And on the eighth day...

[sunshine_queen]

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or NaNoWriMo or what have you, post exactly one sentence/paragraph/whatever from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favorite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else -- this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

To quote Nica, I highly doubt any of these fics'll finished anytime soon ON ACCOUNT OF I SUCK, but hope springs eternal, yes?

1- Liberty- Alias

There were four survivors, the girls who were able to reclaim their names and lives. They keep in touch, barely noting the names they write on envelopes, relying on the names they used before, on the ties that kept them alive.

There are the four: Liberty, Verdad, Quill and Starbuck.

Their letters start the same, always, do you remember?

And no one does.

2- Autopilot- Alias

Nadia drives home on autopilot, because she has found this setting to be a useful technique when she is confronted with information that is difficult to assimilate. She is surprised to find herself in her apartment- hers and Sydney's, but Sydney will spend the night at Vaughn's, of this she's sure. Sydney will deal with the shock in the safety of his company.

Nadia will content herself with the safety of her mind, which will propel her to do things she wouldn't do if she didn't come equipped with autopilot.

It is this autopilot that allows her to continue normally when bombs get dropped- that allow her to flee, to go home, to make herself tea and curl up on the sofa or scrabble through dirty streets without getting caught, her mind numb. It is the autopilot that allows her to obey the Nazi in her mind: the Nazi that commands the father to kill the mother to save the child; the mother to choose which child should live and which should die; the sister to beat another for stealing for the first. It is the autopilot that makes her wake up to find a man in front of her, dead: several clean holes in his chest with thin rivers of blood. She is the blind assassin.

3- untitled- Alias

I’ll make sure she’s out of the house and I’ll say to him, with three lies and a truth, using his name but never his first, that I am over him (lie) and I can handle him coming back (lie) and that I want for him only the best (truth) and that I don’t need him anymore (lie.) And he’ll use my whole first name because nicknames are used as endearments and he can’t afford to endear me and he’ll offer some bland excuse about why he wants nothing to do with me and vaguely say that I should go because she’ll be home soon.

4- She's Not There- Alias

She finds a tiny gold cross in Nevada, no bigger than the fingernail, on a delicate chain, and now she toys with it nervously as they drive. It had become a talisman of sorts for her, despite the fact that she had never quite believed in any true religion. The thin gold charm skims her collar bone, imprinting its shape onto her fingers as she clutches at it carefully.

See how worn it is, she asked him once, quietly, while they were entangled in the dark in some seedy dive or another, someone wore this always and loved it. He had nodded in agreement, kissing her hair, his fingers combing through the short locks, framing the face that studied him in such trusting sincerity. Someone wore this to remember their faith, or their luck, she whispered to him then, her eyes dark with something he couldn’t identify. He had pressed his lips to her forehead, her cheeks and her mouth, sweet with a tang of desperation.

You don’t need a cross to remind you, he said quietly. The person who wore it didn’t, either, or they wouldn’t have lost it.

Maybe she did, she replies, starting to drift off to sleep, settling her body beneath his, maybe she found something else to remind her.

He had laid his head beside hers on the pillow and mouthed, you have me to remind you. Why isn’t it enough?

5- the Nina fic- Alias

Vaughn comes to the warehouse with another file. Sydney forces herself to look calm and collected, to contrast herself with Vaughn’s uncharacteristic display of obvious apprehension. He looks up and tries to smile. She sometimes forgets how hard this must be for him.

“There was a raid,” he starts. “Nothing to do with us, really. Old KGB headquarters, random files from Soviet Russia.” He pauses, and rubs at his forehead. “Syd… there was some footage of Irina Derevko.”

6- nepenthe, or, the sequel to "perdition"- Alias

He manages a strangled, “Sydney,” quietly, the vague memory of a wife shushing him, the baby is sleeping, in a pink nursery with teddy bears and dolls and a white rocking chair, wrapped in a pink blanket edged in satin, but not this, not this sick-smelling room with rows of corpses and a white sheet to cover her face.

She, the angel of death that stands beside him, the living and the damned, grabs at his arm, digging her fingers in. She is saying his name harshly, insistently, “It’s time to go, Jack,” and “Jack, it’s time,” or, more often, “Please, Jack, please.”

There was a time, when she was a baby, when she was afraid of the dark, and she’d cling to his neck when it came time for bed, Daddy, Daddy, it’s dark and scary don’t go and leave me, Daddy, keep the monsters away, Daddy, please stay with me, her baby voice as clear as a bell, never with a lisp, ringlets of hair still damp from her bath, clean and fresh and clutching a stuffed animal , and she is still his baby, his brave daughter that had let him go more often than not and chased away the monsters herself. Now, he would stay. Now, he would protect her. 
 
7- untitled- Alias

When Sydney was little and Irina was Laura, there had been a series of occurrences wherein Sydney went missing. Laura’s husband said that all mothers must be paranoid about the disappearance of their children, but Laura took it to new heights.

8- delicate- Alias

She felt a queer sort of desperation grip her when she arrived home- not a feeling she wasn’t used to, but one that startled her in its ferocity. She calls him at home, the sleepy timbre of his voice thickening her own so that it stuck in her throat.

He speaks gently, soothingly, the nighttime voice of reason she remembers from so long ago, tailored to talk her out of nightmares and fears. He waits, expectantly, uncertainly, to see if she has fallen asleep. She wishes she had, so she wouldn’t have to listen to his awkward excuses.

He asks softly, “Do you need me, still?”

She swallows and nods into the phone.

Comments

[agent-nica.livejournal.com]

You should totally finish them all, but I really, really liked #3.

And it goes without saying that I love #1 and #4. ;)

[thepodsquad.livejournal.com]

Eeeee! The sequel to perdition! Aren't I sort of responsible for that? What with my whole, "Incredibly Depressing Afterthought"?

But they're all so deeply fantastic, for serious.