stalkerbunny

aralias did this thing and it seemed fun, so.

When you see this, post an excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.

I liked the addition of posting everything of the ones that will likely never get finished barring miraculous inspiration, but 1) WOULD anyone on my flist actually want to read unfinished SuFin AUs?
2) I realized one of them is over 3K and another nearing 9K and eeep. I kind of want to finish them just because that is ridiculous. Anyway, you'll just get excerpts of those too. (almost all of these seem to be AUs, funny how that happens...)

So, starting with the ones I am writing right now or started recently.

The Tardis baby fic
In which certain Tardises keep getting close and then there are Consequences. With Eight and Jacobi!Master.

The Doctor opened a door and stepped out into a field of flowers, a hillside in an open landscape stretching off into the blue distance on both sides, the door he’d come in from set into an ancient looking wall on this side. It was sunny, the gentle warmth and fresh colours of late spring, and the grass and flowers waved gently in a slight breeze.

And there, cradled by a nook in the hillside sat a battered space ship, or rather, a Tardis that had been pretending to be one. A small, sleek private ship, which form presumably had suited its pilot when they’d been doing whatever it was that had left them in trouble with the Dalek fleet. A rabble of blue butterflies had descended on the hull, fluttering their wings.

*

The Neighbour-verse (human au with 7 and Ainley!Master)
They're ex-Cold War era spies, John Smith has settled down in Perivale, and the Mr. Masters has spent rather a long time in prison. Also, Ace is very protective and doesn't think much of this new guy. And there are many, many cats. (not really happy with anything I've actually written for this thing so far)

The warm summer sun scorched the back of Ace’s neck as she battled to pedal her mum’s clunky old bicycle up the hill. In the bushes on the sides of the road, grasshoppers chittered feverishly. In the heat, the road seemed eternal, until finally she crested the incline, and reached the cast iron gate to Doctor Smith’s garden, the blue house visible behind the trees and rosebushes.

Ace left the bicycle at the side of the gate, on the inside where no one would spot it and steal it, before heading towards the house on the garden path, wiping sweat from her brow. Next to the bush with large pink roses she stopped, looking at a black cat that had just stepped from under the roses. The cat stared back with unblinking yellow-green eyes.

The scent of the pink roses hung thickly over the garden in the standing warm air. Ace stepped closer, reaching out a hand and the cat arched its spine and hissed at her, before slinking away towards the hedge between Doctor Smith’s house and the one next to it.

Ace shook her head and continued towards the house. The old veranda creaked under her feet, and the door had been left open.

“Professor!” she called out, but there was no reply.

*

The Shalka verse future fic
The Master's escape goes slightly awry and he ends up living one human life in Elizabethan era.

Most people who had met Edward Kelley found him to be a difficult person to know. Driven, certainly, charismatic up to a point, but also tempestuous and mercurial. Like a man possessed, some had whispered behind his back, and sometimes he wondered at that himself.

Jane had asked once, after a long day of rather hurried travelling, why he couldn’t just rest, enjoy what he had, but he had just shaken her away impatiently. How could he rest, when the entire world was subtly wrong. As long as he could remember he had felt it, a sense of misalignment, of not belonging in his skin. Sometimes, he’d looked at his childhood family, and they’d seemed strangers to him. Sometimes he’d thought of his childhood, or his days at Oxford, and the memories would shift like sand, escaping when he tried to grasp them.

He had called himself Talbot, back in the day, and wasn’t sure why anymore.

That sense of wrongness had pushed him to travel, and to his studies of this world and then the other, divine realms. He felt as if there was some profound truth, something he could almost remember. Like a word on the tip of his tongue that refused to surface fully.

Perhaps it had come to him in a dream, and then escaped upon waking.

The dreams came to him, when he slept and sometimes when he was awake, juxtaposed on the world around him and feeling more real than anything else. His angels, with their arch, unearthly ways and at times incomprehensible talk.

*

Survival fix-it
They... uh. Save the planet by making love instead of war? I will probably never finish it because it should be PWP and I can't write porn. So yeah.

The planet was dying. The Doctor could feel it, through the grasping, creeping hold of it on his mind and body. His head ached as if it had been split open, and he didn't know whethere he'd hit it from being thrown on the ground of it is was just the death rattle of the planet. He didn't care, all his thoughts centered on his own anger, his own struggle for life or death with the Master.

So long, they'd played their game of cat and mouse, but now it would end, one way or another. The bloodlust from the cheetah sickness bleeding through to him, and his anger feeding the poisonous frenzy that was tearing apart the reality around them.

The earth shook and groaned, convulsing as the fewered planet screamed, pulling it's children to itself. It was like an animal in pain, thrashing about with no real understanding of what was happening, just mindless fury.

Damn the Master, for not knowing when to give up, damn his endless greed that left everything salted and burned behind him, his endless, foolish plans... damn him most of all for making the Doctor wonder if he could have stopped him if only, if only he'd compromised earlier, not let the stakes rise, the bodies pile up between them.

No, that blood was not on his hands, he hadn't--

The Doctor snarled, and the Master was not quite a match to his strenght, not in his stolen Trakenite body, not with the virus making him simpler, unable to use strategy. He'd called it power, but then he'd always been so good at lying, to himself and others, the Doctor thought spitefully as he picked up the skull.

*

The Thing
... uh, a story where the Valeyard tries to put all the Masters in a tower and then the Doctors have to get them back. In the style of a fairytale because I tried ~~diary~~ log first and it wasn't working. Not sure this is either.

Well, you see, for all that the Doctor tried to be better, it was not easy. And somehow, at one point in his lives (for he had several) the things that were worst in him gained a shape of their own, a shade, if you will.

And that shade was the Valeyard, who envied and hated the Doctor for existing truly where he himself did not. Being as cunning as the Doctor himself, he concocted a plan to gain that existence, and it was a very elaborate and clever plan.

Unfortunately, the Valeyard didn’t take into account the Doctor’s friends, and less still his nemesis the Master.

Log version:

The Log of Events and Ordinances as Recorded by One Known as the Valeyard, vol.2

¤+.#\\
Plan to neutralize and utilize the remaining regenerations of subject D#6 was a failure. Identified cause: unexpected interference from M#14b. It seems to have been a mistake to make my existence known to him. He remains, as ever, an insufferable pest. Will commence plan B shortly.

Note: Believe it wise to first neutralize M14b, lest he interfere in my plans again.

¤+.#)(

Intercepted subject M#14b in an altered state of consciousness from timeline A after xD#7, at a point which the machines calculated to have minimal influence on the time stream (as it should stay intact for the moment, before plan B has been set to motion) easy to trap with the use of primitive manually operated cleaning tool which at the moment seems to greatly fascinate subject. Do not trust the subject to stay dead, therefore best to keep him alive until plan B has been successfully completed. Additionally, subjects’ current affliction might be worth studying at a later point.

Note: Subject’s physical changes seem to include sharper teeth and nails.

¤+.#)o(

On observing D#7 have concluded that my hypothesis was right, perilously adroit, too much risk of failure as a target. D#8 on the other hand prone to periods of amnesia, especially vulnerable at the start of incarnation.
¤+.#)oL
Despite earlier precaution, M#14e was present in timeline, which again caused complications. Subject was under delusions that it has some claim on D’s lives, or in this case, the body. Not surprising, as subject M is generally prone to delusions. It has now been confined like M14b, but D8 managed to elude caption.

*

Oh, and almost forgot I had this!
Case of Death and Honey fic
Based on a short Sherlock Holmes pastiche by Neil Gaiman (no not that one). I need to borrow the book it's in sometime and maybe finish this.

Like most people who have outlived both their family and most other acquaintances, Doctor John Watson didn’t receive many visitors. However, that afternoon right before teatime, Florence announced that there was a Mr. Sigerson to see him.

“Mr. Sigerson” was a tall man, apparent even with the way his back was bowed. His hair was white and his face browned, lined and yet almost ageless in the way some men are. His clothing was worn but of good quality, and he leaned on an exotic looking walking stick. In short, he looked like a well-travelled man of respectable character. This was, for most intents and purposes, the truth.

Doctor Watson considered his visitor for a while, before slowly turning to his maid, still hovering at the door.

“I believe you were about to bring tea?” he said serenely, before turning to his visitor. “I presume you’re staying?” he asked politely.

“Indeed, yes. If it’s not too much trouble,” the man answered, after a barely noticeable pause, and Watson nodded.

“Yes,” he said softly, seemingly to himself, eyes distant for a moment, and then addressed Florence:
“Tea for two, then, Florence.” he said.

After the maid had left, there was some subtle shift in the visitor’s countenance. His back seemed to become slightly less bowed, and he leaned forward subtly, sharp eyes peering at Watson like a large bird of prey looking at something of interest. It was a look the doctor hadn’t been subjected to in many years, and it woke in him a bitter-sweet feeling of nostalgia.

“Holmes,” he said, “you haven’t aged a day.”

Off all the things he could have said, it was a very banal phrase. And yet, what else can one say to an old friend, when one is a tired, lonely man who knows very well he is dying? A friend who had chosen to use those remaining years to go travelling, with hardly a goodbye.

*

The TonySteve Space AU
In which Tony is not at all a humanoid alien who built himself a human android body. Steve only finds out after he "dies" and then isn't dead after all. I'm kind of... not really active in the Marvel fandom atm, but I do want to finish this fic someday. taiyou_to_tsuki started writing it way back when, I helped a bit, and recently she let me adopt it entirely.

He didn’t like it either, sitting duck while Tony defended them alone, but he’d come through against worse odds, and Steve trusted him to— he lost his trail of thought as one of the A.I.M. drones shot at Tony, the laser beam seeming to skim right next to him.

Tony was hovering ahead of them now, the plasma whips coming out of the back of his flight suit fanned out almost wing like, sparking light. Was he… damn the man, was he luring the drones closer?

“Tenseconds before weapon systemsonline,” Pietro spat out, and Clint perked up at the weapon’s control.

”Do not put the shields down, I have them!” Tony’s voice crackled over the comm.

*

The HP + Jeeves&Wooster fusion
In which Jeeves is a muggleborn curse breaker and Bertie is from an old family and working (rather haplessly) at the ministry. And it's mostly NOT set in their childhood but that's where the fic starts.

“O-oh, I beg your pardon,” the boy stammered breathlessly, and then turned, “stop pushing, it’s taken!” to the group of boys crowded in the doorway behind him.

Reginald looked them over, nodding coolly at some of the older ones he recognized.

Isidore Selwyn, already wearing the green and silver colours of his house, clapped the younger boy who’d just barged into Reginald’s compartment hard on the shoulder, causing him to wince.

“Sorry about that, Reg old boy,” he said with a superficially polite grin that showed a bit too many teeth to be genuine. “We were just showing young Bertie here around, making sure he known what’s what. Now, let’s leave Reg to his studies, eh? He does work so hard,” he said heartily, only the faint smirky edge to his smile betraying his real meaning: ‘He has to work harder than us to keep up, after all”

Reginald bristled inwardly, but his face remained impassive.

“Indeed, Mr. Selwyn,” he replied serenely.

*

Spirou: Heavy Rests the Head that Wears the Crown
(canonverse) AU Zorglub & Count Champignac fic in which certain canon events go rather differently and long story short they become villain husbands. Unfortunately they have a certain avenging figure on their trail... And no one here has read these comics anyway ~~these two basically the Doctor and the Master only as side characters in a Franco-Belgian comic.~~ I'D

“You do realize we can’t risk it?” Zorglub implored, glancing at Pacome to gauge his mood. It was hard to tell with him, sometimes, whether he was really going to be stubborn about something or whether he’d let it go. Nevertheless, they’d worked on all this for years, together. Not just the cure, but building the network of clinics, targeted to those who’d been declared incurable elsewhere. The addicts, criminals… they all got the Z-treatment, and they all emerged changed people.

Well, a large percentage. It irked him that they had to intentionally “fail” with some, but Pacome had pointed out a 100% success rate would have drawn too much attention. Much better that theirs remain an ‘alternative’ option, dismissed by medical professionals, he’d said. As it was, they could live comfortable in their ignorance. For a majority of their clients, most of the world was happy enough just to make them someone else’s problem. Or a no-problem, as the case might be.

*

The Watson Children
In which Mary (did not die shush) and John Watson had three children and eventually Holmes accidentally kidnaps them.

The upstairs room was quiet, the silence only broken by the occasional sound of a page being turned impatiently. The sole occupant was curled up on the window seat; the book held sulkily in front of her face, for all there was no one to hide from. In the middle of the floor a doll laid abandoned, victim of a recent disagreement between the Watson sisters.
Eventually, Edith Watson sighed gustily and put the book down, before deliberately not-stomping over to pick up the doll.

Its stuffing was tufting out of a ripped knee seam. Edith’s mouth set in a frown. Betsy could be such a spoiled brat sometimes, she thought. Such nerve, to put Jeremiah Benedict Altamont in a dress! No wonder, with mother and father always letting her get away with everything. Absently, Edith petted the doll’s dark curls as she pondered the injustice of it all. Betsy could rip her new dress climbing into the apple tree and almost falling, and she, Edith, got scolded for not watching after her.

*

The one in which Tony and Steve are kids and Tony gets into an accident

So he was an artist too, on top of looking like a stiff gust of wind might bowl him over. Damn, the bullies were really going to have a field day with this...

Except it turned out Steve wasn't that easily bullied. When they tried to intimidate him, he was stoically polite. When they mocked his drawings, he gave them an impassionate speech about the Importance of Culture, two spots of high colour on his cheeks and his chin thrust out stubbornly.

The bullies didn't even know how to react to that. Tony didn't know how to react to it either.

And then Steve saw some older students attacking a boy in their class, and he broke one of their nose with a frisbee. He had a mean hand with a frisbee.

But it was only when he saw Tony reading Le Morte d'Arthur (he'd maybe, just maybe taken it with him just to see if Steve would show any interest, and Steve got this bright look in his eyes and said:

"Have you read it too? Did you like it?"

That was when Tony knew they'd be best friends.

*

The Marvel Medieval AU
That I tried to write for a big bang but life got in the way. Also the plot was being difficult and there were too many characters.

”There is something in that cave.”

Redwing’s intention was clear, sharp with something that was not quite fear but simply intense attention. As always, the words he… heard was not quite the right term, as his understanding of them had nothing to do with his ears. He just knew. Although there was often the sense of not really getting all the nuances, or only a sense of them, like listening to a language he barely understood, with someone else giving him a rough translation. Some birds were nearly unintelligible to him. Falcons were the easiest, and Redwing clearer than other falcons. This time, the something held a strange undercurrent he couldn’t quite place.

” Not of this world, Redwing shifted impatiently at his questioning thoughts. ”Can’t you sense it?”

“No, I can’t,” Samir replied softly, now staring into the depths himself. “Is it dangerous?”

”…might be,” Redwing replied with some reluctance. ”It is unknown.”

“Perhaps we might check, then,” Samir mumbled, half to himself, ignoring his companion’s complaint of the incessant curiousity of humans.

“You’re not afraid, are you?” he asked teasingly, earning a flat stare from the falcon.

*

and the graveyard of stuff I'm not currently really feeling (though... maybe someday. I like to think):

The Vine Prince
Saiyuki AU based on Sleeping Beauty. ALMOST done and then I got distracted. :I

*

Goddamn these goddamb vines on Prince-I'm-too-stingy-to-hire-actual-gardeners's' lands. Didn't seem like anyone had cut these things in a hundred years, so why bother now? And why make such a racket about one lousy fuck ugly vase anyway? It was a party, things tended to get broken.

He'd had half a mind to just tell his highness Prince Kougaiji he was a knight, not a gardener. But then Jien had given him that look that reminded him he wasn't a proper knight just yet so...Gojyo regretted not speaking his mind when he could have, still.

Gojyo let his sword thunk against the earth, and wiped his brow. He was pretty sure this tangle of vines went from here to eternity, and then some if he was lucky. Occasionally he saw what looked like buildings among them, which was frankly kinda creepy.

Oh well, he'd whack at them until sundown, and then...fuck, were those vines growing back behind him? Dammit, of course they were enchanted, should have known that!

He poked at one leafy...branch thing, and it curled affectionately around his wrist.

*

Don't Stand So Close to Me
Based on that The Police song, yes. Teacher!Tino and student!Berwald, sometime in...late sixties Britain I think? (this is the +3K one)

*

Rain hit the windshield at a steady pace, the water trickling along the glass making the light from the streetlamps melt into glinting shapes, disappearing as the sweepers pushed the droplets away again. The scenery outside was almost fully dark, the sky above the orange lights black, and the air a deep blue of late evening.

Compared to the streetlights, the lights of the bus stop were white; hitting the young man huddled on the bench unforgivingly, casting sharp shadows on his face. He looked cold, in that bluish light, shoulders hunched against the wind blowing droplets of rain with it. His blond hair was sticking out every which way in wet strands, like the boy had been pulling at it. He looked strangely vulnerable and young at that moment. But then, he was only eighteen.

Tino hesitated, but it was late, and as a teacher he had certain responsibilities, even outside of school hours...didn't he?

He stopped the car next to the bus stop, opening a window. It felt strange, but it wasn't like he was some old pervert or something...if anything, he was making sure the boy was safe from any such that might pass by.

The boy looked up, and his eyes were almost unnaturally blue in that harsh light, blue like arctic ice and wary, before something inexplicable shifted in them as he recognized Tino.

"Mr. Väinämöinen," he said.

*

And
Commune
Which is a fic set years later in the same verse (yes, a continuation of the unfinished fic *sigh*), in which Tino and Berwald have temporarily broken up and their young son (my OC for Åland) runs away and ends up taken in by dirty hippies. One of whom is missing.

*

They're a peculiar pair, these two. The tall man, and a teenage boy, dressed in an incongrous sailor uniform. He keeps fingering one frayed sleeve of it, pulling at the loose threads nervously. The man's face is set, pulled into a serious expression. They both look scruffy and dusty against the sterile environment of the cold mortuary as the orderly ushers them in. He leads them to one of the lockers lining the wall, pulling it out.

The young man lying on it looks hardly older than the boy in the sailor uniform. His face still retains some of the roundness of childhood, and it is still and peaceful. It is framed by soft brown curls, giving the man an almost angelic look. If he wasn't so pale, one might think he was merely sleeping. His arms are dotted with bruises and needle marks, standing out sharply against the bluish-white cast of his skin.

The boy in the sailor uniform lets out a small noise, his mouth opening in something like terror, hand shooting out unconciously to clutch onto the older man's arm. Still, his wide eyes scan the body intently. Then he lets out a small sob, and turns away, rubbing furiously at his eyes as if to hide the evidence.

"Niels, it's..." he says, choking on the words.

The orderly is saying something, when and where they found him, but the two aren't really listening to him. Finally, the older man looks up, distractedly, and shakes his head.

"Ain't him," he says, voice at once grim and relieved. "Poor lad...but we don't know 'im." He gives one more sad look at the body, and then touches the boy's shoulder.

"Come on Peter, we'd better go."

*

The Bearfic
The one in which Tino and Berwald are kids in early medieval Scandinavia. Berwald's family had to move because of what you might call political trouble (that or his mom killed someone) and Tino is the son of an escaped slave. Tino mistakes Berwald for the human form of a bear he tried to kill, and then later they become friends.

*

"With his luck he's probably sunk the boat," Svea muttered. Then she stalked outside, and would have no doubt slammed the door if it hadn't gotten stuck. As it was, she made a good attempt.

Göta smiled faintly after her and went back to his work.

Meanwhile, Berwald got up and put on the rest of his clothes. He peered outside, seeing that it was still cold, but no new snow had come to cover what had already melted. So it seemed spring was coming, slowly but surely.

"Oy, son," his father called, and Berwald turned towards him.

Göta took out a pile of fur from the bench next to him, and handed it out to Berwald. Opening it, he saw it was the bearskin cape his father had been working on. The bear's head had been made into the hood, and two polished blue stones had been sewn in place of the eyes. They gleamed faintly in the low lighting of the house. It felt heavy and warm when he put it over his shoulders, the rough fur tickling where it brushed his cheeks.

"For you," Göta said simply, and then smiled a little and put a conspirational arm on Berwald's shoulder. "Looks downright wrightful...reckon even yer mother's going t' approve."

"Approve of what? Oh, that."

Svea, having returned as suddenly as she went, looked at Berwald assessingly. Finally she nodded, smiling in her usual grim way.

"Yes, it does look fitting for my son. Now if he could just live up to the image," she said.

*

Passing the Torch
The more serious, and unfortunately epic backstory (mainly for Tino) to Postal Empire of Doom. Tino becomes a magical ~~girl~~ superhero, lives through some history and would have eventually gotten over his internalized homophobia.

*

A young soldier stumbled through the snow, icy flakes thrown by the wind stinging his eyes. He was out of ammunition, the rifle he was clutching with numb fingers virtually useless. What was he going to do with it if he came across any Russians, try to hit them over the head? The soldier shook his head, gritting his teeth against the hysteria, and walked around a gaping crater in the ice in front of him.

They'd been shooting at them from the air...the trees on the little island they'd been trying to defend had snapped like matchsticks. It was lost now, and he wasn't sure if anyone else from his group was even alive, having gotten separated in the snowstorm that had blown in out of nowhere.

Tino Väinämöinen wondered which of them had caused it, their defender or the enemy. Wasn't like it had really made the situation either much better or worse at that point, but at least it had shielded their retreat a bit.

There was something in the snow ahead, and Tino squinted. A body? Someone injured?

The wind snagged on a piece of blue and white fabric, fluttering up from the motionless figure and Tino's heart leaped into his troat suddenly. No, not her...he hastened his steps, a desperate prayer on his lips, and fell on his knees next to the woman.

"Maiden...?" he whispered hoarsely, hovering over her and strangely reluctant to touch the figure lying in the snow. She'd always seemed so far above everyone and everything, their very own guardian angel.

*

And then some I'd totally forgotten about!

The Peter Pan fusion in which the Nordics are child workers in early industrial era factory... and I rather like the whole thing so I'll post it as is.

Berwald knew he was a lucky boy. Mr. Collins the Supervisor kept telling them all that but Berwald would have known anyway. Maybe not as lucky as some but at least he had food to eat, a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in. Sure, he had to share it with his brothers but that was no hardship. Indeed, he felt it was the thing that made him luckiest of all, because it was not many who are sent from an orphanage to work at the cotton mill all alone and arrive there with a family.

Søren was the eldest, or maybe just the biggest of them, so he'd declared himself as the big brother. He could be kinda loud and bossy sometimes but he was also the one who'd first talked to Berwald when they sat huddled in the shaking carriage taking them to the factory and the one who'd gone up to Sindre and his baby brother Valdi and suggested sharing rooms.

Sindre was usually a more quiet sort but he was also the one who would dare to talk to Søren even in his worst dark moods. The few times he said something it was usually something that made sense, so Berwald listened to him too, even though he was a few years older than Sindre. He was more of a listener anyway, he felt. And the last of them was Valdi, who had been with Sindre when Berwald and Søren arrived at the factory.

Valdi was only three years old, so he hadn't started work yet. Collins was already giving him those looks though, every time he came to check their little room to make sure they hadn't broken anything. Soon he would be four and then he'd be expected to work too. That was another thing they didn't like to talk about but all knew, even Valdi himself.

"I've been watching big brother," he said one day when he was only two, small face set in a resolute, serious expression. "I know what to do."

Søren just laughed and ruffled at his hair roughly.

"Don't be silly, ya're still in yer pinafores!" he said, tugging teasingly at the ragged bow at Valdi's back. Valdi blushed and batted at Søren's hands but he didn't say anything more about it then.

If it was up to them... but then, it wasn't, so there was no point even thinking it.

"When I'm old enough, I'm going to get work on one of th' big ships in harbour," Søren said one evening while they were lying in bed. "I'm going to sail far away and find treasures to bring back and then none of you need to work no more."

"Really," Sindre said, his tone slightly doubtful. Søren just hummed in answer and then yawned.

"Yeah. Enough treasure to buy a house of our own, in the good part of town... or maybe in the countryside! Then we could grow our own food too and there would be... trees and things."

Berwald considered this. He had faint memories from his early childhood, before he and his mother and father had gone on a big ship a long way and come to this city that was almost always foggy and smelled funny, even further away from the factories.

"That'd be nice," he said, his words muffled by the cover that was pulled halfway over his face. Even in the dark, he could see how wide Søren's grin was, like dim toothy half moon.

"That's the spirit! Just you wait!" he exclaimed.

"I'm tired, let's just sleep," Sindre said. He did sound very tired, so Søren went quiet.

Sindre had been at the factory long before Søren and Berwald, his whole life perhaps. He had that look to him of the children raised in the shadows between tall, dirty houses that sunlight never quite reached into. He and Valdi both, they were small and pale, but Sindre was also fast and clever. He'd warned them about the worst supervisors they shouldn't cross and about the ever gnashing sharp toothed machines that could bite off the limbs off unwary children.

He also told them the stories the children at the factory told amongst each other about the sharp toothed crocodile living beneath the machinery, the ghost of the handless boy wondering around in spinning hall six and moaning for his mother... but also about Peter.

"They say all kinds of things about Peter," Sindre said musingly. "Some say he lives with fairies, or that goes with dead children part of the way to the stars so they aren't as scared... or perhaps he himself lives on a star, far far away. In a place called Neverland."

Neverland.

Sometimes, late at night when the light were put out but they weren't yet tired enough to sleep, they would imagine it in their mind. For each of the boys, it was a bit different. Søren imagined it a place full of adventure, big ships and treasures and daring fights, whereas Sindre's Neverland was filled with deep green forests that mysterious creatures with gleaming lamp like eyes could hide in, like the homeland his mother had sometimes spoken of.

Valdi thought it a place where the ground itself was warm even in deepest winter, so that water in lakes would heat up by itself without carrying it up the long stairs and boiling it on the fire. And Berwald... when he allowed himseld to think of it at all, he thought he'd like a house of his own, somewhere the air would smell fresh like it had in his most oldest memories. A house he could share with his brothers and anyone else he happened to like.

It was different for all of them, but they all knew it was a place without the loud, tedious and dangerous machines, grinding away day after day, the sound ever echoing in their ears, day and night.

No, in Neverland there would be no machines.

If they had had parents, their father might have told them it was all nonsense, ghosts and crocodiles and Neverland all and then their mother would have lighted a nightlight to keep strange dreams away. But none of them had neither father nor mother, only Dog and she was only a very small white dog, small enough that even they could afford to keep her. Still, she was smart enough to have taken care of Valdi when he'd been younger, barking at him to remind him to stay away from the fire and the stairs and the machines, if his brothers were all too busy to look after him.

*

And this very old one about Rome and Germania in Hades... I mean Pluto. Germania has come to drag him to HIS afterlife because there was a reason he made sure the bastard didn't die in bed.

The man looks over the pale wheat field, sharply contrasted by the black empty sky, trying to figure out what was wrong with the sight. He brushes over one bristly head, contemplating the wan, almost white color. Like...frost. He remembers frost vaguely, as something bad. It doesn't feel cold right now though. Or warm. It doesn't feel much like anything, really.

"Ave, bastard"

The man frowns slightly at the interruption.

"I am thinking," he tells the newcomer, but turns anyway. Blue eyes, golden hair...oh, now he knows what was wrong with the scenery.

The man laughs, childishly happy at his discovery. His visitor bristles.

*