Seven Minutes to Midnight

[fulselden]

A final round-up of stuff from the Bechdel test comment fic thread.

First up, Narnia. And oh my goodness, if Buffy was the fandom of my teens, I guess Narnia has a good claim to be the fandom of my childhood. And also my first great fictional betrayal, sob. Because, yes, Susan, naturally. But, y'know, even at age seven or whatever, I was used to handwaving that kind of stuff. I read a lot! Including ancient boys-own stuff! Handwaving was a fine art and oh my goodness I cannot believe at what an impressionable age I read Rider Haggard, yeeeech. But anyway, no, the problem was that [SPOILER] Aslan was Jesus! I have since cultivated a very friendly relationship with allegory and a respect for Christianity which is both healthy and genuine, but, oh my goodness, the indignation in my little agnostic heart when my friend's big sister pointed this out to us. IT STILL RANKLES. Phew, ok, I feel better now.

So, a Narnia ficlet, for prompt 'The Chronicles of Narnia - Jadis, Lady of the Green Kirtle - up north'' from eleusis_walks:



Queen Jadis and the Green Lady were drinking diamond wine together in a low cavern. Green flames spat and spluttered in the hearth, sending bright splinters of light bouncing off the silver-black facets of the walls.

Jadis sat in a tall straight chair of this same stone; she had turned it from the wood herself, when she had first arrived. The Lady wore silver and velvet, leaning back on her elbows on silk brocade cushions. She poured herself some more wine.

“Please, Queen Jadis, allow me,” she said, curving upwards, the crystal flagon in one hand. “I have my new servants bring it up from Bism. I assure you, there is no finer drink than diamonds.”

She smiled sweetly, shook out her long hair.



Jadis drew herself up.

“In Charn we drank the heart’s blood of our enemies,” she said frostily. “Down to the Courtyard of the Serpents, across the Bridge of Ringing Lines, we led then and we locked them in bronze.” She paused, face turned up and away, took breath.

“Yes, I’m sure, Queen Jadis,” the Lady said, rather hastily.

She tilted her goblet against the green firelight.

“I always love to hear all about Charn, you know I do. But we have some pressing matters to discuss, do we not? Matters of the here and now.”

Jadis looked across at her, brows down. Her hair threw off the glints of the fire and became like a slab of dry ink.

“You are fortunate, my child, that you will never see Charn. Narnia has softened you down to the bone.”

“Are my bones truly of Charn, then, Queen Jadis?”

Jadis sniffed. “You don’t even have that many, child.”

She flapped one large hand at the Lady’s tail, fat green coils looped over the cushions.

The Lady smoothed down the velvet of her mantle and smiled.

“I have plenty of bones, Queen Jadis,” she said. “As many as one of the little silver river fish it is so easy to get stuck in one’s throat.”



Jadis picked up her goblet, turned it round gently. One might have thought she was trying not to smile.

“So, child,” she said. “I take it you wish to rule in the Underlands?”

“I do rule in the Underlands, Queen Jadis. There may be a few small formalities lacking – ”

“Like subduing the creatures of the Western Deeps?”

“Yes, like so. But,” said the Lady, letting a few beads of diamond-juice run through her lips, “Down here is my domain.”

The firelight ran over her green scales like water.

She looked up at Jadis.

“Of course, I fully intend to rule the world above, in time.”

“In time.” Jadis did smile, this time, over her goblet.

“I shall tell you when I am coming,” said the Lady. “I should enjoy a fair fight.”

Jadis looked ahead, beyond the firelight, her gaze level.

“And so,” she said, “should I.”


 

Aaand, an attempt, ahahaha so very much an attempt, at a rousing ballad for prompt 'Folklore - Queen Mab, Queen Titania - how now, proud Titania' from demonqueen666:




Queen Mab met bold Titania

In grosgrain and green pearls

She opened up the diner door

She winked at all the girls.


She ordered cherry pie with a

Stiff crown of cream in whirls

She waltzed across the chequered floor

Her skirts came out in swirls.


How goes it, bold Titania?

How fare your boys, your girls?

Is milk still left out by the poor?

Do you still stitch through worlds?


Let’s try some stichomythia.

Oh I don’t talk to churls.

Dear queen you smell of Iles d’or.

You smell of candy twirls.


So curb your tongue and lick on the

Raw iron cold as green girls.

I’ll stick to ice-cream floats I’m sure

You crunch on walnut burls.


I’ll show you sweet and sharp soda,

Dear Mab, you of all girls,

Should know your place, should know your lore,

Should kneel and bow your curls.


Drink up your shake Titania,

Bring out your pretty earls,

Have them dance out around the floor

Watch as the silk unfurls.


Oh please my dear you talk like a

Fred Kinsey for the girls

In times long past you lapped up gore,

Ate pig’s ears not sweet pearls.


I’ll show you nymphomania,

Says Mab: her smile uncurls.

I’ll bite the apple to the core,

I’ll take your boys and girls.


Come then, says proud Titania,

Come out and kiss the girls

They’re human children to the core,

They taste of other worlds.

 

Also, another Watchmen fic. Why on earth did I find myself trying to push Watchmen past the Bechdel test? And, heh, pretty much failing! But at least I tried. For prompt 'Watchmen - Laurie & Janey - The only life you get', from anactoria.

Warning: unsettling things are implied to have happened to a child in the second half of this fic. Also, contains comic-book science.





“So, Laurel Jane, is it?”

The kid was all dressed up for the lecture, for Jon too, most likely, blousy green brocade with cuffed sleeves out to here. Janey found her alone, in the milling, drinking crowds in the foyer, academics and entrepreneurs chewing it over, spilling cheese puffs and dropping cheap wine on the floor.

“Just Laurie, actually.”

She was good-looking, you had to give her that. One up on her mother, the strawberry bombshell. A classier proposition altogether, and green as could be. Still whiffing of suburbia, but Janey couldn’t exactly hold that against her, not with their condo with garage and garden high up in the hills.

“You’re Janey, aren’t you? Janey Slater. Jon’s girlfriend. I saw you at the meeting.”

Sure you did, you little boy-sniffer. Sure.

“I saw you too, Laurie. Say, did you enjoy the lecture? Jon was on form, I guess.”

“He was great, Miss Slater. I mean, Janey.” Laurie smiled, brown hair and a beauty spot, ripe for old films. Not a Technicolor girl, not one little bit. “It’s so clear, how he speaks, you know?”

Janey laughed. “How he speaks. How he speaks is punctuation, not words, honey.” She drew on her cigarette, cupped the smoke in her mouth and breathed out. “He’s just marking time.”

Laurie’s shoulders tensed. You could see the muscles on her, like a dancer.

“Well, I guess I wouldn’t be a good judge of science stuff. I’ve been too busy learning to fight, y’know? To be a super hero, like my mom. Like Jon.” Laurie paused.

She is going to say no, I meant Dr Manhattan, not Jon, thought Janey. She will say that, and then I will know. I will know for certain.


Laurie stood in her tight brocade and boning, the metal zip sharp between her shoulder blades, sweet sixteen and trying for older.

“You used to work with him, didn’t you,” she said. “I mean, before the accident.”

Janey laughed. “No, sweetie. He used to work for me, not with me, I’m afraid. He was only ever a research assistant.” Smoke curled up, catching in the tight, sprayed-shut curls of her hair. “And I,” she said, “I was top of my class in quite a few places. Only way they’d let a girl out to Gila Flats, you know.”

“What did you do?”

“I worked in low energy research.”

“Oh.” Laurie nodded. “Not the flashy stuff?”

“Actually, it’s the sort of stuff that goes on inside the hearts of neutron stars. And neon lights, I guess, if you’re being literal about it.”

“Riiight.” Laurie drew the word out, suddenly bullish.

Took you long enough, kid, Laurie thought. All brawn, this one, nothing to her but tight skin and bright eyes. Not even a fighter, really, as far as she could see. Set up by momma dearest, for a fall.

“I took out six drug dealers, last night, you know,” said Laurie. “It was pretty slick, I guess.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Sure. I was just meant to be watching this meeting, you know. Checking if they handed anything over. But then I followed this one guy back to his hideout, and I ended up taking out all six of them.” Laurie looked down. “It was pretty weird, actually. It was just this normal house, on a street out by the west freeway. And inside it was all new. This fitted kitchen and a hot tub out in the back garden. I know that because I had to half drown one of the guys in it.” She fixed her eyes on Janey. “So,” she said. “I guess you never can tell.”

“I guess you can’t,” said Janey, her voice entirely even. “I guess your mother must be pretty pleased.” She paused. “I mean,” she said, “proud. She must be proud.”


The crowd clattered and gossiped around them, voices coming oddly off the high curved concrete of the foyer, the wide windows wet with talk, neat dark university shrubbery out in the gardens, little round spotlights marking the paths.

“And of course,” said Janey, “you must be proud of your mother. She had quite a career, didn’t she? The Silk Spectre, biffing her way through the crooks of the forties.”

She folded her arms. Or at least through the pin-up posters, she might have said. And more, if she cared to guess. But the kid was only sixteen, and fraying at the edges, you could tell. Biting her lip.

"Sure, mom was pretty famous, I guess."

"And you couldn't ask for a better teacher." Janey tapped the ash off her cigarette, down onto the mud-scuffed floor. "For the super hero life, I mean. Which," she said, "I guess you must have always wanted, right?"

She smiled across at Laurie, a dollar-and-dime popcorn and candyfloss grin, folded away a good decade ago, but fresh enough, probably, for present purposes. It wasn't as if Laurie was a guy, after all.

Laurie did not smile back. “I used to like biology,” she said. “I wanted to work with animals. I’m not squeamish, you know.” She balled her fists, tight new scabs on the knuckles. “Sewing them up, watching them grow. The slow stuff.”

She looked past Janey’s shoulder, eyes hot.

Janey sucked a fresh mouthful of smoke, the breeze from the open doorway turning her pearls cold and heavy on her collar bone, her crisp taffeta Dior, a perk of Jon’s job, stiff at the shoulders. She had been young and brilliant – oh yes, she could say that now – in a dozen faculty pow-wows in a dozen grey-white rooms. The old men with their pipes and the young men with their twitches, the corduroy suits and her dry nylon blouses, the vinegar-wine, their contempt or bland kindness. Oh, yes, my dear Janey, I’m sure you’ll go far.

“The slow stuff, huh, honey?” Janey’s voice was soft, careful. Kind. “Seems to me,” she said, “you’re in the wrong line of work.”


---


Six years after she’d first seen Janey, Laurie strode into Dimension Technologies in yellow plastic and leather, carrying one half of a Baryonic field gate, a curve of clunky metal and fibreglass like the strut of a space station.

“I’d like to talk to Dr Slater, please,” she told the receptionist. “The other half of this thing’s on the black Cadillac out in front. Could someone bring it in before it starts to rain?”

The receptionist rang for security, but she’d seen Laurie on the news, so she rang for Janey as well.

Ten minutes later Janey was handing Laurie a cup of oily coffee, technicians scrabbling around them with thick bundles of wires, clamps thick at the hinges with black-speckled white grease. The gate was going up.

Janey shook her head. “This should be done remotely. In a chamber we’ve flushed out with helium, on the other side of an airlock.”

She looked across at Laurie, young and fierce and impatient in her silly stripper outfit, the clear yellow plastic sticking to her skin in blotches, clammy with sweat. There was not a mark on her.

“There’s no time,” Laurie said. “Janey, I mean Dr Slater. I saw the other side when the Professor went through, and it didn’t look good.” She sipped the coffee, grimaced. “And I’d let him rot happily, but he took his daughter through. We can’t just leave that kid there. I don’t care what the chances are.”

Her face was everyday disgust at bad coffee, perhaps, a secretary in the office kitchen, making a moue over thick pale porcelain, bitter caffeine and soft stubby cookies, the boss in the boardroom waiting for service. But Janey looked sideways at her, two years of living with Jon under her belt, shoulders square like a boxer’s. All that training as a kid.

“You already asked Jon, didn’t you,” she said. “And he said not to bother.”

Laurie said nothing. She drank her coffee.

Janey felt in her lab-coat pocket for her cigarettes. “Here,” she said, yanking one out with her teeth, shoving her coffee cup one handed at Laurie, “hold this.” She ducked under a loop of wiring and went to supervise the final installation.


Laurie insisted they haul the company doctor out of bed, have him on standby. There was plenty of time; it was a rosy Arizona morning before the gate was ready, arcing pink and green light between its struts, showing the cluttered lab behind it, jerry-rigged wiring and hot clucking monitors, as if through oily water.

“Well?” said Janey. She clicked round the dial to the Professor’s coordinates. “Lucky you thought to take a note of these, I guess.”

“It wasn’t luck,” said Laurie. “I’ve been doing this for a while, you know.”

“So have I, Laurie,” said Janey. “And I have no interest in being around another accident.” She fished out another cigarette, turned away from the gate to hunch over her lighter. “What exactly did Jon say, about this gate of yours?”

“You’ve read the Professor’s notes, Janey.” Laurie waved an arm towards the sheafs of onion-skin paper, scribbled and poked through with ballpoint, spread over a good portion of the floor.

“I looked through them. They tell me this Professor was smart and liked short cuts. That he didn’t have much more of an idea of what he’d find though that gate than I do, and that he was fond of spinning tall tales for his mafia backers. Tell me what Jon said.”

“He said that exposure to shifting field boundaries could cause irretrievable dislocation, ok.” Laurie looked across at the clock on the far wall. “Won’t your boss be turning up soon? I want to get this over with.”

Janey smiled, tightly. “Oh, right,” she said. “Well, that tells me precisely nothing. And I’m the boss here, actually. Head of the research division, you know. Boss.”

“Well, so-rry.” Laurie was twisting her thin nylon rope round one of the squat pillars holding up the observation deck, gesturing to technicians as she braced one leg against the concrete and tugged, testing the knot. “I think this’ll hold.” She hooked the other end through her belt loops, held it out to Janey. “Coming?”

Janey looked up at the filmy air of the gateway. Irretrievable dislocation.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”



They came through into the room that they’d left behind them. Laurie sighed and shook her head, started back, but Janey held her arm, clutched at the rope. The technicians moved towards them with pink candy eyes, and their brittle arms sparkled like wet sugar. The walls crumbled around them and there was a plain with pulpy trees, the horizon closer than it should be. Over their heads stretched a sky of flat neon. A little girl was crying on the ground, and the professor was on the ground, too. A thick stand of anemones was growing from his stomach, their petals thick and soft as hand-made envelopes. Laurie knelt by the girl, held out her hand. The rope tautened. Janey looked around, up at the humming sky. Shapes were coming across it toward them like flakes from a bonfire. She grabbed Laurie’s arm and moved her mouth, but the words came out in twists like red paper. They picked the girl up by her armpits and made for the gateway.



“Well,” said Laurie. “I guess now I know what drugs are like.”

Janey glanced up at her. “You’ve never – no, of course not. Never mind. And,” she said, “I take your point.”

They were raw and damp from the decontamination chambers, skin sticky with reagents, in too-big bathrobes. In front of them, kneeling and speaking softly, the company doctor was testing the little girl.

“Say Ah,” he said.

“Ahhhh,” said the little girl. Her mouth opened wide like a sleepy kitten’s, and her voice came across their skin like dry red paper.

Laurie and Janey looked at each other.

“Dislocation,” Janey said.

“We got her back, didn’t we?” said Laurie. “She wasn’t irretrievable.”

The girl looked at them through the one-way glass, her skin white as flowers.

Janey shook her head, took out her battered packet. The cigarettes, at least, looked just the same.

“Smoke?” she asked Laurie. There were two left.

Laurie took one, held it up for the lighter.

“Thanks, Janey,” she said.