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write ALL the drabbles like an adu- . . . wait
It only took me mumbleoveramonthmumble, but I finished all the drabble requests from this post! And now I am going to round them up here, for my own future convenience. Most of these were written between midnight and 2 AM on various nights over the past month, and . . . you can tell. But oh well!
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scifantasy: Revolutionary Girl Utena/Leverage crossover snippets from a hypothetical complete crossover that will never actually exist
In Nanami’s mind, it’s so easy – she’ll “accidentally” open Parker’s locker; the set of handcuffs she planted in there yesterday will come falling out; Professor Hardison will say, “I’m disappointed in you, Parker! I didn’t think you were the kind of girl to bring handcuffs to school!”; and Operation: Parker-Is-A-Big-Weirdo-Who-Keeps-Handcuffs-In-Her-Locker will be an unqualified success!
Things start to go wrong pretty fast, though.
Boom.
“What was that!” Nanami shrieks, jumping backwards as smoke starts to fill the hallway.
Hardison sighs and rubs his forehead. He doesn't even have to look at Parker. “You rigged it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Parker says. “I don’t want anyone going through my stuff.”
“Ain’t that cute,” Hardison says, amused in spite of himself. “What, you got like a diary in there or something?”
Parker gives him a don’t-be-stupid look in response. “No, my favorite pair of practice handcuffs.”
(The next day, Keiko leans over to Aiko and whispers, “Gosh, Nanami-sama kind of looks like a space alien with her eyebrows all singed like that, doesn’t she?”)
************************
Nate shades his eyes and squints up. “So that’s what this is all about, huh?”
“It is beautiful.” The sight is stirring some kind of deep emotion in Sophie; they can all tell when this happens because she closes her eyes and attempts to memorize the feeling to use later In Her Art. “You can almost understand why they all go so mad over it.”
“I dunno, I mean, it’s real nice, but it’s getting a little Super Mario up in here,” Hardison says. “Listen up, guys, ‘cause I’m calling it now – the princess is in another castle.” But he keeps staring upwards, and so does Eliot, who doesn’t say anything at all.
Parker looks blankly from one rapt face to the other. She peers up through her right eye. Then she peers up through her left. Finally she opens both eyes, wrinkles her nose, and hazards, “You mean the planetarium projector?”
*********************
“Oh no,” says Eliot. “Hell no.”
His opponent glares at him across the dueling arena, already brandishing his sword. (Too early, Eliot notes in a corner of his mind. If he were the kid’s teacher he’d tell him it doesn’t pay to pull out your weapon prematurely, but right now he’s got bigger things on his mind.) “What are you waiting for?” Saionji snarls. “Draw the sword!”
The light glints off of Anthy’s glasses, and off the hilt of the sword protruding from her chest. It’s very slightly possible that she looks disconcerted. “Eliot-sama . . .”
“I put up with the flowers,” Eliot says flatly. “I put up with the epaulets,” and those things better come off his favorite jacket, by the way, or someone is going to pay. He can hear Hardison snickering through the earbud, which is not helping. “Here’s where I draw the line. You wanna fight, you can take the boob-sword. I’m done."
********************
“You’re late tonight, Anthy.”
Anthy sits down on her bed, across from Utena’s. “I’m sorry, Utena-sama,” she says. “I was helping my brother. He hurt his hand.”
“Oh – is Akio-san all right?”
“He should be careful picking flowers. Sometimes they scratch him.”
“Poor Akio-san!”
“Poor brother,” Anthy agrees, hands folded demurely in her lap.
“I hope he wasn’t too badly – oh! Chuchu, leave that alone!”
Chuchu squeaks and claps his paws to his nose, and the insect he’s been grabbing at buzzes vengefully off. Utena blinks after it.
"Hey, aren't bees supposed to die after they've stung something . . .?"
"Oh," Anthy says, "that one must be a wasp."
Several buildings away, in the transfer-student-dorm-slash-temporary-Leverage-headquarters, Parker snaps, “I’m not a people person!” and storms off into the next room.
“We really have to remember not to ask her to do this kind of thing,” Nate says to Sophie.
“I know,” Sophie says, and sighs. “But did it really have to be another fork?"
Forvivien529: Milliwaysverse Mary Lennox: WWI and spying - this one came out bit more melancholy than I anticipated
If it wasn’t for Milliways, even Mary sometimes admits, she’d never be able to pull this off without exploding.
Today, for example - when she sees the headline in the paper, and can't react to it with anything except thinned lips and silence, not even a little bit, until she gets to Milliways and does what she's been longing to do, which is throw the newspaper down on the nearest table with extreme force.
This does not actually relieve her feelings as much as she’d hoped.
“. . . Mary?” Ingress frowns and picks up her tea, heading over to the table nearest the door. “Are you all right?”
Mary glares down at the paper, as if she can erase the headline by staring at it, and doesn’t answer for a moment. “What a fool!” she bursts out, finally. “How could she be so – we’ve still years of war left, and she hardly made it one!”
Ingress looks down at the headline. Unhelpfully, it’s in German. “Um . . . do you want to talk about it?” she hazards, although the answer already seems to be yes.
Mary stabs down a finger at the name: EDITH CAVELL.
“Executed by the Germans,” she says, the words suddenly clipped and short. “For treason.”
“Oh, Mary –” Ingress’ eyes widen. “She didn’t have your name, did she?” This isn’t a question Ingress would have thought to ask a few years back – but they teach you a lot of things when you put on a set of Grays. Espionage can certainly fall within a Herald’s job description. “Will you need to come here to hide? You know you can always stay at the House of Arch –“
“No - we were in the same line, but I didn’t know her,” Mary says, and Ingress relaxes a little. “They do try to keep us separate – for just that reason, of course. I ought to be safe as any of us will be now, but if the Germans will have got the wind up – we’ll have to be timid as mice, and not get half of what we might do done. I do not do well,” she adds, unnecessarily, “with timidity.”
“That’s sad, though,” Ingress says, looking again at the paper, and the picture of a trim elderly woman in a gray nurse’s uniform. “About Edith Cavell.”
Mary puts her hand down on the paper and then abruptly crumples it, her fingers pulling together savagely. “They’ll make it a national tragedy, I expect.”
Ingress looks at her friend’s drawn face, drained the color of sour milk. She wants to ask if she’s scared, but she’s known Mary long enough by now to know just how well that will go over.
“Be careful,” she says, instead.
“Well, I shall have to be now,” Mary says, which isn’t an answer, and then glances up at Ingress, and smiles, quick and wry. “And if I’m not, you may sit here with a newspaper headline and call me a fool.”
Forin_the_blue: Baccano!: Eve Genoard with a photo album
As a little girl, Eve Genoard had loved having her picture taken. Benjamin and Samasa had indulged her, as they did in almost everything, calling in the photographer for every birthday and special occasion; she would drag her brothers to stand in front of the camera and beam anxiously up into the black box, making sure her hair was neat and her dress was smooth and begging Dallas and Geoffrey to smile. Geoffrey did smile, most of the time, old enough to be indulgent to a pleading small sister, and Dallas could occasionally be bullied into it, but neither one ever stayed to take more than one group picture before they pelted off to go do whatever boy things they did on their own, leaving pretty little Eve in full possession.
When he was sixteen, Dallas went into a rage and ripped up all the photos of himself that he could find in the house. Eve managed to save a photo of herself and Dallas by the expedient of hiding it in a book of Poe’s short stories; the only place Dallas was less likely to look was her Bible, but somehow hiding a picture of Dallas in the Good Book felt disrespectful to the Bible and her brother both. She couldn’t get to any of the pictures of Geoffrey-and-Dallas in time, though. Dallas had gone after those first.
After that, the only pictures left in the photo albums were shot after shot of small Eve, demure little girl with her hands neatly folded, attentive to the photographer’s instructions. By the age of ten, she’d already become less enamored of having her picture taken, but she’d never had the heart to tell Benjamin and Samasa. Half the dresses she’s ever owned are immortalized here; in every one she sits alone, her skirts growing longer and her smiles more and more tentative as the years pass by.
She hasn’t looked at the photos in years.
She’s looking at them now – studying her own face, small pointed chin, light-colored locks. Anxious to look her best, anxious to please somebody unseen; smiling in every picture, even the most recent, the ones where she felt least like smiling. What a sweet, what a good little girl.
“Eve!” Samasa appears in the doorway, frowning over at her. “Eve, you decided what you’re gonna wear for the picture yet?”
“Yes,” Eve calls back, closing the photo album on the last picture of her, taken on her sixteenth birthday. She’s wearing now the same dress she did then; it’s pink, with puffed sleeves and ruffles around the waist. She spent some time considering her options before concluding that she actually liked pink and ruffles, and there wasn’t any good reason to change. “Is the Daily Days photographer here?”
“Yeah, Elean brought him on over. Listen, Eve, me and Elean are gonna go take in a movie, but Benjamin’ll be here. Don’t let that Daily Days no-good boss you around too much, all right?”
“All right,” Eve says, and sets the photo book aside.
A few weeks later, there’s a new entry to slide into the back of the photo album. A newspaper clipping, from an article about the Genoard business’ recent philanthropic projects – a human interest piece, accompanied by a picture of pretty little Eve Genoard herself, so young and such a tragic story; a newspaperman's dream.
In the photo, Eve doesn’t look much older than she did in her sixteenth-birthday picture. The outfits she chooses aren’t calculated for sophistication.
But she’s standing, hands straight at her sides and her chin is high, and she isn’t smiling.
Foragonistes: Leverage/Ouran crossover v.1: Tamaki, Kyouya, Hardison and Eliot
Hardison looks down at the pile of unconscious men with guns under Eliot’s feet. Then he looks at the circle of extremely conscious men with guns surrounding them. Then he lifts his hands in the air and aims a disarming smile at the nearest gun-wielding man, who does not smile back.
Eliot, meanwhile glares for a moment longer, then snarls and throws down his kebab skewer.
Hardison lets out the breath he’s been holding. “All right,” he says. “You got us.”
“Thank you.” The teenaged boy with the notepad brushes through the two men at the top of the circle carelessly, as if he owns them.
Which, Hardison realizes, after a moment to identify the kid, does not make much sense, because while fifteen fascinating minutes tracing back revenue streams have given him a healthy respect for Ohtori Kyouya – “Hey now. Kid,” he says, squinting at him, “this is not your house.”
“I have investments worth protecting here,” Kyouya explains coolly, and Hardison winces as the light from above bounces off the kid’s glasses and into his eyes. “Your associate has already damaged certain of our company assets.”
Eliot blinks, and then glances down at the unconscious men with guns. “Give ‘em a day or two to rest up, and they’ll be fine,” he offers, and then looks again. “Okay, maybe a week or two. Uh, a month, for that guy.”
“Actually,” Kyouya says, “I was referring to –”
“Kyouya!” The second voice is also male and also teenaged, but speaking Japanese rather than Kyouya’s flawless English. Fortunately, Hardison is actually pretty decent at Japanese, thank you Naruto. “Kyouya, this is terrible!” The voice turns out to be attached to another recognizable face; Tamaki Suoh barges through the ring of armed guards, displaying a few scraps of charred and disintegrating fabric in his hands.
“Calm down,” Kyouya answers, also in Japanese, without looking back over his shoulder. “I’m taking care of it.”
Eliot stares at the fabric and says, blankly, “The closet we flash-bombed?” Eliot is also pretty decent at Japanese, thank you, yakuza, or, alternately, thank you Japanese ex-girlfriend. Hardison’s money is actually on a yakuza Japanese ex-girlfriend.
“Do you have any idea what authentic period costumes generally cost?” Kyouya frowns downwards, fingers flying over his calculator. “The imported cloth-of-gold Renaissance breeches alone –”
“Haruhi would have looked so cute in this,” wails Tamaki, clutching his hair in overwhelming sorrow.
“With all the damages taken into account, that comes to –” Kyouya taps the final key, and then holds up the calculator.
They’ve been running kind of short after the last few jobs; crime in Japan is expensive. Hardison squints at the number, and does a few frantic calculations in his own head. “Yeah, all right,” he says, crossing his fingers that his sums are right and sending Sophie a silent apology in his head. She can get around to setting up that foundation in a year or two. “Look, if that’s all, we can send you a check or something, okay?” He’s got most of what they needed on a USB in his back pocket, and the Ohtori kid doesn’t seem inclined to call the police. The Ohtori family wouldn’t have much cause to go crying over the downfall of the Suohs, either; if they play their cards right, they just might be able to pull this one off after all.
Kyouya glances back over at Tamaki, who has stopped clutching at his hair and is now punching a number into his phone. “Yes,” he says. “Well. Overall I really don’t have any objection to your plans for the Suoh family matriarch, but –”
“Haruhi! Haruhi, I have terrible news –”
“I’m afraid that for the sake of some long-term plans I’m going to have to ask you to hold off for –”
“What do you mean, you’re in the - who is – is that those unscrupulous – what?”
“Hm,” Kyouya says, and returns his full attention to Hardison. Hardison returns the favor, and tries not to pay attention to the men with guns, who are all assiduously trying not to pay attention to the putative heir to the Suoh family, who is curled up against a wall growing mushrooms. Basically there’s a lot of careful not-noticing going on all around. “Let’s say five years,” says Kyouya, as smoothly as if they were standing in a boardroom and not in the middle of a ring of armed men in the Suoh kitchens with unconscious souffle-covered bodyguards scattered all over the floor. “For certain assets to mature.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Eliot, flat.
“I could just ask you to hand over the USB drive in your pocket,” Kyouya says, patient. “But I don’t really have the time to spend playing this kind of game with your organization all the time. I’m offering an agreement instead. Five years, and we’ll consider your debt cancelled. Do you understand, Mr. Ford?”
Hardison jumps, and then jumps again as Nate says in his ear, Five years is a long time to our client. Hardison resists the temptation to curse; great time to show up, Mr. Ford, where were you five minutes ago when the teenaged megalomaniac decided to drop in with all the armed goons? However, that might be considered unproductive, so instead he says, butter-smooth, “Mr. Ford says, five years might be a problem.”
Kyouya’s eyes flick back to Tamaki again, and he smiles – a calm accountant’s smile, but if he really wanted people to believe that, Hardison thinks, he’d ditch the creepy-ass glinting glasses. At heart, Ohtori Kyouya is not a kid who minds unnerving people. “Let us,” he says, “take care of that problem.”
I don’t trust him, says Nate, and “Can we trust you?” snaps Eliot, almost at the same time.
“In the long run, corruption is bad for business,” Kyouya says, cool still turned up to the max. “And –“
“Oh, come on, Kyouya!” Tamaki has, at some point in the last thirty seconds, recovered from his mushroom-filled sulk. He comes up now and drapes his arm over the other boy’s shoulders, grinning at Hardison and Eliot from under his doubloon-gold fringe. Hardison can almost feel twenty bodyguards emphatically continuing to refrain from comment. “Why don’t you just admit,” he says – and it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tamaki Suoh also speaks excellent English – “that even a low blood pressure evil overlord is afraid of getting scolded by Haruhi?”
Forfahye: Leverage/Ouran crossover v.2: Parker and Kyouya bonding over love of money
Hardison has already started hacking into the Polish government’s network, the twins are concocting some convoluted plan that involves spreading pitch on the embassy stairs, and Eliot is asking anyone who will listen why they can’t just go beat the guy up, when Kyouya steps into the room. He is only gritting his teeth very slightly.
“Look, Ohtori,” Eliot says, “I’m just gonna go beat the guy –”
“It’s taken care of,” Kyouya says. “Paying them off was the simplest way to handle it.”
Everyone takes a moment to blink.
“Uh,” says Hardison. “Thanks?”
“Please don’t mention it,” says Kyouya and retreats into a corner of the clubroom to tap furiously away on his calculator, his knitted eyebrows an extremely effective barrier between him and the rest of the world.
“. . . okay then,” says Hardison, and looks over at Parker to gauge her reaction - she was kind of looking forward to checking out the embassy elevators - but Parker has for some inexplicable reason already gotten up from her seat. She marches over to Kyouya’s corner, with the air of a nun completing an errand of mercy. (The nun costume she’s currently wearing does help with that impression.)
“I’m sorry,” she mutters, as Kyouya looks up. “I know how hard this must be for you.” Then, while five or six mouths gape in unison, she leans over and gives him a quick, tight hug. “Your money will miss you, too!”
“Okay,” says Eliot, after a moment, “who put Parker back on the happy pills?”
“I spend money for the team,” Hardison says. “I spend money for the team all the damn time, how come I don’t get the sympathy hugs?”
Honey, sitting high on Mori’s shoulders, leans his arms on top of his cousin’s head and beams genially down at all of them. “That's really great, Mori! Don’t you think it’s really great that Kyouya-kun’s made a friend who understands him so well?”
Forblacksheep91: Revolutionary Girl Utena/Princess Tutu crossover: teatime with Mytho and Dios
In every Prince-character, there’s a little bit of Dios.
Admittedly, some correlate a little more directly than others.
“Would you like some tea?” his sister asks politely.
The reflection of Dios sitting across the table blinks at her and ventures, “I don’t really know if I like or dislike tea.”
“Well,” Dios says. “You’re a prince. Courtesy and consideration are important traits. So if a princess offers you tea, you should accept it.”
Mytho nods. “Thank you,” he says, and obediently holds out his cup. Anthy pours the tea. Green eyes meet gold, in what combined might be the most overwhelmingly blank gaze in human history.
Dios resists the urge to facepalm.
“All right, Mytho,” he says. “Do you know where you are?”
“No,” says Mytho, apparently not at all concerned by this.
“That’s good,” says Dios, “because you’re not really anywhere. This is the castle where eternity dwells, and it doesn’t exist.”
“Oh,” says Mytho.
“In a way,” Dios adds, though he’s not sure why – it isn’t as if Mytho’s going to understand – “it’s as if you’re inside your own heart. I’m the embodiment of your princely nature, the only part of you that hasn’t been shattered, which is why I’m here. Anthy’s here because –” He glances over at Anthy, whose smile is perfect and placid. “Well, as far as I can make out, Anthy’s here because she’s fascinated by the nobility that she feels she lacks and she enjoys being passive-aggressively disruptive. If she can, she’ll throw your story off-course, but don’t mind her.”
“More tea?” says Anthy. The light glints off her glasses, and Dios wonders, not for the first time, if he can talk her into contact lenses.
“Thank you,” says Mytho, and holds out his cup, which is still full. Anthy carefully tops it off anyway.
“You’ll go back out into the world eventually,” Dios continues, as Anthy fills his cup without him asking. “You might even get your heart back. The point is – what I’m here to remind you of is – that being under a spell doesn’t release you from your duties. It’s your role as a prince to come to the rescue – always. To help the helpless. To save the princess. Do you understand?”
There is a pause that Dios generously chooses to interpret as Mytho thinking this over, although, of course, with Mytho it is often difficult to tell whether thought is possible at all. Finally, the other prince says, “I don’t know if I’m very good at helping anyone right now.”
“Nonetheless,” Dios says, “you have to try. What’s a prince without that?”
“A trap,” remarks Anthy.
Dios jerks his attention to her. “What?”
“Chuchu got his head stuck,” Anthy explains sadly, and holds up the small monkey-mouse, whose head is, indeed, stuck inside a birdcage.
“Chuuuuuuu!” complains Chuchu, struggling vigorously.
Dios takes a moment to wonder what a birdcage is doing inside Mytho’s heart – but, after all, his story does feature a significant raven. Maybe they’ll even put it on the DVD cover. “Well,” he says, to Mytho, “anyway, you do understand, don’t you? Don’t worry. I’ll be with you the whole way. If you see a lost puppy, or a bird falling off the roof, or, above all, a princess in danger – just listen, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
“Okay,” Mytho says.
“Don’t worry,” Dios says again, which is ridiculous, because Mytho isn’t worrying, and, in fact, probably can’t worry, at this stage. “As long as you keep your nobility, I’m sure your story will have a happy ending.”
"Before you go," says Anthy, looking at Mytho's full-to-the-brim cup, "would you like some more tea?"
And also forblacksheep91: Fullmetal Alchemist: Al/Mei
Al has done a lot of preparation for this moment. He’s spoken to Ling about Xingese social mores ; he’s spoken to Lan Fan to double-check that Ling is not feeding him a load of nonsense about Xingese customs as a practical joke; and, possibly most importantly, he has read all one hundred and seven books in Mei’s collection of Amestrian romance novels (and where she acquired them, given the fact that trade between the countries was almost nonexistent prior to Fuhrer Grumman’s ascension, is one of those questions to which he will probably never find out the answer).
And let’s face it: it’s not like he has any doubt about Mei’s feelings for him. In fact, half of Xing probably has a pretty clear idea of how Mei feels about him. Anyone would say he was ridiculous to be nervous, and they’d be right – but the thing is, by now, Al’s fairly well acquainted with Mei’s ideas of how the world ought to work. Mei’s dreams come writ large, in vivid color; real life rarely arranges itself to accord with her visions, but disappointment never stops her reaching for the next glittering moment. For once, Al thinks, she should have something that lives up to her imagination. When it comes to something like this, it would really be ungentlemanly to disappoint her.
Hence the boat ride down a moonlit river. And the azaleas, and the nightingales, and the starlight, and the formalwear even though they’re not going anywhere that requires it, and the fireworks show that just happens to be going on over a town that’s just within view. Which might have been over the top, but then, this is Mei; going over the top is not really something to worry about.
Basically, far as props and atmosphere go, Al has about the best stage setting in the history of first dates that properly cannot yet be called dates, because Al has not yet actually asked Mei to date him. Which is what he is about to do now, after which he will properly ask if he can kiss her, because while one hundred and three out of the one hundred and seven romance novels featured first kisses that came utterly out of the blue (and forty-seven of them used the word ‘punishing’) Al is fairly sure that that is not in fact the most gentlemanly way to go about it. But this is besides the point. The point is that Al has a plan, and it’s a good plan, and he is completely confident in his abilities to deliver an evening of exceptional romance.
Or he was fully confident, except that, for some completely inexplicable reason, now that he’s reached “Um, Mei . . .” he finds himself stuck.
Mei is looking at him with enormous dazzled eyes, which does at least seem to be a good sign. After a moment or two of silence, she prompts, “Yes, Alphonse?”
“Um,” he says again, wondering if his face is turning red. This is not how it was supposed to go. “Uh - Mei, I - I, um –”
The thing about Mei is that she dreams large, and she always reaches out for her dreams with both hands.
The other thing about Mei is that she is not very patient.
“Alphonse,” she says, after another moment, when it seems clear he’s going to be stuck for a while. She puts her right hand on his silk-clad shoulder, and now he knows his face is red; a second of hesitation and then, all of a sudden, she leans forward and her other hand is on his other shoulder and the boat is starting to wobble a little and she’s kissing him.
Without, in fact, asking first – but then, Mei isn’t required to be a gentleman. And it’s still, Al decides later, pretty romantic, after all.
Forgenarti: Fullmetal Alchemist: Marcoh and Scar on their WACKY ROAD TRIP
Marcoh is not a quiet man by nature, but necessity has helped him grow accustomed to it, and so he does his best to respect Scar’s silences on the long days they spend walking the roads.
He’s not always able to repress the desire for conversation. If he were going to be honest with himself, there’s a certain reassurance in Scar’s gruff, often monosyllabic responses, about as far from Envy’s manic malice as it’s possible to get. He tries his best, all the same; silence is a gift Marcoh ought to be able to give to this young man. It’s the least he can do, surely, given the peace that Scar’s presence brings Marcoh.
Which is not to say that Scar never speaks to Marcoh first. It’s Scar who calls the midday halts, always, with a keen eye for when the older man starts to flag. Marcoh tries to thank him for it, the first day.
“You’ve been injured,” Scar says, expressionlesss, “and you aren’t strong. If you fall sick again, you’re useless.”
This has the opposite effect of what’s probably intended, in that it makes Marcoh want to thank Scar twice as much. He wants to thank him for believing in his usefulness; for not forgiving him, because Marcoh has done the unforgivable, and finding value in him regardless. He stores the words away somewhere, aware Scar won’t welcome them. Perhaps he’ll find a time when it’s all right to say them.
But the longer they travel, the more he thinks that he never will; slowly, left to their own company, they are reaching the point where things don’t need to be spelled out. “Look,” he says to Scar one day as they pass by a children’s shop, feeling a smile settling over his ruined face, “see those barrettes in the window? They’ve got black-and-white cats on them just like Xiao Mei.”
Scar pauses. Then he turns on his heel and walks into the shop, coming out in a few moments with the barrettes displayed in his hand.
He doesn’t say anything, and Marcoh finds it hard to explain even to himself, for a while, why this small moment stays with him for so long after. It’s not just the sense of being understood, although this is a good part of it. The other part, he eventually realizes, is the implication of the act: if little Mei has made her way safely home to Xing, as Marcoh devoutly hopes she has, then the only way for her to receive this present is if someone crosses the desert to deliver it. He thinks he would like to let Mei show him around her home, and see how her irrepressible confidence asserts itself on her home ground. Perhaps Scar feels the same way.
A few months ago, if Marcoh was looking forward to anything, it was reaching the peace at the end. He has a heavy suspicion that Scar felt something similar, although (needless to say) they’ve never spoken of it. It’s a relatively common consequence of a life lived as one long discussion with the dead.
Marcoh is thoroughly aware that his travels since then have changed him. But before now, he hasn’t even thought that perhaps he is not the only mass murderer to have found an unexpected grace while walking this long, quiet road.
And also forgenarti: Fullmetal Alchemist/Princess Tutu crossover: Elrics in Kinkan Town
People always stare a little when Al walks into a new place. They try to be polite about it, but the plain truth is that vintage armor is bulky, heavy and uncomfortable, and nobody wears it while traveling.
When they walk into Kinkan Town, though, it’s Al who finds himself staring.
“Brother!” he whispers, leaning down so far his side-plating creaks. “That was a cat chimera! Just walking around!”
“I saw,” Ed hisses back. “There’s a crocodile chimera over there.”
“Brother, no one’s even looking at them! What is this place?”
“I dunno. The rumors were all pretty vague. But,” says Ed, breaking into a sudden sharp grin that narrows his eyes, “If there’s chimera just walking around, and nobody cares, that’s a pretty good sign that someone’s been using a lot of power here, isn’t it? Maybe even –”
“Maybe,” says Al, but he shivers. He doesn’t know what good reason someone would have for making so many chimera, and it’s kind of giving him the creeps.
Or maybe that’s just the weirdly jaunty music that has suddenly sprung up out of nowhere. “Brother,” he says, but Ed’s attention has already been jerked away by a green-haired woman who’s standing in front of them.
(Which Al could have sworn she wasn’t, a few seconds ago – but then again, he was distracted.)
“Would you like to buy a gem? Pretty gems,” says the woman, “to give as a gift.” If Ed’s patent irritation fazes the woman, she doesn’t show it; her smile remains fixed and serene. “A present for the one you love.”
“Not unless you’ve got a philosopher’s stone in there,” mutters Ed, and prepares to shove on by, but Al touches him on the arm.
“Brother . . . maybe, if she’s got something nice to give to Winry in case you break your arm again . . .”
Ed freezes, then sighs and stomps back around, huffing air through his nostrils. “Okay,” he demands of the gem-seller, “what’ve you got?”
A slender, almost too-long finger extends and presses a button; the lid of the music box pops open, revealing a veritable bird’s nest of jewelry. There might really be a philosopher’s stone in there, and you’d never know it, thinks Al, trying to bend his head over to see the wares without blocking off all the light.
“This is the gem called resolve,” remarks the seller, holding up a square, stolid golden gem; Ed ignores it, and she carefully replaces it in the pile, pulling out another one, blushing pink. “And this is the gem called tormenting the fanbase.”
“What?” says Al.
“- Hey,” says Ed, tugging at the edge of a chain. “What’s this one?”
It’s like Ed, to go straight for the one that’s hardest to reach. The gem-seller’s fingers dive swiftly into the tangle; in a few seconds, she’s somehow managed to separate out the necklace in question and holds it up now for them to see. “This is the gem,” she says, “called character growth.” Her voice is as serene as ever, but her fingers curl a little around the chain.
Ed looks at it for a long time. Then he shakes his head, and lifts his hand, half-turning away. “Nah,” he says. “I’m pretty sure Winry’s got one like it already. Keep your gems, lady, it’s okay.” He walks on ahead, and Al follows hastily after.
He’s pretty sure it’s just his imagination that he hears a crackling old voice behind him, heckling: why didn’t you just give them that old thing? We don’t have any use for that one! Almost entirely sure. But he’s distracted from listening, anyway, as Ed in front of him announces, “Al, this is a weird town.”
Al can’t do anything but agree.
Forfuturesoon: Princess Tutu/Monster crossover: Fakir/Tenma, except actually it's mostly just Fakir and Autor talking
“Oh, for god’s sake, Fakir,” Autor sighs. “He’s a med student, not an undergraduate. He’s attractive, he’s of legal age, I don’t know what you have to angst over.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fakir snaps, without looking up from notebook. He’s working on a new children’s story: a young prince given as a hostage to a war-torn faraway land. The prince will have to escape somehow, unless of course the moral is that he can be happier helping the people who need him in the war-torn land than he will be if he returns home to his peaceful life. Fakir hasn’t decided yet. “Actually, I don’t know why you’re even here. Why are you here?”
“Because you had Rudy Gillen for your intro to psychoanalytic literary criticism class last semester, and now I have him for the master class and I need to pick your brains. But your brains are clearly filled with Kenzo Tenma, so I don’t know why I even bother. Why do you even teach psychoanalytic literary criticism? You’re terrible at it. You should just let me teach both classes.”
“I’m not terrible at it,” Fakir mutters. “I just don’t like people using my stories as examples.”
“Well, then you’re a hypocrite. It’s not like your stories are very good examples anyway. Really, Fakir, it’s literary analysis for kindergarteners. A handsome prince and a swan, please –”
Fakir tunes out Autor with relative ease, now that he’s not talking about Kenzo Tenma – it’s a skill he’s had decades to practice – and taps his quill on the page, frowning. (He still writes with a quill, though everyone else in the department has long since switched over to typewriters. Students invariably think the bright yellow feather is a sign of hidden depths of frivolity, and are inevitably disappointed.) If his prince character perhaps meets a girl in the kingdom – no, too easy, and he doesn’t want to write a love story anyway. Maybe instead he'll introduce children –
“What’s that?” Autor’s sharp, nervously excited voice cuts through his reverie again, and Fakir scowls.
“If you’re just going to –” Fakir begins, but Autor cuts him off.
“Well, all right,” he says, shaking his head, and then turns to flash Fakir one of those smug, I-know-everything-you’re-dying-to-know smiles that he never really grew out of. (They serve him fairly well, actually, as a professor.) “I can certainly see why he’s your type.”
“What?” Fakir leverages himself out of his seat, at approximately a third of the speed at which he would have been able to launch himself before his knees started going stiff after long periods, and heads for the window of his faculty bungalow. Outside, he can see young Kenzo Tenma, sitting on the ground and carefully cradling a small skinny dog, as spectators start to filter around. His leg is torn and bloody; so is the dog’s muzzle. Someone is bending solicitously over him, and pointing towards the hospital.
For a moment, Fakir just stands clutching the window, gritting his teeth. He is restraining a desire, or a memory of a desire, an urge to march out there and grab the young man by the shoulder, to shake him and demand: Why do you do such pointless things? What possible good could it do you?
Instead, he turns around, in a short gesture, and goes back to his desk. “Autor,” he says, aware that his voice is harsh, “I really have to work.”
Autor rolls his eyes underneath his glasses and heads out the door, still carrying the file with Rudy Gillen’s notes under his arm. Fakir doesn’t notice. He picks up his pen, pauses again, and starts to write.
Children - is that what he was thinkingg? Threatened children – dangerous children? Perhaps the prince stops to help them, at risk of danger to himself, but something goes wrong . . . there are consequences to kind acts. Maybe that will be the moral of this story. It’s a moral worth reiterating, after all; it’s a thing that princes never seem to understand.
I think that is all that will fit in this entry but MORE TO COME oh man so many drabbles.
For
scifantasy: Revolutionary Girl Utena/Leverage crossover snippets from a hypothetical complete crossover that will never actually existIn Nanami’s mind, it’s so easy – she’ll “accidentally” open Parker’s locker; the set of handcuffs she planted in there yesterday will come falling out; Professor Hardison will say, “I’m disappointed in you, Parker! I didn’t think you were the kind of girl to bring handcuffs to school!”; and Operation: Parker-Is-A-Big-Weirdo-Who-Keeps-Handcuffs-In-Her-Locker will be an unqualified success!
Things start to go wrong pretty fast, though.
Boom.
“What was that!” Nanami shrieks, jumping backwards as smoke starts to fill the hallway.
Hardison sighs and rubs his forehead. He doesn't even have to look at Parker. “You rigged it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Parker says. “I don’t want anyone going through my stuff.”
“Ain’t that cute,” Hardison says, amused in spite of himself. “What, you got like a diary in there or something?”
Parker gives him a don’t-be-stupid look in response. “No, my favorite pair of practice handcuffs.”
(The next day, Keiko leans over to Aiko and whispers, “Gosh, Nanami-sama kind of looks like a space alien with her eyebrows all singed like that, doesn’t she?”)
************************
Nate shades his eyes and squints up. “So that’s what this is all about, huh?”
“It is beautiful.” The sight is stirring some kind of deep emotion in Sophie; they can all tell when this happens because she closes her eyes and attempts to memorize the feeling to use later In Her Art. “You can almost understand why they all go so mad over it.”
“I dunno, I mean, it’s real nice, but it’s getting a little Super Mario up in here,” Hardison says. “Listen up, guys, ‘cause I’m calling it now – the princess is in another castle.” But he keeps staring upwards, and so does Eliot, who doesn’t say anything at all.
Parker looks blankly from one rapt face to the other. She peers up through her right eye. Then she peers up through her left. Finally she opens both eyes, wrinkles her nose, and hazards, “You mean the planetarium projector?”
*********************
“Oh no,” says Eliot. “Hell no.”
His opponent glares at him across the dueling arena, already brandishing his sword. (Too early, Eliot notes in a corner of his mind. If he were the kid’s teacher he’d tell him it doesn’t pay to pull out your weapon prematurely, but right now he’s got bigger things on his mind.) “What are you waiting for?” Saionji snarls. “Draw the sword!”
The light glints off of Anthy’s glasses, and off the hilt of the sword protruding from her chest. It’s very slightly possible that she looks disconcerted. “Eliot-sama . . .”
“I put up with the flowers,” Eliot says flatly. “I put up with the epaulets,” and those things better come off his favorite jacket, by the way, or someone is going to pay. He can hear Hardison snickering through the earbud, which is not helping. “Here’s where I draw the line. You wanna fight, you can take the boob-sword. I’m done."
********************
“You’re late tonight, Anthy.”
Anthy sits down on her bed, across from Utena’s. “I’m sorry, Utena-sama,” she says. “I was helping my brother. He hurt his hand.”
“Oh – is Akio-san all right?”
“He should be careful picking flowers. Sometimes they scratch him.”
“Poor Akio-san!”
“Poor brother,” Anthy agrees, hands folded demurely in her lap.
“I hope he wasn’t too badly – oh! Chuchu, leave that alone!”
Chuchu squeaks and claps his paws to his nose, and the insect he’s been grabbing at buzzes vengefully off. Utena blinks after it.
"Hey, aren't bees supposed to die after they've stung something . . .?"
"Oh," Anthy says, "that one must be a wasp."
Several buildings away, in the transfer-student-dorm-slash-temporary-Leverage-headquarters, Parker snaps, “I’m not a people person!” and storms off into the next room.
“We really have to remember not to ask her to do this kind of thing,” Nate says to Sophie.
“I know,” Sophie says, and sighs. “But did it really have to be another fork?"
For
vivien529: Milliwaysverse Mary Lennox: WWI and spying - this one came out bit more melancholy than I anticipatedIf it wasn’t for Milliways, even Mary sometimes admits, she’d never be able to pull this off without exploding.
Today, for example - when she sees the headline in the paper, and can't react to it with anything except thinned lips and silence, not even a little bit, until she gets to Milliways and does what she's been longing to do, which is throw the newspaper down on the nearest table with extreme force.
This does not actually relieve her feelings as much as she’d hoped.
“. . . Mary?” Ingress frowns and picks up her tea, heading over to the table nearest the door. “Are you all right?”
Mary glares down at the paper, as if she can erase the headline by staring at it, and doesn’t answer for a moment. “What a fool!” she bursts out, finally. “How could she be so – we’ve still years of war left, and she hardly made it one!”
Ingress looks down at the headline. Unhelpfully, it’s in German. “Um . . . do you want to talk about it?” she hazards, although the answer already seems to be yes.
Mary stabs down a finger at the name: EDITH CAVELL.
“Executed by the Germans,” she says, the words suddenly clipped and short. “For treason.”
“Oh, Mary –” Ingress’ eyes widen. “She didn’t have your name, did she?” This isn’t a question Ingress would have thought to ask a few years back – but they teach you a lot of things when you put on a set of Grays. Espionage can certainly fall within a Herald’s job description. “Will you need to come here to hide? You know you can always stay at the House of Arch –“
“No - we were in the same line, but I didn’t know her,” Mary says, and Ingress relaxes a little. “They do try to keep us separate – for just that reason, of course. I ought to be safe as any of us will be now, but if the Germans will have got the wind up – we’ll have to be timid as mice, and not get half of what we might do done. I do not do well,” she adds, unnecessarily, “with timidity.”
“That’s sad, though,” Ingress says, looking again at the paper, and the picture of a trim elderly woman in a gray nurse’s uniform. “About Edith Cavell.”
Mary puts her hand down on the paper and then abruptly crumples it, her fingers pulling together savagely. “They’ll make it a national tragedy, I expect.”
Ingress looks at her friend’s drawn face, drained the color of sour milk. She wants to ask if she’s scared, but she’s known Mary long enough by now to know just how well that will go over.
“Be careful,” she says, instead.
“Well, I shall have to be now,” Mary says, which isn’t an answer, and then glances up at Ingress, and smiles, quick and wry. “And if I’m not, you may sit here with a newspaper headline and call me a fool.”
For
in_the_blue: Baccano!: Eve Genoard with a photo albumAs a little girl, Eve Genoard had loved having her picture taken. Benjamin and Samasa had indulged her, as they did in almost everything, calling in the photographer for every birthday and special occasion; she would drag her brothers to stand in front of the camera and beam anxiously up into the black box, making sure her hair was neat and her dress was smooth and begging Dallas and Geoffrey to smile. Geoffrey did smile, most of the time, old enough to be indulgent to a pleading small sister, and Dallas could occasionally be bullied into it, but neither one ever stayed to take more than one group picture before they pelted off to go do whatever boy things they did on their own, leaving pretty little Eve in full possession.
When he was sixteen, Dallas went into a rage and ripped up all the photos of himself that he could find in the house. Eve managed to save a photo of herself and Dallas by the expedient of hiding it in a book of Poe’s short stories; the only place Dallas was less likely to look was her Bible, but somehow hiding a picture of Dallas in the Good Book felt disrespectful to the Bible and her brother both. She couldn’t get to any of the pictures of Geoffrey-and-Dallas in time, though. Dallas had gone after those first.
After that, the only pictures left in the photo albums were shot after shot of small Eve, demure little girl with her hands neatly folded, attentive to the photographer’s instructions. By the age of ten, she’d already become less enamored of having her picture taken, but she’d never had the heart to tell Benjamin and Samasa. Half the dresses she’s ever owned are immortalized here; in every one she sits alone, her skirts growing longer and her smiles more and more tentative as the years pass by.
She hasn’t looked at the photos in years.
She’s looking at them now – studying her own face, small pointed chin, light-colored locks. Anxious to look her best, anxious to please somebody unseen; smiling in every picture, even the most recent, the ones where she felt least like smiling. What a sweet, what a good little girl.
“Eve!” Samasa appears in the doorway, frowning over at her. “Eve, you decided what you’re gonna wear for the picture yet?”
“Yes,” Eve calls back, closing the photo album on the last picture of her, taken on her sixteenth birthday. She’s wearing now the same dress she did then; it’s pink, with puffed sleeves and ruffles around the waist. She spent some time considering her options before concluding that she actually liked pink and ruffles, and there wasn’t any good reason to change. “Is the Daily Days photographer here?”
“Yeah, Elean brought him on over. Listen, Eve, me and Elean are gonna go take in a movie, but Benjamin’ll be here. Don’t let that Daily Days no-good boss you around too much, all right?”
“All right,” Eve says, and sets the photo book aside.
A few weeks later, there’s a new entry to slide into the back of the photo album. A newspaper clipping, from an article about the Genoard business’ recent philanthropic projects – a human interest piece, accompanied by a picture of pretty little Eve Genoard herself, so young and such a tragic story; a newspaperman's dream.
In the photo, Eve doesn’t look much older than she did in her sixteenth-birthday picture. The outfits she chooses aren’t calculated for sophistication.
But she’s standing, hands straight at her sides and her chin is high, and she isn’t smiling.
For
agonistes: Leverage/Ouran crossover v.1: Tamaki, Kyouya, Hardison and EliotHardison looks down at the pile of unconscious men with guns under Eliot’s feet. Then he looks at the circle of extremely conscious men with guns surrounding them. Then he lifts his hands in the air and aims a disarming smile at the nearest gun-wielding man, who does not smile back.
Eliot, meanwhile glares for a moment longer, then snarls and throws down his kebab skewer.
Hardison lets out the breath he’s been holding. “All right,” he says. “You got us.”
“Thank you.” The teenaged boy with the notepad brushes through the two men at the top of the circle carelessly, as if he owns them.
Which, Hardison realizes, after a moment to identify the kid, does not make much sense, because while fifteen fascinating minutes tracing back revenue streams have given him a healthy respect for Ohtori Kyouya – “Hey now. Kid,” he says, squinting at him, “this is not your house.”
“I have investments worth protecting here,” Kyouya explains coolly, and Hardison winces as the light from above bounces off the kid’s glasses and into his eyes. “Your associate has already damaged certain of our company assets.”
Eliot blinks, and then glances down at the unconscious men with guns. “Give ‘em a day or two to rest up, and they’ll be fine,” he offers, and then looks again. “Okay, maybe a week or two. Uh, a month, for that guy.”
“Actually,” Kyouya says, “I was referring to –”
“Kyouya!” The second voice is also male and also teenaged, but speaking Japanese rather than Kyouya’s flawless English. Fortunately, Hardison is actually pretty decent at Japanese, thank you Naruto. “Kyouya, this is terrible!” The voice turns out to be attached to another recognizable face; Tamaki Suoh barges through the ring of armed guards, displaying a few scraps of charred and disintegrating fabric in his hands.
“Calm down,” Kyouya answers, also in Japanese, without looking back over his shoulder. “I’m taking care of it.”
Eliot stares at the fabric and says, blankly, “The closet we flash-bombed?” Eliot is also pretty decent at Japanese, thank you, yakuza, or, alternately, thank you Japanese ex-girlfriend. Hardison’s money is actually on a yakuza Japanese ex-girlfriend.
“Do you have any idea what authentic period costumes generally cost?” Kyouya frowns downwards, fingers flying over his calculator. “The imported cloth-of-gold Renaissance breeches alone –”
“Haruhi would have looked so cute in this,” wails Tamaki, clutching his hair in overwhelming sorrow.
“With all the damages taken into account, that comes to –” Kyouya taps the final key, and then holds up the calculator.
They’ve been running kind of short after the last few jobs; crime in Japan is expensive. Hardison squints at the number, and does a few frantic calculations in his own head. “Yeah, all right,” he says, crossing his fingers that his sums are right and sending Sophie a silent apology in his head. She can get around to setting up that foundation in a year or two. “Look, if that’s all, we can send you a check or something, okay?” He’s got most of what they needed on a USB in his back pocket, and the Ohtori kid doesn’t seem inclined to call the police. The Ohtori family wouldn’t have much cause to go crying over the downfall of the Suohs, either; if they play their cards right, they just might be able to pull this one off after all.
Kyouya glances back over at Tamaki, who has stopped clutching at his hair and is now punching a number into his phone. “Yes,” he says. “Well. Overall I really don’t have any objection to your plans for the Suoh family matriarch, but –”
“Haruhi! Haruhi, I have terrible news –”
“I’m afraid that for the sake of some long-term plans I’m going to have to ask you to hold off for –”
“What do you mean, you’re in the - who is – is that those unscrupulous – what?”
“Hm,” Kyouya says, and returns his full attention to Hardison. Hardison returns the favor, and tries not to pay attention to the men with guns, who are all assiduously trying not to pay attention to the putative heir to the Suoh family, who is curled up against a wall growing mushrooms. Basically there’s a lot of careful not-noticing going on all around. “Let’s say five years,” says Kyouya, as smoothly as if they were standing in a boardroom and not in the middle of a ring of armed men in the Suoh kitchens with unconscious souffle-covered bodyguards scattered all over the floor. “For certain assets to mature.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Eliot, flat.
“I could just ask you to hand over the USB drive in your pocket,” Kyouya says, patient. “But I don’t really have the time to spend playing this kind of game with your organization all the time. I’m offering an agreement instead. Five years, and we’ll consider your debt cancelled. Do you understand, Mr. Ford?”
Hardison jumps, and then jumps again as Nate says in his ear, Five years is a long time to our client. Hardison resists the temptation to curse; great time to show up, Mr. Ford, where were you five minutes ago when the teenaged megalomaniac decided to drop in with all the armed goons? However, that might be considered unproductive, so instead he says, butter-smooth, “Mr. Ford says, five years might be a problem.”
Kyouya’s eyes flick back to Tamaki again, and he smiles – a calm accountant’s smile, but if he really wanted people to believe that, Hardison thinks, he’d ditch the creepy-ass glinting glasses. At heart, Ohtori Kyouya is not a kid who minds unnerving people. “Let us,” he says, “take care of that problem.”
I don’t trust him, says Nate, and “Can we trust you?” snaps Eliot, almost at the same time.
“In the long run, corruption is bad for business,” Kyouya says, cool still turned up to the max. “And –“
“Oh, come on, Kyouya!” Tamaki has, at some point in the last thirty seconds, recovered from his mushroom-filled sulk. He comes up now and drapes his arm over the other boy’s shoulders, grinning at Hardison and Eliot from under his doubloon-gold fringe. Hardison can almost feel twenty bodyguards emphatically continuing to refrain from comment. “Why don’t you just admit,” he says – and it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tamaki Suoh also speaks excellent English – “that even a low blood pressure evil overlord is afraid of getting scolded by Haruhi?”
For
fahye: Leverage/Ouran crossover v.2: Parker and Kyouya bonding over love of moneyHardison has already started hacking into the Polish government’s network, the twins are concocting some convoluted plan that involves spreading pitch on the embassy stairs, and Eliot is asking anyone who will listen why they can’t just go beat the guy up, when Kyouya steps into the room. He is only gritting his teeth very slightly.
“Look, Ohtori,” Eliot says, “I’m just gonna go beat the guy –”
“It’s taken care of,” Kyouya says. “Paying them off was the simplest way to handle it.”
Everyone takes a moment to blink.
“Uh,” says Hardison. “Thanks?”
“Please don’t mention it,” says Kyouya and retreats into a corner of the clubroom to tap furiously away on his calculator, his knitted eyebrows an extremely effective barrier between him and the rest of the world.
“. . . okay then,” says Hardison, and looks over at Parker to gauge her reaction - she was kind of looking forward to checking out the embassy elevators - but Parker has for some inexplicable reason already gotten up from her seat. She marches over to Kyouya’s corner, with the air of a nun completing an errand of mercy. (The nun costume she’s currently wearing does help with that impression.)
“I’m sorry,” she mutters, as Kyouya looks up. “I know how hard this must be for you.” Then, while five or six mouths gape in unison, she leans over and gives him a quick, tight hug. “Your money will miss you, too!”
“Okay,” says Eliot, after a moment, “who put Parker back on the happy pills?”
“I spend money for the team,” Hardison says. “I spend money for the team all the damn time, how come I don’t get the sympathy hugs?”
Honey, sitting high on Mori’s shoulders, leans his arms on top of his cousin’s head and beams genially down at all of them. “That's really great, Mori! Don’t you think it’s really great that Kyouya-kun’s made a friend who understands him so well?”
For
blacksheep91: Revolutionary Girl Utena/Princess Tutu crossover: teatime with Mytho and DiosIn every Prince-character, there’s a little bit of Dios.
Admittedly, some correlate a little more directly than others.
“Would you like some tea?” his sister asks politely.
The reflection of Dios sitting across the table blinks at her and ventures, “I don’t really know if I like or dislike tea.”
“Well,” Dios says. “You’re a prince. Courtesy and consideration are important traits. So if a princess offers you tea, you should accept it.”
Mytho nods. “Thank you,” he says, and obediently holds out his cup. Anthy pours the tea. Green eyes meet gold, in what combined might be the most overwhelmingly blank gaze in human history.
Dios resists the urge to facepalm.
“All right, Mytho,” he says. “Do you know where you are?”
“No,” says Mytho, apparently not at all concerned by this.
“That’s good,” says Dios, “because you’re not really anywhere. This is the castle where eternity dwells, and it doesn’t exist.”
“Oh,” says Mytho.
“In a way,” Dios adds, though he’s not sure why – it isn’t as if Mytho’s going to understand – “it’s as if you’re inside your own heart. I’m the embodiment of your princely nature, the only part of you that hasn’t been shattered, which is why I’m here. Anthy’s here because –” He glances over at Anthy, whose smile is perfect and placid. “Well, as far as I can make out, Anthy’s here because she’s fascinated by the nobility that she feels she lacks and she enjoys being passive-aggressively disruptive. If she can, she’ll throw your story off-course, but don’t mind her.”
“More tea?” says Anthy. The light glints off her glasses, and Dios wonders, not for the first time, if he can talk her into contact lenses.
“Thank you,” says Mytho, and holds out his cup, which is still full. Anthy carefully tops it off anyway.
“You’ll go back out into the world eventually,” Dios continues, as Anthy fills his cup without him asking. “You might even get your heart back. The point is – what I’m here to remind you of is – that being under a spell doesn’t release you from your duties. It’s your role as a prince to come to the rescue – always. To help the helpless. To save the princess. Do you understand?”
There is a pause that Dios generously chooses to interpret as Mytho thinking this over, although, of course, with Mytho it is often difficult to tell whether thought is possible at all. Finally, the other prince says, “I don’t know if I’m very good at helping anyone right now.”
“Nonetheless,” Dios says, “you have to try. What’s a prince without that?”
“A trap,” remarks Anthy.
Dios jerks his attention to her. “What?”
“Chuchu got his head stuck,” Anthy explains sadly, and holds up the small monkey-mouse, whose head is, indeed, stuck inside a birdcage.
“Chuuuuuuu!” complains Chuchu, struggling vigorously.
Dios takes a moment to wonder what a birdcage is doing inside Mytho’s heart – but, after all, his story does feature a significant raven. Maybe they’ll even put it on the DVD cover. “Well,” he says, to Mytho, “anyway, you do understand, don’t you? Don’t worry. I’ll be with you the whole way. If you see a lost puppy, or a bird falling off the roof, or, above all, a princess in danger – just listen, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
“Okay,” Mytho says.
“Don’t worry,” Dios says again, which is ridiculous, because Mytho isn’t worrying, and, in fact, probably can’t worry, at this stage. “As long as you keep your nobility, I’m sure your story will have a happy ending.”
"Before you go," says Anthy, looking at Mytho's full-to-the-brim cup, "would you like some more tea?"
And also for
blacksheep91: Fullmetal Alchemist: Al/MeiAl has done a lot of preparation for this moment. He’s spoken to Ling about Xingese social mores ; he’s spoken to Lan Fan to double-check that Ling is not feeding him a load of nonsense about Xingese customs as a practical joke; and, possibly most importantly, he has read all one hundred and seven books in Mei’s collection of Amestrian romance novels (and where she acquired them, given the fact that trade between the countries was almost nonexistent prior to Fuhrer Grumman’s ascension, is one of those questions to which he will probably never find out the answer).
And let’s face it: it’s not like he has any doubt about Mei’s feelings for him. In fact, half of Xing probably has a pretty clear idea of how Mei feels about him. Anyone would say he was ridiculous to be nervous, and they’d be right – but the thing is, by now, Al’s fairly well acquainted with Mei’s ideas of how the world ought to work. Mei’s dreams come writ large, in vivid color; real life rarely arranges itself to accord with her visions, but disappointment never stops her reaching for the next glittering moment. For once, Al thinks, she should have something that lives up to her imagination. When it comes to something like this, it would really be ungentlemanly to disappoint her.
Hence the boat ride down a moonlit river. And the azaleas, and the nightingales, and the starlight, and the formalwear even though they’re not going anywhere that requires it, and the fireworks show that just happens to be going on over a town that’s just within view. Which might have been over the top, but then, this is Mei; going over the top is not really something to worry about.
Basically, far as props and atmosphere go, Al has about the best stage setting in the history of first dates that properly cannot yet be called dates, because Al has not yet actually asked Mei to date him. Which is what he is about to do now, after which he will properly ask if he can kiss her, because while one hundred and three out of the one hundred and seven romance novels featured first kisses that came utterly out of the blue (and forty-seven of them used the word ‘punishing’) Al is fairly sure that that is not in fact the most gentlemanly way to go about it. But this is besides the point. The point is that Al has a plan, and it’s a good plan, and he is completely confident in his abilities to deliver an evening of exceptional romance.
Or he was fully confident, except that, for some completely inexplicable reason, now that he’s reached “Um, Mei . . .” he finds himself stuck.
Mei is looking at him with enormous dazzled eyes, which does at least seem to be a good sign. After a moment or two of silence, she prompts, “Yes, Alphonse?”
“Um,” he says again, wondering if his face is turning red. This is not how it was supposed to go. “Uh - Mei, I - I, um –”
The thing about Mei is that she dreams large, and she always reaches out for her dreams with both hands.
The other thing about Mei is that she is not very patient.
“Alphonse,” she says, after another moment, when it seems clear he’s going to be stuck for a while. She puts her right hand on his silk-clad shoulder, and now he knows his face is red; a second of hesitation and then, all of a sudden, she leans forward and her other hand is on his other shoulder and the boat is starting to wobble a little and she’s kissing him.
Without, in fact, asking first – but then, Mei isn’t required to be a gentleman. And it’s still, Al decides later, pretty romantic, after all.
For
genarti: Fullmetal Alchemist: Marcoh and Scar on their WACKY ROAD TRIPMarcoh is not a quiet man by nature, but necessity has helped him grow accustomed to it, and so he does his best to respect Scar’s silences on the long days they spend walking the roads.
He’s not always able to repress the desire for conversation. If he were going to be honest with himself, there’s a certain reassurance in Scar’s gruff, often monosyllabic responses, about as far from Envy’s manic malice as it’s possible to get. He tries his best, all the same; silence is a gift Marcoh ought to be able to give to this young man. It’s the least he can do, surely, given the peace that Scar’s presence brings Marcoh.
Which is not to say that Scar never speaks to Marcoh first. It’s Scar who calls the midday halts, always, with a keen eye for when the older man starts to flag. Marcoh tries to thank him for it, the first day.
“You’ve been injured,” Scar says, expressionlesss, “and you aren’t strong. If you fall sick again, you’re useless.”
This has the opposite effect of what’s probably intended, in that it makes Marcoh want to thank Scar twice as much. He wants to thank him for believing in his usefulness; for not forgiving him, because Marcoh has done the unforgivable, and finding value in him regardless. He stores the words away somewhere, aware Scar won’t welcome them. Perhaps he’ll find a time when it’s all right to say them.
But the longer they travel, the more he thinks that he never will; slowly, left to their own company, they are reaching the point where things don’t need to be spelled out. “Look,” he says to Scar one day as they pass by a children’s shop, feeling a smile settling over his ruined face, “see those barrettes in the window? They’ve got black-and-white cats on them just like Xiao Mei.”
Scar pauses. Then he turns on his heel and walks into the shop, coming out in a few moments with the barrettes displayed in his hand.
He doesn’t say anything, and Marcoh finds it hard to explain even to himself, for a while, why this small moment stays with him for so long after. It’s not just the sense of being understood, although this is a good part of it. The other part, he eventually realizes, is the implication of the act: if little Mei has made her way safely home to Xing, as Marcoh devoutly hopes she has, then the only way for her to receive this present is if someone crosses the desert to deliver it. He thinks he would like to let Mei show him around her home, and see how her irrepressible confidence asserts itself on her home ground. Perhaps Scar feels the same way.
A few months ago, if Marcoh was looking forward to anything, it was reaching the peace at the end. He has a heavy suspicion that Scar felt something similar, although (needless to say) they’ve never spoken of it. It’s a relatively common consequence of a life lived as one long discussion with the dead.
Marcoh is thoroughly aware that his travels since then have changed him. But before now, he hasn’t even thought that perhaps he is not the only mass murderer to have found an unexpected grace while walking this long, quiet road.
And also for
genarti: Fullmetal Alchemist/Princess Tutu crossover: Elrics in Kinkan TownPeople always stare a little when Al walks into a new place. They try to be polite about it, but the plain truth is that vintage armor is bulky, heavy and uncomfortable, and nobody wears it while traveling.
When they walk into Kinkan Town, though, it’s Al who finds himself staring.
“Brother!” he whispers, leaning down so far his side-plating creaks. “That was a cat chimera! Just walking around!”
“I saw,” Ed hisses back. “There’s a crocodile chimera over there.”
“Brother, no one’s even looking at them! What is this place?”
“I dunno. The rumors were all pretty vague. But,” says Ed, breaking into a sudden sharp grin that narrows his eyes, “If there’s chimera just walking around, and nobody cares, that’s a pretty good sign that someone’s been using a lot of power here, isn’t it? Maybe even –”
“Maybe,” says Al, but he shivers. He doesn’t know what good reason someone would have for making so many chimera, and it’s kind of giving him the creeps.
Or maybe that’s just the weirdly jaunty music that has suddenly sprung up out of nowhere. “Brother,” he says, but Ed’s attention has already been jerked away by a green-haired woman who’s standing in front of them.
(Which Al could have sworn she wasn’t, a few seconds ago – but then again, he was distracted.)
“Would you like to buy a gem? Pretty gems,” says the woman, “to give as a gift.” If Ed’s patent irritation fazes the woman, she doesn’t show it; her smile remains fixed and serene. “A present for the one you love.”
“Not unless you’ve got a philosopher’s stone in there,” mutters Ed, and prepares to shove on by, but Al touches him on the arm.
“Brother . . . maybe, if she’s got something nice to give to Winry in case you break your arm again . . .”
Ed freezes, then sighs and stomps back around, huffing air through his nostrils. “Okay,” he demands of the gem-seller, “what’ve you got?”
A slender, almost too-long finger extends and presses a button; the lid of the music box pops open, revealing a veritable bird’s nest of jewelry. There might really be a philosopher’s stone in there, and you’d never know it, thinks Al, trying to bend his head over to see the wares without blocking off all the light.
“This is the gem called resolve,” remarks the seller, holding up a square, stolid golden gem; Ed ignores it, and she carefully replaces it in the pile, pulling out another one, blushing pink. “And this is the gem called tormenting the fanbase.”
“What?” says Al.
“- Hey,” says Ed, tugging at the edge of a chain. “What’s this one?”
It’s like Ed, to go straight for the one that’s hardest to reach. The gem-seller’s fingers dive swiftly into the tangle; in a few seconds, she’s somehow managed to separate out the necklace in question and holds it up now for them to see. “This is the gem,” she says, “called character growth.” Her voice is as serene as ever, but her fingers curl a little around the chain.
Ed looks at it for a long time. Then he shakes his head, and lifts his hand, half-turning away. “Nah,” he says. “I’m pretty sure Winry’s got one like it already. Keep your gems, lady, it’s okay.” He walks on ahead, and Al follows hastily after.
He’s pretty sure it’s just his imagination that he hears a crackling old voice behind him, heckling: why didn’t you just give them that old thing? We don’t have any use for that one! Almost entirely sure. But he’s distracted from listening, anyway, as Ed in front of him announces, “Al, this is a weird town.”
Al can’t do anything but agree.
For
futuresoon: Princess Tutu/Monster crossover: Fakir/Tenma, except actually it's mostly just Fakir and Autor talking“Oh, for god’s sake, Fakir,” Autor sighs. “He’s a med student, not an undergraduate. He’s attractive, he’s of legal age, I don’t know what you have to angst over.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fakir snaps, without looking up from notebook. He’s working on a new children’s story: a young prince given as a hostage to a war-torn faraway land. The prince will have to escape somehow, unless of course the moral is that he can be happier helping the people who need him in the war-torn land than he will be if he returns home to his peaceful life. Fakir hasn’t decided yet. “Actually, I don’t know why you’re even here. Why are you here?”
“Because you had Rudy Gillen for your intro to psychoanalytic literary criticism class last semester, and now I have him for the master class and I need to pick your brains. But your brains are clearly filled with Kenzo Tenma, so I don’t know why I even bother. Why do you even teach psychoanalytic literary criticism? You’re terrible at it. You should just let me teach both classes.”
“I’m not terrible at it,” Fakir mutters. “I just don’t like people using my stories as examples.”
“Well, then you’re a hypocrite. It’s not like your stories are very good examples anyway. Really, Fakir, it’s literary analysis for kindergarteners. A handsome prince and a swan, please –”
Fakir tunes out Autor with relative ease, now that he’s not talking about Kenzo Tenma – it’s a skill he’s had decades to practice – and taps his quill on the page, frowning. (He still writes with a quill, though everyone else in the department has long since switched over to typewriters. Students invariably think the bright yellow feather is a sign of hidden depths of frivolity, and are inevitably disappointed.) If his prince character perhaps meets a girl in the kingdom – no, too easy, and he doesn’t want to write a love story anyway. Maybe instead he'll introduce children –
“What’s that?” Autor’s sharp, nervously excited voice cuts through his reverie again, and Fakir scowls.
“If you’re just going to –” Fakir begins, but Autor cuts him off.
“Well, all right,” he says, shaking his head, and then turns to flash Fakir one of those smug, I-know-everything-you’re-dying-to-know smiles that he never really grew out of. (They serve him fairly well, actually, as a professor.) “I can certainly see why he’s your type.”
“What?” Fakir leverages himself out of his seat, at approximately a third of the speed at which he would have been able to launch himself before his knees started going stiff after long periods, and heads for the window of his faculty bungalow. Outside, he can see young Kenzo Tenma, sitting on the ground and carefully cradling a small skinny dog, as spectators start to filter around. His leg is torn and bloody; so is the dog’s muzzle. Someone is bending solicitously over him, and pointing towards the hospital.
For a moment, Fakir just stands clutching the window, gritting his teeth. He is restraining a desire, or a memory of a desire, an urge to march out there and grab the young man by the shoulder, to shake him and demand: Why do you do such pointless things? What possible good could it do you?
Instead, he turns around, in a short gesture, and goes back to his desk. “Autor,” he says, aware that his voice is harsh, “I really have to work.”
Autor rolls his eyes underneath his glasses and heads out the door, still carrying the file with Rudy Gillen’s notes under his arm. Fakir doesn’t notice. He picks up his pen, pauses again, and starts to write.
Children - is that what he was thinkingg? Threatened children – dangerous children? Perhaps the prince stops to help them, at risk of danger to himself, but something goes wrong . . . there are consequences to kind acts. Maybe that will be the moral of this story. It’s a moral worth reiterating, after all; it’s a thing that princes never seem to understand.
I think that is all that will fit in this entry but MORE TO COME oh man so many drabbles.
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Hardison’s money is actually on a yakuza Japanese ex-girlfriend + your money will miss you too. BECCA. PLEASE WRITE LEVERAGE FIC FOREVER. ALL THE TIME.
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(also .. . acquire a Leverage icon?)
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Leverage/Ouran is a crossover that would NEVER have occurred to me but has resulted in epic amounts of EYEHEARTS nonetheless. <3___<3
Al/May! FIRST DATE. So perfect. So so so so perfect. Because Al is a GENTLEMAN so of course he tries to make it exactly how May would want, but actually making a move is harder than it seems and OF COURSE May is just like GET OVER HERE <333
SCAR AND MARCOH'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE. AHHHHHHH. Buying barrettes for May so that they can visit and take them to her ajsdkasl I uh...may have made dolphin noises. Scar's ragtag team, I love you so.
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AL IS THE GENTLEMANLIEST OF ALL and gentlemen . . . don't make moves . . . uh. Or maybe Al just has lots of role models in NOT MAKING MOVES, I am looking at you, every FMA adult ever (except for the Curtises, who get a pass. Curtises are AWESOME at making moves.)
I desperately desperately want five million fics about Scar's ragtag team. I love them so desperately! This is not a secret. BUT STILL. (What is secret is the fact that Scar thinks kitty barrettes are super adorable. Except that's not really secret either.)
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Or maybe Al just has lots of role models in NOT MAKING MOVES, I am looking at you, every FMA adult ever
HAHAHAHAHAHA. They all fail at kissing! SO MUCH! I think the Curtises clearly need to give EVERYONE lessons on move-making.
Ugh FMA. I WANT ALL THE FIC. ALL OF IT!!11
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IT'S SO TRUE. Now that they have given everyone a sound lesson in asskickery, it is time to move on to NEW SUBJECTS. In which, as always, Izumi is the master.
PRETTY MUCH THIS.
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. . . also, let's face it, Eliot has bishounen hair. It is just a fact.
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