Meme meme meme

[raven]

I am very very very tired - got up sixish following a very unsettled night and spent several hours race-marshalling on Queen's Green. (Got up before my AO3 kudos email! that is my definition of early.) It's for charity, it was good fun if freezing cold, and there were literally more than a thousand runners - it seemed very much like every local business and every university faculty had a team, which made for a feeling of general camaraderie if very unwieldy team names. (It's quite difficult to shout, "Go, go South Cambridgeshire District Council!" but people womanned up and did it.) Work had four teams. I stood there in my high-vis and attempted not to yawn.

Anyway. I am tired and trying hard not to fall asleep. To that effect, let's do this, nabbed from fahye:

Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)

1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School/College AU

I should probably warn you I'll just end up writing you snippets. My fandoms are all listed on my AO3 page.

edited to add: haven't seen yesterday's Doctor Who. So anything but that but things related to yesterday, I mean. Doctor Who in general is fine!

Fic(lets):

for philomytha, Aral and Simon and telepathy

for ladymercury_10, Amy/Rory, huddling for warmth

Comments

[philomytha]

Lots of sympathy for the sleep deprivation - my son has been on a not-sleeping jag this weekend, and ugh, it's no fun at all.

I will run true to form and say, can I have Aral and Simon and telepathy, please?

[raven]

*yaaaaaaaawn* I am VERY SLEEPY and i have been basically half-asleep while writing this. I am sorry for any and all mistakes and I hope your period of sleep-deprivation ends very soon indeed.

something in the autumn is native to your blood

It begins with the sound of bells.

There is an old church on the wrong side of the caravanserai district that gets graffiti sprayed, steam-cleaned off and sprayed on again different every few days. GREEKIES GO HOME, and even less subtle, FUCK OFF BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM. The priest is a harassed-looking man who pulls his hood down over his face and ducks into the door every morning as furtive as a mouse. In the first frost days of autumn, even the scent is furtive: incense, laced with gunpowder and woodsmoke, drifting in to Simon's window in tentative wreaths spreading over the city.

Aral comes in during the late afternoon, shifting a viewer from hand to hand. Rather than his usual brisk stride, he seems unsure, hesitant. He puts things down and picks them back up, then puts them down again. "Simon…"

"Yes, my lord Regent?" Simon asks, after some minutes of this.

"Nothing." Aral picks up his viewer and strides back out.

*

"What is that?" Aral asks, suddenly.

He's so quiet that Simon almost, but not quite, didn't hear him come in. The man is upsetting, Simon thinks wryly; he's a good soldier but he would make a terrible spy. Even when doing his best to dim his own presence, he makes currents in the air and changes the way the world is.

"What?" Simon asks, gently putting down the report he was trying to read. His office in Vorkisgan House is as beautiful as many of the rooms in the oldest part of the house are: it has ancient beams and open space and a window with ivy crawling around the ledge. It's no wonder he's been spending more time here lately.

"The bells." Aral waves a hand. "You opened the window to listen to them."

Simon raises his eyebrows and doesn't ask how he knew that. "The Greek church in the caravanserai," he says, carefully.

Aral still looks expectant. Simon sighs and says, with reluctance: "There was one like it. In the town where I grew up."

"Ah, I understand," Aral says, which is news to Simon, who doesn't understand this at all. Aral goes out while Simon is still standing to talk to him, leaving something in the air between them, a half-finished conversation hanging like a distant scent.

*

"It's courageous," Aral says a few days later. "To ring the bells, I mean. When otherwise they feel that they have to hide."

Simon has been sleeping badly for a few days and doesn't feel quite up to this conversation. They're on the street for once, boots ringing on the hard surface of the pavement. The layers of ImpSec protection are unfolding around them but there's a palpable sense of freedom, on this crisp freezing day under an intensely blue and lambent sky.

"Yes," he says, cautious, listening to the sound of the bells. His chip tries to find patterns in them, the average time between each peal. He ignores it. It's a perfect day, still, clear, with air that carries sound great distances and a brisk snap that invigorates him somehow beneath his skin.

"It's my favourite sort of weather," Aral says comfortably. "It reminds me of training exercises and hikes into the mountains, before everything got quite so complicated."

"Yes, sir," says Simon, and they go on walking.

*

Simon is at the window, this time, when Aral comes in. He's leaning out, hands on the ledge. Below, an Armsman admits someone to the house, following all the security procedures to the letter, Simon is pleased to note; opposite, a bird takes flight from an old split tree.

"It's you, isn't it," Aral says, after he's been standing there for some time. Without waiting for an answer, he comes in and perches on the edge of Simon's desk. "For a while I thought it was just strange dreams. Then I thought I might be going mad, but then I thought Cordelia would have noticed. The Greek church where you grew up - it was painted white, wasn't it? It had a blue door, and it was a set a little distance from the town, above it. You could see all the way down into the valley."

"Yes," says Simon slowly. "On a clear day you could see forever."

"Why are you dreaming about it, do you think?" Aral makes a gesture towards the window. "The sound of the bells?"

"In part." Simon nods. "Otherwise… I suppose it's the change of the season that makes me think about other times. Another autumn, another winter."

Aral nods.

"And the chip - it doesn't like it, when I dream about memories I've had since before. It rejects them as processing inputs, so I don't sleep very well. And speaking of the chip - I was told right at the beginning that it might do this. I sincerely apologise, sir."

Aral laughs a little. "It's not exactly your fault, Simon."

"But I do know it's a security risk," Simon goes on, earnestly. "Now that I know it's possible, that I might broadcast in my sleep…"

Aral makes an abrupt silencing gesture. "Simon, no one dreams secret codes and classified information. Some might believe that of you, but I never will."

Simon nods. "Thank you, sir." And, after a pause: "What now?"

"Now you go back to work" - Aral gets off Simon's desk - "and I go back to mine. Don't worry," he adds, as Simon steps away, "I'll open the windows and let it all in."

Simon is not sure if he means the bells, the memories, the air mint-fresh with promise. When he turns Aral has gone and Simon stands there breathing, breathing, leaning out of the window under an endless sky.

[philomytha]

Oh, oh, lovely (and wow, how do you write so fast and so well when sleep-deprived?). Simon dreaming of bells and churches and broadcasting his dreams and - this is all gorgeous. Thank you very much!

[avendya]

Vorkosigan canon manages so many of those, but: Vorkosigan, apocalypse fic.

[noldo]

I'm not sure I am good enough at fandoms to um fandom at you, but I merely want to state how deeply beautiful I think a fanfic containing all fifteen of those tropes at once would be.

[hedda62]

I am not being greedy but I can't make up my mind, so write one of these: Mark and Miles, forced to share a bed, or Simon and Alys, pretending to be married. Thank you! (and your one for Philomytha is spectacularly lovely).

[marina]

#8, Game of Thrones!

[forthwritten]

Temeraire, bodyswap.

Good Omens, historical AU

[raven]

Ah, GoT I am not so hot on - I still have only read the first book and seen a couple of episodes of the show. Anything else you'd like?

[raven]

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

[lemon_badgeress]

...now I really, really want this. Augh.

And my brain is fried for other reasons, and I can't come up with your fandoms.

[lemon_badgeress]

Oh hell. M*A*S*H*, either bodyswap or secretly a virgin.

[marina]

Hmm, in that case, Remus/Sirius? Or failing that any other HP ship.

[musesfool]

Remus/Sirius, amnesia!

Simon and Alys pretend to be married

[raven]

I tried desperately to think of a sensible way of doing this, and couldn't. LET ME SING YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE.

gendha phool

Parampara was a small, distant, temperate world several wormhole jumps and then quite some distance away. Its ecosystems were tiny but complete, broad temperate zones bordered by a half-dozen glaciers, a thin strip of sub-tropical rainforest and a desert the size of a county. "Not quite as idyllic a paradise as Ylla," Gregor said, "but interesting. I think it'll do."

Simon was thinking that it was interesting, and also that Gregor was a good man and a good Emperor and deserved a quiet life of faithful service. "I think it will do very nicely, sire," he said, and Gregor smiled.

*

"There are a great many languages spoken there," Alys said, looking up from her viewer. "English and French, and Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil in the main, and but many regional languages, minor dialects and such. I'm learning some Hindi and Bengali, to begin."

"I'm sure I've read," Cordelia said, "that English is widely spoken by almost everyone."

"Yes," Alys said, "but it's not diplomatic, to come empty-handed."

Cordelia nodded. "Alys," she said after a moment, "you know, don't you, that I am the Vicereine of Sergyar in my own right? Not just because I'm…"

Alys inclined her head. "Gregor understands the value of complementary approaches to an ambassadorial post. And besides," she added, after a moment, "I'm not married, Cordelia."

"No," Cordelia agreed, hiding her smile. "Of course not."

*

Afterwards Simon dated the trouble to the particular moment when he picked a metal tumbler off a tray of its fellows and Shrimati Prathibha Devayani Chattopadhyaya said, beckoning back the server: "But you must take some for your wife, also."

Simon sipped the water and opened his mouth to say, she's not my – and then remembered the briefing material and his own first visit to this planet, forty-six years and half a lifetime ago, and said, "Yes, ma'am."

"Dhokla?"

"Thank you," Simon said, and bit into it. The President smiled at him fondly and handed him another. On the maidaan the uniforms glinted in the sun, and the flowers rioted colour on every surface.

Alys said, "Thank you, love" – and drank deeply from the tiny cup, her only sign of discomfort under in the blistering noonday heat. The welcoming speeches continued.

*

"A letter from Alys," Cordelia said, looking up from her correspondence at the breakfast table. "It's going well, apparently. Simon has made some headway towards persuading the Paramparans that what they want to do is export sugar cane, communications technology and economists to Barrayar. And Alys has learned how to drape a sari. She says it's amazing, the intelligence you gain while doing it."

"Not that I'm surprised he's making a go of it, but I didn't think it was going to be quite in Simon's area of expertise." Miles was leaning back in his chair, looking reflective. "Sasha, love, drink your milk and don't bathe in it. You know, the planet doesn't have a local equivalent of ImpSec. Nor any police force of any kind."

"That's interesting," Cordelia said. "I suppose that's not because it's entirely law-abiding?"

"No." Miles paused. "Apparently they have a network of entirely civilian enforcement – aunts, grandmothers, cousins, family connections of all sorts."

"Nothing like Barrayar, then," Ekaterin said archly.

"Quite." Cordelia returned to her letter.

*

On the other hand, the trouble could have been said to have started after dark one quiet evening, at the moment an elderly woman with clinking red bangles and eyes as determinedly implacable as onyx appeared on the veranda of their little bungalow and said, "Simon Illyan?"

"Yes," Simon said, and Alys looked up. "That's me."

"Beta, you must come with me."

*

Alys stayed where she was. Out on the veranda in the soft, luxuriously warm night, the scent of night-blooming flowers drifting in from the garden, she swung slowly in the jhula, back and forth, waiting for Simon.

When he appeared, he was alone, walking slowly. There were crushed marigold petals in his hands and around his neck, bright yellow even in the dim light spilling out from the house.

"Alys," he said, coming to sit beside her so his weight stilled the movement for a moment. It began again slowly, picking up momentum as they came back into balance. "How would you feel about being married to me?"

Alys said, "Simon…"

"Because," Simon said, "I rather think our getting off this planet unscathed may depend on it."

*

Miles let out a breath and said, "Mother, please explain that again."

Cordelia put a hand to her mouth. "Apparently Simon undertook a ceremony, once, when he was nineteen. A betrothal ceremony."

Miles was still finding this hard going. "A non-legally binding ceremony, more then forty years ago?"

"At nineteen, he wouldn't even have reached his majority in some cultures," Ekaterin pointed out.

Cordelia's brow furrowed. "Apparently… these people take marriage very seriously."

Ekaterin didn't look any less confused. "But… why?"

*

"Why?" Alys asked.

The day had dawned somewhat cooler than the one before. Simon scrubbed at his eyes. "Alys, believe me, please, when I say I do not remember. But from knowing myself" – his eyes glittered – "| suspect it was because I thought she was a Cetagandan spy."

"Simon," Alys said, quietly, "is that the only reason you can possibly think of for having promised this woman that…" She trailed off.

Simon sighed. "Either I did it because I was a covert agent trying to get closer to a potential target, or because I was nineteen years old and a long way from home. I don't know which is worse."

Alys kissed him, to his clear surprise. They stood there looking at each other in the clear white light of the world's sun. "Neither of which," she said, "you could exactly help being at the time."

"Yes." Simon blinked. "Tell me, what do we do now?"

*

"Is it really that difficult, for them to pretend they're married?" Miles wondered aloud. "It's Simon and Aunt Alys. They're practically…"

He broke off, as Cordelia and Ekaterin glared at him.

*

They attended upon the family in the post-sunset hour. Shouts and giggles echoed down the stairwell; from the kitchen came the clanging sounds of bells. "Prasad," said the old lady, and Alys took it, right hand over left, and fed it to him.

It was, Simon thought dizzily, quite the most intimate thing that had passed between them in public on this world.

"Bol," said the old lady, when Simon had brushed the sugar from his lips.

"Madam," Simon said, with Alys's hand held tightly in his own, "I understand what I did. But I have since…" He gestured at Alys. "I am married according to the customs of my people."

The venerable old lady rocked forwards in her chair and frowned. "Children," she pronounced, "do not understand the gravity of these things."

"At the time I was a child," Simon said.

"No matter." The old lady glared. "We all are children when we marry, playing at grown-up families. Love comes at the end of a long life together."

"I understand," Alys said after a moment, "that marriage is taken very seriously here. So it is with us."

"Hmph." The old lady waved a hand in dismissal. "Enough. We will not hold you to your earlier promise."

They stole out, hand-in-hand, like children.

*

"One more thing, Simon," Alys said quietly, under a tree laden with blossom. "One thing I have to do before we go."

*

"Mein mafi mangne ke liye ayai hu," Alys said, but the woman waved her to a chair and said, in English, "Please don't."

"I'm sorry," Alys said, again. "Please forgive me."

"Don't." She was a beautiful woman, Alys was thinking: tall and elegant in a deep green sari, with combs in her hair and no trace of red in her parting. When she stood, they were at eye-level. "We have a saying: jo hona hain, woh hoga."

"Que sera sera," Alys said, with some humour.

"Yes." The woman smiled at her. "What is your name?"

"Alys Vorpatril."

"Well," she said, "I have led a long and happy life, Alys Vorpatril. A contented life. You can tell your friend I was never a spy. And my family that they are a meddlesome bunch of interfering busybodies."

"I will," Alys said, and took the proffered hand, warm in hers, and squeezed it tightly before letting go.

*

"Well, that is interesting." Cordelia looked up and smiled at Ekaterin. Miles was busy showing his youngest daughter how to assemble a foot-long jump ship in one corner and gave a grunt. "They're coming home."

"Gregor won't like it," Miles said, without looking up. "After all of that mess last year, the point was to get Simon somewhere away from here where he can cause trouble."

"Your hypocrisy astounds me, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan." Cordelia was smiling. "It's for a visit. The Paramparans want them back. As a permanent fixture. Well, well."

Ekaterin said, "It won't be entirely on Simon's account" – and Miles crushed a toy Necklin rod and said, intelligently, "Well."

*

The farewell speeches were quite as long as the welcoming ones.

"It's interesting," said Shrimati Prathibha Chattopadhyaya. "I had some enquiries made on the public information networks of your homeworld. I looked at registers of marriages and deaths, holos on the public nets, family data held by District courts. You have never walked around the fire, Simon Illyan."

"Saat phere," Alys said.

"Quite," said Chattopadhyaya. "You have walked them, Lady Alys. But not alongside this man."

Alys smiled. "Perhaps you'll excuse me, Madam President?" she said. "I have some goodbyes I wish to say before our departure from Parampara. Thank you again for your unstinting hospitality."

"A pleasure to meet you, Lady Alys," said Chattopadhyaya, sounding quite sincere. "I hope to renew our acquaintance soon."

Alys bowed and withdrew.

"Although I understand," Chattopadhyaya said thoughtfully after a moment, "that for some time you had the sort of political power to, ah, delete or remove that sort of information from public consumption, I could think of no reason for it. And… " She paused. "After all, she travelled here with you."

Simon said, "Alys and I worked together for thirty years. We" – and he was conscious of his own lack of self-consciousness – "ran the Barrayaran Imperial government. We… walked through flames, together."

She smiled and touched his arm. "Hurry back, Simon Illyan. Some time and you will become one of us."

*

Simon wasn't sure if it was a cultural characteristic that the colonists had carried with them or just a result of the obscene fecundity of their world, but the Paramparans used flowers for everything.

"That was quite something," he said, as the ship lifted into orbit. The planet below them was glitteringly, beautifully green; there were petals gathered in his hair and stuck to the soles of his feet. Shrimati Prathibha Chattopadhyaya had presented the flowers ceremonially as they took formal leave of their posts. Absently, he took the garland from around his own neck and placed it around Alys'.

Alys opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. "Thank you," she said, after a while.

When she came to brush her hair in the evening, petals rained down like a benediction.

Re: Simon and Alys pretend to be married

[hedda62]

Thank you. For the song of your people, and for the song of Simon and Alys. It's beautiful. *hugs it and puts flowers around its neck*

Re: Simon and Alys pretend to be married

[philomytha]

Oh, wonderful, wonderful! Oh, Simon, getting betrothed at the age of nineteen either because he was lost and lonely or she was a spy, and Alys, gaining intelligence while learning how to drape a sari, and the ending and oh yes, they have most certainly walked through flames together.

Re: Simon and Alys pretend to be married

[raven]

Thank you, I am very glad you liked it. I'm sure there were a half-dozen proper-SF plots I could've used for this trope, but I could not still the small voice that kept saying, "Send them to the Planet of the Indians!"

Re: Simon and Alys pretend to be married

[raven]

Thank you very much. :) I kind of worried it would be self-indulgent to send Simon and Alys to the Planet of the Indians, but I guess that's what the whole trope meme is for. :)

[raven]

the last winter

Fifty-eight days, seventeen hours and forty-five minutes before the end of all things, Ekaterin gets out of bed in the morning and says, as if in a dream: "Your father's grandmother. His father's mother."

Miles rolls out of bed straight onto his feet and says, "Yes. Not one quarter, then, it's - oh, it's a quarter and a sixteenth, I can't work it out right now, Ekaterin, you…" He abruptly realises he's crying. "I love you."

They sit together on the edge of their bed in silence for a few minutes, holding hands, looking up through the window at the unclouded sky.

*

The population of Komarr has grown all it can without wholly overloading the fragile infrastructure of the domes; similarly, on Sergyar, the limiting factor is long-term food production. Calculations and simulations have been run and re-run, and the Barrayaran government itself is limiting further immigration. As Gregor has put it in innumerable public addresses, the Imperium will live on if only it is allowed to do so. To flood both other worlds with innumerable refugees would be to overbalance their only chance of survival.

The people listen, as much as they ever have, and more, when Gregor speaks: they all know where he will be when it happens.

*

"Tsipsis," Miles is yelling into the comconsole, "all the documentation you can find. Birth certificates, wait, I don't know if they had them then - maybe a passport? Hurry, hurry!"

"Shall we wake the children?" asks Roic, coming to attention.

"No," Ekaterin says, tiredly. "Let them sleep a little longer."

*

The Betan and Escobaran governments, meanwhile, operate a formal system for immigration. The strictness with which the system is administered is itself compassionate - they are trying, as hard as they can, alongside everyone else. Anyone of Betan citizenship, Betan birth, or at least one Betan parent, may return to the land of their own people.

From Beta, they won't even be able to see the object arrive. They may never see the debris; it is thought the shock of planetary impact may close the wormhole temporarily, opening only in the midst of Barryaran nuclear winter.

*

The civil peace sustains like glass, brittle, with all the frightening depths below clearly visible, but it holds. The wintry streets are deserted as they make their journey to the Betan consulate.

"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan," says the agent, stern and firm with a fathomless kindness beneath. "We have discussed it. Without at least one Betan parent…" He stops. "You yourself qualify."

Miles closes his eyes for a moment and says, steadily, "Not without my wife. Not without my brother." They are in the shadow of the Imperial Residence here; Ekaterin knows who he means by brother. "Would you read the statutory provision for me, please?"

The man lifts it and reads: "In this time of Barryaran emergency immigration to Beta Colony is permitted to no one but those individuals who hold Betan citizenship, were born on Beta Colony or have at least one Betan parent or otherwise have more than one quarter Betan blood…"

Miles slaps his papers down on the counter. "My mother is Cordelia Naismith," he said, "formerly of the Betan Astronomical Survey. My father's grandmother married a Betan woman called Ealasaid. I am five-eighths Betan; my children are five-sixteenths Betan. More than one quarter Betan blood."

The silence, for a few moments, is absolute. Then the man says, "Names?"

"Sasha, Helen and Elizabeth Vorkosigan," Miles says, and starts signing.

*

Forty-eight days, eleven hours and sixteen minutes before the end of all things, they're almost ready to leave. Ekaterin says, quietly: "You didn't write their titles on the forms."

Miles shakes his head. "They can't take those with them. Let them be Vor; it's enough, now. I won't let Sasha hold the Countship to nothing."

Ekaterin says, one last time: "Miles, you could… for them, you could go…"

Still steady, Miles says, "They'll have Mark, and Kareen, and Grandma Naismith, and all their Naismith cousins. And maybe…"

Cordelia will take the children to Beta Colony, and return. They don't know yet if she will then take the journey a second time.

"It's nearly time," Ekaterin says, looking out of the window. She's feeling curiously numb, cold within. They will go out to the shuttleport with their children, shortly; take them safely through the last snow that they will ever see.

[raven]

home

"I was somewhere else, and now I'm here" - it's what he says, over and over and over again. They found him wandering the streets and when a Muggle constable tried to arrest him he made sparks fly, like a child doing magic with no conscious control over it. The Aurors found him not long after that, and there were questions asked, about veils, and falling, and memory, and healers came from St Mungo's, and there was a great deal of speculation and panic, but it was always going to end like this.

"They tell me," Remus says, "that you don't remember anything about who you are, and how you came here."

Sirius nods. "That's right."

Remus opens a box of ginger nuts and hands it to him. "Do you like the smell?" he asks. "You always used to like them, but I thought I'd check before I put them out."

"I like the smell."

Remus nods, and makes tea. He doesn't ask if Sirius still likes it, because he needs it, himself: something grounding in this tilting world.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" Sirius asks, as Remus hunts for mugs in a cupboard. "Everyone else asks me what I can remember, and how I ended up on the street, and things, things like that."

Remus shrugs, philosophically. "You'll remember when you remember. In the meantime, here you are."

"Yes." Sirius frowns. "Why? Not that," he quickly amends, "I don't appreciate it, you looking after me, and feeding me, and things. But why did they bring me here, to you?"

Remus doesn't move from the cupboard for a moment. "Do you know what a werewolf is?" he asks.

Sirius frowns. "Yes. Funny… why do I remember that?"

Remus emerges from the cupboard and finishes making the tea before he says anything else. He picks up the two mugs and places them on the table, sits down and reaches for a ginger nut, all the time with Sirius's eyes on him. Perhaps this time, he thinks, this is the time. Perhaps this time they can do it right.

"I'm thirty-six years old,' he says abruptly. "So are you - you're three weeks older than me, we used to celebrate our birthdays together. When you were eleven, you did something for me that remains the kindest and most graceful thing I have ever seen any human being do for another."

Sirius looks startled. He sips his tea and says, "I like this."

"I know," Remus answers, weary.

"Go on," Sirius says, and reaches for his hand, an almost-unconscious gesture, and Remus does.

Re: Simon and Alys pretend to be married

[forthwritten]

INDIANS IN SPACE.

[musesfool]

Oh, my heart. Yes, this, so much. <3

[fairestcat]

Oh, this is wonderful. I love the kind of unsettled feel of the whole thing, how unsettled they both are and how that comes across in the writing.

[avanti_90]

This is great, but I am thoroughly confused. Do you mean Aral's mother's mother, instead of his father's mother? After all, in the unlikely event that Aral's father's mother, um, married a Betan woman, it wouldn't make any difference to Miles' children's blood...