Thursday, December 29, 2011

Story Shuffles!

Sorry in advance if some of these aren't the greatest.


Disclaimer: I Did not create any of these characters, nor do I own them in any way. Scott Westerfeld does.
Jump then Fall- Taylor Swift
“Honestly, Mr. Hohenberg, it’s not as hard as you think. All you’ve got to do is jump.” Deryn watched from across the crevice with mild amusement at Alek, who simply refused to leap over the gap between the two roofs. It wasn’t that far, really, only a yard or two. Any airman could make the jump easily.
Of course, Alek wasn’t an airman.
“And what happens if I don’t make it across?” he eyed the empty space with a sort of suppressed terror, as if it were just waiting to swallow him whole.
“You’ll fall, I assume. Now hurry up! Sneaking out was your idea, after all.”
“Yes, but I figured we’d just climb down a trellis or something.”
“What fun would that be, you daft prince?” she tapped her foot impatiently, “We haven’t got all night! Back up and run at it if you have to!”
He took one last look behind him and went a few paces from the ledge. Deryn hadn’t realized he would make this skulking about business so hard. Life at the Zoological Society had been uneventful so far, and they needed an adventure. What better way to do that than climbing over the rooftops to spend a night on the town?
She readied herself to catch him as he took a running leap across. Deryn grabbed his shirtfront to keep him from tipping backwards, pulling him towards her. The two of them stumbled back, and he fell on top of her, his weight crushing the breath out of her in a choked laugh. “It seems I’ve fallen, Miss Sharp.”
***
Clocks- Coldplay
Where could that girl be? The clock on the wall had drifted five past the hour, then ten. Alek was beginning to lose hope. Fifteen.
He sighed as the door opened and Lilit stepped through, followed by Dylan.
“God’s wounds, that took long enough! What kept you?” he said in German.
“The printer stalled, and we had to fix it, Prince.” Lilit watched him with a cool distaste, as usual.
“Aye,” Dylan held up greasy hands, “Your Clanker contraptions aren’t so hard to figure out. I twisted a few wires and it’s as good new.”
Alek knew the boy was thinking about what fabricated creature could have done a better job. He saw how Lilit watched him with a fierce admiration, and her cheeks flushed a little every time Dylan talked to her. Did the boy realize the way Lilit felt?
If he didn’t now, it was only a matter of time.
***
Hey, Soul Sister- Train
Deryn could feel her heart beating wildly in her chest. Calm down, you ninny! she ordered herself, but it did no good whatsoever. She hadn’t seen her brother since she joined the airservice, and that had been over a year ago.
So she waited at the train station for him, Alek and Dr. Barlow waiting on a nearby bench and Deryn bouncing around almost as much as Tazza.
Finally--finally!--his train pulled in, and the hiss of steam filled the platform. She kept her eyes open against the sting, hoping for just a glimpse of him through the windows. The doors opened and people began pouring out, forcing Deryn to the side. Where was he? Her heart leapt as she saw a flash of blond hair, identical to hers, and she was pushing her way through the crowd to him.
“Oi! You!” she shouted at him. He turned and a giddy smile spread across his face; he was as happy to see her as she was him. She smothered him in a bear hug right there in the stream of people, tears welling unbidden in her eyes. Blinking them away, she pulled out of the hug. “Hey, bumrag.” she said jokingly.
“Hey, sis.”
***
Dead Man Walking- The Script
He was going to die. He accepted the fact. There was no way out of the situation.
The fire in her eyes had been the first sign that he’d stepped too far. God’s wounds, he was such a dummkopf. But it was so easy to forget sometimes!
“Take it back!” she said icily. In some ways it was worse than if she’d been yelling at him.
“I didn’t mean it, I swear! I just--” he swore in German. She had pulled her rigging knife out of her boot. “No, please, Deryn! I believe you!” he pulled at the ropes tying his arms together behind the chair.
The knife flew through the air, straight at his head.
Thwack!
“See? Told you I could,” every ounce of anger had disappeared from her face, replaced by smug triumph. Alek blinked. No searing pain, no blackness, nothing. He was alive!
Deryn untied the knots and hauled him to his feet. To his amazement, the knife had sunk centimeters deep into the wood of the wall, right above where his head had been. In the center of the target, the “o” in “York” from the paper, The New York World.
“I--” he was about to say he should be dead, but then he really would be, “seem to have learned my lesson.”
She yanked the blade from the wall. “And what lesson is that, your Princeliness?”
Alek sighed. “Mess with Deryn Sharp and your a dead man walking.”
***
If it Kills Me- Jason Mraz
He’d had enough. Seeing her as the avenging angel at the New Year’s Eve costume party had been the last straw.
With alcohol buzzing through his brain and the message lizard suit hiding his face, he found her. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her unceremoniously into the hallway.
“What is the meaning of this, Count?” she sputtered.
He pulled off his lizard head and looked her straight in the eye. “Dr. Nora Darwin Barlow, hear me out. I love you.” he said the words carefully, deliberately, but with the utmost passion and meaning.
The woman stepped back, appalled. “Excuse me?”
“I. Love. You. I don’t know how to make myself more clear, Nora. I love you!”
“Clearly you are drunk, Count. This is absurd.”
“Fortified,” he corrected her, “And there is no mistake in my words. I love you, and you love me too.”
“I have a husband!” she cried indignantly.
“But you still love me. I don’t care if you have a husband, Nora, nor do I care if he is the most fearsome man in all the world. Somehow, some way, I will find a way to you, or die trying. I promise, even if it kills me.”
***
For the First Time- The Script
The bed creaked under their combined weight. Deryn supposed it should feel awkward, being on a bed with Alek now that they were--oh, how to phrase it--seeing each other, but it didn’t. Something about it just felt so barking right.
He laughed at something she said and cracked open the bottle of wine they’d borrowed from the boffin’s kitchen. He took a swig and passed it to her, and Deryn took a long draft.
“God’s wounds, woman! This has got to last us a while!” he snorted and pulled it back from her. She fixed him with a challenging look and he shook his head, but drank some more anyway.
The night passed in a blur, the candle on the nightstand burning itself down to a squick. They talked, mostly, and before they knew it the first rays of light were peeking at them through the window. Had they really been there so long?
Suddenly she felt the burn of tears in her eyes, but a smile spread across her face. So this was love. She, Deryn Artemis Sharp, was in love for the first--and oh, God, how she hoped the last--time.
***
Safe and Sound- Taylor Swift (Attempt 1)
The fire was everywhere. It crawled up her arms, leaping to everything around her.
No! No, please! Not again...” she pleaded with it, but it didn’t listen to her, just continued to eat away at all that she had left. “I thought I’d escaped you!” she cried, wishing the fires would just go away. They followed her everywhere, even here into her new life with Alek.
Oh no. “Alek!” she screamed, but he was already gone, the flames had taken him away, leaving her alone like they always did.
“Deryn? Deryn, wake up!”
There were tears streaming down her face, and she reached for him blindly, craving his solidness, the reality that he was still there, still alive. “Don’t leave me alone, don’t ever leave me, please.”
“It’s alright, Deryn. I’m here. It was just a nightmare. You’ll be okay. Just close your eyes, Deryn. I won’t let you go.”
“Don’t ever leave me alone.”
“I won’t. We’ll be together, safe and sound.”
***
Bad Day- Daniel Powter
Newkirk kicked at the leaves, scattering them in a flurry of brown.
“What’s got you in a rut, Mr. Newkirk?” Dylan came up behind him, somehow knowing he was in a rotten mood.
“I’ve had a barking awful bad day, Mr. Sharp. A bad week. Nothing is going right--”
“And that won’t fix itself all on it’s own.” The boy fixed him with a hard look. “You need to do it yourself. When you have a problem there’s no way to get it solved except to barking do something about it. Come on, Mr. Newkirk, I don’t need your carrying on about it, so let’s go have some fun instead. A dead good time, we’ll have, and you’re going to like it.”
“That sounds like a threat to me.”
“Consider it a promise. Now hurry, before all the good shops close for the night!”
***
Safe and Sound- Taylor Swift (Attempt 2)
The ground was shaking. At first they had been small tremors, but they had grown larger steadily. Alek could feel it on his bare feet as he rushed to Deryn’s room. Another blast came, and the chandelier in the dining room clanged against itself. He pushed her door open and rushed to the bed, finding her shaking worse than the floor. She looked at him, face pale and tears gleaming on her cheeks, and he gathered her into his arms. “Come with me, Deryn, we’ve got to get to the basement.”
This wasn’t the first they’d heard of the bombings, but never before had they been this close. Dr. Barlow had warned them before she left on a mission that the Clankers would be targeting London soon, but Alek hadn’t thought it would be this soon.
Don’t you dare look out your window, darling, Alek pleaded with the girl silently, everything’s on fire. It was the one thing that terrified Deryn Sharp.
They scurried down the hall and under the trembling chandelier to the basement stairs. He led her to a corner and their they huddled, watching the dust fall from the ceiling with each new bomb. Alek tried to look brave as he brushed away the tears streaming down her face.
Her wide blue eyes met his as the ground shook more violently. “Don’t leave me here alone.”
“I’ll never let you go,” he assured her. “Just close your eyes. The sun is going down.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. Alek leaned his head onto hers, kissing her hair.
“You’ll be alright,” he breathed. “No one can hurt you now. Come morning light, you and I’ll be safe and sound.”
***
Science & Faith- The Script
The daft prince just couldn’t get it through his barking head. He kept prattling off blether about providence and destiny, and it was giving Deryn a headache.
They were in the middle of one of their long debates of science versus faith sitting atop a large tree and watching the stars. As usual, the two were stalemated, until--
“You can’t find faith or hope looking down a telescope,” he glanced at her, daring her to argue.
“But you can--”
Alek pointed to the sky. “You won’t find heart or soul in the stars.”
She shoved his shoulder playfully, and caught his collar as he began to fall back, pulling him upright toward her.
“You can break everything down to life strands or chemicals,” he said breathlessly.
She laughed, shaking her head, and finished for him, “But you can’t explain a love like ours,” and leaned in and kissed him.

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