stunt_muppet

Here, let me throw a meme at you to distract you from my lack of significant updates. Snagged from the vast and diverse ether of the intarwebs.

This first week of school has been...interesting is a good word. Mostly good, some bad, but interesting. And the Bio seminar went well, even though it looks like a huge amount of work. And my mother remains bizarrely determined to buy me a chair, and I cannot figure out why.

But anyway, the meme:

When you see this, post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.

-----
The older of the two photographs showed a family of four, posed stiffly in formal attire, wearing strained smiles. A family portrait, obviously, taken on a bad day; [Marisol] could almost hear the mother’s weary voice as she placed a hand on both her sons’ shoulders and told them to be still, dammit, and pretend you like each other.

 

One of the boys had a familiar head of bright red hair.

 

The second photograph was as formal as the first, but the smiles on these people were warm and sincere. A bride in white lace and a groom in a tuxedo held hands in the center of the frame; the groom was the other son from the family portrait, but the bride was a woman she’d never before seen, with dark eyes and dark curly hair.

 

The wedding party surrounded the bride and groom. Horatio, in a tuxedo exactly like his brother’s, stood to his left, one hand on his shoulder. By the looks of it, everyone else – groomsmen, bridesmaids, even the ringbearer – was the family of the bride. 

 

It was behind the wedding photograph that she’d found the third picture.

-----

-----

He first notices it when Grissom leaves the autopsy room. Just before Grissom opens the door, the doctor says “Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.”

 

It’s an afterthought – a joke, really, given the body that’s lying on the table. But Grissom pauses when he says it. He turns around and, with a puzzled expression, says “I’m sorry?”

 

“Happy Thanksgiving…?”

 

“Oh.” He nods briefly. “Happy Thanksgiving to you.”

 

It comes as no surprise to Doc that he forgot.

-----

-----
Olivia passed him on the street, on her way to a witness’s home, and almost didn’t recognize him.

 

He certainly looked different, trying as he was to blend in with the toughs standing around him. But even underneath scruffy hair, three-day stubble, filthy dime-store clothes, and near-miss lines on his face, there was no mistaking Brian Cassidy.

 

For a moment, she wondered what he was doing here, what could possibly have happened to him that would end him up on this dilapidated street corner with a cigarette dangling from his lips. But before long she remembered: the transfer to Narcotics. The one everyone had abruptly stopped talking about. Right.

-----

-----

She didn’t miss New York at all. Not that she never wanted to go back, of course, but it felt good to escape the city and immerse herself in something so much older. Because that was the one thing about Europe she loved – it was ancient. It was so much bigger and so much more than her old familiar corner of the world. And every so often it was nice to regain a little perspective.

-----

-----

She tried to transplant herself completely from Montana, wind her roots into the urban jungle’s soil as if she’d been there forever. Another life. Another start. A life as Lindsay Monroe, crime scene investigator, not as the survivor, the witness, the girl who hid in the bathroom, the only one whose mother wasn’t crying.

 

But she must have left something behind in that valley, something to draw her back across the miles, because here she is now, on a plane to Montana, going back to the person she never wanted to be again. The roots ran too deep to leave their home so easily.

-----

-----

How long does he have now? A year? Maybe two? And then he abandons the Pearl for the Dutchman, and spends the next hundred years trying not to grow barnacles.

 

Those were the terms, at least. And it seems thirteen years were insufficient to form an escape plan of any use. Not his fault, of course; there was the minor distraction of the mutiny. And what good were a ship and a crew and a compass if you did nothing but worry and plan?

-----

-----

Jack Sparrow was not taking death very well.

 

That was unmistakably his voice yelling “Bugger!” in the silence, for one. And he was trying to paddle backward using his hands as oars, for another.

 

Will wanted to laugh as he watched him, cursing and grumbling and fighting the irresistible current, but he found that he couldn’t. A decade or two with his heart in a locked box had not deprived him of his ability to feel, but it did lend a certain hollowness and distance to things. He didn’t think that was why, though.

 

No, it was more the knowledge that something out there had finally gotten the better of Captain Jack Sparrow. What a frightening world it had become.

-----

-----

You would think that after almost two years, he’d have a first name. He’s worked alongside them all that time, a familiar presence if not exactly a friend. And the lieutenant greets them all as familiars; Delko is Eric, Calleigh is Calleigh (except when she’s “ma’am”), Alexx is Alexx (except when she’s “ma’am”), but he’s still Mr. Wolfe – those two letters and single punctuation mark still set him aside, mark him as somehow different.

 

Maybe it’s too soon to expect anything else. Eric and Alexx and Calleigh have all known Horatio far longer than he has. Maybe you have to earn a first name here, as an acknowledgement, a sign of respect.

 

Except Natalia already has a first name, and she’s only been here six or seven months – though he’s willing to concede that “Miss Boa Vista” might just be too cumbersome to say on a routine basis. And Valera still has a last name and she’s been here forever, but that’s because nobody calls her anything else.

-----

-----

It caught her off-guard just how quickly she forgot. After they lost Speed, she thought everything would be different. She thought she’d remember how quickly it all could end. She thought she’d stop taking things for granted. But a month turned into a year turned into two, and she lost sight of it, started to dismiss the thought and believe that it couldn’t happen to them, not again. And then it did.

 

And then everything changed again, but not like it did before. And the dead man’s coming home from the hospital today – too early, of course, but who’s going to tell him no? 

-----

-----

She’d been toying with the idea of quitting all day, just because the past few weeks had so frayed her nerves. Being on the receiving end of Van Buren’s withering disapproval did that to you. By the end of it, she’d just wanted the trial to be over. Wanted to head home and not have to deal with another violent, arrogant jackass for a long, long time.

 

But she hadn’t made her final decision until she looked at her reflection in the mirror that morning, and realized that she didn’t have the same weight on her shoulders and weariness in her eyes as all the others.

-----

viralmancer, I didn't put what I've got of your request up yet because I didn't know if you'd want it on display with the rest of my fic. And 1x2foralways, I'm so sorry, but for some reason, I've just run dry on inspiration for Ed/Nina friendship, but I'll try to get you something by the end of next week if it's at all possible. Forgive me. :(