Holding a Drabblefest on the Back of a Turtle

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

These prompts are quotes from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, since boosette done gone and nabbed the Halloweeny theme; but you don't need to be familiar with that canon to understand the prompts or participate in the challenge. Crossovers would be welcome, but they are certainly not required. As always, you should use the prompts as loosely and freely as you desire. There is no requirement to include the quotation in your story. Rules are below.

1) Prompts are not exclusive. There is no limit on the number of people who may write about a prompt, and there is no need to claim prompts.

2) Post responses in the comments and include the lead character and your prompt in the subject line. If you choose a long prompt, you may use just the first few words.

3) Responses may be any length from a proper 100-word drabble to a multi-chapter epic. If the story is too long for comments, you may post it elsewhere and comment with the link.

4) There is no time limit for this challenge. I will return to index the responses in a week or so.

5) Please leave feedback, respond to feedback, and pimp this post around.

6) If your response is rated NC-17 or would require a content warning (for rape, graphic violence, etc.), you may post it in the comments here but you must include the relevant rating or warning in the subject line.



1. The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.

2. Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

3. Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

4. People would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.

5. ...there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

6. She'd even given herself a middle initial - X - which stood for ‘someone who has a cool and exciting middle name’.

7. Today is a good day for someone else to die!

8. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

9. Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

10. A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

11. Ye gods, no! My mother [...] would be terribly offended if I trusted her. She'd say she hadn't brought me up right.

12. Truly, the leopard can change his shorts.

13. Just erotic, nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.

14. Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

15. If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price.

16. She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it.

17. Practically from the moment she'd been able to talk she'd been taught how to listen.

18. Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.

19. Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

20. Shoes, men, coffins... never accept the first one you see.

21. Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.

22. I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.

23. A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish, or the woman.

24. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

25. Do unto others before they do unto you.

26. Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

27. Fear is a strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

28. They get along like a house on fire. Ever been in a burning house, miss?

29. We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.

30. Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.

31. You take the high road an' I'll take your wallet!

32. I commend my soul to any god that can find it.

Comments

16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

It isn't actually a hard decision.

Her period is a week late, then two, then a whole month. She waits till she's six weeks late to take a test, even though she's known the truth in her heart for more than a month. She isn't ashamed to have gotten pregnant -- it isn't her fault that modern birth control isn't foolproof -- but she is embarrassed that she took so long to face the fact. It isn't like her not to own up to the truth.

"Let me know when you've made your decision," Phil says.

"It isn't a decision."

She could have gone back to her quarters to pretend to think, but now that she's finally confronted this...problem, she has no interest in shying away from the truth. For a moment, she considers telling him that she had no parents of her own and that being the captain of a starship is the closest to motherhood she ever wants to come. But Phil is a doctor, not a priest, and she doesn't need absolution anyway. To suggest that the decision requires explanation is to suggest that it is debatable and possibly wrong, and she will not entertain that possibility.

He lets her take the two pills to her quarters and puts her on medical leave for two days. She flushes the painkiller down the head and doesn't bother to analyze why she should choose to suffer physical pain for something she is not ashamed of and does not believe is wrong. Then she swallows the second pill dry, curls into bed with her boots still on, and waits for it to be over.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general (Warning - deals with abortion)

[boosette.livejournal.com]

So, I have been looking for someone to write this story for quite literally years now, and oh. oh.

And for a fic that doesn't end in "babies fix everything" (they don't), and you have not disappointed. ♥

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[joyeuses.livejournal.com]

Ooh. This is fantastic. So precise and yet emotional. That entire last paragraph...so good.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[izzyfics.livejournal.com]

I think the most powerful part of this is the way she feels like she should be punished, should feel the pain. You captured something that is so hard to talk about, but still something women have to contemplate at least once in their lifetime.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

I can hear her so clearly in this.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

This drabble is like a punch to the gut, especially that last paragraph. And I mean that in the best way. Thanks for writing this.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this. It's powerful, especially that final paragraph, feels true somehow.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Oh, well and truthfully done. This made me ache.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[syredronning.livejournal.com]

Oooh, well-done and believable. Including the moment where she chooses the pain.

But Phil is a doctor, not a priest, and she doesn't need absolution anyway.

Yes.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[shaxophile.livejournal.com]

This is very good, and it's completely Number One through and through.

Re: 16. She was not in favor of motherhood in general - Number One (Content Advisory - abortion)

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

I liked this a lot - for all that she's choosing not to analyze it, it's very analytical, which says a lot about her character.

11. 11. Ye gods, no! My mother [...] would be terribly offended if I trusted her. - Winona Kirk

[irnan.livejournal.com]

"I can't believe Chris would stoop to this," Jim mutters.

"I don't understand why you're making such a fuss about it," Winona says absently. She's bent over a computer console with a datapad styllus twirling in her hands and a look on her face like the lines of code in front of her might hold the key to the mystery of life.

They really don't deserve that much of her attention, Jim thinks sulkily.

"It'll only be for a couple weeks, and then you'll be gone, and I'll be here at Spacedock, and the entire universe will be separating us again," she continues.

"It's not enough," Jim says morosely.

"Don't be rdiculous."

"You don't think I don't know what you're like? I leave you alone for ten minutes and you'll rip out the smuggling compartments under the decking on Deck 42 and delete half the library computer because it's inapprorpiate and then Feng Shui my quarters or something, just to annoy me.

Winona straightens up and turns to look at him, propping her hands on her hips and narrowing her eyes. "James Tiberius Kirk. Either get the hell outta this lab and let me do my job, or shut up and pass that data tape."

Jim shuts up, and passes the data tape.

Re: 11. 11. Ye gods, no! My mother [...] would be terribly offended if I trusted her. - Winona Kirk

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

*laughs, applauding* Oh, perfect.

17. Practically from the moment she'd been able to talk she'd been taught how to listen. (Uhura)

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

(Is it a bad thing that I can identify which book each quote was taken from? *grin*)


This, says Grandmother, is the talent of women. The girl-child opens her mouth to ask a question, but shuts it at her grandmother's raised eyebrow, and subsides back to her cross-legged position on the floor. Grandmother, she thinks, is very beautiful, with her brightly-coloured necklace and earrings made of shells. Surely Grandmother never wiggles. The girl-child arranges the arch of her neck in imitation of Grandmother's tall carriage. And this,Grandmother continues, is the story of that talent.

A long time ago, when there was no city, when all around here was grasslands and the baobab, Anansi went a-walking. Now, Mistress Anansi was angry with him for he had spilled the soup she had been making for his supper, and put the fire out with it, and Anansi, he'd been told to go away!

Child, if you are about to ask why she didn't replicate more, remember, this was a long time ago. Longer ago than the Egyptian mummies, yes, longer ago than that.

Anansi walked, and he walked, and Nyame the sky-god his father took pity on him and sent rain so that he was not thirsty, and sun so that he was not cold, but the loneliness crawled into Anansi's belly and blew it up tight like a drum. One day, he spied a little girl, just a bit older than you are now, under the tree where Monkey and his family were living. Aha! thought Anansi, I will take this little girl as a wife. Mistress Anansi does not love me anymore, and I will not tell her anyway.

Anasi was clever and tricky. He knew that if he went up to her, she would run. So Anansi, he laid himself down in the grasslands, and he moaned! Oh, he moaned, it hurts! He carried on, saying Oh, I am surely dying! The little girl heard him, and her soft heart made her go to him. Mister Spider, she said, what is wrong?

Oh, said Anansi, I am sick! I have been poisoned, and I need someone to take me to my home and look after me. And he ran up her arm to sit on her shoulder. The little girl, being kind, said that of course she would take him to his home and look after him. But remember, Anansi was tricky. He told her that his home was a secret, and that she would have to wear a cloth tied over her eyes so that she would not see the way, and that he would whisper to her where to go, and so when after days of walking they arrived at one of Anansi's huts, the child did not know where she was.

She looked after Anansi, and Anasi did not spill the soup, and for a time they were happy. But the little girl was after all only a little girl, and she grew to miss her family, her mother and her father and her sisters. They were far away, and she did not know where, and she grew sad.

She told Anansi, and he said that she would get lost if she left.

So the little girl went out before the sunrise, and cried. Nyame saw her crying, and made wind for her. The wind from the North was strong, and carried with it sounds. The little girl listened, and in the wind she heard nothing. Nyame did this twice more, until in the wind from the East the little girl heard the yelling of Monkey and his family greeting the day, and so she set out, following the sound of the wind.

When Anansi woke and found himself alone, he went home to Mistress Anansi, who made him soup for supper and forgave him.

The girl-child recrossed her legs and frowned, and asked what happened to the little girl. Ah, said Grandmother, she grew up, and had children, and taught them to listen. They did many great things, but that is a story for another time.

***

Nyota keeps a file on her personal PADD. It has the sounds of the street outside a little girl's window: the roar of cars, the trumpet of the jazz musician who plays on the street corner, the clinking of glasses from the bar that lies across the way, front windows non-existent, the babble of the neighbour's television, the wind in the skyscrapers at four in the morning when the rest is quiet.

Later, she adds things: the sound of solar wind, the babble of humanity's voice broadcasts.

Gaila finds it and looks puzzled, and asks what it is for.

Nyota says, So I never get lost.

Re: 17. Practically from the moment she'd been able to talk she'd been taught how to listen. (Uhura

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

You wrote an Anansi story for Uhura.

To even begin to get across what this means to me personally I'd have to give you a little potted biography of myself, so let me just say, on behalf of the little girl I used to be and the little girls my foremothers were and the little girls I believe will hear Anansi stories in Uhura's time, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

*hugs this story to my heart*

21. Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be

[medie]

It is not, after all, as if this is her first child. Sovin is a man, his uniform fitting him in such fashion that she is reminded so very much of his father with each step that he takes, and Soleta nears womanhood with each passing day, her body already shedding the coltish gait of childhood for the easy grace of a Vulcan woman. Their children are grown. It is illogical that she would face this impending birth with any sort of apprehension, and yet --

Heavy with her pregnancy, Saavik watches Leonard bustle about Sickbay. She presses her lips together, putting but a token effort into controlling her annoyance. Spock would chide her (teasing, if truth shall be told) but at this moment, she believes the experience more satisfying than the act of its prevention. At any rate, Spock is not here, though he grows ever closer as the Excelsior races him back from conference. He will arrive before their child, but only just.

Certainly not in time to interrupt her conversation. "It is not as if I do not have valid reasons for concern, Doctor," she says on a sigh.

"Oh, no," Leonard agrees. "You won't hear any arguments out of me, Saavik. I remember the hell they raised. Personally, I blame their father." He turns around presenting the padd in his hand for her review. "You're far too sensible to be the cause."

Amused, Saavik accepts the tease with a nod and, possibly, a smile. "I have often told Spock the very same." Particularly when Soleta had dealt with childhood tormentors by accessing their class assignments. To this day, Saavik's heart wars with chagrin at her daughter's ingenuity or pride at the skill by which she accomplished it.

She believes she knows which one Spock would choose. Despite his aggravation on the matter of their second child's obstinate nature, he has always seemed just a touch too satisfied with her accomplishments to provide any true dissuasion to such behavior.

Surveying the readings on the padd, Saavik is satisfied. Her second daughter, just days from birth, is well. Whole. It is nothing the touch of her mind has not already told her, but it is reassuring to see it in quantifiable data out side the realms of thought. "I confess, however, some apprehension. We had thought ourselves quite finished with this process."

Leonard sits on the edge of a biobed, nodding. "And then mother nature decided to screw with you a little." He grins. No matter the century or the planet, such matters are rarely absolute. "Guess she figured you had something left to learn."

Saavik returns his padd. "On the matter of childrearing, there is always something left to learn, Doctor. Each one is a universe unto themselves. There is no true preparation which will properly ready any of us for the matter."

"Don't I know it," he grins wider. "Joanna's learning that one the hard way."

"As have I," Saavik replies. "Twice." And now faces a third. She lays hand over her daughter, feeling T'Vei (named for her husband's father's foremother) kick firmly in response. "Fortunate, is it not, that the universe rarely listens to what we believe?"

Leonard's eyes glimmer with mischief. "Talk to me when she's teething."

Re: 21. Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed t

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

Aw. That is such a satisfying little bonding moment.

22. I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

Ensign Gaila is not the best engineer of the graduating class; she isn't even close. Allowing for the fact that she came to Earth only five years before entering the Academy, that in her other life all her energy and brilliance was devoted to a discipline as different as it could possibly be from the one she now specilaies in, she is quite extraordinary; but looked at from a strictly objective technical standpoint she is barely competent. Scotty is aware that she almost died on the Farragut, and, well, there is a reason she was assigned there in the first place.

But.

For the engineer any failure avoided is a triumph, no matter how narrowly won. And the Farragut's survivors defied odds he wouldn't have wished on Admiral Archer in his lowest moments on Delta Vega, and they didn't do that with expertise but with raw desperation and crude impossible measures glued together with liquid hope. The engineers assigned to the Enterprise who survived the Narada have enough competence for two crews. He has enough competence for one, probably. What Scotty needs to fill in the empty slots is a very different kind of genius.

He puts her name down third on the list of requests. He is half expecting a question from Kirk, who, he's fairly sure, has memorized the qualifications of every available cadet. But the captain pauses at it only to smile a sharp smile and says, "Good choice."

Ensign Gaila boards the Enterprise mere minutes before lift-off, her ruined legs cased in an intricated lacery of metal and plastic. Scotty pays her no special attention beyond an absent smile, except in the privace of his own head. She replies with a long look, tilting her head until her curls fall forward over her face and she shakes them away, and the evidence of her curiosity slides out from behind her dark eyes, and she continues on to her station.

He regrets the loss, but his regret turns out to be wholly unwarranted: he will see that look again, and again, and again, after all, that same gaze skimming across the wirework in time with her velvet green hands and his white ones. He will see that look while he cries "Ye cannae change the laws of physics, cap'n"; and that look, he hopes, he knows, will make him a liar.

Re: 22. I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

I like this! It is so easy to make our female characters awesome in every way possible, but I you've made the better choice by showing Gaila as competent in one way and outstanding in another.

20. Shoes, men, coffins...never accept the first one you see (Joanna McCoy - 1/2)

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

She crouches on the floor in shoes that cramp her toes. There were other shoes in her wardrobe, more practical and better fitting. More suited to the occasion, her mother had said. But she had chosen these because they were black and glittery, and the way they sparkled reminded her of the night sky. Never mind that she had not worn the shoes since the eighth grade and she had grown since then. The pain in her feet was nowhere near as difficult to bear as the pain in her heart.

She brushes that thought aside as maudlin and continues her search of the closet floor. She finds black wingtips still polished to perfection. He must have worn them only two or three times, for job interviews perhaps, before he'd gone off to space. Or maybe only once, to his wedding. She is sorry now that she had never asked him how he'd met her mother, what their wedding had been like; she ought not to have let divorce cast a pall over what must have once been a good thing. And she needed to know the story, so she can watch out for the good and the bad when she's old enough to settle down with a man.

Her fingers stumble across old house shoes, chewed nearly to death by the puppy she had convinced him to adopt when she was 4. She wonders why he had kept them or anything else in the tiny closet that had been her mother's small peace offering after taking the house, the bank account, and sole custody of their daughter in the divorce. Jeans ripped beyond repair, a suit barely worn, an Ole Miss hoodie stained with bleach. None of it looked worth keeping, much less coming back for. But maybe he had wanted to leave something of his in the house, take his ex-wife up on her last small offer of friendship. Or maybe he had left it for her, Jo. To have something of his to touch. Something so that she could complete the ritual of sorting through his possessions if he died in space.

Finally, she finds the thing she needs: an old pair of running shoes, too busted to use for their original purpose, but not so worn as to be unrecognizable. She remembered watching when she was little, the way he rose from bed, slipped his feet into the shoes, tied the laces, and ran off faster than her small legs could follow. Not that it had ever stopped her from trying. A half-completed application to Starfleet Academy is lying on her desk right now.

She slips out the window quietly and shimmies down the familiar gnarled tree, her black shoes slipping against the bark. It's been years since she's done this; she and her mother are honest with each other, and they agreed a long time ago that she is too old to be sneaking out of the house. But this errand belongs to her alone. Normally, she does not blame anyone for the divorce; tonight, she does not much want to talk to the woman who left her father and broke his heart so badly he had to fly beyond her reach.

Her feet skid on the pavement when she tries to jog, and the tight black skirt she'd worn to the funeral won't let her legs move anyway. She curses under her breath as an alternative to tears. She would have liked to run, but it's too late to get her sneakers now, and there are no perfect goodbyes. She'd had enough practice saying good-bye to him to know that.

When she arrives at her destination, she lifts the old running shoes to her nose and sniffs. She pictures herself three days ago, sitting naively at her desk in school. "Gross," that girl would have said and wrinkled her nose. She isn't worried about that now though; she only wants to know if the shoes still smell like her father. But It is a stupid wish. They only smell musty, and she doesn't know what he smells like anyway.

Re: 20. Shoes, men, coffins...never accept the first one you see (Joanna McCoy - 2/2)

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

Carefully, she knots the laces together, using three of the strongest knots he had taught her in her girlhood. Tentatively, she swings the shoes over her head, making sure the knots will bear the weight. When they do, she flings them into the air, aiming precisely at the power lines that arch over the street. They dangle over the thin metal wire, joined by their laces, and she releases a breath she hadn't known she was holding. They will hang there, perhaps not forever, but long enough for her to say goodbye. She will see them every morning on her way to school and ever afternoon on her way home, and every night that she wants to slip outside to look at them again. In space but not unreachable, battered but still true, just like her dad.

32. I commend my soul to any god that can find it. (Winona) (1/2)

[boosette.livejournal.com]

Four things Winona Kirk wasn't, and one thing she was.

1. Engineer
"That's not gonna wo-ork," she says, voice lilting up and down for her own amusement, when the owner of the second-hand shop tries to pass off the hub for an early-21st century Toyota Spyder as compatible with a mid-20th century Corvette. Poor Sap's going to ruin the beautiful car out in the lot, if her guess is right, and Winona's guess is always right when it comes to machinery. She has A Touch.

There was a once-upon-a-time when she cultivated hobbies besides grunging up the undersides of her (short, unpainted) fingernails and coaxing ancient machines and electronics back to life. She called it high school, with a side of "Dear Starfleet Academy: I am a well-rounded individual. See how I build engines and run track and volunteer at the livestock refuge and am president of my school's classic film club? Admit me, please and thank you. Much love, Winona Michelle Griffith."

Now she just builds engines and hosts an engineering-track movie night for her fellow cadets and will die a happy woman if she never has to smell another cow ever again.

A glint of metallic green catches her eye in the box full of engine parts, wire and junk. Winona laughs in triumph when she sees it. The spark plug practically sang out to her: a Mercedes, Ford imprint. Only had an eleven-month production run, before the last internal-combustion engines were phased out. And it's practically new in box; she can only pray that the owner doesn't know what a treasure he has.

"What's not going to work?" The voice over her shoulder startles her and she jumps, nearly dropping the plug. Nearly.

Winona turns, and yeah: Poor Sap is standing right there, hub held with a kind of loving reverence in his grease-stained hands. She thinks she could get to like him, so long as he's not adverse to learning (A) better haggling skills and (B) better vehicular anatomy. He's certainly easy on the eyes.

"That," she says, pointing to the offending part, "Is not gonna fit your car. It's gonna cause more problems than you already have, and you're probably gonna rue the day you walked in here, which is very sad because here is where I spend practically all of my spare time, Corvette."

"I do have a name, y'know," Poor Sap says, then, "It's George. George Kirk."

"Winona," she says. "I'd offer my hand, but yours is full."

George puts the hub down. Winona decides she likes him.

2. Doctor
"You'd think I'd joined a nunnery the way you talk about it. For God's sake, George, it's only med school."

"Which I don't have a problem with, in theory, " he replies sullenly, from where he sits in her desk chair. He leans backward on two legs and if he cracks his skull open Winona will absolutely not be fixing it.

She manages, "In theory?" without squeaking, and then, "It's four years plus internship. I'll do it in three and I'll have my MD by the time the Kelvin pulls back into port."

"Nursing's only a year-long program. You could transfer on with us then, be there for the greater part of the mission."

"Get out of my room, George," Winona tells him, voice tight.

If he stays any longer or if she says anything else it's going to be something she regrets, and they've already spent too many of their last hours together fighting over this. Even when they're not talking about it, the subject hangs there like a scorned albatross, tightening the air and beckoning the storm.

"I'll - it's just - I'll miss you. I'll miss you so much. I wish you'd reconsider." He's halfway out the door.

"Yeah, and I wish you'd buck up and do a PhD with your promotion instead of jumping right back in the fray because you can."

"That's not - "

"If you say 'the same' I swear to fucking God, George, you'll be tacking another five years of not getting laid onto your sentence. Go."

Winona does not pour herself a drink when he leaves, but not for want of trying; she jumps when thunder cracks outside and drops the brandy bottle, glass and alcohol rolling out across her floor when it breaks.

Re: 32. I commend my soul to any god that can find it. (Winona) (2/2)

[boosette.livejournal.com]

3. Navigator

She gets out of the wheelchair and to the turbo-lift, gets the lift closed before the doctor can stop her, and if she's lucky she will not be among those women who give birth while stuck in an elevator. The lights flicker around her and she bites nearly through her cheek. For fear or for the pain of her labor, she can't really tell, and she wishes she had accepted the painkillers when they were offered.

Blood may drip down from the corner of her mouth when she steps onto the bridge. She's only seven centimeters - Sam spent almost five hours at seven centimeters, she has time, oh, she had better have time - and she makes it to her place at the helm without falling over, though the ship shudders around her and it's too close for her comfort.

"What the hell are you doing here, Winona?"

"Saving your ass," she replies, and when George orders her off the ship at the same time another contraction hits, she tells him to kindly go fuck himself. When she can speak again, she says, "We're getting out of here. We're getting out of here together."

"'S gonna be some story for the kids, huh?"

The ship rocks, klaxons blaring, counting minutes between now and her next contraction, Winona can only hope so. It'll be a hell of a story, and as her fingers skim across the navigation console, she finds the breath to tell her husband, "Forget what I said about - about trying for a girl."

4. Hero

"The only thing I did was have a baby in the wrong place at the wrong time, Lieutenant Pike. When everything is said and done, the Federation will remember me for that more than they'll remember me for any achievements I actually made or works I contributed to science."

5. Mother

Her mother sighs, and in that soft motion manages to sum up every last word or implication she has ever made about Winona's life choices. Every single one of them, the good and the bad and the mediocre and the what were you thinking?. She probably has a right: the clock in the background of the vid transmission showa zero-two thirty in Iowa, though it's still 'daylight' ship's time.

"It's not forever, Mom. Just until George and my transfers to Starbase 47 go through."

"That's what you said with Sam," she says. "He called me 'Mommy' yesterday, d'you know that?"

This new baby is too small to feel yet, but her hands move to clasp over her belly anyway, thinking silent apologies for her elevated heart-rate and the anxiety hormones she knows are coursing through her system, Doc's already admonished her about it and sometimes upset just can't be helped.

"What about the part where you agreed to not guilt-trip me? I'm just asking for a favor, not even long-term."

She can't even threaten to revoke grandparent privileges, not when she's asking for help with child-care, not when asking for help with anything nearly kills her. But she will not cry in front of her mother, that can wait until after the transmission is terminated and she can curl up on the bed with the last of her real chocolate stash and - and not a glass of wine. Because the universe hates her just that much right now.

"One child is a favor, Winnie. Two are an imposition - I can't raise your kids for you. It's time you thought about coming home."

"And I can't believe you just said that. I - no. No, I'm not asking you to raise my kids for me. I'm not. We need a little bit of help while we wait for the Maternity/Paternity and Early-Childhood Leave and the to kick in."

Her mother just looks at her.

Arguing with her is like arguing with a brick: it's probably also where Winona picked up her own stubborn.

"I'm gonna go now, Mom."

"You think about what I said, Love."

"Probably won't think about anything else for the rest of the week, now, Mom," and before her mother can get another word in edgewise, "End Transmission."

22. I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible. (Chapel)

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

Once the counselor asks her about the emergency work she did immediately after the attack.

Christine tells her, quite truthfully, that her memories from that hour are primarily tactile: memories of shoulders rubbing up against hers, and the wet slap of intestines on gloved fingers. Sound and sight and scent she has lost to dreams, and she does not regret that.

Primarily? the counselor says.

Primarily, Christine says, because there does remain in her head one airless minute that is unbroken by any failure of the senses, bright and round and free of context as a penny in a well. She takes it out, now, studies, on the insides of her eyelids, the unsettling orange light that is absent from all her other fragmented recollections.

In that minute she was at McCoy's side; they were working together in the open stomach of some hapless engineer, and she reluctantly told him, unnecessarily she thought, that they couldn't save the woman dying under their hot useless eyes. And McCoy replied in what sounded like a foreign language, voice raw and brimming with a rage directed at something larger than even her long shadow. He elbowed her aside when she was too slow to react, and repeated himself, louder, slower, crueler. "If you're not going to help," he said into her ear, words filling the tender canal like dropped pebbles, "get away."

Christine remembers considering what to say. She remembers thinking: you're a fool. We can do nothing. The greater good. He was wrong, then, there, caught, a bug in amber. And she stayed and worked and was actually pleased that he'd demanded it.

She does not understand why, quite, not any longer, probably she didn't even then; it eludes her in the way of childhood memories, warm, slick, little more than impressions in the sand. She was tired, of course. She might have had an inkling that, were they to survive, the only way to get onto this madman's staff was to stay despite all reason. And there is this: she was angry, too, every organ burning like the membranes had been soaked in gasoline from the anger. And. And.

She falters.

The counselor says this is important, and that they will come back to it next appointment, and Christine nods, and does not tell the counselor that there is not going to be a next appointment, because she has accepted the offered position on the Enterprise, which departs tomorrow.

He was wrong, she repeats quietly, to herself, out on the street. He was being a bad doctor. The engineer died, and who knows how many died with her who need not have?

And it only makes her want to serve under him, in the Enterprise's sickbay, all the more. It is this, she knows, that convinced her not to take the safe path with a research plan at home, like she'd thought she might have to, when she was sitting in her quarters processing the sheer magnitude of her shock.

What does that say of her?

The chilly mist rising off the sidewalk coils around her knees, and she trembles, and she shrugs. This selfish stubbornness, if that's what it is (and it is, she suspects; it is)-- it is unspeakably dangerous, a danger doubled if the tendency is shared by a CMO and his head nurse, she doesn't doubt.

But she cannot convince herself to care: and walking back to her dorm room, face lifted to meet the low-hanging white sky, she does not try.

Re: 22. I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible. (Chapel)

[izzyfics.livejournal.com]

You wrote Christine. ♥

I like this view on how she ends up on the Enterprise--a doctor who challenges her beliefs would be a nice draw. And the hint of danger, of course.

30. Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact. (Uhura, Kirk)

[ink-n-imp.livejournal.com]

The Captain was about to be the cause of a galactic war...and he had been doing so WELL too.

Handing her drink off to Spock, she had walked over to the Captain as quickly as she could manage, while still appearing serene; the tense mood of the diplomatic dinner allowed for no sign of worry, or worse, paranoia.

She had come up behind him, nodding her head respectfully towards the two representatives of the hostile planets he had been small talking with. Her back ramrod straight, she leaned in close. "Sir," Uhura whispered, firmly but calmly into his ear; the Captain continued to chuckle at a comment made by one of the representatives, but there was a sudden set to his shoulders that betrayed that his ears were all hers at the moment.

"Sir, before you agree," like you always do remained unspoken in the air, "might I remind you that that phrase has multiple translations dependent upon tonal delivery that the universal translator has difficulty distinguishing. The more common interpretations are that it is a form of alcohol, and also, a type of soup. The less common interpretations are an act of sexual aggression, and an invitation to personal combat. To the death," she added, just to make her point clear.

And the grin remained on his face, but there was a sudden, strained edge to it. "Thank you," he said, nodding his head to the two aliens. "But I regret that I shall have to pass your offer. If you'll excuse me," he said, graciously.

People said that Captain Kirk was a miracle worker, a savant, a magician. They couldn't understand how he could do the things he did.

"Lieutenant," he whispered as they serenely walked together back towards Spock. "You are a life saver."

The man just knew what tricks he could count on his people having up their sleeves.

Re: 30. Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact. (Uhura, Kirk)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

As soon as I saw that prompt I knew it belonged to Uhura, and you have done splendiferously well by her here.

24. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. (Winona Kirk)

[saavikam77.livejournal.com]

She hasn't worked outside a gravity well since the Kelvin, and George. Not really, even considering her stint at Utopia Planitia. Certainly nothing that required more than a few days up there. It's not even a mystery as to why, either. As much as the stars brought new life to her, they took away in equal measure, and Winona knows that's why she just hasn't been able to bring herself to take that Starbase 3 posting, or the post on the Lincoln before that, or any of the other dozen offers she's received over the last two decades.

No, working the Riverside Shipyard has been all the excitement she's wanted for a long time, and surprisingly, she's at peace with that. Counselors have argued with her on that point, but they weren't there. They can't know. Certainly, there's a component of fear behind it, terror even, that's keeping her chained to the ground, but now... now it's more out of spite than anything. Haha! she laughs at the night sky, you got George, but you'll never get me. I win.

And she has won.

Until the day she gets the call from Jim, all the way from San Francisco, letting her know where he is, and why he's gone.

A part of her is utterly mortified. No, the stars can't take her baby away. She's kept him safe from them all these years, they just can't have him.

But it isn't that simple, and she knows it.

Standing in the field far behind the old farmhouse that night, she stares up at the stars, fighting an epic battle with them in her heart and her mind. She holds onto Jim with every ounce of strength she possesses, determined to not lose him, too, as she curses the sky and everything it represents, but the stars only shine down at her in return, powerful, cold, and serene in their knowledge that they've taken his soul in exchange for hers.

In the end, the stars have won, and it's up to Winona to find new peace with it. Working on the unfinished ship still in its infancy at the shipyard has new purpose for her now, and and a sizable part of her hopes that in a way, she's outsmarting the stars, working to keep Jim safe in a future that might be. It's a small step, but it's something. She still prefers her own feet planted firmly, but in letting Jim go... maybe she'll finally find her own freedom.

* * *

Re: 24. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. (Winona Kirk)

[boosette.livejournal.com]

but the stars only shine down at her in return, powerful, cold, and serene in their knowledge that they've taken his soul in exchange for hers.

Oh, this is one of the most beautiful turns of phrase I've seen ever. (The whole story is lovely and heartbreaking and makes me want to give Winona a hug.)

14. Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought. (Number One)

[helly-uk.livejournal.com]

It took months for One to forgive Christopher Pike.

From the moment he informed her that he was leaving her and the Yorktown for a young Vulcan and a ship that hadn’t been built yet, to the day of her official promotion, she hadn’t spoken to him outside of her professional capacity.

So now she was standing here in her dress uniform, staring into the mirror and stubbornly ignoring the insistent door chime that she knew Chris was responsible for.

She didn’t have to stand there alone for long. She heard the door slide open without protest and she had to come to the conclusion that his command security codes hadn’t been revoked yet. Damn.

“You’re not supposed to abuse those codes,” she muttered, refusing to look at his reflection as he tried to catch her gaze through the mirror.

“I didn’t really have much of a choice. You’ve been avoiding me.”

He folded his arms and rested his weight onto one foot, waiting for her response.

“I have merely been gathering my thoughts.”

For what purpose she wasn’t sure. All One knew was that every time she looked at him she was torn between hitting him or marching off to find this Spock person and hitting him instead. Deciding neither option was the prudent course of action she had decided to keep her mouth shut and hands to herself.

Surely keeping her over emotional reaction within herself would allow her to organise those thoughts and feelings, and let them dissipate.

How wrong she was.

“You know…,” he started to speak, stepping forward into her space “You’re a lot like Spock.”

“Oh my Deity. You did not just compare me to that child.” She had spun on the spot now, facing her adversary and, for the first time in a long time, allowing her furious gaze to meet his annoyingly jovial one.

“Why not? After today he’s going to be my XO, before today you were my XO. I think I’ll be comparing the two of you for a long time. It’s only natural. He has a lot of the qualities I admire in you.”

Her anger flared so brightly she completely missed his compliment and instead focused on the interpretation of his words that suggested he found her replaceable.

“And what qualities make him the perfect replacement for me?”

“His logic echoes your cool headedness. I need someone by me who can keep me grounded.”

“Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.”

Her words were dripping with venom, and her face set in an icy gaze that didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Hey. What’s this really about?”

His voice was firmer now, and he had lifted a steady hand up to press against her cheek, forcing her to truly look at him.

“You and I would have worked on the Enterprise.”

She gulped down a little air, using a shaking hand to drag his skin away from hers.

“You once said that we were the dream team. I scoffed at you then, but I grew to believe in that concept. The Enterprise would have completed that ideal. The two of us together in charge of the flag ship…” She trailed off a little, attempting to hide a trace of emotion.

“Chris, that would have been perfect.”

“Oh,” he breathed out slowly, dragging the vowel out to extremes before puffed out a shorter breath, almost looking amused as he reinitiated contact with her cheek, this time gently using his lips.

“Sweetheart, we don’t need a ship or to be posted together to be the dream team.”

He pressed his lips against her skin trailing an almost electric path to her lips.

“I did this for you, so that you could have this ship, this command that you deserved a long time ago, but gave up for me. And I did this for us, so that we wouldn’t break quite as many regulations every time we did this.”

“Oh.”

The vowel that escaped her lips was short and surprised, her tone echoing her almost shocked expression.

“Well why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”

7. Today is a good day for someone else to die! (The Romulan Commander)

[snowlight.livejournal.com]

Title: Khitomer
Characters: The Romulan Commander, Ja'rod
Rating: PG-13

"Commander, the transmission is undoubtedly originating from planetside, general area Delta-Six-Three."

She closed her eyes briefly. There was something utterly distasteful about this undertaking. Not because her squadron, having ascertained the authenticity of the deflector shield access code on that planet, was about to annihilate some four thousand Klingon colonists—that would be regarded as the collateral damage of war; but this Klingon's betrayal of his own people germinated a dark seed in her. No warrior's anthem for this one. No death ritual. Only desecrated honor.

"The first attack will commence in fifteen minutes," she notified her informant. "If you wish to leave the planet, do so now. The Empire's military will not make a distinction between you and the general populace."

"No need, Commander." The Klingon laughed at the other end of the transmission line. It was a crazed, bitter sound. "Today is a good day to die!"

"Indeed." She smiled grimly. "Today is a good day for someone else to die."

The transmission ended. She turned to look at Subcommander Tal.

"Get the type-R plasma torpedo launcher ready. We attack in five minutes."

Re: 7. Today is a good day for someone else to die! (The Romulan Commander)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

You deserve a much longer comment than "I really rather love this". But I do. I really do.

#27 - the potatoes of defiance, Number One

[boosette.livejournal.com]

FINALLY I write something for this. Fwhoo.

http://boosette.livejournal.com/820614.html

[rumeaxil.livejournal.com]

What a great resource!

[dustinypi.livejournal.com]

Great read! I wish you could follow up to this topic