trace_of_scarlet

Fic: The Bodyguard
Fandoms: Sherlock/St Trinian's (and a couple more)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 7754
Warnings: None
Pairing: Molly Hooper/Annabelle Fritton
Podfic: Here by the lovely and amazing intransitive!
Notes: Some missing scenes from Downstairs, in Baker Street, my Sherlock crossoverama. As in that fic, there are a couple of extra canons in here for you to spot!
Summary: After Sherlock's fall, Molly doesn't quite understand why she has to have a bodyguard. But she turns out to be really quite glad she got Annabelle Fritton...

( Annabelle Fritton, when she finally got there, turned out to be a far cry from the big butch woman Molly had been expecting: she was tall and slim as a model, with more lipstick than Molly had ever worn in her life and a tumble of brown curls worn unscientifically loose. )

One
"Bruce." Molly is looking at him, eyes already glowing. "Does it hurt?"

"Uh." He struggles with words; with the Other Guy bubbling under his skin, his thoughts stutter and stop. "Every - every time."

"I'm sorry." The last thing he feels, before the Other Guy takes over, is her taking his hand.

Two
“Molly, I can’t -”

He looks up at her desperately, like he’s begging her to escape the bomb-blast (run, run away as fast as you can, you can’t catch me), and suddenly realisation hits her: she’s seen this before, at Xavier’s. Some emotions can’t be helped until they run their course; sometimes there’s nothing to do but absorb the pressure and fix things later.

“Bruce, if you can’t stop it, then let it happ-”

“NO!”

He’s only getting angrier, panicking, but she keeps talking. “I’m here, I’m here, nobody’s gonna get hurt, Bruce. It’s okay, I promise, but if you can’t fight it then don’t and we’ll deal with it, okay? It’s going to be okay.”

He still doesn’t believe her, or maybe can’t bear to believe her, but all he says is ‘please’, low and guttural and probably heart-breaking if she weren’t too busy trying not to freak out to pay attention to that kind of thing.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and holds his flashing-green gaze. “It’s okay, Bruce.”

And it totally isn’t okay, not in any alternate universe, but either he can’t fight it any longer or he does let it happen, because suddenly bones crack and sinews and clothing tear like a long, painful lightning sizzle, and then it’s– him.

The Other Guy.

Molly stares up, and up, and does some hasty reconsideration of her previous ideas concerning what she’s going to continue thinking of as the Hulk, even though she knows Bruce hates that name. She’d said, once, that he and Bruce were not the same person, but the more she looks at the Hulk the more she can see Bruce. It’s like looking at a Bruce made out of plasticine: even his hair is different, but Bruce is still there, in the eyes and mouth and shape of the jaw. She’s not afraid, suddenly – she was never afraid of the Hulk himself (because Bruce isn’t scary, could never be scary) but although she’s worried about how upset Bruce will be when he comes back, she isn’t scared. They can fix it, she thinks, because he hasn’t tried to hit her yet, and somehow she doesn’t think he will.

“Hey, Big Guy,” she says, and smiles. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Three
She knows as soon as she hears him shout her name that their chances of getting through this without the Hulk as a guest star are basically shot, but she wouldn't let that stop her even if she knew that for certain.

On the plus side, at least it gives her an idea of his location; maybe she'll have to break the whole place apart to get to him, but she'll do it.

Which means that she can either try to keep him calm and make herself the target, or keep quiet and let him take his chances... And, well. Who is she trying to kid?

She was born to be the target, after all.

"I'm coming!" she yells, a promise to him and a threat to anyone in her way, and begins to run.

Fic: How They Made Me
Fandoms: Torchwood/Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: PG
Words: 533
Warnings: None.
Notes: Beta-ed by my Eric, with help from l’Ashie. Title comes from the Beyonce song ‘Who Run The World’.
Summary: Gwen, Natasha, and all the rules they were born to break.

( Boy you know you love it // How we're smart enough to make these millions // Strong enough to bear the children // Then get back to business )

Fic: The Barnes Case
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe/New Tricks
Rating: PG
Words: 762
Warnings: None.
Notes: Beta-ed by the Eric of my heart.
Summary: Two agencies, one suspiciously Winter Soldier-y case. SHIELD and UCOS might actually have to work together on something -- which has never exactly come naturally to either of them...

( 'Well,' Sandra Pullman remarks, 'It *is* our case. You can't expect my boys to give it up just like that, Coulson.' )

Fic: Paperwork
Fandoms: Marvel Movieverse
Rating: PG
Words: 780
Warnings: None.
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff
Notes: Beta-ed by dictator_duck, because she is awesome. References Hot Fuzz.
Summary: Even SHIELD agents aren’t serious all the time. Some of them rather less so than others.

( In the end, he isn’t exactly surprised when the paper airplane goes skidding across his desk... )

Fic: Practically Perfect
Fandoms: Doctor Who/Mary Poppins
Rating: PG
Words: 3169
Warnings: None.
Beta: My beloved alas_a_llama.
Notes: This ... did not exactly turn out as planned. But it’s been three years or so in the development, so hopefully it’s at least reasonably good! Charlotte’s father was a real person, by the way; Charlotte herself, however, is not.
Summary: Silents in the nursery do not bode well for the future of Earth; luckily, however, there is at least one Time Lady who is willing to do what must be done. To tidy matters up.

( It begins – or began, or will begin – in a nursery in Cherry Tree Lane, with the changing of the wind. )

The state of the Bethan: permanently psychologically and physically tired. Very tired. Trying desperately to work up the mental energy to have a go in the milliways_bar Allpocalypse before it's too late, and still failing.

THEREFORE:

What are you guys working on at the minute? Fannish or original, art or words or fanmix -- anything you're working on right now that you're enjoying. Titles, first few sentences, drafts, sketches ... anything.

I'LL START.

Firstly, I'm approximately five thousand words into what should have been my 2011 NaNoWriMo project, an update of the Enid Blyton Five Find Outers series with the cast grown up in the 1950s. Essentially, Enid Blyton with a twist of Agatha Christie meets Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and all the other classic fifties noir. (Oh God, Blyton and her ISSUES. So much fixing, so little time.)

It's tentatively called The Mystery of the Burning Bridges, and here's the first paragraph:
Elizabeth Hilton had never, ever liked Tuesdays. They were sluggishly grey days, miserably far from the weekend, with a high chance of heavy drizzle and still four days left to slog through in the company of the sulky grey- or red-faced boors who filled the newspaper offices where she worked as junior photographer #3 with an alcoholic, middle-aged haze of beer, cigarette fumes and sweat. Her grandfather had died on a Tuesday, her last angry dispute with her older brother Pip had been on a Tuesday, and she was very nearly positive she had signed the paperwork for her grub of a flat on a Tuesday, too. And all of this culminated on this particular Tuesday morning in the rattling, too-cramped lift to the fifth floor of the offices of the London Standard, and the unmistakable feeling of her chief editor’s fat, sly fingers groping without shame at her posterior as they both exited it. Betsy reacted as her mother had always taught her to: by taking deep breaths and counting in a ladylike, restrained way to twenty.

And then, since she was still furious, she threw her camera at him anyway.

Secondly, I think I have finally managed to suppress having All The Feelings at Sherlock long enough to get writing for it, and I am therefore working on something called The Emperor's Wrath (Jim Moriarty and Seb Moran leading up to and during The Reichenbach Fall), and another, which has been rather more fleshed-out, which is called Upstairs, In Baker Street and features ex-MI:6 Mrs Hudson calling on some old friends (Victoria from RED, M from James Bond, probably also Harriet Jones of Flydale North Doctor Who) to protect Dr Watson and keep an eye on Sherlock, who she knows damn well is not dead). I think I am going to deliberately turn it into a reference hunt and see if people can spot all the references to various kickass women.

Vaguely also tempted to do something with the title All Our Smiles Are Fixed, And All Our Hearts Are Broken, possibly with John/Mycroft/Lestrade/Molly reacting to the Reichenbach Fall, or maybe with Dumbledore's Army immediately after the Battle of Hogwarts.

I also really need to get around to finishing Mornington Criminals, a fic about certain of the Criminal Minds team ... well, playing Mornington Crescent, basically. It's been stuck without an ending for over a year, so I really should be able to finish the damn thing.

Lastly, I do believe I may finally get to put some work in on a long-wanted one-shot about River Song and Indiana Jones: I don't have a plot as such, but as of today it has a title (Cups and Saucers), which is generally a good sign - as a rule, if it has a definite title, I will generally finish it. Also mulling around in my brain since aaaaaages ago is a character study-type fic called To Save The World Entire about Dr Erskine and Yentzen, and about what it means to give your life and create a superhero (movieverse!Captain America and Iron Man, respectively).

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR STUFF, MEIN FREUNDES-KREIS.

This entry was cross-posted to http://splash-of-blue.dreamwidth.org/166926.html. I'd prefer it if you commented here rather than there, though.

Fic: These Women And Their Wars
Fandom: Harry Potter/James Bond
Rating: PG
Words: 1761
Warnings: None.
Notes: Inspired by my beloved milliways_bar, which in turn was inspired by the restaurant created by Douglas Adams. Beta-ed and characterisation-checked by the very kind sp4ztard.
Summary: Two women meet at Milliways, the bar at the end of the universe where anyone can be. Minerva McGonagall may not have a name for the woman with whom she’s drinking tea, but she still knows very well who and what she is.

( 'I’ve said it before,' remarks the slighter of the two women, stirring her tea viciously, 'But I really do miss the Cold War.' )

Fic: Umbrellas Under Clear Skies
Fandoms: Sandman/NCIS
Genre: Crossover
Rating: PG
Words: 497
Warnings: None. No spoilers.
Beta: alas_a_llama and azremodehar, who are both stars.
Notes: Apologies for any failures in medical technique: I did one First Aid course when I was eight and that’s it. Inspiration for the premise is due to Terry Pratchett.
Summary: Abby and Death: a conversation between fragments of time.

( Death took a moment to flick through a mental checklist, twisting her umbrella thoughtfully against her shoulder. )

Fic: Angels In The Architecture
Fandom: Torchwood/Discworld crossover
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2974
Warnings: MAJOR MAJOR TRIGGERS for burial alive. Seriously, guys, I am really not kidding about the triggers. Some spoilers for the Torchwood series 2 finale, none for Discworld.
Notes: This has been three years in the writing. I hope it’s worth it. Beta’d by plum177 and innerbrat, both of whom deserve a barrelful of cookies each.
Summary: Jack Harkness has been buried – sometimes alive, sometimes dead – under Cardiff for centuries. Eventually, this was bound to attract attention from someone who TALKS LIKE THIS.

( He thinks, lying lonely in the dark, that maybe this is it: maybe this is the end. )