Dear Readers,

Since I am constantly plagued with random plotbunnies, I decided to write a series of drabbles, each one relating to a word starting with the corresponding letter of the alphabet. This way, I can get out a bunch of said random plotbunnies without feeling like I need to turn them into full-length fics. None of them really relate to each other and they all take place at different points in time with different characters. Hence, the "random" plotbunny thing...anyway, each installment will have four random drabbles (except for the last one, which will only have Y and Z). I hope you enjoy :)

Best regards from a Bookworm (and obsessive Tesla fan),

Miss Pookamonga ;-P

26 Pieces

A: Age

She is so accustomed to being over a century old that the issue of her age hardly concerns her anymore. But there are occasions when she will suddenly pause from her work and gaze idly out her office window, surveying the gloomy patchwork quilt of smog-drenched concrete edifices and dust-covered metal vehicles below her, and ponder upon the fact that she is one of only three people she knows on earth who can still vividly remember the days when the world was still made of cobblestone, brick, horses, and buggies. But it's not merely this fact that terrifies her so much that her heart transforms into a piston of raging fury. It is what it implies that frightens her more. She should be dead. She should have died long ago, her flesh and bone entombed in a somber wooden box and interred beneath piles of upturned dirt, her memory forever enshrined within faded photographs and petty trinkets. Her history, buried among the lost archives of the past. Yet she is still here, standing on her own two feet, her pounding heart pumping warm blood into her veins, her aching lungs gulping in the air around her. She is still here, well and alive, and as young as she was all those years ago. She is a living ghost, a ghost from a past that has been long-forgotten by modern society. A ghost who cannot vanish from the world of the living… because the world of the living refuses to release her.

B: Birth

It startles her to see the tiny child, wrapped up in a cozy blanket and sleeping soundly in the crook of her arms. It is like looking through a window to the past while remaining firmly grounded in the present—seeing the blurred images of someone who was within the young face of a newborn. It seems so unreal that this child is truly his, the product of a glorious disaster that occurred more than one hundred years ago. Terrifying, tragic, and yet miraculous all at the same time. She can see his smile in that miniature face, she can hear his voice in every small breath, she can feel his whole life encapsulated within that tiny heartbeat. It's him and it isn't him. It's heart-wrenching and heart-warming. It speaks of both love and hate, attraction and revulsion. Her daughter is the incarnation of the very paradox that has dominated her life for so long, and she can only help but wonder if she really has the capacity to love someone that reminds her far too much of a past she still is at a loss to understand.

C: Change

His life has been completely turned on its head since his first encounter with Helen Magnus. Well, his second encounter, really. It still shocks him to think that the woman who protected him from that creature all those years ago was her…the same woman whom he now works for, the same woman who now relies upon him, no longer a frightened child,to provide her with invaluable information on those she calls "abnormals". And even after over a century and a half of life, she has hardly changed at all--at least in physical appearance, that is. He can't even begin to fathom what her existence has been like. The world surrounding her has metamorphosed time and time again while she has remained untouched by time and age, watching those bound to the number of their days gradually wither away to make room for new eras. How does it feel, he wonders, to look on as everyone and everything changes—except you? He can't wrap his mind around it. His own life has changed so much in a matter of months, and he along with it. Months ago, before that fateful rainy night, he wouldn't have even dreamed of ever doing something of great worth or purpose. He was the failure, the crazy shrink whom everyone involved in his or her affairs only out of pity. The worthless orphan who had no real family to call his own, who was shuffled from foster home to foster home like a stray dog nobody really wanted until he was finally thrust out into the real world to fend for himself. He had been the "nobody" for all his life, but that chance encounter had opened a door, a door out of which had stepped a woman who had seen more in him than he could ever hope to see. Who had seen potential. It had been the first time anyone had ever given him some kind of merit, who had actually needed him. And now, because of Dr. Helen Magnus' uncanny ability to envision glorious futures for those who had none, he is a changed man, a man who actually believes that he is in fact worth something…who can in fact be the person he's dreamed of being for far too many years. And for that alone, he knows he owes Magnus his life.

D: Desire

He watches her sleep, her small gasps of breath rising and falling steadily beneath the bedcovers. In the back of his already clouded mind, he knows he shouldn't be here standing in her room and leaning precariously over her bedside, suppressing the unquenchable urge to reach out and touch her. But his desire for her has evolved from the tiny flame flickering deep within the cavernous depths of his hollow soul into a rampant inferno incinerating any ounce of good sense left hidden beneath his shadows. No one can restrain this wild creature screaming to be let free, nothing can quell its perpetual thirst for the unbridled passion that fuels it. Nothing, no one…except her. He draws in a sharp breath of air, relishing in the sweet scent of her perfume as its remaining aroma wafts up from her slumbering body. Suddenly, he cannot contain himself any longer. He hastily sits down upon the bed and lifts a hand to stroke the porcelain skin on the side of her face, brushing a golden curl aside. The sensation of the softness of her cheek rubbing smoothly against his rough thumb is more thrilling than he could have ever imagined—but it is not enough. He trails his fingers down her neck, drinking in moment as the sensation of her skin touching his feeds the fire within him. He allows his fingers to linger on her throat as his eyes bore intently into the spot, inspecting it closely as if she is a specimen to be studied in a laboratory. He presses his thumb gently against it as she swallows, feeling her throat rise up and dip down before it settles once more. There is something so delicate about this part of her body, he realizes. So beautiful and yet so exposed, so…vulnerable…

There is a sudden whimper from the sleeping figure, who begins to stir beneath her blankets. A wave of panic sweeps over him and he quickly jumps away from her, terrified that she might wake to find him there. But before she does, he disappears in a flash, leaving the room as empty and as silent as it was before his visit.

It is not the first time he has come and left like this.

Nor will it be the last.