16. Someday, we will find what we are looking for. Or not. Maybe we'll find something much greater than that. -- Carolyn/Vicki, Dark Shadows
There was a storm that night. Winter and summer, nighttime at Collinwood so often came with a rumbling of thunder, warnings in the distance, and wailing coming from the cliffs.
Vicki had gotten used to it quickly. She told Carolyn it was no worse than the noise of traffic in the streets outside the orphanage, and in some ways it was better. 'Thunder and lightning,' she'd said with a half-smile that made her look so much older, 'can only ever be thunder and lightning.'
She was already asleep. Carolyn was sitting up in bed beside her, looking at her. She couldn't see Vicki very clearly, only a hint of her outline in the darkness, but she could look at the space where she knew Vicki to be, and feel the bedclothes rise and fall with her steady, even breathing.
Carolyn twisted her side of the sheet into knots in her hands. She was thinking about... Joe Haskell. She was thinking about Burke Devlin, and Uncle Roger. About her mother being alone for almost twenty years.
She was thinking about the girl sleeping peacefully beside her, and wishing she could see her face.
Joe was steady and dependable and dull. Burke was vibrant, exciting... dangerous. Uncle Roger was dashing and off-limits.
Carolyn wished she was off-limits. She wished her mother wasn't so eager to marry her off and send her away. Sometimes, she wished she was like Vicki, with no home and no family, able to make her own way in the world, unburdened by the Collins name locked around her neck.
She doubted she'd be any good at it now; she hadn't been brought up to be on her own. Maybe if she'd run away when she was six or ten or any of the dozen times she'd thought about it. Once she'd even packed a bag and the handful of dollars she'd squirreled away, snuck out of the house on a rare non-stormy night and started to walk into town to buy a train ticket to somewhere, anywhere that wasn't Collinsport. She'd gotten maybe a half-mile down the road before the idea of her mother, abandoned in that big house forever, with no companions but the ghosts...
It had been too much for her to bear.
So she'd gone back, put her clothes away, put her meager savings back in her jewelry box, and never tried it again. She couldn't leave her mother alone, anymore than she could stand being alone herself.
Being with Joe was a little like being alone. So was being with Burke. Even spending time with Uncle Roger felt isolating, like they were both on their own little rafts in the ocean. Being with Vicki, even when Vicki was asleep, felt like...
Carolyn sighed and wriggled down until she was lying on her side, facing the space in the bed where Vicki lay beside her. Eventually, she fell asleep.
She dreamed of trains, of Vicki sitting next to her and holding her hand as they watched the landscape flash by, and the night sky was clear and full of stars.
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Prompt and ye shall receive! Currently accepting prompt requests from this list.
I was tagged by @meldanya44 (thanks!) for six non-selfie pictures from my camera roll, and sure! why not?
Top to bottom:
1. City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, San Francisco, CA
2. Audre Lorde plaque on the Rainbow Honor Walk in the Castro, San Francisco, CA
3. A view from the top of Coit Tower, San Francisco, CA
4. A sticker on a pole in my city
5. Philadelphia skyline as seen from the north footpath of the Ben Franklin Bridge
6. San Francisco skyline as seen from Mission Dolores Park, San Francisco, CA
Tagging @stabbyhobbit, @polyproticamory, @ladytharen, @katrinastratford, @billgavemeextrachips and @ruth-gemmells-boob-scar if y'all feel like it. No pressure!
Counted cross-stitch! My ideal stitching situation is on the couch with something that I know more or less by heart on the TV; I think the most efficient evening of stitching I ever did was set to the first half of The Terminator, which I enjoyed "watching" no less than if I had actually been looking at the screen for any part of it.
25. Favorite old person activity?
It's been a long time since I've done it, but I think certainly the most old person activity I've enjoyed was water aerobics at the YMCA. On the other hand if we go by frequency of activity, my favorite old person activity is probably... watching the local news? Or weather discussion. I have a groupchat with college friends who mostly all live in the same city still and we had to create a "weather" channel for live Which Neighborhood Is It Raining In Now updates.
29. Go-to holiday card format?
My problem is that I like the idea of sending cards, so every couple of years I buy a box of roughly "secular Season's Greetings" type of cards, with nonspecific winter scenes and ideally some glitter on them, but I am simply not going to actually send them. I have tried! I have failed! The couple of times I did manage to get it together and send some out in a timely fashion they all got inexplicably lost in the mail or returned to me after taking a monthlong tour of Canada! I give up!
Now that I have a kid I do really want to figure out the logistics of the Seasonal Photo Card. I just... don't know if I will ever actually manage to plan ahead enough. Maybe I will settle on being the weird relative who sends you a New Year's card with a photo of my kid in his Halloween costume; that would at least solve the "have to take seasonal Christmas photos in October" part of the issue.
WEIRDLY SPECIFIC AND UNRELATED ASKS.
27. what’s your favorite or go-to outfit?
this one has two very different answers lol so i'll post both, my fave outfit is a 50's true vintage dress i have (and the hat/gloves/purse/etc combo that I put with it). my go-to is my UV trousers, a knock off 11th doctor jacket from hot topic that I've had for ages, and some form of graphic tee, lately it's been my ds tees (artistic representation included)
Oooh I'm interested in Be It Ever So Humble for the WIP asks
Lol, this one is being written at your request. 😘 This is a fic about the South Downs cottage and about how Aziraphale and Crowley are city-dwellers at heart, and the idea of a quiet peaceful isolated country cottage is LOVELY and ROMANTIC until they realize there's no nightlife and not enough restaurants.
Excerpt (just fluff here, no country living problems):
“You know,” said Aziraphale, his voice low and drowsy, “I really wasn’t sure how this whole cottage idea was going to work out, but so far it seems to be going swimmingly.”
Crowley said nothing.
“I mean, neither of us are really what you might call ‘country’ people. Personally, I was delighted when the Mesopotamians got round to inventing cities, and I’ve never really looked back since.”
Crowley continued to say nothing.
“We both like our night life and our restaurants and our entertainment, and there really isn’t any of that here, but… it’s been wonderful, just you and I. Walking, swimming, picnicking… sitting in the garden… Crowley, are you asleep?”
“Hmm? Sorry, what was that? Were you saying something? Can’t hear you, your arm’s over my ear.”
“Oh! Sorry!” Aziraphale hastily shifted his arm down to around the vicinity of Crowley’s ribs. “Still getting used to the mathematics of this.”
“What, of sharing a bed with someone?”
“Yes. And with you, specifically. You’re very slithery.” He nuzzled his nose into Crowley’s hair. “I never know where you’re going to be next.”
“Mmm.” Crowley snuggled back more firmly against Aziraphale’s chest and stomach. “Perils of getting into bed with a snake. We like to be comfortable.”
“And… do you like this? Having someplace to just… be?”
“Angel.” There was a delicious soft warmth in Crowley’s voice, that he only ever brought out for Aziraphale. He reached for Aziraphale’s hand and pulled his arm tighter around his middle, and then half-buried his face in the pillow so that his next words were muffled.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Aziraphale teased. “I don’t think I heard you.”
Crowley whined and curled into a tighter ball, which of course molded Aziraphale even more snugly against his back. Finally, he gave in. “I said, you’ve always been my place to be.”
“Thank you, my dear,” said Aziraphale, dropping a light kiss to the nape of Crowley’s neck. “I thought that’s what I heard.”
11. You leave claw marks in everything you touch. -- Angelique/Barnabas
11. You leave claw marks in everything you touch. (Angelique Bouchard/Barnabas Collins) (Dark Shadows) (meldanya44)
(Not sure what's going on here... Maybe it's an AU where Barnabas finds out about her intended marriage to Sky, maybe it's post-canon, idk!)
"You cannot do this," Barnabas snapped. "I won't allow it."
"You can't stop me," replied Angelique. "Oh, don't posture at me. And don't mistake my words for smug triumph. I'm tired, Barnabas, and this new... arrangement... will give me a chance to rest. To breathe."
"And what of the man in your new 'arrangement'? Does he know what you are? Or will you wait until your wedding night to tell him the truth?"
"Do any of your young ladies know what you are, before it's too late?"
Barnabas's lips tightened at the truth of her statement, but he merely pressed on. "Everyone you get your claws into is the worse for it."
"My claws or your fangs, it hardly matters. We leave bloody wounds wherever we go." She let out an irritated sigh. "You really must stop being so hypocritical, Barnabas. It doesn't suit you."
"Is it hypocrisy to say that you will be the death of your new 'husband'?"
"Yes. Because I won't be. You, on the other hand, can't even get a girl to the altar without murdering her by accident."
"And who is to blame for that, really? Who made me what I am now?"
"Are you really going to keep using that excuse forever? Two hundred years ago, I cursed you to be a vampire. Since then, you've been cured and reverted and cured and cursed again and cured again, and now reverted again. I think my share of the blame in this has long been exhausted."
"And yet, I persist in this state. Which you first plunged me into. Whatever else may have befallen me since then, you began it."
"Then why don't you end it?" said Angelique simply. "Destroy yourself. Oh don't look so shocked. Why not? You're as damned as you can ever be."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you. Would you laugh, Angelique? If I simply decided to walk into the sun, or shoot myself with a silver bullet?"
"No, Barnabas. No more than you would laugh if I died again. How many times have you watched me die? How many times have you been the cause of my death? Nearly all of them. Would you like to try again?"
"What would be the point?" Barnabas turned away. "You'd only come back again. It seems I am never to be rid of you."
"Nor I you. Don't you think I would give you up, if I could?"
"You can," he spat. "There is no sense or reason in loving someone who has no desire for it."
"Love is neither sensible nor reasonable. It simply is."
"That is not love. Only... obsession."
"And you would know." Angelique waited. "Why are you still here, Barnabas? The door is open."
"I'm not so much a fool as to turn my back on you. And I won't leave you here." He pointed with his cane. "You first."
—–
Prompt and ye shall receive! Currently accepting prompts from this list.
8. And since I love you on this earth, it's on this earth that I need you, not in my imagination. -- Crowley/Aziraphale
This one got away from me, so on AO3 it goes!
Irregular (1,105 words, Rated G)
Aziraphale says no to Heaven, and (somewhat) no to Crowley. Yet another revision of the final season of S2 Ep6.
"Crowley, I... oh." Aziraphale looked close to tears. "I can't... I don't... Please don't make me choose."
All the hope left Crowley's face, like a small, desperate flame being extinguished. "Don't make you chose? Between what, me and Heaven?"
"Oh, to hell with Heaven!" Aziraphale snapped.
For the first time in a very long time, Crowley blinked. "Er. Bit of an ontological conundrum, that."
Prompt and ye shall receive! Currently accepting prompt requests from this list.
Ohhhhhhhh, this is gonna be an interesting story when I get to it, because THIS is the story about GRIEF that I listed on my "What Should I Write?" poll last month (that got the fewest votes). It's technically canon-compliant with the end of GO3, but as with all finales, once the credits roll, I do what I want.
There's an A story and a B story, being told more or less simultaneously:
A Story: "Present Time" - Asa Fell is now a widower, living alone on the South Downs, except for a persistent ghost haunting his cottage, who only vaguely looks like his late husband, and who keeps calling him a name he doesn't recognize.
B story: "Past Time" - An exploration of the pain of being immortal supernatural creatures living among humans, making friends in spite of themselves, and eventually always losing them, and Aziraphale and Crowley being one another’s only constants.
I don't have any real excerpts to share, unfortunately, because I know that once I start this one, I will be locked in until it's done, and then I will be a shivering husk of a person for several weeks. But I do have this one line of dialogue to share...
“I told you, I’m him! Well, sort of. Not really. We talked. And he couldn’t come to fetch you, so I’m here.”
