through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered . . .

So, every once in a great while, I will issue a request for fic challenges.

(This is not one of those posts.)

And then I will say, "And eventually I'll gather them all into one post!"

. . . a year later almost to the day counts as "eventually," right? Because last October, I asked for challenges for kiss fics. And have spent the intervening year reminding myself periodically to make that master post, and then not doing it, because I never get to every request and I hate being like, "Yeah, sorry about that."

. . . hey, at least by now some of you are new and haven't seen these yet?

( from sotto_voice: Shaun of the Dead - David and Dianne, theater production )

( from karaokegal: Torchwood, Jack and Owen, on the beach. )

( From ashen_key: Torchwood/The Fix - Jack Harkness and Cal Chandler, hall of mirrors )

( from joanne_c: Doctor Who, Nine and Jack - somewhere unexpected )

Yeah, I can totally see why I procrastinated on doing THAT for a year.

Next up: Crossover challenges from last April!

OMG. You guys. YOU GUYS. The Owen in the recent past 'verse. I THINK I FINISHED IT. I figured out where to end it (!!!!!), so then I wrote it. And now it's done.

So, uh. HERE IT IS.



TITLE: "Second Look"
AUTHOR: Cathryn (catslash)
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Owen, Ianto; Ianto/Lisa, past Owen/Katie
RATING: PG-13 for language. Genfic.
WORD COUNT: Approximately 6000.
SUMMARY: Sometimes, you get a chance to see the past through a different pair of eyes: your own. Set between "From Out of the Rain" and "Adrift," and during/after "Cyberwoman."
NOTES: Thanks to gileonnen, who first inspired the idea during some random conversation; to nightanddaze, for looking over the finished result to make sure it made sense; and to those two again and other folks on the flist for staying interested and thus helping to keep me interested. This fic has been a nightmare to complete (over a year from start to finish! It even got a tag of its own on my journal, the name of which I got from supervillainess, so thanks to her, too) and I never could have gotten it done without you guys.
NOTES PART THE SECOND: Take the timeline here with a grain of salt. Since the Whoniverse timeline is so notoriously fuzzy, and I needed solid dates, I ended up just pulling a timeframe out of thin air and hoping that it would make sense.
SPOILERS: Up through 2x12, "Fragments."
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood was created by Russell T Davies and belongs to the BBC. I take no credit and make no money.



( Owen always sort of thought that something like this might happen to one of them eventually. He just thought it would be more - dramatic. )

So! Way the hell back in July, when I was innocently seeking distraction from the agonizing wait for the Doctor Who finale and blissfully unaware that said agonizing wait would be the best part of the entire episode (oh yeah, I'm still mad), I asked for crossover challenge requests to keep myself occupied.

. . . no, this is not a second round. Not right now. Maybe some other time. I was going to put the results all up in one post, but, uh, I forgot. Until now. I got almost all of them done, excepting the ones that were requests for something I was already trying to write at the time, and also I never want to write a Dogma crossover again, GAIL. ;) But there are still twelve random snippets right here, presented in no particular order. Spoiler warnings or whathaveyou in the cuts, though the spoilers that were new then are kinda old now.



( House/Dead and Breakfast - See, this is why Thirteen never talks about herself. The simplest questions are landmines. )

**********

( House/Torchwood - Chase looked up, and it was only then that he became aware of the stymied silence. No one was throwing out diagnoses, or even arguing. They were just looking at him. )

**********

( Iron Man/Dogma - It was in Illinois, somewhere, doing . . . oh, something about PR, or something. Hell if Tony knows, it was a decade ago and he was drunk the whole time anyway. But he'd snuck out to some little dive strip joint. )

**********

( Dexter/Doctor Who - The first clue that this situation isn't quite right is the sedative failing to take effect. )

**********

( House/Supernatural, spoilers for House season four finale - Jo's been working in bars since she was sixteen, and of course she spent time in Harvelle's even before that, and she knows all the signs of a man who wants a drink. )

**********

( Dogma/Pirates of the Carribean, AU on account of me kind of forgetting about Dead Man's Chest, oops - Jack Sparrow has met God. )

**********

( Red Dwarf/Torchwood - Owen couldn't wait until Jack moved on from this overprotective crap. )

**********

( Iron Man/Torchwood/Jeeves and Wooster - The Junior Ganymede is, as I have told Mr Wooster and previous employers, a club for gentlemens' personal gentlemen. I have never mentioned, however, that it extends further than one might think, and that said personal gentlemen are not always gentlemen. )

**********

( Boondock Saints/Torchwood, part one of a duplicate request - He sent cards and gifts for Christmas and Owen's birthdays. He never heard back, but it didn't surprise him. He highly doubted that Marianne had ever taught Owen about writing thank you notes. )

**********

( Boondock Saints/Torchwood part the second, which is actually an AU of the first, just for fun - Smecker is not shocked by this. There isn't a cop in the city who wouldn't buy the Saints a round of beer if given half a chance; after this, they'll probably settle for buying drinks for whoever helped.  )

**********

( House/Dogma - But this kid - there was just something about her that drew the eye. Cuddy couldn't even begin to explain what; she just kept glancing back up to watch the girl play. )

**********

( Iron Man/Dead and Breakfast - Tony Stark blinked several times, dazed and vaguely aware that he was probably concussed. He'd have to do something about the helmet's design. It was supposed to prevent concussions, not cause them. )


**********

( Dogma/Supernatural - Plus it gets Bartleby out of his face for an evening, seriously, the two of them are more closely and irrevocably entwined than any other beings on the planet, but that doesn't mean they don't wanna just find a way to kill each other sometimes. )



I may have to do another round of this, I think, with a new list. I had a lot of fun with it before, and a couple of these might even have enough weight to turn them into proper fics.

TITLE: "Lucky Streak"
AUTHOR: Cathryn (catslash)
SUMMARY: Owen finds himself in the middle of something a little outside his usual frame of reference. AU starting shortly after "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and continuing through "Dead Man Walking."
RATING: R for violence.
WORD COUNT: Approximately 5200.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Owen, Martha, Jack, Michael. Owen/Michael, a touch of Jack/Ianto, and a vague bit of Owen/Martha.
WARNING: Character death. Also, slash.
SPOILERS: From 2x01 through 2x07.
NOTES THE FIRST: Thanks to americanleaguer for the beta, and to gileonnen and apiphile for other helpful input. Oh yeah, and huge thanks to nightanddaze, who inspired the idea and threatened to cry cheerleaded hard when the fic stalled and I started to lose hope of ever finishing it. This never, ever would have been written without her.
NOTES THE SECOND: This fic is sort of experimental. Very spoilery notes about what the experiment was can be found at the end.
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood was created by Russell T Davies and belongs to the BBC. I make neither claim nor money.



( It's really just a one-night stand. )

So americanleaguer and I spent the evening tormenting each other with awesome AU ideas, until finally we settled on a snippet exchange. (Pay attention, apiphile; this is gonna look familiar.) So I guess we're gonna be writing snippets at each other until we get bored? I don't know.

Anyway. Mine is a Torchwood AU where it was Jack, not Gray, who was abducted. (Oh, and Jack's name is still Jack because Gray calls him Jack in "Exit Wounds," which allows one to assume that there were coincidental matching first names and so Jack really only changed his last name and also to avoid the headache of trying to rename him. And resist the urge to name him something like Orange or Puce.)



( Gray is eighteen years old when Jack comes home. )

americanleaguer and offspeed both did "'If I write it down and stare at it, maybe I will be forced to actually finish these fics" posts while I was sleeping, so i figured I'd join the party. I've been so unproductive ficwise the last couple of weeks.

( Cut because I decided to throw in snippets for fun. In which I write a lot of damn crossovers, and Torchwood and Supernatural feature heavily. And are NOT crossed over. )

Way too many fics going on there. It beats the zero I had before, though, and I still heart SPN for being the fandom that jumpstarted my fic muse after like two years of silence. And Torchwood for keeping it going. Also, what's up with me being the freakin' crossover queen over here?

Also, I'm probably gonna pull together all my non-recent-past 'verse drabbles to post to communities at some point today, so if you see a "new" fic post from me, don't get excited, because there's nothing new in it. Well, unless you missed my drabble spamming phase.

TITLE: "Recognition"
AUTHOR: catslash/Cathryn
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 500
CHARACTERS: Owen, Jack, the Doctor. Genfic; no pairings.
SUMMARY: Torchwood has a visitor. Crossover with Doctor Who.
NOTES: This is an expansion of a drabble I wrote a couple weeks ago, from one hundred words to five hundred. I fully expect (though I have NOT read any spoilers!) to get Jossed (Russelled?) this weekend by one show or the other or probably both, so I decided to post while the posting was still good.
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and Doctor Who are not mine and I make no claims otherwise.
SPOILERS: Up through 2x08 for Torchwood; very vague ones for 3x11 for Doctor Who.



( Owen arrives to work late that day and misses the first round of introductions. He doesn't need an exchange of names, though, to place the identity of the stranger wearing a pinstriped suit and trainers, wandering round the Hub with a mug of Ianto's coffee and remarking on things as if he has every right to be there. )

No Torchwood drabble yesterday, because I decided to take a whack at actually writing some of the damn recent-past-paradigm fic, like for reals. I think I've figured out the format, too. I'm planning on a series of ficlets of random lengths (no more strict word counts) from various points of view, split into three parts: "Things That Happened," "Things That Didn't," and "Reconciled." The first part will deal with S1, the second with the Year That Wasn't, and the third with some of the aftermath when Owen makes it back to his own present. I will probably have that happen at the end of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," to increase the odds of actually finishing this thing and because nearfuture!Owen's presence could sabotage the events of "Adam" in a way it couldn't any other episode, and I can't figure any way around that plus I seriously don't want to watch that episode again.

I'll also keep posting bits of it every now and then, though no more drabbles, because I have decided that drabbles would be cheating. If I'm going to write this, I will do it properly. But I'll share bits because the very fact that I have solid plans for this to exist as a fic is owed entirely to the people who commented on the drabbles. Without you guys, this would have died a quiet death in the back of my head like so many other potential fic 'verses have done. So I'm gonna keep right on including you in the process, and should this get finished - and there are NO guarantees of that until I've typed the last word - there will be effusive thank you notes in the header. ;)

But anyway! Here is a bit. Shared bits, incidentally, are likely going to be first draft and subject to change. Spoilers for Torchwood 1x04 and 2x12.



( 'It's an autopsy, not a wedding, I don't need a witness.' )

Since so many of my Torchwood drabbles have been set in this 'verse, I thought it would be easiest to put them all together in one post in case anyone who is not me wants to refer to them. This 'verse may turn into a fic of its own; I've got plenty of ideas for it that won't fit the drabble format. If I do write it, I don't know if everything in the drabbles will end up in the fic. At this point, I'm exploring and trying things out.

Drabbles are in chronological order within the 'verse (yeah, it's a time travel 'verse, but there's chronology if I say there is!) rather than in order written. Oh, plus, the first drabble is in past tense and the rest in present. A tip for drabble writing: present tense can save you a precious word or two just 'cause you don't have to use extra verbs. Apparently, I forgot this for like a day.

Spoilers for Torchwood 1x04, 2x06-2x08; Doctor Who 3x12-3x13.



( Getting bounced into the recent past was - pointless, at best. )

Torchwood drabble. Just a random bit of pondering. Spoilers for 2x12, "Fragments."


( The day after that )