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timestamp fics
Due to some pathetic forgetfulness on my behalf, I've only just finished writing drabbles for the timestamp meme.
~
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schiarire - At The Red Gates (original) - timestamp: before the events of the story
Twice in my life, only twice, did I see the braiding of my mother’s hair interrupted by one who was not an Eater. The first interruption was by a girl not many years younger than I, a girl with unsteady legs who sucked on the fingers of one hand and kept herself steady on the doorframe with the other. My mother’s braid had reached the nape of her neck, but the fast flicking of her fingers ceased as I pulled in my breath.
“Mama,” I said, uncertain. But my mother just looked at the child for a count of five, and then her fingers began to move again – flick, flick, the dark strands leaping and falling into place.
“It is nothing, my own Rose. It is fine.”
The child stood there – not making a sound beyond the moist noise of her fingers in her mouth – and blinked at my mother, following the movement of her hands. Not once did she glance at me, and by the time the braid was complete she had given a small cough and waddled away again. I was five. I did not think too deeply about the incident; the taboo had been broken, and my mother had sustained the break, and that was all.
The second time – three years later, or maybe four or five; my timeline is not as sturdy as it once was – it was a man who stumbled into the room, just I was refilling the red salt-pouch and my mother was dividing her loose hair into sections. I do not think he recognised us as those who walk, because he nodded at us with no fear or hatred or respect or any sign of the otherness that I was becoming accustomed to.
“I heard…” he said, and looked for a moment at the woman’s corpse.
“You will get out of this place,” my mother said. Her hands dropped from her hair, which fell over itself and untangled as she stood up. This time when the man looked us he must have seen the pouch, because his face paled. And there. The fear.
“I apologise,” he said, “I did not realise…” but my mother showed no signs of letting this pass as she had with the girl.
“Out,” she said again, her quiet voice all the more frightening for the expression on her face. It would have matched a yell. My mother’s slap drove the man backwards by two steps, but I think it was this eerie contrast in her face that pushed him the rest of the way out of the room.
~
Foragonistes - Nights of endless conversations (Firefly/Sandman) - timestamp: when Simon wakes up
He wakes, as ever, to the sound of his own stomach growling. This time it growls in unison with a faint muttering at the edge of hearing, but Simon ignores it in favour of savouring the warmth down his side and the smell of Kaylee's hair. When he opens his eyes, it is to the sight of a curious peering face all of three inches away from his own.
"Auhghgh," Simon says faintly, closing his eyes again and wondering that the lurch of his heart didn't wake Kaylee. "River..."
The muttering recedes a little, and coheres -
"What was that, mèimei?" he says, still half-asleep.
River's fingertips dance and hover over his forehead.
"Familial blessing," she says, solemn. "Customary."
This seeps through Simon's fatigue, but by the time his eyes have widened - "River, it's not..." - she's moved on and away, in the direction of the cockpit.
~
Formarenfic - Tesselation (BSG) - timestamp: future, the next time they're the same place in the cycle
He starts to click the handcuffs against the table and you sit very still because despite the reversal he will always be faster, stronger and see more of the pattern. You are not usually one to play a game where the odds are stacked so highly against you, but you don’t have a lot of choice. You are, at least, confident that he is not going to kill you. That will always be your prerogative. Captor or captive, it is always Leoben Conoy who dies.
You mention this, perhaps unwisely.
He smiles.
“To look at it another way,” he says, “it will always be you who has to keep going.”
You think about praying for his soul and you think about Casey’s arms stretched out towards her mother and you think about Lee, who is waiting on the other side of the hatch and who will look at you for exactly three seconds – making sure you still exist – before leaving. It’s pointless. It’s very Lee. You exist and you are Starbuck, indestructible, and you will always exist – which is, you suppose, Leoben’s point.
“What do you hear, Starbuck?” he whispers, and what you hear is his breath, and behind that: the cycle of time ticking by.
~
Forpirateygoodness - Almost Rhymes With Orange (BSG) - timestamp: half an hour before #4
"I'm bored," Kara tells the ceiling, and you've shoved your chair backwards by a foot before you remember that you're mad at her. Or she's mad at you. After a moment's consideration, you decide that it really doesn't matter either way, and stand up.
"Going somewhere, Apollo?" Racetrack eyes your pile of credits.
"I'm beat." Quick smile. "Enjoy the game."
Kara will think of some excuse and everyone will pretend to believe her. Kara will push you backwards until you hit a solid surface and she'll pretend that what you're doing together is void, worthless, nothing. Kara will slip her fingers between cloth and skin and you'll pretend that it's enough.
These are the rules, and they say that you will expend some energy in making her gasp and writhe but expend even more in biting back the words that would make it mean something; in all the years leading up to this moment and the moments identical to it that have already passed, you never once imagined that it would be like this.
She kisses you as though she wants to erase you.
You try not to care.
~
Fortarheel - Benevolent Sibling (BSG) - timestamp: beforehand
“Ms Biers?”
“This is all fascinating.” D’Anna flipped her hair over one shoulder and wished the damn kid would disappear, because she needed to plant this camera at floor level and he was just so attentive.
“Um, if you don’t mind, ma’am, we should probably keep this are clear –”
“Whoops!” D'Anna said rather desperately, making sure that her shirt gaped even more than usual as she tripped forwards. The boy flushed and looked away, and she took the opportunity to fix the tiny camera to the line where floor met wall. “There must be – ah – a patch of grease here.”
“I’ll let someone know,” Billy said, still polite, holding out a hand to help her up.
*
“Heeey, another one’s online.” Sharon fiddled with the remote, programming in the new channel, and looked around. “Where is everyone? Where’s Six?”
“Communing with God,” Leoben said distantly. “Was that Starbuck?”
“No. You can’t say that every time a blonde walks past a camera. Where’s Simon, then?”
“Attempting to convince Six that communing with God doesn’t have to involve nudity. Was that Starbuck?”
~
Forliminalliz - Kara-Leoben drabble (BSG) - timestamp: future
One day she spits at him, really spits, and then spits in the figurative sense as well: “This is a nightmare,” (she spits), “and one day I’ll wake up from it.”
Yesterday she killed him. Today he is moving his head in slow circles, trying out the muscles.
“Are you sure that’s what you want, Starbuck?” he asks, sounding lazy and curious as he always does.
“Well, let me think,” and she laughs a bitter laugh that she recognises from her old self, and is glad of, because if she does think about this then she starts running into things like the fact that this enforced stasis is uncomplicated and so full of anger that – for the first time in her life – there is no room for guilt. “Wow, gee, I don’t know, would I rather be free or stuck up in here with you?”
“I don’t know either,” Leoben says, disarmingly. She hates him.
(Casey’s mother reaches out and the weight of the girl is lifted from her like eyelids opening; this is waking up. Kara is waking up. And in this moment she looks around the flight deck almost hoping that Leoben will be there, smiling at her, so that she can walk to him and let him brush back her hair and talk her back down into the dream.)
~
For
schiarire - At The Red Gates (original) - timestamp: before the events of the storyTwice in my life, only twice, did I see the braiding of my mother’s hair interrupted by one who was not an Eater. The first interruption was by a girl not many years younger than I, a girl with unsteady legs who sucked on the fingers of one hand and kept herself steady on the doorframe with the other. My mother’s braid had reached the nape of her neck, but the fast flicking of her fingers ceased as I pulled in my breath.
“Mama,” I said, uncertain. But my mother just looked at the child for a count of five, and then her fingers began to move again – flick, flick, the dark strands leaping and falling into place.
“It is nothing, my own Rose. It is fine.”
The child stood there – not making a sound beyond the moist noise of her fingers in her mouth – and blinked at my mother, following the movement of her hands. Not once did she glance at me, and by the time the braid was complete she had given a small cough and waddled away again. I was five. I did not think too deeply about the incident; the taboo had been broken, and my mother had sustained the break, and that was all.
The second time – three years later, or maybe four or five; my timeline is not as sturdy as it once was – it was a man who stumbled into the room, just I was refilling the red salt-pouch and my mother was dividing her loose hair into sections. I do not think he recognised us as those who walk, because he nodded at us with no fear or hatred or respect or any sign of the otherness that I was becoming accustomed to.
“I heard…” he said, and looked for a moment at the woman’s corpse.
“You will get out of this place,” my mother said. Her hands dropped from her hair, which fell over itself and untangled as she stood up. This time when the man looked us he must have seen the pouch, because his face paled. And there. The fear.
“I apologise,” he said, “I did not realise…” but my mother showed no signs of letting this pass as she had with the girl.
“Out,” she said again, her quiet voice all the more frightening for the expression on her face. It would have matched a yell. My mother’s slap drove the man backwards by two steps, but I think it was this eerie contrast in her face that pushed him the rest of the way out of the room.
~
For
agonistes - Nights of endless conversations (Firefly/Sandman) - timestamp: when Simon wakes upHe wakes, as ever, to the sound of his own stomach growling. This time it growls in unison with a faint muttering at the edge of hearing, but Simon ignores it in favour of savouring the warmth down his side and the smell of Kaylee's hair. When he opens his eyes, it is to the sight of a curious peering face all of three inches away from his own.
"Auhghgh," Simon says faintly, closing his eyes again and wondering that the lurch of his heart didn't wake Kaylee. "River..."
The muttering recedes a little, and coheres -
"What was that, mèimei?" he says, still half-asleep.
River's fingertips dance and hover over his forehead.
"Familial blessing," she says, solemn. "Customary."
This seeps through Simon's fatigue, but by the time his eyes have widened - "River, it's not..." - she's moved on and away, in the direction of the cockpit.
~
For
marenfic - Tesselation (BSG) - timestamp: future, the next time they're the same place in the cycleHe starts to click the handcuffs against the table and you sit very still because despite the reversal he will always be faster, stronger and see more of the pattern. You are not usually one to play a game where the odds are stacked so highly against you, but you don’t have a lot of choice. You are, at least, confident that he is not going to kill you. That will always be your prerogative. Captor or captive, it is always Leoben Conoy who dies.
You mention this, perhaps unwisely.
He smiles.
“To look at it another way,” he says, “it will always be you who has to keep going.”
You think about praying for his soul and you think about Casey’s arms stretched out towards her mother and you think about Lee, who is waiting on the other side of the hatch and who will look at you for exactly three seconds – making sure you still exist – before leaving. It’s pointless. It’s very Lee. You exist and you are Starbuck, indestructible, and you will always exist – which is, you suppose, Leoben’s point.
“What do you hear, Starbuck?” he whispers, and what you hear is his breath, and behind that: the cycle of time ticking by.
~
For
pirateygoodness - Almost Rhymes With Orange (BSG) - timestamp: half an hour before #4"I'm bored," Kara tells the ceiling, and you've shoved your chair backwards by a foot before you remember that you're mad at her. Or she's mad at you. After a moment's consideration, you decide that it really doesn't matter either way, and stand up.
"Going somewhere, Apollo?" Racetrack eyes your pile of credits.
"I'm beat." Quick smile. "Enjoy the game."
Kara will think of some excuse and everyone will pretend to believe her. Kara will push you backwards until you hit a solid surface and she'll pretend that what you're doing together is void, worthless, nothing. Kara will slip her fingers between cloth and skin and you'll pretend that it's enough.
These are the rules, and they say that you will expend some energy in making her gasp and writhe but expend even more in biting back the words that would make it mean something; in all the years leading up to this moment and the moments identical to it that have already passed, you never once imagined that it would be like this.
She kisses you as though she wants to erase you.
You try not to care.
~
For
tarheel - Benevolent Sibling (BSG) - timestamp: beforehand“Ms Biers?”
“This is all fascinating.” D’Anna flipped her hair over one shoulder and wished the damn kid would disappear, because she needed to plant this camera at floor level and he was just so attentive.
“Um, if you don’t mind, ma’am, we should probably keep this are clear –”
“Whoops!” D'Anna said rather desperately, making sure that her shirt gaped even more than usual as she tripped forwards. The boy flushed and looked away, and she took the opportunity to fix the tiny camera to the line where floor met wall. “There must be – ah – a patch of grease here.”
“I’ll let someone know,” Billy said, still polite, holding out a hand to help her up.
*
“Heeey, another one’s online.” Sharon fiddled with the remote, programming in the new channel, and looked around. “Where is everyone? Where’s Six?”
“Communing with God,” Leoben said distantly. “Was that Starbuck?”
“No. You can’t say that every time a blonde walks past a camera. Where’s Simon, then?”
“Attempting to convince Six that communing with God doesn’t have to involve nudity. Was that Starbuck?”
~
For
liminalliz - Kara-Leoben drabble (BSG) - timestamp: futureOne day she spits at him, really spits, and then spits in the figurative sense as well: “This is a nightmare,” (she spits), “and one day I’ll wake up from it.”
Yesterday she killed him. Today he is moving his head in slow circles, trying out the muscles.
“Are you sure that’s what you want, Starbuck?” he asks, sounding lazy and curious as he always does.
“Well, let me think,” and she laughs a bitter laugh that she recognises from her old self, and is glad of, because if she does think about this then she starts running into things like the fact that this enforced stasis is uncomplicated and so full of anger that – for the first time in her life – there is no room for guilt. “Wow, gee, I don’t know, would I rather be free or stuck up in here with you?”
“I don’t know either,” Leoben says, disarmingly. She hates him.
(Casey’s mother reaches out and the weight of the girl is lifted from her like eyelids opening; this is waking up. Kara is waking up. And in this moment she looks around the flight deck almost hoping that Leoben will be there, smiling at her, so that she can walk to him and let him brush back her hair and talk her back down into the dream.)
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