Ooh, a meme!

[mizzy]

C'mon, guys, I've been pretty good, no memes for a while, and this one can't be much work (I don't think I'll have anything much people would be interested in), so let's goooo for it.

Ganked from lightgetsin.

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic is here or here.

Comments

Oh this should be interesting!

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

"You remember what happened in here." Reilly kept her hands flat on the table and stared at Nate. The guards had restrained him. There was a dead expression in Nate's eyes that she rather empathised with. It was about all she could empathise with nowadays.

"I remember." He shook his head and stared blankly at the wall before his gaze moved to hers. "Paul Brody was about to shoot himself. Your guys shot me in the shoulder. When I woke up you tortured me for years and then I escaped."

"We let you go, Mr. Haines."

"That's not my name," Nate snapped, and then faltered.

"It is your name, Mr. Haines."

"Why would you let me go?" Haines asked then, looking weary, like he didn't expect an answer to the question.

"As an experiment. We aimed to create a weapon in this room."

"I don't understand, why-" Haines started, and then faltered. "I talked Brody into Apoptosis. My example made him sacrifice himself." He looked up at her, eyes wide. "I'm the weapon you trained in this room."

"Correct. Thanks to you, we have four people now willing to give up their lives in order to save you. You're very effective, Mr. Haines. Thank you." Reilly pushed herself to her feet and moved to the door. A rattle of chains proved they hadn't quite broken him as much as Phillips thought they would. There was still life in there. Still a fight. Perhaps she wouldn't have to have him executed after all.

"Kill me instead," Haines insisted, his voice low and persuasive. There, Reilly thought with a cavalier briskness which shocked even her, that's how he does it. How he makes people willing to walk into hell to protect him. "Please!" He was shouting now. "Kill me instead!"

"Really, Mr. Haines." Reilly paused at the door, and turns back, switching off her emotions as she had done every minute of her life since joining the MK-ULTRA program. "That would defeat the purpose. Why kill the golden goose?"

"Fuck you," Haines screamed, "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you fucking bitch-"

Haines' profanities were cut off by the close of the door. She glanced impassively at one of the monitors as he started yanking against the chains uselessly, again and again.

Reilly sighed and started the next phase into motion, sending Haines into solitary confinement until he was ready again. Haines would rant and rave. He did that last time. He screamed and cried for months. Reilly supervised him the whole time. She is sure it will happen that way again.

curious! :D

[errant-evermore.livejournal.com]

There's this guy in his AA program that Nate is pretty sure is not an alcoholic. He looks too healthy for a start, his young skin taut over his angled frame. He doesn't mainline coffee in the breaks like the rest of them. He's way too alert. He doesn't fidget, and his eyes don't trail the exits, plotting out the route to the nearest 7/11.

The next time their group leader Patrick suggests they buddy up, to sponsor each other, Nate gravitates to him. He doesn't need a sponsor. He needs a mystery to concentrate on, something to let his mind wander through while his body wants it to think about drinking, and the young man is it.

Nate doesn't get much out of him, apart from his name: Alec. That, and the way he swigs soda. Identical to the way Nate can used to down bourbon. So maybe Nate's just making mysteries up in his head.

Can I request all the fridge notes instead of 500 words?

[fictionalfemme.livejournal.com]

http://archiveofourown.org/works/213756/chapters/320677

[ultra_fic]

I confess, I haven't read a great deal of your fic - we seem to have different tastes in pairings and all, but this? This I want explanation for, because of its awesomeness ;)


"Don't you want to see?" Mr. Gold reaches into his pocket, and Sarah tenses, unconsciously reaching for her fork just in case, but Mr. Gold doesn't pull out a gun. Sarah needs to sort out her overactive imagination. It's not a weapon at all. It's... three crystal balls. Mr. Gold holds out his palm towards her, the three spheres spinning on his palm easily. "Maybe you can learn some tricks. Dazzle the kids."

Sarah's halfway through holding her hand out for them, almost entranced by the way the light catches them. And then a memory takes hold of her, reminding her what she's running from - the rest of the memories. Staying in that house which her father and stepmom grudgingly sold her was too much. Seeing Toby regularly was too much. It was all a reminder of what she had to fear in life.

Jareth never left her alone. Not for long.

And maybe this Mr. Gold isn't Jareth. Maybe he doesn't even know the Goblin King. Maybe this is a genuine offer of a trinket, something innocent.

But Sarah's learned never to take deals at face value.

No one wants nothing for something.

She pulls her hand back. "No. No thank you." She swallows. Mr. Gold's face freezes, like he's not expecting it. There's something familiar about his face. Something which reminds her painfully of Jareth. "I don't deal with people like you. You always want more than anyone should ever give."

"Merely a trifle," Mr. Gold protests, but his voice is thinner now, and they can both hear the lie in it. He pauses. Then settles back in the chair with a laugh. "You've had dealings with my kind before."

Sarah doesn't say anything, but her silence is as much of an answer as anything. "I guess so," she says, because she's not sure what Mr. Gold's type is.

"I could keep him off your back," Mr. Gold says, perceptively. "The way you run," he explains, "small town to small town? No one escapes an army like that. No, you're escaping a singular someone. And I can keep him off your back permanently." He smiles, showing his teeth. "What do you say?"

"Same thing I told him." Sarah pushes back from the table, and looks down at him coolly. "You have no power over me."

He shrinks back from the words, and Sarah smiles, coldly. "Good night, Mr. Gold."

She grabs her newspaper and stalks out of the cafe, leaving it far behind. She'll leave Storybrooke. She doesn't belong, after all. But maybe she'll settle down in the next place. Her words and will are apparently weapon enough for all the evil characters out there.

THIS WHOLE FIC REALLY (only mostly this bit...)

[lmx-v3point3.livejournal.com]

Eames looks down at Arthur's face, pressed so suddenly and awkwardly near his, and his expression is blank. Ariadne swallows, and it hurts, because Eames is schooling his emotions more tightly than she's ever seen him, and this has to be painful for him, to have Arthur so close and so far away.

Except, Bastian's voice is deeper than it has been when he says, "Eames," and then again, "Eames?" and Ariadne's heart is in her mouth, it's the only way she can describe it, because it's Arthur, oh, somehow, it's Arthur, and he's come back to them and they can stop this farce. And Eames has realized too, because his eyebrows are furrowed, and his face had been entirely blank.

Eames' eyes are scraping Arthur's face like he's been missing - not just his personality, but his whole body gone too. Eames is looking at Arthur like he hasn't seen him for a week, even though his face has been right there the whole time. Arthur - because it is Arthur, it is - makes that sound again in the back of his throat, the one he made when he was saying that Cobb didn't know what Arthur was giving up, and Ariadne knows what it means now, because it was Eames Arthur was giving up, is giving up, and Ariadne glances up to see if Cobb has realized.

Cobb turns around a moment later to see why they're not following him, and his eyes flicker to Arthur and Eames, and over to Ariadne, then back to Arthur and Eames for a moment. Arthur and Eames are almost frozen; Eames' hands tight on Arthur's elbows, their eyes locked on each other.

The trees around them that had been rustling gently in the wind start to quieten; a silence settles on the whole, frozen tableau as Bastian's subconscious can't populate the dream any more. His imagination is busy with something else.

Someone else.

Ariadne looks over to see Cobb, to gauge his reaction, and she catches the moment he realizes what's going on, the instant he finally, finally understands.

Ariadne doesn't know what to say. "Arthur" might be what she wants to say, using his name like Mal devised, like a totem. She wants to use his name to bring him back permanently, but Arthur stepped through that door despite his feelings for Eames, despite not wanting to die, because Arthur wanted to save Amelia like Mal saved him, and Ariadne doesn't have the right to decide for him.

Cobb takes a breath, and Ariadne fights the urge to stop him, to shout out, because whatever name he chooses to say probably will decide the whole way forward. Ariadne imagines for a moment telling Amelia's parents that they're sorry, they can't help; she's much more relieved at the concept than she should be.

When he speaks, Cobb doesn't say a name. His eyes linger on the weird, half-accidental embrace between Arthur and Eames, and his voice is soft when he says, "How long?"

"Years," Arthur breathes, without tearing his gaze from Eames, and Eames, Eames who's never without a word to say, stays silent and trembles a little. Eames' mouth compresses into a line, like it's a fight to keep his emotion in check now. "Years and years."




~I didn't word count, but... you know... :)

[hannasus.livejournal.com]

This is technically 666 words of fic, but I'm leaving it because a) it's the passage I want; and b) it amuses me that it happened to coincide with the Mark of the Beast.


"Cap," Tony says, narrowing his eyes a little, trying to hide how hard he's breathing. And other things. Steve shakes his head. Ah. So this is one of those name moments. One of these days, Tony will understand Steve when he blathers on about the difference between Natalie and Natasha. "Steve," Tony amends, keeping his voice low. "What the hell was that?"

Steve, in front of him, flickers a look over to the men still wrapped in streetlamp, and shrugs. "Modern homosexual men need to know it's okay to be gay. Cowards who bully them need to know it's okay; if a couple of superheroes are okay with it, well, we're positive role models to the world."

Tony resists the urge to blast something. It's easy, with Steve so close. Hitting Steve - even though he doesn't even really feel it - is like kicking a puppy. Easy. Damaging to the soul. Irreversible.

"Steve- I'm not even gay."

"I know. They don't." Steve shrugs. "Besides..." A slight smug smirk twitches on his face for just a moment. "You felt gay back there."

"...you could feel that through the iron suit?" Tony asks, appalled, wondering just how good that super serum was.

"I meant you kissed me back," Steve says, unruffled. Then a slight frown creases his face. "Was there something else for me to feel?"

"No," Tony lies, "apart from my severe awkwardness."

"Your tongue in my mouth spoke that in volumes," Steve says, still in that ridiculous placid voice.

Tony sighs, and remembers the megatons of power in his palms before he faceplants into one of them. He had kissed back, but it was... it was rude not to, right? He already knows how much of a lie that is. Even if he hadn't slightly admitted it to himself, Pepper had shouted it enough in their messy distended break-up last year. He feels dizzy, annoyed, and Agent Hill is smirking so widely that Tony already has half a dozen plans to annoy her stacked up in the back of his head.

Number one: reprogram her TIVO so it only plays How I Met Your Mother.

It's hard to be very angry at Steve, because Tony knows everything he does is with the best of intentions, it's just... "It's all very well for you," Tony says, trying to figure it out. Trying to pretend he's not figuring it out as he goes. "You're not in the public eye as much as I am—the world knows you're Steve Rogers, and knows you're Captain America, and knows you're one and the same, but there's still a distinction for me."

Steve just looks a little puzzled now. "The world knows you're you, Tony."

"They don't know anything about me when I'm not in the suit." Tony shakes his head. "Even Fury makes the distinction. Iron Man good, Tony Stark bad-"

"You're not bad," Steve says, low and serious, like he thinks Tony one hundred per cent believes that.

He's sort of right to think that.

"And you're in the suit," Steve says. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be this big of a deal. You're the one who said kissing doesn't mean much. And you know Fury's always saying with our power comes responsibility, and for one small thing, that's a whole crowd of people thinking differently."

He gestures behind them. Tony squints. There are a lot more faces turned angrily to the men wrapped in a lamp post. A couple of the cops look more confident too. "Wow," Tony says, because outlandish he can do whatever he's feeling, "look at what one kiss did. We should have had sex in front of them."

Steve, predictably, colors.

"Let's just drop our statements and get back to the mansion," Tony mutters. Because Steve is right. Tony remembers saying it. Kissing. Kissing isn't anything.

Pepper's right. There's a lot of things that go wrong in his life that are his fault.

Not like he'll ever tell her that.