kerravonsen | WIP meme

From

lizbee: When you see this, post summaries and/or snippets of some of your most recent works in progress.
Works in progress? Ha! Not progressing at all. (kicks self)

My overdue help_haiti story (sigh)

"How many Tomorrow People are there on Earth?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Elizabeth answered it anyway. "Three."

"And how many of them are women?" John continued.

Only one. Herself. "Really, John, I would have thought you'd have outgrown this sexist nonsense. It's the seventies, not the middle ages."

My SS/HG story (which is not overdue... yet)

Hermione stared nervously into the mirror. The spells in "1001 Household Charms" had been a challenge to figure out. She'd found the book in a box of old books at the Hogsmeade Fair, a charity event for the benefit of war orphans. Now that Voldemort was dead, they called it a war, though compared to Muggle wars it was nothing much. No, not true, really. Because it had been a civil war, and they were the worst kind. Stop thinking about it. Think about the spell.

More Buffy and the Doctor

The Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door. "Yep." He opened the door and walked inside. Golden light spilled out into the shadows of the storeroom.

The professor's eyes widened. He touched the edge of the TARDIS doorway, and stepped up to the threshold. "Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." He broke into a grin.

"Huh?" said Buffy.

"I rather made a fool of myself about the helicopter, didn't I?" Stephanos said.

"It's just applied science," the Doctor said. "It's not a miracle."

Stephanos gave a slight smile. "The two are not mutually exclusive."

The Doctor frowned. "I've battled gods who thought that technology could substitute for miracles."

"Magic doesn't substitute for miracles either," Buffy said. "I only fought one god and saw one miracle," she continued. "It snowed on a summer day; magic just isn't the same."

"Well, are you coming?" the Doctor said to Stephanos.

"Indeed I am," Stephanos said, and stepped inside the doors.

(alas, this is the point where the story stalled)

The bridging story between "Complications" and "The Year That Was", where Martha ties up loose ends before heading off

The Doctor drummed his fingers on the table as he looked out at the passing scenery.

"Are we there yet, Mum?" Martha said sarcastically.

"I didn't say anything!" the Doctor protested.

"You didn't have to," Martha said. "Honestly, for someone as old as you are, you're rubbish at waiting."

The complete re-write of my Romana-Rose story

Noah's Ghost, Personal Log, Mission Day: 1
Prador's got us out chasing fairy tales. I notice he didn't actually explain why he thought that the piece of space-junk was of Dalek origin. C'mon, Daleks don't exist! Fine, he said they'd paradoxed themselves out of existence, but in that case, there shouldn't be anything left at all. Still, paradoxes are tricky; you can never be certain what will be remembered and what won't, what will stick and what will vanish. So maybe Prador's right. He's certainly worried enough about the "artefact". Just a bit of metal, but the security on the case... you don't see duralloy bio-locked strong-cases all that often.

The Master with Amnesia AU

He didn't want to admit it, but this region of space that was not Gallifrey made him uneasy. It wasn't just the disturbance in the Vortex near it, but that seemed to have bled into the area itself. Echoes in time, things seen out of the corner of the eye, what less enlightened lifeforms would call ghosts. No wonder he was having bad dreams.

He'd been reluctant to leave the area because it might be their only way back to N-Space, but while he had gone over the primary systems yet again, and fixed every minor glitch he could trace, he wouldn't really be able to re-calibrate the TARDIS systems without additional reference points. Which meant they needed to go somewhere else, anywhere else.

He crawled up out of the hollow beneath the console and replaced the grating. Then he set a certain set of coordinates. There probably wouldn't be anything there, but in the real universe it had been a very pleasant place.

The second he dematerialized the TARDIS, they hit the turbulence again, but he was expecting it this time. It only took a few minutes of subjective time to get clear of it, and after that the TARDIS settled down to a much smoother ride.

At which point, Jo burst into the console room.

"You might have warned me!" she snapped. "I was getting tea! What if I'd spilled boiling water all over myself? As it is, you're minus one pair of teacups."

(the story stalled here)

Methos at Hogwarts
"What is a squib doing teaching Ancient Runes?" Snape said.

"Squib is such an interesting sociolinguistic concept, don't you think?" Professor Pierson said. "Of course, it should more properly be 'damp squib', but considering that the word 'squib' itself didn't come into the English language until the mid-1700s and the International Statute of Secrecy was signed in 1692, I wonder what word had been used for the concept before then. Or even if the concept had been articulated at all. And yet the word itself indicates that Wizarding society was not so isolated from Muggle society back then as it is now, since the squib firecracker was a Muggle invention."

"Don't try to distract me, Pierson," Snape said.

"I suggest you take up the Headmaster's hiring policies with him," Pierson said. He smiled, teeth sharp, eyes glinting, and Snape was reminded of a fox, laughing at him. "Besides, I'm not a squib; I'm a changeling."

(this is the ONLY bit that's been written)

And while I'm at it, I'll quote some snippets from some REALLY REALLY old unfinished stories that I haven't worked on in years.

Works NOT in Progress
A)
Beneath the veneer of the everyday, lies another world; a world of magic and miracles, dreams, wonders and horrors; where turning the corner, opening a door, or simply picking up a telephone, is far from simple, and far from ordinary.

Scratch the surface, and it bleeds strangeness.

Most people never scratch the surface.

B)
He smiled slightly at Avon's appraisal and said, "Bryan Ashe. You've come for me?"

"No." Avon kept his calm veneer, but inwardly he was cursing himself for a fool. "For your knowledge - but unless you teach on Holy Ground, I'd rather pass."

Ashe waved his free hand. "So much for a good reputation."

"I don't know you," Avon said evenly.

"I don't know you either," Ashe pointed out.

"Let's just keep it that way," Avon said, and backed out the door.

C)
...two men walking down the street at night. One is tall, buff, cropped hair, muscles; the other shorter, with long curly hair

"I wonder if the laws are the same here?" Curly says.

"It seems very similar," Buff says.

"Well you know about seeming."

Buff stops. "We're being followed," he says quietly.

They are attacked by a group of men with very ugly faces. Martial arts ensue, where the two men dodge and kick very agilely.

"What are they?" Curly asked.

"Ask them to stand still and I'll tell you," Buff said. "They smell like a graveyard."

D)
"Did I ever tell you about Metabelis 3?" the Doctor asked the Tardis control room at large, which at the moment was occupied by Tegan and Nyssa. He was idly swinging an octagonal blue prism from its cord. "The similarity didn't strike me before -"

Tegan looked up at the jewel he was swinging. "I wish you'd get rid of that," she remarked. "It gives me the creeps."

"But it's all over," Nyssa pointed out.

"I don't want to be reminded of it," Tegan declared irately.

The Doctor stepped towards Tegan, the Little Mind's Eye still dangling from his hand. "But there's nothing to be afraid of," he said reassuringly. "Not any more. It's gone."

"But that isn't!" Tegan snapped in a fit of temper, snatching the dangling jewel from the Doctor's loose grasp. Agony coursed through her hand. She hardly noticed the Doctor's sudden gasp and grimace of pain. Tegan dropped the stone like a live coal. She looked up at the Doctor, stunned and frightened. "Wh-what happened?"

E)
"I was expecting something like this. I guess it's time to call in the reinforcements."

At that moment there was a knock on the door. Godbold went and opened it. At the door was a large bearded man and three others. "Ah, John, you're just in time. Please come in."

Adam muttered, "And some people don't believe in miracles."

The Hermit of Leeds coughed and waved his mobile phone. "The Lord does work in mysterious ways, but he also gives his servants tools. And if a certain gathering of souls in Toronto becomes internationally famous, a telephone book is quite sufficient."

F)
Adam was sitting on the ground, leaning against the wheel of the wagon, one leg up, his arm resting on his knee. He was staring at something gripped in his hand, staring as if he wasn't seeing what he was looking at. He held something metal, a spoon perhaps, with curved branches on its handle; a tree perhaps, or the tines of a stag.

And then she saw the crimson drops falling on the grass. It was a dagger he had clenched in his hand, the sharp edges cutting deeply into his palm and fingers. Sam ran up to him.

"Adam, what are you doing?"

He looked up, startled, and she slapped the dagger out of his hand. She went down on one knee, grabbed his hand and turned it over, wondering how deep the cuts were, and what on earth they would do if they needed stitching -- and gasped. The cuts had stopped bleeding, and were sealing themselves up with a tracery of blueish light, even as she watched. There was no blemish or even scar left behind; the only sign that he had even been cut was the blood glistening redly on his palm.

"What...?"

"Exactly," he said bleakly. "Not 'who am I?' but 'what am I?'."

Sam pulled her mind back from fascinated speculation about the mechanisms of the wonder she'd just seen, shocked that Adam could take her exclamation to mean that she thought he wasn't human. "That's not what I meant," Sam said quickly.

"But it's what I meant," Adam returned, pulling his hand out of her grasp, and wiping it on the grass.

G)
Duncan's eyes widened. "If it's that serious, then I need to know."

"You're better off not knowing. Take a long vacation. New Zealand." Are you trying to persuade him to go, or not? You know what you'll have to do if he doesn't. He adjusted his grip on the weapon in his pocket. "Or maybe Antarctica. On the other hand, Antarctica might be the worst place to go."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Stubborn Scott. "Okay, Macleod," Methos said, and shot him. Duncan collapsed in a flurry of blue lightening, and spasmed on the floor. Methos shot him again. Duncan stopped breathing.

"Sorry," Methos said. "But I had to be sure."

Then he sat down and waited for the highlander to revive.

Y'know, I've started an awful lot of stories over the years. Should I be glad that I've actually managed to finish as many as I have?