1602 and Alias not-quite-drabbles
Nov. 26th, 2004 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI hope everyone American on my list had a nice Thanksgiving - ours is in October, so no holiday here. The muse talked to me, and I wrote two more loosely holiday-related not-quite-drabbles (am forbidden to use the term by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ide_cyan). Firstly, more Elizabethan mutants:
There was some talk that the King’s grandmother, Juana La Lorca, had been witchbreed. That this had been the true reason why her father and her son had shut her away from human company. She had not been mad, people whispered, not at first, not until even her youngest daughter, her last companion, had been taken away from her. But she had been marked as the devil’s child, she who was the daughter of the most blessed Isabel and in the end her only heir. It was not to be born.
“If the Lady Juana was witchbreed” said young Carlos Javier to his companion, “the King might be inclined to change the laws. He even might petition the Holy Father on our behalf. After all, he must fear that he, too, could be one of us. Or his children.”
“Do not pretend to be a numbskull, Carlos,” replied the Venetian who only recently had altered his name to accomodate the Castilian tongue. “It does not suit you.”
“But who can watch his brothers and sisters burn, and not feel the flames licking his own flesh?”
His companion’s smile was as sharp and thin as a blade, and without any joy. “Are we not all brothers and sisters in Christ, Carlos? At least that was what I was taught.”
***
On to some first generation spy folk:
Inevitably, someone somewhere at the office mentioned that more people committed suicide during the Christmas holidays than at any other time of the year. There was the usual mixture of depressed sighs and nervous laughter, but for some reason, Arvin Sloane, who had been on his way out, stopped and drew Jack aside.
“You know you could visit us, Jack,” he said. “You and Sydney both. Emily would be glad.”
As in most conversations with Arvin these days, Jacks found the replies he wasn’t able to give of more interest than anything he actually could say. The silences between him and his daughter on anything resembling a family holiday were growing longer every year, but this was still preferable to allowing her anywhere near someone like Sloane before she was ready. On another level, he felt vaguely insulted by the implication of Arvin making the offer just now. What had been breakable in him had been erased years ago, and the memory of the woman who had never been Laura was far too perverse to keep to some kind of calendar. A third part in him wondered whether this was about Christmas at all. Ever since joining SD-6, he lived with the knowledge that Arvin could discover what he was really doing at any given moment.
It would be like Arvin Sloane to deal with such a discovery in the disguise of friendly invitation.
“I know,” Jack said, and was aware that Arvin correctly interpreted this as a refusal, when basically everyone else would have felt the necessity to ask. Because they could read each other that well.
“Invitations don’t expire with the holidays, Jack,” Arvin replied, and maybe he even meant it.
That was the most disturbing possibility of all.
***
ide_cyan). Firstly, more Elizabethan mutants: There was some talk that the King’s grandmother, Juana La Lorca, had been witchbreed. That this had been the true reason why her father and her son had shut her away from human company. She had not been mad, people whispered, not at first, not until even her youngest daughter, her last companion, had been taken away from her. But she had been marked as the devil’s child, she who was the daughter of the most blessed Isabel and in the end her only heir. It was not to be born.
“If the Lady Juana was witchbreed” said young Carlos Javier to his companion, “the King might be inclined to change the laws. He even might petition the Holy Father on our behalf. After all, he must fear that he, too, could be one of us. Or his children.”
“Do not pretend to be a numbskull, Carlos,” replied the Venetian who only recently had altered his name to accomodate the Castilian tongue. “It does not suit you.”
“But who can watch his brothers and sisters burn, and not feel the flames licking his own flesh?”
His companion’s smile was as sharp and thin as a blade, and without any joy. “Are we not all brothers and sisters in Christ, Carlos? At least that was what I was taught.”
***
On to some first generation spy folk:
Inevitably, someone somewhere at the office mentioned that more people committed suicide during the Christmas holidays than at any other time of the year. There was the usual mixture of depressed sighs and nervous laughter, but for some reason, Arvin Sloane, who had been on his way out, stopped and drew Jack aside.
“You know you could visit us, Jack,” he said. “You and Sydney both. Emily would be glad.”
As in most conversations with Arvin these days, Jacks found the replies he wasn’t able to give of more interest than anything he actually could say. The silences between him and his daughter on anything resembling a family holiday were growing longer every year, but this was still preferable to allowing her anywhere near someone like Sloane before she was ready. On another level, he felt vaguely insulted by the implication of Arvin making the offer just now. What had been breakable in him had been erased years ago, and the memory of the woman who had never been Laura was far too perverse to keep to some kind of calendar. A third part in him wondered whether this was about Christmas at all. Ever since joining SD-6, he lived with the knowledge that Arvin could discover what he was really doing at any given moment.
It would be like Arvin Sloane to deal with such a discovery in the disguise of friendly invitation.
“I know,” Jack said, and was aware that Arvin correctly interpreted this as a refusal, when basically everyone else would have felt the necessity to ask. Because they could read each other that well.
“Invitations don’t expire with the holidays, Jack,” Arvin replied, and maybe he even meant it.
That was the most disturbing possibility of all.
***
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-25 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 01:09 am (UTC)http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2135689/1/
And thanks!
I have the Jack Bristow love
Date: 2004-11-25 11:31 pm (UTC)oh, by the way, got "Brief Encounter" on your rec and loved it; such a gorgeous film -- and how romantic are train stations?
OK, when people in Europe are up and I haven't gone to bed yet, it's time for me to log off.
Thanks
Date: 2004-11-26 01:13 am (UTC)Alias: not Jossian good, but watchable, with some great characters.
Re: Thanks
Date: 2004-11-27 06:28 am (UTC)a thought that did not fail to cross my mind. I was imagining him trying to get early-days Angel & Cordelia to watch it. Cordy would be like WTF?? Angel would dig it too though he wouldn't say anything -- at first. And in other news? My first-ever Angel/Wesley slash just wrote itself.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 12:31 am (UTC)Thanks for your thoughtfulness. You can still use it if they're 100 word-long stories, remember. :-) You can always use it then.
Was just watching Ron Rifkin on TV, and my knowledge of Alias being somewhat better than my knowledge of 1602, I can appreciate the second piece more. Big evil softies, eh?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 01:11 am (UTC)And one of these days I shall actually manage to keep the 100-word-limit...
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 02:22 am (UTC)drabbleficlet very much. Ouch.no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 05:16 am (UTC)Queen Juana as witchbreed? Hummm. Interesting possibilities....
*ponders*
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 05:39 am (UTC)I thought so.*g* Seriously, you can make a good case that since both her father's and her son's right to Castile derived solely through their guardianship/inheritance over and from Juana, it was in their best interest to declare she was mad. At the very least, Charles V. deliberately tried to push her over the edge before her meeting with the Cortez when they insisted on seeing her by abducting his youngest sister who lived with her. But I like the witchbreed idea. You can even fit it with the son of Philipp II., Don Carlos, who was declared to be mad as well and spent his not very long life locked up.
And of course, in the 1602 universe, Anne Boleyn would have been witchbreed (sixth finger!), and Elizabeth inherited enough to enable her to dream those dreams shown in the second chapter.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 01:57 pm (UTC)And of course, in the 1602 universe, Anne Boleyn would have been witchbreed (sixth finger!)
Yes! The finger is a good sign, but not a "power"; I wonder what she could do!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 03:06 pm (UTC)Hah, Anne Boleyn as Destiny or Storm. One of these needs to be written. By you. Yes.
But what about Elizabeth's confusion about the source of the strange weather at the beginning of the series? If her mother had been able to control weather, mighn't she have suspected a mutant with similar powers as the source and called for Javier instead of Strange?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 10:06 pm (UTC)Actually, Elizabeth's feelings about her mother are impossibe to guess which makes them very intriguing indeed. There are only two or three recorded examples of her mentioning Anne, but she favoured all her Boleyn relations, and the exhibition in Greenwich last year showed that her coronation ring, which she wore all her life, contained a secret miniature portrait of Anne Boleyn. (Who gave it to her, one wonders.) Growing up knowing all your life that your father killed your mother and accused her of witchery and incest must have been bizarre, and that's just the normal-'verse version.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 04:13 am (UTC)Hummmm.
Don't get me started on wondering about it! I'm up to my eyebrows in the Aegean Dark Ages!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 10:43 am (UTC)Good point. But I like the idea that her indulgence toward Javier's school was related to her mother's witchbreed status. Historical Elizabeth was fairly violent in surpressing Catholics, yeah? So why would she tolerate the witchbreed unless she had some reason? (Of course, if she herself had Armada-defeating weather powers . . .)
But maybe she was told about her mother. By the person who gave her the ring?
By the way, I think Destiny!Anne could still be argued. She might have had reasons for publicly predicting her child would be a boy, even if she knew the truth. Things were already bad between Anne and Henry before Elizabeth's birth. If we're assuming that her ultimate execution was due to her husband learning that Anne was witchbreed, and her power was prophesy, maybe she was trying to throw him off. Does ever Destiny make false predictions?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 03:14 pm (UTC)The witchbreed, much like the Jews (illegal in England since Edward II officially, but in actualty Elizabeth accepted quite a lot of them from Spain and Portugal), would not have been under any obligation to support one of her rivals or to kill her, on the contrary, they would have been useful.
All this being said, I do like that she accepted Javier & Co. partly because of her mother. As for how she would have learned about Anne having been witchbreed, and how she got the ring - my idea would be via Kat Ashley or Blanche Parry, both of whom had remote connections to Dr. John Dee, aka the most famous of Elizabethan magicians, if I'm not mistaken.
No idea about Destiny making a deliberate false prediction, but as a survival tactic, anything is possible. Also, Anne might correctly have seen that her child would be ruling England one day. (Hey, if it's good enough for Maxwell Anderson to allow her in Anne of the Thousand Days...)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-07 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-07 03:18 am (UTC)When Elizabeth was nearly three, relations between Henry and her mother Anne had, shall we say, degrated to the point where Henry had Anne executed. Doing nothing in halves, he declared his marriage to her void first as well. And then married Jane Seymour. Skipping over the rest of Henry's marriages, let's just say that Elizabeth's status always varied between bastard and legitimate heir depending on whom Henry was currently married to. And then on who was on the throne after him. She was a legitimate heir under her brother Edward, and a bastard again when her older sister Mary, the daughter of Katherine of Aragon, was on the throne. And that was just in England.
As for the rest of Europe: the Catholic countries had it simple. For them, Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragorn had never been dissolved by the Pope, therefore Elizabeth was illegitimate. The Protestant countries saw her as legitimate, mostly, from the moment she ascended the throne.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 04:11 am (UTC)The problem with having Destiny's gift is that surely she would know that Elizabeth wasn't a boy, and wouldn't have proclaimed that she was having a son.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-27 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-30 07:27 am (UTC)very good; sheds quite a bit of light on the early, tentative yet strong connection between them-- understanding independent from alliegances although the first is a foundation for the latter.
These final lines are just excellent. So true.