Winter Bingo: Card Three, Column Five
Equals
Prompt: wise men
Time Period: Post-"Secundus"
Notes: A quick piece that popped into my head after studying the prompt. Victor mentioned (to himself) in Chapter 5 of "Secundus" how inadequate he felt talking science with the others – I decided it was worth exploring. Plus, this was another chance to use Doc in one of these stories. Poor guy needed more airtime, so to speak.
“I used to feel a bit inadequate around you sometimes.”
Doc looked up in surprise. Victor was leaning over the case of the Deep-Thinking Mind-Reading Helmet (Work in Progress), looking rather embarrassed. “You did?” Doc replied, frowning. This was a rather unpleasant confession for Victor to make. “I always did my best to treat you as an equal.”
“I know – it wasn’t anything to do with you, really,” Victor assured him. “I felt the same around Richard and Sir Christopher and – L-Lewis. Anyone who was Touched, a-actually.”
Doc straightened up, deciding his maintenance on the wiring of the main console wasn’t quite as important as this conversation. “Why?”
Victor half-smiled, looking even more embarrassed now. “Because I thought I could never match up to you in intelligence. Do you remember the first tea party of Richard and March’s that I attended? When the talk started to veer toward my interest in butterflies, I immediately wondered what right I had to talk science with you and the others. After all, I was nothing more than a hobbyist entomologist.”
“That wouldn’t have made a difference to us,” Doc told him firmly. “We love talking science no matter the skill level. And it’s not like many of us have all that much formal experience. I know for a fact Richard never attended university.”
“I know, I just – you must know I have a bit of a p-problem when it comes to self-esteem,” Victor said, blushing.
Doc scowled as various unpleasant memories involving Victor’s parents popped into his head. “I do indeed.” Pushing the dark thoughts away, he regarded his friend curiously. “Why bring this up now?”
“Well – it just occurred to me that, if you’d asked my younger self if he’d ever feel like the mental equal of any of my Touched friends, he probably would have burst out laughing.”
Doc smiled. “Is he happy to have been proven wrong?”
Victor grinned back, looking ever-so-slightly mad. “I believe he is.”
Be A Man
Prompt: coming of age
Time Period: Post-"Secundus," around the time of the wedding
Notes: I was in a wedding mood at the time of this fic (watching "Say Yes To The Dress" while on the treadmill will do that to a person), so after examining this prompt for a bit, I decided to try and relate it to Victor and Alice's wedding. After a moment, the initial idea of "Victor doesn't feel ready before Secundus, but he does after because of his experiences there" popped up. It took me a bit to get the proper feel for what I wanted to say, though. This was trickier than expected. (And I may sympathize with him a little, being (at the time) a 24-year-old attending college while living with my parents. Though I do pay rent, admittedly.) And yes, the Mulan song inspired the title.
When his parents told him that he was going to marry Miss Victoria Everglot in January, Victor’s first reaction was panic. Married? How on earth could his parents expect him to get married? He was only nineteen! Yes, all right, that technically qualified him for “manhood,” whatever that might be. He was certainly no longer a child. But – but he didn’t feel like a real adult yet. He’d never held a job, never paid a bill – he was still living with his parents, for God’s sake! Not to mention he’d never even had a girlfriend. Girls made him nervous, frankly. How could Mother and Father expect him to go from this to supporting a wife? His frightened protests that he wasn’t ready went unheard however, and Victor spent the next few weeks alternately hoping that the wedding would make him feel more grown up, and dreading what would happen if it didn’t.
Then Doc Brown and his flying steam train appeared on the scene, and Victor was whisked away to Secundus. At first, he saw it merely as a chance to have an adventure and avoid the terrifying specter of arranged marriage. But as time went on, he began to see it as an opportunity to live his own life and perhaps start growing up for real. He had a job – a simple one, but it was still a job. He was responsible for anything he wanted to buy, having to pay his own way (more or less) in the world. And, as time passed, he even got his first girlfriend in the form of Alice Liddell. Feeling better about this whole business of becoming an adult, Victor started to make plans for the future – perhaps finding a flat of his own one day, or taking his turn at creating something fantastic like his Touched friends. And he made a promise to himself to try and experience everything the city had to offer.
Of course, he ended up experiencing quite a bit more than he’d expected. After going a bit Creative, defeating the Queen of Hearts, and pulling the shattered remains of his sanity back from the brink of oblivion, he felt he’d changed a lot inside. He felt stronger. More mature. More – adult. So, shortly after he turned twenty, he decided he was ready for what had scared him so much when he was nineteen.
And as he kissed Alice in the First Church of Steam, in front of their cheering family and friends, he truly felt like a man.
Out-Stubborning Nell
Prompt: donkey
Time Period: Between Chapter 6 and Chapter 15 of "Secundus"
Notes: I initially worried about what I could do for this prompt. Then I remembered the phrase "stubborn as a mule" and decided donkeys were close enough. (Later the phrase "stubborn ass" popped into my head. . . .) If it seems like I hate Victor's parents – yeah, I rather do. Nell in particular. Let's face it – we have evidence in canon that she's emotionally abusive. (And the Everglots are just as bad – no wonder canon Victor and Victoria hit it off so well.)
Victor slammed the door behind him, then immediately felt guilty as four heads popped out from the aisles to see what the noise was. “Sorry, that was rude of me,” he called out in apology.
Marty, standing at the counter, frowned at him. “That’s not like you,” he noted. “What happened? You were all happy when you went out.”
“Mother,” Victor groaned. “I bumped into her and Father on the street, and immediately she started going on about the shame I’m bringing to the family and how can I associate with ‘such people’ and how I need to come home right away, and Father just kept nodding along. . . .”
Marty shook his head, looking stunned. “She just does not give up, does she? I’ve met donkeys less stubborn than her. And I lived in the American West – I knew my fair share of donkeys.”
“She’s just very – determined,” Victor said, rubbing his forehead. “She knows what she wants, and she won’t rest until she gets it. I’ve seen her like this before.” He groaned. “Maybe I should act like I’m brainwashed. She might eventually come to the conclusion I can’t be ‘fixed’ then and leave me alone.”
“I dunno, Victor,” Marty said. “I don’t think this is going to end until you finally cave or one of you dies.”
Victor couldn’t help but nod. “She thinks I’ll give in,” he admitted softly. “It’s what I’ve done before, more or less. I hate confrontation, and I hate making her upset. It would certainly be easier to give in.”
“But you’re not, right?” Marty asked, starting to sound a little worried.
Victor stiffened his spine. “No. This is different. I’m tired of never standing up for what I want, and this – this is more important than anything before.” Trying to sound hopeful, he added, “And if I’ve held out this long, it’s obvious I’ve inherited at least a little of her stubbornness.”
Marty nodded. “Yeah. Let’s just hope you got enough.”
Slipping And A’Sliding
Prompt: black ice
Time Period: Anytime in "Secundus" before Chapter 10 (aka when Victor and Alice start dating)
Notes: My initial conception for this prompt was a darker fic involving a carriage accident, but I decided I'd had enough of that with the last card and decided for this brief comedy piece instead. The inspiration was an incident with ice one of my other Victors, deadgirlsliekme, had while trying to help a friend in his old game (trying to rescue her from an icy spot, he slipped and fell over himself), and one of Alice's idle animations with the Ice Wand in "American McGee's Alice" (she freezes a patch of ground, tests it, slips, and falls on her bum). The title is from a tune I know I heard in a commercial at some point, but I can't remember which.
“Now then, what would you – whoa!”
Victor suddenly found the left side of his body trying to go in a different direction from his right. He scrambled to try and keep his feet, slipping and sliding dangerously. A glance down revealed he’d managed to step on a patch of nearly invisible ice. “Oh! Oh dear – aah!”
“Victor!” Alice grabbed his arm to try and steady him. “Stand still – if you can, that is. . .maybe you should lift that foot–”
Before Victor could even think of doing that, though, said foot shot out from under him, pulling him – and thus Alice – to the ground. They landed in a tangled heap, Alice on top. “Oh! I am s-so sorry,” Victor said, embarrassed beyond belief. “Are y-you all right?”
“Fine,” Alice assured him, pulling herself up and leaning over him. Victor found himself vaguely grateful he’d been there to cushion her fall. “This is far from the worst tumble I’ve taken. Are you all right?”
“I think so.” Victor did his best to ignore the warmth of her body against his and did a quick check. “Leg hurts a bit, but it’s not broken or anything like that.”
“Just landed on it wrong? I’m not surprised,” Alice said. “Here, let’s get ourselves up.”
They disentangled themselves and regained their feet, being extra careful not to step on that frozen patch of sidewalk again. Victor dusted himself off, not looking at her. Why did these things have to happen to him? Especially when he was out with a gi – a friend? “I am sorry about that,” he apologized as Alice fixed her skirts. “I g-genuinely d-didn’t see that ice.”
“It’s fine. Accidents happen.”
“S-still, I wish I weren’t so clumsy.”
“Oh, everyone’s clumsy on the ice.” Alice looked up at him with a chuckle. “Let me tell you about the first time I tried out the Ice Wand. . . .”
Made In Their Image
Prompt: glowing
Time Period: Shortly after "Secundus"
Notes:Okay, yeah, I'm sure you can guess what this ficlet's all about. To be fair, the prompt IS "glowing." It took me a day or so to figure out just how to build the story around the butterflies, however. The Essex Skipper and Duke of Burgundy are real species of European butterfly – don't you just love the names they give these creatures?
Victor loved butterflies, there was no question about that. He adored every single type, from the Essex Skipper to the Duke of Burgundy. He even loved their usually drab cousins the moths. He could find something beautiful and wonderful in any species from Lepidoptera.
His affection was expressed in a number of different ways throughout the years. As a child, he simply chased them and tried to catch them in jars, fascinated by their pretty colors and ability to fly. As a young man, he progressed to studying them, devouring books on the various types, producing detailed sketches of captured specimens, and quietly dreaming of a career in lepidoptery. And as a Touched. . . .
Well, as a Touched, he made his own butterflies to love. From the bread-and-butterflies he bred for the reconstruction of Wonderland Park, to the clockwork butterfly he made at Doc’s lab, to the giant riding butterfly he named Ferdinand, Victor Created and adored them all.
But, even with those fantastic creatures to his credit, his favorites would always be a rather simple variation on the butterfly – the results of his very first project after gaining a hold on the madness. After all, he would tell people, they were technically the creatures that had ushered him, slowly but surely, into the realms of Touched-dom. He owed them a debt of gratitude.
And besides, glowing butterflies looked beautiful against the night sky.
Prompt: wise men
Time Period: Post-"Secundus"
Notes: A quick piece that popped into my head after studying the prompt. Victor mentioned (to himself) in Chapter 5 of "Secundus" how inadequate he felt talking science with the others – I decided it was worth exploring. Plus, this was another chance to use Doc in one of these stories. Poor guy needed more airtime, so to speak.
“I used to feel a bit inadequate around you sometimes.”
Doc looked up in surprise. Victor was leaning over the case of the Deep-Thinking Mind-Reading Helmet (Work in Progress), looking rather embarrassed. “You did?” Doc replied, frowning. This was a rather unpleasant confession for Victor to make. “I always did my best to treat you as an equal.”
“I know – it wasn’t anything to do with you, really,” Victor assured him. “I felt the same around Richard and Sir Christopher and – L-Lewis. Anyone who was Touched, a-actually.”
Doc straightened up, deciding his maintenance on the wiring of the main console wasn’t quite as important as this conversation. “Why?”
Victor half-smiled, looking even more embarrassed now. “Because I thought I could never match up to you in intelligence. Do you remember the first tea party of Richard and March’s that I attended? When the talk started to veer toward my interest in butterflies, I immediately wondered what right I had to talk science with you and the others. After all, I was nothing more than a hobbyist entomologist.”
“That wouldn’t have made a difference to us,” Doc told him firmly. “We love talking science no matter the skill level. And it’s not like many of us have all that much formal experience. I know for a fact Richard never attended university.”
“I know, I just – you must know I have a bit of a p-problem when it comes to self-esteem,” Victor said, blushing.
Doc scowled as various unpleasant memories involving Victor’s parents popped into his head. “I do indeed.” Pushing the dark thoughts away, he regarded his friend curiously. “Why bring this up now?”
“Well – it just occurred to me that, if you’d asked my younger self if he’d ever feel like the mental equal of any of my Touched friends, he probably would have burst out laughing.”
Doc smiled. “Is he happy to have been proven wrong?”
Victor grinned back, looking ever-so-slightly mad. “I believe he is.”
Be A Man
Prompt: coming of age
Time Period: Post-"Secundus," around the time of the wedding
Notes: I was in a wedding mood at the time of this fic (watching "Say Yes To The Dress" while on the treadmill will do that to a person), so after examining this prompt for a bit, I decided to try and relate it to Victor and Alice's wedding. After a moment, the initial idea of "Victor doesn't feel ready before Secundus, but he does after because of his experiences there" popped up. It took me a bit to get the proper feel for what I wanted to say, though. This was trickier than expected. (And I may sympathize with him a little, being (at the time) a 24-year-old attending college while living with my parents. Though I do pay rent, admittedly.) And yes, the Mulan song inspired the title.
When his parents told him that he was going to marry Miss Victoria Everglot in January, Victor’s first reaction was panic. Married? How on earth could his parents expect him to get married? He was only nineteen! Yes, all right, that technically qualified him for “manhood,” whatever that might be. He was certainly no longer a child. But – but he didn’t feel like a real adult yet. He’d never held a job, never paid a bill – he was still living with his parents, for God’s sake! Not to mention he’d never even had a girlfriend. Girls made him nervous, frankly. How could Mother and Father expect him to go from this to supporting a wife? His frightened protests that he wasn’t ready went unheard however, and Victor spent the next few weeks alternately hoping that the wedding would make him feel more grown up, and dreading what would happen if it didn’t.
Then Doc Brown and his flying steam train appeared on the scene, and Victor was whisked away to Secundus. At first, he saw it merely as a chance to have an adventure and avoid the terrifying specter of arranged marriage. But as time went on, he began to see it as an opportunity to live his own life and perhaps start growing up for real. He had a job – a simple one, but it was still a job. He was responsible for anything he wanted to buy, having to pay his own way (more or less) in the world. And, as time passed, he even got his first girlfriend in the form of Alice Liddell. Feeling better about this whole business of becoming an adult, Victor started to make plans for the future – perhaps finding a flat of his own one day, or taking his turn at creating something fantastic like his Touched friends. And he made a promise to himself to try and experience everything the city had to offer.
Of course, he ended up experiencing quite a bit more than he’d expected. After going a bit Creative, defeating the Queen of Hearts, and pulling the shattered remains of his sanity back from the brink of oblivion, he felt he’d changed a lot inside. He felt stronger. More mature. More – adult. So, shortly after he turned twenty, he decided he was ready for what had scared him so much when he was nineteen.
And as he kissed Alice in the First Church of Steam, in front of their cheering family and friends, he truly felt like a man.
Out-Stubborning Nell
Prompt: donkey
Time Period: Between Chapter 6 and Chapter 15 of "Secundus"
Notes: I initially worried about what I could do for this prompt. Then I remembered the phrase "stubborn as a mule" and decided donkeys were close enough. (Later the phrase "stubborn ass" popped into my head. . . .) If it seems like I hate Victor's parents – yeah, I rather do. Nell in particular. Let's face it – we have evidence in canon that she's emotionally abusive. (And the Everglots are just as bad – no wonder canon Victor and Victoria hit it off so well.)
Victor slammed the door behind him, then immediately felt guilty as four heads popped out from the aisles to see what the noise was. “Sorry, that was rude of me,” he called out in apology.
Marty, standing at the counter, frowned at him. “That’s not like you,” he noted. “What happened? You were all happy when you went out.”
“Mother,” Victor groaned. “I bumped into her and Father on the street, and immediately she started going on about the shame I’m bringing to the family and how can I associate with ‘such people’ and how I need to come home right away, and Father just kept nodding along. . . .”
Marty shook his head, looking stunned. “She just does not give up, does she? I’ve met donkeys less stubborn than her. And I lived in the American West – I knew my fair share of donkeys.”
“She’s just very – determined,” Victor said, rubbing his forehead. “She knows what she wants, and she won’t rest until she gets it. I’ve seen her like this before.” He groaned. “Maybe I should act like I’m brainwashed. She might eventually come to the conclusion I can’t be ‘fixed’ then and leave me alone.”
“I dunno, Victor,” Marty said. “I don’t think this is going to end until you finally cave or one of you dies.”
Victor couldn’t help but nod. “She thinks I’ll give in,” he admitted softly. “It’s what I’ve done before, more or less. I hate confrontation, and I hate making her upset. It would certainly be easier to give in.”
“But you’re not, right?” Marty asked, starting to sound a little worried.
Victor stiffened his spine. “No. This is different. I’m tired of never standing up for what I want, and this – this is more important than anything before.” Trying to sound hopeful, he added, “And if I’ve held out this long, it’s obvious I’ve inherited at least a little of her stubbornness.”
Marty nodded. “Yeah. Let’s just hope you got enough.”
Slipping And A’Sliding
Prompt: black ice
Time Period: Anytime in "Secundus" before Chapter 10 (aka when Victor and Alice start dating)
Notes: My initial conception for this prompt was a darker fic involving a carriage accident, but I decided I'd had enough of that with the last card and decided for this brief comedy piece instead. The inspiration was an incident with ice one of my other Victors, deadgirlsliekme, had while trying to help a friend in his old game (trying to rescue her from an icy spot, he slipped and fell over himself), and one of Alice's idle animations with the Ice Wand in "American McGee's Alice" (she freezes a patch of ground, tests it, slips, and falls on her bum). The title is from a tune I know I heard in a commercial at some point, but I can't remember which.
“Now then, what would you – whoa!”
Victor suddenly found the left side of his body trying to go in a different direction from his right. He scrambled to try and keep his feet, slipping and sliding dangerously. A glance down revealed he’d managed to step on a patch of nearly invisible ice. “Oh! Oh dear – aah!”
“Victor!” Alice grabbed his arm to try and steady him. “Stand still – if you can, that is. . .maybe you should lift that foot–”
Before Victor could even think of doing that, though, said foot shot out from under him, pulling him – and thus Alice – to the ground. They landed in a tangled heap, Alice on top. “Oh! I am s-so sorry,” Victor said, embarrassed beyond belief. “Are y-you all right?”
“Fine,” Alice assured him, pulling herself up and leaning over him. Victor found himself vaguely grateful he’d been there to cushion her fall. “This is far from the worst tumble I’ve taken. Are you all right?”
“I think so.” Victor did his best to ignore the warmth of her body against his and did a quick check. “Leg hurts a bit, but it’s not broken or anything like that.”
“Just landed on it wrong? I’m not surprised,” Alice said. “Here, let’s get ourselves up.”
They disentangled themselves and regained their feet, being extra careful not to step on that frozen patch of sidewalk again. Victor dusted himself off, not looking at her. Why did these things have to happen to him? Especially when he was out with a gi – a friend? “I am sorry about that,” he apologized as Alice fixed her skirts. “I g-genuinely d-didn’t see that ice.”
“It’s fine. Accidents happen.”
“S-still, I wish I weren’t so clumsy.”
“Oh, everyone’s clumsy on the ice.” Alice looked up at him with a chuckle. “Let me tell you about the first time I tried out the Ice Wand. . . .”
Made In Their Image
Prompt: glowing
Time Period: Shortly after "Secundus"
Notes:Okay, yeah, I'm sure you can guess what this ficlet's all about. To be fair, the prompt IS "glowing." It took me a day or so to figure out just how to build the story around the butterflies, however. The Essex Skipper and Duke of Burgundy are real species of European butterfly – don't you just love the names they give these creatures?
Victor loved butterflies, there was no question about that. He adored every single type, from the Essex Skipper to the Duke of Burgundy. He even loved their usually drab cousins the moths. He could find something beautiful and wonderful in any species from Lepidoptera.
His affection was expressed in a number of different ways throughout the years. As a child, he simply chased them and tried to catch them in jars, fascinated by their pretty colors and ability to fly. As a young man, he progressed to studying them, devouring books on the various types, producing detailed sketches of captured specimens, and quietly dreaming of a career in lepidoptery. And as a Touched. . . .
Well, as a Touched, he made his own butterflies to love. From the bread-and-butterflies he bred for the reconstruction of Wonderland Park, to the clockwork butterfly he made at Doc’s lab, to the giant riding butterfly he named Ferdinand, Victor Created and adored them all.
But, even with those fantastic creatures to his credit, his favorites would always be a rather simple variation on the butterfly – the results of his very first project after gaining a hold on the madness. After all, he would tell people, they were technically the creatures that had ushered him, slowly but surely, into the realms of Touched-dom. He owed them a debt of gratitude.
And besides, glowing butterflies looked beautiful against the night sky.