#kiji fics

[kijiboop]

Gideon and Lucas argue about Gideon's sex life.

[kijiboop]

Liberata Me: Chapter 2

Source Work: Event Horizon (1997)

Pairing: DJ x OFC (Liat Kotona)

Content warnings: suicide, gore, hallucinations, reality warping

When Liat and DJ arrived on the bridge, Miller nodded to them. "I'm taking Justin and Kotona over with me to the Event Horizon," he said simply. Liat stood up straight and nodded, though DJ squirmed, his hand automatically going to the small of her back. "Cooper's on stand-by in case of emergency and I want the medbay standing by."

"I can go," DJ said quickly. "Liat should stay and check the medbay." She shot him a glare and he found he couldn't meet her eyes.

Miller stared at him and said evenly, "Kotona, get suited up. I want you, Dr. Weir and Smitty on the bridge here, guiding us through comms." He held DJ's gaze until DJ finally looked away and nodded. 

"It's just a routine sweep," Liat said quietly when Miller walked away. She tugged on DJ's hand, trying to get him to look at her. "I'll be fine, DJ. It was just a dream."

"A dream you weren't in," DJ whispered with a weak smile. "I'm not sure if that's comforting or more terrifying, to be honest." He ran his hand along her jaw and kissed her quickly. "Be careful," he said. 

"Of course." Liat smiled at him and jogged off down the hall toward the suit bay, leaving DJ to stare uncertainly at the looming image of the Event Horizon on their forward screens. 

"Bloody ugly bitch, isn't she?" muttered Smitty from the pilot's seat.

I hear her screaming.

It feels like I've been hearing my wife screaming for centuries. An aching, heart-ending scream that guts me more than Weir's knife ever could. 

This time, though, I feel like she's screaming on the other side of a wall, a paper-thin tissue of matter between us that made me stop cycling through fact and fiction and nightmare and daydream to really focus on what I was hearing. Am I hearing it? Is that even possible?

I open my eyes somewhere between hell and reality. Liat's voice reaches me there, a wordless thing that was both beautifully musical, almost sonorous, and gut-wrenchingly ugly. Liat always turned away from me when she cried, insisting it was when she was at her ugliest. I couldn't have disagreed more: in those moments of raw emotion, I felt like looking at her was as beautiful as staring into the eye of a hurricane.

Hearing her now is like that, the power of her despair and grief ripping across time and space and impossible distances until it jerks me like a fish on a hook. I cry out in answer because I can't be silent when my heart hurts like this and she's been my heart since the first moment her hand curled into mine. 

I've needed her my whole life and now, deep within my death, I need her even more.

DJ twitched away from the shadows of his nightmare. "Ugly," he agreed in a low voice, then looked away before Smitty could say more. Instead, he watched Liat's camera as she crossed the umbilicus to the Event Horizon with Miller and Justin, trying to remind himself that she had just as much space-walk time and just as many hours of rescue training as he did. It didn't calm his nerves at all. "We've got pressure," she announced over the comm.

Justin began drilling open the hatch while Miller and Liat watched. DJ drummed his fingers against his biceps, unable to calm himself. Every moment his wife was hanging in open space next to that monstrosity of a ship grated on his nerves like chewing glass. The hatch opened and the boarding crew entered the derelict ship, their cameras swinging as they explored the dark inside. 

"What are those?" Captain Miller asked in a monotone, his camera pointing at a bundle of wires and cables. More of them were spaced down the long corridor at regular intervals. They all bore a familiar warning label: DANGER: explosive.

"Explosive charges," said Weir. Ice flowed into DJ's veins and he stared at the box in the monitor. 

"Why would there be so many?" he asked past the invisible hand clutching at his throat.

"It's in case of emergency," Weir explained in a casual voice. "If something happens with the gravity drive, the crew can use the forward decks as a life boat." He looked over his shoulder and frowned at the tight expression on DJ's face. "It's just a precaution, Doctor."

"Sure," DJ said without conviction and Smith snorted. They watched as the captain, Liat and Justin made their way down the corridor to the greater portion of the ship. Justin peeled off to head to engineering while Captain Miller sent Liat to the bridge and he headed to the next deck down, which opened on the medical bay. 

Nothing about this sat well with DJ and he hugged one arm across his belly, refusing to rock on the balls of his feet. He watched Liat's camera fixedly, wishing there was a reverse camera in the helmet so he could see her face. He wanted to be able to see her face, to gauge her fear or concern, to read the emotions in her dark brown eyes. She was so expressive and just listening to her voice was killing him as she said, "I'm on the bridge. No sign of the crew but there's a weird red mist here."

DJ leaned in closer to the camera and felt himself smile weakly when Liat leaned forward at the same speed and angle. They were so in sync sometimes, it was creepy. "It looks like... blood," he said cautiously.

Liat made an affirmative sound in her throat. "Arterial spray," she confirmed. "Crystalized. Someone died here messily." Her camera dipped as she looked down to her belt and removed a sample vial. "I'll collect a sample," she added unnecessarily and leaned back in to catch some blood crystals in the vial. 

"No sign of bodies?" Miller asked over the comm channel and DJ glanced at the captain's camera. He was looking around the medical deck, which seemed pristine and untouched.

"Nothing, Captain," Liat replied, then hesitated. "Wait..."

DJ's fingers curled hard into his forearms and he gritted his teeth, trembling. Flashes of violence, of blood and viscera burst behind his eyes again and he grunted, stumbling back a step with his hands over his eyes. "Doc?" Smith asked in a wary voice but DJ shook his head, one hand up.

"I'm fine," he insisted quietly. "Just a headache."

"One," said Liat. Her voice was flat and professional, drawing his attention the way her panic might not have. A mutilated face loomed in her camera and DJ felt his gorge rise like it hadn't since he was an intern in medical school. The face was missing its eyes, the veins standing out in stark contrast against pale skin and ruptured. Its mouth stood open in a silent scream and the tongue, swollen and pallid was visible inside like a worm in a hole. "Frozen," Liat observed in that same clinical voice. 

"Where are his eyes?" Smith asked in a hollow tone, his face pale.

"Explosive decompression," replied Weir.

DJ shook his head, swallowing his queasiness. "Decompression doesn't do that."

"I'm in the second containment field," announced Justin and DJ dragged his eyes away from the mutilated face on Liat's camera to the console Justin was examining in engineering. "Ship's got power. The coolant level is on reserve but everything's still green. Should I restore power, captain?"

"Not yet," Miller said calmly. "Kotona, how's our patient?"

"Crunchy," Liat said and there was a note of disgust in her voice that almost made DJ smile in spite of the situation. There was the woman he'd married.

"Any chance of transporting him for autopsy?"

"I don't think the body will survive both gravity and thawing, sir," Liat replied. "He'll just be jelly. If I could hazard a guess, I would say shock from the eye trauma and the pain of decompression." 

"Alright, can you turn on the thermal units from there?"

Liat's camera swung to scan over the bridge engineering console and she said, "Yes, sir."

"Justin, go ahead with the power. When it's engaged, Kotona, turn the thermals on." Both crew members acknowledged their orders and lights all over the ship fluttered into life. 

An ominous booming sound resounded through the comms and all the cameras jerked upright as the boarding party looked around. DJ's stomach dropped into zero-gee and he stared with wide eyes as Justin's camera turned toward a spinning corridor that had opened in one wall. The engineer moved toward it as if drifting in a dream and DJ wanted to scream, opened his mouth, reached out one hand...

Liat jerked sharply as a resounding boom rippled the space around her. Gravity restored, she could hear the frozen body hit the floor and shatter, but there was chaos on the communicators. She could hear everyone shouting, but couldn't make anything out. "Captain?" she tried weakly, turning toward the door to the corridor. "Dr. Weir? Starck?" Something gripped her stomach and she shivered. "DJ?"

He stood at the end of the hallway, expression fixed and still but his hands constantly moving. There was a scalpel in his left hand, flipping back and forth, over and around his nimble fingers as if he had no idea it was there. His eyes never went down to it, never left the flat panel of the bulkhead. It was if the wall itself had mesmerized him.

Liat wanted to shake him, to call his name and force him to look at her, anything to get the uncanny blankness out of his incredible blue eyes. The blankness scared her more than anything. The scalpel's constant movement seemed like something he did when his mind was occupied but his body was on autopilot, like clicking a retractable pen or chewing a pencil eraser.

His head turned and he stared blankly at her, through her. His mouth opened to speak, but nothing came out except a cough, a brief gout of blood that dribbled down his bottom lip. Grief and pain crossed his face and he was suddenly there, inhabiting his eyes again as he looked at her. "Liat," he managed hoarsely, reaching out with his right hand to her as the left flicked the scalpel across his own throat.

Liat screamed and lunged down the short hallway, her arms out to catch him as he dropped bonelessly to the deck but when she got there, the corridor was empty. "DJ?!" she gasped, spinning in place, patting the deck plates like he had gone invisible.

"Kotona?" the captain's voice snapped in her ear and Liat froze in place, breathing hard. "What's happening?"

"Liat?!" DJ's voice on the comms sounded panicked but very much alive and she struggled against her relief and confusion. 

"I thought I..." Liat sat back on her heels in the corridor, looking helplessly around her and trying to reason her way through the adrenaline surging through her body. "What was that sound, Captain?" she managed, almost desperate to change the subject.

"Some kind of gravity pulse from the drive," Miller informed her. "Justin is hurt and the Clark is damaged. I want everyone on the Event Horizon. Kotona, DJ, medical deck immediately. Cooper?"

"On my way, Cap," Cooper replied, his voice dark and strained. "Baby Bear is secure."

Liat stayed where she was for a few more moments, trying to clear her head. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the hopelessness in DJ's eyes as he slit his own throat. She jerked and gasped, then stumbled to her feet and headed for the medical deck as fast as she could make herself move. She listened as the crew talked back and forth over the comms, the panic in Smitty's voice as he insisted on being allowed to go back to his ship, the sound of DJ ordering someone to do what she should have been there to do already.

But he was alive.

She started to run in her bulky EVA suit, forcing herself not to think beyond getting to him, getting to Justin and helping in whatever way she could. When she burst through the medical bay doors, DJ looked up at her and pointed wordlessly at an IV stand attached to the table where Justin was stretched. No one in the med bay was wearing their suits anymore, so she shed her own at a run and dove in to get the IV started. 

Justin suddenly arched up in a spasm, his eyes rolling over white as he choked and cried out. Liat and DJ threw themselves across his body, trying to hold him to the table without hurting him. DJ finished injecting the sedative into the IV line and the engineer went limp, finally unconscious and still. 

Panting, DJ looked at her, then reached to cup her face in his hands. "You're alright," he said. It wasn't a question.

Liat closed her eyes and exhaled, willing the words to be true. "I'm fine," she whispered. She came around the exam table and hugged him tightly, reassuring herself that he was real, that the vision she'd seen had been nothing but a hallucination. She paused, then looked up at him and put her hand over his sternum.

DJ's face paled and he put his hand over hers. "You saw something, didn't you?" When she didn't answer right away, his fingers closed around hers, almost hard enough to hurt. "Tell me. Liat."

"I saw you kill yourself," she managed in a faint voice. "It was so real, DJ."

The look of relief that crossed his face was both profound and baffling. He pulled her against his chest and pressed his face into her hair. "They aren't true," he breathed, "or they don't have to be. They can be changed." He cradled her face in his palm, eyes intense. "I saw something else. If what you saw and what I saw aren't compatible, one of us has to be wrong. At least one of us. They can't both be true."

Liat searched his face nervously, then leaned her face against his chest. "I hope you're right."

[kijiboop]

Kiji Writes

So, a few months ago, I read this article regarding Jason Isaacs's history with substance abuse and some of the roots of the moving around his family did when he was a kid. I had never really realized (yes, American goyim alert) how bad the antisemitism is in countries other than the US. I sat down and started reading more articles, studies published about the prevalence at various times and in various areas.

Around the same time, a character popped up and started poking around the inside of my head. His name was Nathan Pryor and I ended up putting him into an AI chatbot on Character.ai, just for shits and giggles. The whole time I was chatting with Nathan, I kept getting this overwhelming feeling like there was something I was personally missing about my own character.

Something eventually clicked and I realized there was a novel brewing in the back of my head with Nathan at the center of it. Because I had always planned Nathan as being a British Jew. It wasn't until I was doing more research that I started getting ideas for how he was Jewish, what that looked like for his family and history. I did more research and messed with story ideas, threw things at the chatbot to see what bits stuck and what didn't.

I ended up with a story that spans generations. It explores antisemitism in England and Wales going back to the 1100s (at least). It explores how that kind of persecution echoes through time. And it explores a man's relationship with his son and his relationship with his father. It explores his self-identity and how he processes things he doesn't understand.

Nathan's story got very big on me. That's not unusual for me, but this is the first time it's happened in a way that I think I actually have something to say that's worth saying. I know I need to research a hell of a lot and I don't even know a quarter of what I need to know to pull this off.

But I think I'm finally ready to start. This weekend at GalaxyCon, I had an opportunity to talk to Jason Isaacs. Not long, but I did manage to put my brain together enough to tell him that I was working on a novel that had been inspired by his interviews and descriptions of antisemitism. I asked him if he was okay with my dedicating it to him when it's finished. He said it would be an honor and, especially impactful for me, "If it helps you write it," it was fine with him.

Maybe he'll never see it. Maybe I'll never write it. But I think I'm ready to actually start putting words into a document marked 'Nathan's Story'.

[kijiboop]

Jackson!!

Stop.

Stop getting hurt.

You’re making me cry.

Shut up. Just shut up and get in the bed, man.

Yes, dear, I love you too.

[kijiboop]

At @jezifster ‘s urging, I’m gonna do this thing. Please vote.

Rules: Pick a bunch of your WIPs and summarize them as badly as possible, then ask your followers to vote on which one they'd be most likely to read. Multiple/all/none options are completely optional.

Which would you read?

Man brings underage kids to drunken bar fight.

Boy meets girl. Girl goes to hell. Boy follows. Featuring m/f/f/f polycule.

Neurodivergence is next stage of human evolution. NDs move to the moon.

1880s vampire falls for his GenZ assistant.

NGC noble befriends foreign princess at summer camp.

Bachelor playboy prince offers political marriage to NGC cousin. Gains polycule.

A/B/O aliens invade New York.

Multiple (please specify)

Voting ended onJan 28, 2024

[kijiboop]

Working on faceclaims.

[kijiboop]

So.

Jackson.

I need you to come here right now and sit down.

Because you are gonna get the Jason Crouse treatment, my friend.

Two novel-length fanfics about falling in love with a librarian.

Like it or not.

And you’re gonna like it.

Yeah.

[kijiboop]

Sneak Peek - Hooked

Fairies are supposed to protect the forests in Neverland. Their primary reason for being is to make sure the seasons happen in time, that birds and insects and animals of all kinds follow the rhythm of their hearts, the natural pattern we all dance to.

When Peter Pan came to Neverland, that all changed. Tinkerbell was entranced by this boy, this fae creature even among the fairies who could cease time just by willing it. The seasons stopped turning except when Peter wanted to do something seasonal. When he wanted to make snowmen, snow fell in blizzards. When he wanted to go swimming in lazy summer sunshine, the temperature soared, the trees burst into blossom and full leaf. 

The little island of Neverland was in thrall to the whims of an eternal child. The rest of the fairies were powerless, especially after Tink shared the magic of pixie dust with him. Once he could fly, Neverland was his.

Having fun all day is one thing, but eventually, even Peter Pan tired of nothing but fun. He sought adventure from the world beyond his stars. He pulled in other children, mostly boys with their reckless abandon in search of joy. As his playmates grew in number, he set his sights on bigger game.

Adults. The dreaded old people who made and enforced the Rules, who wouldn't let you go to bed when you wanted or eat whatever you wanted, who made you go to school and then turned you into one of them. What worse villainy could any child want than an adult in a land of freedom and magic?

And so a respectable sailing ship passed out of Time and memory, carrying all hands with it. When they emerged in Neverland, they were cruel, vicious pirates with no memory of their own childhoods, their own families or their old lives. To a man, they were bloodthirsty and cutthroat. 

None of them could hold a candle to their captain, though. Whatever his name had been in Time, he became Captain James Hook, the hated rival and nemesis of Peter Pan, sworn to destroy the child who laughed in his face and made him feel... old.

Tags list: @jezifster @lucifers-trash-stash @risingphoenix761 @girlwiththepapatattoo

If you'd like to be added or removed to the tags list for future updates to this series, please let me know!