Broken Space

Cal had gotten the idea to host a movie night after he'd found not one, not two, but three Chuck Norris movies. Clearly something like that was a sign, and so he'd scrounged up some blank paper and made a few signs to post on doorways and the bulletin board.

He wasn't really the kind to head the refreshment committee, but he'd set out some juice and punch (and sweet tea made by Alec) and cups, and whatever he could find in the kitchen: fruit, stuff to make sandwiches, a plate of cookies that someone had baked up and left on the counter. If anyone else was feeling ambitious, they could add to it, he just wanted have some basic offerings.

He got everything set up and ready to roll on the first movie, then sat back with a banana and waited for people to show.

[Gathering post! Tag in, tag each other, enjoy some cheesy 70s and 80s Chuck Norris movies. They will be watching Breaker! Breaker!, An Eye for an Eye, and Firewalker, which can all be found on wikipedia or IMDB if you need more info about them. ;) This post serves to fast forward us by three months, too, so keep this in mind if anything significant has happened to your pup in the interim. :)]

Calvin hadn't set out to start a party or anything. He'd been out hunting earlier and had shot a few wild chickens before stirring up a boar's resting place completely by accident. Fortunately Cal's tree-climbing skills got him out of goring range, and a few well-placed arrows from above meant there was a lot of boar meat to cook up, as well as the fowl.

So what was a guy to do? He cleaned and butchered the meat, then built a small bonfire on the beach and got it burning. Now it's fading toward dusk, the fire is getting to just the right point to start cooking, and Cal's made a few more trips to get some fruit and vegetables, as well as juice (and a kettle of boiling water, in case anyone wants tea), and he's just hanging out, prepping the meat by threading it onto carefully cleaned and sharpened sticks and waiting for anyone to respond to the "Free meat on the beach" sign he'd tacked to the refrigerator.

Alec is a creature of habit, of small personal rituals that give his life structure and, sometimes, meaning. He's never been all that adaptable or open to change, but considering the crap he's been through, he's pretty resilient. And when there's something he /has/ to do, he does it. Might not want to talk about it or even think about it, afterward or at the time, but he does it.

Which is why back home, he'd always conscientiously made sure the ulunsuti was primed as often as needed, and had the blood of a large animal at the requisite intervals. He definitely didn't want to talk about it, and thank God even Davy had never asked.

Here on the island, it's different. For one thing, there hasn't been an awkward thing you didn't want to talk about that ever existed on Earth that Ianto wouldn't ask about anyway, and most of the time Alec doesn't mind, but after a bit he got tired of everybody around basically telling him he was being an idiot worrying about feeding it when it clearly didn't work. So he'd started doing it in private, when nobody was likely to notice him messing with it. It's all his own business anyway, and he didn't ask for the goddamn thing but he's sure as hell not going to fuck up any more than he already has.

He does it symbolically now, though--no big gestures, no slicing himself open or bleeding a lot, no killing things he'd rather not mess with only to have the blood all go to waste on the ground. He does it small-scale, just to show he's still making the effort.

Like right now, when he's burrowed into a little hollow in the bushes not quite all the way to the beach, the ulunsuti's bag next to him and the thing itself balanced between his knees. He nicks himself on the hand, just a tiny little cut, and if the ulunsuti wants it, it can have it. A dark little stream of blood trickles down his palm, beading against the skin, and he presses it against the stone.

For a flash of a second, it feels like the stone grows warmer, like there's a pulse like a heartbeat underneath his hand.

"Holy shit." Alec yanks his hand away, reflexively, but slaps it back down before he can look to see if it's gone clean or if he just imagined it. And the stone, unlike his suddenly-ragged breathing, stays silent.

It's an annual tradition, and this year Johnny is feeling particularly celebratory. The island seemed to have gone easy on them this year, for some reason. A few people coming, a few people leaving, and mostly not craziness. In fact, it was so incredibly mundane that Johnny was going stir-crazy. He wouldn't even have minded if the dinosaurs came back, so long as something interesting happened. So this year he'd decided to ring in the next year with a particularly exceptional party in the hopes that something would happen--even if it was just another baby in nine months. With any luck it wouldn't be his.

There was alcohol. Lots of alcohol. And a feast of barbecued boar, roasted fish, fresh vegetables and fruits. There were torches lighting the path from the Compound to Summerfell, and on the beach a large bonfire burned. Best of all, he'd spoken with the sciency types and they'd managed a very special countdown for midnight.

Fireworks. Raw, experimental--but still big explosions of sparks and light. It was going to be awesome.

Over the course of the last nine hundred years, the Doctor has travelled space and time, to the furthest reaches of the universe (and one or two others), back and forward in time from Vesuvius to the post-apocalyptic ruins of a far-distant New York. He's seen aliens and creatures in infinite variety, many of them very dangerous and possessing numerous combinations of claws, venom, spines, wings, weaponry and very sharp teeth.

So one might think, after all this vast experience, that walking back toward the TARDIS one day to discover one such very nasty creature standing between him and it, staring at him licking its distinctively vicious chops would not be quite such a shock as it is.

"Ah, right," he says, staring at it, and takes a step backward. Must think, must think. The creature's lionish, sinewy body lowers toward the ground. Its head, vaguely human but with three rows of nasty, jagged teeth, makes a clear, trumpetish noise that sends shivers down the Doctor's spine.

Speaking of spines, there are some on its tail. "Right," the Doctor says, moving his hand very slowly toward the sonic screwdriver in his pocket, and scanning the area for Ways Out Of This Fine Mess. "Nice...kitty?"

[The Doctor seems to have found Fionchadd's manticore. He would like some help, please.]

There was, Bright thought, something pretty cool about being able to have a New Year's party on the beach. He'd made a bonfire, got some brews, fired up the grill, and harassed everyone he knew into hauling a whole lot of food down to the main beach. His iPod was hooked up to some speakers Alec had gotten working again, and there were some towels and cushions tossed onto the sand for people to sit on.

Success was his.

"Happy new year celebration in progress!" he yelled. "Let the party begin! Who's got karaoke?"

[NYE party! Tag now/late/slow/whatever at will!]

Crowley is racing down the countryside, as content as a devil can be, listening to an electric-guitar-laden Vivaldi, resisting the urge to whistle along and instead taking in the happy - er, unhappy - day. He'd just woken up from an eight-week nap and is feeling - well, utterly devilish. Already today, he has rigged the match in favor of Manchester United (again - amazing what sports will do to spread ill will), orchestrated the reunions of two boy bands, and gotten three new reality shows (all with stupid but scantily-clad women as stars) approved. All in all, he has been doing a good - er, bad - job.

And it is as he is congratulating himself on this that the Bentley - his darling Bentley - crashes with nothing. It just simply comes to an abrupt stop as fifty-plus years of non-care catch up to it, and as one the tyres deflate and rust off, the paint peels, the engine not only dies but abandons ship, and the Vivaldi: Best of Queen tape begins to screech in pain and horror.

Crowley sits in the driver's seat, taking it all in, and after a few minutes does the only thing he knows to do: He blesses.

He looks at a building, in front of which his car has died. It occurs to him to ask if there's an auto mechanic there, and that way he can skip out on the bill and score Downstairs some more points, but in the end he lifts a hand and snaps. Nothing happens. He does it again. Again, nothing happens.

Crowley stares. What the Heaven?

Things are getting pretty weird. Not that there's a better way to describe a day, or a week, that starts with getting knocked out of bed because your girlfriend's sprouted wings, especially when that morning finishes off a night where your best buddies can now both change into stuff and the stone you thought was dormant is very much awake again and hungry for blood.

But there's more to it than that. It started when his eyes started tingling. It was the weirdest thing, they just started burning a bit from the back, like when there's a wind blowing too hard in your face--only there wasn't, just a flicker of something silver, and then things were back to normal for a bit.

Only it keeps on happening, and every time the flashes of silver get a little stronger, a little thicker, until he thinks he's not imagining them anymore. How could he be? How could he imagine a long, straight, shimmering line of flickering silver stretched across the island in front of him and out to the west, across the water?

A Straight Track. Silver, not gold, but a Straight Track all the same.

"Fuck," he whispers, rubbing at his eyes. "David, this is so your department. I'm not supposed to have this shit." Not all the the stinging is from the Sight, but it's a good excuse. "Where the hell are you, man?"

[Sad!Alec is sad. Open to anyone, though especially wanting Finno and Calvin.]

Early morning and Ukyo is in her favourite place in the hub, the kitchen, and preparing breakfast for herself and any of the hungry residents who might come through the door seeking sustenance. Already she's prepped some grilled fish, steamed rice and some small okonomoyaki, and is currently in the process of making tamagoyaki - rolled egg omelets, one of her favourite parts of a proper Japanese breakfast.

Humming happily as she cooked, Ukyo wonders who would take over kitchen duties after she left with Jack and the Doctor. Although there hasn't been any word on when that might be, so she supposes there would be time enough to make sure the others weren't left bereft when the time came.

Hearing a footstep, she looks up and smiles.

Contrary to what some people believed, Southern California did have seasons, they were just a little different from the seasons that other people had. Instead of spring, summer, fall, and winter they had early spring, late spring, early summer, and late summer. Or sometimes earthquake, fire, mudslide, and wind.

The island had seasons too, Lilly was finding, having been here for nearly a year. There was early summer, humid summer, perfect summer, and Mother Nature on Acid. At the moment it was a humid summer day, so Lilly was taking advantage of the Blue Lagoon to cool off by swimming. She could swim fairly well, since she'd grown up with a pool, but her favorite thing to do was to pretend she was in one of those old films with synchronized swimming performing some big routine, singing softly to herself while she floats on her back, treading water.



[For anyone! The socialite is feeling lonely.]

Bright had been good at relatively few things in his life. He hadn't ever been really good at anything, the way genius seemed to run in Ephram's family, with the piano and the brain surgery stuff. He wasn't all super smart in a general kind of way like Amy or Hannah. He was usually kind of dumb.

But he'd been good at a few things--sex, football, tossing pizza dough, and filing. And with Izzie having disappeared, he wasn't doing any more of the first. He needed distracting.

This was what led to the current scene: Bright Abbott, his head in the refrigerator, and three piles of its contents on the floor around him. There were plenty of people around willing to cook in this place, and even a couple of neatfreaks to keep the kitchen sanitary, but it looked like it had been a while since the last time anybody actually went through the fridge. The files consisted of "Still totally edible," "Edible but might not look it," and "toss the hell away NOW before it starts killing people in their sleep."

It was like filing, but with food. Everything was pretty much better with food.

[open to everyone who just needs a break! Neatfreaks feel free to come yell at him. Tag in pretty much whenever. :)]

Misato'd heard the story, of course--the mini mart world turned into a crime scene, the whole thing marked off-limits till they could be sure there'd been no lasting damage. She'd offered at one point to go and check it out in a military capacity, but so far there hadn't been a need. The offer still stands-it would be something to do beyond examining the bits of technology the others find washed on their metaphorical shores, and most of that she does just to make sure it's not any part of the Eva project. Oh, she's learning--she can't help that; she's a quick learner and pretty good at figuring things out--but she still worries sometimes that one of them will turn up some day, and the rest of Torchwood will have put it together before she can stop them.

But for now, there is nothing new, and she's indulging in a hobby she didn't have much time for back home--sunbathing. She'd always had a thing for hot springs and beaches, and so now she's taken a blanket, a book, and a six-pack of beer and headed to the beach for some well-deserved lounging.

The water still makes her think of LCL sometimes, and the island is nothing like post-Second-Impact Japan, and the beer is something cheap and American that barely tastes like beer at all, but it's hard not to let her thoughts stray back home sometimes. She pops open one of the cans and holds it up to the sky before she tilts it back. "Ritsuko, Kaji...kampai."

So far Julio hadn't really gotten much out of the island probably because he'd been keeping to himself. Sure, he recognized a few people, but it wasn't like they would know who he was. Or like he felt like explaining. Maybe if he'd kept his powers he would have tried, but being barely mutant if he was still mutant at all... It just seemed better not to make the first move.

Instead, he thought he ought to see about making himself somewhere to live. In theory, it sounded pretty simple, but the truth was by the end of a few hours, he hadn't built much of anything and Rictor was pretty sure building a hut on his own was the stupidest idea he'd had since listening to Jamie's dupe up on the roof a handful of months before arriving on the island.

Wiping some sweat off his brow and noticing that it had gotten pretty dark out, he headed back to the compound. Sleeping in a building with AC didn't seem like such a bad idea after all.

Rather than dwelling on how lame his life had suddenly gotten, Tony had taken to hiding behind booze and various other pointless projects. The first of which had just been pimping his little remote control car in various ways, but he figured the best thing to do was to give it to Sue's kid.

Tony Stark's second pointless island project was going to take a little longer, but he wanted to at least build himself a small robot of some kind. He'd found some tools (pliers, tweezers and screwdrivers), wire, batteries, an exacto knife, a few small solar panels, random gears, bits of scrap metal, and a sodering kit, but he wasn't sure how far he was going to get with three different little clocks, a radio, and four remote control cars at his disposal.

Taking another sip of scotch, he surveyed the supplies and sighed. "Might be able to build some kind of proto-Roomba. What d'you guys think, huh? What would you like to be?"

Why, yes, he was talking to inanimate objects. What of it?

Having helped Ianto with the coffee and cacao beans, mostly by dumping the bag in the kitchen and scooting--hell, what does he know about roasting coffee and processing chocolate?--and after a few minutes of wandering around followed by a few more of standing in the hallway, Alec finds he's at a bit of a loss for what to do. Lilly is asleep--a perfectly reasonable expectation for the middle of the afternoon, if you're Lilly--and Fionchadd, he thinks, is off hunting. He hasn't seen Tory all day and Dairine has gone mysteriously missing. Which doesn't mean he can't find them, or something to occupy himself. There's a lot of stuff in the storage rooms he knows Ianto wanted to go through, and since his room's already as clean as he can get it, he may as well get started.

That, at least, is the plan. What actually happens is that he opens a door on one of the lower levels he thought had been a closet, and walks into a room that he's one hundred percent, bona fide, absofreakinglutely sure was not on the island before. For one thing, it's all in black and white.

Rows of sepia-toned beer cans form a pyramid between the cooler and the aisles, balanced against them a sign proclaiming "$2.19 six pack" which he thinks is cheaper than it ever was at home. Rows and rows of boxes, cans, and plastic packages line the shelves: mac and cheese, potato chips, candy bars, tins of stew and Campbell's soup like a bad print of that Warhol painting. A stocky, balding man leans on the counter behind a stand of magazines in shades of the same worn-out grey, paying no attention to Alec but staring, instead, out the glass facade to the parking lot, where a wood-panelled pickup truck waits by a gas pump in a cloud of settling dust. There's a Pepsi machine just outside the door, and not even that is in colour, the lightbulb inside dull, the bottom half the logo burnt out. The landscape beyond is the same dreary dull, brown and grey, flat and windy in the shadow of far-distant mountains like what Alec figures Nevada or Wyoming must look like.

This is definitely weird. More weird than the shit the island usually pulls. He turns back around to find himself face to face with a large metal door labelled FREEZER. He opens it, sees the familiar corridor of the Hub basement, and runs back in, yelling at the top of his lungs.

"FINNO! LILLY! IANTO!!"

Bright was actually pretty familiar with how Ephram's brain worked, and that when he said he didn't want a bachelor party, what he actually meant was that he didn't want Bright's kind of party.

And Bright knew that already. Because every time he'd ever known Ephram to go to a party, he hovered in the back and left early, or else just spent the whole time drunkenly playing Ms. Pac-Man and totally failing to realize that there were hot girls there totally trying to score with him. Ephram was kind of a loser when it came to noticing the scoring potential directly under his nose.

Not that he was going to need to score with girls at his bachelor party the night before he tied the knot with a guy, but it was the principle of the thing. And the fact that Bright actually did know how to make his best friend have a good time, and unlike every other red-blooded American guy in existence, it wasn't with booze and loud music and chicks.

He drafted Alec into helping him clear out one of the spare rooms, found a deck of cards and a couple of board games, and bribed Dairine for the use of her iPod and a couple of speakers. The fridge was full of leftover Japanese food--God, he was glad Ukyo was back--and he figured once he invited Johnny he could get him to bring some hard cider (which was, all things considered, better than beer. At least better than cheap-ass Coors he was used to drinking back in Everwood).

He stood back to admire his handiwork and flipped the iPod onto 'shuffle'. The speakers crackled and some old Journey song started playing.

Let Ephram never say he didn't get a good party.

[In theory guys only, but Bright has never been too fussed about party crashers. *g* May be top-levels at varying points to determine when stuff goes on, and there's to be a debut here later, but other than that, total freestyle.]

It's your average sort of day on the island, and Alec's got to where he's settled into a basic routine--coffee and breakfast, whether he makes it himself or somebody else does, wander by the lab and see if anything new's happened, take a shower, find something time-wasting to do for a bit to keep from going insane.

It isn't much of a routine, but there are a lot of hours in the day when you don't have real responsibilities. There's Torchwood, but even Alec can only maguyver computer parts for so long before he goes kind of nuts, and Lilly, who is more like a partner-in-crime in the whole time wasting gig, and working on a D&D adventure for when they all get tired of Risk. (It may or may not bear a certain resemblance to things that actually happened, but he's got to start somewhere.)

He's on a walk out by the trees, getting some exerise--he's never been a runner like David or Darrell, but he was used to getting outside most days, back home, and he figured a hike would help him clear his head a bit. Now he's sweaty and getting tired and heading home, eyeing the trees around him for a good candidate for a walking stick. He used to have a staff he'd taken on camping trips, one David has made for him--it had an iron tip and a leather grip, and some spell poem thing David had burnt into it in Norse runes.

Which is beside the point at the moment, except that he wants a walking stick and stops to see if he can't pull a good branch off one of the trees. Palm trees don't really look promising on that front, but there's something that looks like it might work, and he's in the middle of pulling it out of the leaves to get a better look when something hits him on the head.

Oh. Yeah. The one David made him looked like that.

He grumbles and rubs his head, but picks it up. The last time he saw it was in Galunlati, and the whole thing was a blur of pain and fire and the stench of death and burning blood, a memory that still makes him gag a bit. His fingers close around the leather grip of the runestaff, here and intact, complete with the protection rune David had made up--

Whoever holds to hinder here
from Road that's right, from Quest that's clear
Think not to trick with tongue untrue,
nor veil the vision, nor the view;
Look not to lose, nor lead astray
who wields this Warden of the Way.

These runes were wrought, these spells were spun
by David, son of Sullivan.

Wow, what a load of crap that ended up being, he thinks ruefully. He hadn't known what to make of it when David gave it to him, but he'd clearly put a lot of work into it, and it was something his best friend made, how could he not be proud of it? But his best buddy's spellcraft left something to be desired.

The palms of his hands stinging memory, Alec stops walking and sinks down onto the ground, the staff across his knees. Any head-clearing is pretty well demolished now, and he just sits there for a while, thinking.

Edmund felt a hand on his hip: protective without being possessive. Then, the light brush of lips on the curve of his neck.

"Caspian?" He whispered groggily. But no, that was not it. The weight on his hip was a sword. He'd started wearing it around ever since the disastrous confrontation with Jon Snow. The lips were a leaf, blown by the breeze.

Edmund sat up on the roof of the compound, blinking sleep from his eyes. He'd fallen asleep in the sun, and he remembers now what had brought on his dream. Or, his memory. It lay next to him on the roof. Innocuous enough, the small book had practically jumped into his hand in the library. It had a white cover with unremarkable blue lettering, but the words had jumped out at him: "Dawn Treader."

[open to anyone else who might be clambering around the roof! edit: will return tags tomorrow when I am not asleep]

Zelda's mood was foul. She had thought to impress Jon by wearing her arrival gown and when she had seen him sad, hoped to cheer him, but neither had gone according to plan. No, he had just confirmed her worst fears--that she was no more fit to be a friend than an object of affection and that she was just (again) throwing herself at a man who wanted nothing to do with her. Jon pitied her, pitied her inability to make a friendship, and at the end of duty wanted nothing more with her.

She had gotten impossibly angry on the beach, railing at Jon like some sort of harpy, and it was no wonder he had taken his leave of her. Why on earth would he want to remain friends with such an inept and stupid woman such as herself? He would not. That was made impossibly plain.

She wept, eyes red-rimmed and puffy from crying, and could not help the sick feeling in her heart. Jon Snow wanted nothing with her and, yet again, she had found herself hopelessly attached to a man who wanted nothing from her and would seek it elsewhere as fast as his legs could carry him.

She watched the ocean rise and fall, not caring if her gown grew soiled. It had been a stupid vanity that made her don it to begin with, after all.

[Only people who know her, please. She's not fit company for meeting new people.]

Bright had spent most of the afternoon lying on the beach. He had a lot to think about, and he'd never really been a serious thinking kind of guy, so it took a certain amount of preparation. And suntan lotion.

Mostly, he'd been thinking about Ephram. Who was getting married. To another guy. Oh sure, it didn't actually mean a whole heck of a lot here, since there wasn't much in the way of legal status for anybody to take advantage of one way or another, but it was still married, and Bright still had trouble picturing it. Not that he was going to tell Ephram that, not when he was all excited and happy and stuff. And Bright was happy for him, sure. He liked Bran. Definitely thought he treated Ephram better than Amy ever did, and he could say that objectively while still loving his sister.

It still felt weird.

Bright got up, leaving the lashed-together lounge and sandy juice glass and stripey beach towel wadded up next to it, splashing into the water. If he was gonna be stranded somewhere, this was a pretty good place. He had sunshine, sand, warm water, he was learning how to surf from a freaking superhero and had a really good thing going on with a supermodel doctor.

Weird? Totally. But that didn't have to mean bad.