2am. This is day 3. Or 4, now. Feel terrible. The Three Wisemen came by in the afternoon and stood around awkwardly, mostly not looking at Mulder. He is doing his best impression of a dignified statue, which is of course awful. They looked at me just fine, including poor little troll man. The flowers he brought were hand-picked, messy. Cherry blossoms. And then mom came in with hash brownies and where does she find cannabis in Pennsylvania? Frohike had one and broke off a piece for me.

Felt nappish after that, and kept down a snack at 6:30. (They should definitely legalize.) Then the evening dose, and barfed through primetime. Mulder fled for that part, thank goodness. He looks like a ghoul already; I wonder if I can send him away when I start to lose my hair.

END

(Because while I do practice Carterese in my journal, I also practice sentence fragments and inanity.)

All Rivers Towards the Sea - X-Files
spoilers: Triangle
[Scullyfic Challenge: a character in love with Scully, 155 words]

She marched into the little office, barking, "It's ready?"

At the desk, he didn't bother to ask what she wanted. "Keys on the seat. Your map of Miami. I marked the fastest route to the Marina. I called ahead: they're waiting."

"Excellent." She scribbled her signature where he pointed. He came around the counter and followed her outside, eyeing her gaggle of passengers. They had already climbed into the car, and left the driver’s seat to her.

"You said it was an emergency," he half-asked, gesturing at Frohike in the back seat. All three men looked at him.

"Thank you," she said, swooping in to kiss the pimply boy on the cheek. "We'll save his life yet."

She took the onramp at 50 mph. Behind her, the Hertz clerk held his hand over the lipstick mark and watched amazed as Scully sped off to fish her partner out of the Atlantic Ocean.

end

Because honestly, folks. Did you really think I'd do something normal?

Thursday - Farscape
spoilers: none
thanks: cofax, who made me do it. And supplied the title.

"Ow. What day is it?" Crichton rubbed his head and sat up.

D'Argo made a noise. "What kind of a question is that?" he asked, and held out his hand to help Crichton to his feet.

"I think it must be Thursday," Crichton told him, nodding sagely. Or he did, till the nausea hit, and then he held very, very still. "Thursday," he gasped, "is John-gets-smacked-on-the-head day."

D'Argo looked him up and down, watched him take a few steps. "I don't care whose day it is. You're on duty in three arns." He straightened his jacket, and turned away.

Crichton said, to that vast back, "But then with GWAR, every day is John-gets-smacked-on-the-head day." He stood straighter, regaining his color.

A snort from Rasta-Man. "Do not tell me who this Gwar person is." He waited, though, for Crichton to catch up. They walked down the round hallway, three Human steps to every two Luxan.

"I couldn't explain it if I tried," said Crichton.

"You can't explain it when you do try."

They snorted, in unison. Although D'Argo's snort sounded like an elephant seal with a hangover. "Never mind, then," said Crichton.

END

nota bene: I can't explain GWAR either. Let us just say that my introduction to GWAR was the sentence: "But then with GWAR, every day is necro-bestial-butt-sex-day!" You sort of gotta laugh or cry, and crying will ruin your leather chaps.

Unified Field Theory - Farscape
spoilers: inferentially, yours
thanks: cofax's flybeta

As suns go, it was rather unremarkable.

"Yellow, average size."

"What kind of wobble, Pilot?" asked Crichton. He sat chewing racro fruits, which he insisted on calling 'nuts', feet rested on the console. He drew another dot on his useless map.

"Gravitational analysis indicates it has substantial mass in orbit. I have not performed the calculations, but it seems there are several planets, possibly in a single orbital plane. It is -- very far away."

The human dropped his feet to the floor. "Holy shit," he said, and the racro fruits tumbled, rolling, across the room. One of them bounced off of Aeryn's boot. She glanced at it, kicked it away, and returned to her work on the atmospheric calibration.

"It could be -- Aeryn, did you hear him?" Crichton bounded across the room towards her.

She didn't even look at him. "We'll be at the checkpoint in how long?"

Crichton didn't answer. "Seven arns, at the most," Pilot supplied, meekly.

"Hand me that spanner," grunted Aeryn. Crichton deflated, and passed her the tool.

"Remember that one, Pilot," he said, turning away. "For someday." And he crouched to pick up the scattered racro fruits from where they had fallen.

END

Raymond Chandler Summary - Angel
[How to introduce 2 years of canon to a new viewer, briefly.]
[Originally posted to the Buffistas Boards.]

"You might not have liked him, if you had known him. He was the kind who staggered, drunk, after the retreating shape of a blonde down a dark street. He isn't proud of who he was, or what he did. Actually, he's very, very sorry.

"Not sorry that the blonde was a demon and made a demon out of him. Frankly, she was a looker, and there was nothing he could have done to stop her. It's the century and change of murderous glee that gets him down, when he thinks about it. And he's got plenty of time to think about it.

"You kill that many people, you make enemies. If you're smart, you avoid the people who can hurt you back. Nobody's ever accused Angel of being smart. He got himself hit with a curse, a conscience, and ever since he's been falling all over himself to prove he's a right guy. The kind of guy you'd want on your side.

"He's been on this earth a quarter-millennium. He's older than the Scotch he drinks. And for the first time since he felt the teeth at his neck, he's got friends. Real friends, the kind that can help him out in a jam. The kind you depend on, the kind you put yourself in danger to protect.

"Man. Is he ever doomed."

...and I shrug the trench coat up around my ears, flick the cigarette into a handy puddle, and walk away down the rain-slick street, chuckling sardonically.

[A response to a challenge on the scullyfic list: write a love letter from any one X-Files characters to any other. So I was feeling wicked and this was the result.]

[Written 2/9/99, which, in the US timeline, is during the stretch covered by Two Fathers and One Son.]

~~~~~

Mr. Skinner --

I suspect you don't remember me. I hope you'll remember this letter, since not many adults write to you in crayon. But it was crayon or blood or some damn thing so crayon it is.

We met before, I mean when I was still real, in a civilian hospital somewhere. We met over the body of a child who had contracted smallpox. I remember your bafflement -- neither you nor anyone in that hospital had ever seen that disease. It was dead; for more than thirty years it had been effectively eradicated. And then we got our hands on it, and you saw the results.

I do say we, don't I. I shouldn't do that. I'm not one of them any more; I'm not a part of anything. A Japanese lantern, wandering down the river to the ocean, untouched except by the caprice of waves and carp. I saw that when I was a child, when my father was posted to Tokyo. They put paper lanterns in the water at midsummer, written with the names of the dead.

This sounds mad, doesn't it. It does. I am sorry; I had meant to send you an explanation of things and have detoured into the personal too many times. But in my case, the personal and the professional have become a single line -- ever since I met you, events sped faster and faster until I slid from complicity to agency to subjection in this dirty enterprise. I would wake in the night, sometimes, after I stopped being real, and see your wrinkled forehead and feel sorry for cutting you out of the investigation. If I had --

No point in what-ifs now. I didn't tell you about the plan, and I failed warn your agent that Krycek was back in the game, so I am as much to blame for my present state -- and yours -- as the people who locked me up. You are not in Fort Marlene, but you are as much as prisoner as I am. Pray they don't subject you to tests. As a pawn, at least you have your dignity.

I am entrusting this letter to your Agent Spender; he can't get me out of here and Krycek refused. If I still had my looks I might have charmed him as I suspect I charmed you, once; if that charm still has any hold on you I beg you to come to my aid. Aside from our one meeting I know only what gossip I can overhear, and that is from your enemies. But that is enough to suggest to me you will help me, if you can. If only because we met, once; if only because I am a pitiful woman who grasped on any image she could to get her through the terrible nights.

You are the only person I could think of who is decent. As I lay alone, or worse, not alone, I saw in my mind your blunt features and your guarded brown eyes -- don't think I am insulting you; it was a sight I welcomed. You made me remember what being real was like, when I existed in the world. I hope you have not grown in imagination larger than you are in life. I wish I could tell you in person how your humane grimace saved me. If you are at all able to act on this missive, and I pray you are, I will tell you.

We victims need to stick together.

love,
Marita Covarrubias
ex-Special Representative to the Secretary General of the United Nations. Didn't that sound grand, once.

~~~~~

The letter, of course, was found on a corpse in a basement office of the FBI building. It was soaked in blood and difficult to read. And by the time he cut through the red tape at Fort Marlene, Skinner found that there was no such patient in the quarantine wing, or anywhere to be found.