections of roof, watching the sky turning from 501st blue and white to 212th gold and Coruscant scarlet and the violet willow of his own discarded armor. Alone for the moment, but that’s why he’s up here. Everyone has their own way of finding a moment’s peace, and everyone knows not to pester those who have sought such privacy.

Looking away from the first pinprick of stars in a steadily darkening sky, he turns his attention to the wide swatch of grass between the house and the lake, where there are still children playing. The older younglings, watched over by Generals Kenobi and Secura – no. Not Generals. Master Kenobi and Knight Secura. Jedi, only Jedi, and nothing more.

The younger ones will already be inside, fed dinner and pestering Master Yoda for bedtime stories. The little green troll had shown up soon after they’d finished the initial building of the house, and Kenobi had let him stay. It seems to be working out well enough, and Tree knows that it helps to have another person to watch out for the younglings, born and adopted.

And maybe having Yoda here is why the Jedi Order hasn’t come calling to try to scoop up any of the younglings, even the ones who could have been taken. Tree doesn’t really know, and for all that the clones were made of the Jedi, he doesn’t want to know. It’s enough that their children will stay here, with them, all of them.

Tree shakes his head, a small smile crossing his face as he tilts his head back again, watching the stars as the light from the sun vanishes over the horizon. He never visited most of them, though he could name them, the ones that were once part of the Republic, with worlds spinning around them. Some of them still are, and those that aren’t, well. It’s not his job to spy on them, or the job of his Jedi and his brothers to bring them back into the fold.

It still feels strange, to not have all of that weight on his shoulders, even if they were made to bear it. All he’s responsible for now is this house, and those within it, and he has plenty of help with that.

He watches the stars for a long moment more, listening to the clatter of younglings being herded back inside, before he lets out a long breath, and pushes up from his chair, heading for the trap door and the family waiting for him.

Notes:

Tree has mostly only existed on the periphery of Butcher and River so far, but he’s half of the commanders – Mouse is the other – of the group of SpecOps clones that were mixed Jango-clones and Shmi-clones (because if you try to clone Anakin, you get Shmi instead).

Highlander: The Priest, the Goddess, and the Scholar: Anat’s Tears

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Highlander, Phoenician Mythology
AU: The Priest, the Goddess, and the Scholar
Word Count: 790
Characters: Anat, Darius, Marcus Constantine

“I’m not entirely dead.”

She’s in his garden, planting dormant bulbs in every spare bit of soil that isn’t occupied by herbs. Barely leaving enough of a path winding between her plantings to reach the herb beds. That they’re not even real until she plunges her hand into freshly dug holes is a profligate use of her power that he doesn’t expect.

“I know you’re watching me, Darius.” Her voice is rough with grief, and she shifts to allow herself a better line of sight. Where she can see him in her peripheral vision. “I’m not like MacLeod or most of your friends who cannot see beyond the living world.”

Darius doesn’t move from the doorway, not yet. He still hasn’t determined his new limits, and while he thinks the garden might be within them, that doesn’t excuse pushing too far, too soon. Not when he’s utterly out of his depth.

“I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” He knew she’d come; he’d be a fool if he hadn’t expected it. But for her to arrive as quickly as she had speaks, he thinks, of more use of power than she would normally bother with.

“Mot told me. About the dreams as well.” Anat pauses a moment before pushing to her feet and turning. He doesn’t expect the raw fury on her face. “You let us do nothing when we might have. It would have been worth burning it all to save you. And now we can do nothing to bring you back.”

“I’m not entirely dead,” he points out quietly, folding his hands in his sleeves as he meets her gaze. Steady and calm, even in the face of a deity’s wrath.

“And I am to simply accept that you will be forever caught between life and death, trapped in the confines of one small church and the gardens that surround it?”

Anat takes a step toward him, her form wavering slightly as if in the shimmer of heat off desert sands. Around her, he can see the plants growing, the bulbs she’s planted shooting up green spikes surrounded by leaves and topped with trailing sprays of brilliantly red flowers. Not merely use of her power, he thinks, but manifestation of her anger and grief.

A sound in the church behind Darius breaks the moment, and Anat’s wavering control firms, her form as solidly human as that of the man who’s entered the church. The garden around her still blooms, the new plants a broad splash of crimson that evokes the thought of newly-spilt blood, even as she steps around Darius, ignoring him and the man – Marcus, come to mourn or to say goodbye, Darius thinks – as she walks away.

Marcus glances at the woman walking from the door that leads to Darius’ rooms and the garden beyond, frowning a moment as something about her tugs at his memory. She’s ignoring him, and moving too quickly for him to make the connection before she’s out the door. He hesitates a moment, before continuing as he’d intended, into the rooms that had belonged to Darius for so long. Where they’d talked long hours, with tea and chess to distract them from whatever subjects the conversation covered.

He’d almost think Darius was still here, watching him as he looked around the room. There’d be little enough to remove, if Marcus hadn’t been certain that Darius would prefer the few belongings he’d had be left for his successor. Marcus reaches out to touch the chess board a moment before moving past it toward the open garden door, his attention caught by the brilliant color of some flower.

Flowers that are everywhere, sprays of tiny scarlet blooms that trail like the branches of a weeping willow from the tops of sturdy spikes. They are naggingly familiar, though he has to think for a long moment before he can place them. Flowers that bloom through any weather, though the leaves that wreath the base of the spikes die back in the cold of winter or the dry heat of the desert.

He crouches a moment to touch one of the sprays, his fingers coming away damp with the nectar that collects in the tiny wells. It tastes of salt, and brings to mind tears and blood. The same as the flowers that graced a single spike the height of a man in an Egyptian temple. Marcus knows there will be no seeds, no way to transplant such a flower to another garden. There never has been, for all the trouble some mortals have gone through to do so.

“What name did she bear to you, old friend?” he murmurs as he stands. Remembering the flowers, and his one encounter with the woman who made them grow, centuries past now.

Doctor Who: In the Doctor’s Place: Alone

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Doctor Who
AU: In the Doctor’s Place
Series: The Travel Collection
Word Count: 152
Characters: Romana

She has stayed on Earth for a century and more, letting her TARDIS heal, and mourning all she has lost. Romana isn’t certain she wants to leave yet, but all too soon she will begin to encroach on the Doctor’s favorite centuries, and she cannot have him meet her too soon. Cannot have him learn his fate, no matter how much she wants to see him again, how much she wants to grab him and tell him to run, and never stop. Never go home.

Most especially, she wants to shake him and ask him why he thought her life more important than his own. Why he’d lied, and told her he would join her, that he would be able to escape before the lock took effect. A question she doubts he could answer in any but the regeneration that had left her the last of their kind, alone in the universe.

MCU: Heroes Are Villains: Agent and Raindeer Games

AO3 | DW

Fandom: MCU
AU: Heroes Are Villains
Series: Fireside Tales
Word Count: 401
Characters: Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Loki (MCU), Phil Coulson

And he’s kind on board with the whole “burn the world down and build new in their image” idea that Loki’s trying to argue.

Tony supposes he could step in and interrupt the argument going on in front of him, but that would ruin the entertainment of it. Besides, if he’s going to interrupt Agent and Raindeer Games, he’d need a proper plan, and right now, he’s too tired to come up with one. That, and he’s kind on board with the whole “burn the world down and build new in their image” idea that Loki’s trying to argue.

No one steals their kid.

He leans back against the bar, tilting his head as he continues to watch, almost forgetting the drink he has in one hand. This is far more relaxing than alcohol, anyway, and it might give him ideas.

“You know, it’ll be interesting to watch what they do to Fury if he doesn’t actually listen to what I told him yesterday.” Clint is sitting on the bar – lounging, really – watching the argument with a shit-eating grin.

“It might have been more entertaining seeing what they’d have done if you didn’t make it back before dinner.” Tony smiles wryly, taking a sip of his scotch. “The idea of Fury’s helicarrier in shambles is actually appealing right now.”

Clint shrugs, shifting so he’s leaning against Tony, his chin hooked over Tony’s shoulder. “There are still people there I’d like to see survive, but give me half an hour to warn them, and I’ll watch the carnage. Might even help.”

“Agent and Raindeer Games just need to figure out how they want to do it.” Tony leans back into Clint, reaching up his free hand to run it through Clint’s hair. It’s been nice to have people around him he can indulge skin hunger with as much as his libido. “I need to make you some explosive arrows for it, too.”

“Wouldn’t hurt.” Clint’s voice is warm and amused, with an underlying glee at the idea of violence. They’re all perhaps a bit too fond of violence, but it’s been too much a part of their lives to leave behind. “We should probably give Fury another twenty-four hours before we destroy his favorite toy, though.”

“Only if it takes them that long to hammer out their plan.” Tony gestures with his glass-holding hand, ignoring the scotch splashing over his hand.

“It will.” Clint chuckles. “It’s Loki and Phil. They’ll argue until they’re no longer having fun, and then they’ll actually figure out what to do.”

Doctor Who: In the Doctor’s Place: Absolute Silence

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Doctor Who
AU: In the Doctor’s Place
Series: Fireside Tales
Word Count: 264
Characters: Romana II
Warnings:

The end comes not with a bang or a whimper, but with no sound at all.

The end comes not with a bang or a whimper, but with no sound at all. A strange, deafening silence that makes her stagger, and cling tightly to the rail of her TARDIS. She’s barely aware she’s fallen to her knees, only aware of the absolute silence in her mind where there’s always been something. Never voices, never so distinct, but the constant hum of the presence of her people.

Now, there is nothing, and she is alone. Terribly alone in a sense she had never imagined she would be, even as she worked feverishly on the Doctor’s final plan to end the war. To lock it all away where it couldn’t tear the universe apart.

It should have been him to take the final step, to make the final seal, but he’d never had the chance. Never been allowed to take the chance, and had sacrificed his life to make sure there was an opportunity for her to take that last step, even as he told her he would return in time. Offering up her people as well as the Daleks to save the universe from destruction.

Would that she could have followed them, but she could not lock it from the inside, only from the outside, and there was no one else they could trust to do this.

Dragging herself to her feet, Romana sets coordinates on her TARDIS, and manages to land herself safely before she stumbles into the back, and finds her bed. Tumbling into a sleep that she will later suspect is only nightmare-free because her TARDIS is interfering.

Highlander: Sea and Wolf: A Wilderness Stripped From the World

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Highlander
AU: Sea and Wolf
Word Count: 2183
Characters: Alysse (OC), Joe Dawson, Methos
Warnings: Suicide, Original Character Death

“He was… everything. Wild wolf of the steppe, sharp and fierce as winter winds on a northern sea. The thunder of hooves beneath me; wild, joyous laughter reveling in all we were.”

“You’ll know when it’s time to come, before I have to find you.”

The last words Kronos had spoken to her still echo in the still watches of the night, when her ship sits silent on flat and brooding seas. A cruel lash of what will never happen, as her Watcher quietly told her after making port one day. He’d slipped away to make his report, and to gather what he could about “Melvin Koren”, no doubt with the explanation that he’d like to know if he needed to make himself scarce from her ship. The heart-shattering blow was so softly delivered she almost didn’t feel it at first.

Now, she sails alone in a boat that had been carefully designed for her, and built for her as a present. Lying on her back on the polished deck to stare blind-eyed at the stars that glint in cold patterns set in a midnight sky of inky black. Trying to piece together a soul that doesn’t wish to mend, struggling to remember why she clings so fiercely to life.

A wildness has been stripped from the world, and taken with it her fire – it seems, sometimes, has even taken the fierceness from the mother on whose breast she rocks now. Grey seas that mourn with her, cradling her as gently as any mother with upset child. Encouraging tears that will not come, trying to ease the numbing emptiness that gnaws at her heart.

She doesn’t know how many days pass sitting on the edge of the deck, half-heartedly fishing for her meals. How many nights blur into one another staring at uncaring stars. Only that gradually, the numbness fades, letting emotion once more trickle in around the edges. Bright flashes of overwhelming fury that someone has stolen her lover – her first, her only, because lover implies equal, and she had no other she’d consider such. Black sorrow deep enough to drown in the tears that it drags unwilling to the surface.

Screams are swallowed by the endless ocean as easily as weeping, until she wears herself thin enough to fall once more into a numbness that has become as comforting as a blanket. As comforting as Kronos’ quickening curling and crackling around the edges of her own, overwhelming and fierce.

More time passes without her knowledge, until she wears her grief thin enough to think of more than drifting with the currents and the winds, and turning away from any land she spots in the distance. When she’s willing to take herself into a port, though it takes long hours to recall where she is, and what ports might be near enough to resupply.

The docks are silent, if not still, when she guides her little boat into a marina long hours after the sun has set. There is no one to take her port-fee, and she doesn’t leave her little boat until dawn breaks, trying to remember who she’d been in that lifetime before this and to decide if she wishes to be that person again. In the end, she digs out a different persona, one she hasn’t used yet – one who wouldn’t have to worry about customs – and pays the fees that allow her to slip onto the streets of the city.

She wanders, a pair of sandles dangling from one hand so if she must put them on, they’re with her. Randomly taking one street or another, not worried about becoming lost and turned around in the web of brick and stone, steel and glass. The solid weight of her sword hidden in a coat long since out of fashion, and the smaller, more compact form of a favored pistol are enough armor for now.

A bar attracts her attention with pink neon, and she pauses to see if it’s open at this mid-morning hour. Not yet, but soon, and she mentally marks it as a place to return later. No amount of drink will drown the grief that still pricks with needle-sharp claws, but neither will it kill her. At least, not unless some fool of an Immortal challenges her, and then, she’s not entirely sure if she would truly give a good accounting of herself or simply let herself be killed.

The sky is fading into dusky blues and purples when she finds her way back to the bar, slipping in to the quiet strains of guitar and a gravel voice. The sort of drink she craves is unlikely to be found here, the reminder of her youth not readily available, but the sharp burn of vodka is good enough. Listening to the musician’s voice weave a spell of sorrow and aching grief that echoes her own heart.

That same gravel voice takes over behind the bar after the set, the musician’s worn hands pour another shot when she puts another crisp bill on the counter. Eyes that remind her of the northern seas watch her for a long moment before he asks her if she wants to talk about it. The offer of a stranger, a mortal who will never quite comprehend the timeframe, but who thinks they might have some knowledge of the depth of grief.

Still, she studies him a moment before she shrugs. If he doesn’t understand, or thinks her crazy, it doesn’t much matter to her. “His name was Kronos,” she says quietly, almost too quietly to be heard over the background. “He was… everything. Wild wolf of the steppe, sharp and fierce as winter winds on a northern sea. The thunder of hooves beneath me; wild, joyous laughter reveling in all we were.”

She looks down at her vodka, not wanting to see the mortal’s expression, but only the memories. “I was a goddess when he found me. Wild daughter of the ocean, merciless and generous, creator and destroyer. He made himself a god in the eyes of my people, brought me to my knees and taught me so much more.” A soft laugh escapes her, the sound more ragged than it has any right to be. Edged with barbs of grief. “My god, my lover. Wind and thunder and flame.”

“And now he’s dead.” The gravel voice is quiet, and draws her attention back to the lined mortal face. Knowledge more than intuition in wary, northern-ocean eyes, though how he could know, she doesn’t understand for a long moment. Not until she darts out one rope-callused hand to grip his, turning the wrist to see the tattoo on the inside.

“You wouldn’t have known him by that name,” she whispers, not letting go, watching him with a fierce anger clawing its way up her throat, choking any effort at speaking louder.

“A friend of mine does.” He doesn’t try to pull away, meets her gaze without nearly as much fear as she expects. No doubt some weapon is hidden under the bar to give him some measure of courage. “We didn’t know you knew him by that name.” The Watchers didn’t know how long she’d known Kronos – she can read that between the lines easily as breathing.

They’re still for a long moment, Watcher and Immortal, silent amongst the chatter of mortals who do not know, nor would care to if they had any inkling of what was really going on. Before she lets go, and settles back onto the stool, before the Watcher relaxes faintly, almost imperceptably.

“Your friend.” She snorts faintly, wondering slightly at the idea that an Immortal would call a mortal friend, much less a Watcher. Hers is only crew, subordinate and protected, but never equal.

Silence once more envelopes her and the Watcher, before she looks up again. “Would this friend of yours challenge me?”

The Watcher shrugs, giving her a wary look. “Don’t think so.”

“Pity.” She drains her shot of vodka, holding it out for another – she hasn’t spent the entire bill she’d handed him earlier, not nearly. She’d welcome his friend, one who she has little doubt is Immortal, right now if he’d be so obliging as to offer her a fight. Win or lose, live or die, none of that matters, only the fight itself, the fierce clash of fire and steel where life sings through her veins.

The night passes in vodka and soft-voiced tales of sea and steppe, horse and ship. Passion, fire-bright and sharp as a winter wind. Grief that breaks that all to razor-edged shards that slice deep into a soul already steeped in blood. Cuts away at the softer parts that have grown only slowly over long centuries, withers emotions that have only just begun to blossom. An anger that burns cold with no direction, and a bone-deep ache for a wild freedom that’s been lost in more ways than one.

She returns to her boat feeling hollowed out, memories flashing across her mind like knife blades, numbness refusing to curl about her in its comforting folds. Sleep refuses to come, and she spends her night staring up at a sky with fewer stars to be seen through the haze of light from the city nearby. Dawn creeps across the sky in brilliant ribbons, and with it comes a slow encroachment of crackling presence, a storm that grumbles long on the sea before it rolls toward ill-prepared shores, vast as the horizon.

A man stands on the dock, hawk-faced and silent. Dark hair cut short, eyes muddied river water older than any ocean. Watching her for a long moment before he raises an eyebrow, and tilts his head toward the shore. “Are you coming, or do we talk with you on your boat and me here?”

Waiting for a long moment, she nods. “A moment.” To remove salt-soaked clothing in favor of something that’s at least been rinsed clear, and wrap her own coat with its hidden cargo about her. Silent as they move along the dock to shore, and into streets waking from the night’s slumber. Tracing a path to the same bar that she’d murmured stories of Kronos to a patient bartender – Watcher, who’d write them down – and ducking inside despite a door locked when they arrive.

There’s a table with the chairs around it rather than on it, tea delicately tinting the air with its aroma, rather than a more welcome bottle of vodka or other strong spirits. She settles, though, and allows a cup to be poured for her. Watching the Immortal who sits across from her as she cradles the cup in her hands, waiting for him to speak and to see from that which way he intended to direct the conversation.

And when he does, there’s a wistfulness to his voice that speaks to a grief that’s perhaps not as jagged edged as her own only because he’s known for longer that the death that tears at her would happen. Had to happen. Sharing a story of Kronos as he was before she ever met him, when he burned bright as wildfire with passion more than rage, chaos and change sweeping across the world. Wildfire instead of wolf, sun-bright summer god rather than savage northern wind.

In return, she tells him her own memories, same as she had the Watcher before. Knowing they’ll not be written down, but remembered as they should be. All the while, wreathed in the perfume of tea for all that she craves something stronger to blunt the still-sharp edges. Tea that becomes something salty and bitter when she sheds silent, unnoticed tears.

“I want to see the wildness of the world again. It grows too small and too tamed to mortal hands.” Her voice is barely a whisper, and her grip on the cup tightens. “But there is no wildness left. Only children with walls and tilled fields in their hearts.”

He’s silent a long moment, the edges of his horizon-storm quickening sparking still against her own still and silent seas. “The world changes, and he couldn’t change with it.”

“He was the wild, untrammeled and beautiful.” She met the gaze of muddy-river eyes, her own lightning-charred black and dead. “As you are the horizon-storm, and I the dying seas. Children burned the wild in quicking-fire, and Mother will take me home before she lets the land-bound have me. What will you do when the world seeks to destroy the horizon-storm too?”

“Survive.” He takes a last sip of his tea, still watching her. Muddy river, horizon-storm, ocean bedrock. Ancient wild long gone and still lurking.

She remains silent for a long moment before setting the bitter brew down, a calm washing over her like the eye of some great hurricane. “Then let the ocean feed horizon-storm, and let me rest. No child should tame the seas, and Mother won’t begrudge you.”

In the end, he refuses to simply kill her, and it takes careful work to corner him and force the choice of survival or falling to her flickering blade on him. She would laugh as steel comes whistling toward her exposed neck, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. Pain lasts but a moment, and then all is dark and quickening-fire before the end.

Doctor Who: In the Doctor’s Place: A Thread of Possibility

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Doctor Who
AU: In the Doctor’s Place
Series: Fireside Tales
Word Count: 675
Characters: Romana II, Unnamed Original Characters

There’s a sorrow on her face that makes Romana flinch, the sort of loss that she can only wish she did not understand.

The human who is sitting against the door of her TARDIS is older, a woman with a lined face that is more tired than anything else. Romana watches her through the external sensors, mentally cataloguing what she can tell from simply watching.

Black hair just beginning to be touched with gray, that’s looking a little frayed, straying from the otherwise neat chignon at the nape of her neck. The loose strands seem to create a dark halo around her head, and Romana feels her lips twitch up in a wry smile at her fancy.

The dress she wears isn’t the current fashion, but it’s well cared for, and while faded, it’s still servicable. A woman who is perhaps down on her luck, or never has been able to live the life of the upper classes, despite her attempts to appear as such. Certainly not a woman of the aristocracy.

Romana rests her hands on the controls, wishing she could see the woman’s face properly, but the human is facing away from the TARDIS, and keeps her expression hidden. If Romana leaves now, she will topple the woman over, or worse, pull her in her wake, and she won’t do that. Won’t leave her stranded in a place and time that will not be her own, and may well be inimical to human life.

It’s nearly an hour before the woman shifts, a quiet sigh escaping her as she moves to stand up, resting one hand on the column Romana’s TARDIS has appeared to be. There’s a sorrow on her face that makes Romana flinch, the sort of loss that she can only wish she did not understand.

Looking down at the small mound Romana had set her TARDIS near, the woman smiles, her face softening. “At least someone thought well enough of you to place a monument, my boy.” She pats Romana’s TARDIS, fingers tracing the flutes a moment. “Perhaps that girl you made a fool of yourself over?”

She hadn’t realized she’d parked herself in a graveyard – the columns are varied, and some are strange, but hadn’t registered as monuments to the dead. Romana winces again, closing her eyes, though that doesn’t shut out the woman’s voice, quiet over the sensors.

“Your father still refuses to come, but you know how he is. So bound by tradition.” Another sigh. “At least he’s not fool enough to stop my coming.” A long pause, long enough for Romana to look up again, studying the woman’s expression once more. Still that deep sorrow, but tempered by affection and amusement.

“Your sister ran off with Avra Koshel’s son two months ago, and we’ve not seen them since. Your father is promising to gut the boy if he ever finds him, so I do hope they have the sense to stay hidden until his passing.”

Romana tilts her head, and carefully adjusts the controls. There is something there, a thread of possibility that is fragile, but not impossible. Waiting until the woman has finished talking to her dead son and left before following that thread back to a place and time.

A boy catches a girl who’s dropped from her second-story bedroom window, and the two turn as Romana opens the door to the TARDIS, clinging nervously to each other. She smiles, and beckons. “They won’t find you here, and I can take you anywhere you want to go.”

The two look at each other, waiting a heartbeat before they dash for the open door, not asking any of the questions they perhaps should have. The door is shut seconds before the light goes on in the girl’s bedroom, and a bellow echoes into the night. Romana grins, and goes to set the controls.

“Do you have anywhere you want to go?” She looks over at her guests, letting the long-dormant sense of adventure she has rise to the fore, a spark of challenge in her eyes.

“Earth.” The girl returns her smile with a slow, slightly manic one of her own. “I’ve always wanted to see the mother-world.”

Stargate SG-1: Born a Queen: Returning Home

AO3 | DW

Fandom: Stargate SG-1
AU: Born a Queen
Word Count: 543
Characters: Baal, Bra’tac, Daniel Jackson, Lilith (OC)

Lilith leaves Earth to return to her father one final time.

Lilith stands straight as she can, watching the chappa’ai spin, the coordinates familiar as her own name. Not home, but a safe enough place to pass from the hands of the tau’ri to those of her father. A last exchange, a last goodbye to those she has come to count as family, though she still finds Earth wanting compared to home.

“What are you thinking about?” Dan’yel is kind enough to speak goa’uld with her, though he is the only one to do so even now. He’s also taught her other languages, a tactic of diplomacy she has come to appreciate.

“That I will not return to Earth again as hostage.” Lilith tilts her chin up as the wormhole flares before stabilizing in the center of the chappa’ai, a blue welcome that beckons on to home. “If I return, it will be as a Queen treating with allies.”

She pauses, turning to look over her shoulder at the window above the control center. General Hammond, standing at the center among others who have come to see her off on this last journey. Waiting a long moment, words caught in her throat before she manages to speak, voice steadier than she’d expected it to be. “I will miss you.”

Turning back to face the chappa’ai, Lilith takes a deep breath, waiting for the marines who always accompany them to send back the all-clear before she steps onto the ramp, counting the seconds to keep from running like an undignified child to the path to home.

On the other side, her father waits with his own entourage, and the leaders of the planet make a third party to this exchange. J’affa, who have a vested interest in the continuing circumspection by her father, and in what ceremony might accompany this last fraught visit here.

Meeting the gaze of the old man who is the leader of the j’affa, she tilts her head in a greeting of equals. “Master Bra’tac. You have my thanks for offering this place as neutral ground between my father and the tau’ri. I shall not forget your kindness, nor the generosity of the j’affa who opened their home to a great risk in allowing this.”

Bra’tac smiles a little, though it holds no more warmth than is diplomatic. He could act the indulgent uncle when she was younger, and the tau’ri had come before her father arrived. She will miss that closeness, even as she uses the lessons that it had taught her. A sacrifice to the role she had been created to fill, and has looked forward to even as a child.

“You are welcome for the place and the time, Lady Lilith. May our paths never cross in battle.” His smile widens a little at the end, and Lilith nods in silent assent. She hopes it is a promise she can fill, to never bring war to the doorstep of the free j’affa.

Turning away from Bra’tac, she smiles widely, though she keeps her steps measured, counting silently once more. “Father.”

Baal is watching her with pride, his hands clasped behind him as he waits for her to stop in front of him. Taking her hands when she offers them, studying her for a long moment. “Welcome home.”