YORK IS NOT DEAD: Two Quick Drabbles

Here are two little things I wrote a really long time ago. (The word doc they are saved in is in fact titled YORK IS NOT DEAD.)

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1. Missing Persons

                York lets her touch him, run her hands over his shoulders and down to his wrists where she grips tight for a moment.

            “You’re dead,” Carolina says, voice cracking just a little.

            He nods. “That’s the official version.” He tries to say it jauntily but it just comes out hoarse. Because she’s been dead too, for the longest time, and now the both of them are resurrected in some kind of limbo where all of the old battles are waged but never won.

            “I looked for you.” It’s almost an accusation. Her fingers tighten around his wrists, nails scraping skin. “I searched the recovery records. I looked.”

            “I waited for you,” York replies, low and earnest. “I listened. I –”

            She interrupts him with a kiss, rough and confused but the familiarity of it overwhelms him. When she pulls away he reaches for her reflexively and –

            And there’s a light cough a few feet away. York blinks. He turns to see Wash looking a little amused and a little concerned, but mostly just serious. (He’s way too serious these days.)

            “Yes, Agent Washington?” Carolina says dryly.

            Wash shifts his feet. “It’s just. You know. There’s a fight waiting for us.”

            “Oh,” says York. “Isn’t there always?” He looks to Carolina, already readying her gun, and for the first time in a long time, he smiles.

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2. Leprechauns

“My last name is awesome,” he insists.

“Your last name sucks,” Carolina asserts.

“Come on,” he says, snuggling closer to her on the couch. “It’s got a ring to it. You gotta admit that at least.”

            She shrugs him off. “Don’t start.”

            “Wait, wait, just listen a sec. Appreciate the alliteration.” His voice dips low. “Mrs. Murray.”

            Carolina rolls her eyes. “I’d rather keep my last name. Especially since yours is so…fluffy.”

            “Fluffy?”

            “Fluffy.”

            York huffs. “It’s distinguished. It’s a classic! It’s Irish!”

            Carolina raises an eyebrow. “So are leprechauns.”

FA York and Carolina for anon

delkios:

Anon wanted York to find out Carolina’s past that made her… well, the thing that completely broke her down.  It’s not graphic, but it may be best that I warn: it still has a firm psychological stranglehold on her, so don’t read if you can’t handle a character still unable to come to terms with their trauma.
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One day Four-Seven went up to him and said with a quiet seriousness he’d never expected from her: “If Carolina tries to tell you something but has trouble getting it out, don’t say she doesn’t need to tell you.  She knows she doesn’t.  The fact she’s trying to tell you means she already made that choice, she’s just afraid of what you might think after.”

York didn’t get it then and he wouldn’t get it for almost another two weeks until he went up to their room after class and found Four-Seven standing outside the door.  She said nothing and just nodded her head for him to go inside with that quiet-seriousness again.

Carolina was sitting on Four-Seven’s bed, fingers crumpling tight the edges of her skirt and when she saw York she said a quiet, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replied, approaching slowly, waiting for permission to sit next to her.  “What’s up?”

She nodded and York kept a small buffer of space between them.  Far enough to not be potentially threatening, close enough that he wasn’t rejecting her.  “I want to tell you something.”

“Okay.”  When silence stretched between and Carolina’s mouth twisted in frustration, York remembered Four-Seven’s words.  “It’s okay,” he said.  “Take as long as you need.  I’m not going anywhere.”

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Empty

texelations:

She can still remember the first time she felt it, though she doesn’t remember the occasion—a flash card drill, or doing a math problem on the chalkboard, something like that—can still feel the way it coiled in her gut, cold and unforgiving. Can still feel it to this day, though the shame of the moment that caused it is long gone.

The feeling of knowing she had made a mistake. That she wasn’t good enough.

She thinks now that to anyone else the moment wouldn’t have meant much, would have been laughed off, would have been taken as a lesson not to sweat it when things went wrong. It must have been pretty minor, in the long run, if she didn’t even remember what had caused it.

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Fridgelancer CrackFic: Part Two. The anthropomorphic, sad version.

The fridge on the Mother of Invention saw many things. It saw York raiding through its contents for midnight snacks, more frequently after the other freelancers started to become nonfunctional. It saw Wyoming, trying to store gourmet cheese in one of its drawers and raging when he found that York had eaten it all the night before. It saw Carolina, doing inventory and generally criticizing the fridge for not having enough healthy foods. It saw Wash with armfuls of apples and bananas that he attempted to fit in the produce drawers.

For a while it saw CT, who sometimes came to the kitchen just to sit and think because no one else would look for her there. Sometimes she would be upset and sit in the corner by the fridge with her arms around her knees and her shoulders trembling just a little, and the fridge would long to comfort her. But it could not, because it was a fridge. And soon it didn’t see her at all anymore.

It saw South, who punched a dent in it one day for reasons unknown. And North, who woke up sometimes in the middle of the night and just really, really wanted ice cream (or maybe Theta wanted it; he couldn’t tell anymore). Maine came by for these little fat free yogurts that he secretly ate, with flavors like luscious raspberry and red velvet delight.

And occasionally it glimpsed Tex, who wandered aimlessly through the ship every night because she did not need to sleep and could not find rest anyway.  

The fridge knew them all, or at least it knew the part of them that sought out its kitchen for whatever reason, and it grew fond of them. Even Wyoming with his raging, and Carolina with her criticism. It took good care of their yogurts and cheeses and apples and bananas. It wanted to speak to them, to tell them that it valued each of them dearly. But being a fridge, it was incapable of speech.

So it stood, cool and stable whenever they needed it, and gently hummed when they opened its doors.

[RvB fic, Carolina] Instinct

Might be triggering, so it’s mostly under a cut. A rather depressing what-if fic about what happens after Carolina kills the Director. 

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who put this brain inside of me? 

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance. 

it will not say
“no.” 

— Charles Bukowski, “The Crunch”

The gun was still in her hand.

He hadn’t said a word when she’d appeared and it’d infuriated her. He was supposed to beg, or – be surprised, or something. But he just stood there, looking impossibly old.

[RvB fic] One Helluva Storm

They’d met in a rainstorm, like some kind of cliche romantic movie where the guy lends the girl his umbrella — except Leonard had no umbrella and Allison sure as hell wasn’t a girl. It was raining and he was sitting on the side of a highway that had never looked emptier, and he thought, Hell’s an empty highway in the pouring rain when your truck’s broken down and nobody’s coming for a million miles. He should’ve been sitting in the truck, utilizing the roof like any sane man, but Leonard was angry and lost and sanity was the least of his concerns.

And then like a miracle there she was, roaring up around the bend on an old guttering motorbike, and he had to figure her for a hallucination because who the fuck was crazy enough to get on a halfdead motorcycle in the middle of a goddamn rainstorm with no goddamn helmet? When she pulled up next to him her hair was so dark from the water that he couldn’t tell what color it was, and she bared her teeth in a grin and said in a slight accent that wasn’t Texan or anything else he knew, “Sure is one helluva storm! Name’s Allison. What’d you do to the truck?”

Sure is one helluva storm, the first words she spoke to him, and if he were a more literary man he’d have taken that for foreshadowing. A more spiritual man and he could call it an omen. But Leonard Church was a tired man more than he was anything else and so he just called it coincidence and bad luck wrapped into one.

To make a long story short it turned out Leonard L. Church was crazy enough to get on a halfdead motorcycle in the middle of a goddamn rainstorm with no goddamn helmet, because there he was sitting on this bike behind this even crazier woman who shouted above the motor and the storm, “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”

“LEONARD,” he yelled back, hoarse, because he didn’t talk much these days let alone yell and his voice just wasn’t used to that kind of a task. 

“NICE TO MEET YOU. HOLD ON.”

And he did, hands gripping her waist because holy shit this was a horrible idea. From the back of the motorbike, raindrops felt like thousands of cold needles stinging his bare arms and face but hell if he was gonna bail out now. He had miles to go but nowhere important to be and the needling rain felt a little like freedom.

A lot like needles, really. But a little like freedom, too.

[RvB fic] Mortal

[Notes: So, I love the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and I periodically write about it. It so happens that the Director and Allison suit this myth absolutely friggin’ perfectly, so if I were to do an RvB fic related to the myth you’d think I’d choose those two, right? …Nope. They parallel the myth too perfectly. I needed more of a challenge. So I went with York and Carolina. The iltalicized lines in between sections are lifted straight from the actual myth, mostly taken from this book I have called Mythology by Edith Hamilton — but they’re also on this site here. Also bee tee dubz please excuse my pretentiousness? Pretension. Whatever. I can’t help myself man.]

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Everything animate and inanimate followed him. He moved the rocks on the hillside and turned the courses of the rivers…     

            He never said it, not once, not even as a joke. But it was in the set of his shoulders, the swagger in his stride, the peaceful way he stared down danger on the training field and the battlefield alike. It whispered over every small, seemingly insignificant motion, like clicking a lighter on and off – I can do anything. I can do anything at all.

Untitled

tigerlily937:

A/N: DAYUM that last episode of RvB inspired some serious fanfics/fanart. This is just my stupid headcanon on what Carolina said at Ererra. Stupid story, extremely cheesy and generic, I don’t even know why you’re reading this. Also it would make this vomit a little better if we knew their actual names but what the hell. 

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That was really cute, and I loved the dialogue, and you know what? Don’t ever insult your writing when you’re showing it to people. Just let it be. Chances are it’s about ten thousand times better than you think it is, as seems to be the case here. =)

catch.

ichidou:

ichidou:

I pretty much wrote this for the last line. Set in the future of a Wash/fem!York AU where she breaks him out of Project Freelancer; at this point they’ve been married several years, the war is over, and so forth.

Or: I am a giant sucker for writing Wash as a dad. Oops.

She’s always kept Wash on a routine, ever since she broke him out of Project Freelancer, and though at first it had simply been one of the treatments they’d used to help bring him back to sanity, it’s become a regular part of their lives in the years since. York knows that by the time she gets home from work every day, he and Teddy will be flopped on the couch watching cartoons after a long day out and about, the cats curled up at Wash’s side.

Teddy’s old enough that he doesn’t take naps anymore, but she’s found the two of them curled up together more than once, and sometimes she doesn’t bother to disturb them, just settling onto the couch beside them and wrapping her arms around her two favorite men. There’s nothing like the way Wash smiles at her when he wakes, turning to press a kiss against her cheek, and Teddy never fails to light up at the sight of her, crawling over Wash’s lap and into hers with a grin so wide she wonders how it even fits on his face.

She knows things can’t stay this way forever, but they’re good now, and honestly, after all the shit they’ve been through, York’s glad for it.

They spend Sundays at the park around the corner, and Wash has improved his cooking enough that York can trust him to make a couple sandwiches for a picnic lunch. Delta always stays by her side, when they go out, even if there are other dogs running around the park, and York can’t help but think that for all the ways the little brown retriever is nothing like the AI he’s named for, he always seems to know when she’s aching for his company.

Teddy’s always full of energy, bursting at the seams, and she tries to give Wash a break on the weekends, knowing he’s worn out from looking after their son every day, but some days all Teddy wants is to play with his dad. York gives both of them a wide smile as Teddy tugs Wash towards the open field, pushing the baseball glove at him, and just seeing the way Wash reacts to him, letting out a mock sigh as he pulls it on, is worth every minute she’s away from them.

York’s always encouraged Wash to find things he likes to occupy his time, and to leave the business of making money for them to live on to her, but not even in her wildest dreams had she thought he’d take so well to fatherhood. He’s more content spending his time looking after Teddy than he ever was in the long months he spent rehabilitating, once Epsilon had loosed his grip on the tattered remains of his mind. Every now and then, she’d thought about suggesting that he find something more, something to make him feel like he’s doing something productive, but he’d loved spending time with Teddy so much that it turned into a moot point, after time.

Teddy is their lives now, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

York leans back on the ratty old picnic blanket, the one she knows she really ought to replace one of these days, and curls one arm around Delta, fingers playing against his smooth green collar. Her other hand slips down over her stomach, over the curve she’s still getting used to all over again, and just watches Wash and Teddy run back and forth, tossing a baseball back and forth under the summer sun.

“Dad! Hey, Dad!” York just smiles to herself as Teddy jumps up, throwing the ball as hard as he can into Wash’s glove, and though he’s never been the loudest child his words carry across the wind. “How was that?”

“That,” Wash calls back, beaming back at his son with all the pride in the world, “was the best throw ever. Of all time.”

And rebloggin’ for the night crew.

You know I’m the most ridiculous Carolina/York person BUT I still think this pairing is really sweet, and you’re an amazing writer, and this was wonderful and made me smile. =) Like that. Except with an actual face.

[RvB fic, York and Carolina]

(Wrote this after last week’s episode and forgot about it till just now.)

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“You don’t have to watch over me,” she says, unknowingly echoing North. Except she means it sort of like a threat, not a comfort. York takes a long sip of his coffee, which by the way is cold, stale, undersweetened and over-roasted, and all in all basically liquified despair – but hey, it’s keeping him awake.

            “I can handle myself,” Carolina goes on, watching him. She’s changed out of the armor, t-shirt and sweats now, but she’s still got that fighting mask. He hasn’t seen her smile in too long.

            I can handle myself. Blatant lie, that one, because nobody can handle Carolina. Including Carolina. York’s never been good at lies himself but he doesn’t mind letting one slip when he hears it, figures it for a learning experience. He’s better at drawing the truth out of the lie, picking at dishonesty like he would any other lock.

            So he lifts his gaze from the mug and says, “Doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

            The fighting glare shifts a bit, gets replaced by a mutinous sort of confusion. “That last run was my best time yet.”

            “I don’t care about the time.”

            “I do.”

            “Yeah.” He sighs, sips from his awful mug of awfulness again, and his words come out in this ramble of honesty that only happens at a certain time of night. “You care about the time, and about the board, and about the team and the missions and the floorplans for the missions and you sure care about a whole lot of stuff, Carolina, but at the end of the day who the hell’s left to care about you?”

            She frowns. “Let me worry about that.”

            York laughs. “Y’know, I would, but it’s the only goddamn thing you’re not any good at.”

fic poooost

chiiwritesshit:

Alive and Well

Summary:

Everyone’s luck runs out sometime- Carolina just didn’t expect theirs to run out before hers.

Link!

also if anyone wants to drop fic prompts and shit for rvb fics, i will gladly (try!!!) to do them?

Why are you breaking my heart.

This is fantastic.

What’s Lost - RvB fic

This is set in that afterlife I keep writing about. During Season 8, when Wash is super injured, I thought maybe he’d be on the verge of death for a bit and be able to cross the lines somewhat. Wrote this while mentally exhausted so excuse any errors.

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            Wash appears sort of hazily, fading in and out sometimes – he’s gasping and bloody and there’s ice breaking up through the sand all around him, cradling his trembling body. CT gets there first; she’s always watching, keeping track of newcomers. She gets there first and she kneels down and brushes the hair from his forehead while he shudders and fades back and forth. She murmurs something York can’t hear and Wash reaches for her hand but she draws back, shifts away. She doesn’t want him to stay here. Doesn’t want him to want it. Not yet.

            York edges closer to take a look at him. “Hey, man,” he says. “You’re breaking death protocol here.”

            North leans down to clap him on the shoulder. “Yeah, how ‘bout you head on home?” he says kindly.

            Home. Head home. He’s got to, because he can’t stay here, because he’s one of the only ones left.

            One of.

            Wash won’t remember it later, not really – but York kneels down and ruffles his hair anyway. Gently, careful to keep clear of the blood trails.

             “C’mon, kid,” he murmurs. “You gotta go back and find her for me, okay?”

            Wash looks up, blinks, breathes open-mouthed and struggling. Blood trickles from his lips. But he’s alive. Dead people don’t feel that kind of pain.

            “You go and find her,” York repeats, stepping back as Wash starts to fade for real this time. Wash locks eyes with him for a second and maybe he nods, maybe it’s just a glitch in the going-back-to-the-land-of-the-living kind of thing.

            And he won’t remember it later, no…but maybe he’ll feel it. Like an instinct. Find what’s lost. It’s his job, isn’t it? It’s what he’s always done. Find what’s lost.