seriousfic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seriousfic) wrote2008-04-12 10:03 am
seriousfic) wrote2008-04-12 10:03 am
Fic: Cycles (Fourth World)
Writing The Other Wife has put me in such a funk that I needed to write something light and fluffy. I.e., Scott/Barda. Here ya go. Now, I am off to work for twelve hours (!) and getting me through being on my feet for half the time it takes for the Earth to make a single revolution will be the knowledge that I’ll have lots of nummy feedback waiting for me when I get home. So please, think of the feet.
Also, whaddyaknow, the latest chapter of The Other Wife is up. It has sexytime, and there’s mention of zombies in the comments. Why don’t you fill one of your twelve hours of doing nothing with some literature, eh?
Title: Cycles
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Scott/Barda
Word Count: 2,338
Continuity: After the last issue of Mister Miracle v1. Short version: Barda and Scott confess their love for each other and get married because God ordained it. Darkseid shows up to be a dick about it, so the whole wedding party goes to New Genesis to live happily ever after.
Summary: Or not.
Evaporation
The ceremony was quick, tinged with goodbyes and exhilarations. Looking back, it was the one thing Scott didn’t doubt, never doubted. Of course, he had unwavering confidence in his own abilities, that he could escape any trap. But the thing with Barda (there was a word for it in New Genesis tongue, a love/marriage/family/togetherness word he couldn’t yet pronounce) was even surer than that. As if that wasn’t enough, after his heart-pounding panic at Darkseid’s appearance, he calmed just at Barda’s hand in his.
New Genesis was such a paradise it was like diving into cold water. Everything was beautiful. Barda fit right in.
They rushed through a day of celebration and merrymaking so long that Scott felt his legs would fall off. His father… Highfather, everyone called him that… was beside him always, an arm usually wrapped around his shoulders, seeming to introduce him to every single New God by name. The Forever People joked and jostled, and Barda bested Orion in some combination of a drinking game and arm-wrestling match, and someone had made a cake that was such a work of art that Scott would’ve felt guilty about eating even a portion except it tasted so heavenly.
And then the great sun set, casting a prismatic range of colors over the floating city (home, was the word for it in New Genesis tongue). The New Gods retired in song, each off to bed, the lights of the great city marking the passage from evening to night. And just as suddenly as that entire day, Scott and Barda were alone in their room. It was isolated at the edge of Supertown, and later Scott would wonder if there was a sort of quarantine in effect, but at the moment all he could think of was how happy he was, and how happy Barda was, and how happy that made him.
The room was as beautiful as the rest of New Genesis, even though it lacked the hominess of Thaddeus Brown’s place. Later, that would come to pang Scott. At the moment, its loveliness astonished him. He yawned, wondered about something inconsequential, and looked at Barda, who looked at him with such need that his heart almost stopped. The deeper he looked into her eyes, the more he saw. Devotion, love, compassion… understanding that he couldn’t see in anyone else.
Barda had been at his side throughout. They hadn’t kissed since leaving Earth, but they’d always been touching, so casually it wasn’t even conscious. But now Scott felt the absence of her touch more keenly than any wound.
She was still in her armor, tattered and torn from the day’s battle, though her bandages were crisp and white under it. He almost broke into a run to embrace her, squeezing her and feeling the familiar too-hard pull in return. And they just… didn’t part. He felt, instead, her fingers undoing the clasps of his cape. It fluttered gently to the ground to layer at his heels.
“We don’t have to,” she said in deference to any trepidation on his part, and he kissed her before she could say another word.
Doubts were a thing for Earth and Apokolips, where he’d never fit in, never belonged, never had Barda. He was home, with the woman he loved at his side and an entire city honoring him as a hero. He’d done it.
Condensation
It was hard to sleep in the same bed with someone else. Their lovemaking was the perfect climax to the day’s events, and perfectly in keeping with them… exhilarating, tinged with weariness and pain, and promising better things to come. With some reluctance, Scott wiggled out of her grasp to get comfortable. She smiled at him, letting him know it was okay. She was a vision, even in sleep. He could’ve laid awake all night, just watching her, but the bed was so comfortable it practically rocked him to sleep.
The next morning was as busy and confusing as anything. There were clothes for them prepared in the drawers, tailored to their exact size. The fashions were strange to Scott, who’d just gotten used to Earth clothes. He selected a pair of trousers and a tunic that looked inoffensive, although they were both in bright colors and with lots of thin gadgets on the sleeves and legs.
Barda dressed as well, and Scott laughed to discover it was in one of the elaborate, diaphanous gowns. He would’ve thought she’d look ridiculous in such a feminine outfit, but in the morning with her hair down, and in the gentle New Genesis light, she looked…
He kissed her, then just clung to her, until her stomach rumbled and she playfully pushed him off.
“Come on, we need grub,” she said, and he followed her into the kitchen. There were branches growing in through the windows. Scott picked an apple-looking fruit off one of them. Barda searched through what was probably a refrigerator for anything meaty, but resolved herself to a thick pear.
They ambushed Scott and Barda outside the front door, a group of well-wishers who quickly furnished their new home with housewarming presents. Barda’s Mega-Rod, which she’d relinquished at Scott’s insistence upon arrival on New Genesis, was returned to her as promise, shined and polished. She frowned at her reflection in its metallic finish.
“I miss the dried blood,” she pouted when Scott hugged her to him, tactilely asking what was wrong.
After that, a helpful New God told Scott that he’d be considered underdressed without a robe. Scott put one on and went out into the world, Barda close at hand.
She parted from him with a brief kiss on the cheek, customarily needing to assert her independence before returning to him. Scott knew her too well to be offended. Besides, he wanted some time alone just as bad. Some time to think before things went any further. He thought for so long he practically meditated, and awoke from his trance to find Highfather… dad… was meditating with him.
“Excuse me, son, I just thought I’d join in.”
Scott winced inwardly at being called ‘son’ by a stranger.
“So, how do you like it here?” Highfather asked with a beatific gesture.
“It’s fantastic.”
“Yes, we try.”
“I was wondering about work.”
“For wages? I continue to be impressed by the primitiveness of your earlier surroundings. Here, we work for enlightenment and the betterment of our fellow beings. Material gain is not a goal in our lives.”
“Oh,” Scott said. “Okay. Groovy.”
“They say you’re an escape artist.”
Scott nodded. “It pays the bills. Well, it did. Not that I don’t see the appeal of the whole slacker lifestyle, but Barda likes regiment in her life. Duties to perform.”
Highfather’s face darkened behind his thick beard. “As ever, we train for the seemingly inevitable war with Apokolips. That will be a dark day indeed.” He pursed his lips. “No son of Apokolips has ever set foot on New Genesis since…”
Scott’s mother. Scott had seen holograms of her. She was beautiful, and in death eternally young. He had her eyes, pale and blue and always sad until they lit up with laughter and life.
That was one of Highfather’s favorite recordings, one where he surprised her and her eyes went bright at the sight of him.
Scott changed the subject quickly. “See, great, she’d be perfect for that. Maybe a little… intense,” Scott conceded. “But you really could not do better as far as wars go.”
“As it happens, she’s already reported for duty as our armory.” Highfather frowned. “How’d she find it?”
Scott shrugged, a smile already playing across his lips. “She’s Big Barda.”
***
There were technicians eager to assist him, although Scott hated to take their time away from the relief efforts going out through the Boomtubes. They were mystified with why he’d want to invent death-traps (“No, I don’t want to execute anyone, they’re for me. No, I’m not suicidal, have you met my new wife? HEY!”), but they helped him regardless and by the end of the day he had three new traps that he was just aching to figure out how to escape.
He returned home to find Barda taking out her frustrations on either a punching bag or a blameless appliance that sufficed as a punching bag. “They’re hopeless,” she said. “You know they want to solve their problems with conversation?”
“The horror.” He bent to kiss her neck and found she was wearing a new perfume. He showed her how much he liked it.
After was where the trouble crept in. The air was always cool on New Genesis, with the sun always bright but never too bright. But night… night was the same on all worlds. There was some comfort to be taken in the fact that the stars shot down light instead of the Fire-Pits that might’ve overrode them, but Scott still missed the noise of Earth, the sense that life continued even while he slept. It made him eager to wake and rejoin it.
In her sleep, Barda shook and cried out. Scott knew he would have the same nightmares if he could get to sleep. Instead, he held her until she calmed, then walked the full-barren house, furnished with things whose function he didn’t know. The house AI suggested an entertainment for him, which turned out to be a hologram. The programming struck him as more insipid than Earth’s. There were skits and musical performances, which were all really good as far as Scott could tell, not really having an appreciation for such things. He missed bad B-movies and dubious infomercials.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Barda asked him over breakfast. The auto-chef’s attempt at bacon made them both reach for the fruit branches.
“Just jitters,” Scott said. “New place. I’ll be over it.”
But that night, he was still awake, standing out on the porch and listening for the crickets’ chirping. He couldn’t hear it. Somewhere, someone must be making love, talking, cheering, crying, anything, but he couldn’t hear that either.
Barda approached him. He sensed it, but couldn’t have known that her robe was hanging, loose and undone, from her broad shoulders until he turned to look at her. “Can’t sleep?”
He shook his head.
She took him in her arms. “I’ll tire you out.”
And she did.
Afterward, they lay under the foreign stars. They had scared Scott, once, until he’d learned the constellations. He knew, without asking, that Barda was thinking about how they couldn’t be seen on Apokolips through the pollution and the flames of the pits.
“Do you like it here?” he asked her, almost as comfortable on the grass of their estate as he was in the bed.
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
Scott fell asleep with his head on her arm.
***
He tried to put on a show in the center of town.
Operative word: Tried.
First, his costume. It wasn’t enough to repair and clean it, they wanted to put so many safety features in it that he couldn’t so much as scratch his nose. Finally, he scraped their “upgraded” version and grabbed one of the spares. It was simple Earth fabric, but it felt good against his skin. After all the New Genesis silks, it felt good to have something a little coarse. Like the calluses on Barda’s hands when she touched him.
They came from miles around to watch the performance of Highfather’s son. That made him nervous; not so much the crowd as being judged against Highfather. It was a strange, heady sensation. He’d always been anonymous. Now, he had borrowed fame.
The show never got beyond the first trap. As soon as he was in danger, a few people tried to rush the stage and help him. They were pushed back (Barda seemed to enjoy that part a little too much) and he escaped as planned. But then there was crying, from the children and the adults, and no matter how much he tried to explain that he hadn’t been in danger, not really.
He went home in a melancholy even Barda couldn’t dispel, feeling like a disappointment and a fraud and a thing still wearing the taint of Apokolips. Maybe he was. They all looked at him like that. Everyone on New Genesis was fit and thin and perpetually in their mid-twenties, while he remembered being malnourished and bruised, and Barda’s thick musculature belied her womanhood. They were both scarred, inside and out, and that made them stand out like weeds among flowers.
It wasn’t exactly healthy, cheating death for a living.
Once, he dreamt that it was all a lie. That he’d never escaped the orphanage and that all of it, especially Barda, was a joke and Granny was laughing and laughing and he woke up screaming, only stopping when Barda clutched him in one hand, her Mega-Rod at the ready in the other.
Neither of them slept that night. The floating city was passing over the ice caps and the northern lights were excuse enough to stay up. Its brightness played over them through an open window.
“Do you like it here?” Scott asked, turning the wedding band around his ring finger.
Barda said nothing.
“Me neither,” Scott confessed. He kissed her and grinned for the first time in days. “Wanna escape?”
Precipitation
They left a note and took only what they could carry. As far as clothes, there was just the costumes. Although Barda had noted Scott liked seeing her in one of the dresses, so she took that as well. A souvenir.
The only one Scott said goodbye to was Highfather, who nodded. He’d known, of course, but he appreciated that they’d tried to make a life with him, in his city that he’d built for a son and family. They hugged for the first time before Highfather opened the Boomtube to Earth.
“Love you,” he said in Barda’s ear, and she said a New Genesis word that meant love/marriage/family/togetherness.
They stepped through the portal hand in hand.
Also, whaddyaknow, the latest chapter of The Other Wife is up. It has sexytime, and there’s mention of zombies in the comment
Title: Cycles
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Scott/Barda
Word Count: 2,338
Continuity: After the last issue of Mister Miracle v1. Short version: Barda and Scott confess their love for each other and get married because God ordained it. Darkseid shows up to be a dick about it, so the whole wedding party goes to New Genesis to live happily ever after.
Summary: Or not.
Evaporation
The ceremony was quick, tinged with goodbyes and exhilarations. Looking back, it was the one thing Scott didn’t doubt, never doubted. Of course, he had unwavering confidence in his own abilities, that he could escape any trap. But the thing with Barda (there was a word for it in New Genesis tongue, a love/marriage/family/togetherness word he couldn’t yet pronounce) was even surer than that. As if that wasn’t enough, after his heart-pounding panic at Darkseid’s appearance, he calmed just at Barda’s hand in his.
New Genesis was such a paradise it was like diving into cold water. Everything was beautiful. Barda fit right in.
They rushed through a day of celebration and merrymaking so long that Scott felt his legs would fall off. His father… Highfather, everyone called him that… was beside him always, an arm usually wrapped around his shoulders, seeming to introduce him to every single New God by name. The Forever People joked and jostled, and Barda bested Orion in some combination of a drinking game and arm-wrestling match, and someone had made a cake that was such a work of art that Scott would’ve felt guilty about eating even a portion except it tasted so heavenly.
And then the great sun set, casting a prismatic range of colors over the floating city (home, was the word for it in New Genesis tongue). The New Gods retired in song, each off to bed, the lights of the great city marking the passage from evening to night. And just as suddenly as that entire day, Scott and Barda were alone in their room. It was isolated at the edge of Supertown, and later Scott would wonder if there was a sort of quarantine in effect, but at the moment all he could think of was how happy he was, and how happy Barda was, and how happy that made him.
The room was as beautiful as the rest of New Genesis, even though it lacked the hominess of Thaddeus Brown’s place. Later, that would come to pang Scott. At the moment, its loveliness astonished him. He yawned, wondered about something inconsequential, and looked at Barda, who looked at him with such need that his heart almost stopped. The deeper he looked into her eyes, the more he saw. Devotion, love, compassion… understanding that he couldn’t see in anyone else.
Barda had been at his side throughout. They hadn’t kissed since leaving Earth, but they’d always been touching, so casually it wasn’t even conscious. But now Scott felt the absence of her touch more keenly than any wound.
She was still in her armor, tattered and torn from the day’s battle, though her bandages were crisp and white under it. He almost broke into a run to embrace her, squeezing her and feeling the familiar too-hard pull in return. And they just… didn’t part. He felt, instead, her fingers undoing the clasps of his cape. It fluttered gently to the ground to layer at his heels.
“We don’t have to,” she said in deference to any trepidation on his part, and he kissed her before she could say another word.
Doubts were a thing for Earth and Apokolips, where he’d never fit in, never belonged, never had Barda. He was home, with the woman he loved at his side and an entire city honoring him as a hero. He’d done it.
Condensation
It was hard to sleep in the same bed with someone else. Their lovemaking was the perfect climax to the day’s events, and perfectly in keeping with them… exhilarating, tinged with weariness and pain, and promising better things to come. With some reluctance, Scott wiggled out of her grasp to get comfortable. She smiled at him, letting him know it was okay. She was a vision, even in sleep. He could’ve laid awake all night, just watching her, but the bed was so comfortable it practically rocked him to sleep.
The next morning was as busy and confusing as anything. There were clothes for them prepared in the drawers, tailored to their exact size. The fashions were strange to Scott, who’d just gotten used to Earth clothes. He selected a pair of trousers and a tunic that looked inoffensive, although they were both in bright colors and with lots of thin gadgets on the sleeves and legs.
Barda dressed as well, and Scott laughed to discover it was in one of the elaborate, diaphanous gowns. He would’ve thought she’d look ridiculous in such a feminine outfit, but in the morning with her hair down, and in the gentle New Genesis light, she looked…
He kissed her, then just clung to her, until her stomach rumbled and she playfully pushed him off.
“Come on, we need grub,” she said, and he followed her into the kitchen. There were branches growing in through the windows. Scott picked an apple-looking fruit off one of them. Barda searched through what was probably a refrigerator for anything meaty, but resolved herself to a thick pear.
They ambushed Scott and Barda outside the front door, a group of well-wishers who quickly furnished their new home with housewarming presents. Barda’s Mega-Rod, which she’d relinquished at Scott’s insistence upon arrival on New Genesis, was returned to her as promise, shined and polished. She frowned at her reflection in its metallic finish.
“I miss the dried blood,” she pouted when Scott hugged her to him, tactilely asking what was wrong.
After that, a helpful New God told Scott that he’d be considered underdressed without a robe. Scott put one on and went out into the world, Barda close at hand.
She parted from him with a brief kiss on the cheek, customarily needing to assert her independence before returning to him. Scott knew her too well to be offended. Besides, he wanted some time alone just as bad. Some time to think before things went any further. He thought for so long he practically meditated, and awoke from his trance to find Highfather… dad… was meditating with him.
“Excuse me, son, I just thought I’d join in.”
Scott winced inwardly at being called ‘son’ by a stranger.
“So, how do you like it here?” Highfather asked with a beatific gesture.
“It’s fantastic.”
“Yes, we try.”
“I was wondering about work.”
“For wages? I continue to be impressed by the primitiveness of your earlier surroundings. Here, we work for enlightenment and the betterment of our fellow beings. Material gain is not a goal in our lives.”
“Oh,” Scott said. “Okay. Groovy.”
“They say you’re an escape artist.”
Scott nodded. “It pays the bills. Well, it did. Not that I don’t see the appeal of the whole slacker lifestyle, but Barda likes regiment in her life. Duties to perform.”
Highfather’s face darkened behind his thick beard. “As ever, we train for the seemingly inevitable war with Apokolips. That will be a dark day indeed.” He pursed his lips. “No son of Apokolips has ever set foot on New Genesis since…”
Scott’s mother. Scott had seen holograms of her. She was beautiful, and in death eternally young. He had her eyes, pale and blue and always sad until they lit up with laughter and life.
That was one of Highfather’s favorite recordings, one where he surprised her and her eyes went bright at the sight of him.
Scott changed the subject quickly. “See, great, she’d be perfect for that. Maybe a little… intense,” Scott conceded. “But you really could not do better as far as wars go.”
“As it happens, she’s already reported for duty as our armory.” Highfather frowned. “How’d she find it?”
Scott shrugged, a smile already playing across his lips. “She’s Big Barda.”
***
There were technicians eager to assist him, although Scott hated to take their time away from the relief efforts going out through the Boomtubes. They were mystified with why he’d want to invent death-traps (“No, I don’t want to execute anyone, they’re for me. No, I’m not suicidal, have you met my new wife? HEY!”), but they helped him regardless and by the end of the day he had three new traps that he was just aching to figure out how to escape.
He returned home to find Barda taking out her frustrations on either a punching bag or a blameless appliance that sufficed as a punching bag. “They’re hopeless,” she said. “You know they want to solve their problems with conversation?”
“The horror.” He bent to kiss her neck and found she was wearing a new perfume. He showed her how much he liked it.
After was where the trouble crept in. The air was always cool on New Genesis, with the sun always bright but never too bright. But night… night was the same on all worlds. There was some comfort to be taken in the fact that the stars shot down light instead of the Fire-Pits that might’ve overrode them, but Scott still missed the noise of Earth, the sense that life continued even while he slept. It made him eager to wake and rejoin it.
In her sleep, Barda shook and cried out. Scott knew he would have the same nightmares if he could get to sleep. Instead, he held her until she calmed, then walked the full-barren house, furnished with things whose function he didn’t know. The house AI suggested an entertainment for him, which turned out to be a hologram. The programming struck him as more insipid than Earth’s. There were skits and musical performances, which were all really good as far as Scott could tell, not really having an appreciation for such things. He missed bad B-movies and dubious infomercials.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Barda asked him over breakfast. The auto-chef’s attempt at bacon made them both reach for the fruit branches.
“Just jitters,” Scott said. “New place. I’ll be over it.”
But that night, he was still awake, standing out on the porch and listening for the crickets’ chirping. He couldn’t hear it. Somewhere, someone must be making love, talking, cheering, crying, anything, but he couldn’t hear that either.
Barda approached him. He sensed it, but couldn’t have known that her robe was hanging, loose and undone, from her broad shoulders until he turned to look at her. “Can’t sleep?”
He shook his head.
She took him in her arms. “I’ll tire you out.”
And she did.
Afterward, they lay under the foreign stars. They had scared Scott, once, until he’d learned the constellations. He knew, without asking, that Barda was thinking about how they couldn’t be seen on Apokolips through the pollution and the flames of the pits.
“Do you like it here?” he asked her, almost as comfortable on the grass of their estate as he was in the bed.
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
Scott fell asleep with his head on her arm.
***
He tried to put on a show in the center of town.
Operative word: Tried.
First, his costume. It wasn’t enough to repair and clean it, they wanted to put so many safety features in it that he couldn’t so much as scratch his nose. Finally, he scraped their “upgraded” version and grabbed one of the spares. It was simple Earth fabric, but it felt good against his skin. After all the New Genesis silks, it felt good to have something a little coarse. Like the calluses on Barda’s hands when she touched him.
They came from miles around to watch the performance of Highfather’s son. That made him nervous; not so much the crowd as being judged against Highfather. It was a strange, heady sensation. He’d always been anonymous. Now, he had borrowed fame.
The show never got beyond the first trap. As soon as he was in danger, a few people tried to rush the stage and help him. They were pushed back (Barda seemed to enjoy that part a little too much) and he escaped as planned. But then there was crying, from the children and the adults, and no matter how much he tried to explain that he hadn’t been in danger, not really.
He went home in a melancholy even Barda couldn’t dispel, feeling like a disappointment and a fraud and a thing still wearing the taint of Apokolips. Maybe he was. They all looked at him like that. Everyone on New Genesis was fit and thin and perpetually in their mid-twenties, while he remembered being malnourished and bruised, and Barda’s thick musculature belied her womanhood. They were both scarred, inside and out, and that made them stand out like weeds among flowers.
It wasn’t exactly healthy, cheating death for a living.
Once, he dreamt that it was all a lie. That he’d never escaped the orphanage and that all of it, especially Barda, was a joke and Granny was laughing and laughing and he woke up screaming, only stopping when Barda clutched him in one hand, her Mega-Rod at the ready in the other.
Neither of them slept that night. The floating city was passing over the ice caps and the northern lights were excuse enough to stay up. Its brightness played over them through an open window.
“Do you like it here?” Scott asked, turning the wedding band around his ring finger.
Barda said nothing.
“Me neither,” Scott confessed. He kissed her and grinned for the first time in days. “Wanna escape?”
Precipitation
They left a note and took only what they could carry. As far as clothes, there was just the costumes. Although Barda had noted Scott liked seeing her in one of the dresses, so she took that as well. A souvenir.
The only one Scott said goodbye to was Highfather, who nodded. He’d known, of course, but he appreciated that they’d tried to make a life with him, in his city that he’d built for a son and family. They hugged for the first time before Highfather opened the Boomtube to Earth.
“Love you,” he said in Barda’s ear, and she said a New Genesis word that meant love/marriage/family/togetherness.
They stepped through the portal hand in hand.