Fic Meme

[joiedecombat]

Stolen from infinitepryde:

Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.

Since I usually write shortfic which doesn't especially lend itself to this sort of thing, I will expand "story" to include RP and canon. Have at.

Comments

2/2

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

He couldn’t take this any more. Shrugging off his sister’s arm, he scrambled up onto his feet and started around the desk toward the door.

“What are you doing?” Ellone rose up to call out to him anxiously across the desktop. “Uncle Laguna said to stay here.”

“It’s okay,” he told her; “I just wanna see what’s going--”

The office door blew in with a force that knocked Squall off his feet, throwing him back against the solid bulk of the desk hard enough to force the air right out of him. Wreathed in wisps of smoke and steam, a tall blond guy in a long white coat loomed in the shattered doorway, boots crunching on the splinters that littered the floor.

Squall’s first dazed, stupid thought was that the guy couldn’t have been much older than he was.

“Squall!” Ellone cried out, her voice shrill will panic. The blond guy smiled nastily and hefted a bloodied gunblade up against his shoulder, scattering drops of red against the white coat.

”Take care of your sister,” his father had told him.

Squall raised his pistol and fired and fired and fired and fired.

It was that easy. More splashes of blood bloomed on the long white coat; he swayed, looking down at himself with an expression of foolish disbelief, and almost in slow motion dropped, first to his knees, then crumpling to the floor. He really couldn’t have been that much older than Squall; Squall found himself watching the uneven rise and fall of his back in time with a wet, soft rattle of indrawn breath, once, and once more, and then nothing.

He’d just killed a guy, Squall thought numbly. He could hear Ellone from behind the desk - was she crying? - but he couldn’t quite remember how to move.

“Useless,” said the dispassionate voice of the sorceress, and then she was stepping over the dead body, dragging her long black skirt through the pool of blood that was spreading over the floor, and Squall remembered how to move after all but it didn’t matter anyhow. He’d only half managed to lunge up onto his feet before she made a contemptuous gesture with a clawed black hand; there was a flash of cold bluish light and he fell hard back against the desk again with the wind knocked out of him.

It felt like there was a spike of ice driven through his shoulder, and it took Squall a confused moment to realize that was because there was a spike of ice driven through his shoulder, pinning him to his father’s desk like a bug in an insect collection.

Ellone’s scream went on forever.