Fluff, Relationships, and Traditions
Sep. 22nd, 2013 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scribblemynameSo characters have habits, ways they interact with certain people and situations, things they do and like to do, stories and histories together. I've known a lot of my characters' for a long time but getting them all into fic is interesting, particularly for the ones I don't know that for.
I've got about five novelettes I want to turn out plus a short story, created out of the 5 Things Meme and then the whole Pieter/Ashen dynamic that originally played in my head before I even wrote that first Ashen drabble (and it is awesome to me, but got sidelined drastically with a deluge of other prompts), but, but, but...
I'm on day 265 of my challenge and story count 157 and I'm still plying angles and there's all those little things above that I'm itching to nibble at. Want to help a girl out?
Particularly of interest to me are things like where does Wesley work (not sure actually), and then relationship things that I haven't gotten to like how Justus always recognizes Shift regardless of her current form or demeanor, friendships, sibling relationships, Ilsa and her husband, etc.
Calling for prompts, as promised:
- character(s) and/or canon/fandom
- random word, quote, or other prompt
Oh, and I'll try to keep it short and fluffy or sweet. Try is the operative word. :grins:
Prompts
- Meld, couples, prank war
- Justus + Special Unit
- From thecatisacritic's fluff-fest
- Justus' family + Shift, Rachelle
- dancing, quotes, and not without you
- who is Justus when he's Rachelle's?
- undercover Justus
- more quotes
- From Daily Scribble post 1 AND from previous promptfest
- Ilsa prevents
- the work they do
- finding Justus, about that memory
Ficlets
Seven Days
- Wesley/Lena: Shall We Dance?
- Wesley/Lena: Stubborn
- Wesley/Lena: You are My Photograph
- Wesley/Lena + Angelita: Learning to Tango
- Wesley + Connor: Just Saying
- Wesley + Connor: On Practical Uses for Journals
- Wesley + Connor: A Spaghetti-Flavored Aftermath
- Wesley + Connor: Maybe Next Week
- Wesley + Connor: The Apple Don't Fall Far
- Wesley + Mom: The Joys of Motherhood
- Connor + Ashelynn + dogs: On the Acquisition of Dogs
- Connor + Ashelynn + dogs: Girls
Kingdoms and Thorn
- Shift + Team ensemble: That'll Work
- Shift + Meld: Soon
- Sear + Meld: Bone-Weary Need
- Rachelle + Meld: Between
- Rachelle + Meld: The Leash
- Rachelle + Special Unit: Anywhere But Here
- Rachelle + Heather + Shadow: An Absurdly Dangerous Shadow
- Rachelle + Joseph: What the Emptiness Fills
- Justus + Joseph: Cracking the Ice
- Justus + Team Ensemble: In the Business
- Justus + Larique: The Unsuspecting Suspect
- Shift + Justus: Self-Preservation
- Sear + Justus: Gratitude in an Off Note
- Rachelle/Justus + Heather: Backfire
- Rachelle/Justus + Sophocles: Comfort Objects
- Rachelle/Justus + Sophocles: On the Care and Feeding of Cats
- Rachelle/Justus + Sophocles: The Taste of Coffee
- Rachelle/Justus: Living with Hope
- Rachelle/Justus: Tiny Significant Pieces
- Rachelle/Justus: Side Effects
- Rachelle/Justus: Remind You to Dance
- Rachelle/Justus: Family
- Rachelle/Justus + Red Wolf and Whisper's kids: Cure to All That Ails
- Storm + Red Wolf + Anya: We Can't Have That
- Red Wolf and Whisper's kids: Don’t Forget the Ice Cream
- Red Wolf/Whisper: The Fox and the Wolf
- Red Wolf/Whisper: Taste of Regret
- Red Wolf/Whisper: Business as Usual
- Red Wolf/Whisper + Ashen: A Gift Well-Chosen
- Red Wolf: Rearranging Assets
- Storm + Minder: The Five W’s of Declaring War
- Storm + Minder: Tell Me in the Morning
- Storm + Minder: Moral Support
- Storm + Mirage + Surge: Waiting for Blood
- Hasheni/Ilsa Killinger: Homework
- Hasheni/Ilsa Killinger: Catalyst
- Ilsa Killinger: Linger
- Ilsa Killinger | Special Unit: Reality Check
- Keeper/Brushfire: When Memory Burns
- Anna/Lightsculpt: Dinnertime Distractions
- Anna/Lightsculpt: Needing a Break
- Anna/Lightsculpt: Worth Something
- Anna/Lightsculpt: Working Up the Nerve
- Anna/Lightsculpt: Would That It Were
- Sketch + Team ensemble: Something Other Than Smoke
- Shift/Kilter + Watcher: Wedding Gift
- Shift/Kilter + Elisabeth: You're My Heart
- Shift/Kilter + Elisabeth: The Answer to All Problems
- Shift + Elisabeth: Little Girl Reminders
- Surge + Maker: Embrace of Freedom
- Watcher + Team Ensemble: An Ounce of Protection
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
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Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Rearranging Assets
Date: 2013-10-16 06:46 pm (UTC)Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Rearranging Assets
Date: 2013-10-17 01:48 am (UTC)Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Rearranging Assets
Date: 2013-10-17 03:19 am (UTC)“Do you want to remember?”
The question stopped him. He had just finished a consultation for another business, and he was tired, ready to return home to his family, to the smile from his daughter that could make all of the fatigue disappear, the love of his wife that sustained him, that kept him thriving. The words, though, shifted him from consultant to operative, sharp and suspicious. He turned, trying to prepare himself for anything that might come. “Excuse me?”
“Do you want to remember?” The woman repeated, and he frowned, taking in the dark clothes and unusual hair.
“It’s not possible,” he said, though he should not have let her know that her question had an audience. He did not recognize her as any operative he’d known or heard of, though the possibility of her being someone like the leader of team thirty-four came to him. Still, if it was, why meet him like this?
“For your genetically modified humans, your specials, no, it’s not. I’m a different sort of anomaly,” the woman said. “Your memories got lost in processing, and they say that can’t be undone no matter how great the mental gift. Me? I can and have pulled memories from a man who rewrites his genetics and wipes his mind clean more than once. I can help you. If you want.”
He shook his head. “I have no reason to believe you, less to trust you, and I don’t think I want to know the cost.”
“I’m a woman who can’t touch without getting memories from people. There are only a few ways to cope with that—you go insane, you blackmail people, or you find a good reason to dredge up the memories and give them back. I think I passed the first option a few years back, I did the second for a while, and nowadays I spend my time doing the third. I don’t have a cost. I just... If you’ve got a curse, why not put it to good use? Isn’t that what you do in applying your training to helping those that consult with you?”
He knew there was a part of him that did want to believe her, that wanted to accept her offer. “Why would you come to me?”
“Fracture doesn’t need me anymore. I had to find someone who did.”
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Rearranging Assets
Date: 2013-10-17 03:44 am (UTC)Okay, calming down. Very interesting. Of course, the truth is on regaining memories... it depends. On the serum used, how well the body integrated it, etc., but yeah. This is intriguing.
I'm not sure if I've got enough Recall to write her well yet. Will have to consider bouncing this one back with a reply fic.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Rearranging Assets
Date: 2013-10-17 04:02 am (UTC)I wasn't entirely sure how much they could get back of their memories, but I couldn't help thinking that she might be able to help the people that couldn't get them back another way.
You could always do one with him discussing it with his family and if he wants to go ahead with it, if he thinks he can trust her, all that fun... If you want to do a reply, that is. You don't have to.
Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-17 05:31 pm (UTC)Whisper looked up and flicked off the silent floor cleaner. Wolf was leaning on the wall at the inside of the entryway, arms cross, and frowning thoughtfully. He had never asked that or addressed many of the issues lying under her surface.
Instead of speaking, she simply shrugged. It was always more complicated than yes or no when it came to matters of the Department.
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He was looking in a mirror, then with a soft sigh, he came in and sat down on the couch.
"You never ask questions without reason," she said softly.
He nodded, then held out a hand until she took it and he could draw her nearer. "You remember, don't you?"
"Some," she conditioned. "Plenty. Not everything. There was some degradation in the hardware."
He considered that. Red serum then. Those targeted and broke down the physical structures in the brain related to episodic memory. Though there were anti-serums that could restore scarred tissue, none could retrieve a memory completely destroyed. "Would a healing fix it?" he asked, even though he knew the answer. Healing was how they restored episodic memory function in the first place.
She shook her head.
"Would you want it to?" he pressed.
She stared at him, eyes searching his. "Your episodic centers were completely destroyed," she said quietly.
He knew that. He closed his eyes and scrubbed one hand through his hair. He knew that. Most given red serum were given enough to wipe out their history, not enough to completely annihilate an entire portion of their brain and then restore it in essentially a reset. He knew that what he did remember was strictly by the mercy of the brain's keeping nonepisodic memories in a different location. He still had all his skills and different, familiar things he had clearly loved before—such as music.
"I don't know if I would want it to," he said quietly. He opened his eyes and looked at his wife.
Whisper's open gaze was a mirror of his, troubled. "I was a daddy's girl," she said. "He left before my mother did..." She trailed off, then shook her hair out of her eyes as if dislodging the remembrance.
He slid his hand into her hair and leaned his head against hers.
"I remember laughing." Whisper rarely laughed freely anymore. She had seen too much, done too much. She shrugged that tiny shrug, said in that sotto voice of hers that was almost a whisper, "I think you would have liked the woman I could have been."
Would she have liked the man he once was? He wrapped one arm around her shoulders. "What happens if who I was and who I am are irreconcilable?"
After a long moment fraught with tension, she admitted, "I don't know."
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 12:22 am (UTC)I feel bad for Wolf, since his memory is completely gone.
I want to believe she'd still love the man that he was, just as he would have liked her. I was thinking about AU Shift/Kilter and what that would be like (I blame the whole Lovemark thing for starting me down that thought process and a bit of this because I was wondering what Wolf was like in it and if he would have met Whisper and a lot of other things, like how Shift and others might be, too.)
And I do have to ask... would Red be okay with who he was and who he is?
Also thinking... My ideas defy science/logic again, at least in what Recall does (wait... in what Fracture does, too,) but I did have more thoughts on the idea of her interacting with people from K&T, a few lines that were almost impossible to rid my head of, though I should say that an impossible AU crossover is better than thinking about parts of Fracture's life I'd never write about.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 04:15 pm (UTC)I feel bad for him too, and I haven't really sat down and dealt with the fact that his wipe was so complete specifically because of Storm's instruction to medical. Eventually, I'll have to dig through that mess I suppose. Maybe.
They would have been smitten and head over heels, provided they met. Snippet from Lovemark:
I guess I should've said excerpt!
Truthfully, no. He would not be able to reconcile the two sides of himself without a LOT of work and probably years and therapy. Justus named it right when he said "Forgetfulness is its own absolution." He never reached out to tell Red Wolf about who had been, even after they both realized Justus could, more as a mercy than anything else.
I like your ideas. It's more an alternate science. In this world, this is how things work. And I know I want to read more, which is why I bounced this back.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 06:10 pm (UTC)Does she ever meet up with her father again?
Would it anger him, knowing what Storm did?
Hmm. It's a bit sad knowing that Lovemark is just a dreamed reality. That means none of it is real. :(
I like the idea of seeing them as they might have been not as operatives, and I suppose it wouldn't be real no matter what, but it's still a bit... sad.
Ouch. Poor Wolf. I guess I don't know enough of who he was before, but I was hoping since he was still a good guy that he'd be able to. He's probably not the best candidate for what Recall can do, then, either.
I did write down the dialogue that was bugging me, and I did some more mental percolating with Recall's side of it.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 06:39 pm (UTC)I have no idea. Depends, probably, on how he found out.
I might exclude the scene, I might not, but since the whole thing was AU anyway, I needed to make it canon and one of the weird factoids of Dreamer's ability is that it IS real—but only WHILE she's dreaming it.
That bit is interesting to me because while Whisper and Wolf would make a good nonoperative couple, I can't see them meeting each other if she were an operative and he were not, so it would require a more complete AU.
He is still a good guy, but... :ponders this: His differences were more fundamental. Justus' behavior changed radically to put it mildly; Wolf got to literally live a whole new life. His personality is different, his thinking is different, his moral choices are different, his world is wholly different. It's not so much knowing as being unable to turn two different people into one. The underlying person is the same, but not in a way that would be easy for him to work with.
That's half the beauty of fanfic though. You can explore the questions. And if Recall doesn't bring it back in a way that makes it all HIS, if it's just piecemeal memory, then it might be fine.
Care to share?
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 07:10 pm (UTC)It would be interesting to see how that played out, though painful, too.
It's hard to know out of context, but it would be hard for anyone who knew about the dreaming to cope with knowing it was only real while she dreamt it.
That would be an issue. I don't know how they'd meet, either, but they need to meet because they need each other. Though I suppose... She'd be happy if her first love lived, and the other Wolf might not need her the same way.
Yeah, that would be very difficult to come to terms with. Poor Wolf.
It might work in just pieces. She can do that. It's what she does with Fracture.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 07:51 pm (UTC)It depends. Some mind a lot and some don't mind at all because if Dreamer chooses not wake up, that's the reality. It's not a dream in the "it was all a dream" sense; it's a dream in the "let's shift reality for the time being." So I might omit the scene or I might not, but I needed to know how it could/would work to make myself happy writing what is little more than a novel's worth of glorified fanfic of my own work. :le sigh:
I think he's going to do well overall with reconciling with his family. He doesn't have the weight on his conscience that Justus' does.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 08:14 pm (UTC)One of the first things I did after writing Nickel and Dime was write a crossover with a tv show I used to watch. I also plotted crossovers with my own stuff. It was fun, though most of them haven't materialized to more than a few scenes. In my mind, though, most of my characters meet and are good friends with each other despite their supposedly separate worlds.
I figured eventually I might throw them in as bonus stories in the books or something, so I was okay with writing them.
That's good, though. Wolf could use his family, though they might have a hard time at first, knowing how different he is.
Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Shattered by Night [1/2]
Date: 2013-10-23 06:08 pm (UTC)Storm leaned down into the hold from the small galley between hold and cockpit. "You figured out where we're taking him?" he asked dryly. In Wolf's absence, Storm would be team leader.
It almost startled Whisper into shattering something—she was too tense, holding too much air around them taut—when she realized he was treating her as second where he was third. She looked in his dark, determined eyes and knew they were both committed. Wolf had to make it.
Her mind flitted through possibilities, picking them up and discarding them with the rapidity of necessity. She found one and hesitated to let it go. She nodded sharply and gave him the coordinates quietly.
Storm looked at her oddly.
"Let me go in first," she said, sotto voice. She held a little more tightly to Wolf, then let him go and slid forward into the cockpit behind Storm. It was time for her to lead.
A dark, quiet neighborhood appeared out of the night. Storm's jaw was tight as he landed the jet in a field barely big enough to contain. Maker's dimension shimmered around them, cushioning the landing and acting as the silencer on a gun.
Whisper inhaled gently. She could hear the crickets singing outside in the tall grass. She unbuckled and headed down the ramp.
She had always been a tracer. Almost before she had heard of the courses, she threw herself headlong into learning how to control and manipulate computers, security systems, surveillance, networks, and government databases. She had known for years now what had become of her family, her parents, her illegitimate sister; there had simply been nothing she could really do with that knowledge. Until now.
Storm shadowed her out of the jet. He would soon be needed elsewhere to help head up this rebellion she had ordered into existence, but for right now, he could walk with her down the streets of what could have been her childhood and wait down on the walk as she stepped up to a homey door and knocked lightly.
It was late, but there was light in the window. Her father had been a military man before she was born. He had always kept long hours, early and late.
Harold "Harry" Lewis. He was good people, as they said in the business. Always had been.
Had it been anyone less patient than Whisper, she would have knocked again, but it wasn't, so she waited quietly in the shadow of the eave over the front porch, pressure taut between her open hands, with only a whisper to warn of how deadly she could be.
The door creaked open and there was Harry framed in the doorway, looking exactly the way she'd always remembered him, perhaps a little more tired, a little greyer around the edges. His eyes narrowed slightly in disbelieving recognition. "Sierra?"
"Hi, Daddy," she said softly, almost a whisper but not. "I need your help."
Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Shattered by Night [2/2]
Date: 2013-10-23 06:08 pm (UTC)"Your husband?" he asked in that soft, rough voice of his.
She turned, keeping contact with Wolf, but accepting the cup of hot spice tea he handed her. Her ability to speak openly was rusty at best. "Common law," she finally managed. If the administration had ever found out, both of them would have been dead. Her eyes flicked up to meet her father's gaze.
He sat down beside the fire in a shabby, but comfortable old chair. "You could have come sooner," he said quietly, pained.
Her mother had been a negligent alcoholic, but somehow she had managed to get custody and take away his right to see her when the two divorced. But she was too negligent. Nobody had even known when one day, her daughter Sierra Lewis simply disappeared.
Whisper knew because she had been that daughter. She shook her head sadly and answered, "I couldn't." She sipped her tea and turned back to Wolf. "I wish I could have," she murmured, low enough that she didn't know if her father would hear.
She was here now. Wolf was alive. For a brief moment, that was all that mattered.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Shattered by Night [2/2]
From:Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Shattered by Night [2/2]
From:Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 06:42 pm (UTC)“You weren’t on a team.”
“Never had a team. Just a partner,” the woman said, closing her eyes. “Gone now.”
“Can you actually do this?”
She uncurled herself from the reports and rolled her shoulders, then her neck. “I don’t know. Science was never something I understood or wanted to understand. Vules didn’t make himself very welcome when he was testing me, so when he explained things, I didn’t like to listen. He said something once about Fracture actually rearranging his brain when he fractured—he rewrites his genetics to be whatever he needs to be and genetics supposedly includes the mind—so that was why he never remembered anything when he was done, but if he rewrote his brain, his memories shouldn’t be there like a normal person’s. Then again, taking memories from Fracture always hurt a lot more than it did with others—my theory being that his were ones I had to work harder for because they’re not where they’re expected to be. Looking over what they used to do this stuff to you, I’m thinking—”
“That you can’t?”
“I might get something. I might get nothing. The only thing I can guarantee is that it will hurt.”
“Hurt?”
“Mostly me, though I’m told it stings sometimes when I give people memories.” She let out a breath. “I can do this if you want me to try. If you don’t, I’ll go. I’ll find something else to do.”
“How do we know you can do any of what you’ve said you can do?”
“I can prove it if you want, but that still means me having access to someone’s memories.”
“You won’t like what you see.”
“I have the memories of a man who stopped a nuclear holocaust on his own in my head. I have murderers, rapists, and terrorists in there. There isn’t much I haven’t seen and processed already. I’m not afraid of what I might see—and I’m already insane, so that’s not an issue, either.”
“Child soldiers?”
She met his gaze, neither confirming or denying anything, and in the end, he held out his hand. “Here.”
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 06:54 pm (UTC)Re: Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: Price of Reconciliation
Date: 2013-10-18 07:13 pm (UTC)Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: It's a Start Anyway
Date: 2013-10-18 07:33 pm (UTC)Sting was a rather nice way of putting it. Wolf gritted his teeth as he felt the energy transfer of what she was doing and wondered if she had a clue how much it messed with his own sense of the energy streams underlying the use of most special abilities. He doubted he could knot up or suppress this one. Her ability seemed to work by tying it down herself, bringing his mental energy flow and hers into such tight proximity that she could read what she needed.
For the first time since Whisper told him he was a wolf, he understood why that was significant. He'd never had that sort of power used on him before, and he couldn't say he liked it.
And there was a memory he knew coming back at him.
"Qiqeret."
Hot, feverish, agonizing pain screaming through his body as he coughed. Damp air, cement floor, and that soft touch on his skin as a woman held his chin and looked into his eyes with her own warm brown ones and said, low enough to be a whisper, "You will live."
Recall pulled away, frowning.
It was also rather nice to say that there were obvious holes in his history. That wasn't really the case. There was nothing, and then there was Red, who became Red Wolf and Alpha. He didn't even remember processing, only its aftermath—something apparently rare.
"So it worked," he said cautiously, referring to the memory transfer more than whether she had found what she was looking for.
She waited. It wasn't like she needed the proof she could do it.
He considered what he knew, what resources he had, whether he wanted to even try this, but it hadn't overwhelmed him. It was living the memory, but it wasn't quite what he expected. It came attached with what he knew and felt then rather than now. He nodded shortly. "Did you get anything?"
"I'll need to process it before I can share much," she said.
She did look like she'd been affected. He'd seen plenty of varying reactions to the way using an ability could drain somebody.
"Shall I see you in a day or two?" he asked quietly.
"I should have something for you by then."
Red Wolf breathed in, deliberately smoothing it out from his automatic reaction. She had gotten something. "Where does your friend keep his memories?"
Her grimace turned to a bittersweet smile. "Like I said, I'm not into the science."
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: It's a Start Anyway
Date: 2013-10-18 08:01 pm (UTC)I like the glimpse into what Wolf can do, how he does it, and his reaction to what she does and what he feels as she does it.
And the last bit...
I love it.
She's where he keeps his memories, but that's not something she'd admit.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: It's a Start Anyway
Date: 2013-10-18 08:29 pm (UTC)When possible, I do like to step into how their abilities feel to them. It's a lot different than just, well, normal.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: It's a Start Anyway
Date: 2013-10-18 08:49 pm (UTC)It's a good way of knowing who they are and how it is for them.
With Recall, that first scene where she likens it to lots of knives stabbing her, it was easier to understand how she felt when she used her ability, but Fracture was harder to get because he is different, because he has varying reactions to what he's doing and how much of it he understands, but there's pain involved in what he does, too, and so... yeah, I do my usual shying away from it. :/
Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: Selfish or Selfless
Date: 2013-10-18 09:58 pm (UTC)He could have stopped me, Recall thought, still shaken by the meeting she’d had with the man now known as Red Wolf. She could call him by other names—she knew enough of him to know almost all of them, even without the old memories that she’d tempted him into reclaiming.
She turned onto her side, curling up against herself. She hadn’t processed this much in a long time, having most of Fracture’s memories except the most recent ones, and she hadn’t hurt this much, either. She almost welcomed this kind of pain, though. She would rather be lost in someone else’s memories than her own than remember what was missing, than acknowledge the gaping hole that would never be filled.
She should have found someone else, someone besides Wolf. He was dangerous in more than one sense. He was a former operative—she had known that before she approached him—and that should frighten her, but she had lived with Fracture long enough to be immune to fear, only what she had forgotten was that she was weak. The idea of someone besides Fracture stopping what she could do—she wanted that.
She also had a terrible feeling that she’d break him if she gave him back all of his memories, just like a fracture she’d given too much to in the past. What she had gotten—Wolf was two different men, not like Fracture, not the same.
Did his wife know? Recall hadn't sorted through everything yet, so she had to wonder if he had told Whisper he was going to do this. He might not have—there was a chance that it wouldn’t work at all—and he might not have said anything until he knew that it had. Recall didn’t doubt the man’s devotion to his wife, but she did understand his fears, probably better than most because she could get thoughts and feelings from what she processed. Memories were full of many things, more than people realized, and she had his.
She forced herself up off the bed, crossing to the phone. One way or another, she’d need someone else’s cooperation. She would hate herself a little more for this, but she knew what had to be done. “I need you to back me up when I lie to him.”
“What?”
“He needs to believe that I didn’t get much from him—and that you love him regardless of who he was in the past.” Recall leaned over the desk, fighting the pain. “Please. I made the offer with good intentions, and I know when not to give too much. This is one of those times. When I tell him there is nothing beyond what I give him, help him to accept that. I thought I was helping, but I’m not. I was being selfish.”
“I see.”
The words were quiet, and Recall didn’t miss their significance. “He already knows he likes music. No harm in showing him that, and when I have, I’ll be gone. No more interference. I promise. I just... needed to be sure someone would be there for the fallout.”
The silence was condemning, but she didn’t expect anything else—what she’d done was wrong, even if she thought she was doing right when she made the offer. She went to end the call, losing her grip on the desk and consciousness first.
Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: The Right Question
Date: 2013-10-20 02:43 am (UTC)Gently, she settled on the bed beside him, tracing one finger faintly over his cheek. He didn't move. He rarely did anymore when it was her, just as her own reflexes were beginning to take into account that she trusted him.
"What did you ask her?" she whispered to herself in Alaric. She knew he was going to find out what was possible, but when he left, he hadn't really decided how much he was willing to actually test.
Whisper had long suspected Red Wolf's past was best learned about from the outside in, due to Justus' long silence on the matter, but she wasn't entirely sure how different he had been. Wolf was an alpha, harsh when necessary, and an extremely competent operative who did what needed to be done. The impression she received from the information they were only now beginning to dig into was that as a young man, he'd been a fundamental Christian, good guy next door, and an enthusiastic bluegrass fiddler. Perhaps the difference was as wide as the gulf between her own childhood and what she had become, but it was hardly one worth losing love over.
She flicked a wave of tight pressure over his shoulder.
He tensed instantly, then sat up slowly as he realized it was her that had woken him. "Whisper?" He was keeping the grumpiness out of his voice and it made her smile.
"You're always a grouch at night," she commented softly, thoroughly amused.
He groused but leaned against the backboard and tucked her under his arm. "What'd you need?" he asked somewhat more amiably.
She hummed thoughtfully as she got comfortable, then, "What did you ask her?"
He blinked, then caught on to her topic. "I asked her to prove it," he said slowly.
"Which she did..."
"Which she did." Wolf looked at her carefully, scrutinizing this odd frame of mind. "She got something from before. I'm not sure how much."
"Did you want to see it?" Whisper asked. He hadn't decided and maybe he still hadn't and this was all moot. She craned her neck to meet his gaze better. He could have asked her for his records for years. He had always known she was a tracer. It was only in the last few months that they had walked down that path.
Wolf shrugged. "Some of it," he said softly, tucked his chin against her hair. "I'd like to feel like a brother."
She thought about that, hummed softly under her breath, then traced over his jaw with one hand. "Ask her for that then."
He breathed out a sigh.
She waited a moment, listening until the silence held acceptance, then slipped under the covers and drew him down with her toward sleep.
Re: Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: The Right Question
Date: 2013-10-20 03:07 am (UTC)I like seeing Whisper's reaction to it, the way she chose to support him and all she already knows, her loyalty to him, all of that.
They are an awesome couple because of these quiet moments where they strengthen each other.
I have another part where he does see Recall again, and it would take a bit of tweaking to fit with this, if that's okay.
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From:Re: Kingdoms and Thorn/Fracture & Recall Crossover: The Right Question
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