Entry tags:
Find the Word meme (WIP excerpts)
I was tagged by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
black_bentley for this meme on Tumblr. (There's supposed to be a passing-it-along part that I'm not doing this time because that's the part that always gets me stuck on doing memes.) However, since I have a ton of WIPs right now, this is a nice opportunity to give the Biggles fandom a look at what I'm working on. All picked from the Biggles folder; I figured I'd branch out to my other 10,000 WIPs if I couldn't find all the words there, but I didn't need to.
Posted on Tumblr here.
Rules: Share snippets of your work containing each of the words the previous poster selected for you (optional addition: if you can't find the words in your WIPs, or you simply don't have any WIPs, you can just write a sentence around the word).
BB: The words I'm passing on are quick, leg, blink and wait!
1. Quick
This is the first few paragraphs of a fic I originally started writing for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fan_flashworks's "Guest" prompt last year and then wandered away from at the point where I had to figure out the actual plot.
It was absolutely inevitable, and yet when Algy opened the door and found Erich von Stalhein on the doorstep, he said, "Oh no," more or less automatically.
There was a quick tug of something like a smile on the normally implacable face, and von Stalhein said, "Greetings. May I come in? It's raining out here."
"Yes, fine, if you must." Algy noted that he was wearing a slightly threadbare greatcoat that looked as if it had seen service in the last war, only to be meticulously patched back together, and he was using a fold of it to protect the paper-wrapped parcel under his arm. For this reason mainly, Algy stepped back and allowed him in without putting up more than token resistance.
From the sitting room, Biggles called, "Erich? Is that you? Come save me, they're forcing me to endure a party in here."
The look that crossed von Stalhein's stern face as he took his coat off was something that Algy almost wished he hadn't seen, a quick flicker of softness and humour entirely at odds with the rest of his cold aspect. "I can't save you, I've come to join them."
2. Leg
This is a Sakhalin escape AU in which EvS doesn't show up in the chain gang on the day of the escape, so under the cover and confusion of the fire and related events, Biggles and Fritz have to figure out a way to break into the prison and look for him. I figured this fandom needs a good old fashioned prison break AU.
Following Biggles's instructions, Fritz climbed on [the horse] using a block of wood to mount. Biggles instructed him briefly in the use of the reins. The horse was well trained and calm, startling only a little, which would help.
"Hold this rope. You can take me in as an escaped fugitive. They won't know there's anything wrong until they count up the chain gang and realize they have an extra man."
"And then what?" Fritz asked, pale with tension. He took the rope end with a hand that shook slightly.
"By then we will hopefully have found your uncle and we will be ready to leave." Biggles clasped his hands together with the end of the rope tucked inside, so it was not evident they weren't actually bound but instead had the rope looped around his wrists. He looked up at Fritz. "You understand the danger we face."
"As well as you do," Fritz said. He took a deep breath and gently tugged on one of the horse's reins as instructed, turning its head toward the half-open door of the mill.
Biggles nudged Fritz's leg and gestured toward the riding crop fastened to the saddle. "Carry that. If they try to argue with you, I shall make some sort of trouble and you can strike me with it. That will be distracting, at least."
3. Wait!
It took me a while, but I found a proper one with the exclamation point because I guess I had to make a scavenger hunt out of it. This is from the original version of the fic Rear Guard Action, in which EvS collapses during the escape from Sakhalin. I only kept the first section, and then it changes where Biggles stays behind with him in the published-on-AO3 version. Originally EvS stayed unconscious until they got him back to the Otter, so it was mostly from Algy's POV at that point.
Algy dropped the blankets on the floor, and then knelt beside von Stalhein and, businesslike, began to strip off the wet rags; by this point the cold, sodden prison suit was doing more harm than help. The fabric was so rotten that it came apart in his hands. Beneath it—
Algy swore again.
He had not wanted to feel pity for his enemy. He very definitely had not wanted to see him like this, ribs standing out beneath the clotted cuts of what Algy knew immediately were recent whip marks. There were others crisscrossing under those, partly healed, and colorful bruises that might be old or new; with the bad treatment it was unlikely that von Stalhein would heal quickly or well.
The soft bump of the boat against the hull, a twin to the earlier sound of Ginger's arrival, drew him with great relief from this task. Algy laid a blanket across von Stalhein and went to open the cabin door.
"Fritz," he said with relief, clasping the boy's hand and helping him in. "Ginger, let's trade. I'll take the boat, you come in and get warm."
Ginger shook his head stubbornly, blinking snow off his lashes. His hair was frosted white. "No, you stay dry, one of us shouldn't be soaked at least. Your coat is doing well enough for me. I'll fetch another of the men and then take you up on that, all right?"
"All right," Algy said reluctantly. "Wait!" He pulled down the damp coats and threw them into the bottom of the boat. "Take those back for the others."
Ginger gave him the familiar cheeky, boyish grin and paddled off into the growing dark. Algy shut the door and turned to Fritz, who had gone straight to his uncle and was bending anxiously over him.
"Go ahead and get him out of the rest of those wet things and wrapped up," Algy told him, relieved to put the task off on someone who wouldn't mind. His chest still felt hollow with unwanted pity. "I'll make us something hot."
4. Blink
Technically I COULD have used the above excerpt which also has "blink" in it, but I picked another one. This is another alternate version of a published fic, this time for Any Landing You Walk Away From, the one in which EvS is electrocuted on the fence. In the original version, Biggles (who has been shot) had to fly a plane while trying not to pass out. (I ended up having them rescued by Algy & co. instead.) I still want to repurpose that entire sequence for something else, because it was a lot of fun to write.
Biggles blinked sweat out of his eyes. He felt cold and dizzy. This was going to have to be a short flight, he thought. Fortunately they were not in a hostile country, just a temporarily hostile corner of it. Any field or suitably long and straight road would do. He just had to find one.
He heard von Stalhein say his name. In the glow of the dash controls, Biggles saw von Stalhein move jerkily and push down Biggles's flight jacket so he could lean forward to shake at his arm. "You're flying erratically," he said. "Are you trying to evade something?"
"Only my own poor decisions," Biggles said with what was trying to be a smile, but from the look on von Stalhein's pale face, he decided it hadn't worked as he'd hoped. "I need to find a place to set down this bird. Do you think you can help me find one?"
"In that?" von Stalhein asked, looking down.
They were flying above the cloud ceiling, cotton-soft in the moonlight. From what Biggles recalled, it would stretch for miles. They had to get beyond it, or go down through it.
--
Thank you toblack_bentley for tagging me!
black_bentley for this meme on Tumblr. (There's supposed to be a passing-it-along part that I'm not doing this time because that's the part that always gets me stuck on doing memes.) However, since I have a ton of WIPs right now, this is a nice opportunity to give the Biggles fandom a look at what I'm working on. All picked from the Biggles folder; I figured I'd branch out to my other 10,000 WIPs if I couldn't find all the words there, but I didn't need to.Posted on Tumblr here.
Rules: Share snippets of your work containing each of the words the previous poster selected for you (optional addition: if you can't find the words in your WIPs, or you simply don't have any WIPs, you can just write a sentence around the word).
BB: The words I'm passing on are quick, leg, blink and wait!
1. Quick
This is the first few paragraphs of a fic I originally started writing for
fan_flashworks's "Guest" prompt last year and then wandered away from at the point where I had to figure out the actual plot.It was absolutely inevitable, and yet when Algy opened the door and found Erich von Stalhein on the doorstep, he said, "Oh no," more or less automatically.
There was a quick tug of something like a smile on the normally implacable face, and von Stalhein said, "Greetings. May I come in? It's raining out here."
"Yes, fine, if you must." Algy noted that he was wearing a slightly threadbare greatcoat that looked as if it had seen service in the last war, only to be meticulously patched back together, and he was using a fold of it to protect the paper-wrapped parcel under his arm. For this reason mainly, Algy stepped back and allowed him in without putting up more than token resistance.
From the sitting room, Biggles called, "Erich? Is that you? Come save me, they're forcing me to endure a party in here."
The look that crossed von Stalhein's stern face as he took his coat off was something that Algy almost wished he hadn't seen, a quick flicker of softness and humour entirely at odds with the rest of his cold aspect. "I can't save you, I've come to join them."
2. Leg
This is a Sakhalin escape AU in which EvS doesn't show up in the chain gang on the day of the escape, so under the cover and confusion of the fire and related events, Biggles and Fritz have to figure out a way to break into the prison and look for him. I figured this fandom needs a good old fashioned prison break AU.
Following Biggles's instructions, Fritz climbed on [the horse] using a block of wood to mount. Biggles instructed him briefly in the use of the reins. The horse was well trained and calm, startling only a little, which would help.
"Hold this rope. You can take me in as an escaped fugitive. They won't know there's anything wrong until they count up the chain gang and realize they have an extra man."
"And then what?" Fritz asked, pale with tension. He took the rope end with a hand that shook slightly.
"By then we will hopefully have found your uncle and we will be ready to leave." Biggles clasped his hands together with the end of the rope tucked inside, so it was not evident they weren't actually bound but instead had the rope looped around his wrists. He looked up at Fritz. "You understand the danger we face."
"As well as you do," Fritz said. He took a deep breath and gently tugged on one of the horse's reins as instructed, turning its head toward the half-open door of the mill.
Biggles nudged Fritz's leg and gestured toward the riding crop fastened to the saddle. "Carry that. If they try to argue with you, I shall make some sort of trouble and you can strike me with it. That will be distracting, at least."
3. Wait!
It took me a while, but I found a proper one with the exclamation point because I guess I had to make a scavenger hunt out of it. This is from the original version of the fic Rear Guard Action, in which EvS collapses during the escape from Sakhalin. I only kept the first section, and then it changes where Biggles stays behind with him in the published-on-AO3 version. Originally EvS stayed unconscious until they got him back to the Otter, so it was mostly from Algy's POV at that point.
Algy dropped the blankets on the floor, and then knelt beside von Stalhein and, businesslike, began to strip off the wet rags; by this point the cold, sodden prison suit was doing more harm than help. The fabric was so rotten that it came apart in his hands. Beneath it—
Algy swore again.
He had not wanted to feel pity for his enemy. He very definitely had not wanted to see him like this, ribs standing out beneath the clotted cuts of what Algy knew immediately were recent whip marks. There were others crisscrossing under those, partly healed, and colorful bruises that might be old or new; with the bad treatment it was unlikely that von Stalhein would heal quickly or well.
The soft bump of the boat against the hull, a twin to the earlier sound of Ginger's arrival, drew him with great relief from this task. Algy laid a blanket across von Stalhein and went to open the cabin door.
"Fritz," he said with relief, clasping the boy's hand and helping him in. "Ginger, let's trade. I'll take the boat, you come in and get warm."
Ginger shook his head stubbornly, blinking snow off his lashes. His hair was frosted white. "No, you stay dry, one of us shouldn't be soaked at least. Your coat is doing well enough for me. I'll fetch another of the men and then take you up on that, all right?"
"All right," Algy said reluctantly. "Wait!" He pulled down the damp coats and threw them into the bottom of the boat. "Take those back for the others."
Ginger gave him the familiar cheeky, boyish grin and paddled off into the growing dark. Algy shut the door and turned to Fritz, who had gone straight to his uncle and was bending anxiously over him.
"Go ahead and get him out of the rest of those wet things and wrapped up," Algy told him, relieved to put the task off on someone who wouldn't mind. His chest still felt hollow with unwanted pity. "I'll make us something hot."
4. Blink
Technically I COULD have used the above excerpt which also has "blink" in it, but I picked another one. This is another alternate version of a published fic, this time for Any Landing You Walk Away From, the one in which EvS is electrocuted on the fence. In the original version, Biggles (who has been shot) had to fly a plane while trying not to pass out. (I ended up having them rescued by Algy & co. instead.) I still want to repurpose that entire sequence for something else, because it was a lot of fun to write.
Biggles blinked sweat out of his eyes. He felt cold and dizzy. This was going to have to be a short flight, he thought. Fortunately they were not in a hostile country, just a temporarily hostile corner of it. Any field or suitably long and straight road would do. He just had to find one.
He heard von Stalhein say his name. In the glow of the dash controls, Biggles saw von Stalhein move jerkily and push down Biggles's flight jacket so he could lean forward to shake at his arm. "You're flying erratically," he said. "Are you trying to evade something?"
"Only my own poor decisions," Biggles said with what was trying to be a smile, but from the look on von Stalhein's pale face, he decided it hadn't worked as he'd hoped. "I need to find a place to set down this bird. Do you think you can help me find one?"
"In that?" von Stalhein asked, looking down.
They were flying above the cloud ceiling, cotton-soft in the moonlight. From what Biggles recalled, it would stretch for miles. They had to get beyond it, or go down through it.
--
Thank you to
black_bentley for tagging me!
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Practically all of these make me go, "Aww, poor Algy!" Especially the third one. 😢
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