from the subclavian vein

007 - Heaven

2011-10-26T21:40:00.001-07:00

Aster was on the verge of snapping her pencil in two, frustrated enough to flip the table, punch someone in the face and leave the room with no ill conscience. It was a very tempting scenario, but she instead chose to close her eyes and breathe deeply to quell the anger inside her. Suffice to say, this job wasn't the glamorous opportunity she was expecting. She knew what she was getting into going into research-- days and nights of paperwork and grant applications and ethics boards and bureaucracy, hours of staring into microscopes and synthesizing compounds and observing, looking for results. Hard work and not all that exciting all the time, but stimulating enough if you had a mind and a passion for it. When she'd been offered a position in biochemistry research at ASPEN, she had jumped at the chance-- imagine never having to fill out a plea for funding again, never having to use antiquated lab equipment, chipped microscope slides and temperamental spectrophotometers? And all the lab rats-- in more ways than one-- you could possibly need for your work. Of course she had said yes.

But now the shiny veneer of the Institute was fading away into a distant memory, and she was faced with the harsh reality of the situation; this was a) not what she was expecting, and b) the most difficult thing she had and ever would have to do. The work was never-ending; with no need for grants or extraneous paperwork, they sought faster developments, faster research, more papers, more knowledge, more work. If the research would progress as predicted, then that wouldn't have been a problem, but as usual when working with such variable things as biological entities, there were always deviants. What should have been a simple compilation of simple results derived from a simple theory that worked through wonderful, miraculous science, turned into a several-page-long 'suggestions for future study' section in the report, and extreme frustration for the biochemist whose name had to go on this lackluster article.

When she opened her eyes, still her disappointment turned into impartial, detached vocabulary glared up at her from the paper she was working on, and she could take it no longer. She had put in far too many hours already today, so she had no qualms against packing up her things and leaving the lab early. The urge to flip a table or throw a rack of test tubes was still tempting, but she managed to keep it together and leave the laboratories without doing something brash that she would regret later.

Embarking the elevator was reassuring only in that it meant she didn't have to think about her failed experiment anymore, and she could do with her time as she pleased. Even though the typical canned music wasn't much to listen to, it still made her smile.

At least, until the elevator stopped.

"No, no, please, no, come on..." she hissed, pressing the main floor button again and again, trying to get the stupid useless piece of machinery to respond. "Fuck, come on!" None of the buttons were responding, and pounding on the doors didn't seem to do anything, either. "God damn it!" she roared, feeling the same surge of anger return even more powerfully than before. The Southerner banged and kicked and cursed at the elevator's doors until she finally sank to the ground, exhausted, but the damn thing still didn't budge. In the midst of her button-mashing, she had hit the emergency call button, so she had some small consolation in knowing that at least someone was coming for her, but it still didn't help abate her anger.

An hour and a half later, she was finally free, but simmering in her own rage. The worst part of it all was that she didn't have anyone to blame for anything that had gone wrong today; not the cold shower this morning, not the bad hair day, not the new stain on her lab coat, not the reluctance of cancerous mice to react favourably to the drug she was synthesizing, and not the broken elevator. This series of coincidences was aggravating, but just simply that; coincidences all coinciding to ruin a perfectly good day and put more strain on Aster's already taxed mind.

The elevator fiasco meant that she missed 'dinner time'; the kitchens at ASPEN operated at all hours of the day and night, but most of the residents of her wing chose to dine at about five-thirty. Anselm could only spare so much time to come to the dining hall out here instead of in nearer to the medical wing, so that meant she shouldn't have been as disappointed as she was to discover him not waiting there for her. Her misfortunes even extended so far as to include her favourite food being served that night, but it was all gone by the time she arrived. Her dinner was quiet and dissatisfying, and the rest of her evening spent alone in the common area of the biology wing. The occasional person stopped by, but invariably they all soon left, exhausted after a long week and looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. She tried her best to be pleasant for them, but often fell flat.

Finally, around ten-thirty, the surgeon appeared, looking tired but relatively satisfied with his lot in life. He wore his clinic lab coat, a little wrinkly but unmarred by stains like his scrubs would be after a day in surgery. He stood tall and imperious in glowing white, a little roughed-up but handsomely so, exactly as the hero in any story is. When his eyes fell on her, he smiled the most genuine smile. Aster leapt to her feet.

"I missed you at di-" Aster cut him off with a tight hug, holding him as close as she could and relishing the feeling of his own tight reciprocal.

"I missed you." Aster mumbled against him. She no longer felt angry. or frustrated, or miserable. Everything else drifted away. He tipped her head back and sought her lips, a quick, sweet kiss snatched from a vulnerable place. Nobody was around to witness it, but he still felt dangerous and titillatingly risque. Her concession was potent in his mind, made him forget everything else he was thinking about and

"I missed you, too." he mumbled against the pulse-point in her neck, dizzy against her skin.

Late in the night, entangled together, sticky from sweat and happily exhausted, when the settled silence said volumes more than they could in words, Aster's fingers strayed lazily across Anselm's chest. This moment- this whole situation- was perfect. Her terrible day was inconsequential compared to how good this was, how good it was to have something to rely on in this place.

"Heaven," she sighed, the word fanning across his flesh.

"Hmm?" he murmured, opening his eyes again to observe her.

"Heaven. This is heaven, obviously." She kissed a line from his sternum to his deltoid.

"How do you figure?" he asked, meaning no offense but unable to string together his words with much tact in his exhausted state.

"Because even if everything else is going to shit, just knowing I have you here with me makes all the difference. Nothing could ever be this perfect unless I had died and gone to heaven."

"As a doctor, I can assure you you're not dead," Anselm mumbled, pulling her closer and pressing a kiss to her forehead, "But I agree. This is heaven."

--
Going out of order? Blasphemy!!
Six was just stupid, though. I couldn't think of a single damn thing for 'break away'. Maybe later.
And this one is shit, I'm aware.

005 Seeking Solace

2011-10-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

The room was uncomfortably quiet, only the loud ticking of the clock on the wall breaking up the silence. Calyx felt stupid, lying on a therapist's couch in such a typically cliche way, and running out of things to say but still not feeling any better. Wasn't the whole point of this exercise for her to feel better? But there were so many things she felt she had to leave out. And, she supposed, if they couldn't touch on the root of her troubles, then it would be hard to alleviate her emotional discomfort. Finally, after a few moments of silence between the two, the therapist shifted in her seat, tucking her pen in her ledger and closing it. The therapist was an older woman with greying blonde hair pulled back into a severe bun and cold blue eyes, whose shorter stature she compensated for with extravagantly tall heels and high-waisted slacks. The heels of her pumps clacked against the hardwood floor as she uncrossed her legs and sat forward in her chair.

"Well, if there's nothing else on your mind, then I think perhaps we could end it for today." Dr. Anderson's voice tried and failed to be warm, as usual. "I think we made some progress today, though. Maybe you would like to come in for another supplemental session next week and we can pick back up where we left off, maybe talk a little about your parents." As per ASPEN's regulations, all staff had to attend bi-weekly psych check-ups, usually a little fifteen-minute 'how are you, any problems lately' sort of thing. If needed, staff could book extra sessions, as Calyx had done, to talk about problems. And as much as Calyx respected psychiatry in and of itself, she found Dr. Anderson unnerving rather than comforting, and said a few noncommittal words about her return before she left the therapist's office.

And now Calyx loitered outside the psych offices, unsure of where to turn to with this uncomfortable feeling still closed tightly around her heart. Restlessness settled into her limbs and she headed to the elevator and the grounds beyond.

The warm evening felt less pleasant than suffocating to Calyx as she moved out onto the field. The sun was low in the sky and blinding, and no wind disturbed the blades of grass or moved the heated atmosphere about. Her restlessness was choking her, seizing her muscles until she couldn't fight it anymore and she broke into a run. With every step, she felt some tension leaving her body, and a little bit of hope enter, as though perhaps she could outrun her problems. She kept running until she was completely exhausted, until her muscles burned and her breath came in hard gasps. She doubled over until she caught her breath, noticing that with it returned some of the awful feeling she had tried to leave behind. Frustrated, she started on the walk back to the complex, wondering what she should do. Nothing was working so far, and that notion was almost more frustrating than the ailment itself.

She needed to talk to someone, she determined. The psychiatrist wasn't the answer, because she couldn't say what she needed to say without fear of reprimand or action against her. Who else was there to talk to? She couldn't talk to Caden about it. She didn't know many of the others in the mathematics wing that well, not well enough to trust with something like this without it devolving into blackmail or an issue of office politics or something, and besides, the wing completely empty. Finally, her feet started to carry her toward the biology wing, hoping that maybe Aster would be around. The Southern girl usually had a way of making the mathematician feel better.

The biology wing's common room was almost empty, save for Anselm, the surgeon, who was relaxing on one of the couches with a novel and a cup of tea. He glanced up from the pages with a warm smile.

"Guten abend," he said, setting the book down in his lap with a small hint of reluctance. "Can't sleep either?"

"No, not really. I was actually hoping to see Aster, but I suppose she's already asleep." Calyx couldn't help the disappointment being evident on her face; she was too exhausted to keep up any facades.

"Yes, she retired to her quarters quite a while ago." He slid his legs off the couch to make room for her should she choose to stay, and put the closed book on the coffee table. He kept his eyes low, trying to avoid anything being read from his expression. It wasn't that he was ashamed or embarrassed by his recent tryst with Aster, it's just that he thought it would be best if it was kept to themselves for now. "Perhaps I can help?"

Calyx considered his offer, wrestling between the urge to confide in someone and the fact that she didn't know the Doctor as well as she did some of the others in this wing. Finally her emotional turmoil won out over her apprehension and she sighed heavily, dropping to the couch beside him.

"If... if you wouldn't mind..."

"Not at all, kleine, please. You look tense. What is on your mind?"

Calyx hesitated, folded her hands in her lap, then undid them, before taking a decisive breath. "I slept with Caden, just a one-night stand, no strings attached. Except he didn't tell me he had a girl waiting for him at home." She avoided looking the doctor in the eye, trying not to feel so vulnerable. "And I mean, why should I care? It's not my problem. I'll never meet her, I don't have to deal with the consequences. So... why do I feel so guilty?" She hung her head, feeling powerless with all her cards on the table. What would he think of her?

Anselm didn't react as Calyx was expecting; he didn't laugh at her, or shout at her, or criticize her. He merely offered her the kindest of sympathetic smiles. "Don't be upset," he said, just simply that, and pulled her into a hug. He didn't tell her any platitudes, he didn't tell her anything unnecessary or untrue. "It is done, there is no point in wasting time and energy being upset about that fact. Forgive yourself."

And all at once, things felt better.

"...Thank you."

---
at this point I'd like to say that all of these are just drabbles using characters and probably none of this is going to connect to the actual novel because I had trouble with this, got stuck on the idea of inner conflict and guilt, and chose to work with Calyx but I dunno if in the actual story she'd ever really experience guilt or anything like that. She doesn't seem the type. Too proud and self-righteous.
and I'm just having troubles with my half-baked "plot" and I'm getting to the point where I feel it needs either serious rethinking and retooling, or scrapping.
And this writing is just so shit and it's been sitting around for months so I decided let's just finish it and post it.
And jesus what is wrong with me: I've matched both A names, which I knew about before (Aster and Anselm) but I also matched C names (Calyx and Caden) what the everloving fuck is wrong with me.
Hopefully the next prompt comes out better.

004 Dark

2011-06-03T01:57:00.000-07:00

Dr. Vivian Roth left the lights in her office off, choosing to remain slumped at her desk in the dark. She ran her fingers through her hair until her forehead came to rest against the hardwood desk with a solid thunk. It felt good to just sit in the dark like this, anonymous and invisible in the shadows, in a room that was just slightly too chilly to be completely comfortable. At least here and now she could forget about everything in her life that was grating on her fragile nerves and just breathe without someone criticizing her for the volume of oxygen she was using. Her peace was disturbed only by the constant inundation of thoughts, which was to be expected. She reflected briefly on the time when she used to enjoy this job much more, and with a start realized how much guilt she felt in the current moment.

"Geez, you're getting soft," Vivian growled. There was a time when test subjects were subhuman in her eyes, and she could poke, prod and perforate their flesh all day long without even the slightest wavering doubt about what she was doing. She got a sadistic joy out of what she did, and that quavering of fear and pain in the subject's eyes upon the insertion of a needle was one of the best rewards. There was nothing in the world better than using a scalpel on a subject, drawing straight lines of blood across their chest. Sometimes an afternoon was spent removing the ribcage so she could watch a subject's heart beat before her just because she could, fixating on the struggling throbs of the organ, the twitching of the vessels that connected it to everything else in the body, until far too soon it seized or sputtered and the subject died. Ethics didn't come into play down here in the bowels of the ASPEN facility, and as long as she continued to yield usable results and further science, very few people concerned themselves with what projects she undertook in her off time. She had worked her way to a position where she had free access to all the tools and resources she could ever want, to do with as she pleased. It had been liberating, being able to satisfy whatever curiosity crossed her mind without repercussions, and the idea that she couldn't remember when that had changed struck her suddenly as particularly unnerving.

It had to be her current work. Her mentor had started the project some forty years ago, and gave all her notes to Vivian upon her retiring. It had been fascinating work, outlining the discovery of a gene within what was believed to be genomic dark matter that could be manipulated subtly to grant unimaginable power to ordinary people. Thousands of photographs and hundreds of hours of video footage from her mentor's laboratory were handed down to her, illustrating the experiments on lesser animals, first standard laboratory mice, then other small mammals, until pigs and primates were tested, being the closest to animals. Finally, a small selection of women were selected for the experiment, and within a few years, the laboratory was keeping tabs on twenty newborn children with the altered gene. Thousands of pages of detailed notes for each child as they grew, blood samples and observations of their DNA, all observing the effects of the mutant gene to an intimately personal level of detail. Vivian had spent countless hours pouring over every page, every word, every scrap of information on the project that her mentor would give her, and so of course when the now thirty-something-year-olds were brought in to ASPEN, Vivian recognized each one immediately, and knew perhaps more about them than they themselves did.

And that intimacy with the test subjects was where the problem lay, she thought. Unlike the mice and monkeys, whose abilities that the altered gene had given them were easy to observe as they were provoked through stress and fear responses (Vivian would never forget the first time she saw a mouse burst into flame in a stress test, or a Capuchin monkey turn its fur to poisoned quills when cornered in its cage by a thickly-gloved hand).

But the human test subjects weren't responding in quite the same way-- there were very, very few examples of the abilities being provoked during adolescence, and even during the examinations and testing upon their arrival, fear tests were failing to yield results. It was frustrating, and even more difficult because it was hard to say what sequences coded for what sort of ability. There had been a few small patterns observed during the mouse studies, but it was impossible to say if those patterns would be applicable across species. It could be there before them the whole time, but too weak to be noticeable. And on the one occasion that she had decided, out of frustration and anger, to keep going with the test long after her better judgment told her to stop, the subject had died. The loss had affected Vivian a lot more than she thought it would, simply because knowing so much about the subject's whole life made it feel like she was losing a close friend, or even a child. She had underestimated the human element in this experiment, and now she was paying for it.

Vivian's fingers fumbled across the desk until they located a notepad and pen, and turned her head just enough to scribble down notes about finding more scanners for detecting ambient environmental changes during the next tests. She felt exhausted, lost, at her wit's end. If her mentor was still here, then maybe the brilliant old bat would have some sort of nugget of wisdom, or direction, or even just a kind word to help her move on, but no. She'd retired well over a year ago, and it was Vivian all alone working on this monumental, groundbreaking project that should have made her happy, fulfilled, excited, but instead she was tired, sore, humiliated and heartbroken.

A shaft of light fell across the room as the door was opened, illuminating her pathetic slumped form, much to her displeasure. She didn't want to be seen like this. She didn't want to be bothered.

"Get out. Please." she groaned, clutching her forehead in one hand.

"Vivvy? It's just me... Jesus, it's cold in here," Dr. Desmund said, shutting the door and letting the darkness mercifully swallow her up again. Maybe if she kept her eyes shut and ignored him, she mused, then maybe he would go away. "You missed dinner, so I brought you something." He set the tray beside her on the desk, close enough that she couldn't ignore how good it smelled, despite her sour mood.

Oliver moved around her office like it was his own, which wasn't unusual since they both spent a fair amount of time in each others' offices. As he searched for things, it gave her a much-needed moment to collect herself. Vivian ran both her hands back through her hair as she picked herself up off the desk with a deep breath. She started when he draped a blanket over her shoulders, but he didn't notice as he went to bring over the chair he had found.

"You should turn the heat on when you're in here. It's not good for you to be in the cold like this, and you will get no sympathy from me when you've got the sniffles," he said, sitting down (entirely uninvited, she spat in her mind) next to her, not too close but close enough that his presence wasn't able to be ignored. He sat in silence next to her, and in fact was toying with the metal globe on her desk, brushing his fingers across countries with a certain fondness.

"Why are you doing this," she huffed, reluctantly reaching for the teacup off the tray.

"Doing what?" Oliver asked, giving the globe a good spin and then stopping it with a digit, frowning gently when his finger landed in the Pacific. "The blanket? Because I seriously don't want to catch your cold when--"

"Not that. Being so nice. All the time." She enclosed the teacup in her hands, feeling it warm the numbed fingers. She hadn't realized she had been as cold as she was. "I don't deserve it."

"And what makes you think that?" he said casually, turning on the electric fireplace with one of the buttons on her desk. It chewed away at the darkness, only able to consume so much of it, and leaving the pair in the half-light of its flickering glow. "This is just a little tangle. You'll get through it sooner or later. No reason to lose all your faith in yourself."

She hated him. She hated him so much, because he had a point. She hated that he was looking after her like she was some helpless puppy or something, something unable to look after itself. She hated the way he slid the tray in front of her, studying her with a grin as she took a bite. She hated the way he was heating up her office so she was comfortable. She hated that he had so much damn faith, not just in her but in the universe and everything. She hated the way she couldn't help the little smile at her lips because his presence just now, even just sitting here in the dark with her, made her feel a little bit better.

She sighed, stabbing a piece of broccoli with perhaps a bit too much vigor. "I guess what I should be saying is... thanks."

"It's no problem, Vivvy." Oliver's eyes glittered in the unsteady firelight as he stretched out in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "You're like a sister to me. Where I'm from, we take care of our own."

Vivian smiled softly before turning back to her meal and the pair settled into a comfortable silence. How Oliver always seemed to know just how to cheer her up whenever she needed it most, Vivian figured she would probably never know. Even in the darkest places, he was able to bring light and make the darkness bearable.

---
Shitty rushed ending is shitty and rushed. What do you want from me. Jeez. Get off my lawn.

I imagine in my actual story I won't be giving away what's going on just in the prose like this. That's just not good storytelling. But as it stands, it helps me think about my ideas and elaborate them. I don't care that this is total shit that's taken me like, what, over a week to complete?
And holy fucking shit I need to stop making such nice-guy male characters and such insecure female characters. Buhhhh.

003 Light

2011-05-23T23:02:00.003-07:00

Spoiler warning for my own novel? Yes. Nothing huge, but this scene would fit at the very end if it were part of it.
---

For a long while, nobody spoke. The survivors stood a safe distance away from the enormous hatch they had come through, as though something might rear up from it and drag them back down again. The sun beat down on them from above, warming their backs and surrounding them like a mother's arms. That was something they hadn't been able to get right in the biosphere, Aster realized. It had been a convincing display, of course- state of the art ASPEN would not have settled for an imperfect subterranean atmosphere-- but there was just something they hadn't been able to get right about the warmth. There wasn't that localized heat where the photons glanced off your skin, it was just... altogether hot, or warm, or cool, or chilly. It had been enough to convince them all that they were above ground for quite a while, but now that they stood in the midst of nowhere, in a real, wild forest, the differences were obvious. The sharp smell of pine trees mingled with a low rich note of mud and leaf decay from the forest floor, blowing in on a perfectly imperfect, unsteady breeze. Wildflowers poked up from the remnants of a fallen tree, nestled in its broken boughs and scarred trunk. Somewhere nearby, a river ran, just loud enough for them to hear. And still nobody spoke.

Aster sat down in the dirt before her knees gave out on her, suddenly very tired, very weak. It wasn't long before the others followed suit in relative silence. Anselm sat beside her, threading his fingers through hers, and she gripped the sleeve of his labcoat with her free hand, feeling like if she wasn't holding on to something then maybe she would drift away.

There was an obvious void in the group, their number was too small, the gathering too quiet and too solemn. Worse perhaps than their deaths were the memories of each one that ran through their minds, and the knowledge that it was all because of ASPEN. That organization that the rest of the world looked so highly upon, that held the world on the end of a string and toyed with it however they pleased in the name of science and progress. This modern god who took as it needed and gave back just enough to keep itself protected, leaving the small weak-minded world to revel in the new miracle it had granted them while it stole their children from beneath their noses and ignored all lines of ethics, morality, and even sanity in its pursuit of something greater. It was too much. Aster wanted to cry, but she didn't have the energy. Still the group sat in silence.

"Well then," Caden mumbled, followed by a long sigh, and then the silence returned.

The sun drifted higher in the sky, drenching the clearing in pure white light. The idea that the sun still dared to shine after all that had happened seemed baffling; below them, thousands of miles of subterranean complex slowly burned itself to ruins, what was once the root of the world, the lifeblood of their society, was now a skeleton. The rest of the world would take a long while to adjust as the source of everything they relied on was slowly destroyed underground, but the sun still shone. There was still light.

Humans were resourceful, and they would find a way to make it by without their false idol like they had a million times before.

Nature looks after its own, and it would in time cleanse the cavernous ruins of ASPEN of all the evil it held, and reclaim it.

And as for the survivors, time would fade the memories into peaceful homages to wonderful people, slowly ebb away at the pain until there was nothing left but love and happiness.

There was still light left in this world, still good things that could be had.

"Well," Aster said quietly, "Maybe we should get moving. Find a town. Figure out where we are." The gravity of their situation slowly settled into the minds of the group, and the irony that after all they had survived, they still had no idea where they were or how to find their way home, was not lost on them. They were still metaphorical lab rats scuttling about under observation, even after finding the cheese at the end of the maze and breaking out of their cage entirely.

"We should follow the river downstream; most towns are built near water sources. It's our best bet," Caden said.

A few nods and stretches, and the survivors got to their feet, brushing themselves off and ready to move again. The river was close, gurgling along and reflecting the sun between two borders of glowing green canopy. A single green leaf fell from one of the branches overhead and landed in the water, flowing along the ribbon of light far ahead of them. Anselm slipped Aster's hand in his and matched her pace. Despite everything that had happened and everything they had just been through, she couldn't help the smile that sprang to her lips. She felt undeniably light in that moment.

The sun would still rise again tomorrow, she realized, and there would still be light. Even after everything, this wasn't an end, this was merely a course of events, winding like a river. There was still much more to come, and while the shadows of leaves overhead cast a shadow on the river's glass surface on occasion, they would always emerge into the light.

---
want to be all "B'AWW IT'S TERRIBLE" but I really dunno. Light was sort of awkward to work with. And I wrote this earlier, and only just finished it now over twelve hours later. I went out today. I was going to write two today, but I probably won't seeing as how my day went.

Also; can you tell I haven't yet decided who will live or die? I tried to be vague about the numbers because most likely I'm going to change them, and I haven't even a full cast of characters to begin with.

002 Love

2011-05-23T01:33:00.002-07:00

Caden took a deep drink from his brandy snifter, relishing in the burning trail it left down his throat. He needed this now more than he'd ever needed anything in his life. As the alcohol started to work its magic and take the edge off all the tension of the day, he raised the glass to the light and admired the refractions it made through the cut crystal and the way the amber fluid seemed to glow.

A shadow passed through the glass and he looked up, irritation blatant on his face. He'd come here to get away from the people who were making his life at present so difficult, and someone dared to come search him out? He set the glass down and watched the figure approach him, pull out the chair opposite and sit down. Vienna smiled at him from across the tabletop, setting down a wine glass whose stem was betwixt in her fingers like that of a rare, beautiful flower. She simply smiled at him, her expression plainly easy to read; there was no anger, or malice, or sadness, all things which Caden would have expected. In fact, if anything, she looked amused. She didn't say anything for a while, just sat and sipped her wine and watched him. Caden, not one to let others get the best of him, sat and stared back. Finally, she seemed to realize this was futile and set the glass down daintily with the faintest of noises.

"Do you want to talk about last night?" she asked, gently, staring, staring.

"Not particularly." he murmured, stubbornly keeping her gaze, even though she was most likely angry as hell inside.

"Well, maybe we could talk about something else, then." she said diplomatically, hoping to watch relief flicker across his face, but the stubborn physicist didn't react, and a moment too late she should have realized that he would never feel remorse for what he did.

"Mmm." he hummed. And then waited. Staring.

"You ever think about love, Caden?" she asked casually, reclining and taking the wineglass between her fingers again.

"How so?" he asked with a sigh, humoring her even though he was disappointed in the topic choice.

"Just... how you know you love someone. Anyone."

"Mmm..." he contemplated her revision for a moment. "No. My answer is definitely no, then."

Vienna's eyebrow quirked in frustration. "How can you say that?" she demanded, setting the glass down with a solid sound that reflected her anger. "Do you not love anyone? Your parents?"

Caden took a second to think about it before replying, "No."

"You're lying." Vienna spat.

"No, I'm not." Caden sighed and sat up straight, taking another gulp of brandy before mustering up the courage to talk about them. "My father was a bastard that cheated on my mom, smacked her around and finally left us when I was thirteen. And my mother, well, she resented me from that day forward. Because I was like him. I look more like him than I do her, I act like him and speak like him and that bothered her. She meant well, but she was never proud of me. Not on any of my graduations, not on my career or my prizes or even getting here." He took another drink, longer this time, and winced at the burn. "So I decided I don't need her approval."

Vienna sat silently, wide-eyed as she processed this bit of information, possibly the most she'd ever heard him say at one time before. "Wow. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Like I said, I don't need them." Caden could feel the warmth of the buzz starting to encroach on his senses, dampening the vividity of his world.

"Well," Vienna continued, undaunted. "What about that girl you have at home? I'm sure she's wonderful."

"She's alright." he murmured noncommittally.

"'Alright'? Really, Caden?!" Vienna snapped. "You must love her a little to be living with her! Tell me about her."

Caden sighed. More brandy. His glass was getting dangerously empty and the world wasn't fading into oblivion nearly as quickly as he would have liked. At least if he passed out he wouldn't have to keep up this conversation.

"Her name is Anna." he relented. "She's pretty. Average height, small build, long dirty blonde hair and legs that go on forever. Her eyes are green. She usually keeps her lips red, but I love them best when they're just pink and natural. She likes to laugh. She worries a lot, mostly about me. She looks after me like I'm her child or something. She's a great cook, and she reads a lot. She went to university with me, but she was an art major. At first I didn't understand why anyone would study art, it seemed like a waste of time. But when I see the way she smiles when she paints, or the way she hums to herself arranging flowers, the way her eyebrows knit a little when she admires artwork, her sigh while looking at trees, just... I understand. I see the world through how it works, physics. She sees in colour and movement and shape. She sees application." He smiled to himself, a little sheepish. "The apartment is always full of flowers and pictures and light."

Vienna didn't say anything for a long while, just sipping her wine and watching him with satisfaction. That was definitely the most she'd ever heard out of him at once. "She sounds lovely." she finally said.

"Yeah. I guess she is."

"Do you love her?" Vienna asked abruptly.

"Why does that matter?"

"It doesn't matter to me, Caden." Vienna said sharply, drinking the last of her wine. "I, quite honestly, don't give a damn about you, and I wasn't looking for anything more than you were last night. Usually it's pretty rude to not tell people you're already involved with someone, but I really don't care. I don't know her, and when we go home, I'll never see you again. This doesn't affect me, and quite honestly, I don't feel guilty about it. We can fuck all you want, Caden, but if you're not going to be honest for your partner, then maybe you should be honest for Anna." Vienna got to her feet, snatching up her wineglass from the table. "If she's as wonderful as you say, then I'm sure it'd be a shame to lose her."

And then she left, heels tapping out a brisk rhythm on the hardwood floors and leaving him utterly alone in the dark to think.

---
Prompt 2 complete. I like this one much better, and it came to me right away and isn't as much useless blathering as the last one is. I don't know why I enjoy writing so much more around 1-3 AM than, say, 3 in the afternoon or something reasonable. I have class tomorrow morning, dammit.

001 Introduction

2011-05-21T02:32:00.001-07:00

After the long plane ride, none of the new researchers felt like staying up to socialize, so the next morning, the common areas of every wing were buzzing with life, the new research teams acquainting themselves. After finding her way out of the spaciousness of her quarters that she hadn't had the opportunity to appreciate the night before, Aster found that she wasn't the first one up. The rest of the biology department was clustered together around some plush chairs and coffee tables, the new researchers talking eagerly with the older inhabitants, trying to calm their nerves about such a transition. Aster, minding her manners like any good Texan belle would, avoided those occupied in conversation and instead sidled up to a tall, well-kept man who stood alone against the wall.

"Hey there," she said, extending her hand. "M'name's Aster Bernard, Immunologist from Dallas," She offered the quiet man her widest smile, doing her best to make a good impression on the people here. The man hesitated, frowning before relenting and shaking her hand.

"I am Anselm Hartmann." His voice was smooth but obviously accented, falling harder over vowels than her own southern drawl would have. "I studied medicine at Greifswald, in Germany." Ah, so that was the accent. His s-sounds were sharp like z's, his w's turned into v's. Having never left her own state, his foreign vernacular was fascinating to her. He still remained cold to her and didn't offer a smile, instead pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Anselm." She pronounced it carefully, not wanting it to come out wrong on her own tongue, and seemed to do an okay job of it. "Medicine, huh? Did you work in a practice before?" she asked, curious about his field, even though it wasn't too far off from her own. Her work kept her confined to the lab most of the time, and she had little to go on in terms of how things went for med students beyond moving on from med school.

Anselm grinned now, a small grin but Aster was willing to count it. "Nein, I did my residence in an emergency room, actually. I could not imagine the monotony of a practice."

"Really?" she asked, genuinely interested. "What was it like? I've never met an ER doctor before. I can't imagine that kind of stress. Did you have to perform surgeries on the spot? Or... or autopsies?" Her voice dropped on the last note, remembering her own stay in med school and the way the work with real cadavers always made her uneasy. She was aware she was being overly chatty, a little bit from nerves, but she didn't particularly care, and it made him grin wider, exposing two rows of perfect white teeth framed by an elegant lip curvature.

"It was definitely stressful. But I did not mind it. The adrenaline rushes are like nothing I have ever felt." His smile seemed to relax, become more natural as he recalled night after night of his work. "And I did not perform many surgeries, the seasoned surgeons tended to take care of most of those, and it was too busy to argue over it for long, but I have been holding the scalpel on several occasions. As for the autopsies, the coroner in any hospital handles those." His tone was more than a little condescending, but Aster didn't mind; she should have known that. Before she could get another question in, he stopped her with a question of his own. "What is your work in immunology?"

"Research," she said gently, frowning gently. "Until now I've been assisting in research on tropical parasite illnesses. It's not that exciting. We've been trying to develop an effective agent to kill parasites in the host, but it's really very difficult." Despite not being demanding or exhausting or exhilarating in the way ER work was, she couldn't help the twinkle in her eye or the way she wanted to babble on about the fascinating little details of parasites that made them so resilient.

Anselm opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by a woman of average height with enough presence and attitude to make up for whatever height she lacked. She summoned the new researchers with a few short words and a toss of her dark curls, and turned on her black pump heels without waiting for the group.

"I suppose we should follow her," Anselm said, pushing himself off the wall. "I hope breakfast is first; air travel makes me so hungry."

---

First one done. I feel horrible about it, it's terrible and flawed and I realized something huge about three paragraphs from where I ended it that might just break my entire plot so now I have some srs thinking to do. Still, it was nice to exercise my characters, feel them out and see how they work. Even though I've already written these two quite a bit, still...

Next prompt will have different ones, though, I promise.

100 Prompts - Beginning.

2011-05-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

So I've decided I'm going to do a 100 prompts challenge sort of thing, using characters from my novel because writing with them helps me figure out who they really are. If that doesn't make me sound like a loon.
I might do more than one in a day, depending on how I'm feeling. Probably not, but I hate things that insist I only do one a day because then I hate the waiting, and I'm not likely to remember to do it the next day, and if I ever forget a day, it irritates me in ways that probably aren't necessarily healthy.
I put them on here because I'm not doing anything with this space, and I didn't want to bother Tumblr followers any more than I already am, or bombard my friends on DA with constant updates.

So, without further ado, here are the prompts I will be using. I haven't read them all, but I'm sure it'll go alright.

001. Introduction
002. Love
003. Light
004. Dark
005. Seeking Solace
006. Break Away
007. Heaven
008. Innocence
009. Drive
010. Breathe Again
011. Memory
012. Insanity
013. Misfortune
014. Smile
015. Silence
016. Questioning
017. Blood
018. Rainbow
019. Gray
020. Fortitude
021. Vacation
022. Mother Nature
023. Cat
024. No Time
025. Trouble Lurking
026. Tears
027. Foreign
028. Sorrow
029. Happiness
030. Under the Rain
031. Flowers
032. Night
033. Expectations
034. Stars
035. Hold My Hand
036. Precious Treasure
037. Eyes
038. Abandoned
039. Dreams
040. Rated
041. Teamwork
042. Standing Still
043. Dying
044. Two Roads
045. Illusion
046. Family
047. Creation
048. Childhood
049. Stripes
050. Breaking the Rules
051. Sport
052. Deep in Thought
053. Keeping a Secret
054. Tower
055. Waiting
056. Danger Ahead
057. Sacrifice
058. Kick in the Head
059. No Way Out
060. Rejection
061. Fairy Tale
062. Magic
063. Do Not Disturb
064. Multitasking
065. Horror
066. Traps
067. Playing the Melody
068. Hero
069. Annoyance
070. 67%
071. Obsession
072. Mischief Managed
073. I Can't
074. Are You Challenging Me?
075. Mirror
076. Broken Pieces
077. Test
078. Drink
079. Starvation
080. Words
081. Pen and Paper
082. Can You Hear Me?
083. Heal
084. Out Cold
085. Spiral
086. Seeing Red
087. Food
088. Pain
089. Through the Fire
090. Triangle
091. Drowning
092. All That I Have
093. Give Up
094. Last Hope
095. Advertisement
096. In the Storm
097. Safety First
098. Puzzle
099. Solitude
100. Relaxation