Title: my spaceship is bigger than yours
Prompt: AU. Wally and Artemis as rival space captains.
Characters: Wally West, Artemis Crock
Words: 600
A/N: Okay, I dug into my Firefly knowledge and had a LOT of fun with this one. So much fun, in fact, that I'm working on a very long continuation of this AU. Keep an eye out for it!
~o~
He keeps looking at her, with that stupid smug grin on his face; completely out of place with his unkempt, (impossibly) red hair, torn and dirtied clothes, and tired bags under his eyes, one of which has blackened from the day before, courtesy of her own right hook.
Oh, and adding to the fact that he's contained in her ship's prison cell, with no hope of escaping, unless she was feeling really nice (which to him, she would never feel).
Yet, he keeps on grinning.
She's seen it before; the suave smile he'll send to any female, whether it be a member of his on crew, a normal civilian of a planet, or (infuriatingly enough) a member of her crew. But it's never directed towards her. Never. The looks he saves for her mirror the ones she has especially for him; glares of rivalry, eyerolls of disgust, scoffs of incredulity.
But the only time a smile comes into play, is when one of them knows they have topped the other - just like the smirk she had sent him when she had captured him.
He's up to something.
She flicks the ship over to autopilot and directs her second-in-command, and her best friend, Zatanna, to watch the helm, before she stalks over to the cell behind her and glares right at him - Wally West, captain of the infamous ship "The Flash" (really, who in their right mind calls a ship "The Flash"?), and her greatest rival in the galaxy. "Spill, West," she hisses, causing the redheaded man to raise his eyebrows and straighten up.
"Oh, I'd love to, but…" he looks around his cell, stark empty and completely dirty (she had made sure it was nice and muddied up, especially for him), "…you haven't actually given me any water or liquid to spill. Or any food for that matter. I have a fast metabolism, you know. I could starve if you don't give me any food." He raises a cocky eyebrow. "Is this really how the notorious Captain Crock treats her prisoners?"
Artemis bites back a retort about how watching him eat would make all of her crew physically ill and pushes on her main point. "No prisoner just sits there with a smirk on their face. Especially not you. What have you got planned?"
West leans forward and pushes himself to his feet, beginning to pace around the cell. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Captain." He brings his face in front of hers, and she can count every offending freckle that sits on his nose, mocking her. She opens her mouth to say more, but is cut off by a crash and a lurch of the ship. A cackle echos through the ship's loudspeaker system, and Artemis jerks her head back to look at the prison, breathing, "Robin," before the power goes out, leaving the cabin in darkness and the prison, with its containment bars reliant on electricity, rendered useless.
"Well," she hears Wally say (she can still hear the grin on his damn face!), "that's my cue." There's a scuffle of feet and another whisper right next to her ear. "We have to do this again sometime, Captain Crock. Though I'll be sure to be much more hospitable host for your visit." She whirls around to punch him again; grab him, trip him, anything, but brushes empty air, just as the ship's back-up generator switches the power back on, and she finds herself in an empty room with a smelly and dirty prison cell and seething anger.