The iTune challenge!
Jul. 2nd, 2010 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lullabelleInstructions!
1) Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2) For the first ten songs that play, write a ficlet. You can only write for as long as the song is playing. And then -- on to the next!
This was crazy-tough, but a good exercise, and I don't completely hate everything that came out of it.
So: ten ficlets, various lengths totaling about 2,000 words. All Torchwood, both pre-and-post CoE, various characters and pairings. Nothing above PG-13. Sorry about the last one, that song's like 60 seconds long.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heddychaa for the zippy quick beta, even though I know she was wicked busy. :)
1. this science is breaking my heart (Science - David Usher)
Jack stood in the middle of the Plass, watching as the people passed. It was stupid, but he justified himself on the basis that it was an accident he was here, crossing his timeline yet again. He didn't have a personal timeline as much as he had a spiral, or maybe a Venn diagram. He'd been shooting for 2013, a year he had not been to, on Earth anyway, but he'd felt the wrongness of his location as soon as he'd landed. For one, there was no crater where the hub once was; instead, there was the hub.
He hadn't been back for them. He hadn't come back to see. Once they'd gone, he'd shaken the planet's dust from his shoes, and taken off.
He could look for a paper, to find out when he was, but then he saw. Saw himself, arm in arm with Gwen, Owen and Tosh not far behind them, no Ianto to be seen, and he had a sickening feeling that he knew exactly what day this was.
They passed by an older, intelligent-looking Asian man heading in the opposite direction, and none of them paid him any mind.
Jack hastily punched new coordinates into his vortex manipulator. Anywhere but here.
2. a sad song with nothing to say (Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance)
Ianto could listen for hours. Sometimes in the beginning, Jack would get impatient with all the questions, thinking he was prying. It took him a while to realize that Ianto wasn't prying, not really, or not on purpose. Jack was a portal to the past, and so he could share things that never made into the history books and the archive files. What it felt like to be a fighter pilot in Earth's atmosphere, versus the vacuum of space -- not actually all that different. The free love of the sixties, the backlash from the free love of the sixties, and Jack's thoughts on them as both participant and objective viewer. What it felt like to die from mustard gas.
But when Jack questioned Ianto, all he got was half-arsed evasions. Ianto's life was boring, normal in comparison. Jack's life was a cinematic event, and Ianto's was a soundless black and white newsreel. Incomprehensible, without the sound, and over quickly.
3. and in this way wish away each day (Sentimental - Porcupine Tree)
The last time Gwen Cooper saw Jack Harkness, she nearly hid. It was Sidney who pointed him out, tugging urgently on her hand, and demanding, "Grandma -- WHAT is he wearing?" and even though he'd been facing the other direction at the time, Gwen recognized the shape of his shoulders before she even noticed the familiar coat draped over them. She pressed some money into Sidney's hand and asked her to go buy her a diet coke from the hotdog stand, and Sidney's face lit up -- she was independent, like Gwen, and loved when she got to do things by herself. She ran to join the queue and Gwen sidled over to the familiar form with a tentative, "Jack?"
The split second lack of recognition in his face hurt -- surely she hadn't changed that much? Her hair had been gray for years, and there was a network of lines in her face that hadn't been there before, but she was in good shape for her age. Surely she wasn't unrecognizable?
Recognition dawned, and Jack's face split into a grin. He picked her up into an embrace that made her shout -- it'd been a long time since anyone had lifted her that way. Not since Rhys began having his back problems. When he put her back down, she spared a glance back at Sidney -- still only halfway up the queue.
"How long?" she asked, because she needed to know. She wasn't sure why, but she needed to know.
A frown creased his brow before he figured out what she was asking. "As long as it's been for you," he told her. "I got here the long way."
"You've hardly changed," she said.
And he answered, "I hardly ever do."
4. always stays the same, nothing ever changes (English Summer Rain - Placebo)
By the sixty-third day, Tosh had gotten her explanation down to a science. As soon as the loop restarted, she'd wake up Jack. She'd never entered his quarters before, and it had taken seven repetitions for her to work up the nerve, but her time was limited, and that was the fastest way to get his attention. Every day, to a certain extent, she started over. She couldn't write anything down, because at 12:24am on June 2nd, she would suddenly be snapped back to 12:25 am on June 1st, and everything she'd changed in the interim got erased. And then, her daily slate reblanked itself, she would crawl down the ladder to wake up Jack, who would be surprised to see her but unembarrassed as disentangled himself from a deeply-unconscious and equally naked Ianto.
All she had to do was say, "I'm caught in a time loop." He would ask her how it had happened, how long the loop went for, and how many times she's repeated herself. Every day the number grew higher by one, and every day Jack looked a little more worried. She'd show him the device she had been working on. Every day she would ask him different questions about this kind of technology, and he would answer her patiently, but by the fifth day he'd unknowingly run out of new things to tell her. Still, she kept trying.
Every day the team would come in. At first, she'd tried to enlist their help, but it took too long to answer all their questions, and this was outside their skill set anyway.
She thought about destroying the artifact, but she was terrified if she broke it the loop wouldn't end, and the device would still be destroyed, and she would be even more fucked than she was already.
She couldn't believe how long it took her to attempt breaking out of her loop by running from it. She was out on the Plass for the end of her 98th, getting drenched by the same rain that had been pouring for months, only to find herself inside and dry for the beginning of round 99. The end of round 99 found her on a plane to Mumbai, and the beginning of round 100 found her waking up Ianto this time, and having him make her tea while she shook and cried and generally scared the crap out of him. She was still upset when Owen came in at nine and issued her a sedative, and she suddenly realized that in 100 days, and some odd hours, she hadn't actually slept.
On repetition 115 she made a mark on the alien device with a grease pen.
On repetition 116, the mark was still there, and she decided she could either take her chances or lose her marbles. She didn't wake Jack this time, simply requisitioned his Webley and took aim.
5. all because i want you bad, all because of appetite (Appetite - Iris)
"Slowly," Jack cautioned. All eyes were trained at the box of pizza in the middle of the table, except for Gwen's, whose eyes darted between the pizza and himself. "You've all been exposed to the Venusian Manta venom. It messes with the human metabolism -- temporarily hyper-accelerates it. It's not uncommon for victims to eat themselves to death, or choke. Two pieces each, ten chews per bite. If I see anyone misbehaving, I will rip the pizza out of your hands and pump you full of sedatives, understood? For once, guys, self-control."
There were nods all around the table. A brief scuffle as too many hands reached inside the box. Owen stole half the cheese off of Tosh's piece, and she hoped he gagged on it. Her own face screwed up like she was chewing on lemons in an effort to keep from swallowing the mouthful whole.
Gwen chewed, watched Jack, and thought about the mechanics of self-control.
6. d'anam an diabhal (Finnegan's Wake - Dropkick Murphys)
It took nearly a minute for his wife to stop screaming -- she looked good in black, though it felt wrong of him to notice -- while most of the others just stared at him, jaws agape like fish.
Jack sat up in his own coffin. It'd taken him an unfortunately long time to come back this go round.
"I'm not dead, just hung over," he offered by way of explanation. "Hey, is that whiskey?"
7. until there's nothing left but ashes (Let it Burn - The Dreaming)
In his defense, Jack did knock first. But when no one answered, and he heard a crash from inside, he kicked the door open. Ianto ignored him, continuing to rip things off shelves and toss them in to the middle of the floor. Upon closer inspection, the heap on the floor was actually three piles with a piece of notebook paper next to each. "Keep", "store", and "burn", they said. The burn pile was small and consisted only of photographs.
Jack knelt down and scooped them up. "You'll want these someday," he promised.
Ianto looked like he disagreed, but wasn't up for an actual argument. Jack ordered him to take a shower, because he smelt horrible, and to eat something. Then he left, taking the photos with him.
8. i'll show you the way, the way i'm going (Capricorn - 30 Seconds to Mars)
When Jack introduces himself as Jayson Hawkins to the curvy brunette at the bar, Owen can't completely hide his surprise. He's even more surprised when the woman politely declines Jack's advances.
"What?" Jack demands, when he returns to the table and Owen can't wipe the surprise off his face in time.
"Nothing. Just you rely so much on being Captain Jack Harkness in your day-to-day life, I can't believe it's not the highlight of your nightlife as well."
Jack shrugs a little. "Fake name reduces the chances of a necessary retcon. And an occasional alias keeps me humble. Don't tell me you've never picked someone up for the night under false pretenses."
"False pretenses, yes. Fake name, no."
"Lazy."
"Maybe." Owen finishes his drink in one swing and saunters up to the bar. He offers the brunette his hand. "Jack Harkness," he says, with the best imitation of a sincere smile he can manage.
The brunette smiles back.
9. i'm getting through; i wish you felt the way i do (One More Day - VAST)
Gwen had always been guilty of feeling too much, but this time it took nearly a week to feel anything. Rhys knew what was happening -- he knew her, and he watched the pressure building in those days after -- after everything, and he'd never seen her do this before, never seen her hide behind this mask of cool professionalism, not while it warmth and empathy were where she usually shined. But she'd never lost anything this profoundly. Gwen had been married to her job, a job which had both somehow widowed her and divorced her in the space of a day, and then left her to clear the wreckage left behind.
So he wasn't surprised when he heard the first crash -- a red-and-white striped mug, one of the ones Gwen hated, had exploded into bits against the wall where she'd thrown it. He was in the room just in time to see her go for two, pulling her arm all the way back before letting fly, shoulders shaking, face caught somewhere between rage and despair.
"Do you want to be alone?" he asked.
She didn't turn to look at him, just exhaled a breathy, "God, no."
So she wasn't.
10. kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep (Prelude 12/21 - AFI)
"In a thousand years time, you won't remember me."
As last words go, they're not great, but it's not like he has time to regret them.
1) Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2) For the first ten songs that play, write a ficlet. You can only write for as long as the song is playing. And then -- on to the next!
This was crazy-tough, but a good exercise, and I don't completely hate everything that came out of it.
So: ten ficlets, various lengths totaling about 2,000 words. All Torchwood, both pre-and-post CoE, various characters and pairings. Nothing above PG-13. Sorry about the last one, that song's like 60 seconds long.
Thanks to
heddychaa for the zippy quick beta, even though I know she was wicked busy. :)1. this science is breaking my heart (Science - David Usher)
Jack stood in the middle of the Plass, watching as the people passed. It was stupid, but he justified himself on the basis that it was an accident he was here, crossing his timeline yet again. He didn't have a personal timeline as much as he had a spiral, or maybe a Venn diagram. He'd been shooting for 2013, a year he had not been to, on Earth anyway, but he'd felt the wrongness of his location as soon as he'd landed. For one, there was no crater where the hub once was; instead, there was the hub.
He hadn't been back for them. He hadn't come back to see. Once they'd gone, he'd shaken the planet's dust from his shoes, and taken off.
He could look for a paper, to find out when he was, but then he saw. Saw himself, arm in arm with Gwen, Owen and Tosh not far behind them, no Ianto to be seen, and he had a sickening feeling that he knew exactly what day this was.
They passed by an older, intelligent-looking Asian man heading in the opposite direction, and none of them paid him any mind.
Jack hastily punched new coordinates into his vortex manipulator. Anywhere but here.
2. a sad song with nothing to say (Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance)
Ianto could listen for hours. Sometimes in the beginning, Jack would get impatient with all the questions, thinking he was prying. It took him a while to realize that Ianto wasn't prying, not really, or not on purpose. Jack was a portal to the past, and so he could share things that never made into the history books and the archive files. What it felt like to be a fighter pilot in Earth's atmosphere, versus the vacuum of space -- not actually all that different. The free love of the sixties, the backlash from the free love of the sixties, and Jack's thoughts on them as both participant and objective viewer. What it felt like to die from mustard gas.
But when Jack questioned Ianto, all he got was half-arsed evasions. Ianto's life was boring, normal in comparison. Jack's life was a cinematic event, and Ianto's was a soundless black and white newsreel. Incomprehensible, without the sound, and over quickly.
3. and in this way wish away each day (Sentimental - Porcupine Tree)
The last time Gwen Cooper saw Jack Harkness, she nearly hid. It was Sidney who pointed him out, tugging urgently on her hand, and demanding, "Grandma -- WHAT is he wearing?" and even though he'd been facing the other direction at the time, Gwen recognized the shape of his shoulders before she even noticed the familiar coat draped over them. She pressed some money into Sidney's hand and asked her to go buy her a diet coke from the hotdog stand, and Sidney's face lit up -- she was independent, like Gwen, and loved when she got to do things by herself. She ran to join the queue and Gwen sidled over to the familiar form with a tentative, "Jack?"
The split second lack of recognition in his face hurt -- surely she hadn't changed that much? Her hair had been gray for years, and there was a network of lines in her face that hadn't been there before, but she was in good shape for her age. Surely she wasn't unrecognizable?
Recognition dawned, and Jack's face split into a grin. He picked her up into an embrace that made her shout -- it'd been a long time since anyone had lifted her that way. Not since Rhys began having his back problems. When he put her back down, she spared a glance back at Sidney -- still only halfway up the queue.
"How long?" she asked, because she needed to know. She wasn't sure why, but she needed to know.
A frown creased his brow before he figured out what she was asking. "As long as it's been for you," he told her. "I got here the long way."
"You've hardly changed," she said.
And he answered, "I hardly ever do."
4. always stays the same, nothing ever changes (English Summer Rain - Placebo)
By the sixty-third day, Tosh had gotten her explanation down to a science. As soon as the loop restarted, she'd wake up Jack. She'd never entered his quarters before, and it had taken seven repetitions for her to work up the nerve, but her time was limited, and that was the fastest way to get his attention. Every day, to a certain extent, she started over. She couldn't write anything down, because at 12:24am on June 2nd, she would suddenly be snapped back to 12:25 am on June 1st, and everything she'd changed in the interim got erased. And then, her daily slate reblanked itself, she would crawl down the ladder to wake up Jack, who would be surprised to see her but unembarrassed as disentangled himself from a deeply-unconscious and equally naked Ianto.
All she had to do was say, "I'm caught in a time loop." He would ask her how it had happened, how long the loop went for, and how many times she's repeated herself. Every day the number grew higher by one, and every day Jack looked a little more worried. She'd show him the device she had been working on. Every day she would ask him different questions about this kind of technology, and he would answer her patiently, but by the fifth day he'd unknowingly run out of new things to tell her. Still, she kept trying.
Every day the team would come in. At first, she'd tried to enlist their help, but it took too long to answer all their questions, and this was outside their skill set anyway.
She thought about destroying the artifact, but she was terrified if she broke it the loop wouldn't end, and the device would still be destroyed, and she would be even more fucked than she was already.
She couldn't believe how long it took her to attempt breaking out of her loop by running from it. She was out on the Plass for the end of her 98th, getting drenched by the same rain that had been pouring for months, only to find herself inside and dry for the beginning of round 99. The end of round 99 found her on a plane to Mumbai, and the beginning of round 100 found her waking up Ianto this time, and having him make her tea while she shook and cried and generally scared the crap out of him. She was still upset when Owen came in at nine and issued her a sedative, and she suddenly realized that in 100 days, and some odd hours, she hadn't actually slept.
On repetition 115 she made a mark on the alien device with a grease pen.
On repetition 116, the mark was still there, and she decided she could either take her chances or lose her marbles. She didn't wake Jack this time, simply requisitioned his Webley and took aim.
5. all because i want you bad, all because of appetite (Appetite - Iris)
"Slowly," Jack cautioned. All eyes were trained at the box of pizza in the middle of the table, except for Gwen's, whose eyes darted between the pizza and himself. "You've all been exposed to the Venusian Manta venom. It messes with the human metabolism -- temporarily hyper-accelerates it. It's not uncommon for victims to eat themselves to death, or choke. Two pieces each, ten chews per bite. If I see anyone misbehaving, I will rip the pizza out of your hands and pump you full of sedatives, understood? For once, guys, self-control."
There were nods all around the table. A brief scuffle as too many hands reached inside the box. Owen stole half the cheese off of Tosh's piece, and she hoped he gagged on it. Her own face screwed up like she was chewing on lemons in an effort to keep from swallowing the mouthful whole.
Gwen chewed, watched Jack, and thought about the mechanics of self-control.
6. d'anam an diabhal (Finnegan's Wake - Dropkick Murphys)
It took nearly a minute for his wife to stop screaming -- she looked good in black, though it felt wrong of him to notice -- while most of the others just stared at him, jaws agape like fish.
Jack sat up in his own coffin. It'd taken him an unfortunately long time to come back this go round.
"I'm not dead, just hung over," he offered by way of explanation. "Hey, is that whiskey?"
7. until there's nothing left but ashes (Let it Burn - The Dreaming)
In his defense, Jack did knock first. But when no one answered, and he heard a crash from inside, he kicked the door open. Ianto ignored him, continuing to rip things off shelves and toss them in to the middle of the floor. Upon closer inspection, the heap on the floor was actually three piles with a piece of notebook paper next to each. "Keep", "store", and "burn", they said. The burn pile was small and consisted only of photographs.
Jack knelt down and scooped them up. "You'll want these someday," he promised.
Ianto looked like he disagreed, but wasn't up for an actual argument. Jack ordered him to take a shower, because he smelt horrible, and to eat something. Then he left, taking the photos with him.
8. i'll show you the way, the way i'm going (Capricorn - 30 Seconds to Mars)
When Jack introduces himself as Jayson Hawkins to the curvy brunette at the bar, Owen can't completely hide his surprise. He's even more surprised when the woman politely declines Jack's advances.
"What?" Jack demands, when he returns to the table and Owen can't wipe the surprise off his face in time.
"Nothing. Just you rely so much on being Captain Jack Harkness in your day-to-day life, I can't believe it's not the highlight of your nightlife as well."
Jack shrugs a little. "Fake name reduces the chances of a necessary retcon. And an occasional alias keeps me humble. Don't tell me you've never picked someone up for the night under false pretenses."
"False pretenses, yes. Fake name, no."
"Lazy."
"Maybe." Owen finishes his drink in one swing and saunters up to the bar. He offers the brunette his hand. "Jack Harkness," he says, with the best imitation of a sincere smile he can manage.
The brunette smiles back.
9. i'm getting through; i wish you felt the way i do (One More Day - VAST)
Gwen had always been guilty of feeling too much, but this time it took nearly a week to feel anything. Rhys knew what was happening -- he knew her, and he watched the pressure building in those days after -- after everything, and he'd never seen her do this before, never seen her hide behind this mask of cool professionalism, not while it warmth and empathy were where she usually shined. But she'd never lost anything this profoundly. Gwen had been married to her job, a job which had both somehow widowed her and divorced her in the space of a day, and then left her to clear the wreckage left behind.
So he wasn't surprised when he heard the first crash -- a red-and-white striped mug, one of the ones Gwen hated, had exploded into bits against the wall where she'd thrown it. He was in the room just in time to see her go for two, pulling her arm all the way back before letting fly, shoulders shaking, face caught somewhere between rage and despair.
"Do you want to be alone?" he asked.
She didn't turn to look at him, just exhaled a breathy, "God, no."
So she wasn't.
10. kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep (Prelude 12/21 - AFI)
"In a thousand years time, you won't remember me."
As last words go, they're not great, but it's not like he has time to regret them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-03 01:15 am (UTC)I'm such a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to new music but The Dropkick Murphies are one of the ones I know and the ficlet was SO PERFECT.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-03 03:39 am (UTC)And I <3 the Dropkick Murphys. I'm glad I managed to get that Irish-drinking-song feel in there. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 03:11 pm (UTC)My favourite is definitely number six though. So Jack!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-05 04:16 pm (UTC)