yonmei

11:25 pm: 10 flash fiction stories
As requested, following a longstanding tradition:

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spacefall asked: Oooh, please please Blake's 7, with the word asleep. *begs in a begging fashion*

Zen and the Art of Rebel Maintenance

Roj Blake sleeps curled up with his arms wrapped around his head, his thighs pressed against his stomach, his face pressed into his knees. Once asleep, he seldom moves, though he sometimes screams.

Kerr Avon sleeps on his right side, with his left arm flung out over whoever shares the bed with him; when he sleeps alone, he moves a pillow under his left arm. He complains about insomnia on the flight deck, but sleeps well when he has a companion in his bed.

Vila Restal can sleep sitting up, and often does: when he sleeps alone, he’s restless, twitching, falling asleep to wake as if from an unpleasant dream, sleeping so close to the edge of wakefulness that he sometimes speaks or stands up without waking. He sleeps well on the flight-deck or the teleport bay when there are other people around, deep and easy, as if company serves for a comforter.

Olag Gan sleeps on his face: the implant in the back of his skull seems to bother him in his sleep, and he always turns over, on to his stomach, pressing his face into the mattress so that it seems as if he might suffocate. But asleep, he’s quiet.

The one called Cally walks in her dreams, sometimes disturbing me. She sleeps with her head pillowed on her arms, and when she dreams of home she weeps.

Jenna Stannis sleeps on her back, her arms out, embracing me as I watch her in the dreams I cannot share.

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foreverdirt asked: I'd like a The West Wing/Star Trek crossover. (Or, if that's not quite in the spirit, I'd like Drop the Dead Donkey.) Word: Overtime.

No More Overtime

On Election Night, Toby Ziegler went home early and did not switch on his television, or boot up his computer, or even switch on the radio. Whoever won, it wouldn’t be Bartlett, and Toby would be out of a job.

He sat on the sofa and looked out of the window and thought about pouring himself a beer, and thought better of it, not because he was afraid he might not stop, but because he couldn’t be bothered to walk over to the fridge. An end to all they had hoped to accomplish in the Bartlett administration: an end to a President who listened to his good angels more than his bad angels: an end to a Presidency which had, for all Bartlett’s many flaws, represented hope to those most in despair. He tried to cheer himself up: an end to unpaid overtime, an end to bad coffee and worse food and being asked stupid questions by politicians, and CJ nagging him and Josh’s stupid jokes...

This wasn’t working.

There was a dazzling blue light behind him. Toby blinked. He found that he had turned round and was kneeling on the sofa, facing a bearded man wearing red. “Who are you, and how did you get in here?”

“Is your name Toby Ziegler?” the man asked.

“Excuse me, you’re in my apartment, I believe I get to ask the questions,” Toby said. “Who are you, and how did you get in here?”

The man touched something on his chest. It looked like a brooch. It beeped. “We’ve located him,” he said.

“You’re sure?” a distant voice asked.

“He matches the ID I was given,” the man said. “Short, dark, bearded, and sarcastic.”

“How did you get in here?” Toby repeated. “Wait – who told you to say that? Is this some joke of Josh’s?”

“Mr Ziegler,” the man said. “We’re retrieving you. All your questions will be answered in about ten minutes, but we have to get you up to the ship before we can clear your memory.”

“What ship?” Toby blinked. “Clear my memory?”

The man’s brooch beeped again. Another distant voice said, “We have a fix, sir.”

“Two to beam up,” the man said. “Mr Ziegler, please stand up.”

Toby opened his mouth to say Why should I? and blue light flashed. He was kneeling on the floor in a strange place, and a bald man in the same red outfit as the bearded man was coming towards him, holding his hands out.

“Toby, are you all right?” Thin strong hands closed around his hands, pulling him to his feet. “Welcome home.”

-

“And on Election Night in the USA,” said Sally Smedley with a perfect smile, “there are reports of UFOs over Washington. Perhaps a case of alien intervention.”

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nerdcakes asked: Ooh! Star Trek, please! And the word: defeated.

Tension

Vulcans since Surak’s time have seen life as the complex and fruitful interaction of forces, in which there is no conflict, and therefore neither victory nor defeat. Spock perceives his interaction with McCoy as both complex and fruitful, but it is not without conflict. Surak never wrote of this, but sometimes to be defeated by a lover is worth all conflict.

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the_shoshanna asked: Methos/Picard. "Endurance."

Joy of Archaeological Sex

The Enterprise was in orbit; the rest of the crew was (Picard hoped) cheerfully and safely occupied in various recreational activities; and Picard was attending an archaelogy conference, where he hoped to meet no one who worked for Starfleet.

He first noticed the young man because, at one of the dryest presentations at the entire conference, the man was sitting two empty seats away from him watching the images being used to illustrate Earth’s first literate culture: from the Mesopotanian plain with a wide, amused grin on his face.

Picard stopped watching the presentation, and started watching him. He could not believe the man was responding to what Professor Dx’yi was saying: the professor, a Tuy from Ghoti, was plainly enthralled by early Terran writing, but ze didn’t have the gift of conveying zir interest to others.

After a few minutes, the man noticed Picard watching him, and looked back, with raised eyebrows.

Picard decided to take that as an invitation, and moved to the seat next to him. “Forgive my curiosity,” he said, under his breath, “but what’s so amusing?”

“The clay tablets,” the man said, after a moment.

Picard glanced back. As before, the Tuy was showing a tablet that someone, five thousand years ago, had made by taking moist clay and impressing sharp marks into it; and the sun-dried clay had lasted, long past the use or understanding of the writing in clay. In the right environment, even brittle sun-baked pottery has great endurance. He looked back at the man, and raised his eyebrows again. “What?”

“Professor Dx’yi’s been running through some really hot porn for the past twenty minutes,” the man said, still grinning. “And I don’t believe ze even knows it.”

“Pornography?” Picard glanced back at the display.

“Oh, this was back when it was really hot to compare your lover’s head to a shining hill,” the man said, and smiled at him.

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derryderrydown asked: Ooh! Professionals? And the word of the day is: snowflake.

And fare thee well awhile!

It amused Cowley to compare his love for Bodie to a snowflake – the first snow of winter, turning down out of an apocalyptic orange sky. Unique, beautiful, fragile, unexpected – appearing like magic, clinging to his black sleeve. A singular pleasure, to love Bodie.

Like a snowflake, he could crush it in a moment, with one movement of his finger. And he would. In a moment. In one more moment. Soon.

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whatho asked: M*A*S*H. Glasses.

A smashing time

Mulcahy took off his glasses to rub wearily at his eyes. Hawkeye came over with his loaded tray and sat down beside Mulcahy, setting his tray down on the table, saying something about the food that was interrupted by everyone else at the table a moment too late.

“Hawk, watch out – ” – “Pierce, be careful – ” – “Captain, look out – ” – “Hawkeye!”

There was an ominous crunching noise.

Hawkeye picked the tray up again. Mulcahy’s glasses lay on the table, the frames shattered, one lens cracked.

Mulcahy’s hands fumbled out over the table, finding and picking up the remains of his glasses. His face fell. “Oh, dear.”

Over apologies from Hawkeye and recriminations from everyone else, the Colonel’s voice cut sharply. “Padre, I’ll get the ophthalmologist up here for tomorrow at latest. Pierce, another time, look where you’re putting your food down. That’s army food, might as well be a tank.”

“It’s all right,” Mulcahy said. He didn’t sound as if it were all right. “I’ll just catch up on my sleep.” He stood up, and sat down again. “If someone could walk me over to my tent?”

Hawkeye stood up. “I’ll be your guide dog, Father. To your tent, and anywhere else you want to go.” He woofed, apologetically, and when Mulcahy stood up again, he took his arm.

They didn’t say anything to each other until they reached Mulcahy’s tent.

“That was rather drastic, wasn’t it?” Mulcahy said. He put his head down on Hawkeye’s shoulder, and his arms round Hawkeye’s waist. He always closed his eyes: it didn’t matter now that he couldn’t see Hawkeye.

“I notice,” Hawkeye said, kissing Mulcahy enthusiastically, “that you didn’t say anything about the spare pair of glasses you’ve got in that drawer under your clerical collars.”

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angelofthenorth asked: Harry Potter, Kitsch, Theme - Christmas!

Christmas Jinx

Harry loved Christmas at Hogwarts; in all the years he spent there it never lost the glow of that first year when it had been a miracle of warmth and splendour and good food, and magical choirs and presents and broomstick riding after breakfast in the clear and frosty sky. He had never loved Christmas before Hogwarts: he’d slept in the broom cupboard, and sometimes got a present, and eaten leftovers: Dudley rarely left much. But looking at Christmas from the outside, when he was a child, now he was an adult, he wished he'd been able to have it otherwise, just once in his childhood.

He never did celebrate Christmas outside the wizarding world: but when he heard other pureborn wizards say that Muggle decorations were kitsch, or that the Muggle habit of cooking turkeys that had been frozen after death was unhygienic, he still wanted to kick them.

He never did kick them, or even cast the smallest jinx on them: if Draco had ever found out it hurt Harry’s feelings, he’d probably have jinxed them himself, then gone out and bought the flashiest Muggle tree decorations he could find: even if he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

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melata_fic asked: Discworld, trice.

Burglar Blues

Granny Weatherwax sat up and stared at the strange man in her room. He was kneeling by her storebox, which hadn’t been locked because, as Granny would have said, who would steal from a poor harmless old woman? He was also pointing a crossbow at her.

“Where’s your savings?”

“Ain’t got none,” Granny said. She swung her legs out of bed. Naturally, she’d gone to bed in her boots, because she never knew when she might not be called out in the night to a sick cow or a mother or a baby.

“I’ll shoot you if you move!”

Granny grinned horribly. “Now that wouldn’t be a good idea, on account of two reasons.”

The man stared at her, fascinated. He wasn’t scared: he was well-armed enough to deal with any opposition he might find, and this old biddy wasn’t opposition, in his sense of the word. He could kill her in a trice, and probably should. But, on Discworld, narrative tension is a very real force, and it was lifting the hairs on the back of his neck and whispering in his ear that there was something very worrying in this situation, and he would probably regret asking, but nevertheless, he found himself asking “What would those be?”

“The second reason is, if you shoot me, I’m not going to be able to show you to the nearest pond,” Granny said.

“Pond?” the man said.

Granny fixed him with her eye. She had never been able to actually describe how she did the next bit, but it was something like turning someone’s mind so that they expected something different. Granny supplied the expectations from her Borrowing.

The crossbow fell to the floor. The man’s mouth fell open. He looked as if he were trying to shoot his tongue out.

“Ribit?” the man said.

“The main reason is,” Granny said, getting up, “that it’s not polite to burgle a witch’s cottage. Shows disrespect.”

She took hold of the man’s legs and dragged him outside. “There’s a pond that way,” she told him. “Hop along.”

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thette asked: Buffy, cunning.

Holding your heart

Angel doesn’t think of himself as particularly smart, though Angelus was. Angel was a dumb Irish boy until he got bit by a vampire, and Angelus took over. Angel is still in so many ways just a dumb Irish boy, just with a couple of hundred years more experience in what the world will do to dumb kids, no matter how tough they think they are.

He wants Buffy. He doesn’t think Buffy understands how many ways he wants her. He wants her kissing him, with the fire of her cross branding his skin. He wants her protection, though he’d die sooner than ask for it. He wants her commanding him, giving him orders, giving him direction. He wants her cunning and fierce, like a hunted vixen. He wants her bold and direct, like a hunter with hounds. He wants her forever, even though she’s a Slayer.

The only way he doesn’t want her is safe. She isn’t safe, and he knows it.

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coyotegoth asked: Harry Potter, please (Snape/Dumbledore); the word is "traverse," and the theme is "peace."

At the end of all things

“Of course, you will have to kill me,” Albus said.

Snape looked up from the cup of mulled wine he was turning between his hands, and said nothing.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said. It was his commander speaking now, the head of the Order of the Phoenix, even though he used Snape’s given name.

Snape set the cup down. “I would rather die,” he said heavily.

“I know,” Dumbledore said. He was leaning forward, looking at Snape earnestly. “But I am expendable: you are not.”

“You are not expendable,” Snape said hoarsely.

“That is your love for me speaking, not your strategic sense,” Dumbledore said gently, but still sternly. “If it comes – as it will – to death for me or death for you, remember that you promised to do whatever I asked, and kill me.”

Snape closed his eyes. Albus Dumbledore had asked him to do so many unbearable things in Snape’s years with him, and he had found he could bear them all. “I can’t,” he said. He had sworn his loyalty and obedience to Dumbledore years ago, hoping eventually for peace, for some kind of resolution: resolution of a kind he had received, and love unstinting, but never peace.

“I never promised you a happy ending,” Albus said gently, and Snape opened his eyes again.

He saw in Dumbledore’s gentle and relentless gaze his future mirrored: the traverse he would have to cross, leaving him alive and friendless, with but one purpose and one goal.

“No, Headmaster,” he said, and set his cup down. “You never did.”

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bugshaw asked: I know I'm number 11, but do you do hamster? :-)

Prisoner on the wheel

“I am not a number! I am a free hamster!”

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Tags: bible, blake's 7, christmas day stories, discworld, flashfic, harry potter, m*a*s*h, professionals, star trek, west wing, write write write, yuletide