old (but possibly new to you) fics

[kindkit]

That "post excerpts from your stories" meme is going around again, with the twist that you can post bits of completed, posted stories if you wish.

Expertly spotting an opportunity for self-promotion, I've decided to offer a few hopefully tantalizing bits of old (2007 or earlier) stories that I'm especially proud of.

Um, they're a bit of a grim lot. Many of them are about death, although not all. Several of them end unhappily, and all but the last have a biggish dose of angst. (I don't know if it's easier to write angst than to write happiness, or if I'm just better at it.) Additional warnings, if any, are included in the story headers.

All links go to An Archive of Our Own (where you can comment if you wish--I love comments!--even if you don't have an account).



1) In the House of Dust (Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh/Enkidu)

If you only read one story by me, read this one. You don't need to be familiar with the epic; there's a brief summary of it before the story that tells you everything you need to know.

Excerpt:

When he was a child, he used to watch his mother, Ninsun the goddess, reading. Petitioners sent her letters full of praise and supplication. Sometimes she would read one out, giving voice to the strange marks that looked like the tracks of birds. Mostly the letters came from herdsmen, asking for healthy lambs and no foot-rot in the flocks. Gilgamesh used to imagine the passage of the words, from some shepherd's toothless mouth to a scribe's clever fingers, to a priestess, to the goddess herself. Impressions in clay voyage farther than most men.

Ninsun wrote, too, sometimes. Letters to his father--not his divine father Lugulbanda, her husband, but to his other father. Gilgamesh knew only his name, Namtar.

What she wrote, he never knew. She didn't read those letters aloud, but she let him watch her press the stylus into the soft clay. The words bloomed under her hands like flowers.

When a letter was finished, she dried it in the sun. And then she smashed it to pieces and ground the pieces to dust in a mortar and pestle, using her own hands like a servant. Afterwards, she buried the dust.

By the time Gilgamesh understood that Namtar was in the land of the dead, he was old enough to spend his days with the warriors. If his mother still wrote letters, he never saw them.

2) Dismantle the Sun (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giles/Oz)

Wishverse AU in which Giles doesn't manage to smash Anyanka's necklace; about as cheerful as you'd expect from that premise.

Excerpt:

In Giles' dreams, the sun shines all night long. Inescapable, godlike bright, reaching its saving fingers into every dark corner. It kills the things that live in the dark, and then the light-loving things too. Plants shrivel to straw and break apart in the hot wind; people stagger, crawl, die, and turn to dust. Salt plains stretch to the pale blue sky, dust-dunes form and settle until storms pluck them up, whirl them, set them down again in new shapes. There is no life; even viruses have died of thirst. The world is as sterile as a test tube cleaned after a failed experiment, ready for the next attempt.

Giles wakes sweating on sheets that are greasy with other nights' sweat. He lies in the distorted squares of afternoon sunlight that fall on the bed and unbuttons his shirt to let the sticky heat evaporate. Only a dream, after all. The same dream he's had for two weeks, the one that always proves false when he stutters awake in the mocking, inadequate California sun. The sun still sets every night, having achieved nothing.

Every day is pointlessly bright, living up to the town's lying name. Sunnydale. They might as well have called it Eden, this anteroom of hell. Thirty thousand people lived here once, poor bastards, letting themselves be fooled. Only Giles came here for the dark things; when hell spilled over, broke loose, he wasn't surprised. He knows nothing now that he didn't know two weeks ago, or even two years. He's always known about death, always, and Sunnydale had nothing new to teach him.

3) Metamorphosis (Angel: The Series, Wesley/Gunn)

Early in S5, with Wesley and Gunn trying to come to terms with the Jasmine era, what's changed since then, and what hasn't.

Excerpt:

Earlier today, on his run to the dry cleaner's, the liquor store, and the supermarket, Wesley picked up some new brochures. Beer in hand, he settles down to an evening with Upscale Living in the Heart of the City, The Luxury You Deserve, and A New Beachfront Lifestyle for the Twenty-First Century. But he's hardly begun reading when there's a knock at the door.

It's Gunn. He's in a suit, so either he was at the office on a Sunday or he's taken to wearing them all the time. "Hey, Wes. Can I -?" He extends a hand, fingers reaching just past the doorframe. It's a way to ask permission while showing that it's safe to give it. An old gesture, dating back from the time--Wesley thinks of it as an era, like the Cretaceous--of being buddies, hanging out, having the special handshake. After that, seeing each other only at work, they didn't use it. And of course there was no need a few months ago, when (still another era) they lived at the Hyperion.

Wesley steps aside to let him in. "Of course."

"I brought some Scotch," Gunn says, giving him a carrier bag with a bottle inside. "Hey, you moving?" He points at the stack of real estate advertisements.

"Maybe." Gunn's Scotch is a Talisker. Not Wesley's favorite, but very good. He pours two glasses and gives one to Gunn, who's still standing near the door. "What brings you here, Gunn?"

"I gotta have a reason?"

"No." Wesley can sit on the uncomfortable leather armchair he never uses, or the sofa. He chooses the armchair. After a moment, Gunn takes the near end of the sofa, just opposite him. Like a well-behaved boy in church, Gunn sits very straight, planting his beautiful shoes squarely on the rug. Once, he would have sprawled low and loose on the cushions, knees comfortably apart. Only his fidgeting--he tilts and rolls the heavy glass in his hands--is unchanged. He never could sit still. "But I imagine you do have one. Especially since you don't drink Scotch."

4) Five Confessions (due South, Kowalski/Fraser)

I like all the stories I wrote in this fandom, but this is the most emotionally-complicated and my favorite.

Excerpt:

I. Tuesday

Fraser

Dear Be

Ben

Dear Fraser,

I don't want to write this. I want to be sleeping. But I can't sleep because all I can think about is how the fuck hell I'm going to tell you.

Writing it down should be better than just telling you on the phone. Shouldn't it? This way I can think of the right words.

Only what do I want the right words for, for something like this? Like words are going to make it okay. Like if I can just find nice tactful diplomatic goddamn words, words you'd use if only you were dumb enough to get into a mess like this, it could pretty up the truth. Make it like it never happened.

I wish it never happened, Fraser.

I fucked up so bad.

You know by now, right? You know what I did.

When I close my eyes I can see the look on your face. How you're sitting there not moving a muscle, because I stabbed you in the back and you hurt.

It wasn't on purpose, okay? I mean, it was in a way. I did it. I did it. He didn't put a gun to my head. But I didn't go out looking for it. I didn't put on cologne and get dressed up and decide to go out and fuck around on you.

I had a lousy day at work because I missed you. I went to a bar and watched guys dance with their boyfriends because I missed you. I got drunk because I missed you.

You believe me so far, I bet. Can you believe the next part, though? There was a guy, and I talked to him because I missed you. Went home with him because I missed you. Sucked him off because I missed you. Slept in his bed. Held him. Because I missed you.

It happened because I love you. So much, so fucking much.

Yeah. It's all your fault. Isn't that funny? I bet you're laughing your ass off.

I'm the worst piece of shit in the world, and I don't deserve you, and if you stop loving me I think I'm going to die.

Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.

I'm sorry, Fraser.

Love,

Ray

5) Scene of the Crime (CSI, Warrick/Nick)

This is in the time-worn genre of "a case has personal associations for a character," but I think I complicated the cliché a little as well as capturing the feel of an established, but still pretty new, relationship.

Warning: This story starts out at a crime scene, in the aftermath of violence. But the opening is as violent and graphic as the story gets.

Excerpt:

There's blood everywhere. All over the Honda's broken windshield and dented panels, inside the car where it dripped down through the windshield, on the ground, and spattered eight feet high on the back wall of the Ramrod bar. Looks like the vic lost most of his body's gallon-and-a-half right here.

There's blood on the three pieces of steel pipe the perps left behind, too. Blood, hair, gray matter. Warrick bags the pipes, takes samples and photographs of everything, goes through the routine. He's been at a lot of crime scenes. He's seen worse. This is nothing special.

That's what he's telling himself when he hears Nick's voice from over by the dumpsters. Loud and pissed-off: "Shut the fuck up!" He's yelling at the rookie cop who discovered the body. Swearing at him, which is weird, almost scary. It's hard to make Nick that mad. The cop says something back that Warrick doesn't hear, and then Nick shoves him, and the cop shoves back, and Nick's fists are up, and Warrick runs and he catches Nick's arms just in time.

"Hey," Warrick says. "Hey, cool down, man." Under his fingers, Nick's wrists feel like weapons, as unyielding as the metal band of his watch.

"Did you hear what this asshole said?" Nick doesn't struggle, but he doesn't loosen up, either. Warrick holds on like he would if Nick was hanging off a cliff.

"No. But I can guess."

"It was just a joke," the cop says. He can't be much older than twenty, and he looks freaked out. He already threw up, although he had the brains to do it on the other side of the squad car and not in the evidence. Warrick had been feeling sorry for him.

"Right. Just a fag joke," Warrick says. The LVPD's been cracking down, these last few years, and most cops do less of that shit than they used to. But this kid's still new, still trying to prove something by flapping his mouth and swinging his dick. Warrick gives him a long look, what he thinks of as a Grissom look, where you don't say anything and just let the other guy squirm. "Somebody died here tonight, and you are not funny."

6) A Cyborg Manifesto (Torchwood, Ianto/Jack, Ianto/Lisa)

This was written before S2 aired and many details have now been thoroughly Jossed, but I still think it works as a story. And the emotional dynamic holds true, in my opinion.

Excerpt:

They must have dissected her.

Jack would've wanted a closer look at her variant upgrading. Lisa wasn't a brain in a box, but flesh and metal interwoven like lace, like wires on a silicone chip. Owen would have unpicked her, his scalpel re-dividing human and alien. Her metal bits--is it right to call them hers?--are probably in Jack's safe now. The rest of her . . .

Would have been scraps and rubbish. Wrenched bones, torn nerves, everything displaced. People don't break down into pieces the way machines do. People are humpty-dumpty, never fitting together again.

The rest of her probably went into a bin bag, and then the incinerator. Lisa is the dust on Ianto's shoes, the rain falling on his face.

He wonders if they put her brain back with her body first, or left it in the pizza girl.

He almost wishes he had seen what they did. Seen her one last time.

7) The Death of Arthur (X-Men movieverse, Erik Lehnsherr)

Post X-3, Erik thinks about identities.

Excerpt:

His name is Moise Liss. It says so on his driver's license and his social security card. He's not sure why he chose something so Jewish. Erik Lehnsherr didn't sound Jewish at all. Before he was Erik, he was Dawid, but no one living has ever called him that. Dawid Goldwasser died in Auschwitz. He's a number tattooed on Erik Lehnsherr's arm, which is Moise Liss's arm.

Erik Lehnsherr, the first one, was a boy at Dawid Goldwasser's primary school. A sort of friend. He was eight years old when he died from stepping on a rusty nail. Years later, in 1945 when the Russians arrived, his name came into Dawid's mind, and he told it to the man with the notebook. In the camp, people used to say that Jews with Polish names, German names, had been able to get away. Even to America.

It worked for Erik Lehnsherr. When they sent him back to prison, it wasn't because he was a Jew.

8) Liminal (Sandman, Hob Gadling and Death)

To end on a lighter note, here's a not-depressing ficlet about death. No, really.

Excerpt:

When Robert sees a woman sitting at the end of his bed, at first he thinks it's a hallucination. Maybe his fever's got worse. He pats the night table for the thermometer, coughing, and then she lifts her face a little. The faint light in the room glints off the ankh at her throat, and she smiles, and he knows her.

"Hello, Hob," she says. No one's called him that since the sixteenth century.

Panic makes him sit up, pulling his legs to his chest, away from her. He coughs some more, wheezes for a bit, and finally says, "Oh no. No. I've survived plague--more than once. Not to mention famine, fire, revolution, two world wars, and a nasty accident in a hansom cab. I'm not about to die of the bloody flu."

I hope you folks do this meme as well; I don't always think to check out older stories, so there may be awesome fics of yours that I haven't read.