Always Drabbles

Jessica Moore died in a fire (Shatter)

2008-08-01T11:58:37Z

TITLE: Jessica Moore died in a fire
FANDOM: shatterverse
WORDS: 538
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't mine, and neither is the game.

Jessica Moore died in a fire on the 2nd November 2005 and her headstone confirms this. Headstone on an empty grave, and you can bet your ass that Jess points this out the next time Dean starts the bad cop routine.

(not that it helps)

Jessica Moore died in a fire and the longer that Jessica Winchester is around, the more Ms Moore fades. Although, perhaps fades isn’t the right word. With every kick and punch that Sam teaches her, Jess buries the ruins of her former self; she aims the shotgun at the target and thinks, I will not be helpless, I will not be vulnerable, I will not be that girl burned alive on the ceiling.

She thinks, if I see that demonic son-of-a-bitch again and the bullseye gains another puncture.

Jessica Moore died in a fire and Jess would like her to stay buried so that Jess herself can survive. There wasn’t anything fundementally wrong with Jessica Moore, it’s just that Californian pre-med students don’t live too long in a post-apocolyptical world. They wouldn’t have callouses on their hands from guns and knives and chopping firewood. They wouldn’t have the scars of living rough, but Jess likes to think that she still would have been able to brain that werewolf with her skillet.

She wouldn’t have a ring on her finger courtesey of an abandonded mall, either, even if she and Sam are still finding their feet in a relationship with another person whom they mostly know, but slightly don’t.

Jessica Moore died in a fire and when she’s flung into the wall, Jess thinks Jessica Winchester might join her. Same demon, different body, and from Sam’s stories she’s getting a sense of déjà vu.

Well. More of a sense of déjà vu.

Jessica Moore died in a fire, and the yellow-eyed demon points this out. She manages a grin, even through the pain, and her tone is cheerful as she says nope. The demon monologues, words rolling out of that gravelly voice like he’s just enjoying the sound; Jess and Dean, pinned to opposite walls and with their history of fighting over Sam’s attention, still manage to have a oh god kill me now look.

It’s then that both of them start to scream.

Jessica Moore died in a fire and she’s sure it hurt worse than this. Damn sure and she survived that (with help) and godohgod the lack of pain is even worse. Fall down to the floor, grab the gun, cock it and aim at Sam’s dad because hey, John’s back. Sam’s dad John who tells her to shoot.

She remembers the closed look on Sam’s face when sammy and family came up, she remembers the lies and you can be certain that she remembers the way John never called on Sam’s twenty-first and the way Sam waited and waited without even knowing. She remembers hating his family for his sake, hating them deep and ugly in her stomach and Sam’s dad is telling her to shoot.

Jessica Winchester pulls the trigger.

(later, sitting by the fire and listening to John and Dean and Sam argue, Jess realizes that they’d never know that Jessica Moore would have done the same thing)

swimming in space (Milliways)

2008-06-05T00:25:06Z

TITLE: swimming in space
FANDOM: milliways_bar
WORDS: 295
PAIRING: Atton Rand/Medusa
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Atton Rand isn't mine, but this version of Medusa is

swimming in space

It starts as most things do: with a kiss.

~

Medusa’s idea, although Atton was not more than half a second behind. The guards were looking for a small woman, hair covered, and a tall man, both on the run. His height is unsalvable, but as the guards jog through the street, he pulls her into a doorway. She pushes her cowl back, snakes shaking her braids free, and she says, kiss me.

The guards move past, as is the spur-of-the-moment plan, but it takes the pair half a minute longer than it should to notice. Neither are the kind to linger when in danger, especially not stop-and-stare-and-what-did-we-do.

He grabs her hand and they keep running.

~

It’s possible they don’t start actually breathing until Atton’s put them into hyperspace and far, far away. It’s a fact that when he goes to hide their ill-gotten gains, she stays in the cockpit, watches the stars, thinks.

~

He comes back.

~

Everything is completely normal. .

~

More to break the silence than anything else, he offers to teach her how to fly the spaceship.

Sure, she says, and that shy smile is normal and hers.

~

In retrospect, she really should have said no to anything that involved watching his hands.

~

In retrospect, he really should have thought more about the effects of sitting right behind her to guide her over the switches and levers.
~

In retrospect, when she turned her head over her shoulder and he moved his to catch her gaze, when their silent understanding of each other’s fucked up mind became agreement, when they thought Sam/Lucifer want to it’ll mess him up better for him push away don’t deserve please I want to– In retrospect, they really shouldn’t have kissed.

Sam and Medusa do Oxford (Milliways

2008-04-10T11:59:19Z

TITLE: Sam and Medusa do Oxford
FANDOM: milliways_bar
WORDS: 393
PAIRING: Sam Linnfer/Medusa
RATING: 6
DISCLAIMER: Sam Linnfer isn't mine, but this version of Medusa is.

Sam and Medusa do Oxford

It should be said that Sam Linnfer’s divergence from his schedule – five days at Oxford, rest of the month not even rumour knows where – only made the talk about him worse. He came back after a few months (oddly enough, no one could agree how many), explained it all with ‘family trouble’, and settled back in doing who knows what as if nothing had happened. Meg swore black and blue that he had white in his hair, and Charlie agreed, but the next month Sam came even those two were forced to agree that it seemed to have vanished.

There was, however, a rather intriguing difference to before.

Everyone was used to Sam attending lectures, dropping in and sitting there as if he were a student himself and occasionally staying back to discuss, and indeed he kept on doing so. But every so often, seemingly without pattern or rhythm, he had someone with him; a very, very pretty Middle Eastern woman, headscarf around her hair and wire-framed glasses. Whereas Sam wore scruffy black, all ill-fitting with undone buttons and mismatching patches, his companion was colourful and elegant. She wore vibrant pleated skirts and fitted blouses, and her headscarf always matched something, be it her skirt or embroidery, and walk close enough to her and she jingled like a gypsy (the result of a coin anklet around one of her slim boots, Claire discovered in a lecture on the Phoenician settlements in Northern Africa).

When asked, she said that her name was Baseema Abdullah; Tariq-from-Egypt said that she and Sam spoke together in Moroccan Arabic. Which he couldn’t understand, thank you very much, because Moroccan Arabic is fast and guttural and with French and Spanish whenever they pleased and eavesdropping is impolite, anyway.

She had a ring on the wedding finger of her left hand, and was just as devious as Sam as to regards to her background. Like him, she seemed young but no one could quite manage to meet her eyes. It all added to the mystery, but somehow, no one could quite bring themselves to ask what her relationship with Sam was – it’d spoil the fun. The one time anyone had come close was when Baseema had asked for directions to the library and, startled, Jonathan had blurted out, “Oh, bugger, you’re the mad wife in the attic!”

She had raised her eyebrows.

Later, everyone agreed that she was just a little too chic to live in an attic.

(For their part, Sam and Medusa just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.)

Why (Milliways)

2008-04-10T11:12:20Z

TITLE: Why
FANDOM: milliways_bar
WORDS: 73
PAIRING: Sam Linnfer/Medusa
FOR: ceitfianna
PROMPT: Sam/Meda, teaching him to cook
RATING: G
DISCLAIMER: Sam Linnfer isn't mine, this version of Medusa is.

Why

“Lucifer.”

“Yes, Beautiful?”

“I’m confused.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve managed to survive for over four thousand years, presumably occasionally away for civilization and inns.”

“More than occasionally, unfortunately.”

“You…you are one of the best fighters I’ve seen.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not finished. You know how to use your body, you know how to use weapons, and you can kill with a precision that is frankly unsettling.

“Ye-es?”

“So why can’t you cut the coriander properly?”

Waiting (Milliways)

2008-04-10T11:06:11Z

TITLE: Waiting
FANDOM: milliways_bar
WORDS: 278
PAIRING: N/A
FOR: alas_a_llama
PROMPT: Atton and Meda, lightning
RATING: G
DISCLAIMER: Atton Rand isn't mine, but this version of Medusa is

Waiting

It is seven hundred and something years after the founding of Rome.

At least, that is how Medusa thinks of it. And something. It's so hard to remember, dates and years and months and only the season matter, really. It is seven hundred and something years after the founding of Rome and a summer storm is kicking up the waves and sand and that is all that matters.

"Sam'll come back," Atton says, tall and scruffy and stretched out on the sand studying the clouds.

"Of course he will," Medusa says. She is small and dressed in the height of fashion, all violets and greys and ribbons around her wrists and the lady who had owned this is dead, dead and sleeping in the sea.

(she doesn't ask why do you call him Sam because he's not, he's not Sam, he's Lucifer, but she doesn't because Atton loves him too and it's walking on broken glass talking sometimes)

"I wish-"

"Storm's coming," she points out.

"So?"

"Most humans go inside."

Atton links his hands behind his head. "Miss the best bit that way."

She smiles, but he doesn't see it. She's gazing out to sea, wide-eyed and bitten-bottom-lip longing but she can't leave him to think. Said she would distract him, distract her, stop them thinking about stolen armies and missing keys and revenge for some(one who isn't them, selfish things they both are) blue-eyed blonde fool of a sister.

"Atton," Medusa sings in a voice clear and breathy as the wind, "Atton, care to play with some lightning?" and she's lifting her hands to the rumbling sky even before he grins at her back and says yes.

Legendary (Supernatural)

2008-04-10T11:01:22Z

TITLE: Legendary
FANDOM: Supernatural
WORDS: 133
PAIRING: N/A
FOR: newredshoes
PROMPT: the Winchesters have to hunt something from a Monty Python sketch.
RATING: R
DISCLAIMER: The Winchester boys aren't mine, sadly, and neither is Monty Python

Legendary

"You know, why couldn't we get the castle full of chicks?"

Sam gave him a look.

"I mean, I'm cool with that. Especially those doctors. Man-"

"Basic medical training, Dean."

"But, no. Instead of the hot girls, we had to get the cartoon."

"The legendary Black Beast of Argh."

"Nah, that wasn't it. It was more...Aaaaaaaaaauuuuugh."

"Can we argue about this later?"

"Silver doesn't work, we're out of rocksalt and it doesn't work, I'm kinda running out of ideas here, Sammy!"

"According to the movie-"

"-can't believe we're using a Monty Python movie for information-"

"-they were saved when the caroonist suffered a fatal heartattack."

"You're kidding me, right."

"...no."

"There's some metaphysical cartoonist around, trying to kill us?"

"Just for the movie."

"We're not in a movie!"

"Well, it'd explain a lot!"

Slow and Steady (Milliways)

2008-04-10T10:53:49Z

TITLE: Slow and Steady
FANDOM: milliways_bar
WORDS: 305
PAIRING: Sam Linnfer/Medusa
PROMPT: icon reading "wicked fingertips"
RATING: R
DISCLAIMER: Sam Linnfer isn't mine, but this version of Medusa is.

Slow and Steady

She likes your hands. You are clever, quick-thinking and witted, and as you told her, you've been with many people, male and female and in-between. And she is easy to read, open and complicated, yes, but open, and she likes your hands.

She likes your hands on her waist, pick her up and pull her close. She liked your hands before, running up and down her skin, gentle here, rough there; liked it and kissed you before her mind tripped down dark lanes and memories. You, as in the both of you, hadn't done anything like that since.

(You, as in just you, wake up with the memory of her claws never-quite-scratching your skin and it makes you shiver)

But she doesn't move away as you kiss her shoulder. She doesn't move away as you send your fingertips lightly down one of her wings and she doesn't move away as you move from metal feathers to her warm skin. Down her back until it's linen, not skin, down past the dip of waist and then up following the curve. Down the back of her right thigh, her calf and at her ankle she stops and sits up. Watching you.

You give her a little smile that makes her blush.

And, slowly, gently, your fingertips trace a pattern back up her slender ankle and along her calf and under her dress. Somewhere around her knee she reaches out and fists your shirt as she pulls you to her. It's a slightly awkward kiss, given positions, but you shift and put one hand on the grass to balance. You kiss her back, just as slow and teasing as your fingers glide up her inner-thigh.

She doesn't move away, not even when your clever, clever fingers reach the warmth of her and make her whimper in your mouth.

Kisses of Her Mouth (Milliways)

2008-04-10T10:49:40Z

TITLE: Kisses of Her Mouth
FANDOM: milliways_bar
WORDS: 393
PAIRING: Sam Linnfer/Medusa
PROMPT: skin, taste, dance
RATING: R
DISCLAIMER: Sam Linnfer isn't mine, but this version of Medusa is.

Kisses of Her Mouth

Atheist that you are (yes, you, and don’t think you aren’t aware of the irony), even you are prepared to admit that sometimes sex goes past physical, emotional and into something more. Something earthy and sensual and yes, fine.

Sacred. Spiritual.

Not that you would admit it, though. Not even with her hands fitting in yours, just so, not even as your bodies keep a beat fast and urgent and please, please, please. That would be you, whispering and encouraging and begging. Please, Meda, fuck, Beautiful, please, yes, oh oh yes and she laughs. She kisses your mouth and mostly misses; second time lucky and yes, she has to slow the pace to do so but it’s worth it.

She tastes of Atlantean, and chocolate and, below that, nothing but her very own self.

You watch her as she moves back , sways above you with golden wings outstretched and her skin darkened to bronze in the lamplight. Beautiful girl, beautiful girl; curves and shadows and your own fingers seem so pale as they dig into her hips hard enough to leave marks.

She won’t mind.

She does, however, seem to mind as you push yourself up. It disrupts things, slows them and throws the beat off and even as you both settle yourselves and she kisses you, again, hard and impatient, her claws dig into your shoulder. You’re far enough gone that it just feels good, it just feels right, it just feels fuck yes.

You whisper things in her ear, things filthy and lovely and true, and as your hands roam and pull at her (rough girl the Gorgon is, she won’t mind; she’ll say yes, yes, please and, really, you are well-matched) she almost seems to whine. Kiss your shoulder, your neck, claws skate up and down your skin with enough pressure to mark and even as she says please, please, Lucifer </b>you can feel her constrict around you.

Lucifer, she had begged, Lucifer in a voice thick with love and lust and fuck how long had it been since- It’d be poetic to say that that pushed you over the edge, hearing your true name on a lover’s lips.

Poetic and true, because as she rests her head against you, as you shut your eyes and attempt to remember how to breathe, all you can say is thank you.

Damsel in Broken Heels (shatterverse)

2008-03-22T11:04:32Z

TITLE: Damsel in Broken Heels
FANDOM: shatterverse
WORDS: 1, 266
PAIRING: Josh/Samuel Rand
PROMPT: Naughty, broken shoes, sunset.
RATING: Um. PG/R, with adult themes and non-explicit sex
DISCLAIMER: Josh is mine. Sam Rand belongs to alas_a_llama, who is unlikely to sue me.
NOTES:…if Sam is wildly OOC, I’m really sorry, Eric.

Damsel in Broken Heels

You are an artist; you create art. Fill the air with butterflies, fill the ruins with a thousand waltzing lords and ladies, spin yourself a dress of moonbeam silk and make ‘em think they are dying.

It takes imagination, and thus it is art. It’s just not real. But real is boring, flat, empty. Real is dead.

You are an illusionist; you create illusions.

~

illusion, n. delusion, hallucination, VISION, apparition; chimera, mirage, bubble, figment [of the mind or IMAGINATION]; dream, fool’s paradise; misconception, self-delusion, ERROR, legerdemain. See DECEPTION

~

Well, whatever.

~

You used to, when young and dreamy and your father was ‘Daddy’ out of guileless affection instead of calculated charm, argue that you made things better. You spun stories in the air, butterflies to tickle skin and glitter to dance, a coat of magic to hide the mud and cracks and shit of this world. It was better.

You used to, when young and idealistic and a bunch of raw nerves behind hazel eyes, worry about truth and fiction. Truth and fantasy. Truth and lies and you’d sob and sob about everything being empty and false and it’s wrong it’s wrong I HATE IT and end up quite hysterical.

~

You got over it.

~

Now you call yourself trickster; trickster with a smile of gonna make anything of it and a smirk of yeah, whatever bitch.

He said, you seem like a tricksy person and that made you stop and eye him. Sharp tack, aren’t we, boy, although you didn’t say that.

You’re shallow, not stupid.

~

There is one reality in this world, and you aren’t sure how to handle that. This world isn’t yours, and you really don’t know how to go about getting home without thinking of being unable to leave, and you don’t know how to think about being stuck with breaking down.

So, you don’t.

You don’t get home; you don’t handle anything; you don’t think.

You lie on a roof and surround the air with gently glowing butterflies and when Sam offers a ride in his flying car you are, like, there. You think of him as Sir Sam of the Nice Ass, Sam Knight of Snark and Magic, Sam who does a mean glass of water and you never, ever, ever think Sam who told you that you couldn’t leave.

~

Okay, so the three pasts thing threw you for a moment. Then you shrugged and went ‘cool’, ‘cause it was, in a way. Hurt your brain when you thought about it, but…

When was the last time you really thought hard about anything?

~

May, in the barn, is the second time you kiss him. There’d been some tequila and limes and it’s a well known fact that heat makes people act like an idiots.

There is music and intoxication of laughter and then there is a pile of Josh and Sam with him apologizing and forgetting half the words. It is adorable. You kiss him as the CD player sings but to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear, and by the time Boney M’s Rasputin comes on again, you are trying to catch your breath so you can apologize for dragging your claws down his back.

Heat of the moment, so to speak.

~

That had been Sam with no magic, just his odd genius for something he called the Force. You don’t really keep them straight, but you are clever enough to keep up with the random changes.

Sometimes being smart really does mean that you get lazy.

~

Three pasts, one present, three futures. Or rather, three ways of dying and yes, you shouldn’t have looked, but you were born without that little voice that told others stop, to think, to pull their fingers back from the fire.

Three deaths.

Maybe they all had to happen, before he’d actually die.

Or…

Something.

(You link your hands behind your head and study the pink and orange and red of the sun’s daily dying and you don’t even think of forgetting. You just forget.)

~

Lazy means hanging around him and being sarcastic, showing off and flirting and inn-u-en-do and sure, you have to think to keep up, think to keep sharp and on the ball and reply, but it’s not thinking.

You build a galaxy of smiling moons and grumpy suns and aloof planets, and he plays pool where you aim for the sun with asteroids and try and collect as much as you can along the way. If the other problem with being smart is being unable to stop thinking, then the best thing is diversion. Every illusion means another moment ignoring the twisting of panic in your chest, and you don’t stop.

You kiss him to distract yourself from the fact that it’s growing harder to breathe, and hope that he doesn’t notice.

~

The sandcastle was still totally his idea, though.

~

Okay, the boathouse was your idea.

~

So was the sex, actually, but the silence had been stretching too long and anyway you never asked him to respond like that, did you? Nope. There’d been hands around your waist and a wall and he’s almost a foot taller than you, so there was a certain amount of shoes-off-of-floor. Only the wall was rough and wood and digging into the bare skin of your shoulder, so you told him, somehow, that if you got splinters you were going to kill him.

The doorway wasn’t much better, but at least you could brace yourself.

Sex is fun, ridiculous, half touch me there and half laughter. At least, it should be. This is something darker, something raw and forbidden and you come so hard that you forget where you are.

You must have looked as startled as you felt because Sam asked if you were alright. You nodded, not trusting your voice, and you slipped down to stand on your own two feet. You intended to straight your dress, catch your breath and catch your hair, only it turns out that the crack you had heard before was the heel of your sandal. The shock of ending up on the floor was enough to make you cry, nevermind the pain spreading from head and butt and hands. Nevermind that it hurts and it’s real and there is blood on your hands that you can’t vanish away and nevermind Sam hovering awkwardly, torn between pulling up his pants and…actually, you have no idea what else.

Keep things shallow, expect them shallow, keep things light and what happens when ugly, heavy reality intrudes?

You don’t know.

That makes it worse.

So you just sit there and sob, gasp out things in Persian, English, Arabic, Tamazight and the Japanese gets stuck in your throat until you think you are going to choke. You can’t…it’s too much…it’s real and squalid and-

It’s only when the storm has passed, when you are hiccuping and sniffing and wishing that your eyes would stop stinging already, that you realize Sam has his arm around your shoulders.

Which is…nice. Nice of him.

“So, uh, if I ask if you’re alright this time,” he says just a little hesitantly.

“I’ll say that I feel like shit but don’t think I’m up for a repeat performance.”

“Oh.” You curl up a bit closer, because he’s there and warm and it’s kind of comforting and he resettles his arms. “Well, uh. That’s. That’s good.”

“Mmhm,” you reply, shutting your eyes. It’s easier to calm down when you aren’t looking and if he minds, well.

He shouldn’t have stayed.

Fin.

A Little Theory (Milliways Bar)

2008-03-22T01:40:48Z

TITLE: A Little Theory
FANDOM: milliways_bar (Doctor Who-Torchwood, Waywalkers, Greco-Roman mythology)
WRITTEN FOR: Prompt: Picture of John Barrowmen in briefs
CHARACTERS: Jack Harkness, Medusa, Sam Linnfer
PAIRINGS: Jack/Sam/Medusa
WORD COUNT: 1, 035
DISCLAIMER: While this version of Medusa is mine, everyone else...is not.

A Little Theory

Little and lovely and dark, Sam had said, but the first thing you notice about Medusa is her wings. Large wings, shaped like a hunting bird’s with gold, gold feathers. Small woman, by the height and the flowing skirt. Dark ha-

Black snakes. Slender snakes, green-black to the blue-black of her slender braids, but still snakes.

That is the second thing you notice.

The third, as she turns around and raises an eyebrow at you, is that her eyes (chocolate brown, cat slit pupils, wire-framed glasses) give the somewhat uncomfortable sensation of looking directly into your soul.

(she never apologizes for that, although her smile does turn a little crooked)

~

I can’t die, you say eventually; it came up after other conversation that is more probing than your previous normal for Milliways. You admit to some curiosity about the kind of person who could get under Sam’s skin, but that’s not everything. Medusa, Medusa Gorgos who lives in Morocco and never looks at you for long, tilts her head in a movement more serpentine than not.

Immortal, or just can’t stay dead?

You pause, glass of water mid-way to your mouth as you look at her. The Gorgon, small and dark and lovely, smiles a smile quick and crooked.

It’s what I call it. A little more accurate, eyeh? She says, fingers skating along the edge of the table.

What do you see? Your voice is quiet, sharp.

Nothing.

~

She’s a sweet thing, you think. Shy, skittish, snarky.

Dangerous.

(You noticed her retractable claws the first time she twisted her fingers.)

~

Hot, is what you tell Sam the next time you see him, and he smiles smug and happy.

~

Sam Linnfer, also known as Lucifer, worries about you. Sam, the Devil, is black haired, black eyed and don’t think you didn’t miss that wild hope in his ever-young face when you told him what happened in regards to your mortality.

Brilliant in bed, too. Even when a girl (long story that can be summarized with ‘fucking Milliways’). Even with a beautiful immortal (sort of) girlfriend.

Open relationships should really, really be more common on this planet.

~

You have a theory.

Okay, call it an idea.

Okay, fine, an idle wondering while you are drifting along in that hazy not-quite-sleep in your office, because despite everything in the past one hundred and fifty years, you are still you and hot damn if it wouldn’t be interesting.

On the other hand, it’s been over a hundred and fifty years since you last had sex with someone who has wings.

(The threesome part happened just the other week.)

~

You don’t like admitting it’s just a way to distract yourself from the fact that Medusa doesn’t see anything when she fails at dying, either.

So, you don’t.

~

Sam’s good at distraction, Milliways prudery be damned, but Medusa is just plain distracting. Chime of her wings, jingle of her bracelets, hissing of her snakes and the sharp clip, clip of her sandals that stops as she takes a seat and crosses her legs.

Don’t mind me, she tells you both with a glittering smile. Sam untangles himself from your lap, gets to his feet.

Meda and he sounds uncertain, worried. You choose to be diplomatically silent.

Honestly, and her British accent is worse than normal. I’m just…oooh, I hate her.

You follow Sam’s glance to a dark-haired, light-eyed woman at the bar, watching with a cool expression.

Athena.

Mmm-hmm. Misogynistic cow and the Gorgon stands up, her movements sharp, angry, but Sam steps in and pulls her close, one arm around her waist.

I could – I could leave you offer, rising from the chair and she looks over as if startled.

Oh, I didn’t mean…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just…didn’t want to end up in the cells again. I am sorry, Jack, Lucifer. Oh, shit! Medusa is North African, all black hair and sun-darkened olive skin, and you can still see the dull flush that comes over her face.

He knows Sam says quietly, a touch resigned but he kisses her forehead anyway. You lean against the table, arms crossed.

And don’t care, you add. Medusa just bites her bottom lip.

I’m not terribly good at being…sneaky she admits. Not when I’m rattled.

Right, I heard something about you and Athena…

She cursed me. Sent the boy to cut off my head. We ended up in the cells and have loathed the very sight of each other for millennia. You can’t decide if Medusa sounds more amused or angry.

Yeah, something like that.

Her smile flickers across her face and she tilts her head. This time the movement is sharp and avian, and her expression is thoughtful. Medusa, you are finding, has never been one to hide her expression.

It’s not a terribly hard expression to decipher, either.

She glances at Sam, almost as if for permission and then, without ever quite leaving the circle of the Devil’s arms, steps forward and kisses you.

You kiss her back. Hand on her jaw, tongue careful of the fangs lying flat against the roof of her mouth (dangerous girl, you had known the first time you saw her, and this isn’t the first time you’ve had to be careful even just kissing) and you’re conscious of Sam standing there, of Sam watching you kiss the beautiful Gorgon in his arms. You don’t make it a tease, don’t make it a promise or a show, just a question.

You’ve always been good at the grammar of the body.

It is Medusa who pulls back, dark eyes heavy-lidded and mouth curving into the kind of smile you can feel in your pocket. Sam clears his throat, and you and Medusa look at him.

Feel free to continue, he drawls as polished as a courtier, but do wake me up when I can join.

Were we boring you? Medusa asks archly.

No…it’s just more fun when there is audience participation.

You smirk at them. Well, I think my opinion on this doesn’t need to be said, so-

You both look at Medusa, who looks at you both and then grins.

Lucifer’s room or yours, Jack?

Lioness, Rampant (Once Upon a Time in Mexico)

2007-10-22T08:54:06Z

TITLE: Lioness, Rampant
FANDOM: Once Upon A Time In Mexico
CHARACTERS: Ajedrez, Chiclet Boy, Ramirez, Sanchez
PAIRINGS: past Ajedrez/Sands, Ajedrez/OC
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 3, 270
DISCLAIMER: The sandbox and characters belong to Robert Rodriguez. I’m just playing for fun, and am receiving no profit. Please don’t sue, I’m broke.
WARNING: Contains one murder, and is a WiP
NOTES: This is an AU set post-canon, as if Ajedrez survived being shot by Sands at the end of the movie. This Ajedrez is also not the same version currently found in millliways_bar. This is also UNFINISHED.

Lioness, Rampant

you fucking little monkey stand upsee anything anythyingyoulike

nononono

laughter his lips taste of dirtandblood can smell it

see anything anythingat all baby sorry

i’m sorry

painsharp god it hurts it hurts helpmepleasesomeonegod oh god

forgiveme

No

--

You wake to a pale blue ceiling. Low and soothing, with sunlight dancing with lace-curtain shadows but still you frown. You remember black and brown, the sharp scent of blood, and when you turn your head you can see where the beeps are coming from. The lights go up and down in time to your heart and that’s reassuring.

Reassuring enough that you move your head back and close your eyes, ignoring drips and pains and the fact that it hurts to breathe to just let yourself fall. Hell wouldn’t be a hospital.

Would it?

--

Crying. A child crying. Why won’t the mother shut it up where is the mother you open your mouth to call for her and feel betrayal’s sharp stab when she goes to the sobbing baby instead of you. Screams and moans of pain and loss and grief and

mama, mama, where are you, a child’s wail in the dark maaaamaaaaaaa

and then you remember that she is dead. Everyone is dead. So you start to scream, but you can’t get enough air and the world is nothing more than lights.

--

Someone mentions a fever. What fever? This isn’t a fever; this is a fire baking you from the inside out. Stupid fucking doctors, don’t they know that the lowest circle in Hell is reserved for traitors?

--

Sometimes, you scream. Sometimes, you sleep.

Sometimes, you stare at the ceiling and pray that the bed stops spinning because it’s going to toss you right onto the floor in a second.

Nothing you can do except grit your teeth and clench the sheets and try not to cry because you are your father’s daughter and a Barillo never cries. You think, barillo and ajedrez and your confusion lasts until the nurse slides another needle into your hand.

--

When you open your eyes this time it’s hot and humid. Even the curtains are still. You feel sticky and disgusting, aching all over. There are voices, other voices, soft and conversational so you can’t make them out, but at least the kid’s shut up.

Or maybe it died.

A mental shake and you start taking stock. An unfamiliar bed. An unfamiliar room. A drip in your arm and a steady beeping in time to your heart. You want to sit up, but the pain in your chest is jumping up and down and screaming that that wouldn’t be a very clever thing to do.

So you just lie there, staring at the ceiling and carefully keeping your mind blank as you wait for one of the voices to come your way.

The room is full, still, and there really is nothing to do but wait for the doctor. As it turns out, you are almost dozing off when she comes around. An older woman, she somehow manages to look frazzled, tired, and perfectly calm all at once.

It has to be the hair.

You force your eyes to stay open and look up at her. She manages a brief smile.

“Good to see that you’ve managed to pull through, señora.”

You try to talk and end up coughing. Voice clawing your throat, eyes watering, you manage to get out,

“What’s wrong?”

Internal damage. Blood-loss. Infection and a fever and something about your spine. You can’t tell if the bullet missed, or hit and did no damage.

It doesn’t matter. You are alive.

You smile, or at least try to. The expression twists and your voice is a dry rasp as you ask,

“When can I leave?”

--

Too soon for their liking, as it turns out, but you’ve never been fond of forced inactivity. The hospital is still crowded after the attempted coup d’etat and one night when you feel able you sneak out. Steal some clothes, find your guns in the cupboard in reception still with their silencers, open a window and drop to the street below.

Somehow, it was easier when you were fifteen and without stitches. You stagger back against the wall, pressing your hand against the wound and just concentrate on breathing.

In and out, in and out, in and out and everything will be fine.

And, yeah, the tears are just from the pain.

--

You make your way back to your apartment, walking until you find a car old enough to be easily stolen. Parking it in the alley out the back, you climb onto the roof and pull yourself over the top of the wall, pausing only to brace yourself as you drop lightly onto the wooden table in the patio.

It’s still there, and you take this as a good sign. You have no idea how long you were out of it, but you know that no one recognized you. False name, obscure hospital, and surely your (former) friends and colleagues have better things to do then do anything more then write you off as dead. The key is buried in the cactus pot and you can’t help but yelp a curse as your hand gets scored. You bring your hand up and suck at the wound; blood and dirt and it tastes like Sands’s mouth that one last time.

That one last time, where you kissed him. Where he tried to kill you and damn near succeeded. You could think, fair’s fair. You could think, well, I betrayed him first and then I was going to put him out of his misery and, well…

But you don’t. You whisper, “And fuck you too, Sands,” and let yourself in.

--

Your apartment’s been searched, that much is obvious even with the lights off. Drawers pulled out and the clock on the wall is crooked in the moonlight. Slowly, you slide a handgun out and flick the safety off. Slowly, you make your way through the kitchen and stop in the arched doorway.

Someone is sitting on your couch.

Someone who hears you. Someone who turns his head and calls out, “Ajedrez?”

With little conscious thought, and entirely without emotion, you pull the trigger and he falls silent.

“My name, Sanchez,” you inform him, gently, “is Barillo.”

He had never been terribly good with the details, so you shrug and leave the room. Inspecting the rest of your small apartment, it’s the same story wherever you look; draws and cupboards pulled open, books on the floor, and there is dust everywhere. You don’t bother tidying up, you aren’t staying.

Well, not staying long. Just long enough to change into your own clothes and pack some things. You pick up a jacket that Sands had left on your bedroom floor God knows when, and press your face against it. The cloth smells of smoke and alcohol, of cologne and sweat and him and with barely more conscious thought then when you killed Sanchez you slip the jacket on.

It’s cool enough for it, anyway.

Picking up a lighter and a mostly-empty packet of cigarettes, you make your way back to the living room, swiping up a bottle of tequila along the way. Dumping your gun on the coffee table next to the bottle, you fall back onto the couch and glance at Sanchez. You’ve turned on a light, just one, and it makes the blood on his face glitter like rubies dipped in black paint. The bullet had entered through his cheek and made a mess of things along the way.

You study him for a moment, pulling out one of Sands’s cigarettes.

“Closed coffin for you, I’m afraid,” you tell him as you toss the pack next to the gun and tequila. Your voice sounds cheerful, tastelessly cheerful, but it’s not as if Sanchez can complain.

--

You are drunk. Not surprising, really; you can’t remember the last time that you ate, and you are just drinking and drinking. Sometimes you laugh, but you never cry.

A Barillo never cries (where people can see).

You talk, like you used to. You could always talk to Sanchez. Poor Sanchez. Poor old Sanchez, always so good at listening, always so patient and he had the worst luck in girlfriends.

You remember Sands, and his screams to your helpless (hysterical) laughter, and your sigh turns into a short laugh.

“Well, not the worst taste, amigo.”

You think that he looks faintly reproachful, and you can’t stop laughing. It’s really not that funny, some part of you thinks. It’s twisted and it’s fucked up and it’s true.

That’s why it is funny, another part argues and you are still giggling as you reach for the bottle again. There’s nothing left, which makes you glare and curse but as you contemplate moving your head starts to swim. So you just stay there and curl your legs up, trying to get comfortable. The blood on Sanchez’s face has long since turned black in the dull light and it reminds you of him. Sands.

You smile, soft and sad.

“You guys all hated him, I know,” you say then. “Annoying shit and I wouldn’t go out with any of you. Bad work policy and all of that, and I couldn’t hide from you. Not all the time. I could from him, though. Gringo, read about Barillo’s daughter and dismiss her as missing. Useless.

But so did you, so maybe I would have been okay.

It’s just that…I don’t know. He was so annoying, so smug and brilliant. It was either go out with him or kill him, and it wasn’t as if I planned for it to go on for so long, did I? Just an affair, enjoy the sex and he was good. Got to be habit, maybe.” Your voice has been getting softer and softer and you hate it.

“He made me laugh,” you say at last, and it sounds weak even to you. But it’s true, he made you laugh. He made you cry and rage and throw things in frustration. He made you coffee in the mornings and let you top in sex and he gave you a gun once for no reason at all.

And he made you laugh.

Your lips twist and move, and you can feel your face crumple. “Dammit,” you whisper, rubbing at your eyes with the sleeve of Sands’s jacket. “Damn, damn, damn,” but it doesn’t help. You have tears running down your face, and your shoulders are shaking because you hate him, you hate him so damn much because he offered you the world and you didn’t, couldn’t, take it. You hate him for staring at you with those disbelieving eyes and you hate him for not dying. But most of all?

You hate him because he made you laugh, and you had loved him for it.

(and Barillos don’t cry where anyone can see, but the dead can’t talk so maybe it’s okay)

--

At some point, you doze off. You don’t dream, but when you wake up you are stiff and sore and disorientated. There is grey light coming in from the window and you can’t remember when you fell asleep. Blearily, you rub your head and glance around. You catch sight of Sanchez, and he looks absolutely ghastly. Blood and bone and you wince, slightly.

“Perdón, Cristobal,” you say, softly, touching his shoulder as you move to get your backpack. “Perdón, but you should not have come here.”

Absently, you wonder why he did. Was he waiting for you, or just remembering? A shrug and you leave through the front door as if everything is normal.

He’s not your problem anymore.

--

You check into a nearby motel, marvelling faintly at your lack of hangover. Not that you ever really got bad ones. Of course, your head may be fine, but you ache deep inside from the bullet wound and something is telling you that you over-did it yesterday.

Locking the door and shoving a chair underneath the handle, you swallow some painkillers and fall asleep almost as soon as you slide into bed.

This time, you don’t wake up for quite some time.

--

You dream. You dream of nonsense things, vivid and horrific things that make no sense.

You try to wake up, again and again. Make the dreams-that-aren’t-quite-nightmares stop.

You never can.

--

You wake, eventually. You shower and change, pay your bill and leave. Eat in a café somewhere, read the newspapers to get up to date, listen to gossip in the streets. Your father is dead, you learn without surprise and possibly without grief. The cartel is falling apart, but rumour is that your cousin Iago has taken control. You wish him luck when you hear, and then forget about it. The Americans are looking for Sands, whether to save him or arrest him it isn’t quite clear. You smirk without humour and wish them the same luck that you wished on your cousin.

You’re dead, so says the rumour. Well, missing presumed dead and someone has finally connected the dots between Azora Ajedrez and Barillo’s only child.

Took them fucking long enough.

--

The days and weeks take on a pattern. In the mornings you leave, go out onto the streets. Eat in cafés and read the newspapers to keep current, you browse the markets for new clothes and other such things that even if you do buy you never keep for long (money isn’t a problem, not with the amount of accounts you have under various names). You go and check into another hotel, lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling until sleep reluctantly takes you under. Sometimes you stay one night, sometimes three.

Three is your limit, though.

You eat and you sleep, shower and smoke. Sometimes you read a trashy paperback that you picked up that morning. Sometimes you throw the books in the bin, others you put in the top draw of the bedside table with the Bible.

Once, you set a romance on fire, and then left before anyone noticed the smoke.

You think about getting out, of leaving Culiacán and just taking off somewhere. The Yucatan region, maybe, or perhaps even another country. Belize, Honduras, Columbia, Argentina. Catch a flight off the American continents and go somewhere new. You’ve heard that there is a temple in Sri Lanka entirely taken over by monkeys, and you think that you’d like to see it. You stand on the edge of town and look at the farmers driving in and out. It’d be easy enough to hitch a road with one of them. Easy enough to smile and charm in an instant.

So easy.

You turn around, and walk straight back the way you came.

--

Sometimes, you think that you really are dead. Like that American movie with Bruce Willis and the boy who could see ghosts. Maybe Sands actually killed you, and you are just hallucinating that people can hear you when you speak. Make it up in your twisted little brain because you are actually a ghost who doesn’t know it yet.

You wonder if that would explain why you can’t bring yourself to leave.

You wonder if you could haunt your ex-boyfriend for the rest of his miserable life, make him jump because he has no eyes and you’re there anyway.

And then you wonder why people stare as you start to laugh.

--

You buy a guitar one day, just on a whim. You haven’t played in years, and anyway you’ve always preferred the cello. But the woman at the stall smiles at you even as you start to melt back into the crowd.

It feels like a very long time since someone has smiled at you like that.

--

Her name, you learn, is Lupe. Lupe Velez, like the actress. She has a dark Madonna face with long dark brown hair, and tattooed around her belly-button is a red rose in full bloom. Lupe owns a narrow townhouse near the markets with flowers, vines, and a little balcony that overlooks the street. You learn that her bed is old and wide, that her hair gets utterly everywhere, and that she makes the best coffee that you’ve ever tasted. You learn that she has never married, and that the paintings in the house are hers.

You tell her that your name is Maria, and in the morning you leave.

--

You are browsing a market when the real world starts to creep into your dreamy post-survival state. The plaza is bustling and crowded, but you’ve got a good memory for faces and you remember his.

(FBI… or he was, anyway)

Ramirez. Jorge Ramirez, and you hit him over the head with your M-16 before tying him up in a chair. You are genuinely at a loss as to how he managed to survive that day, but here he is in the Sunday sun, talking to a boy in a yellow t-shirt.

He looks up, but you just smile and vanish into the crowd.

You mane of brown hair has been tamed by a French-braid, and you are wearing big ethnic earrings you picked up in the market with Sands’ brown jacket; Ramirez has only seen you twice in person, once when you were a girl in San Antonio and the other on that day, briefly, before you left. You are counting on him remembering the hair and the stark black clothes, not your actual face.

Counting on that, and the fact that nearly everyone thinks you’re dead.

--

Partly out of curiosity, partly out of intuition (and partly out of a burning desire to know), you hang around that part of town to try and spy him again. Sands had been messing with the man’s head, after all, and maybe he still is. Just like him, you think as you gnaw on your bottom lip. Poke and annoy as far as a person can handle it, and still have them break his fall.

He’d done it often enough with you, after all.

--

You see the boy, the one in the yellow t-shirt. He hangs around Ramirez and you wonder where his parents are. Ramirez helps him with his homework in the café, sometimes, and you wonder where his wife is.

Your answer to both is ‘probably dead’.

You wonder where Sands is, and your answer is a rather unhelpful ‘around’.

Well, it was your grandmother who had been the witch in the family, not you.

--

You contemplate taking that up, tarot-cards and palm-readings and voodoo.

Well, just for a night.

Guns are faster.

--

In the end, it is the boy in the yellow t-shirt who leads you to your ex-boyfriend, not Ramirez. He comes up to you one day as you sit in front of the church, trying to remember how to play the guitar.

“You aren’t very good,” he says informs you, as if you didn’t know. You glance up at him, squinting against the sun.

“Well, that’s why I’m practicing,” you tell him. And then you smile wryly. “Do you normally go up to strangers and tell them that they can’t play?”

“Sometimes.”

You look at him very seriously, for all that inside you are laughing.

“Why?”

“Well, it’s true.”

“And that’s important to you, is it?”

“Yes.”

“May you always think so, chico.”

“My name is Miguel.”

“Miguel it is then.” And then you smile at him, at Miguel with the bicycle and yellow t-shirts and belief in the truth. “I’m Alma.”

--

Three Drunken Teenage Gorgons (Greek Myth)

2007-10-22T08:51:30Z

TITLE: Three Drunken Teenage Gorgons
FANDOM: Greek Myth
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 406

Three Drunken Teenage Gorgons

EURYALE: You do know that Dad is going to kill us, right? Because you know what happened last time. And he’s going to kill us. Can you pass the bottle back over?
MEDUSA: My idea, my theft, I’ll die. Not you.
EURYALE: We colluded.
MEDUSA: Big word, I’m impressed.
EURYALE: Fuck off, Medusa.
MEDUSA: After you, Euryale.
EURYALE: And we aided and abetted and didn’t tell.
MEDUSA: You are good little minions.
EURYALE: We’re taller than you.
MEDUSA: Only physically. My turn.
STHENO: Don’t forget the hangovers.
EURYALE: …you had to bring that up.
STHENO: Yep.

[all the pass the of Atlantean around again]

EURYALE: You know, we should do something. Because that’s sorta what you do when you are drunk. You do stupid things and regret them. So, we should do something.
MEDUSA: Like?
EURYALE: You’re the idea.
MEDUSA: [thinks for a moment] I get them, or I am one?
EURYALE: Both.
MEDUSA: …why don’t you think of something? Practice for when I’m not around.
EURYALE: Truth or Dare?
STHENO: No.
EURYALE: What’s wrong with it?
STHENO: [counts points off fingers] We know everything about each other, we’re too drunk to fly so we can’t do anything, Med’ll mope about Epimethesus…
EURYALE: True.
MEDUSA: I will not!
STHENO: You will.
MEDUSA: I won’t!
EURYALE Will.
MEDUSA: I don’t mope about him!
STHENO & EURYALE: DO!
MEDUSA: [hoards the bottle sulkily] I just flirt.
EURYALE: Mope. Watch him when he’s around, all starry-eyed. And it’s sick. And I don’t see why him.
MEDUSA: As opposed to whom?
EURYALE: M’s cute.
MEDUSA: Scarily passionate about everything.
EURYALE: Your moon-eyed idiots.
MEUDSA: [flat look] are idiots. Who won’t go away. What’s wrong with Epimethesus?
EURYALE: Shall I start with where he is married, or finish with it?
STHENO: Eury…she only likes him because he is married.
EURYALE & MEDUSA: Huh?
STHENO: Well, more like married and in love with his wife.
MEDUSA: [dangerously] Explain.
STHENO: Can’t go anywhere. Can’t get serious. Enjoy the flirting without all the pressure.
MEDUSA: [takes a drink] If it can’t go anywhere, then I am allowed to.
STHENO & EURYALE: [stare at her]
MEDUSA: [beams at them] No harm. Can’t go anywhere, he’s cute, he’s fun, doesn’t want to marry me like everyone else, and he’s got utterly gorgeous hands, and
STHENO & EURYALE: [glance at each other, glance at Medusa, and in perfect unison attack. She can’t talk if she’s being tickled]

An Interlude in Hades (Greek Mythology)

2007-10-22T08:47:46Z

TITLE: An Interlude in Hades
FANDOM: Greek Mythology
RATING: PG
PAIRING: Medusa/Menoetius, sorta
WORD COUNT: 569
DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't originally mine, but this version of Medusa is.

An Interlude in Hades

“If I were to ask what possessed you to challenge Herakles to a duel, am I going to get a sensible answer?”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Not particularly.”
Menoetius let his head fall back against the grass. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”
“Really.”
“Yeah.”
“Herakles.”
“I wasn’t in a good mood.”
“This is new?”
“Shove it, Medusa.”
“Tch, tch, cripples have to mind their manners, you know.”
“I’m not crippled, I just have broken ribs.”
“Because you wrestled Herakles.”
“I…lost my temper.”
“I wasn’t aware that you ever kept it.”
“Fuck you.”
“In your dreams.”
“Quite a few, sure.”
She stared down at him from her perch on the tree. “You aren’t serious.” Without looking at her, he smirked. “I didn’t need to know that,” Medusa said finally, her voice slightly faint.
“Hey, babe, you brought up the subject.”
“I wasn’t being serious!”
“I really don’t see why not. You’re dead, I’m dead, I have to stay on my back anyway so you wouldn’t have to worry about getting your wings dirty-”
“You’ve given this far, far too much thought.”
“Only in the last half a minute.”
“…we were arguing about you and Herakles.”
“The guy’s a thug.”
“I know, he keeps killing my nieces and nephews.”
Menoetius opened one eye to look at her. “You didn’t mention Geryon.”
“He reminded me too much of his grandfather,” and her voice was cool.
“Still, you’re his-”
“Menoetius, son of Iapetos. I am quite aware that you, like your brothers, suffer from character exaggeration. However, I would have thought thirty thousand years or so in the pit of Tartarus would have taught even you the ability to know when to just…stop.”
“Well, it didn’t.”
“Clearly!”
“…he butchered one of my cattle,” he finally conceded. Medusa frowned and jumped down, landing lightly on her feet and then crouching next to the dead Titan. She raised an eyebrow.
“And, you know, Zesus’s precious bloody bastard.”
“Ah, yes.”
“So. I lost my temper.”
Fondly, “Idiot.”
“Haven’t we covered this bit?”
“It needs going over again.”
“Careful, Medha, you nearly smiled. It could be seen that you actually care.”
“If I didn’t care, why would I be here?”
“You are sadistic?”
“…for a guy who wants to sleep with me, you do have a habit of insulting me.”
“I wasn’t so much planning on the sleeping part.”
“I’m going to ignore that.”
“Right.”
“I thought you might need help. You know, with our lord’s cattle and your ribs.”
“So you yelled at me for breaking them in the first place?”
“I didn’t yell!”
“First rule – don’t yell. It frightens them.”
“…and you are the cowherd?”
“I’m wounded.”
“I know.”
“Once upon a time, you used to have a sense of humour.” Awkward silence. “I didn’t mean that.”
“…fuck you.”
“I apologized!”
“Not really!”
“It’s true!”
“I do too have a sense of humour!”
“No, you don’t. You are bitter and twisted and nurse everything like you gave birth to it!”
“Oh, like you don’t? Go to hell!”
“Been there, done that!”
They glared at each other and Medusa clenched her fists. Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say…
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Whatever.”
“Prick.”
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
“Love you, too, babe.” She rolled her eyes, and flew away. He sighed in disgust, looked at the cattle currently milling around aimless, and attempted to sleep.

Tomorrow, she would be back.

King, Meet Princess (M'ways!AU!Future!, Marlowe and Aife)

2007-10-22T08:42:58Z

TITLE: King, Meet Princess
FANDOM: milliways_bar!AU!Future
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 451
DISCLAIMER: Aife and Marlowe aren't mine - Aife belongs to walksbyherself and burning_bryght, I'm just playing. This Marlowe belongs to Terry Deary.

King, Meet Princess

She hasn’t seen him before, and that is unusual. By now, just about all of the family has come and gone and peered at her curiously. Delighted, some. Confused, bemused, worried; a whole host of reactions, but they were reactions.

But this one…he had stayed away. She knows who he is, of course, although really she hasn’t met him. Not a tall man, but not small either, dressed in dusty, working black. He has a round face, a pleasant face slightly at odds with the way he is watching the rest of their family from his seat on the stairs.

Amused. Slightly mocking.

Assessing.

“I was wondering when you would come,” she says at last. He glances at her, left eye black and bright. The right is still covered by an eyepatch as worn as the rest of him.

“Did you now?” A soft voice, roughened by age and drink but still compelling. Also just as amused as his expression.

Aife nods, watching him.

“Yeah.”

“Waiting for me?”

“You’d come when you felt like it, no use worrying.”

His fingers twist the ring on his thumb, less nervous than pure energy, and he smiles.

“Sometimes it’s good to come home.”

“Dad’s not here.”

The smile, wicked and sharp, widens.

“I know.”

She waits.

He shrugs. “We don’t get along.”

“You don’t get along with Mom, either.”

“Oh, we get along just fine, girl.”

“Girl?”

Mildly, “We haven’t exchanged names yet.”

“Will you use it?”

“You might get lucky.”

She watches him with steel-grey eyes, too old for her twelve-year-old face. “I’m Aife.”

“Marlowe.”

“King of Swords.”

“Princess.”

“I am not!”

“Oh, I think it’s a good name. Daughter of a queen, after all.” He tilts his head and studies her; she feels her back straightening and chin rising in spite of herself. “You’ll hate it, sometimes,” he says at last.

Aife frowns slightly.

“Being able to see things that others can’t. Knowing, and being unable to explain even here. It’ll seem simple to you, and they won’t understand. Can’t.”

She doesn’t say ‘and you will?’ because that’s not what he is saying. And he might be shielding, might have been shielding all the time that she has been aware, but she remembers a time when he was a boy, a young man with fire and passion and genius shining in two wide eyes.

“I know.”

A faint smile, tired and almost sympathetic. “Thought you might.”

“But you don’t regret it, do you?”

“Never.”

“Then neither will I.”

“Is that a promise?”

“A challenge.”

Marlowe laughs at that, low and dark and amused as hell. “You will be fun, girl.”

(she always knew that he was never going to use her name)

Strings Attached (M'ways, Ajedrez/El)

2007-08-28T11:23:46Z

TITLE: Strings Attached
FANDOM: milliways_bar/OUaTiM
RATING: PG
PAIRING: El Mariachi/Ajedrez
WORD COUNT: 456
DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't mine, I'm just playing without permission.

Strings Attached

The day that the Mariachi comes over with his guitar-case is the day that Beatriz has been crying. He doesn’t ask why and she doesn’t offer an explanation, just a wan smile and a ‘would you like to sit?’

He does, so he does; pulling out his guitar and asking if she wants to hear anything. A little shrug, you choose, and she rests her head on her folded arms to watch him. Some days, it’s disconcerting to have her large brown eyes staring at him. On those days he takes care not to look at them, because if eyes are the windows into the soul then Beatriz is in trouble. Somewhere, behind the solid warm-brown gaze, she’s damaged. Not broken, not exactly, but damaged.

It’s on those days that he calls her mija more often then not, although his little girl had never looked at him with that dreadful emptiness.

Today is one of those days, but the Mariachi choses to do something a little different.

“Do you know how to play?”

Beatriz blinks, as if she didn’t quite hear him. He doesn’t repeat himself, and she lifts her head a little to say, “Not really. Piano, cello, but not the guitar.”

“Now, what kind of Mexican are you?” His tone is mild, and so she smiles instead of taking offence.

“An unusual one.”

“I can show you, if you like.”

Her gaze turns wary for a moment, and then she shrugs again.

“If you want to.”

“I do.”

“Okay.”

And so he ends up sitting behind her chair, the guitar settled in her lap and his fingers guiding hers. For a moment, the situation reminds him of sitting on Carolina’s bed, trying to coax a note with one hand as she fumbled at the top of the guitar. For a moment, at least, because then Beatriz asks, “What happened to her?” and his memories disappear.

“Who?”

She’s looking at his hands covering hers, and doesn’t look up.

“The girl in the stories, the one with the knives.”

The Mariachi is silent, just moving her fingers up and down the scales.

“She died,” he says at least, and then turns his head to look at her. “What happened to Sands?”

Beatriz’s head jerks up and she gives him a twisted smile.

“He didn’t.”

And it’s one of those days, the days where she has been crying, so when she moves her head away, moves to get up and run, the Mariachi holds her in place and kisses her cheek. That gets a pause, almost a reassessment as she stares at him with wary brown eyes.

And it’s worth a lot of things to see that look fade from her face as she kisses his mouth.

Knight and King (M'ways - tarot!verse)

2007-08-28T11:18:19Z

TITLE: Knight and King
FANDOM: milliways_bar!tarot'verse
RATING: PG?
WORD COUNT: 446
DISCLAIMER: Characters aren't mine - Ajedrez belongs to Robert Rodriguez, this King of Swords belongs to walksbyherself

Knight and King

It is one of those nights when all three moons have vanished behind the winter clouds and all is tense and cold. It is one of those nights where those who are sensible are safely in bed, be it their own or someone else's, and it is one of those nights where the King of Swords makes his way to his lady's chamber.

He comes to Mary Anne's door, arrogant and proud, and he doesn't listen to see if her husband is there. He knows that Ruin isn't, not tonight, and besides it doesn't matter. He is her King, her Consort, not the Ten of Swords.

He smiles and reaches out for the door-handle. But because tonight is one of those nights, it's one of those nights where Ajedrez has had enough. So she moves in the shadows, just enough so that her eyes flash amber and mahogany in the light of her own true self, and she lifts her head slightly and says,

"Sir."

The King stops, but he turns it into a court gesture; turn on his heel, hold out his hand.

"Ajedrez."

She smiles, faintly.

"May I ask what are you doing?"

"I would have thought that it was obvious, my dear."

She widens her eyes.

"Really? Oh, my. Well, you see, sir, I wouldn't know that. Because, I am asking, so clearly it isn't."

"She is my Queen."

"And? You don't see me creeping around to her bedroom at all hours, do you?"

He regards her with his ice-bright blue eyes, she stares back and thinks, gringo.

"If you aren't creeping around, then what are you doing?"

"My job, sir. And with all due respect, if you don't fuck off right now, I'll be forced to take action."

He smiles, silly little girl.

"Oh, really?"

"Si.."

Still watching her, he reaches out and curls his hand around the door. And then he jumps back, holding his wrist and swearing. Ajedrez rests her sword on her shoulder, poised and calm.

"Now, sir, you are new, and we all make mistakes. However, that was your last warning. Come by here again when I am here, and I'll challenge you. And, trust me, you do not want to fight me."

He is still holding his wrist, trying to stem the blood flow. It's a snarl instead of a smile, and his eyes are cold and colder.

"Maybe I'll just have to come when you aren't here."

"You do that. Goodnight, sir."

She watches him go with eyes as dark as the night sky, and for a moment she just looks grim. He'll be back. But for now, she settles back against the wall.

A Knight, after all, has a duty to guard her Queen, and Ajedrez has always been a very good Knight of Swords

Morning After (cartel!verse)

2007-08-28T11:11:57Z

TITLE: Morning After
FANDOM: Cartel!Verse
RATING: PG?
WORD COUNT: 947
DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't mind, and the world is a strange 24/Once Upon a Time in Mexico/The Things They Carried crossover via M'ways in the past, and sorta belongs to walksbyherself - I just threw in OUaTiM and started playing. Set directly after this, and makes little to no sense unless you read Kat's fic first.

Morning After

This is something that Mary Anne should have learned by now; there is always a morning after. It is the sixth day, day before rest, the day that God created the original game park, and she is more than a little bit lost. Well, that is her excuse, anyway. The hotel has a pool in a greenhouse on the top floor and she wants eavesdrop those eating in the dinning hall nextdoor. And if she can’t eavesdrop on someone, then she’s going for a swim. Day before day of rest, but as Ramon was conferring with one of his captains…

Never let it be said that she wasn’t opportunistic.

Also never let it be said that Lady Luck always smiled at her, for when she turns the corner she nearly collides with Barillo. Mary Anne would apologize, for the collision if not the borrowing of the woman’s bodyguard, but she has a knife at her throat.

It takes less then a second for her to react, and she locks her eyes with Barillo’s across their blades.

“Ms Barillo.”

“Mary Anne.” Barillo’s warm voice is husky from anger and her dark eyes are smoldering. She looks different like this; jeans and short-sleeved t-shirt with that incredible hair left loose in a brown mane. Not so polished as the meetings (Mary Anne hadn’t been paying attention to her last night at the club), not so polished and younger; closer to the thirty side of the age bracket instead of the forty.

“Is this really necessary?”

“I have your attention.”

“I’m all yours.”

“Manhandle my husband like that again, and I’ll carve out your heart.”

Death threats Mary Anne is used to, but…

“Husband?!”

Barillo smiles at her, bitchwhorekiller. “Si. You look surprised.”

“Oh, I thought you guys were just fucking,” Mary Anne replies lightly. Crap.

“No.”

“…same goes with me, then,” she says after a moment’s reflection on the way her Columbian drug-lord had looked at this dark-eyed cartel queen. “Leave Ramon alone because if you fuck him? I’ll kill you.”

“A fair request.”

“It’s not a request, lady.”

“A matter of principle?” Now she sounds amused and Mary Anne presses her knife in just a little bit more. She doesn’t feel like explaining the jealousy. It’s not just the fucking around. It’s that with Barillo it wouldn’t just be…oh, fuck it.

“Something like that. You’d really carve out my heart?”

“Not so hard, just go under the ribs. Easier with practice.”

Mary Anne briefly considers talking shop (so, what do you do with the hearts afterwards, because I have this lovely tongue necklace…) when she looks over Barillo’s shoulder. Then she grins, because misery loves company. “Hi…Sands, wasn’t it?” He, sans sunglasses, puts up his hands and starts to move backwards but Barillo’s attention has been successfully diverted. She spins around in a whirlwind of brown hair and two steps gets the knife at his throat.

Mary Anne doesn’t put hers away, but she does lower it and rub at her abused throat.

“Beatriz,” Sands was saying, placatingly. Mary Anne glances at his left hand and wonders if the gold ring is the wedding one – it’s a little hard to tell when he has more than one.

“I’m still mad at you,” and Barillo’s voice is low and warm and rich and oh so very pissed off.

“Flirt with Salazar, sweetheart, what do you expect me to do?” His voice, on the hand, is the softly-spoken voice of the Devil’s own reason.

“You mind?” Barillo’s tone is arch and she steps closer, moving the knife so the tip is under his jaw.

“You could say that.” Guarded, mocking, and Mary Anne has the distinct feeling that she’s being utterly ignored. Barillo traces the knife down his throat, running the blade along the skin without actually cutting. Mary Anne can hear his sharp intake of breath from the corner of the hallway. “C’mon, AJ, you jerk my chain, I jerk yours-”

“With Salazar’s piece of ass?”

“I use who is available.”

Thanks, Mary Anne thinks, but she’s starting to be amused despite herself. She had been wondering why exactly he had agreed to dance with her, and now she’s curious as to just how many games like hers and his are played. Clearly, she’s just going to have to pay more attention to the underlings and peers of the criminal world.

Sands’s hand is on Barillo’s arm and just as lightly as she had traced the knife he traces his fingers down to her wrist, her hip and with her knife still at his collarbone he bends his head down and kisses her. Deep and hard and his fingers dig into his wife’s hip even as his other arm draws her close. Her free arm curls around his neck, and Mary Anne resists the urge to wolf-whistle at them.

(Not by much)

“You,” Barillo (AJ?) says a little breathlessly once he pulls away, “are coming with me.” She slides the knife away and grabs his hand and as they go past Sands tosses Mary Anne a grin.

“I love my life,” he tells her brightly, and the pair vanish around the corner. Mary Anne manages to wait until she hears the elevator ping before she starts to laugh.

It’s a long time before she manages to stop.

~~

Ciudad del Este (cartel!verse)

2007-08-28T11:05:59Z

TITLE: Ciudad del Este
FANDOM: Cartel!Verse
RATING: PG?
WORD COUNT: 947
DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't mind, and the world is a strange 24/Once Upon a Time in Mexico/The Things They Carried crossover via M'ways in the past, and sorta belongs to walksbyherself - I just threw in OUaTiM and started playing.

Ciudad del Este

Ciudad del Este is a cesspit, a hellhole of a city carved into the sweltering South American rainforest. It is a place where crime and sin run freely down the streets; where murderers-for-hire stand in the shadows talking shop with hookers who look as cheap as they are; where addicts shoot up only meters from where the drug lords and gangsters in their flash hotels and conference rooms discuss the next shipment. It’s grungy and dark and Mary Anne is in love. It’s like death by chocolate cake and she has her face pressed against the window. Nevermind that they arrived too damn early to be sane, nevermind that the scenes in the streets could be reflected again and again elsewhere; the point is that her lips are parted and her blue, blue eyes are just drinking it all in.

The limousine eventually pulls up in front of a classily understated hotel– or at least classily understated as passes for such in the Sin City of the South. She frowns, glancing back at the cartel-lord next to her.

“This is it?”

Ramon just snorts without answering and glances at the papers in his briefcase before snapping it shut. He could say a witty one-liner but…he’s too pissed off. The bruises on her back attest to that.

(not that Mary Anne had minded)

They step out into the summer and it’s like she’s eaten too much. Smog and the stink of addiction and decay; she manages not to gag as he gives quiet orders as to their bags and men, but it is a close thing. He doesn’t even have to say ‘this way’ before she’s at his heels and through the doors. It’s cooler in the foyer, but that is to be expected. In any other city, Mary Anne would say that there are tourists hurrying too and fro, but this Ciuded del Este. Italians brush shoulders with the Chinese, and in the part of her mind that has absorbed meeting after rant she starts thinking ‘shipments’, ‘arms deals’ and ‘heroin’. There, a Japanese businessman talks to his colleagues (Yakuza), there some Russians (the Organizatsiya), there a Latin American woman heading into a lift with several manila folders under one arm.

“Stop that lift,” Ramon says quietly and she doesn’t need to be told twice. Quickly and silently, Mary Anne dodges through the barely-there crowd and throws an arm out just as the lift is closing. The woman glances up, startled. She’s attractive, dark-eyed and brown-haired, and could be anywhere between thirty and forty. She opens her mouth to speak and Ramon steps into the lift with a smile.

“Ms Barillo.”

“Mr Salazar,” she replies calmly enough in a voice that is quiet and husky and makes Mary Anne curl her upper lip as she slips into the lift with them. Without glancing away, Ramon presses a button, any button.

“Ms Barillo…we need to talk. Now.”

Beatriz Barillo Trejo does nothing more then look mildly resigned.

“I suppose we do.”

Barillo, Barillo…Mexico, Florida.

“Do you want me to cut out her tongue?” Mary Anne asks, watching the other woman. Curvy, by both nature and children, with a thick gold wedding ring on her left hand and expensively nice clothes like any cartel-wife, but you would be a fool to discount the flash of fire in her dark brown eyes.

Mary Anne has never been a fool.

Ramon shakes his head, but it’s less no than not right now.

“What’s going on in Florida, Ms Barillo?”

“We saw a hole in the market, and took it.”

“I thought we agreed that Florida was mine.”

“Yours?”

“Columbia’s. Mine soon enough.”

“Of course.” The Mexican woman’s voice is mocking, in a polite way.

“You still-”

“We did nothing of the sort. You had an agreement with Enrique Torres, not the Barillos.”

There is pause and Ramon narrows his eyes. Barillo shrugs and smiles. It’s cold and warm at once, bitchwhorekiller. It’s a smile that Mary Anne recognizes from the mirror.

“And if you care to talk to your various contacts, then you will know that Señor Torres has recently met with an unfortunate realization, and acted accordingly.”

Ramon’s voice is flat.

“He got religion?”

“No, just an absence of the heart. It’s usually fatal, I am told. But, it does tend to happen when you cross your partners. Now,” she brings up the folders to her chest and starts thumbing through, “if you could read this and contact me afterwards, I’m sure we’ll have a far more productive conversation.” Barillo holds out the creamy-coloured folder with a smile. Slowly, still watching her with cold, narrow eyes, Ramon takes it from her. The lift stops with a ping and Barillo’s smile widens. Businesswoman perfect it’s not, but it seems more genuine for it.

“Now, can I go? You have some,” a brief glance at Mary Anne before her eyes snap back to Ramon, “uh, reading to do.”

“…fine.”

“Gracias, señor,” and with that she steps out of the lift and walks down the hallway. Wordlessly, Mary Anne turns to glare at her lover.

“Bitch of a woman,” he mutters, “Never understood why they let her-” and then looks at her.

“Ramon.”

“What, it’s true. I will never understand-”

“You were checking out her ass.”

“I was not.”

She steps forward and taps the knife-blade against his chest.

“You were.”

“Mary Anne, would I do that?”

(he means in front of her)

The doors open again, this time to their floor. “Yes,” Mary Anne informs him in frosty tones. “But I’ll forgive you, because the view was rather nice.”

And with that, she stalks out, leaving him to choke on sudden laughter.

~~

The Queen and the Soldier (M'ways)

2007-08-28T10:54:47Z

TITLE: The Queen and the Soldier
FANDOM: milliways_bar
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 10, 799
WARNINGS: Contains off-screen violence and on-screen results of it, also mentions one fully consentual, adult incestuous couple in passing.
DISCLAIMER: The poem Mary Anne quotes from is ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, by Oscar Wilde. The various interpretations of tarot cards come from a variety of books, websites and, ultimately, my own view of them. Nearly all of the characters in this, including the tarot cards as actual personifications, are not mine. The description of the tarot cards’ beach has been taken from what Saundra has already written, I have merely lifted and edited.

The Queen and the Soldier

This is Ajedrez. Beautiful and Mexican, all curves and shadows and tomboyish enthusiasm. Sands’s ex, although the idea of Sands going out with anyone, let alone the genuinely likable AJ, gives you a headache.

“You know, my grandmother sometimes does readings.” She says one night, looking through her tequila glass at the rest of the Bar.

“Oh?” You asks, glancing over. You are the Queen of Swords, not as new as you used to be, and Ajedrez rings a bell, somewhere. Right now, that bell is ringing Sorrow despite her quick smiles.

“For the gringo tourists and hippies in Tepoztlán. Part of the whole bruja and voodoo business.”

“As she ever done a reading for you?

“Once. And then Abuelo said it was heathen nonsense. I can’t even remember what she said.” Ajedrez tilts her head back, watches the ceiling. “Would you do one, Mary Anne? Just a card? I’m curious.”

You smile, a little sadly.

“You know, not everyone can be summed up in just one.” Her head tips forward and she regards you with her wide dark eyes. She smiles back, faintly.

“I’m not that complicated, chica.”

This is a lie. But you draw yourself together, focusing and stilling your mind and self. A deep breath in, a deep breath out and you hold up a card. Ajedrez leans closer, tilting her head slightly.

“And what, oh wise and beautiful one, does the Three of Swords mean when it is home?”

So you tell her. Pain and heartbreak and Sorrow. The fragile balancing act of the previous card has shattered, and now the truth has no choice but to come forward. It hurts, though. What was previously held to be true is now revealed to be lies, or misconceptions. Words and thoughts that have been bottled up can now come out into the open, to be fought out and argued if Ajedrez is to move on. And it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt and hurt, but it’s up to her if what comes out of it all is blood or poison.

The dreaded Three of Swords, piercing a heart that can’t help but bleed.

Two sentences in, Ajedrez goes as pale as she can and tips back another shot.

“Fuck.”

Privately, you agree.

--

There is an itching in the back of your head. Like a swarm of angry wasps, buzzing and stinging incessantly. It’s hard to sleep, hard to concentrate.

It’s the feeling of Random trying to hold reality together. It’s the feeling of his siblings, of Julian and Fiona and all the others you have never met, fighting to help him. This is a war you can’t fight, can’t help. You can only watch and wait.

To hold yourself together, you take to drinking.

(it dulls the connection. nothing else.)

--

Ajedrez has acquired a lighter. Nothing fancy, just silver, but she’s snapping it open and shut, on and off, to a beat that only she can hear. You stop and look, figure what the hell and walk over.

As you sit, she glances up and takes the cigarette out of her mouth to grin at you.

“Hola, Mary Anne.”

“Hey. I didn’t know you smoked.”

She glances at the cigarette, brown and slim like her fingers, and huffs a laugh.

“I don’t. It’s Sands’s.”

You quirk up a brow.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Found him passed out and it was too good an opportunity to lose.”

And maybe it’s just because you are drunk, still drunk, or maybe it’s because you are feeling old and weary, or maybe you just tired of the other woman having Sorrow engraved in her soul, or maybe…

The point is that you stop your thoughts from looping over and over and make yourself say,

“Lovely, maybe you shouldn’t.”

Ajedrez looks up, and her full lips twist. Dimly, you can hear her foot jiggling up and down but you are just staring into her flat brown eyes. Flat and empty and something behind them has broken. Has been broken, you realize, for quite some time. Years, maybe.

“Why not?” And her voice is a soft, dangerous purr. Snap, click, snap, goes the lighter.

“Because maybe you need to let him go.”

Ajedrez watches you, smiling faintly. “Yeah?”

The alcohol is starting to catch up with you. It’s making the room spin and you grip the table.

“Yeah,” you tell her. Firmly. The wasps are back, and you just want to be sick.

She snorts. Snap, click, snap.

“I’ll let him go when he lets me go. In the meantime, chica, it fills in the time.”

Snap, click, snap.

--

A couple days later, you are nursing a hangover. Nothing new. Ruin is, too, but he didn’t actually make it downstairs. No, that little piece of masochism he leaves to you. You nurse your coffee and try and avoid the lights.

It’s a little hard to avoid the screaming, though.

Sands and Ajedrez, in the middle of Milliways. You watch, although it’s a little like watching a head-on collision between two passenger trains. In slow motion. Before the trains go over the edge of a cliff.

You can’t tear your eyes away.

She’s punctuating her speech with her hands, he is still. So still, too still, but they both are shouting. She says something. Softly, looking almost stricken and the silence stretches out impossibly long.

You realize that you’ve never seen them together before.

You realize that you’ve never seen Sands lose control like this.

You wonder if you should visit them in the cells.

--

“So,” you say when Ajedrez comes out. “So, was it worth it?”

She looks at you, looks through you with eyes that glint oddly for a moment.

“I don’t know.”

And with that, she walks up the stairs.

--

“So,” you say to Sands as you claim a seat. “So, what did she say?”

“None of your fucking business, sugarbutt,” he snarls.

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

“She’s a traitorous bitch and I killed her.”

“ ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard’.” Sands goes still. You don’t know why, but it is hurting him and sometimes the Queen of Swords is a bitch. And you hate him, still. A little.

“ ‘ Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword.’”

He opens his mouth, shuts it again, and looks at you. For a moment, someone a little deeper, a little more emotional and human peers out of his dark eyes. Someone that Ajedrez loves. And then he pushes the chair back.

“Fuck you, Mary Anne,” and he walks away. You watch him go, and softly continue.

“ ‘ Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of lust, Some with the hands of gold; The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold.’”

--

“I think,” Ajedrez announces one night, “that I am growing mad. Er.”

“Oh?” It’s a murmur as you reach for the tequila bottle.

(you had the dreams again last night, dreams of the wasps escaping from your head and buzzing and stinging and making the whole universe swell and bleed.

in the morning, you always end up throwing up.)

“Yes,” says Ajedrez. “Mad. Completely and utterly loco from lack of meaning and purpose and activity. You shall come down one day to find that I’ve snapped and gone on a shooting spree and have been eaten. Heart cut out and blood poured to fuel the windows, my ribs devoted to the ceiling beams. Or whatever it is that they do here,” she adds and tips back another shot.

“I…don’t know, actually. What they do. Or would.”

“It could be very civilized. Go the route of the Mayans and the Aztecs and the Toltecs. My heart would make the false sun cross the false sky and my blood the real plants grow. I think it makes perfect sense.”

“‘Thought you were Catholic.”

“I am. Just….I’m also Mexican.”

“And crazy.”

“Now that, my dear queen, goes without saying.”

“‘M not your queen.”

“No? No. No, I guess not.” Ajedrez looks at you, and her eyes are oddly compelling. And then she shakes her head.

“I couldn’t do it, you know.”

“Do what?” She tops up your shot, you nod in thanks.

“Be what you are. Tarot card. I couldn’t.”

“Oh?”

“I couldn’t be this for the rest of the eternity. I just…couldn’t.”

“We already have a Three of Swords.”

“Really?”

“My step-daughter, Reue.”

“Fuck. Poor kid. Think we can have another bottle without killing ourselves?”

“I’m immortal.”

“Speak for yourself.”

--

“Tell me about Sands.” It is afternoon, you think, and you’ve just come back from Vietnam. You smell of blood and dirt and green living things and the young Mexican woman just looks at you with her wide dark eyes.

“He is American and annoying and a psychopath. What else did you want to know?”

“Why did you go out with him?”

Ajedrez finishes braiding her thick brown hair and tosses the braid over one shoulder.

“It was either that or kill him, and I figured if it didn’t work I could always shoot him anyway. And then…I don’t know. He made me laugh. Plus,” she adds with a wistful and rueful sigh, “Sands is the kind of man who can kiss you behind your ear and make you feel like you just had kinky sex. Very addictive.”

You think of Sands. Of irritating, twitchy, snarky Sands. You try and match him with kinky sex, and the other woman just laughs at your expression.

--

You see them kissing on the couch, Ajedrez in his lap and her hands framing his face. Sands has one hand pressing against the small of her back and his free fingers tangling in her gloriously thick hair and they kiss as if they are drowning. They kiss as if they are long-lost lovers who have been missing for centuries, and you think that this really can’t end well.

You watch them and you think, Sands isn’t half bad.

You wonder if Ajedrez’s little comment is correct, and then you remember Ramon’s blood spilling across your hands and decide that Ajedrez can keep the irritating little shit.

You wonder what Mal will think.

--

Ajedrez and Mal fight by the lake. Well. It starts off as a fight. Probably fair, too, until Ajedrez gains the upper hand. She’s taught you to fight, so you know her style. Gutter-fighting, sharpened by professional training. At the heart of the federal agent, at the heart of the cartel princess, will always, always be the crazy gangster, and a gangster would never let another girl get away with fucking her man.

Ajedrez, bouncy and likable and now bloody Ajedrez, drags Mal over to the infirmary and then turns herself into security.

You visit her in the cells, although your head feels like it is going to split. You lean against the glass and peer at her through your fingers. She’s sitting on the floor, head against the wall and snapping Sands’s lighter open and shut.

“Was it worth it,” you ask her, not really knowing if you mean the sex or the fight or both. She, she of the bruised face and split knuckles, just smiles. Opens her wide brown eyes and looks at you and smiles. Except for the lighter, she is still. Still and at peace, for the first time that you’ve seen her.

The afterglow of violence.

“Yes, it was.”

--

One day, the wasps leave. You wake up and they aren’t there. You can feel your brothers and sisters, you can feel the reality again. A little different from before, but it’s there.

“Thank you, Random,” you whisper, and fall back asleep.

(you don’t wake up for three days)

--

One day, Ajedrez walks in. From the front door, this time. A little older, and she’s whistling. Dressed as a cowgirl in jeans and a vest and a hat, with one gun on her hip and rifle slung across her back and she’s nearly humming with focused energy.

She looks happy.

You don’t say anything at first, just drink some coffee and watch her.

You can still Sorrow in the shadows of her smile, but there is something else as well. Something, something…the world starts to swim behind your eyes, and you shut your eyes.

Still not well.

--

“What’s up, chica?” You look up and smile.

“I’m good. Yourself?”

She just grins at you.

“Yeah, I’m good. Been a few years. About four. I’m all grown up, I think.”

“And what,” you ask, “constitutes being grown up?”

“Being over thirty. Oh, god. I feel old now.” Ajedrez makes a face, and then laughs. “Not much over that, though. Can you tell?”

“I’m afraid so. But not very much.” Your eyes are wide and innocent and she snorts.

“Thanks for the ego-massage.” She ducks her head under the rifle strap and then leans the weapon against the table. You want to run your hands over it, and are half-tempted to sit on your hands to stop yourself.

“You look good, though.” Ajedrez smiles at that.

“Gracias. I’m just patrolling at the moment, checking out the labs and such.”

“A good leader-”

“Oh, I’m not leading anyone, really. That’s Iago.”

“I can’t see you being a grunt,” you tell her, bluntly.

“Well…I’m not. I order, they obey, but I follow my orders just as much. I’m a good little cartel daughter.”

“And Iago is…”

“My cousin.”

“And you follow him?”

This time, the smile is a soft glow. The glow of a solider in love with her leader. Oh, not in love in love. But it’s love and respect and something almost feudal. A knight and her lord.

“Yeah, I do. I couldn’t…I’m not a leader, Mary Anne. I’m not a general or a king-pin. I’m a solider. Always have been, always will be.”

You look at her, curiously. She shrugs and orders a tequila.

“They wouldn’t follow me, even if I wanted. I’m too female, and I would spend too much time proving that I have just as many balls as they do. So. I scare them enough that they don’t give Iago shit and…well, I can be very scary.”

You look at her wolfish smile, and remember the razor-blade lessons. You remember Mal, the little vampire broken and unconscious on the infirmary bed as Ajedrez walked away, and you remember her sensual languor in the cells. You think and you remember and you give her a smile.

(you remember the green berets and killing for the first time, you remember the terror and the electric feeling that filled your body to bursting, you remember dancing in a pink cardigan with a necklace of tongues and wonder if she is related to the aztecs)

“Good,” you say as your smile widens and sharpens, “for you.”

--

Time passes, both in the Bar and in Vietnam. Time passes in Mexico and Texorami and Amber and sometimes to hurts to see Fiona glow so. You are happy for her; she is your friend, after all. Your close friend (you don’t use the word ‘best’, that is for Ramon. Always, always, always for Ramon), but you had loved Julian so…

Sometimes, it is easier to retreat into the hopeless butchery of Vietnam then it is wishing that you could have everyone that you love.

You don’t say much of this Ajedrez, that’s not how things work between you, but maybe she guesses.

The rifle she leaves at the Bar for you one day is a thing of beauty.

--

The wedding is lovely, managing to be both elegantly cosy and a public ceremony celebrating love, perseverance, and the utter disregard of common morals.

You smile and laugh and dance with both the bride and groom, make polite talk with their siblings (you find that you like the ditzy and leggy Flora despite yourself) before you retreat to Ramon and make snarky comments about the entire event and everyone in it.

You also get very, very drunk.

Ruin, oddly enough, doesn’t even mention it.

You think that you would love him for the rest of eternity just for that.

--

“What you need,” Ajedrez says one day, dropping her cowboy hat onto your head, “is to kill someone.”

“I have,” you inform her with great dignity, “been doing that.”

“Psssh. Knives and bullets. I think you need to blow someone up.” You remember grenades, you remember planes flying overhead and the burning agony of napalm on your legs.

You remember Julian kissing Fiona as if she were something precious.

“And what precisely did you have in mind?”

--

Ajedrez’s Mexico is hot and dry like it should be, and dusty like no one ever mentions. The heat hits you as soon as you step out of the door, but it’s not so bad. Humid is worse. Vietnam is worse.

Or so you keep on telling yourself.

You swallow a mouthful of water, and follow Ajedrez’s boots as she glides across the desert. She hasn’t told you the details, but then you didn’t ask. She just said what and when, and that’s all you wanted to know.

“And, once things get interesting, be prepared to run.”

“Why,” you had asked, and you had been rewarded by one of the most beautiful smiles you have ever seen.

“You’ve never seen a drugs lab blow, have you?”

That was a couple days ago and this is now. This is hot and dense and smoky and you hear a man’s appreciative laugh as you step into the shade.

“Hey, princess, who’s the broad?” You hear someone ask in Spanish, and as your eyes adjust you see Ajedrez gesture.

“She’s with me, boys. No touching.” And then you see her smile. “Save that for the whores you spend so much money on.” Some more laughter, and that’s that. You find a spot between José and Pablo, and just wait for nightfall.

(it’s like being with the green berets. low laughter in the shadows and crude jokes, but they don’t care what you are as long as you are one of the boys. you’ve missed this more then you’ve ever realized, and for a moment you have nothing but envy for the curvy latina woman you call friend.

just for a moment)

--

This is also what you’ve missed. Smoke and haze and screams in the distance. You, all ten of you, have run into the guards and it’s a gunfight. A bullet skims across your jaw and the pain is a kiss of adrenaline.

Oh god, oh god help you, but you love this.

Somehow, you think as you slide behind a building and reload, you are a little past His Mercy now.

Sorry about that, Mom.

--

Ajedrez nearly runs into you. Soot and blood on her face, on her hands and her clothes, and she’s laughing.

“Come on, Mary Anne!”

It’s hard to hear from the here-again-gone-now deafness, but she grabs your arm and hauls you to your feet.

“Come on.”

She jerks her head towards a building hidden by haze, and you remember what she had said. You’ve never seen a drugs lab blow have you, and something about getting ready to run…

Her fingers tighten and she’s gone three steps before you get your head back into gear. She’s taller, just, but your legs are longer and it’s a race back to the truck. A race against each other, just for the sheer fun of life and this moment, and a race against the flames before they hit the stores.

You sit in the back, with her and some of the others and when the lab blows up you are nearly deafened. It’s like a bomb. It’s better then a bomb and Ajedrez is still laughing. You could kiss her, but you are too busy devouring the orange and red smoke that mushrooms into the night sky with your hungry, greedy eyes.

You can taste blood and smoke and the wound on your jaw is stinging like a bitch, but you feel so alive. So alive. And you can’t help but laugh.

--

It takes you a while to come down from your high, but that’s okay. The next time you see Fi, you can smile without it hurting and that’s the main thing.

You leave a note for Ajedrez with the Bar.

Thank you.

--

“Is it normally like that?”

Ajedrez is sitting in the corner of the booth, eyes closed. You can’t decide if she reminds you more of a great, lazy cat or a wolf.

“Sometimes. When I’m with my boys, it is. I don’t let the rest of the cartel treat me like that.”

“I thought you said that you didn’t lead anyone,” you murmur, remembering the way the men, grown and experienced and cynical as any soldier, followed her into the valley. Ajedrez opens her eyes and the light catches them. For a moment, they glint rich red-brown.

(a lioness, you think; she’s not solitary enough for a leopard. Or jaguar, if you are going by geography)

“I don’t. Not really.”

“You lead them. I think,” and you pull your glass closer, “that they would follow you into hell and back, AJ.”

“Maybe,” she says, and Sands’s lighter goes snap, click, snap.

--

Sometimes when Ajedrez comes into the Bar, she seems tense and on edge. Like when she was Bound, but somehow worse. That was the nervous energy of someone trapped and caged and frantic that the jailer has lost the key; this is the nervous energy of someone whose recently righted world is starting to go deeply wrong and she can’t help but fight.

Fight to keep it together or maybe just fight, you haven’t decided yet.

She won’t say what is wrong. You ask and she laughs, tosses her gloriously thick hair over a curved shoulder and says that it is just cartel politics. But then her lips twist and she stares at the flames with eyes that are sometimes black and sometimes brown and always unreadable.

You worry.

It doesn’t seem to help.

--

One night in the Milliways autumn you see Ajedrez stumble down the stairs and head straight to the bar. Her hair is a tangled mess, her shirt is half undone, and when you get close you can see that her eyes are wide and staring at nothing.

You also see the burns like fingermarks. On her face and neck, circling one wrist; red and painful and they stand out against her brown skin as she drinks tequila straight from the bottle.

You have, to borrow a popular phrase, a really bad feeling about this.

“What happened?”

Ajedrez blinks, and when she looks at you, you have the uncomfortable sensation that she is looking through you. No, not through. Into. As if picturing what you would look like without your skin, and wondering if that would make her feel better.

“He,” and her voice is a rasp. She coughs, clears it, tries again. “He said that I went looking for him. A door I hadn’t seen before, and he opened it and said my name.”

“Who?” But you think you know who, so you change the question. “Why?”

“They’re dead,” Ajedrez whispers. “They are all dead. And I’m the only one left.” She shuts her eyes and sways on the stool, and you need all your supernatural speed to catch her before she hits the floor.

--

Ruin helps you carry her to your room. He takes off her shoes as you pull back the sheets and Ajedrez sprawls almost lifelessly across them. She looks, you think, very brown and very vulnerable.

The burns seem even worse now.

“Legs,” Ruin says quietly, and you turn and glare at him. She’s fallen from the daughter straight to the father and some part of you can’t help but be angry.

“What?”

He runs a hand through his shaggy hair and looks down at the Mexican woman sprawled over your bed.

“You can’t,” he says at last, “help everyone.”

“Yes,” you tell him, “I can. But for now, I’m going to settle for punching the Devil.”

Ruin glances at you in a show of mock(ing) confusion.

“Which one?”

--

Belial. Satan. The Devil.

Well, whatever. His lip still splits as you send your fist into it and he still bleeds red. But the hand that he uses to grab your wrist burns, and that’s not terribly human of him.

“Now really, my dear,” he says mildly. You want to spit in his face and only just restrain yourself.

“Leave her alone.”

“Who?” It’s a sly smile, his sly smile, and even through your protective fury you feel yourself react to it. Only a little bit, though. You are way passed being merely pissed off.

“You know perfectly well who.”

“Ah, yes. Sheldon’s little Mexican. Pretty thing, don’t you think? All those curves, all those buttons to press…” He is running his thumb over your skin and you barely even notice.

“Leave her alone, asshole.”

“Now, Mary Anne…she came looking for me. And I’m hardly going to turn down a lovely little piece like her, am I? I do so love the Catholic girls. They know how to fall.”

“She-”

“She is a grown woman,” Belial says smoothly, overriding you. “And fully capable of choosing her own destruction if she so desires. She gambled away a life of crime and passion with that agent of hers, and for what? Her family is gone, her cartel is in ruins, her cause is dead. The soldier put aside everything, sacrificed chances and people and dreams, and now all that is left is the desire to fall. Could I really be so cruel as to deny her that?”

You wrench your hand away and try to rub away the burning sensation his fingers have left.

“I won’t let you have her,” you tell him, and something in the universe goes click.

Belial smiles.

“My, my. That does sound like a challenge, doesn’t it?”

--

Ajedrez is in the bathroom when you step into your otherwise empty room. She’s standing topless in front of the mirror, hands braced against the sink and her head bowed and all you can see from behind is her hair and her yellow bra and those burns.

She is far, far too still.

“Ajedrez?” Your voice is soft, but she flinches as if you shouted. Slowly, she lifts her head and looks at you via the mirror. In the light, her eyes are a beautiful mahogany, but just as lifeless.

Suddenly, you see it. You can see the knowledge and the possible futures and you can see what Ajedrez could become. Could.

Not will.

“Mary Anne.”

You hover in the doorway and watch as her lips twist. You can see the welts on her back, the press of fingers and hands around the scars of bullets and knives. The area just below the small of her back is red and blistered, but you know that it’ll all heal clean.

“I-”

“You know,” she says then, interrupting you (it seems to be your night for it), “I had a tattoo on my back. LQ, the Latin Queens. From when I went loco in San Antonio. Big and chunky but it…it was mine.”

Was.

Your eyes fall to the concentration of blisters and she laughs. Low and harsh and more then a little mad.

“All gone, now. All gone.”

“AJ…” You take a step forward and she takes a step to the side as if it is a choreographed dance. But when she stumbles over the hem of her jeans all grace is lost. She ends up a crumpled heap on the floor, hands pressing against her temples and breath coming shallow and fast.

You squat down in front of her, balancing easily on the balls of your feet.

“AJ, look at me.”

She doesn’t move, so you reach out and push her chin up with your fingers. You look into her eyes, her face, and wish that she would cry. She might not feel better, but you would. This silence, even with the shaking shoulders, is unnerving.

Especially with Belial’s smile fresh in your mind.

“AJ…”

“My name is Beatriz. Beatriz fucking Barillo.”

“What is more real, Ajedrez? The name you are given or the name that you choose?” She doesn’t answer and you let your hand drop with sigh.

“Come on then, lovely, lets get those burns looked at.”

--

You’ve been in a war before, but this is different. This is personal, the only casualty a lovely and likable woman that you met by chance. You don’t think that she is lost, not yet, but she certainly isn’t here.

The Ajedrez in the Bar is now cynical and bitter with flashes of caustic humour. Sometimes, you think you see the laughing girl who had pulled you to the truck before she vanishes into someone on the fast track to self-destruction. She annoys, she pushes and shoves until she is pushed and shoved back and then she laughs. She walks into the Bar with burns like fingermarks and you grit your teeth.

It’s like watching Sands, and you wonder if this is what happened to him.

It’s like watching yourself and Ruin all those months and months ago, and you wish that you hadn’t thought that. That was different, you protest to yourself. That was a…it was an accident, a collision. We never meant to start anything. This is all on purpose.

(somehow, that doesn’t actually help and it just gives you the urge to apologize to your friends)

--

She gets into a fight with Sands. Out by the lake one cold day, and you wonder if it is the anniversary of their first one. They know each other well, so well, and this time there are no witnesses, no Mal or Random to stop them, no restraint.

They are tearing each other apart, and you know on some level that that is precisely what they want. What they crave. Pull out the guns, pull out the knives, and say the hundred nasty, hurtful things that they want to scream, and don’t leave the other standing alone again.

Well.

Not on your watch, because a) you are a bitch like that and b) you have a little on-going disagreement with Belial as to the state of Ajedrez’s wellbeing.

You reach them just as Sands shoves her back, hard. Her fist smacks into your open hand, and quick as quick you close your fingers around hers before looking at Sands.

“Enough.”

He snarls at you and she struggles to get free. You let her go only to grab her wrist and she goes rigid at the pain. Burns are the worst, after all. He steps back, rubs the back of his head and just glares at you.

“Mary Anne, fuck off.”

“No,” you tell him, sweetly.

“Mary Anne, please.” That is Ajedrez, voice husky from anger and other things.

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Sands smiles, blandly and insincerely.

“What are you going to do, stop us?”

“Mmm, yes.”

He moves then, feinting to the side with the knife and then lunging in. Your hand snaps out automatically and you feel the blade slash your wrist. You also feel your hand snaking around and grabbing his anyway.

You’re not entirely sure what to do, you are just so sick of their fighting and the hatred that only comes from true love gone wrong that you just pull. You reach down into their minds and pull the first things that flash, searching for memories of them.

What you forgot is that you’d get the memories as well.

You get Ajedrez as a little girl in a pink cotton dress, lying on sun-warmed tiles and tormenting a shiny beetle with a pin. You get Sands as a little boy, gravely explaining to his baby brother how the man lives on the moon. You get her screams for her father as they set her on fire and you get him holding the body of his cat, named for his dead brother, in his hands and trying not to cry. She’s playing with two monkeys in the garden and he’s being stood up on prom night. You see them kill their first men and lose their first innocence. You get laughter and blood, death and the flickering quality of every day life. Violence and normality, twined around each other and marking Sands and Ajedrez for life. You struggle through the random images, trying to find…

There.

You see him walking over to her in a club, hear her ringing laughter. You see her ignoring him at work, telling him to take a hike. You see him watching and flirting and making her heart beat fast despite herself, you see her coming to work on a Saturday in very short denim shorts with a split lip from her then-boyfriend, you see him shoving her against her desk and kissing her. You see the seduction in a matter of seconds, but you feel it. Both sides, at once.

You see the occasionally awkward process of two people trying to slip and slide into compatibility, and you see the fights. Screaming, painful, but you see them make up time and time again. You see the mornings of shared coffee and bitching about work, you see him slide into bed at some ungodly hour of the morning and her moving automatically to curl around him. You see her pale and unconscious in a hospital ward while he holds her hand and waits for her to wake up and you see her sit beside him on some church steps and rest her head against his shoulder. You see her upset and crying and you see him gather her into his arms and murmur that it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.

You see them laughing as she drags him out onto the patio to dance in the rain and you see them holding up a MacDonald’s before getting into a gunfight with a Mexico City gang.

You see them fitting together like the proverbial hand and glove and you shove that into their brains.

And that’s all you meant to show them, but you are new at this and the vision escapes your slippery-fingered grasp.

You see her sitting at a café, trying not to study the clock as he sits somewhere else and talks to a little fat man with a patch over his right eye. You see him stumble into her room as she informs him that he is paying for the lock before she fires the gun that he had given her. You see him offer her chance to escape, nonchalant and cocky and you see her grin as he leaves. You see her father backhand her or maybe he shoots her and she’s left on the ground, staring into nothing while Sands is on the operating table screaming, no but she can’t as she lets the Mariachi go and smiles at Sands in the café and murmur that he didn’t see it coming and then he has his eyes gouged out…

Oops, you half think to yourself as was and could have been and might be pan out and tighten their grip on the three of you.

You see her stop him before he leaves and explain in tumbling words who she is and could they leave now, please. Modern day Bonnie and Clyde, they are killed again and again and live again and again. They have a little boy, a little girl, a house somewhere that no one has heard of and two unmarked graves all at once.

She doesn’t tell him who she is and he kills her as she kisses him and stares sightlessly at the sky before he falls and she kills him as she stands there and they kill at each and she bleeds to death on a smoky street with his blood covering her face. He comes to Milliways and she follows from unconscious habit.

They kill each other. Again, and again, and again. He kills her and she kills him and they are both left with nothing but bitter regret in their mouths before they follow the other. Sometimes within a matter of moments, other times months or years, but it’s always a downward spiral. They work things out in the Bar, fragile and uneasy and he digs at her for years and she stays because she deserves it and they split, again, and she goes running to Belial while he gets himself killed by Ramon as the Bar’s second murder victim. She’s shot in front of an old blue farmhouse and he lets her die he is shot as he runs towards her he drives her to the hospital and he leaves and he comes back and they go and find their son. You attempt to gain some control again, and follow that future to a doctor placing their daughter in Sands’s arms and he whispers into her baby ear that he’ll kill anyone who hurts her and she’s eight while her brother is twelve and talking to Ajedrez about football and she tugs on his sleeve, Daddy can you teach me to shoot a gun and

“Fuck,” Sands whispers, tearing himself away. You blink as the world spins and you, carefully, let go of Ajedrez’s wrist. Sands is shaking, pacing, and she’s just staring at him with too many emotions in her dark eyes to be understood. He flinches and brings up a hand, running it jerkily through his hair.

“Don’t say anything, AJ. Just…don’t.”

What she might have said in reply is lost as you say quite clearly, “Oh, shit,” and fall backwards in a dead faint.

--

You wake to see Ajedrez sitting on the desk, one leg swinging free while her hands clasp her ankle.

“Welcome to the land of the awake, Mary Anne. Interesting…thing that you showed us. Probably award-worthy. Although I am a little pissed off that you interrupted us. We had some really amazing progress happening. The relative merits of being independent and knowing when you are being bullshitted to instead of dumbly swallowing the hierarchical crap before asking for seconds, as opposed to being a malcontent cynic who is only out for himself and his own sick, twisted entertainment instead of believing in something greater then yourself and having the discipline to follow orders, even when you don’t like them. A really in-depth, civilized conversation. Practically a college debate.”

You raise a hand to your head to try and defend yourself against the onslaught of words, and realize that she’s bandaged it for you.

“Thank you,” you say, gesturing to your wrist with your eyes.

“Not a problem. It was worth it to see Sands nearly have a heart attack trying to carry your lily-coloured ass up the stairs. Really, he’s terribly out of shape. I always did tell him that the smoking was bad for him.”

Somehow you manage to mostly suppress a whimper.

“You’re in a fine mood.”

Ajedrez grins at you.

“Yeah, I think I am.”

You attempt to sit up, and feel inordinately cheered when you succeed. Her grin fades to smile, and then she ducks her head. Your eyes fall to the burns on her wrists and you let the silence stretch out.

“So…”

“So. Hello, Mary Anne. Welcome to my humble abode.”

“Not that I’m complaining, but why your room?”

“I couldn’t remember where yours was, and I didn’t see Señor Longshanks-”

“Who?”

“Your husband.”

“Ah.”

“As I was saying. I couldn’t see your dearly beloved anywhere, and Sands doesn’t have a room anymore, so…it was mine by default.”

“You were talking?”

Ajedrez bites her bottom lip.

“Um. Sorta.” A quick shrug, topic now off-limits. You swing your legs out of the bed and wait for the room to stop doing the cha-cha around your head.

“Why Belial, AJ?” You ask then, quietly, not looking at her. “Why are you….why?”

“Because he gives me what I need.”

“Which is?” You know the answer, both because of your intuition and because sometimes Ajedrez is scarily like yourself, but you have to hear it from her own lips.

“Pain. Lots, and lots, of pain. You can’t feel anything when you are dead, and if I am alive I can go track down my hijo de puta of an ex-boyfriend, and carve out his heart for turning us over to the Feds.”

“You have,” you inform her then, “the worst taste in men of anyone that I have ever seen. Including myself. And if you knew the rest of my friends…”

She just laughs. The sound is rich and genuinely amused, and you think that maybe she isn’t lost yet.

“I know. They keep on trying to kill me. Maybe they don’t like my sense of humour.”

--

Things should be better after that. Should be, but they aren’t, because the world isn’t fair. If anything, they are worse. Sands now avoids the both of you with an ease that you find maddening even as you are amazed at his skill, and Ajedrez goes back to Belial time and time again.

It should be better, if he only gave her physical pain. That you could understand, deal with, not mind and all of that.

But that’s not what the Devil is about. Honey-tongued and poison-tongued, he reduces her to tears even as she whispers please. Please, please, oh god, what have I done, oh please I want to die please, amante, please.

He plays her like a guitar and then smirks as you try and drag her back into the world and conversation.

You think that you are losing.

You hate the fact that you are losing her.

--

One night as you sit on the couch, she comes to you crying. You move to open your arms but she falls to her knees instead, and curls up with her head resting against your knee. It can’t be comfortable, but she isn’t moving. You stroke her gloriously thick and wavy (and now almost hopelessly tangled) hair and glare at the Devil as he walks to the front door.

She’s crying in Spanish, soft and tangled with Nahuatl and English, and your fingers tighten.

“Stop it, Ajedrez,” and you pull her head back. “Don’t go to him, you don’t have to…it’s not worth this.”

Ajedrez pulls back and there is anger in her eyes. Well, it’s better then before. It’s an emotion.

“It’s no worse than anything you’ve done.”

“I didn’t-”

“So just general self-destruction is better then it being for a purpose, Mary Anne?”

“You can’t…Ajedrez, your family are dead. And once you kill your ex, what do you have left? Once he’s dead, it’s all over!”

She smiles and gets to her feet. The firelight catches her face, all Aztec angles and impracticality.

“Don’t do it, Ajedrez.”

“You,” she says quite calmly, “have no right to tell me what to do.”

“I am your friend.”

“Sorry, not good enough,” and she walks away.

--

Ajedrez leaves the Bar as soon as her door comes back.

You act very mature and do not go and antagonize a certain Irish-sounding gentleman.

Ruin tells you that he is astounded.

You tell him to shut up and kiss you.

(he is, occasionally, very obliging)

--

The waiting is the worse part. Waiting, waiting, waiting; you look up every time that the front door opens and out of the corner of your eye you notice that Sands does the exact same thing.

Who knows, it might even be for the same reason.

Might be.

--

When she comes back, she leaves blood on the door and its handle. Not really her fault, her hands are slick with the stuff. Drenched blood-red up to her elbows and you have the phrase carve out his heart running through your head. You look at the knife in her hand, and reflect that sometimes it’s nice knowing people for whom that saying isn’t a metaphor.

Then you look up into her blank eyes.

Blank, empty, but you know Ajedrez well enough by now to know that sooner or later, she’s going to break.

And this time, there might be no coming back.

You see her sway and drop the knife and you mutter, ‘Oh no you don’t,’ before you run towards her. You kick the door shut and open it again. A pristine white beach with a violet-red sky lays beyond the doorway and your grab her by the arm.

“Come on, Ajedrez.”

“What, Mary Anne-” And you haul her through.

--

You stand on a beach. The sand is pure white, untouched and unspoiled, powder-fine. The sea is a shade of jade unknown to the human eye, and the sky at the height of the day is a cool violet-red. Now it is late afternoon, almost evening, and the sky is darker, richer. There is a sun, but it seems far away in the cloudy sky, and three moons hang in the sky.

Ajedrez falls to her knees, gape-mouthed in shock.

“Oh, sweet Mary. Where am I?”

You slip off your shoes and wriggle your toes in the powder soft sand. And then you straighten, cross your arms and regard her coolly with your too-blue eyes.

“You are at a crossroads. If you want, I can turn around and open the door again and let you fuck your way to damnation or whatever it is that you want. Or you can come with me and hear out a proposal. If you say no, I’ll return you to Milliways. If yes, well, then whatever you do is up to you.”

She sits back on her heels, and automatically raises a hand to push back her heavy mass of hair before it catches her eye. Drying blood, drying sticky blood now covered with that pure white sand. You can only imagine how her skin is crawling as she rubs her hands, both of them, against her jeans to try and clean them.

“The sea is right there, you know.”

She pulls off her boots and gets to her feet, putting her hands on her hips.

“Mary Anne?”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes you can be a real bitch.” And then she stalks towards the sea.

“Yes, I can,” you whisper to yourself, letting your shoulders slump while she isn’t watching. You don’t know if she’ll say yes, you just hope that she will. She’d fit, she’d fit so well and, well, Ruin had said that you would find a project, didn’t he?

You just wish that Ajedrez didn’t require so much tough love when she’s like this. You think that, and you check who is the castle, and then you grin.

Oh, yes.

He’d be perfect.

You are grinning happily to yourself as she comes back, looking marginally better. Her jeans rolled up to her knees, and her arms are mostly free of the blood. Her fingernails are still caked with it, but nothing a good bath won’t cure.

She’s regarding you warily, but the blankness in her eyes has been pushed back.

At least, for the moment.

“Okay, then, so what’s this proposal?”

“Not for me to offer, lovely. I mean I could, but I won’t. Come with me?”

“I don’t,” she points out, “really have a choice, do I?”

“There is always a choice.”

“Whatever.”

--

You hand her over to Tower. He raises an eyebrow as you explain telepathically something of the circumstances and what you saw that day in the bathroom.

Highly unusual.

You grin at him.

I thought you might like it.

We’ll see. He hides a smile and then turns to Ajedrez. Ajedrez, who is clutching her boots to her chest and eyeing the both of you as if she wants to bolt.

“Now, Ajedrez, was it?” Tower says, placing a hand on her back and guiding her to the library.

“I think you know perfectly well who I am,” she snaps. You resist the urge to cackle, just, and decide to go exploring.

After all, you have some time to kill.

--

She’s sitting in a courtyard in when you find her. She’s sitting on the step next to the column and staring at nothing for all that her face is towards the fountain. She hears your steps and jumps to her feet, whirling around to face you in a flurry of brown hair and limbs.

“What…he…”

“Yes?”

“The fucking Knight of Swords?!”

You raise an eyebrow at her.

“I think it suits you quite well.”

She’s shaking her head, moving backwards and shaking her head and you wonder if she’ll topple into the fountain.

“No, I can’t…I’m not…”

“Why not? It suits you. The Knight of Swords is skilful, clever, decisive, fierce and courageous, possessed with a swift and bright energy-“

“Oh, stop sounding like a fucking book.”

“-you are goal-orientated. When you know what to do, you go out and you don’t rest until it is done. You consider things, but once you decide on something, your mind can’t be changed. You can be fanatical, single-minded. You know how to plan things out, how to fight and how to win, but on the reverse you fight for no reason. You can be obstinate and malicious, and you can be temperamental and cruel as easily as you are passionate and practical.”

She’s rubbing her mouth, but she’s not looking away.

“This is a card of duality, of good and bad at once, and it is a break from the past. Something, a relationship or world or job, has ended; you are released and free to forge a new destiny. You are not a general or a leader, but neither are you a blind follower. You uphold what you think is true and worthy, and you are loyal.”

“Are you talking about the card there, or me?”

“Both.”

“He…the Tower. He said all that. And, I…oh god.” And her face crumples. You start to move forward, but then you feel a hand at your elbow.

“Let me,” Reue says, quietly. You stand to one side and let Ruin’s daughter past. Reue, Sorrow, the Three of Swords. You watch as Ajedrez sits down, sharply, on the step leading up to the fountain and you watch as Reue folds Ajedrez into her arms and just hold her as the woman cries.

It’s only fitting, after all; Ajedrez has spent quite a few years in Reue’s sphere of influence, and maybe the time has finally come for a gentle hand and soothing voice.

Silently, you walk away. You can do nothing more here.

--

You have dinner with the Family, only half paying attention to the talk and gossip and bickering.

They talk about Ajedrez.

You listen to Tower scolding them for being conservative about getting a new family member so soon, you hear Victory say that it might be nice to have another woman to spar with, you hear…

You hear them all talk, some for and some against and all acting like a loud, boisterous, argumentative family, and you are glad that Ajedrez, only child and reeling, has elected to stay in the suite that Reue found for her. Her nerves really, really wouldn’t be up to this right now, and it’d be a shame to put bullet holes in the walls.

--

Balancing a try on one hand, you knock on the door with the other.

“Ajedrez?”

There is a long pause, and then your hear a simple,

“Come in.”

The room would be dark if it weren’t lit by the three full moons, their light shining in through the large open window to your left. Ajedrez is sitting on the wide window still, back against the frame. There is still room for another person to sit, so you place the tray down on the coffee table and walk over.

“I brought you some dinner.”

A flash of a wan smile, and you notice that she has Sands’s lighter out.

“I can see that. Mucho gracias, mi reina.” Snap, click, snap.

You think about saying ‘I’m not your queen’, but figure that at this point it’ll be counter-productive. So you settle for asking,

“Am I?”

She bites her bottom lip, looks out the window to the sea.

Snap, click, snap.

“I don’t know,” she says, softly. “You could be. All too easily, I think. It’s…it’s tempting.”

“So…” You draw one knee up, hug it to your chest.

“So it feels like running.”

“Ajedrez…you have nothing left.”

She looks at you, her eyes black in the moonlight and her skin oddly pale. You turn your head and watch the moons play on the waves.

“You…there is nothing to go back to in your Mexico. Nothing to run from. Do you believe me?”

“I believe that you may just have an ulterior motive.” You glance at her, sharply, and she grins. “Well, you do.”

“And so I have. I think you would be a good Knight of Swords, and I also think that you are too good a person to waste because you believe…whatever it is you believe you are doing with Belial. And if offering you the chance to be a card is the way out of it, then I will do it.”

“It’s a question of penance, I guess.”

“Penance.” The word is flat in your mouth.

“I’m…I’m not a very good Catholic, but I am Mexican and we are Catholic. We may be atheist, or whatever else, but there are saints’ days and fiestas and churches and you argue with an upbringing like that. You don’t escape it.”

“Do you still believe in God?”

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. It’s a little hard to tell.”

“Ajedrez…” You rub your temple with one hand and regard her wearily. She smiles back, which means absolutely nothing.

Snap, click, snap.

“You know, that is very annoying.”

“Mmm, do you want me to stop?”

“Does it make you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“Then no, I don’t.”

Ajedrez laughs softly.

“You know, my father and Iago would have ordered me to stop a long, long time ago.”

“Well, I don’t order people.”

Snap, click-

“I think that’s your problem.”

“…huh?”

“You don’t like being a queen. Oh, I don’t mean Queen of Swords, I think you like that well enough. No, I don’t think you like being a queen.” You shift uncomfortably, and her smile widens. “See? I have no problem with being a knight, it’s a lot like being a solider and I am already that. I like it, it’s me. But you, chica…you don’t like it.”

“And what is your deeply revealing and intuitive reason as to why?” You ask her, amused.

“You don’t want the responsibility. Not because you are lazy, but because you are scared. Fucked up little Mary Anne, how could you lead anyone? Order anyone? To have people rely on you not as a friend but as a leader…well, I think that scares you.”

- snap.

You stopped smiling after the second sentence and now you are just staring at her. She smiles again and you swallow.

Hard.

“And what,” you murmur, “is your solution to that?”

“Go out. Find a world somewhere, join up in an army or a mercenary gang, and work your way up. Just a matter of practice, if you have it. I think you could, you’ll just have to find it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, shush. Besides, if I do this, I’m going to be following you.”

“You’re what?”

“You are the Queen.” she says with a wicked grin, and you think that she is enjoying this far too much, “If I am your Knight, chica…a Knight is supposed to protect her Queen, no? And if you read the stories, you are supposed to send me on all these stupid quests and-”

“And you are supposed to be in love me.”

“Oh, god no. Aside from that bit.”

“I think I may be insulted.”

“Hey, if you were a guy I’d be so checking out your ass. As it is, you’re a friend.”

“And your Queen?”

Ajedrez traces a fading burn scar on her wrist.

“We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

You don’t mention how much you hate waiting; it won’t help, and by the trace of apology in her voice, you think that she already knows.

Snap, click, snap.

--

You take her back to Milliways, like you said you would.

Fuck you hate waiting.

--

You see her, sometimes, but for the most part she avoids you and you let her. No sense pushing, she’ll tell you aye or nay soon enough.

You see her talking with Sands, and yes, they are actually talking. Softly, seriously, and later she says that she’ll see where that leads them. She stands to go, kisses his cheek; he ignores her, stares into the fire. But later you notice that he reaches up and touches where her lips had pressed.

You remember the flashing images that you saw, and wonder what happened to the man that Ajedrez had loved so very much.

“If he forgives me,” Ajedrez says a couple days later over some coffee, “then we have somewhere to start from. If not, then ni modo.”

Ni modo; it can’t be helped, nothing to be done. Sometimes you wish that you didn’t have this gift of languages, but her fatalistic shrug is translation enough.

“Have you…”

“Not yet.”

--

One day, she walks over to you with burns on her neck and arms.

“I’ll do it.”

You blink and raise your head to look at her; she stares back at you with eyes that are dark and angry.

“I’ll be your Knight, Mary Anne. As soon as the burns heal, anyway.”

“Okay.” Your voice is soft, and you think you should feel triumphant. Instead, you just look at the burns and the pain that screams from the lines of her body, and wish that it didn’t have to be like this.

“Good. And now to the infirmary I go.”

And with that, she stalks away, Sands’s lighter a pacifier in her hand.

Snap, click, snap.

--

Belial seems more then a little annoyed when you see him next, although he is hiding it well.

You smile at him, sweetly, and don’t go over.

Responsible Adults ‘R’ Us.

--

“Are you sure?” Ajedrez smiles faintly at you and you continue talking. “You can’t back away from this once the tattoo is in place, you know.”

“Mary Anne,” and her voice is a woman’s purr and a warrior’s report all at once. “Mary Anne, I have been tattooed once before. And I want this.”

“Why?”

It’s the first time that you’ve asked her, and for a moment she doesn’t answer. She just lifts the hem of her simple white dress so that she doesn’t trip down the stairs. The dress is backless and bound at the waist with a cord of silver, with a silver clasp at the back of her neck. It’s the most feminine thing that you’ve ever seen her wear, and it suits her surprisingly well.

Her hair, like yours had been, is twisted up and tied into a knot.

“It’s not the power, if that is what is worrying you. As far as I see at the moment, the power that you…we have is not that great, at least not as I am used to. It’s the power of offering choices and showing paths, not glory and riches. It’s….showing people that, like you did with Sands and me. It’s seeing things like my grandmother, knowing things and helping when you can. It’s a purpose I think I could believe in, that I do believe in.

Does that make you feel better?”

“A little,” you admit, and are rewarded by her smile.

--

You lead her to the little used back room and open the door. The room is lined with candles and Tower stands next to a high table. Cynical Tower, with the Socrates-like ability to make people think even as they get angry at their ill-considered ideals and thoughts being destroyed; destroyed, only to have the freedom to start again anew and afresh with a stronger foundation.

Annoying, maddening Tower, and you were fairly certain that he and Ajedrez would get along.

Once she stopped screaming at him.

(you have a feeling that he won’t let you forget her reaction to the offer any time soon)

Ajedrez walks over and sits on the table, the table tall enough for him to work at while standing, and for a moment she just looks at the door. And then she draws in a deep breath and swings her legs up. She settles with her arms folded and her forehead resting against her wrist.

And so Tower begins to paint.

Unlike Choice did with you, he starts with the hilt and works his way down. The pommel, perfectly circular and just an outline at the moment, rests at the base of her neck and the curved cross-guard sweeps across her shoulder-blades. The length of the sword runs down her spine, and you can see that it is different to yours. Darker, heavier, wider; the more practical, working sword belongs to the Knight, after all. Not for her the rapier delicacy, nor the pretty gold trim; that she leaves, and trusts, to you.

A Knight defends her Queen, you find yourself thinking, and then wishing that you knew what that will entail.

Well, you’ll both find out sooner or later.

The blade, you are interested to note, is double-edged and double-hued. On one side it is iron, dark and cold; on the other, dancing silver steel. There is a shield on the pommel, white and black, with an iron blade in the white and a steel one in the black so that it is almost yin and yang. It’s a detail that not many will see, but you see it and will remember. Tower paints copper wire twining around the grip before standing back. He puts the paintbrush down and whispers “Esto perpetua”.

The sword glows against Ajedrez’s brown skin, all shades of contrasting grey with the slim richness of the copper wire, and you see her fingers tighten around her lower arms. Slowly, as the glow fades, she begins to move.

You push yourself off the wall and walk over. She looks up, almost in a daze.

“Hey, lovely,” you say, quietly. She smiles at you, and her eyes are dark. Dark and deep as the night sky, and just as unfathomable. It is then that the reality of what she has done and chosen crashes in on her. The knowledge of millions of various paths - walked and unwalked --known from those in her own sphere and known second-hand through the other cards. All those paths and choices, all hers to oversee and Know.

And as you watch her stiffen and clutch the edge of the table, you watch her eyes. They seem to, almost impossibly, darken before the light catches them. Her eyes are now brown. Brown as wood, brown as mahogany and stained maple, but it’s that rich red-brown of living trees instead of the lifeless beauty of polished boards.

Most people, you think, would just see black and brown. But then again, most people are mortal.

“Oh,” Ajedrez says, almost too soft to hear. “Oh, my.”

“Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Si.” And then her smile turns impish as she slides off the table. “You still need to get your ass down to a proper war.”

You hear Tower snort as he packs up the paints, and you just put your hands on your hips.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah-huh.”

The exchange is beginning to have the faint overtones of ‘well, your mom’, and it’s so utterly ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. It’s her way of dealing with things, you know and now Know; to make jokes, to laugh and tease and another person might think that she wasn’t taking it all seriously.

But you know that she is.

You see it in her eyes, now old and shifting colour as the light hits them. You see it in the way she holds herself, with the quiet pride and silent purpose that she had had under Iago, only more so. You see it and it makes you smile.

The Knight of Swords.

“Come then, sister, lets meet the rest of the family.” And with that, you open the door and lead the way.

Fin.

Why Being a Citizen Sucks, #63 (AU!Future!M'ways)

2007-08-28T09:25:07Z

TITLE: Why Being a Citizen Sucks, #63
FANDOM: Once Upon a Time in Mexico via milliways_bar
PAIRING: Sands/Ajedrez
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 483
WARNING/S: Mentions a body?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Sands and Ajedrez aren’t mine, they belong to Robert Rodriguez; I’m just playing without permission, but please don’t sue. I’m broke.
NOTES: Set in a future, possibly AU!verse of Milliways. This was also typed up in about forty minutes.

“Hey, honey-”
“Everything okay?”
“Uh, well, that’s why I’m calling…”
“Not my stimulating conversation that brightens your present housewife existence? I’m crushed.”
“Fuck off.”
“Love you too.”
“So, lets say someone broke in and I killed them. What do I do?”
“…excuse me?”
“We’re all fine! Milio – Emiliano, if you step one foot out of the living room! – didn’t see anything, the baby is kicking my kidneys like normal, and my hand’s still ringing from using one of the pots as a make-shift weapon, but we’re all okay! It’s just…he’s staining my floor.”
Silence.
“And you have no idea how unnatural it feels to call the cops. But I’m supposed to! Because, I’m a civilian now. And they do things like that.”
“And you haven’t called them yet why…?”
“How do civilians act when they call up and say that they’ve killed someone?”
A snort of laughter. “You’re asking me?”
“Well, sure. You were normal once. Ish.”
“….I really wasn’t.”
“Fuck. Do I…do I cry at them? What…what do I say?"
“I can’t quite see why you’re having problems with this.”
“I don’t know what to do! I know what Ajedrez would do, I know what Beatriz Barillo’d do, I know what Maria and Flor and Leon and half a dozen other people I’ve been would do, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Because, I’m trying to actually be myself for once.” Ruefully, “I don’t think it’s working.”
“Beatriz. Why don’t you just pretend to be one of those other people? Just until the cops leave.”
“That’d be dishonest.”
“…I’m not going to dignify that with answer, sugarbutt. I’m really not.”
“Well, you’re helpful.”
“Cry at them. They’re used to that. They probably aren’t used to being greeted to a rant about bloodstains on the floor. Well, then again…”
Glumly, “Don’t suppose you care to come home and hold my hand and be all supportive and try and stop me from laughing at them?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure I could make time.”
“Thank you.” Long silence. “Cry at them? Really?”
“Yep.”
“I can hear you smirking at the other end of the telephone. And you know, Sands? Fuck that. I’m going to be in shock. That’s a perfectly normal reaction, isn’t it? I mean, I just cleaned the floor.”
“…I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. You just…do whatever makes you happy.”
“You have no idea how henpecked you sounded just then.”
“Giggling is good. Giggling can be converted to crying, which remains my favourite suggestion.”
“Maybe. See you soon?”
“Sure.”
“Sands…”
“Fine, fine, I’ll be home soon.”
“And now I act profoundly unnatural and call the cops. Being a criminal was so much easier.”
“Shorter life-expectancy.”
“But fun. Although at least this way I don’t have to worry about the body being found…”
“That’s the spirit!”
“Adios, mi amante.”
“Back at you,” and he hangs up.

Happy Anniversary (OUaTiM, Ajedrez/Sands)

2007-08-23T23:22:40Z

TITLE: Happy Anniversary
FANDOM: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
PAIRING: Sands/Ajedrez
RATING: PG/R?
WORD COUNT: 604
WARNING/S: Some language, plus mention of after-the-fact violence
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Sands and Ajedrez aren’t mine, they belong to Robert Rodriguez; I’m just playing without permission, but please don’t sue. I’m broke.
NOTES: This is actually a section from a much longer (and so far unfinished) story about them, I just thought it could work as a stand-alone as well.

Happy Anniversary

“Why, Ajedrez, what are you doing calling so late?”

“I was in the neighbourhood.” Her voice is light and breathy. You can’t decide if she sounds like she’s going to pass out or cry.

“And?”

“Can I come up?”

“…you weren’t joking about the neighbourhood bit, were you?”

A choked laugh.

“God, I wish I was. I’m in the carpark. Can I come up?”

“Why?”

“Need to use the bathroom.”

You raise an eyebrow in the general direction of the door.

“Room 24.”

“Thank-”

You hang up.

--

“Are you sure you meant bathroom? Because, I have a lovely car just downstairs. If you promised not to get blood all over the leather, I’m more than happy to drive you to the hospital. I’m told it’s practically professional, and has a much lower fatality rate than you might expect.”

She doesn’t even bother glaring at you, and that has you more worried than you like.

“Know how to take out a bullet?”

“I’ve done it once or twice. Bathroom’s this way and easy does it.” You catch her as she stumbles and guide her to the bathroom. Tiles, easy to clean, bath easy to hose off and as she gets into the tub and sits down on the ledge, you open up the cabinet to find your tools.

“Sorry, out of morphine, but I’m told that tequila does in a pitch…”

“Fuck off, Sands.”

“You are bleeding all over my motel bathroom. And the carpet.”

“Sorry.” She even sounds like she means it, and you unscrew the lid and pass the bottle over. Ajedrez takes a long drink, but she’s using her left hand. A pause, and another long drink, and she gives it back. You look at her, battered and bloody and shivering faintly, and you sigh.

Well, there go all plans for sleeping tonight.

--

By the time two am rolls away, you’re down to picking the broken glass and grit from her feet. She’s drunk, drunker than you’ve ever seen her, and nearly asleep from it all. You’d almost say that she looks adorable like that, all sleepy-eyed and soft, wrapped up in a blanket like a caterpillar. You’d almost say it, but her bottom lip has been split and in the morning her right cheek is just going to be one fat old bruise.

You had been idly contemplating tracking down who had beaten her up and making their life hell, just from the principle of it. But her clenched-teeth scream as you finally managed to pull the bullet out of her arm changed your plans a wee bit.

You’re going to kill them. Nothing creative, just a few bullets, but you are going to kill them.

As soon as you work out who.

“Hey, baby, what’s the time?” Ajedrez’s voice is slurred with sleep and alcohol. You find it doesn’t detract from the picture in the slightest.

You tell her and she laughs.

“Hey. Happy anniversary, then.”

You can’t help but smile at her, albeit crookedly.

“You’re a sick, sick woman.”

“S’why you like me.”

You open your mouth to reply, but her eyes are closed and her breathing is even. You finish her feet, bandage them, and pack everything away. You contemplate leaving her in the bath, but…

Hell with it.

You pick her up and carry her over to the bed, managing not to drop her.

“You’re heavier than you look, AJ,” you inform her, and you know that if she had been awake she would have hit you for that. That gets a smile, even as you turn off the lights and pull her close.

--

Merit in a Box: Table

2007-08-07T10:05:30Z

Table for meritinabox

01.	Supplication	02.	Deliverance	03.	Crime pursued	04.	Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred	05.	Pursuit	06.	Disaster
07.	Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune	08.	Revolt	09.	Daring enterprise	10.	Abduction	11.	The enigma	12.	Obtaining
13.	Enemy of kinsmen	14.	Rivalry of kinsmen	15.	Murderous adultery	16.	Madness	17.	Fatal imprudence	18.	Involuntary crimes of love
19.	Slaying of a kinsman unrecognized	20.	Self-sacrificing for an ideal	21.	Self-sacrifice for kindred	22.	All sacrificed for a passion	23.	Neccessity of sacrificing loved ones.	24.	Rivalry of superior and inferior
25.	Adultery	26.	Crimes of love	27.	Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one	28.	Obstacles to love	29.	An enemy loved	30.	Ambition
31.	Conflict with a god	32.	Mistaken jealousy	33.	Erroneous judgment	34.	Remorse	35.	Recovery of a lost one	36.	Loss of loved ones

For general reference.

You and I (Maladicta/Ajedrez)

2007-02-03T22:04:32Z

TITLE: You and I
FOR: silverpenlight
FANDOM: Milliways
PAIRING: Maladict(a)/Ajedrez
RATING: R
WORDS: 2, 807
NOTES: This is a 2nd/1st person fic, written in a semi-stream of consciousness style while being rather smutty. If any of those things don't float your boat, don't read.

You and I

It starts with alcohol, where else? Alcohol and obsession as you lie there on my bed, drinking and bitching and don’t mind me, honey, I’m just watching you. The thing is…the thing is he is away, isn’t it? And we have nothing to do. Not that I’m faithful, never think that. Not even loyal. Just possessive, and he’s gone so I’m possessionless (care to step in his place, sweetness) and you are obsessionless and where else can we gather in (secrecy) safety?

And maybe I like watching you.

You see, I can remember things, things and memories that I stole from him. I remember the way you arch your back when he kiss(ed)es you there, I remember the way your lips press in anger and I remember I remember I remember.

I remember the way you bite your bottom lip, just like that, honey, and you gaze out with dark eyes from under dark lashes in a face darkened with shadow and sun. I remembered the sound of your voice before ever we met and you screamed at him…

I do wonder why. Why, why, why did you, pretty little thing, why did you lovehimleavehimbetrayhim...giggle, that is the word. Yes, why did you giggle, little princess and do you know that he calls me that now? No, well, I’m not going to tell you. You look too damned good, curled like some hunting cat at the head of my head. Exotic, because we don’t have people like you where I come from. Not with all that brown skin and hair and those dark eyes…oh, we do have people like that, but not that caste of your face. Not with your nose and lips. Lovely lips, I remember how he kissed them and the things you did with that luscious mouth…

Okay, I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but, oh honey, look at the way you blush. I didn’t think you could, whore. Princesswhoresluttraitor but you still look damned good, curled on my bed. No, don’t leave and do you know what my mother told me? She told me to look, look at her all over and let your eyes linger. And when she notices, look into her eyes and then you’ll know if she wants you and so I’m looking. I’m looking at you, just you with all those tousled brown curls and large dark eyes and I’m meeting those gorgeous eyes and I think you want me. Why, I haven’t got a fucking clue. Him, maybe, curious to see what attracted him to my bed after yours (you pushed him out first, whore, just remember that, okay) and keeps him there and maybe something. Maybe a curiosity and a drunkenness and you were just telling me about your gods. Blame all those countless ones for alcohol and drugs, and blame whatwashername ah yes, Tlaelquani and Tlazoltéotl, darkness and sex and carnality and I am a vampire, and all of that, but I do not think you mind. I remember things, after all, and sharing a bed with him is very interesting. And you shared it for two years, so certain things must be the same. Certain things so come here, honey. Come on, come closer and let me bury my fingers in that glorious, beautiful hair of yours (it’s wasted on you), let me twist and pull you down to my level to where I can do this. Kiss you. Press my lips against yours and slide my tongue between them, twine with yours as you open your mouth underneath (above) mine warm and wet and soft, so soft I’d half forgotten so thank you for reminding me.

No, don’t go. I’m not going to let you, got me hot and bothered, whore. Pretty little thing…one of a kind, honey? Sweetness and honey and the bitterness of blood and spice. Don’t go, honey, I’m not going to let you and lets get that top off you. Run my fingers up the silky fabric, start at the bottom and work my way up as I kiss you. Your mouth your cheek your jaw your skin your neck let me suck just here, suck and tongue and nip just over your pulse as my fingers work, work, work.

Close your eyes, little girl, and trust me.

Trust me, I breathe against your heated skin and you laugh. You damn well laugh that husky laugh that got him so turned you and gods I can see why it just goes straight down doesn’t it, that laugh. Nice laugh, but don’t laugh at me, whore. Really. Don’t. Not likely, you say and you smile as I snarl. Drunk, drunk, drunk and when did I start repeating myself? Lets see how you smile when I do this, hmm? Will you smile as I trace patterns with my nails against your silky skin and satiny scar will you smile as I slide my fingers down below the waistband of your jeans, down below the elastic of your underwear and smile all you like, honey, but thing is our bodies can’t lie and yours is begging for me begging me to do this and that and I twist and rub you gasp and arch your back your neck eyes wide and staring as I murmur things into your skin and push you back to the bed. Stumble back on those heels and only the bed saves you (now isn’t that a thought) so brace yourself against it, curl those long brown musiciankiller fingers of yours in my sheets as my own clever white ones make you moan.

Don’t think I can’t hear you.

So it’s my turn to laugh because I’m winning and you didn’t know this was a battle, did you? Poor innocent little girl, with her jeans pulled down to her knees as I pull out and don’t think I didn’t hear that whimper of protest that I drew from your throat. Don’t worry, it’ll become clear as I kiss my way down, down your neck and collarbone and the swell of your breasts thanks to that lovely plum-coloured bra that does nothing to hide that I’m turning you on turned you on. Hot and bothered, sweetness, just little old me making all your composure and stillness vanish as my tongue skirts your belly-button and lower, lower down so I can taste you on my tongue and make your head fall back against your shoulders so all those brown tangledcurls dance down your back and stick to your curves with sweat and did he make you moan like this, did he make you crave his tongue like this or his fingers long and talented but so’s my tongue, honey, I draw you out on the fire between your legs and as your fingers twist and clench the sheets all bunched up and didn’t you know that I made it this morning and as you do that, moan and whimper and whisper si si sisi ay dios no pares and it’s not a loving curse but a fucking one, a hateful fucking curse as you say over and over puta no pares bitch don’t stop that’s nice I hate you too because he still fucking loves you so let me fuck you (up) draw you out call for your god said you were straight, honey, you don’t look so straight now. Just curves, brown and beautiful and you know I think I’ll stop just so I can look up the line of your body between your breasts and down your neck and your breath is a broken thing, broken and trying to fly and your face is flushed with blood and anger and lust pure naked and wanting. Puta, you say, fucking bitch why

My knees hurt and I want to laugh at your expression so I do. I didn’t expect the slap but maybe I should have from the scars and look in your eyes (and he was and he is right, you really are a terrible liar) that says don’t fuck with me but I did and I am and no one slaps me you little lying traitor so I get to my feet jump to my feet and dance with grace (modesty happens to other people) and grab you. Neck and shoulder and your hands are up, fingers circling my wrist and others digging into my waist as I stare into your eyes hot and dark as hell with all the sin and lust that rages there.

Bitch. Whore, and I kiss you again. Angry things, both of us, is that why he likes us I’ll never ask and neither will you. You don’t kiss back but your lips are bruised. Run my thumb over your swollen lower lip and you draw it into your hot, wet mouth. You watch me, you beautiful girl, as you bite down with white, white teeth and I don’t even yelp draw my blood, it’s on your tongue and this time you kiss me back. I can taste my blood, can you taste yourself in my mouth and maybe this time I groan and press myself closer, thigh slipping between yours and I pull you up and push you down the bed’s meant for two, after all. Stupid fucking jeans don’t worry, maybe I’ll buy you a new pair. Underwear you can get yourself, but leave those boots. Long and sleek and black, zip them up and my fingers run around the rim of your stocking no garters, strange girl and you shake your head not fair, chica, all these clothes of yours and your fingers tighten on my shirt hard enough to rip from the neck down and I’ll be generous, it’ll be no extra cost to see the muscles working underneath that silky skin of yours no additional charge to hear that sharp long rip and I shrug it off my shoulders even as your fingers move to the bindings on my chest that bind my breasts close because I hate those fucking underwire nightgowns you try being me, inky black tresses and snow white death skin and blood red lips vampire succubus it means submit, you mutter as your nails nip and catch on my skin.

Not fucking likely.

Snow white skin, white as death without the blue or grey and you’re a splash of colour against me, all that brown skin and hands as they run down my body to my waist and you pull me down so I have to brace myself on the bed next to your shoulders pull your hair but neither of us mind. Succubus, demon, traitorous bitch and it’s a hating endearment on my tongue as I kiss your neck and I can feel the vibrations in your throat as you say in your quiet little husky voice only he gets to call me that, little girl. I’m not, I’m not god I hate it when you call me that as I’m not gentle as I pin you down and bite your neck not hard, not that hard, not enough to puncture and kill you in sex and blood but hard enough to make you moan and you like this don’t you I thought you might you were his lover too. You move beneath me, shifting your hips and your legs closer closer closer it’s a prayer on those damnably kissable lips and I can’t help it but do just that, kiss them and you as your legs wrap around mine and move your pelvis and wickedly curved hips I’ve got you now, begging for me with voice and body. Stain my pants but they are black, it doesn’t matter and your hands, they don’t flutter like other girls’, they run down my body, down my breasts brush and cup and you run your nails down my skin so I tighten my fingers in your strangle-vine hair (it creeps and crawls and spreads all over my nice clean sheets) and you move and writhe and it’s let me up, let me up i want i want

what

you

i win

fuck you

just say please, bitch

por favor, por favor, please

You move and writhe and shove and flip me over to the side slide above me with your slick, slick skin and hungry mouth yes yes oh god yes conquest of you of me in this bed and battle as you run your hand down my body down below and under my belt. I moan and groan and gasp and you’ve done this before with those fingers, haven’t you on yourself and it’s oh oh oh as you brush my wetness with your knuckles, rough and teasing kiss my neck and watch me wriggle and squirm with my fingers in the pillow and around the cold metal of the head of the bed where you curled like a cat now stretched out and stretching me out line of white fire running through my body touch me, please, anywhere there I don’t care but you are playing me like a harp, a guitar, cellist you whisper in my ear in a husky little giggle like when he was writhing and screaming and that makes it worse it’s all darkness and sex as you rub and twist and slip a finger in, one two three, in and out play against that spot with the delicacy of an artist like I give a fuck just please and I can feel you watching me with those heavy-lidded eyes and secret smile kiss me fuck me oh bésame you whisper with your lips above mine so I have to reach up and pull you down and dig my hand into your thick curls to hold you there. Plunder your mouth with my tongue, ravage it and moan in it moan and groan I’m dying just just just

just

there

there

there

your mouth swallows my wordless cry as I clutch and cling to you riding the waves of pleasure and desire rolling up and down and through my body and haven’t you heard that an orgasm is like a little death? My head falls back and my eyes fall shut as my unbeating heart dances in my ribcage with the rhythm of your blood. You watch me, smiling, then you move with the languor of a cat, a big cat, lioness tiger (ride the tiger and laugh at my wit) leopard, something large and boneless and beautiful in that dangerous longtotouch way and you part my knees kneel between them my legs ride up around your hips and you lean forward, intent and beautiful like some kind of battle-scared and sex-marked goddess as you run the tips of your fingers down my skin and I can feel the difference between left and right and right and wrong one side swollen and damp from me, just me. Witch, sorceress bitch (because I still hate you for what you did to him) and I follow your fingers up like I’m nothing but a puppet play me like a doll, darling, and I’ll kill you in blood and laughter. Twisting limbs, tangled limbs and you can’t help but laugh as we try and sort ourselves out and maybe neither can I so I’m giggling as I end up straddling your lap and framing your face in my white dead hands. We stare at each other and I can’t tell what you are thinking, terrible liar that you are, and you’re staring back with large dark eyes that are the colour of living mahogany and you are so beautiful so fucking beautiful why doesn’t he remember it? I slide my hand up into your hair, and curl my arm around your neck and shoulders and we’ll just stop here, catch our breaths as we breathe in each other’s breath and try and say that ten times quickly. I twist my head a little, kiss your nose, your lips as

the

door

opens.

Who would come here, my room and his and he was away but oh my as I twist and turn and stare with too-wide eyes and I open my mouth and can’t say a thing. I’m not faithful, I’m not loyal, I’m just possessive but it’s like a dog smelling another dog on the owner’s hands only no one owns him oh, oh, oh shit and that’s when you laugh. Low and quiet and husky as you toss your head and give him a smile and speak in a quiet voice heavy with sex and desire and oh, I can’t believe you just said that, I can’t believe you just asked, oh I can’t I can’t…and I look at him and I look at you and I can’t help but giggle because how does a man answer this?

“Sands, honey, care to join us?”

Endings and Beginnings

2006-06-13T13:39:06Z

TITLE: Endings and Beginnings
FOR: fightingthecage
FANDOM: Amber Chronicles
PAIRING: Julian/Fiona
RATING: PG?
WORDS: 1,274
NOTES: Contains incest (no duh) and spoilers for the first five books of the Amber Chronicles. Also unbeta'ed.

Endings and Beginnings

As Corwin had put it not that long ago, too much had happened. The past seven and a half years had taken their toll, and Fiona was just tired. Even that five-year pause in action hadn’t been a rest. Not with Brand in the tower and Chaos’s periodic attacks, not with Martin’s blood on the broken primal Pattern, not with Julian, and that whole tense, messed up situation. They hadn’t talked yet, not really. A few conversations in the past decade didn’t really mean anything; it wasn’t Talking, and that’s what they needed to do.

Soon.

Maybe even now, but Fiona was emotionally exhausted and it wasn’t hard to keep up her avoiding act amongst the bustle of the entire family (or, what was left of it) being in Amber for Random and Vialle’s upcoming coronation. No, it wasn’t hard at all.

Of course, after all these centuries Julian knew her well, and had found her not two hours ago. We need to talk, Fi, he had said, and she had swallowed and smiled, had prised his fingers off her arm and said, soon, before pleading a prior engagement and walking away.

Too much had happened, too much time had lapsed since they had last properly talked, and so Fiona had fled. Not far, just to the gardens and a quiet corner under an apple tree, but it was the symbol of the thing.

It was quiet there, under the summer’s night sky, and the garden seemed calm when compared to the palace. She was not so far that she couldn’t see the lights of the palace if she were to raise her head above the wall, and yet she was far enough away that she couldn’t hear anything; far enough away to relax in the pleasant night air and start to momentarily forget.

“Fiona.” A man’s voice, low and familiar in its slowness, but with her artist’s mind busy contemplating how to capture the ripples of moonlight on a nearby pond it took a minute for her name to sink in. She blinked slowly, and then her eyes widened.

“May I join you?” Julian asked, looking down at her calmly. Saying nothing, Fiona nodded and gestured to her cloak spread across the grass. He passed through moonlight, and sat down next to her. Unlike Fiona, still in her green evening gown with jewelled pins in her now loose hair as she was, he wasn’t wearing that much. A loose white shirt, a belt with his sword (which he unclipped and let drop to the ground before sitting), dark trousers of some colour (impossible to see in the dark) and his normal scaled boots; all this she noted in an instant, and in the next she wished he had on his armour, or indeed anything that made it harder for her to mentally undress him.

It really had been too long, and for that she had no one to blame but herself.

“Julian, I-”

“I believe I said that we needed to talk.” He said, nearly impassively, nearly gently. Fiona glanced down, tucked a stray curl behind her ear.

“I. Yes, you did. I said soon.”

“Doing anything now?”

“No. Not really,” she admitted.

“Good.”

Silence.

Julian seemed calm, she was anything but. Eyes closed, fingers twisting in her lap, words echoing her in her head, when the silence proved too much all she could say was,

“Jules, I’m sorry.”

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but she could feel him looking at her.

“You lied to me, before. After Bleys’s attack.”

“I know, and I hated it.” The clichéd term to use would be ‘like a dam breaking’, but that’s what her words were like after she started. “And, well. Why do you think I was avoiding you? Pretending everything was fine and normal and avoiding you? It was easier then lying, because I couldn’t stand the guilt and you wanted to trust me so-”

“So you ran off to Shadow.”

Fiona could have said, I needed to make sure that Brand was secure, and she could have said, I was trying to fix what I had done, but in the end she just said,

“Yes and…I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

(And if her tone and words were closer to the sobbing apology she had offered Oberon (Dad, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. Daddy, please believe me) than anything she had said before, then so be it.)

More silence.

“Is it over, then? What you and the others did?”

“I…I do not know if it ever will be. Brand has,” a pause, “had a son. Rinaldo. But, if you mean-“

“No more secrets or conspiracies?”

“Yes, that. No more secrets, I promise. And conspiracies…no. I’ve learnt my lesson.” Her tone was faintly mocking on the last sentence, a flash to the sarcastic Fiona of old. Julian went on then, softer then before.

“Fi…I still love you. But, can I trust you?”

Fiona laughed, nearly normal but not quite.

“Trust? I am an Amberite, your sister…a sensible person would say ‘no’, would they not? But when were we sensible…As your sister? Maybe. As anything else? Yes. Yes, you can trust me. I won’t lie to you, ever again. It nearly killed me to do so for so long, and I won’t do it again.” She looked up, tried to catch his eyes. “I love you,” she said, softly. “If nothing else, can you not trust in that and believe me?”

Julian tilted his head back, and looked at the stars through the branches.

“I’m tired, Fi. Through all this…we’ve lost three siblings. Four, if Corwin doesn’t come back. We’ve been to the Courts of Chaos, and attended Dad’s funeral. I probably shouldn’t trust you.”

Fiona had clenched her fingers in her lap when he started to speak; had shut her eyes and tried to not cry. Too much had happened, too much, too much-

And that was when he kissed her.

Gently, leaning forward with his hand cupping her small face, he kissed her as he used to. For a long, fragile moment all she could do was numbly let him before then her arms went around his neck and she kissed him back. A real kiss, gentle and loving and all the things that their last kiss (if you could call that hard, possessive and frightened thing they had shared after Brand’s re-entrance a kiss) hadn’t been. Amberites or no, they had to stop to breathe eventually, and when they did they just looked at each other.

“Promise me you won’t lie to me again.”

“I promise. I swear it.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

“And it’s all over?”

“It’s over.”

Julian nodded as if to himself, and kissed her again before falling back against her cloak and the grass, pulling her on to him. Fiona braced herself on the ground, and gazed down at him. His eyes were closed, hers questioning as he smiled and wound her hair around his fingers. Something nagged at her, told her the conversation wasn’t done yet, and she’d spent too much time surviving not to pay attention to that little voice.

“…Julian?”

“Mmm?”

“Why are you smiling?”

“I,” he said, opening his eyes, “am picturing Random’s face tomorrow.” When Fiona raised an eyebrow, Julian just laughed. “You’ve spent so long wanting a ring, Fi, I might as well give you one properly and officially now that Dad’s not aro-”

In the end, he never managed to finish the sentence. But the expression on Random’s face when he was informed that they were getting married with or without his saying so was worth it.

Fin.

Full Moon (original)

2006-05-15T06:39:02Z

TITLE: Full Moon
FOR: fahye
FANDOM: Original
PAIRING: n/a
RATING: G
WORDS: 225

It's full moon tonight. A violent-tinged moon in a lavender sky, but now the sun is gone and it's crisp, moon-white. Full moon, round and staring down with the waterless seas that look like eyes and a round, round mouth.

It's full moon.

It's the time of month where things happen. A fairy-ring just visible from a little girl's window, the brushing of fingers from a pair of young, star-crossed but moon-blessed lovers, a dancing, giggling party with dew-drops and toadstools and feathery butterfly wings with silver laughter...

It's a full moon, the moon of the mother-goddess and the moon of the wolves which howl and howl. Werewolves, human-formed by day but it's their moon and their time to hunt. Shut your doors and bar your windows and try not to hear those moon-inspired howls. It's a full moon, where 'loopy' 'lunatic' comes from and the full moon stirs the blood and sends the thoughts of men chaotic.

It's the full moon, and the cat by the window just licks her paw and rubs her ear and goes to find a mouse. A sleek, quiet hunter with glowing ears and soft paws, hunting by the light of her very own full moon.

In the morning, though, she will wake up in her bed and try and get the leaves out of her long blonde hair.