For wingedflight21
Narnia, Eustace/Jill, they received gifts from Father Christmas, too.
There is no magic in these gifts, no glory of steel or salve. Only cunningly packed satchels, filled with supplies enough to last them days, dry matches and travel bread and little salts to purify water, tightly woven cloaks to slick away water and cold. And in them, the littlest shred of hope that Eustace and Jill had just thought they'd lost.

For lizzie_marie_23
Narnia, any, adrift in a new culture
Aravis is at loose ends without the careful formality of home. No one here seems to be able to tell her how, precisely, to act in any set of given circumstances. What's worse, they keep telling her just to be herself, as if it's that easy.

biblical/Narnia, Jesus, He rode into Jerusalem riding a lion
He would never say that they have failed with Earth, could not hurt his Father so (He knows anyway; they are one). But humanity hurt - hurts - and there is so much more to life than these glorified apes, these children of formless slime, and perhaps their goodness would shine more strongly if they did not feel themselves so unique. He goes forth a lion, to try again (and again, and again).

Narnia, Peter, mother hen of Narnia
He wants to laugh about it, at first, but when he realizes how seriously they take the charge, he goes to Susan.
"They expect me to be father and mother," he tells her, and he can feel it creeping through his veins, the urge to provide, protect, feed, defend, care; it is too much, and he wants her to take it from him, to promise herself as the mother, to mother him.
"You do it already," she tells him, and straightens his crown and sends him back out to hear his children's needs.

For animus_wyrmis
SPN/Narnia/Mary Poppins [Winds to Catch]: Claire becomes Susan's (or Mary's) apprentice.
The girl comes to her on the wind, and isn't that unusual, Susan muses in her next letter to Mary. She doesn't just catch a wind, she speaks to it, plays with it, becomes it.
She asks Claire where she has been on the wind, and Claire sighs, suddenly ever so young, and in her eyes Susan sees the brightest and darkest memories.

And then mrinalinee started an epic Gwen&Annis commentspam, which I'll just link too in all its glory of kickass Queens and wise ruling and wondrous things like that. Yay for new friends and awesome ladies!

For lizzie_marie_23
academia, formal/informal, slippery slope
It's only one late night; one cup of coffee too few, too late, and suddenly a flutter in the stomach, a trembling of fingers. A flirtation. Suddenly, contractions and extreme punctuation, and the footnotes are left lonely out in the cold.

Doctor Who/Narnia, any Doctor and Susan, "well, my lady, where shall we go next?"
"Oh," Susan says, careless and quick with loneliness, "I haven't been a lady for a long time."
"What are you, then?" the Doctor asks, leaning on the TARDIS console, already pressing buttons.
"Let's find out."

academia, marginalia/text, I will map a world across your body
In younger, clumsier hands I am the conqueror, bold curves pushing into your space, so eager to make my opinion of you the new truth. But we grow together, and soon come others, even the same fingers now more careful and careworn, gentler expeditions, overtures of peace. I ask questions; I seek you rather than myself in you.

academia, race/ethnicity, blurring the lines
"You're only a social construction," Ethnicity tries to say; "you don't exist."
"Don't I?" Race asks, eyes flicking to the news program and back. "Who're you talking to, then?"

academia, marginalia/text, here be dragons
The blank pages in the back of the book are lonely territory, too clean and empty and unknown. The rows of silky block text, the pre-figured answers are safe. Here there be dragons; here you must think for yourself.

For grim_lupine
Narnia, Susan, scarlet lipstick like a brand
In school they are forced to read a horrid American book about Puritanical adultery and a scarlet letter, and later Susan looks for a long time at herself in the mirror, bright eyes and red cheeks, brighter and redder lips. She raises a hand to wipe the brand from her mouth, but then she thinks - what did Hester Prynne do but love the wrong man, live in the wrong world? - and her hand drifts back down to her side. She smiles, fierce for herself, and freshens the lipstick before going out.

Harry Potter, Fleur, beauty is no crime
She plays up the speck of Veela blood because it's better that they fear her than believe they can own her. So she lets a rumor flutter here and there. It's not her fault that they so desperately want to believe she is not wholly human.

Tamora Pierce, girl!George, she becomes the Rogue with blood on her knife and a smile on her face
They never expected the crooked-smiled girl to slip out of the shadows one night and slit a new grin into the Rogue's throat. They expected even less for her to hold the seat more than an hour. But Gee's always been good with odds against her.

For seasight
Narnia/Game of Thrones, Susan and Sansa discuss Arya and Lucy.
"She dirty, and loud, and she never understands that sometimes it's better to just shut up and be small," Sansa complains, and Susan smiles for the love in that whining voice. She covers Sansa's trembling hands in her own.
"One day she might surprise you with much more understanding than you see."

For skullage
Supernatural/Stonehenge Apocalypse AU, Jimmy/Jacob (twins), sanctuary.
It hurts, of course, every time they do this thing where they forget they are separate people. The re-separation afterwards is always a death. But they need each other.

For gabby_silang
Supernatural. Mary Winchester never died.
She watches them grow up and knows that one son is not like the other. Dean plays baseball with John and helps her in the kitchen and play-wrestles with Sammy; Sam...is quiet, the calm before a storm. Mary watches, and fears that one day she will have to kill her son.

For caramelsilver
Hunger Games, Katniss, AU (dead!Peeta, victor!Katniss), alcohol doesn't numb the pain or the guilt, but helps with the forgetting
Her talent is the distillation of bootlegged alcohol. It was supposed to be a fuck you to the Capitol, but no one's stopped her yet. Probably they enjoy watching her manufacture her own destruction, again.

For twoskeletons
Avatar, Azula/Ty Lee, challenge yourself
She would never, ever admit it, but the reason Azula likes sparring with Ty Lee (why she likes Ty Lee), is that it's a challenge. The burning need to prove herself against the other girl's gifted fingers, the threat of immobilization. The desire to conquer.

For tigriswolf
Biblical, Jesus/Judas, the Son of God
You'd think it would be hard to love the Son of God like this. Certainly everyone else holds themselves at a certain distance; no matter how well they know him, no matter how much he relies on them, Jesus is too much for them to do anything but follow. But Judas sees the man.

I finally got back to the ficathon today, and a truly wonderful and awesome person prompted a ton of English Patient!!! Favorite. Book. Ever. So I did, uh, a few...

The English Patient (preferably book?), Caravaggio/Hana, found his voice for her
They took his thumbs, took his hands. But a thief is not all thumbs - a good thief is at least half words, and for months he feels that knife sawing away at his voice, lack of use dulling the desire to speak. Hana, though, deserves at least half of him, and she gives him morphine, and he gives her the words he steals from delirium.

The English Patient, Caravaggio/Hana, garden
"I brought you something," he says, dropping a few tiny seeds into her dirt-covered palm.

"Basil - the women down in the village say it wards from evil," he smirks.

"Well then," she says, and kneels to plant them in front of her crucifix scarecrow.

The English Patient, Hana, 2 a.m. Everyone is asleep but her.
Caravaggio snores gently, and the English patient hisses out desert-wind sighs in his sleep, and in his tent Kip will be maintaining a slow steady in-and-out of air. She knows their breathing, each a different dialect of pain. She wishes she could hear her own.

The English Patient (book), Caravaggio & Hana, talking about Patrick
"I had a letter from him, before," Caravaggio offers. "He was proud of you."

She gets up and leaves.

The English Patient, Caravaggio/Hana, burning like phosphorus
She finds him lying in the dirt, in the rain, and when she rolls him onto his back he leaves a deep impression in the earth. "If you drown yourself I won't fix you," she murmurs crossly, but she loosens his collar, collects rainwater in her palms and splashes it on his forehead. She knows what it is to burn inside.

The English Patient (preferably book?), Hana/Caravaggio or Hana & Caravaggio, her love for him always in her heart like the page in the book where she wrote it down
There is a man, and he is a man, his suffering is not saintlike as the English patient's but more human. The man in the bed spins words out into the air as easily as he breathes. Caravaggio's words are heavier, thicker; he forces them out and she gathers them in close to her.


And then Betsy prompted Vincent and the Doctor, so I rewatched that and wrote this.

Doctor Who, art scholars, speculation on "for Amy"
Whomever 'Amy' was - a lover, a stranger - the painting she inspired is a full, if quiet manifestation of Van Gogh's talent, rich colors and masterful strokes. Whomever Amy was, to have formed such a connection with a famously lonely artist, to have given him such inspiration, she must have been special indeed.

Amelia Pond closes her Van Gogh book with a sigh and wishes she could have known him.

Doctor Who, Amy, "That sign said keep out!" "I could have sworn it said 'come see.'"
All her life, Amelia Pond has been told "no"; no, the Raggedy Doctor does not exist; no, her parents will not be coming home; no, she cannot travel the world. Now the Doctor has come to prove her right, to make her dreams and stories come alive, and she doesn't have to listen to anyone anymore. Amy Pond will not be told "no."

Harry Potter, Hermione, memories of war.
It's the oddest things that stick with her, afterwards - the smell of the tent, the number of minutes it took her to stop shaking after Ron was splinched (43 and a half), the taste of Bellatrix's Polyjuice Potion. The smoothness of the basilisk fang in her hand, and the layers of dirt on her clothes. Lavender Brown's expression as she bled out in the Great Hall.

Supernatural, Dean, left behind
"Just us now, buddy," Dad says as they drive off from Stanford, and he hasn't called Dean 'buddy' in years, but Dean understands the need to sink back into something old. There's too much forward movement right now, too much change, and neither John nor his elder son is used to change, especially not when it comes from Sammy. They're the ones driving away, but Dean can't shake the feeling that Sammy has left him behind.

Chronicles of Narnia, Ramandu's Daughter, the rose of battle
She sings the sun up each morning from within the walls of Cair Paravel, and in the spring she sows and in the autumn she harvests, and throughout the years she watches as her husband leads troops past her and brings them home again, brings some of them home again. When she cannot understand the ways of this land she escapes to the beach and the woods and the Centaurs, who show her how to read the skies as mortals do. She watches once-familiar stars dance strange steps, and reads in them cold doom.