[Monkey Island; prompts #39, 49] Desperate Times / To The Bone Title: Desperate Times Fandom: Monkey Island Rating: PG Character(s): Elaine, Largo Prompt: 039. Map. Word Count: 250 Disclaimer: Still not LucasArts, still don't own them. Summary: Desperate times call for strange alliances. Notes: This fic and the one following it both spring from the same plot bunny (the original notes to which I've apparently lost—please insert a great deal of swearing on my part here), which was a somewhat lengthy fic based around the idea of what would happen if Elaine Marley and Largo LaGrande were forced to work together against LeChuck. Well, besides the obvious, which is homicide. One of these days I may get around to writing the whole fic. Or I may not; who knows.
Desperate Times
Desperate times, Elaine reminded herself, schooling her face into an expression of steely indifference as she studied the map. The waters controlled by LeChuck were marked by (entirely too many) various bits and bobs; rusted silverware, a thimble, a candle steadily dripping wax onto the parchment.
Across the table, sprawled with his legs dangling over the arm of his chair, Largo LaGrande scratched at his neck—fleas, Elaine thought, mostly out of spite—and offered a less studious but still correct assessment: “We’re screwed.”
Elaine pinched the candle out before it could ruin any more of the map, wishing all the while that she could do the same to Largo’s skull. “If we were,” she answered through clenched teeth, “I wouldn’t have bothered coming here in the first place. Are you going to help me or not?”
Largo looked at the map for a few spare seconds before he shrugged. “I’m just the muscle, Marley. You strategize us out of this hellhole, I keep your pretty head safe from LeChuck.”
The threat behind his words being, of course, that he could hand her over to LeChuck any time he felt like it. Or at least he thought he could.
“Fine.” Elaine picked up the rusty dagger that marked her—their—tiny ship and stabbed it down onto another part of the map. “Go muscle the crew into doing something useful and taking us there.”
Largo rose from his chair, grumbling. Desperate times, Elaine thought again, attention fixed on the map.
Title: To The Bone Fandom: Monkey Island Rating: PG Character(s): Elaine, Largo Prompt: 049. Bone. Word Count: 246
To The Bone
Elaine had never been good with stitchwork. She’d never learned how to do it, rather—the childhood-long parade of tutors had run her through literature, history, geography; needlework had occurred to neither them, nor her, nor especially her grandfather. Not that it had mattered anyway. Mêlée Island wasn’t known for its sewing circles.
So now what made her jaw clench wasn’t that she was stuck on a ship riddled with cannon fire, being tossed about on a sea poised to storm, in the company of a man she normally wouldn’t touch with a barge pole—but that it was taking her so long to stitch said man’s arm back together.
Her one consolation was that Largo was suffering more than she was. He alternated between squirming in his chair until she all but broke his elbow, forcing him to sit still, and taking liberal gulps out of the bottle of rum he held in his other hand.
“I told you we should’ve followed the Voodoo Lady’s advice,” she said, breaking what had been an interminable silence.
“I hate that voodoo bull.” He took another long drink of rum. The bottle was painted with streaks of dried blood. “You done yet?”
“Almost.” Which was true—her hap-hazard stitches had at least covered up the bits of bone that had been peeking through, and his arm was beginning to resemble an arm again.
Not that he seemed grateful. “Good,” he grunted, and went back to drinking.