Dreaming through the noise.

Collection: The Other Side of the Mirror
Title: "On the Sea"
Characters/Pairing: Alice, Tarrant
Songs: Crazy For You and Ray of Light – Madonna
Notes: Music Meme drabbles. These two came out linked.







She’s come to know well the early hours of morning. Those dark hours where it seems you are the only person left in the world. On the sea. Hours that make you feel small, as if you’ve drank much too much Pishsalver.

Sleep has had trouble finding her, since her return from Underland nearly a year ago. She blames it on her never-still location, the incessant rocking of the ship that drives her from her bed to sit before the mirror affixed to her cabin wall, staring into it as if it might hold the answer to her sleepless nights.

And perhaps, she thinks, blinking as she watches the image unfold before her, the Hatter’s hands moving deftly over a bolt of blue silk—thimbled fingers carefully marking, measuring, cutting and stitching—it does.





They are not two evenings from the last port when the storm hits them.

She has never seen a storm such as this. It eclipses the moon, disappears the stars, makes the world go black.

The last thing she hears before the waves cover her head is a thundering crash, the unmistakable pistol-crack of breaking wood and the captain’s voice shouting over the din.

When she surfaces, the sea has swallowed everyone. And she is alone, floating on the back of what was once the captain’s cabin door, the rain beating down on her head, stinging her eyes. But that doesn’t matter, because she can’t see anyway.

All around her is dark. Dark swells. Dark clouds. Not even a flash of lightning to brighten the way.

Her fingers, chilled to the bone, lose their grip on the cabin door and she slips beneath the waves. The dark grows deeper. Her head feels strange, too big and too small all at once.

She opens her eyes; they blur and sting with the brine. But! There is something there. Just in front of her. A smear of a glow, like flame behind oily glass. And it’s coming closer.

She reaches out; her fingers brush smooth glass, find a wooden frame of worked roses and vines. The mirror from her cabin.

What fortune that she should just so happen to find it here in the depths of all things dark and ending. And she hopes it is not merely her mind playing tricks on her when her arm slips through the glass, up to her elbow, and warm fingers tangle around her own, gripping…grasping…tugging.

Title: Eventualities
Song: “Ring of Fire” – Dear Park Avenue (covering Social Distortion)
Characters/Pairing: Michael, T-Bag
Genre: General
Notes: Another drabble created with the music meme.


He was used to people looking at him, even before he got the tattoo. Used to quick, furtive side-eye glances—that most men wouldn’t catch—from women, the head turns and full body look-overs from men. The appraisal. The consideration. The lust.

Lincoln had always used to tease him about being “pretty as a girl.” (At 15, that was what first prompted him to shave his head. But the absence of glossy curls only seemed to draw people’s attention to his eyes, his lips…and he’d had more than one encounter with women—and men—wanting to touch the fine stubble on his scalp.)

( In his last months of freedom, he'd been drowning in a sea of black-ink blue prints... )

Title: In the Light of Morning
Song: "Love Remains the Same" - Gavin Rossdale
Characters/Pairing: Lincoln/Veronica
Genre: Pre-series, Gen, Drabble
Author's Notes: Crafted using the music meme.


Half the time the world is ending
Truth is I am done pretending
Too much time, too long defending
You and I are done pretending



Lincoln liked to wake up early whenever she slept over.

It gave him a chance to watch her before she woke, to see her—what was the saying? “warts and all?”—without her noticing his stare and changing her behavior as she often did, so subtly altering the way she sat, took a sip of coffee, bit into a pancake.

Here, she just was.

One hand on her chest, the other flung over her head; fine shadow of dark hair along her underarm where she hadn’t shaved; mouth parted slightly, letting out a soft snore—that she would vehemently deny when she woke up.

And the sunlight came through the broken blinds, the gap in the curtain, and lit up all of the little distinctive features of her face—what she would call imperfections—the soft lines under her eyes; the freckle just under her chin; the pale, downy hair along her jaw line; the ghost of a scar on her lower lip.

He had them all memorized.

He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

“Desolation Row” – Bob Dylan





He’s in a nondescript hotel room, in a nondescript town, and the blood of a nondescript prostitute—Mary, she’d said, my name is Mary, and he’d had to hold back a laugh—is drying on the threadbare rug.

He washes his hands in the dingy bathroom sink. On the vanity, a silver ring catches his eye. He picks it up, turns it between his fingers, holds it in his palm. Then he’s not in the room anymore.

It’s yesterday. He’s on the street a few blocks from here. He sees the man—lanky, unremarkable, wearing crumpled business clothes—who’d given Mary the ring.

The ring had belonged to the man’s wife; she’ run off, taken the kids, left the ring.

It was more than enough payment for what he’d wanted from Mary. What he wanted to do to her. He’d put her on her knees. Called her by his wife’s name. Slapped her. Then bent her over the mean wooden dresser and fucked her, unprotected, until she bit her lip—breaking the skin—and begged him to stop.

Sylar shudders, blinks his eyes open and is greeted with his own reflection in a filthy mirror. He cracks the vertebrae in his neck to release the tension that had taken him with the sudden onset of the vision. This new ability would take a little getting used to.

He steps out of the bathroom, looks once at the half-clothed form on the bed. The pillow, where the ruin of her head lays, is soaked in blood. But Mary looks…at peace.

He drapes her discarded shirt over her—covering her naked torso and the hand-shaped bruises where yesterday’s John had gripped her around her waist—before flicking off the light and shutting the door behind him as he walks out into the night.



The Meme:

Choose a subject and put your entire music collection on shuffle, hit play, and write. Write for as long as each song plays and move on to a different writing when the song switches (even if it's mid-sentence). Go for 5-10 songs.