Fic: Genesis
Sep. 29th, 2013 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clockwork_hart1Title: Genesis
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,000
Prompt: for femslash minis on lj, and brutti_ma_buoni who wanted Saffron and Zoe, post Serenity, with a new world, the laughter of dead kings, and no overall angst (which I struggled with), and not too much Mal getting in the way (which I tackled head on)
Summary: "I knew you were a thief, but I never pegged you for a graverobber"
originally posted here
For a planet so bathed in sunlight, Miranda's breeze is frigid. It pricks her skin with gooseflesh. But maybe that's not the planet's fault. Maybe that's the memories smothering her soul.
She sits on the sand, just below the sterile, stilted city of the dead. The sand's white, like bone, and runs softly through her fingers. As she buries her toes in it, she starts to let the past slip away.
It had been closure, and not the need for space, or the selfless urge to rebuild and replenish that had made her join the clean-up crew, building an oasis from the bleached rubble of the civilisation before. This is where Wash had made his sacrifice, and this is where she needed to heal, to rebuild a planet along with herself.
The solitude, the quiet, well that was nice. Eventually.
One of the do-gooders is giving her a dirty look—withering glare juxtaposed with fake-plastic smile, bloated with the guilt of wealth. Screw her, screw all of them. They come here to throw their disposable cash at the corpses and expect her to be grateful. They don't know about loss. They don't know about grunt work.
Her trigger finger itches in a nasty way, begging to teach the jien huo a lesson. But that wouldn't… She doesn’t do that now. Unlearning ruthless, warrior tendencies have all but stripped her bare and she's only just finding who Zoe is now. But whatever she is, it’s not trigger happy killer. So she stands, wiping sand from her dress, and bends, ready to lift the bulging wooden crate that's been dropped at her feet.
Zoe grips the wood, watching as disinterested shadows leave her to it, and the anger swells again. She hauls the box up with a surge of defiance and stumbles with it toward the cargo lift she'd almost single-handedly installed.
When this place is finished, she oughtta be made Mayor.
Zoe turns around, and there's another three boxes making a trail from her seat in the sand to the lift.
She quells the sigh, stuffing it down in her diaphragm and bends again.
"Hey? Need a han—oh."
Zoe looks up, finds blue eyes that swell with contrived innocence. Red hair like a flaming beacon of dishonesty.
"Well if it isn't the prettiest snake in all the verse." Zoe regards Saffron, and if her practised plastic smile isn't star-bright, well, you've been looking at the wrong sky.
Saffron's scowl falls for a second, taken aback by the other woman's lack of weaponry (or, infact, leather), then smiles back, "you think I'm pretty?" Eyelashes flutter like the epitome of innocence, a hand slips into her bag, groping for a gun. Then she thinks better of it.
There are other ways to play this song.
Zoe doesn't have the patience for this, or the energy. This isn't her life anymore, and yet it seems determined to gos se on her new start. Saffron's particular load is starting to stink up the place. "Why are you here, Saffron? I know you ain't here to lend an oh-so-charitable hand. Do snakes even have hands?" She flops down onto a crate, beginning to lose the battle to not start beating Saffron, repeatedly.
Walking away doesn't enter her mind.
Saffron's hands slide sensuously over the next crate along. She pouts at Zoe, loving the way she squirms. Oh, she remembers this game. It's been a while, but there's no real character to play this time, she just has to be the person Zoe thinks she is. Saffron keeps her victim's eyes trained on hers, fluttering lashes and biting lips and swaying like the seductress she plans to be. "Darn, you caught me. I was looking for a new prince to marry."
An eyebrow lifts in deft sarcasm, "another crown for the trash pile. Haven't you run out of burial ground yet?"
"Funny, though the black widow thing's a little ironic, don't you think?" One hand slips into the crate, fingering a perfume bottle, probably one of the dead's. The other runs through her hair, silky and wild, eyes never leaving the other woman. "I like to think of them as victims of circumstance. They have what I want; I let them think I'm what they want. Anything more is a happy accident." She lifts the perfume bottle through the crack in the crate and slides it into the pocket hidden in the seam of her dress. "And maybe the others watch as I do it over and over, pitying their successors. The laughter of dead kings... Has a nice ring to it."
Zoe stands, and Saffron knows she's rumbled. And it pumps through her with that special satisfaction that only flares when she wins. There’s a smile when she turns, looking ready to escape.
Zoe snatches her wrist. "You're a pretty good actress, but you're one lousy stealer", her hand slides down in a painfully slow caress until it slips inside the redhead's pocket and lingers a moment too long, then she yanks the perfume bottle out. "I knew you were a thief, but I never pegged you for a grave-robber."
Saffron twists in Zoe's grasp so they're facing one another, looking impishly up into heated brown eyes, then down to moistened lips. "What're you gonna do, take me in; punish me?" Saffron laughs, head thrown back with a joyful kind of malice, "but I suppose you'd need your precious Captain's permission for something like that."
Eyes meet in deadlock, laughter all but gone, a sparkling challenge replaces it.
"See, that's where you're wrong. I make my own decisions." She moves in, looking down at Saffron, chests a breath away from touching.
There's a new world being built here. New kinds of wants and needs are bubbling through the cracks of older foundations.
Zoe's mouth pulls in to a sinful smirk, "and I've decided punishment is the least of your worries."
Saffron smiles back. Consider Zoe played like a harp. And later? Later she might even make her sing.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,000
Prompt: for femslash minis on lj, and brutti_ma_buoni who wanted Saffron and Zoe, post Serenity, with a new world, the laughter of dead kings, and no overall angst (which I struggled with), and not too much Mal getting in the way (which I tackled head on)
Summary: "I knew you were a thief, but I never pegged you for a graverobber"
originally posted here
For a planet so bathed in sunlight, Miranda's breeze is frigid. It pricks her skin with gooseflesh. But maybe that's not the planet's fault. Maybe that's the memories smothering her soul.
She sits on the sand, just below the sterile, stilted city of the dead. The sand's white, like bone, and runs softly through her fingers. As she buries her toes in it, she starts to let the past slip away.
It had been closure, and not the need for space, or the selfless urge to rebuild and replenish that had made her join the clean-up crew, building an oasis from the bleached rubble of the civilisation before. This is where Wash had made his sacrifice, and this is where she needed to heal, to rebuild a planet along with herself.
The solitude, the quiet, well that was nice. Eventually.
One of the do-gooders is giving her a dirty look—withering glare juxtaposed with fake-plastic smile, bloated with the guilt of wealth. Screw her, screw all of them. They come here to throw their disposable cash at the corpses and expect her to be grateful. They don't know about loss. They don't know about grunt work.
Her trigger finger itches in a nasty way, begging to teach the jien huo a lesson. But that wouldn't… She doesn’t do that now. Unlearning ruthless, warrior tendencies have all but stripped her bare and she's only just finding who Zoe is now. But whatever she is, it’s not trigger happy killer. So she stands, wiping sand from her dress, and bends, ready to lift the bulging wooden crate that's been dropped at her feet.
Zoe grips the wood, watching as disinterested shadows leave her to it, and the anger swells again. She hauls the box up with a surge of defiance and stumbles with it toward the cargo lift she'd almost single-handedly installed.
When this place is finished, she oughtta be made Mayor.
Zoe turns around, and there's another three boxes making a trail from her seat in the sand to the lift.
She quells the sigh, stuffing it down in her diaphragm and bends again.
"Hey? Need a han—oh."
Zoe looks up, finds blue eyes that swell with contrived innocence. Red hair like a flaming beacon of dishonesty.
"Well if it isn't the prettiest snake in all the verse." Zoe regards Saffron, and if her practised plastic smile isn't star-bright, well, you've been looking at the wrong sky.
Saffron's scowl falls for a second, taken aback by the other woman's lack of weaponry (or, infact, leather), then smiles back, "you think I'm pretty?" Eyelashes flutter like the epitome of innocence, a hand slips into her bag, groping for a gun. Then she thinks better of it.
There are other ways to play this song.
Zoe doesn't have the patience for this, or the energy. This isn't her life anymore, and yet it seems determined to gos se on her new start. Saffron's particular load is starting to stink up the place. "Why are you here, Saffron? I know you ain't here to lend an oh-so-charitable hand. Do snakes even have hands?" She flops down onto a crate, beginning to lose the battle to not start beating Saffron, repeatedly.
Walking away doesn't enter her mind.
Saffron's hands slide sensuously over the next crate along. She pouts at Zoe, loving the way she squirms. Oh, she remembers this game. It's been a while, but there's no real character to play this time, she just has to be the person Zoe thinks she is. Saffron keeps her victim's eyes trained on hers, fluttering lashes and biting lips and swaying like the seductress she plans to be. "Darn, you caught me. I was looking for a new prince to marry."
An eyebrow lifts in deft sarcasm, "another crown for the trash pile. Haven't you run out of burial ground yet?"
"Funny, though the black widow thing's a little ironic, don't you think?" One hand slips into the crate, fingering a perfume bottle, probably one of the dead's. The other runs through her hair, silky and wild, eyes never leaving the other woman. "I like to think of them as victims of circumstance. They have what I want; I let them think I'm what they want. Anything more is a happy accident." She lifts the perfume bottle through the crack in the crate and slides it into the pocket hidden in the seam of her dress. "And maybe the others watch as I do it over and over, pitying their successors. The laughter of dead kings... Has a nice ring to it."
Zoe stands, and Saffron knows she's rumbled. And it pumps through her with that special satisfaction that only flares when she wins. There’s a smile when she turns, looking ready to escape.
Zoe snatches her wrist. "You're a pretty good actress, but you're one lousy stealer", her hand slides down in a painfully slow caress until it slips inside the redhead's pocket and lingers a moment too long, then she yanks the perfume bottle out. "I knew you were a thief, but I never pegged you for a grave-robber."
Saffron twists in Zoe's grasp so they're facing one another, looking impishly up into heated brown eyes, then down to moistened lips. "What're you gonna do, take me in; punish me?" Saffron laughs, head thrown back with a joyful kind of malice, "but I suppose you'd need your precious Captain's permission for something like that."
Eyes meet in deadlock, laughter all but gone, a sparkling challenge replaces it.
"See, that's where you're wrong. I make my own decisions." She moves in, looking down at Saffron, chests a breath away from touching.
There's a new world being built here. New kinds of wants and needs are bubbling through the cracks of older foundations.
Zoe's mouth pulls in to a sinful smirk, "and I've decided punishment is the least of your worries."
Saffron smiles back. Consider Zoe played like a harp. And later? Later she might even make her sing.
