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indiana_jTitle: Miracles for Sale
Fandom: Bones
Characters: Caroline Julian, Booth
Subject: Providing miracles is tiring work.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 363
Notes: No beta and it was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon for the prompt Bones, Caroline Julian, Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast
If they expect miracles before breakfast, as they always seem to, it's not going to come for free.
Caroline answers the door at a time of morning that even the Good Lord forgot about and discovers a wet and bedraggled Agent Booth disgracing her front stoop. She's still in her nightclothes, for goodness sakes, as he starts in on what he wants from her.
No, what he needs. It's always something they need, isn't it? Everything they present her is the be all, end all – despite a dozen other cases claiming the same.
It's obvious to her that he's been spending just a little too much time around Dr. Brennan as Caroline only understands a quarter of what’s coming out of that boys mouth. And she hasn't even had any coffee, let alone enough time to even start it brewing.
But from what she does understand, what he's asking for is an honest-to-god miracle.
"Son, do I look like someone who could wake a federal judge up at -" Caroline grabs his wrist, like it's the most natural thing to do, to glare at his watch. "- a time of morning that would get me fired for a number of reasons?"
"Yes," Booth says, without hesitation even as he digs into the bag at his side. He produces breakfast and coffee from her favorite place in DC - a place that certainly would not be open at that hour. But the coffee in his hand is hot and steaming and the pastries smell divine. "And I look like the kind of guy who can get a high priced pastry place to open their doors with just a call."
"Are you bribing me, Agent Booth?"
"Are you making that call?"
She sighs and grabs the coffee right out of his hand. "You, in the kitchen. You so much as sneeze on anything that looks important and you'll be wishing you'd never took the time to look up my address." Her finger stabs him in the chest. "For the record, Agent Booth, even miracle workers need their beauty sleep. Next time you come to barter for my services, remember that I have office hours, son."
Title: Trust Not the Coyote
Fandom: Bones
Characters: Caroline Julian
Subject: Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story
Rating: PG
Word Count: 256
Notes: No beta and it was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon for the prompt Bones, Caroline Julian, Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story
When people talk, Caroline Julian listens very carefully. It is an undeniable truth that most people, when talking to an attorney, find telling the truth - even when it's in their best interest - difficult, at best. The entire system frightens them to the point that they omit things in an attempt to make themselves appear like they're good, honest human beings.
Caroline knows better.
Now, most people's lies to her are simply a product of fright. Brain hiccups her daddy used to call them. A little nudge, a little point in the right direction (a little reminder that, "Son, you will soon be under oath, do you understand what that actually means or am I just wasting my time here?"), and the omissions melt away like sugar in the rain.
After all, no one - and she means that considering what she's seen in her career - is a true, one hundred percent good person.
But those are not the ones she truly watches for.
She watches for the coyote, the predator, the trickster, come incarnate into her court room. They seek to twist and corrupt. They love the lies and the attention it garners them.
But the problem with the trickster, she's found, is that they too often tie themselves up. So she listens carefully to everyone that crosses her path and waits for the story to talk to her. And eventually it will.
And then it will be her teeth gleaming white and sharp in the courtroom as the story undoes its teller.
Title: And We Will Walk Side by Side Once More
Fandom: Babylon 5
Characters: Ivanova, Deleen
Subject: Loyalty trumps grief
Rating: PG
Word Count: 187
Notes: No beta and it was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon for the prompt Babylon 5, Susan Ivanova, loyalty
"Where do you place your grief, Susan, so that you may walk this path?" Delenn asked as the aging leader of the Anla'shok settled next to her on her customary bench.
Four years had passed since the death of John and the two women rarely spoke of the fact that their original numbers were fast dwindling.
"I could say, I suppose, that I have no grief," Ivanova said slowly.
"No?"
"Well, perhaps a little." She leaned forward and tried not to think of the extra twenty years her old friend would have had with them. Of Marcus in cryo. Of Lando and G'Kar. Of even herself and Delenn. "After all these years, Delenn, and after all we have seen and done -"
She shook herself, a full body shake. "Come what may, I will walk with my brothers and sisters again. It is this belief that allows me to retain their memory without the price of grief or pain and allows me to stand my ground after so much loss."
And their footfalls would echo amongst the planets and would shake the very foundation of the universe.
Title: The Wolf at the Door
Fandom: Fringe
Characters: Astrid Farnsworth
Subject: The job changes you.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 341
Notes: No beta and it was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon for the prompt Fringe, Astrid Farnsworth, The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep
Astrid Farnsworth was actually an FBI agent, junior or no. Sometimes she thought people forgot that part (and god only knew what Walter thought). She'd gone through the same training, the same field tests, as everyone else had. Just because she was a junior agent and current assistant/erstwhile babysitter to Walter didn't diminish that.
She had a badge, she had a weapon, she had the guts. She wouldn't have made it that far working with her current group if she had been found lacking.
Astrid would admit that sleeping with the gun was a new thing, though. It was on safety, of course, and certainly not under her pillow - on the nightstand, not the one with the clock (just in case), between the glass of water and her allergy medicine.
Working with the FBI had always had a tinge of danger to it but. Well. The things she'd seen, the things she'd participated in, had turned her awareness of the danger from acknowledging them to actively protecting herself.
Every night, she padded around the house and double, triple, checked the locks and windows. She would stand, gun in hand but out of sight, at the corner of her window and she would watch. Ten, twenty minutes sometimes would go by before she wiped the condensation off (sometimes she wrote rude sayings that Walter had taught her sort of as a cosmic 'Fuck You') and headed to bed.
Only once had something ever written something in return on her window - the speed dial to Olivia's phone had been hit, the safety turned off and the gun leveled.
When Astrid checked the porch, fierce in her determination that these people would not find an easy mark in her home, all she encountered was a gentle fall breeze. Distrustful, still, she touched the windowpane from the outside and felt the chill of a colder night seep into her bones.
Olivia spent the night, the two women wrapped in a comforter dragged out from the attic, guns on safety on two different nightstands.
Title: Kisses
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: Parker
Subject: Parker’s way of showing affection. No, really.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 318
Notes: No beta and it was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon for the prompt Leverage, Parker, the ways she shows affection and the ways she never will
1. No matter how well Hardison hides his daily stash of candy, Parker always finds it. When he disappears for a Red Bull break, she makes her move - but she always only steals half of it and she always leaves him the kisses because she knows they’re his favorite.
2. Parker calls her a baby as she shoves her around, deft fingers sliding in and out of the harness to test it before she kicks Sophie over the edge of the building. But before she does it, before she sends Sophie screaming down a building, she smiles, briefly, and tells her she'll be fine. And then lets her scream like a little girl as Parker jumps a second later, laughing the whole way down.
3. Outside the bathroom that Nate's in, throwing up the most recent batch of scotch, Parker's confused and upset. So she talks him through it by telling him of her latest house plant. It's a large venus fly trap but, she says, frustrated, it seems to have no interest in her neighbor's yappy rat dog thing. He laughs with his head on the toilet and she passes him a wet washcloth.
4. Eliot likes to cook. Parker's relationship in the kitchen is one best not spoken of. So she sits on the counter, even though he bitches at her to get down, and allows him to slip her things to taste as he's preparing meals. Some of it's too fancy for Parker’s taste but she saw the look on his face the one time she spat it out with him still in the room so now she hides them in a pocket when he doesn’t look and waits until he's gone.
5. Hardison's looking up at her, blood on his face from a close call as she leans down and kisses him on the mouth. She glances away, frustrated, knowing that she's not normal enough for that. But she likes the dream.
Title: Escape
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rose Tyler
Subject: Crowds are never around for the important things
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 173
Notes: No beta and it was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon for the prompt doctor who, martha jones, rose tyler or amy pond
just like a soldier boy, I been out fighting wars
that the world never knows about, but I never win them loud
there are no crowds around me
Crowds, Rose quickly discovered, were only around for the inane things. They swarmed around her every time she fancied a step outside her home, her office. They were fucking fascinated with Pete and Jackie Tyler's 'new found' daughter. She couldn't take a breath (hell, sometimes a piss) without them knocking around.
The noise drove her to distraction, almost caused her to run over them once in a fit of pique. She didn't, though. It would have ruined the paint job on the car and then there would have been hell to pay from Pete.
Noise, crowding, shouting, flashing of the cameras.
Escape came in the dark; during the midnight hour; alone or with a small group of close, and quiet, men and women. It came with bruised knuckles, broken bones, dried blood under the finger nails.
It came when all those fuckers turned their cameras away and let her do her job. It was almost enough to make a girl want to stay in the sewers, hunting an escaped alien war prisoner, forever.