indiana_j | (no subject)

This might be a bit long but I wanted to get this up so I can look back and maybe pick something to actually work on and finish. So, excerpts and mini-explanation of unfinished stories, both original and fanfiction.

'This is War' - a Doctor Who story centering around Rose and alt!Master in Pete's World. Instead of the Doctor surviving the war, his actions ensured that the Master (now stuck on earth and playing at Vice President) survived instead. Being the only one alive has changed him - but he's still sort of crazy, as Rose discovers.

Blood in her mouth, sharp and metallic, as the world around her starts to shake and rumble. The aliens are knocked off their feet and not even the knowledge the missile is due to hit could have kept Rose on hers.

The gun ends up lost as she falls backwards, blood in her mouth, and all she wants to do is to keep her eyes open to the very end. She saw the end of Earth, after all, and considers it only fair.

The hand that locks onto the back of her jacket collar is unexpected, fingers like ice accidentally yanking fistfuls of blonde hair as someone drags her backwards into the room made warm and damp from human bodies clustered together.

A second to swallow blood, to see the bright light blossoming from beyond the door and then the door slams home and there is nothing but the blackness.

Unnamed Star Trek (Reboot), revolving around the trouble of having a bored, certified genius on board (Scotty viewed through Kirk)

[...] it hadn't taken much to get him named Head Engineer. That had given Kirk another week of breathing space. And then Spock had spent an hour telling him that it wouldn't be good for moral if he were to just to beam Scotty back to that ice planet.

Bones had smirked and added that Spock was speaking from experience, thank you very much.

An eyebrow rose; Bones drank. Kirk figured that was their way of going to war on each other. Very dry, very drunk, very quiet war.

It wasn't that Scotty was doing anything. It was just that he was bugging the ever loving crap out of Kirk because all the repairs were done. They weren't on a mission. Scotty hadn't had to beam anyone up or down in three days. He'd beaten Chekov in an eating contest - twice. Though the Russian had put enough away that Bones had become rather concerned; Sulu had simply demanded that he be checked for hollow areas or an alien infestation.

In short, despite the large array of things to do - officially, unofficially, legally and illegally - he had a genius, bored head engineer on his hands.

Unnamed Star Trek (Reboot), where Kirk actually does something wise and touching by telling his crew that he needs them more then ever. This might not be a wise move after all...

"My own crew gives me lip and he thinks it's fascinating. Right, does anyone else have anything smart they'd like to say? Put your hand down, Sulu."

"Sir, yes, sir."

Kirk wondered if Pike ever had to deal with this kind of thing and realized, quickly, that the answer to that was no. But that was why he'd called this meeting and why he'd invited these particular people. Kirk wasn't the usual kind of captain, his crew wasn't the usual kind of crew and the ship...

Well, as far as he was concerned, the ship was the best thing in space.

And that trifecta (he did pick things up from Uhura but mostly when they involved cheese) had made him realize that how he operated things couldn't really go by the book.

and

"When we're in here? Speak your mind, yell at me, throw - wait, no, ignore that. No violence to your beloved captain. Argue until you're blue or -" Kirk paused and looked at Spock. "What color does your race turn when you run out of oxygen?"

"I am not seeing the relevance to the conversation at hand, Captain, but seeing as I am half human I would expect to see no different coloration if that unlikely situation were to occur."

Bones snorted. "We're in space, Spock. There's always a high probability of the hull being breached and someone being sucked into space. Where there's no oxygen."

"Actually, structurally speaking, this lass would have to take quite a punishment before we even reached that particular situation," Scotty chimed in. "In other words, before that would happen, ye'd probably be dead."

"I should have gone with my original ship," Uhura muttered.

"What?" Kirk asked.

"Nothing."

A Call to Arms: The Woman From UNIT: Doctor Who, actually the sequel to one I'm sitting on because I want this mini-series done before posting. This one features Jack, Rose and Martha. A series of stories that revolve around Rose building up an army to fight the stars going out when she cannot seem to locate the Doctor and Donna.

Maybe if she hadn't been so tired or hadn't had so much to worry about, Rose might have felt gut clenching envy. Instead, she just looped her arm through Jack's and hummed a little. "Good to have in a fight?"

"One of the best."

Rose nodded and gave his arm a squeeze. "Guess that's good enough for me until I meet this Jones person."

He broke away from her to open the door and gave her a look that was part amusement, part wistful. "Seems our Rose is growing up on us."

"Oh stuff it, you tosser."

"Oh wait, there you are. Welcome back."

Original, a piece from my Rose Red story. Fairy tale characters in a modern city setting. Murder/mystery.

She dropped the idea of getting the car restarted. First pocket, easy to find and easy to get to, held her cell phone but she knew her mom wouldn't answer. The woman refused to even admit she had a 'peasant' device in her otherwise completely magical house.

Grimacing, Rose tapped the rear view mirror - as far as she knew, it was the only thing in her car that had a working spell on it. And only because her mother was, well, her mother.

As soon as her fingers touched it, the glass rippled like water and the images of the street behind her were washed away. Her mother's face filled the tiny space instead.

"Tell me you know that you've got a rapid unicorn trampling on your forsythia bushes," Rose gritted through her teeth.

"I - what?!" Judith's voice rose an octave. "He's in my bushes?"

Maybe that had been the wrong thing to point. Maybe she should have just stuck with the fact that a rapid unicorn was slowly bearing down on her mother's only daughter.

Unnamed, Harry Potter. Hermione struggles with the idea that Kingsley wants her to run for Minister when he retires.

"Hermione..."

She whirled on him and only the fact that he was her boss kept her wand in her robes. "You're joking and this - it's - argh."

Kingsley smirked a little bit when he reached her, tugging her hand into the crook of his arm as he continued to walk. She had no choice but to continue or else get pulled along like some errant child instead of a woman on the wrong side of 30. "When," Kingsley responded, sounding amused, "have you ever known me to joke? Especially about work?"

She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder while he steered her true. They had an interesting friendship and one that she never would have expected. They'd even gone on a date or two before she'd started to work for him. It had never gone more than that but she enjoyed his company a great deal. He was different than her boys and sometimes it was a much welcomed difference at that.

So, yes, she knew he was perfectly serious when he had asked her that question as they'd stepped into the cemetery and the fact that he had meant it had shaken her.

"Should I ask you again?" he asked cheerfully. He didn't even wait for her to answer, the bastard. "Hermione, would you consider running for Minister when I retire?"

Discovery, Doctor Who. What it would have been like if the Doctor (Nine) had actually been open with Rose regarding his past?

He studied the ceiling with a determined eye. Not that he was going to find any flaw or error in here - his ship was like its master. Proud to a fault. She would eventually let Rose see the beauty in the cracks, the hidden secrets in the dusty corners, the adventure under dust covers. But not quite yet.

"She was a friend," the Doctor gruffly replied. "Traveled with me."

"Oh." There was a lengthy pause as Rose digested that. He shot her a look out from the corner of his eye. She looked ... slightly disheartened at learning that there had been others before and he waited to see what she would do. He only took the best but it didn't mean they were devoid of the baser emotions.

...on the contrary, most of them had seemed to have been made up of the baser emotions. But he'd cared for them in his own fashion.

Rose's legs stretched out and over his one knee and he gave her a sour look.

"What was she like, then, this Ace?" she asked and he couldn't help but smile. There was a hint of jealousy in there but she was honestly curious as well. Because he suddenly realized that she was using it to get to know him.

"Ever heard of somethin' called Nitro-9?"

Unnamed, crossover, Dresden Files/Pendergast novels. A Captain Laura Hayward (Pendergast books) and Murphy befriend each other at a conference.

A glance around made her realize she wasn't the only cop hanging around on the edge of the group. She'd met the woman once before, she realized, coming up with a name after a moment of thought. A Captain Laura Hayward, from the city itself. And it seemed that the native New Yorker was just as reluctant to follow the herd into the American Museum of Natural History.

Curiosity piqued, Murphy waited until they were mostly alone before going over to stand next to the other officer. Neither of them said anything for a moment and just took in the sweeping architecture of the building in front of them. It was a sight to see, that was for sure, but then again Murphy had learned the hard way that looks could be deceiving.

“Aren't you going to go in, Lt. Murphy?” Hayward asked, breaking the comfortable silence.

In response, she shrugged on shoulder. “If you've seen one crime scene, you've seen them all,” she deadpanned, catching the Captain's answering grin out of the corner of her eye. “You wouldn't happen to know any place to get a drink and a bite to eat, would you?”

Hayward looked thoughtful and then turned, gesturing at Murphy so she'd follow. “As a matter of fact, I do. There's a place right around the corner...”

Original, my attempts at a magical urban fantasy thing with alchemy as the main source of magic.

She hadn't lied when she'd told Sami that an alchemist could be anyone. There was no special “alchemy” potential in someone. But there was something else. It was in the ability to memorize. It was in the ability to write. It was in the ability learn. But more importantly, it was in the ability to know that you could do it. The absolute certainty that it would work. That the equation for turning one substance into another would happen the minute you put the final touches on the last symbol.

For some, it was belief or confidence. For others, it was more like channeling inner chi. For Mary it was like something simply clicked in her mind, like a switch turning on.

People wanted alchemy to be fancy and they wanted the flash and bang. Some alchemists gave them that but she didn't. She didn't even check inside the cup as she blew on the written words to really cement them into being because she knew without a doubt that she'd done it.

That absolute certainty in something – in anything – was the hardest trait to find and probably one of the reasons that alchemists weren't on every street corner in the world.

Sami took the cup back with a bemused air that turned into astonishment as she cracked the lid open. The dark brown liquid of the coffee had been turned into a lighter color as the scent of tea wafted from the cracked lid. “I don't believe it,” she said and then took a sip.

Mary covered her grin as Sami drew back as if slapped, face contorting in a grimace as she forced herself to swallow. “What the hell?” she gasped and Mary couldn't help but snicker for a moment.

“Just because I can turn coffee into tea,” she said mildly as Sami groped for the bottle of water she'd also purchased, “doesn't mean I should. Conjured tea is nasty as hell because something in the tannins just doesn't react well to being shifted into being. Tea is, simply, rather ornery and it's the reason that I own a tea pot.”

“I need a new coffee,” Sami said mournfully and headed up to the counter to order another one.

Original, short story about New York City's magic. It's a bit weird and I seem to have lost most of it. *grumps*

Children are extraordinarily cruel little creatures. They are also, for the most part, incredibly clever and their eyes haven't yet been clouded over by adult 'truths'. That makes them useful to those adults who have managed to avoid falling into the mainstream ideals and thoughts.

That's why the two sharp-dressed men - one who gently leads a slightly dazed young woman by cupping her hand in the crook of his elbow - take great pains to locate a small group of street children. It's not like it was in the old days of New York, where ragged groups of children - orphans or those simply trying to stay out of the way of their engorged and ever growing families - could be easily found in any alleyway.

Now there are police, social workers and the occasional concerned parent (out of luck, out of work but still good people) to contend with. They act as if predators are a new thing, a new threat to their off-spring but for every child of the city, old or young, there has always been a predator stalking through the city.

The information age has simply high lighted some while others slipped through the cracks, exsisting on a different level. These are the predators that concerns the group now, not the pedaphiles or more mundane murderers that roam the streets around them.

Original, superhero love story. Thing.

From house to work, it was normally about a ten minute flight considering I fly faster than your average crow. And in the middle of July, with no storms brewing or meteorites threatening to crush the city, it should have been a cake walk.

Well, it wasn't.

The cold had crept in about three minutes into the flight with that kind of wind chill that makes you swear it's actually twenty below instead of just above freezing. And maybe I could have kept out the cold if I could have skipped out on breathing - where there's air, there's temperature.

Unsettling enough in July on its own right, the cold snap was followed by thick, grey clouds that bunched over the city as if it were December. I was about a minute out when the snow starting falling.

Cursing loudly, I managed to find the rooftop of work - a cute little brownstone that normally boasted a cute little garden in the spring and summer - through luck and memory alone. And I hit hard, too, unable to tell exactly where I was or where the roof was until seconds before impact.

Thanks to my powers, I bounced and rolled around in the heavy snow drift like a hamster in a ball that had managed to suddenly become intimately familiar with the stairs. I came to a stop simply because I gave up and dropped my shielding, only to find myself floundering in snow covered roses.

Amelia, I thought forlornly, was going to kill me.

My goal for this year: finish the fics and flesh out the original stuff. As I can never figure out what to work on, you guys can tell me what you'd like to see finished/fleshed out first.