dark_agenda | Dark Drabblefest: Prompts for Day One

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Dark Drabblefest: Prompts for Day One

Theme:
A world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. - W. E. B. DuBois (Source)

Texture:

Trope:
Chased by Angry Natives

Taste:
~ briny ~ viridian ~ caulk

Tongues:

Para que tú me oigas
mis palabras
se adelgazan a veces
como las huellas de las gaviotas en las playas.

Collar, cascabel ebrio
para tus manos suaves como las uvas. (Source)

For you to hear me
my words
thin themselves out, at times,
like the trails of gulls on the shore.

A necklace of bones, a crazed rattle
for your fingers smooth as grapes. (Source)

Guidelines:

Prompts are entirely optional, to use, subvert or ignore as you please.
The goal is to write a drabble of at least 100 words in one of the qualifying Remix fandoms. If you end up writing a longer fic, more joy to us all.
Your drabble must put a chromatic character at the centre of its narrative.
You can share your drabbles in comments to each day's prompts post, as long as you include a fandom and a rating in your subject.
You may suggest and/or solicit fandom or character specific prompts in comments, as long as your ratio of prompts to drabbles does not tilt heavily towards the former.
If you are trying to qualify for Remix 2010, you will need 7 drabbles in any one fandom. You don't have to do Remix to play here, though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Derrial Book is an acquired name, but it's one that suits me better than any of the others I've used. My personality is half acquired, half what I've always thought it ought to be.

Whatever else I've been, I'm a real Shepherd. I think I would have to be a less faithful (or stronger) man to lie about that.

There was a time, when I was a child, that I thought I would grow up to be a Shepherd. I'm glad I was right.

What I was before I was a Shepherd is unimportant now. Who my parents were and what planet I was born on are also irrelevant.

I'm fulfilling my purpose and God's purpose.

Derrial Book is the name I've earned.

First comment, how scary. Let me know if I've done anything I shouldn't/failed to do something I should.

\0/ - no need to be scared, you were perfect!

Longer than a drabble. Uhura has a conversation with her old professor, Hoshi Sato. Background pairing of Spock/Uhura.

The Language of Love

“Why are you coming to me, Cadet Uhura?” Professor Sato asked. “If you’re looking for an expert on the Vulcan language, you should be contacting Dr. Grayson, on Vulcan.”

Uhura shook her head. “I don’t think that will work for me, Professor. You served with a Vulcan for years. You were friends with her and her human lover, and I’m sure you would have tried to collect words from a native speaker if they were missing from the standard lexicon. You must know the expressions Vulcans use with their lovers.”

“How did you know about T’Pol and Commander Tucker’s relationship?” Professor Sato asked, frowning.

“It’s… obvious, from watching the recordings. Weren’t they?”

“I suppose the only reason it took the rest of us so long to figure it out was that none of us were used to the concept that Vulcans feel love,” Sato said, smiling wryly. “But I’ve given advice to a human student who wanted to express love for a Vulcan before, and since then, she’s married him and moved to Vulcan, so she would know far, far more than I would. I really do think you should contact Dr. Amanda Grayson, on Vulcan, and ask her.”

“That… would be awkward,” Uhura said, and took a deep breath. “It’s… Dr. Grayson’s son… I’d like to express myself to.”

“Oh,” Sato said. “So you’re in a relationship with Spock, then?”

“I… not yet. I want to be. Which is why I’m looking for the words.”

Sato smiled radiantly, her lined face crinkling with delight. “In that case, based on my correspondence with Amanda… you definitely are going to want to speak with her first.”

This should have had a rating of PG; apparently I can't edit on Dreamwidth.

Het with maidenly fade-outs. I'm linking to this one because it's significantly longer than a drabble. A rewrite of Amok Time in the ST:XI universe with the Spock/Uhura relationship present. Uhura is the POV and protagonist.

Remaking Tradition

Lookit you, writing two longer than drabbles! Yay!

It's a new life, a second chance, and it's not that different from the one that was taken from him in the first place except for all the monsters and the fact that he's currently bound to Dean fucking Winchester. Tonight the rain drops into the sand and the noise of it on the roof of the car drowns out the sound of the ocean. It's sweltering hot even in the dusk and the gray, and they're huddled here in the car waiting for night to come and more damn monsters.

Dean kisses him while they wait. It's usually Victor who has to initiate it, but this evening it's Dean, in the middle of checking his gun once more while they sit and wait and wait some more. His mouth presses against Victor's and their guns are on the seat between them. Victor kisses back, tries to keep it chaste for now, because once Dean starts he generally isn't interested in stopping. But the kissing isn't bad, especially not when Dean starts making those little noises of his, soft grunts that make him sound happy for once.

Something screams outside and they fall apart. His heart is racing with the scare and the kiss. "Just a gull," he says, and they both laugh a little. Dean picks up his beer with one hand and his gun with the other, but he glances up, long-lashed eyes locking with Victor's over the sweating bottle, which he offers to him.

Victor shakes his head, grins, takes it and drains it.

"Douche," Dean mutters, tossing the empty bottle in the back. "You jumped too."

The sudden rainstorm is dying off; the clouds are still racing and the ocean is still white-capped, but there's no rattle on the car's roof anymore. There's the sound of the sea, distant through the glass and the metal, and there's still the distant scream of the gulls, and Victor's not sure what he's about to say but then something flashes dark down on the sand and it doesn't matter; he's undoing the safety and opening the door.

Dean's hand alights once on the small of his back and then they're moving, into the night, and just for a second, before they hit the sand, he is on steady ground in this life. It's enough to carry him into the fight, enough to carry him into the night.

You worked in the seagulls, yay!

"Scotty, get us the hell out of here," Kirk shouted into his communicator. He raced across the rocky terrain, followed by four mahogany-skinned residents of Beta Canis.

Uhura looked up from the group of local children, whose playground rhymes she was recording. Xenoanthropology was really not her thing, but Lt Sagna was ill, and samples of children's language might come in handy with upgrading the universal translator to include the local language.

"Uhura, what are you doing? Get out of here! Can't you tell the natives are hostile!? Move, dammit!" Kirk's face was mottled red with exertion, making him look even more alien on this world of dark skinned humanoids.

Instead, Uhura stepped forward, and raised her hand with first three fingers extended, the traditional gesture of greeting and good will in this civilization. The leader of the group of locals came up and started speaking rapidly, gesticulating wildly. Uhura jerked her head up and back and looked pointedly at the children. Slowly and haltingly she spoke in their language. "Please take pity. Your children understand your language better than I do."

The man stopped and looked at . . .his second in command? Uhura had no idea what their relationship was but the younger fellow took over attempts to communicate. After several minutes of questioning the fellow to clarify his meaning Uhura stopped and laughed. "Jim, you idiot. These men are scientists, not warriors. They were on a field assignment when they witnessed one of the ... um, not sure what to call it - monkey-like animals, I guess - steal your phaser and tricorder. They were trying to catch up to you to tell you about your missing equipment."

Kirk just looked baffled. "You mean, they weren't trying to kill me?"

The younger scientist made a puzzled noise, and Uhura translated for them. Their raucous laughter filled the narrow valley as they realized Kirk's mistake. "C'mon you. Let's go find your missing equipment, Indiana."

Subvert that trope, subvert it good!

Summer classes start soon and Susan wants to at least have done some of these exercises before then, but the limit of the function as x approaches two is the limit of her knowledge as time approaches the end of April is the asymptote she can come closer and closer to but never quite attain—

The book is taken from her hands and closed with a snap. Susan looks up. It's Aisha, who she hasn't seen since February when Susan skipped two days of class to be home with—

"I heard about Jake," Aisha says. She's got two hot dogs on a plate, which she puts down on the book so she can sit with Susan. "I am so sorry, honey."

Susan twists sideways and flings her arms around Aisha, clinging for dear life.

"They found the other two," Susan says into Aisha's hair. "Dead. Throats cut. And something strange they won't tell us about. No sign of Jake."

Aisha doesn't say 'maybe he's still alive'. Susan's glad. Mama won't stop saying it, because there must be a reason Jake's listed as MIA, not KIA; Susan knows 'missing' just means the body hasn't been found, or else it's in pieces too small to identify.

She won't cry. She won't. She's Susan Deborah Talley and she will face the world with her back straight and a smile on her face because her brother fought and died for her life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and she will not be a shame to him.

"Easy, Susie," Aisha says.

"You take it easy, Susie," Jake said in February, right before he shipped out. "But not too easy. Don't you be wasting my money skipping any more classes, you hear? Can't have the future first lesbian President slacking on her schoolwork."

Susan grinned then, playing along, and doesn't grin now: it's not a joke anymore. It's a goal.

Susan breathes the jasmine scent of Aisha's shampoo and listens to the syncopation of their heartbeats, the chatter and laughter of the Memorial Day picnic, tastes salt on her lips and feels the softness of Aisha's hair on her cheek. She pulls back, scoots the plate onto the ground, and flips the textbook open. "So the limit of a function as x approaches a number is usually what you get when you put that number in for x and solve, right? If the function's three x plus two is zero, the limit approaching zero is three times zero plus two is two, approaching one is three times one plus two is five—"

"But this one gets you zero over zero," Aisha says, pointing at exercise two point one, "which ain't anything."

"Yeah. So instead of solving with two, we solve with numbers approaching two—" Susan grabs her calculator from her purse and presses buttons. One point nine times one point nine, minus one point nine, minus two, memory, one point nine minus two, divide by memory, and she takes a pencil and writes 0.345 in the table below 1.9. Memory clear, one point nine nine times—

The limit of this function as x approaches two is one-third exactly. The limit of Susan Talley as she approaches her brother's wishes, goals, memory is infinity.

Not picky about pairings, just want to see some sapphic Uhura lovin' that involves texture porn (lush brocades, sheer silks, baby fine cashmere, whatever!)

Emmy unlocked another recently-occupied room and pulled her cart inside, humming "I Will Survive", scooped the used towels off the bathroom floor and dropped them in with the laundry, picked up a stack of fresh towels, and as she turned to hang them up a column of black smoke smacked into the glass of the bathroom window. Emmy jumped back, slammed the door shut, but the smoke was already hissing between the window and the sill, through the crack under the door, and upwards and down Emmy's throat.

Emmy glanced down at the towels, dropped them on the bed and grabbed a sheet of motel stationery and scribbled a note against her arm, took the towels and hurried out of the room and along the hallway past a few motel patrons, her eyes and arms and legs moving without her consent. That man hadn't had that face behind his face when she saw him check in, had he?

Silent, Emmy screamed.

Emmy's hand knocked on a door. "Housekeeping," called Emmy's voice.

"Not now," answered a man inside.

"Sir, I've got clean towels," Emmy's voice called back, and Jesus fuck—Emmy's body shuddered, and still, Emmy smiled—Jesus fuck was this all it was about? Emmy wasn't doing her job fast enough?

The door opened to one of the handsomest men Emmy had ever laid eyes on, and if she were fifteen years younger and twenty years stupider—and could work her own damn fingers—but Emmy was none of the above as proven by the way her body was ignoring her mind and pushing past the man to close the curtains and turn to the man's handsome friend. "I'm at this address," Emmy's voice said as Emmy's hand passed the note, and ignored what the friend said next to continue "go now, go through the bathroom window, don't stop, don't take your car, don't pass go. There are demons in the hallway and in the parking lot."

Demons?

Emmy caught flashes of how the room was supposed to look, crystals of sugar or salt in a thick line along the windowsill and something Satanic drawn on the ceiling above the door, remembered the face, and Jesus fuck. Demons.

"—so I've gotta hurry back," Emmy's voice said. "See you when you get there. Go!"

Emmy's body marched back to the room she'd left, and the black smoke poured out of her as quickly as it had come. Emmy slumped to the floor and lay there for a minute, an hour. She opened her fingers, pushed against the floor, and her body moved as it ought. "Jesus fuck," she said, and leaned against a bed to just breathe.

Emmy stood and it was proof that her body was her own. Hers. Not a demon's.

Emmy took her cell out of her pocket and hit speed dial. Two rings, then "Casa de Emerald y Latisha Johnson."

"Spanish homework?" Emmy asked.

"Sí. You're still at work. Is something wrong?"

Emmy opened her mouth and closed it. "No, no, baby," Emmy reassured her. (Liar.) "Just wanted to hear your voice, is all." Emmy tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and stripped the used sheets off the bed, every movement under her control and no one else's.

Three days later, Emmy walked past the New Age store like she did most days and glanced in the window like she did in every store she passed and saw a necklace on display, a five-pointed star in a circle, like the Satanic design the demon had expected to see in the room where the handsome men who knew about demons were staying. Emmy walked in the store and asked a few questions and walked back out wearing one of those necklaces and with another tucked in her pocket to give to her daughter.

What a prolific start you are off to!

Charlene slid into the privacy of her quarters and closed her eyes. Leaning against the wall, she rubbed the back of her neck and breathed through the discomfort that always came with a double-shift.

"A few more weeks," she reminded herself, "and then it's off Klingon patrols and back to good our old exploration mission. Nice, quiet exploration." Although she tried, Charlene couldn't even think it with a straight face. She'd transferred aboard with the captain, a part of the typical two-step rank shuffle that went with a change of command, filling a position left by a domino of promotions.

She thought about that, realizing she hadn't thought about it in a while, and let it wander a little. She'd been an ensign then. It hadn't been her first tour on a starship, that honor went to the Reliant. It didn't matter, not really, no ship could prepare you for this ship. She had a feeling even the captain himself would say that. There wasn't another ship in the fleet that could lay claim to reality jumping mad-men, godlike children, and aliens who looked like living lasagna.

Charlene loved her job, loved her ship, but some days were almost too much. The scary part wasn't that, though, the scary part was that those days usually involved routine reports and run-of-the-mill experiments.

"The Enterprise Curse," she mused. The extraordinary becoming ordinary. She smiled, rueful, and then sighed. However skewed her sense of normality, she was tired. Quarterly reports and an exacting nature did not an abundance of energy make.

Sighing, she scrubbed a hand over her hair and contemplated fighting the foodslot. God, she missed good coffee. Some people chased white whales or Klingon cruisers, Charlene chased cups of coffee that didn't taste like engineering waste.

The thought made her snicker as she shrugged out of her uniform, leaving it and her boots in a pile by her bed. She'd get them later.

"Maybe that's why," she said, giving the foodslot a half-hearted poke. "It's not the ship's fault the engineers programmed the slots. They've probably never tasted a good cup in their lives." She remembered the swill the Reliant's engineers had called coffee. It made the Enterprise's version taste like ambrosia.

Not that she planned on giving it a try. She settled on tea instead.

Tossing her hose in the direction of her bed, Charlene took her tea and hotfooted it across the floor to her desk. Despite her temperature settings, the floor was always freezing. Of course, barefoot and in her underwear, the whole room was more than a little chilly.

Her console came to life with a pass of her hand and, with interest, Charlene checked out the sectors Starfleet had assigned them. Ships had made glancing passes through it, but nothing of any depth. They'd be the first Federation presence there period.

The thought of it made her adrenaline pick up, excitement stirring it to life, and she sat down. "Of course," she said with a wry smile, "the way things have been going, we'll be out there less than a week before the Orion Syndicate takes a shot at us and blows out life support on half a dozen decks."

The desk chair was cold against her skin, leaving Charlene to squirm as she checked her console. Just over half a dozen messages waited and Commander Spock had sent three of them. She grinned and shook her head. They hadn't even left Federation space yet and he was already gearing up.

Not that Spock ever actually slowed down.

She wasn't surprised that the first two were on already planned projects - upgrading life support's stability and a new dillithium matrix. Reviewing them with a practiced eye, she dashed off quick responses to both and then moved on. The next one was more general, mixing professional and personal, and demanded a more thorough response. She took her time with that one and longer still with the response, fingers curled around her mug and legs pulled up against her chest as she thought over her answers.

With Spock, it was always difficult to tell where personal left off and professional started. Not that it was that way for anyone else onboard. Shipboard life, especially shipboard life on the Enterprise, meant that somewhere along the line off-duty and on-duty blurred into one.

After she'd finished it, Charlene rolled her neck and refreshed her tea before she moved onto the next message. She laughed at Christine's latest "McCoy-isms" and rolled her eyes at Nyota's horrible puns. She suggested a new Argosian restaurant for Helen Noel's next leave and agreed to Hikaru help with Beauregard's next re-potting. She hated that plant, but Sulu loved the old monster and she just couldn't say no.

She finished her tea with the last of her messages, darting back to the foodslot to recycle the mug.

From there, it was the sonic shower. She passed a hand over her favorite wall-hanging as she went. The lace of the fabric scratched at her fingers, reminding her of the way it had floated and flared with the movement of the dancers who'd worn it. They'd been tiny, violet-skinned people of no particular gender who'd moved in patterns that overwhelmed the human eye.

She'd bought it on one of the border worlds with the last of her ship-issued chits, enamored of the dance. It had joined her modest collection, purchases from worlds that no other humans, save her shipmates, had walked. Stars no other humans had seen. A memory made tangible in the brush of fabric against skin.

Charlene moved her head, watching the hanging's material shine beneath her cabin's lights.

"Here's hoping for no Orions," she murmured, giving it another stroke. "I want to see what's next."

A little grin lit her features as she added, "Maybe someone out here will know how to make a decent cup of coffee."

Great start for the longer-than-drabble fest :)

Taitt (whom I have given a first name: Erika) appeared in the TNG episode Descent Part II.

You have toiled in obscurity for six years and you have learned to like it that way.

Starfleet is enormous, that's the thing. Your parents will never understand it, never accept that their Erika is not the next James T. Kirk; can't understand why you didn't gain the ear and trust of Captain Picard the day you shipped aboard the Enterprise. Of course you became a hero just six weeks after that posting. Isn't it natural? Isn't that what you were born to do?

They're so proud of their daughter, the little Borg slayer.

You read Commander Riker's mission report as soon as it's posted. The Borg had learned individuality. The Borg had gone rogue. Like a computer gaining self-awareness, you had to kill them the moment they became people. Co-workers still clap you on the back, still congratulate you for your burn on Lieutenant Barnaby. Picard personally sent you a commendation and gave you your pick of assignments. You consider asking for a transfer to a different ship, but you know this reputation will follow you — Starfleet is small, after all. You stay and work on finding the next answer.

You don't regret destroying that ship and saving all your lives. You don't regret a chance to shine. But you didn't write a thesis on solar dynamics because you wanted to use your research as a weapon, and when people congratulate you for your killer calculations, you wish over and over that somebody might ask — what else can your knowledge do?

Don't know the fandom, but this last line was a killer.

Inara fingered the fabric.

"How piaoliang!" she said. The woman at the stall gave her a toothy smile in return.

The fabic really was pretty. Rough but still pretty, with a muted shine, and she could tell that the woman was proud of her wares, and knew their worth, and it didn't matter what the fancy lady in front of them said.

The little girl next to the woman looked at her with big, big eyes, too shy to do much but hide behind the woman's skirts.

It still was strange to be on the other side of the stall.

Ooh, I like it. :)

Without Expectation, Spock/Uhura

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dark Drabblefest: Prompts for Day One

Firefly, G, On Names

Re: Firefly, G, On Names

Star Trek 2009: The Language of Love

Re: Star Trek 2009: The Language of Love, PG

Star Trek 2009: Remaking Tradition (PG-13)

Re: Star Trek 2009: Remaking Tradition (PG-13)

Supernatural, PG, Startle

Re: Supernatural, PG, Startle

Star Trek (Reboot or TOS); G

Re: Star Trek (Reboot or TOS); G

Supernatural, PG-13, Ask What Answer I Can Find

Re: Supernatural, PG-13, Ask What Answer I Can Find

Prompt: ST AOS or TOS - Uhura femslash

Supernatural, PG-13, Did You Think I'd Crumble

Re: Supernatural, PG-13, Did You Think I'd Crumble

Star Trek: TOS, pg, Painted Ships

Re: Star Trek: TOS, pg, Painted Ships

"Accurate," Star Trek: TNG, G; Ensign Taitt

Re: "Accurate," Star Trek: TNG, G; Ensign Taitt

Firefly, G, Fabric

Re: Firefly, G, Fabric

Star Trek: AOS, PG