Title: Hello Again
Fandom: The 39 Clues
Summary: Through countless worlds, the paths of their lives always seem to intersect. Nine universes in which Amy Cahill and Evan Tolliver meet. Twoshot; AUs
Disclaimer: The 39 Clues (c) its respective owners. Just writing some canon OTP here... Oh, yes, and the intriguing universe of 1984 (c) George Orwell.
Author's note: Hurrah for ET/AC! Yes, it is, as they say, my "OTP", so please no bashing in the reviews. Some of the answers to these prompts probably qualify as "flash fiction" or "drabbles", while others are long enough to qualify as oneshots. Notice that the summary says "twoshot". This means that those stories which don't seem to have proper conclusions - and even those that do - will all have follow-ups or conclusions in the next chapter. So please don't tell me that I need to have "an ending" for any of these, as those are forthcoming. :-) Also, the nine different universes are all from my own head, but I don't mind if you want to use them for your own devices. And yes, some of these stories involve purely platonic relationships. You don't really expect that two characters are going to get into a romance in every single world they meet in, do you?
Prompts: 1984, Art School, Fairytale, Fantasy, High School, Hollywood, Preschool, Post-Apocalyptic, Sci-Fi
Rating: K
Genre: Romance & Friendship
Characters: Evan Tolliver, Amy Cahill, others mentioned
.oOo.
1984
He's as close to a nobody as a member of the Inner Party could be, spends his nights (and a good percentage of his mornings) gliding silently through the ghostlike rows of the backs of telescreen monitors – tweak a wire here, rub away a blemish there – and returns gratefully in the afternoons to his welcoming room and comfortable cot. His life is far from fulfilling, in truth, but he does not dwell on this, for there could have been worse fates for the younger son of a once-influential family that had fallen on hard times, and after all, what better duty could he ask for? Where he is now, he is surrounded by the machinery that's so much easier to understand than his fellow Party members; where he is now, he is providing a vital service to Oceania, and in the end, that is all that matters. One day as the raucous noon bell rings, he hurries across the bleak paved square towards the door of his flat, and a chance glance aside catches a flurry of bright auburn hair and a flash of vivid green eyes – he doesn't know where he last saw such a blaze of color, nor if he's ever seen such in his life – his hand is upon the door's handle now, he turns away and leaves the oppressive wind and crowds behind him, but cannot fall to sleep as swiftly as he always does. Instead he tosses and turns and stares up at the webbing of hair-thin cracks in the plaster ceiling, and impulsively wonders, Is there more?
But what this means, he cannot explain.
Art School
His parents and his peers saw how his fingers flew nimbly across the keys of the computer, watched him code elaborate websites with what seemed to be the pressing of a few buttons, and asked him detailed questions about their electronic devices, listening raptly to the tech jargon that inevitably answered them; thus, they were more than a little surprised when he announced his desire to become an artist (in senior year, no less). But they all had the good graces not to make much out of little, and so Evan packed his bags and drove several hundred miles to Rhode Island School of Design and managed to find a niche in the community where he fit almost perfectly. He wrote flowing e-mails home each weekend if he could find the time, detailing his various experiences in and out of class; when at Christmas vacation his giggling younger sister presented him with a clear and accurate line graph of the steadily increasing times per letter he'd mentioned that auburn-haired girl with green eyes and seemingly permanent paint-freckles in all colors of the rainbow, Evan's ears turned a stunning shade of bright fuchsia.
Fairytale
On a fine summer day, John Do-Nothing sat staring up at the broken windmill.
"Hullo, John Do-Nothing," Harold Hold-Fast said as he passed by. "Come out and work in the fields with me, why don't you?"
John Do-Nothing moved not a muscle, but his eyes remained fixed upon the mill.
A little while later, John Piper walked passed, playing his pipes vigorously. "Come along, John Do-Nothing," he encouraged, ceasing his piping for a moment. "Come and play music in the town square, you old sluggard."
John Do-Nothing gazed silently at the windmill and did not acknowledge John Piper.
"Come along, John Do-Nothing," exclaimed Sarah Sparrow as she hurried past only minutes later, "you must take records of harvest amounts with me, you lazy fellow."
John Do-Nothing stared up at the broken windmill and did not reply.
"John Do-Nothing!" Clever John scolded him, prowling up from behind. "You always sit around and do nothing, you lie-abed. Get up and do something to better yourself, for the princess has declared that he whose doings return prosperity to the kingdom shall have whatever reward his heart desires."
John Do-Nothing blinked at this, it must be told, but continued to look up at the slowly turning, creaking arms of the mill. "Perhaps it could be done," he murmured to himself at length, and with an effort, roused himself from his recline and began to draw upon the ground with his fingers, creating a most intricate design in the dust.
Fantasy
The mare pirouetted on its hind legs, half-rearing as it snorted and champed at the bit, white streaks of foam splattering its dappled coat as it fought frantically to rid itself of its rider and flee. Hands moving swiftly and surely over the reins, seemingly everywhere at once – patting the mare's neck, guiding it first to the right side and then to the left with barely a touch of the reins, and all the while the horseman murmured reassuring nothings in his mount's ear. At last the mare calmed, nostrils flaring wide and red with rushing blood, and tossed its head proudly, glancing back surreptitiously to get a proper look at the strange knight. It liked what it saw, insofar as a horse could, and its dancing feet slowed, allowing him to get a proper seat.
"There we are, Saladi," he whispered, catching his breath at last. "There's a lovely girl. Shall we away, then?"
The mare's ears swiveled backwards as it alerted, stamping a steel-gray forefoot eagerly and snorting encouragement to the young knight. Not for nothing was it said that the Ayr warhorses of the blue frostmeadows could almost perfectly understand the speech of humans.
"We're going to the cavern of the Dread King," the knight confided once he'd gotten the mare's attention properly. "If you'll take me, that is. I know I'm not Queen Aimee, but I'm going to try and fetch her home, if I can."
Saladi's ears flicked once, and the mare sprang away, galloping swiftly as though to rival the north wind.
High School
"Hey, Ames," he greeted her, sliding into the desk in front of her, already turning to look over the back of the seat. As usual, he was met by the cover of a book, and as usual, it was lowered in about five seconds.
"Hi, Evan." She swept a hand across her forehead, brushing a few stray strands of auburn hair away from her eyes. "So, the algebra test killed me. But of course you aced it."
He shrugged noncommittally. "Nah. I had some trouble with the third one, actually. Not sure if I got it right." Changing the subject – he knows she hates talking about math almost as much as she despises actually doing it – he tapped her book and said conversationally, "I thought you said you'd never read Twilight."
"I didn't know you listened to me talk about books," she replied playfully, grinning.
"Well, you ranted enough about this one…" He raised his eyebrows, and she laughs.
"Well, it's nice to know you care about something besides your little machine dissections, Evan Tolliver."
"It's nice to know you know I care," he hazarded.
Again, she laughed. "Oh, Evan. Yes, you're a very caring person. You know," she added as an afterthought, "Hannah asked me when we were making it official. I told her we had nothing to make official."
"Yeah, just friends, right?" The warning bell rang sharply as he nudged her hand with his, playfully. "Friend zoned from day one, Ian Kabra, friendship's more fun – huh?" He was smiling as he said it, and she rolled her eyes as she answered cheerfully.
"Well, yes, but I didn't tell all of that to Hannah. I know that she's convinced we'll get together sooner or later, but hey, like you said – friendships are more fun. Catch me calling Ian at one in the morning on July 14 with an extra ticket to Deathly Hallows part 2 and forcing him to come with me to the midnight premiere that night, right?"
"And of course, you call me and force me to come instead, and I only watch the movies," he mock-lamented, sketching quotation marks in the air with his hands.
"Someday I'll make you read those books," she threatened, shoving Twilight into her bag; he grinned and shook his head overdramatically as the bell rang.
Hollywood
For all that he'd fiercely desired to edit films to his heart's content, the slight young man was sadly inexperienced in the matter of discovering movie stars in his midst; thus, he ended up having a casual coffee and donuts with a lovely girl he'd happened to meet on one of his rare excursions to a nearby park, and never understood the customers' staring.
"It was nice getting to know you, Amy," he told her quite earnestly and naively when they parted outside of the little shop. "Would you like to meet up again – er, would Friday night be fine?"
She cast him a shining smile, eyes aglow. "Friday night sounds great to me."
Preschool
Evan bit his lip and glanced towards the corner quickly. Amy was standing there, talking to Nellie, who was in time-out again. It was true that Nellie was one of the tallest girls in class, and she was really loud, but she was friends with Amy, and Evan was friends with Amy, so when Nellie was in time-out and Amy was sad, Evan didn't feel very good either.
He looked over at the time-out corner again – Amy and Nellie were playing blocks, Nellie still in the time-out chair, Amy crawling around and getting blocks for them. It looked like Dan and Jake were helping to get a few blocks, too. Evan wanted Amy to come and play with him, but like their teacher said, they were supposed to take turns playing with each other. The little boy pushed his glasses up on his nose as they started to slide down, and looked back at the toy telephone that he held securely between his knees. He pressed a few buttons, delighted at the beeping noises.
The sounds soon got boring, though, and Evan decided that he would pretend to call Amy with his phone. That was something that everyone liked to play together sometimes – they would take turns calling each other on the telephone, and use the big rectangle blocks for pretend cell phones. Maybe Amy was having too much fun over there with Nellie and Dan and Jake to play with him right now, but he thought he would try to call her.
"Amy!" he shouted as he picked up the phone from the receiver and put it on his ear. "Amy, I'm calling you!"
Amy looked up from where she and Jake were talking about where to put one of the skinny yellow cylinder blocks and waved happily at Evan with the hand that wasn't holding a block. "Okay! Just a second!" she shouted, and quickly set the block down on top of the building that she was making. Then she scrambled away from Dan and Jake, picked up a rectangle block that nobody was using, and said loudly, "Hi, Evan, and how are you today?"
Post-Apocalyptic
They stood huddled in a group, now past the phase of stunned gazing at the wreckage of their world that had taken hold of them as they emerged, blinking, from the shelter. The air carried an unnatural chill, but the crispness that it should have also held was tainted with gritty smoke. Evan could feel it clogging his throat with every breath he took, and, obeying a far-distant memory that now almost seemed a dream, pulled up his t-shirt to cover his face and breathed through that. He saw that many of the others had done the same. One girl standing at the edge of the group had not – face pale, white-gray with ash, she still stood staring bleakly at the devastation around her, auburn hair blowing into her face seeming crimson against the dull hues of all else.
"Hey – you okay?" he asked numbly, shuffling a few steps to stand a few feet away from her.
She opened her eyes – they were a vibrant blue-green, wide and shining, like nothing he'd ever seen before – and gave him an appraising glance, then said simply, "My brother's out here."
And since there was nothing else Evan could do, he moved closer to the strange girl, reached out, and gave her a brief one-armed hug, his right hand grasping her shoulder. She buried her face in his jacket, but didn't cry, and when he let go she said bluntly, "I don't even know you." And then, almost shyly, she took his hand in hers and said quietly, sincerely, "Thanks."
Sci-fi
"I'm holding down the fort for now," he shouted in the general direction of the audicom, "but it would be really nice if you guys could get somebody down here to help out!" Evan pirouetted quite suddenly and, with a carefully aimed blow from the hefty prod, took off the head of one of the arktor that had managed to force their way through the force fields. There was a hollow thud and a splatter of white blood.
"Doctor Tolliver!" the audicom was protesting, its tinny tones barely decipherable amidst the chaotic screeches and clicks of the arktor. "Doctor Tolliver, we really do need more details – "
"No time for details!" Evan gasped, batting away a juvenile arktor with a lucky stroke of the prod and grasping in vain for the little communication device that lay just out of reach. "Send someone, I don't know, a Special or anything, I just need – "
And then he had the spectacular luck of swiping the audicom off of the table with an accidentally overenthusiastic flourish of the prod. It hit the cement floor with a loud clack and promptly broke to pieces. Evan allowed himself a fraction of a second to mentally chastise whatever idiot had invented that, then leaped back into battle as heroically as a skinny young man with too-big glasses who had failed SimGym twice possibly could, brandishing the prod.