halloween - delayed, but still happening!
Nov. 4th, 2009 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseIt's still the, er, Halloween season, right? Halloween fics are still coming! If yours isn't in this batch, I hope to have it finished by tomorrow - what with various charging issues and so on as well as, um, falling asleep on planes and other things like that, I didn't get quite as much cohesive writing time as I'd hoped on the trip. So I'm still playing a bit of catch-up. :)
But here's a few to get us started!
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zinjadu:
There's a reason why Mulder and Scully don't get invited to Bureau parties, and its nothing to do with the X-Files.
"Just Once Would Be Too Much"
It wasn’t often that an invitation to one of the bureau’s office parties descended as far as the basement. Scully wasn’t sure what they’d done to deserve this one, particularly, although there was a possibility that the new mailing clerk, who she’d seen smiling rather vacuously on Mulder in the hall in the past weeks, might have had something to do with it. Although she generally struggled to think well of the other women in the office (on the basis that most of the men were unlikely to bother), Scully was fairly certain that the girl’s resume’d had less to do with her appointment than the fact that her legs seemed about twice as long as was normal for a human of her height, and her shirts about the same percentage lower than was strictly appropriate for a government office. Maybe she had hidden depths - maybe she could type a thousand words a minute and speak Mandarin, Czech, and Russian. And, then again, maybe Mulder had been right to suggest that it had been little grey men from outer space who’d stolen Scully’s yogurt from the office mini-fridge, and then dropped the lid to it into Mulder’s trash can to frame him. Stranger things, to Scully’s eternal chagrin, had in fact been known to happen.
And maybe situations stranger still awaited them in the near future - after all, Mulder had agreed to come to the bureau Halloween party, and had even rolled his eyes and asserted that yes, he’d read the invitation and knew that it was not the sort of Halloween party to which one was meant to wear a Star Trek uniform and plastic pointy ears. If there was one thing Scully had learned from her time working on the X-Files, it was that there really was no limit to the strangeness that was in the world. Just this once, maybe even her partner could surprise her.
For her own part, she’d picked out an ankle-length dress in dark copper-brown satin, with a spray of black lace at the neckline, paired with a choker and earrings of black beads and amber. The overall effect, she decided after looking in the mirror, was subdued and formal enough to please the propriety mavens in the office, but just slightly light-hearted, and self-aware in a “yes, I realize I work on the ‘spooky’ cases, isn’t it funny?’ sort of way. Black heels and a beaded black evening bag finished the ensemble, and for once it was a pleasure to leave the revolver in the drawer of her dresser. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d dressed this nicely for something that wasn’t an undercover job. For that matter, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d dressed this nicely at all.
“Must’ve been Angie’s wedding,” she muttered as she finished her makeup. Her college roommate had kindly invited her out to her ceremony in Colorado back... God, had it really been five years before? “Well past time to get out the nice shoes again.”
The door chimed, and Scully glanced at the clock. For once in his life, Mulder was on time.
All in all, Scully thought, it really wasn’t that strange that whats-her-name had taken an interest in Mulder. He was a good-looking man, in his peculiar way. And he was oddly considerate... with an emphasis on the ‘oddly,’ it had to be admitted, but reliability was still something to be prized. And he did surprise her sometimes. And make her laugh...
“Sorry, I was just finishing up--” Scully opened the door and stared at her partner. At Mulder. At the moment, she felt he was more an enemy than a partner. “Mulder, what in God’s name are you wearing?”
“Do you like it?” Mulder’s voice came, muffled by a layer of heavy latex.
“What is it?”
“Aww, come on, Scully! You remember Nixon!”
“Of course I remember Nixon, Mulder. I’m asking why you’re wearing a latex cartoon of his face on your head.”
He made two v-for-victory signs with his fingers. “For the party!” The mask continued to grin inanely, but Scully was sure Mulder’s face was making the same stupid expression underneath it.
“Mulder... this isn’t a costume party.”
“It’s a Halloween party! You can’t have a Halloween party without costumes!”
“I told you, Mulder--”
“You said ‘no stupid costumes that’ll get us into trouble with the brass,’ Scully. No monsters, no aliens, no science fiction characters, no giant sandwich boards made up to look like a box of cereal or something. And I am wearing a tie!”
Scully pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just take off the damned mask, Mulder, and let’s get out of here. We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry, and the news says there’s bad traffice on fifteenth.”
“Okay, g-woman.”
“And for God’s sake, Mulder - can’t you just call me Dana? Just this one night?”
“Of course. Dana. Sure.” He tossed the mask onto her couch, and held out his arm. Maybe this wouldn’t be that bad, after all. A night without a single problem wouldn’t be a night with Mulder, but at least the mask had been an easy fix. Scully breathed a deep sigh, and allowed him to escort her out of her apartment.
She should have known something else would happen - the drive went perfectly, and Mulder even let her choose the radio station without making the slightest fuss. Later, Scully would claim he’d intentionally lulled her into a false sense of security.
Mulder, for his part, would say she’d never said anything about his choice of tie.
* * *
Forruuger: Spike & Giles (or, you know... Spike/Giles... :P) with Halloween-loving Giles and disapproving Spike :)
"Watchful"
“You are not really going to put that on.”
Giles looked over his shoulder at the disapproving vampire who slouched on his sofa, then down at the woven poncho and sombrero he’d just pulled out of the closet. “Of course I am. It’s Halloween.”
Spike snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. That piece of tarted up consumerism? It’s not for us.”
“Who, exactly, do you mean by ‘us?’ I wasn’t aware we had any common society to speak of.”
“You mean apart from being two lone Englishmen here in California, two full adults in a horde barely out of their teens, comrades-in-arms, and, oh yeah, let’s not forget - two men of the night.”
“Men of the night?” It was Giles’ turn to snort, now. “A phrase far more suited to dubiously-written adult movies than to my own life, thank you. And as for you, unless your chip has stopped working, I can hardly see how it--”
“Chip or not, I’m still a vampire.”
“Hmph.”
“And you are still an old sorcerer, no matter how much you pretend you really are that stuffy librarian exterior you wear for the little kiddies,” Spike continued, ignoring Giles’ noise of protest and leaning forward.
His whole body language attuned to Giles as he leaned his bare elbows on black-denim-clad knees. While his posture typically was a studied display that he couldn’t care less about what was going on around him, Spike had a way of dropping that facade in an instant in favor of an attentiveness that could make one feel like the only man in the world. His sharp cheekbones cast shadows in the dim light of Giles’ living room, his white hair and inhumanly pale skin shone in the lamp-light, and the dark roots of his hair seemed to draw attention to eyelashes and eyes both shockingly dark for the rest of his coloring.
Spike’s sudden displays of attentiveness, Giles thought with some embarrassment, seemed to draw out a similar fascination in those around him... whether or not they wanted to reciprocate.
“I know the kind of crowd you went with when you were young, Watcher. I ran with that sort, too. No trouble was too much, no darkness too dark, no perversion too--”
“I beg your pardon,” Giles interrupted in a tone of quiet ice.
“I won’t tell them.” Spike waved his hand dismissively toward the door - neither of them needed to speak for it to be clear he meant Buffy and the other children. Children. Giles sighed - even his own thoughts betrayed that of course Spike was right. As much as he hated to admit it, he could never truly think of Buffy and her cohorts as anything but children to be protected and cared for, whereas Spike, despite his appearance, was... something else. An equal?
“We’ve both seen what’s in the shadows, Watcher,” Spike told him, a cheeky grin touching his lips as if he knew exactly what Giles was thinking. “What did you do on All Hallow’s in the old days, hmm? I bet it wasn’t dressing up in a stupid sombrero and passing out candy.”
“No.”
“Summon a few demons, eh, Rupes?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? Too informal? Not stodgy enough for you? Does it remind you too much of the old days?”
“Not hardly. It sounds idiotic.”
To Giles’ surprise, Spike laughed softly. “Fine, then. What should I call you?”
“I think ‘Watcher’ will do just fine, if you can’t stay with ‘Giles,’ like everyone else.”
“I’m not a surname kind of bloke.” Spike stood up and stretched - languid, like a cat. His bones were far too long, and the little bit of taut white stomach that showed when his t-shirt rode up... Giles turned away and took off his glasses, wiping them with a handkerchief.
“Rupert.”
It’s been too long since someone’s called him that. The name is tied up with memories like spider’s webs around a fly - Olivia, Jenny, Wesley, his father... a world of disappointments of every shape and form. “Certainly not that, either.”
A glance over his glasses shows Spike grinning cheekily, his dark eyes shining. “Watcher.”
Spike had called him by that title a thousand times. Never like this. It sounds soft in his mouth, now, as though he pronounced it with the greatest care, a little bit like a question, a little bit like an order. Giles could never have admitted it to another living being, but something in him responds to that tone. It calls to the part of him he hasn’t let out in years, and it’s been too long since he’s let that part of him out to play for a little bit.
Spike stalks forward - the only word for it, with the way the vampire slides his hips, tilts his head, arches his shoulders. He’s shorter than Giles, but he exudes something else, something not so much inhuman as completely human, and yet utterly, unquestionably of the night, and the part of Giles that long ago left Oxford for a life slumming in London with a wild crowd of magicians and vagabonds has missed that visceral liveliness more than he could ever have admitted to anyone else.
With the careful lead-up the vampire had created - giving him a chance to back off, perhaps? Could Spike really be so considerate? - it could hardly have been a surprise when one long, black-varnished hand reached up and tugged Giles’ jaw down toward him, pulling him into a fierce kiss.
“What’d your old friends in the bad crowd call you, Watcher?” Spike murmured against his throat. The breath of his words was weirdly cool.
“Ripper.”
Spike laughed softly, but it was an oddly friendly laugh. The laugh of comrades, of equals. Of two men who understood the world, and all that was in it, of darkness and of light.
“Ripper it is, then.”
* * *
Forbeam_oflight: Romana & Sally Sparrow, or Romana/Sally or Romana is Sally. A Chance meeting at a Hallowe'en party - something along teh lines of 'This, again?'
"Halloween Monster Movie Mash, and the End of the World Again"
Halloween was popular with the kind of clients the shop brought in, so they’d decided to have a party for it. Show a few old Dracula movies, the Blair Witch project, Psycho, things like that, and try to sell some books and DVDs, too. It had been Sally’s idea to sell refreshments, too, and to give out free popcorn - in part because nobody in their right mind would have popcorn without something to drink, and then half the people would want candy or a pastry or something to go with it. The other part was that popcorn was cheap, and a lot more people would come to anything that offered free food. Larry hadn’t really understood her reasoning at first, but he’d gone along with it because he’d got used to Sally making all the big decisions about the shop. To her shock, Sally was turning out to be rather good at running a business... which was a good thing, because apart from knowing everything about everything in the DVD stock, Larry was total rubbish at it.
Halfway through some absurd old Christopher Lee Dracula movie, a woman burst in through the front door of the shop. She had long darkish blonde hair, and wore a red jacket and thigh-high hunting boots. It didn’t quite look like a costume, but given some of the outfits they’d gotten that claimed to be, it was hard to tell for sure. She scanned the shop, and then locked eyes with Sally.
“There you are!”
Sally sighed. She’d never seen the woman in her life. At least not yet. And that wasn’t nearly as much of a surprise as she wished it was.
“If it’s the angels again--” she began.
“No, no--”
“Then how you know me?”
The blonde woman pursed her lips. “You’ve already seen the angels, so you already know something about time travel. I’m a time traveller.”
“Like the Doctor?”
“I suppose, if you insist.” She smiled. “You can call me Romana.
“Like Rome? Italy?” Sally clarified, when the woman stared blankly at her. “Romanitas... whatever?”
“No, like Romanadvoratrelundar. If it’s too complicated, you can call me ‘Fred.’”
“I’ll manage.” Sally was beginning to think this new time traveller was just as tiring as the Doctor, if slightly less perplexing. “I was just curious... never mind. Just a coincidence.”
“It’s best not to believe too much in those, I’ve found,” Romana pointed out. “In any event, I need your help. There’s an invasion force on the way, and with this ‘Halloween’ of yours in full force, I’m afraid the proper authorities won’t notice until it’s far too late to do anything about it. Besides, the proper authorities haven’t got this.” She lifted a long, silvery-crystal object out of her coat-pocket. It looked a bit like a really artistic torch.
“And that is...?”
“A very entertaining weapon. You’ll like it. Trust me.” The woman grinned, showing what seemed to be far too many teeth for such a delicate face. It should have been appalling, Sally thought, but somehow it worked on her.
“How do you know I’ll like it?”
“Because you designed it. Here, take it - I have my own. We’d better get going, if we’re going to stop the invasion.”
“Wait - what do you mean I designed it?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Romana muttered, and then fixed Sally with a stern look. “Do you like running a DVD shop, Sally Sparrow? Or do you want a side-line in time-space travel and occasionally saving the universe? I can even make sure you’re back in time to do the books once a month, if you like. Really, not like whatever the Doctor would have told you, if you’ve spent time with him.”
Sally thought about it. “Hand over the torch. Let’s get those aliens.”
“Sally?” Larry caught her arm. “But--”
“Don’t fuss, Larry. I’ll be back. And it’ll be good for you to figure out how to run the stocking system by yourself for a while. Just take good records so I don’t have to do it all over again when I get back. It’s tiring work, saving the world. I’m bound to need a rest sooner or later.” She kissed him on the cheek, grabbed the crystal torch from Romana, and took the other woman’s proffered hand.
The shop could wait. She had a world to save. Again.
But here's a few to get us started!
For
zinjadu: There's a reason why Mulder and Scully don't get invited to Bureau parties, and its nothing to do with the X-Files.
"Just Once Would Be Too Much"
It wasn’t often that an invitation to one of the bureau’s office parties descended as far as the basement. Scully wasn’t sure what they’d done to deserve this one, particularly, although there was a possibility that the new mailing clerk, who she’d seen smiling rather vacuously on Mulder in the hall in the past weeks, might have had something to do with it. Although she generally struggled to think well of the other women in the office (on the basis that most of the men were unlikely to bother), Scully was fairly certain that the girl’s resume’d had less to do with her appointment than the fact that her legs seemed about twice as long as was normal for a human of her height, and her shirts about the same percentage lower than was strictly appropriate for a government office. Maybe she had hidden depths - maybe she could type a thousand words a minute and speak Mandarin, Czech, and Russian. And, then again, maybe Mulder had been right to suggest that it had been little grey men from outer space who’d stolen Scully’s yogurt from the office mini-fridge, and then dropped the lid to it into Mulder’s trash can to frame him. Stranger things, to Scully’s eternal chagrin, had in fact been known to happen.
And maybe situations stranger still awaited them in the near future - after all, Mulder had agreed to come to the bureau Halloween party, and had even rolled his eyes and asserted that yes, he’d read the invitation and knew that it was not the sort of Halloween party to which one was meant to wear a Star Trek uniform and plastic pointy ears. If there was one thing Scully had learned from her time working on the X-Files, it was that there really was no limit to the strangeness that was in the world. Just this once, maybe even her partner could surprise her.
For her own part, she’d picked out an ankle-length dress in dark copper-brown satin, with a spray of black lace at the neckline, paired with a choker and earrings of black beads and amber. The overall effect, she decided after looking in the mirror, was subdued and formal enough to please the propriety mavens in the office, but just slightly light-hearted, and self-aware in a “yes, I realize I work on the ‘spooky’ cases, isn’t it funny?’ sort of way. Black heels and a beaded black evening bag finished the ensemble, and for once it was a pleasure to leave the revolver in the drawer of her dresser. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d dressed this nicely for something that wasn’t an undercover job. For that matter, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d dressed this nicely at all.
“Must’ve been Angie’s wedding,” she muttered as she finished her makeup. Her college roommate had kindly invited her out to her ceremony in Colorado back... God, had it really been five years before? “Well past time to get out the nice shoes again.”
The door chimed, and Scully glanced at the clock. For once in his life, Mulder was on time.
All in all, Scully thought, it really wasn’t that strange that whats-her-name had taken an interest in Mulder. He was a good-looking man, in his peculiar way. And he was oddly considerate... with an emphasis on the ‘oddly,’ it had to be admitted, but reliability was still something to be prized. And he did surprise her sometimes. And make her laugh...
“Sorry, I was just finishing up--” Scully opened the door and stared at her partner. At Mulder. At the moment, she felt he was more an enemy than a partner. “Mulder, what in God’s name are you wearing?”
“Do you like it?” Mulder’s voice came, muffled by a layer of heavy latex.
“What is it?”
“Aww, come on, Scully! You remember Nixon!”
“Of course I remember Nixon, Mulder. I’m asking why you’re wearing a latex cartoon of his face on your head.”
He made two v-for-victory signs with his fingers. “For the party!” The mask continued to grin inanely, but Scully was sure Mulder’s face was making the same stupid expression underneath it.
“Mulder... this isn’t a costume party.”
“It’s a Halloween party! You can’t have a Halloween party without costumes!”
“I told you, Mulder--”
“You said ‘no stupid costumes that’ll get us into trouble with the brass,’ Scully. No monsters, no aliens, no science fiction characters, no giant sandwich boards made up to look like a box of cereal or something. And I am wearing a tie!”
Scully pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just take off the damned mask, Mulder, and let’s get out of here. We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry, and the news says there’s bad traffice on fifteenth.”
“Okay, g-woman.”
“And for God’s sake, Mulder - can’t you just call me Dana? Just this one night?”
“Of course. Dana. Sure.” He tossed the mask onto her couch, and held out his arm. Maybe this wouldn’t be that bad, after all. A night without a single problem wouldn’t be a night with Mulder, but at least the mask had been an easy fix. Scully breathed a deep sigh, and allowed him to escort her out of her apartment.
She should have known something else would happen - the drive went perfectly, and Mulder even let her choose the radio station without making the slightest fuss. Later, Scully would claim he’d intentionally lulled her into a false sense of security.
Mulder, for his part, would say she’d never said anything about his choice of tie.
* * *
For
ruuger: Spike & Giles (or, you know... Spike/Giles... :P) with Halloween-loving Giles and disapproving Spike :) "Watchful"
“You are not really going to put that on.”
Giles looked over his shoulder at the disapproving vampire who slouched on his sofa, then down at the woven poncho and sombrero he’d just pulled out of the closet. “Of course I am. It’s Halloween.”
Spike snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. That piece of tarted up consumerism? It’s not for us.”
“Who, exactly, do you mean by ‘us?’ I wasn’t aware we had any common society to speak of.”
“You mean apart from being two lone Englishmen here in California, two full adults in a horde barely out of their teens, comrades-in-arms, and, oh yeah, let’s not forget - two men of the night.”
“Men of the night?” It was Giles’ turn to snort, now. “A phrase far more suited to dubiously-written adult movies than to my own life, thank you. And as for you, unless your chip has stopped working, I can hardly see how it--”
“Chip or not, I’m still a vampire.”
“Hmph.”
“And you are still an old sorcerer, no matter how much you pretend you really are that stuffy librarian exterior you wear for the little kiddies,” Spike continued, ignoring Giles’ noise of protest and leaning forward.
His whole body language attuned to Giles as he leaned his bare elbows on black-denim-clad knees. While his posture typically was a studied display that he couldn’t care less about what was going on around him, Spike had a way of dropping that facade in an instant in favor of an attentiveness that could make one feel like the only man in the world. His sharp cheekbones cast shadows in the dim light of Giles’ living room, his white hair and inhumanly pale skin shone in the lamp-light, and the dark roots of his hair seemed to draw attention to eyelashes and eyes both shockingly dark for the rest of his coloring.
Spike’s sudden displays of attentiveness, Giles thought with some embarrassment, seemed to draw out a similar fascination in those around him... whether or not they wanted to reciprocate.
“I know the kind of crowd you went with when you were young, Watcher. I ran with that sort, too. No trouble was too much, no darkness too dark, no perversion too--”
“I beg your pardon,” Giles interrupted in a tone of quiet ice.
“I won’t tell them.” Spike waved his hand dismissively toward the door - neither of them needed to speak for it to be clear he meant Buffy and the other children. Children. Giles sighed - even his own thoughts betrayed that of course Spike was right. As much as he hated to admit it, he could never truly think of Buffy and her cohorts as anything but children to be protected and cared for, whereas Spike, despite his appearance, was... something else. An equal?
“We’ve both seen what’s in the shadows, Watcher,” Spike told him, a cheeky grin touching his lips as if he knew exactly what Giles was thinking. “What did you do on All Hallow’s in the old days, hmm? I bet it wasn’t dressing up in a stupid sombrero and passing out candy.”
“No.”
“Summon a few demons, eh, Rupes?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? Too informal? Not stodgy enough for you? Does it remind you too much of the old days?”
“Not hardly. It sounds idiotic.”
To Giles’ surprise, Spike laughed softly. “Fine, then. What should I call you?”
“I think ‘Watcher’ will do just fine, if you can’t stay with ‘Giles,’ like everyone else.”
“I’m not a surname kind of bloke.” Spike stood up and stretched - languid, like a cat. His bones were far too long, and the little bit of taut white stomach that showed when his t-shirt rode up... Giles turned away and took off his glasses, wiping them with a handkerchief.
“Rupert.”
It’s been too long since someone’s called him that. The name is tied up with memories like spider’s webs around a fly - Olivia, Jenny, Wesley, his father... a world of disappointments of every shape and form. “Certainly not that, either.”
A glance over his glasses shows Spike grinning cheekily, his dark eyes shining. “Watcher.”
Spike had called him by that title a thousand times. Never like this. It sounds soft in his mouth, now, as though he pronounced it with the greatest care, a little bit like a question, a little bit like an order. Giles could never have admitted it to another living being, but something in him responds to that tone. It calls to the part of him he hasn’t let out in years, and it’s been too long since he’s let that part of him out to play for a little bit.
Spike stalks forward - the only word for it, with the way the vampire slides his hips, tilts his head, arches his shoulders. He’s shorter than Giles, but he exudes something else, something not so much inhuman as completely human, and yet utterly, unquestionably of the night, and the part of Giles that long ago left Oxford for a life slumming in London with a wild crowd of magicians and vagabonds has missed that visceral liveliness more than he could ever have admitted to anyone else.
With the careful lead-up the vampire had created - giving him a chance to back off, perhaps? Could Spike really be so considerate? - it could hardly have been a surprise when one long, black-varnished hand reached up and tugged Giles’ jaw down toward him, pulling him into a fierce kiss.
“What’d your old friends in the bad crowd call you, Watcher?” Spike murmured against his throat. The breath of his words was weirdly cool.
“Ripper.”
Spike laughed softly, but it was an oddly friendly laugh. The laugh of comrades, of equals. Of two men who understood the world, and all that was in it, of darkness and of light.
“Ripper it is, then.”
* * *
For
beam_oflight: Romana & Sally Sparrow, or Romana/Sally or Romana is Sally. A Chance meeting at a Hallowe'en party - something along teh lines of 'This, again?'"Halloween Monster Movie Mash, and the End of the World Again"
Halloween was popular with the kind of clients the shop brought in, so they’d decided to have a party for it. Show a few old Dracula movies, the Blair Witch project, Psycho, things like that, and try to sell some books and DVDs, too. It had been Sally’s idea to sell refreshments, too, and to give out free popcorn - in part because nobody in their right mind would have popcorn without something to drink, and then half the people would want candy or a pastry or something to go with it. The other part was that popcorn was cheap, and a lot more people would come to anything that offered free food. Larry hadn’t really understood her reasoning at first, but he’d gone along with it because he’d got used to Sally making all the big decisions about the shop. To her shock, Sally was turning out to be rather good at running a business... which was a good thing, because apart from knowing everything about everything in the DVD stock, Larry was total rubbish at it.
Halfway through some absurd old Christopher Lee Dracula movie, a woman burst in through the front door of the shop. She had long darkish blonde hair, and wore a red jacket and thigh-high hunting boots. It didn’t quite look like a costume, but given some of the outfits they’d gotten that claimed to be, it was hard to tell for sure. She scanned the shop, and then locked eyes with Sally.
“There you are!”
Sally sighed. She’d never seen the woman in her life. At least not yet. And that wasn’t nearly as much of a surprise as she wished it was.
“If it’s the angels again--” she began.
“No, no--”
“Then how you know me?”
The blonde woman pursed her lips. “You’ve already seen the angels, so you already know something about time travel. I’m a time traveller.”
“Like the Doctor?”
“I suppose, if you insist.” She smiled. “You can call me Romana.
“Like Rome? Italy?” Sally clarified, when the woman stared blankly at her. “Romanitas... whatever?”
“No, like Romanadvoratrelundar. If it’s too complicated, you can call me ‘Fred.’”
“I’ll manage.” Sally was beginning to think this new time traveller was just as tiring as the Doctor, if slightly less perplexing. “I was just curious... never mind. Just a coincidence.”
“It’s best not to believe too much in those, I’ve found,” Romana pointed out. “In any event, I need your help. There’s an invasion force on the way, and with this ‘Halloween’ of yours in full force, I’m afraid the proper authorities won’t notice until it’s far too late to do anything about it. Besides, the proper authorities haven’t got this.” She lifted a long, silvery-crystal object out of her coat-pocket. It looked a bit like a really artistic torch.
“And that is...?”
“A very entertaining weapon. You’ll like it. Trust me.” The woman grinned, showing what seemed to be far too many teeth for such a delicate face. It should have been appalling, Sally thought, but somehow it worked on her.
“How do you know I’ll like it?”
“Because you designed it. Here, take it - I have my own. We’d better get going, if we’re going to stop the invasion.”
“Wait - what do you mean I designed it?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Romana muttered, and then fixed Sally with a stern look. “Do you like running a DVD shop, Sally Sparrow? Or do you want a side-line in time-space travel and occasionally saving the universe? I can even make sure you’re back in time to do the books once a month, if you like. Really, not like whatever the Doctor would have told you, if you’ve spent time with him.”
Sally thought about it. “Hand over the torch. Let’s get those aliens.”
“Sally?” Larry caught her arm. “But--”
“Don’t fuss, Larry. I’ll be back. And it’ll be good for you to figure out how to run the stocking system by yourself for a while. Just take good records so I don’t have to do it all over again when I get back. It’s tiring work, saving the world. I’m bound to need a rest sooner or later.” She kissed him on the cheek, grabbed the crystal torch from Romana, and took the other woman’s proffered hand.
The shop could wait. She had a world to save. Again.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 02:56 pm (UTC)Oh, Mulder, you idiot. You're so lucky Scully loves your crazy ass.
Also, liked the tension between Spike and Giles. Fab.
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Date: 2009-11-05 05:13 pm (UTC)Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed them!
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Date: 2009-11-05 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 05:41 pm (UTC)I miss all of these, too, although I admit I'm equal parts nervous and excited for the new Doctor Who stuff coming up. The number of ways Davies could turn these last three episodes into total disasters boggles my poor little mind. But it will be fun nonetheless!
(And a big yes re: Uther. I love my Uther... I just love Giles a whoooole lot more. ;) ♥)
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Date: 2009-11-05 05:44 pm (UTC)Haha, no one beats Giles!
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Date: 2009-11-05 06:27 pm (UTC)No one! ...Well, except maybe Nine.
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Date: 2009-11-05 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 07:40 am (UTC)