To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Title: To Give Life a Shape
Rating: R, purely because Geoffrey's mouth is, you know, less than clean.
Pairings/Characters: Fraser/Thatcher, Geoffrey/Ellen (sorta), Oliver, Anna. Mostly, it is a Geoffrey story.
Word Count: 5,000
Summary: Fraser and Thatcher attend one of the New Burbage Festival's corporate workshops, where Geoffrey, because he finds them amusing, attempts to yank their chains by casting them in precisely the two roles they don't want to play. Awkwardness ensues, musings on life and art are pronounced, and all is well ended.
Notes: This takes place in a timewarped universe in which a day several weeks after "Red, White or Blue" coincides with one sometime around episode five of the first season of S&A (Darren is gone, but Claire is still around). The title is part of a quotation from The Rehearsal, by Jean Anouilh: "The object of art is to give life a shape."
Thanks: About a million of them to rowdycamels, without whom this would be but a pale shadow of itself.

( 'How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?' she asked, completely deadpan. 'The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art'—she didn't give the impression that she thought this was much of a problem—'if any of my kinsmen find thee here.' )

Title: Blushing Pilgrims
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1370
Timeline: Between S2 and S3 for due South, and pre-canon for Slings & Arrows.
Pairings: Fraser/Thatcher, Geoffrey/Ellen
Summary: Meg Thatcher is not a fan of Romeo and Juliet. However, on a trip to New Burbage with Constable Fraser, she finds a few reasons to reevaluate her opinion.

( She is not going to cry. She is far too old, and anyway, it's more of a cliché than she can bear, crying at the end of Romeo and Juliet. )

One of the many things I like about this pairing is that some of the gender expectations are swapped: Susan is often the more practical one, while Michael, though he keeps it under wraps, is more traditionally romantic/sentimental (c.f. Dodger in "GROPOS"). This is the first fic in my AU from Michael's POV, something I've been wanting to do for a while, and it was fun to play with that here.

Title: With Paper Wings
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,900
Timeline: Spring 2263
Summary: Michael and Susan are pressed into babysitting duty and as a result, while ostensibly talking about the past and present, wind up having a conversation about the future. Fluff. (Though of course with them, there's always angst lurking in the corners...)

( You realize this looks remarkably like a dog playing fetch with a tennis ball, right? )

Or, In Which I Fangirl James Joyce Kind Of A Lot.

Title: "Iter Durum"
Author: icepixie
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1850
Timeline: 2269 (Handy-dandy timeline/master list)
Summary: November is hard for Susan Ivanova, and Michael has learned to give her space on this particular anniversary. It might go on like this forever, but the universe has other plans.

( Every year she hopes it will hurt less, and every year it does, but the pain diminishes with the approximate speed of a bird emptying a beach by carrying away the grains of sand one by one in its tiny beak. )

Okay, so this is utterly ridiculous, just so you know. But the idea grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go until I wrote it down. Then of course I had to inflict it on y'all, because I'm evil like that.

Title: Friends Like These
Author: icepixie
Rating: G
Characters and Pairing: Ivanova/Garibaldi, G'Kar
Word Count: 875
Summary: G'Kar decides that since they're friends now, it's his duty to give Garibaldi advice. Set sometime in season three after "Voices of Authority."

( When ARE you going to ask Commander Ivanova on what you humans so charmingly refer to as a 'date'? )

Title: Unchoreographed
Author: icepixie
Film: Roberta (1935)
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,694
Summary: "At sixteen, Lizzie Gatz had bright blue eyes and a winsome smile, and Huck Haines couldn't have been more in love with her if he'd tried." 'Cause I always wondered how they became childhood sweethearts.

( Just a few years ago, he'd been pulling her hair as they walked home from school. )

Title: A Heart for a Compass (or, A Proposal, the Modesty of Which Is Irrelevant)
Author: icepixie
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ivanova/Garibaldi
Word Count: 561
Summary: Michael asks a question. Fluff. (Well, okay, it's them, so there's a little angst mixed in, but it's mostly fluff.)
Timeline: Spring 2263 (roughly nine or ten months after "The Backstreets of Heaven")
Note: This pretty much exists in order to make an homage to one of my favorite scenes in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. Hopefully it'll be enjoyable if you haven't read the book in question, though.

( So what do you think? )

Here's a handy-dandy timeline for my Ivanova/Garibaldi AU, which also serves as a master list for everything in it. As I write more in the series (and oh, believe me, I have many bits and pieces littering my hard drive), I'll come back and update this post. You can also read everything in order at the series's page on the AO3.

This AU is a mix of standalones and fics contingent on ones which came before. "Little Dreams" follows directly from "Closet Idealism," and "How We Were Transfigured" follows right after. "Backstreets of Heaven" can follow either "Dreams" or "Transfigured." The others require no background, but they benefit from it.

Jan-Dec. 2260
Closet Idealism [PG-13]
Susan is not as much of a realist as she thought she was. Angst. (1175)

Jan. 2261-May 2262
The Little Dreams We Dream (Are All We Can Really Do) [PG-13]
Susan hasn't been as careful with her heart as she should've been. Angsty, but I do promise the epigraph is pertinent. (9100)

June 2262
How We Were Transfigured [G]
The sharp edge of memory begins to dull. Mostly Ivanova-centric. (425)

August 2262
The Backstreets of Heaven [R]
Bester comes to the station, and things go rapidly downhill. It's not quite a revenge tragedy, but it's definitely not fluffy and light. (2600)

March 2263
With Paper Wings [G]
Michael and Susan are pressed into babysitting duty and as a result, while ostensibly talking about the past and present, wind up having a conversation about the future. Fluff. (Though of course with them, there's always angst lurking in the corners...) (1900)

May 2263
A Heart for a Compass (or, A Proposal, the Modesty of Which Is Irrelevant) [PG]
Michael asks a question. Fluff. Well, okay, it's them, so there's a little angst mixed in, but it's mostly fluff. (550)

December 2263
Epithalamion [G]
On the day of Susan's wedding, she and Delenn have a chat. Susan & Delenn friendship more than anything. (1200)

Autumn 2266
Biological Inefficiencies [G]
"All of your biological inefficiencies are made up for by the fact that your friends can babysit this early in the child's life." - G'Kar. (625)

Spring 2268
We'll Crack the Darkest Sky Wide Open [G]
Susan, Michael, and Sofie move to Minbar. It's a new beginning, but not in the old way. (1750)

Autumn/Winter 2268
Language Lessons [G]
Susan and Michael discover what their friends have been teaching their daughter. (225)

Autumn 2269
Iter Durum [PG]
November is hard for Susan Ivanova, and Michael has learned to give her space on this particular anniversary. It might go on like this forever, but the universe has other plans. (1850)

Title: How We Were Transfigured
Author: icepixie
Rating: G
Word Count: 429
Pairing: Ivanova/Garibaldi is mentioned, but it's more of an Ivanova-centric piece
Summary: The sharp edge of memory begins to dull.
Notes: Takes place in my Closet Idealism AU, several weeks after The Little Dreams We Dream...

( Near the end of their working lunch—the first time they'd managed to see each other outside of joint staff meetings in over a month—Susan took pity on her former CO. )

All right, campers, there's a story behind this one. Over the past week, I've been trying to finish or make significant progress on no fewer than ten fics in three different fandoms. I have literally managed about five sentences on each of them, and it's driving me up a wall. So I looked through my files for something, anything, I could finish, in the hopes that it would jumpstart my writing process on things I actually wanted to finish, and I came upon this, which needed only a few paragraphs more.

I wrote about three quarters of this roughly a month after Atlantis started airing. I have not seen or really even thought about this show for...three? four? years now. So the chances of this resembling canon at all are slim. Mainly I wrote it as an exercise in finishing something, for the love of god. It does not even pretend to aspire to greatness. But hopefully it will still be amusing!

Title: Camping Indoors
Author: icepixie
Rating: G
Word count: 1,597
Pairing: Sheppard/Weir UST
Summary: Early S1. John and Elizabeth amuse themselves during a blackout on Atlantis.

( That was NOT an invitation to drool on my jacket. )