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Title: Cotton Breathes
Fandom: Tin Man
Characters/Pairings: Azkadellia, Glitch, background DG
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 390
Notes: for Erinm_4600.
Prompt: cotton, party hat, twelve
DG had sent her to find him, the conniving little brat. Her sister knew full well that Azkadellia would cheerfully face a lynch mob while helpless (and there had been a few) than face the Advisor. No. Not the Advisor. Not anymore. Glitch, now. She had to remember that. His name was Glitch, even if he now remembered being Ambrose.
She heard the clatter from his workshop as she entered, ready to tell him that he was wanted at the party, and get the hell back out of there. But when she went in, what she saw stopped her dead.
The thin scarecrow of a man her old friend had become stood in the center of a maelstrom. About a dozen party hats were scattered around him as he stood in the center, wringing his hands in between darting out to grab one and drop it again. "Ad ... Glitch?" she asked, uncertainly, and tried not to flinch when he leapt away from the sound of her voice. He turned to her, his eyes wide, something very helpless in his look of raw panic. "What's wrong?"
"I can't find it!" he said, in one rapid burst. "There's no cotton. I need a cotton hat!"
Azkadellia blinked at him, wondering if something was wrong. He'd not been so childish in a long time, since his rebrainment. "Why?" she asked, cautiously, suddenly afraid of reversion. They'd been warned ...
But when he looked at her again, it was Ambrose looking sadly out of those eyes at her. "Cotton breathes," he said, in the old lecturing voice she remembered. "I need something to hide ... well. To hide it." She couldn't stop this flinch. "But ... I've gotten so used to air around ... around the old brain-pan, you know?" He looked so sad, so sorry to be hurting her, trying to explain anyway, and all at once Az remembered how she'd loved him.
She reached down, picked up one of the hats, a rich bronze, and held it silently out at him. And as he touched it hesitantly to take it from her, she let her magic wind down through her hands, for the barest second.
He held the cotton hat, and looked at her, so sadly, so gratefully. And then he smiled. "Thank you, princess."
She tried to say welcome, but the tears in her throat blocked it.
Title: Stubborn Violet
Fandom: Tin Man
Characters/Pairings: DG, Raw
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 288
Notes: for Kseda
Prompt: DG, violet and ivy
DG didn't like this whole princess gig, she was rapidly discovering. Not at all. There were too many ... too many rules, too many rigid codes of behaviour. She'd always had something of a problem with the rules, as Elmer Gulch could readily attest to. She'd sort of been hoping that the magical O.Z. wouldn't have quite so many. Instead, it seemed to have more, and she was beginning to feel strangled by them.
It was Raw who found her, tried to explain it to her. He'd been following her for a couple of days, probably feeling her frustration and yearning to escape. DG didn't like worrying him, but she didn't know how to stop feeling these things, and she wasn't going to abandon her friend just because she couldn't get her emotions under control.
He showed her a patch of flowers hiding under a corner of the garden wall. She'd blinked at it for a long minute, trying to figure out what the hell he meant her to see, and at the same time trying to control the itch in her fingers that demanded she draw the interwoven stems. Instead, she'd looked at him and waited for him to explain.
"Violet and ivy," the Viewer said, quietly. "DG like violet, yes? Feel trapped, surrounded, shy? But look. Violet still bloom. Still smile." He reached out to lay a warm hand on her shoulder as she blinked at him. "DG find a way to bloom. Raw knows."
She smiled at him, knowing he would feel the happy bloom of gratitude inside her. And later, she found her sketch pad, and went back to draw the plants. She hung it in her room. To remind herself.
And because she liked the shape of it.
Title: Loyal
Fandom: Doctor Who (New and Old)
Characters/Pairings: Doctor, TARDIS
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 321
Notes: for Tininess
Prompt: Who or Torchwood
He was having a quiet moment. He didn't have many. To be honest, he didn't want many. Quiet moments meant his thoughts had time to wander, and his thoughts had a distressing tendancy to wander to old pains.
But this once, he let himself sit in the quiet, alone, and listen to the hum of his TARDIS around him. She purred beneath him as he sat on her floor, his back cradled by her console. This once, he let himself be alone, and yet, this once, he didn't feel lonely.
It was her, he thought. Always, her. The one companion who had stood by him through everything. The one who had given him the freedom he'd thought he wanted, so desperately, back on Gallifrey. Back when he'd been young and innocent, and Gallifrey had been eternal and indestructible. He'd thought his world would last forever, and all he'd wanted to do was run from it. Funny how things turned out.
But she was still here. The one who'd carried him out into the universe. The one who'd stood silently by him as he'd been stranded on Earth. The one who had carried all the others, all those people he'd shared his life with, all those people he'd cared for, in his way. She'd been there through it all.
She'd carried him through the Time War. She'd endured the chaos as Time itself was rewritten, and carried him through the unmaking to the universe on the other side. She'd borne him alone through a universe without Time Lords, suffered the last reemergence of his enemy, carried him through all his trials.
She must be getting pretty tired of him, by this stage, he reflected ruefully. He supposed it was lucky, then, that she was far more patient than he was.
And on that thought, he jumped to his feet. Places to go, people to see! Patience ... patience was for her.
And he would always love her for it.
Title: Roses
Fandom: DC (probably DCAU, because that's the only Steve I've met, and that a while ago)
Characters/Pairings: Steve/Diana
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 289
Notes: for Bradygirl12
Prompt: Steve/Diana, roses
He gave her a rose. In the middle of wartorn Europe, taking shelter in a bombed-out mansion, and somehow he found a bloom to present to her with a warm and rather wry smile. She stared at it.
"How?" she asked, still looking at it in bemusement. But what she really meant was why. No man had ever thought to give her a rose before. He grinned, and cupped his hands around hers as she held the fragile stem gently.
"A man should always be able to lay his hands on a rose to give a beautiful woman, angel," he told her, very seriously, his eyes sparkling. "I found it out back. I'm sure no-one will miss it." And there was sadness as he said it, a quiet awareness of everything that surrounded them. But his eyes still laughed. "I saw it, and thought of you. A beautiful thing surrounded by ugliness. A man must be lucky indeed to find something like that." And he lifted her chin gently, smiling at her. "I must be the luckiest man alive, to have found it, and you. My angel."
She hadn't known what to say. So she hadn't said anything at all. The kiss had been warm, and deep, and a strange combination of joyful and sad. Just like him.
Years later, she had never told anyone. But she kept a rose, in her quarters. To look at, whenever the world seemed too much. She would look at the fragile, beautiful bloom, and remember golden hair, and a sad smile, and laughing eyes. And she would remember that no matter how ugly and war-filled Man's World became, there would always be something beautiful to make it worth fighting for.
Even if it was only a memory.
Title: Cooking
Fandom: DC
Characters/Pairings: Bruce/Clark, Alfred
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 266
Notes: for Rai_daydreamer
Prompt: Bruce/Clark, cooking, kisses
It was a bad idea to let Bruce loose near a cooker. Alfred had warned Clark of this. Warned him at some length, as it happened, in that quietly pointed manner the older man had that had probably had every child that had ever passed through Wayne manor shaking in their boots. "I would advise against it, sir." Don't say I didn't warn you, sir.
But Clark enjoyed watching Bruce snarling too much to listen. He loved watching the scarily competent, utterly efficent man growling in frustration as he attempted to glare the half-baked concoction into submission. Unfortunately, since most food bore little resemblance to Gotham crooks (at least, it did until Bruce had finished thoroughly burning it), this didn't really work. But it was fun to watch, especially if Bruce was still in the Bat gear. There was just something so inherantly funny and heartwarming about watching his lover, every dark terrifying inch of him, trying to make him a scrambled egg.
There was something so wonderful about having this man, to whom pride was everything, who hated failing so much, trying again and again to do this thing that defeated him, just to make Clark happy. It warmed Clark down to his toes, made him want to scoop his lover up and hold him forever.
To date, they'd never actually managed to taste any of Bruce's efforts. They usually never made it as far as the eating stage before Clark lost control and pulled Bruce into a thorough kiss. Which, all things considered, was rather fortunate.
But Clark would never dream of saying it out loud.
