rionaleonhart: kingdom hearts: riku, blindfolded and smiling slightly. (we'll be the darkness)
Riona ([personal profile] rionaleonhart) wrote2017-06-30 12:12 pm

You Never Really Get Out Of Silent Hill.

A worrying thought: how many of my favourite character types can be traced back to James Sunderland of Silent Hill 2? I love characters who make terrible mistakes and are overcome by self-loathing, characters trying to atone for things that can't ever be undone, characters who undergo horrible experiences they'll never recover from or be believed about, characters who can't trust their own perception of reality. And I follow all those threads back, wondering when I first developed these preferences, and they all take me to James Sunderland, all-time champion of the World's Worst Husband competition.

Mike Munroe of Until Dawn falls into three of these four character types (all four in a couple of fics where I kick in his perception of reality: Alone Together, Wrong Road Home) and, moreover, wears a James Sunderland-esque heavy green jacket for most of the game. It's no wonder I like him so much. If it's any consolation, Mike, you are at least a slightly better person.

Here is a small handful of Until Dawn ficlets, most written anonymously for drabble challenges on [community profile] fail_fandomanon, all focusing on Mike and Sam.



Until Dawn, 100 words, prompt: comfort bathing

“I’m going to have a bath.”

Mike nods. “Guess I’ll make my way home, then.”

“Wait,” Sam says. “Can you...” Is she going to ask this? “Can you watch me?”

There’s a pause. Mike cocks his head. “Can I watch you bathe?

“Or just be in the room,” she says. “You know, last time I had a bath, it... didn’t go so well.”

Mike winces. “You’re not back there, you know? You’re safe.”

“You don’t have to be there. I just thought I’d ask.”

“No, I want to,” he says, too quickly, and then, “Uh. I mean, I don’t mind.”



Until Dawn, 100 words, prompt: long-distance

Clattering. Mike’s dropped the phone. “Sam?

“Hey.”

“I thought...”

He thought she was dead. She’d have thought the same. Everyone seems so fragile after you lose six friends in one night.

“Sorry,” Sam says. “I had to get away.” From everything: concern, media, therapy. Mike, and the memories he brings up. It seems cruel to say that.

She doesn’t know why she’s calling.

“Jesus,” Mike mutters. “Thought I was the only one left.”

“Are you going to ask me to come back?”

Mike’s quiet for a moment. “I get why you went. I just wish you’d taken me with you.”



Until Dawn/Animorphs, 100 words, prompt: fusionfic

“We can starve it out! We don’t have to kill her!”

“Emily can morph, Sam,” Mike says. “Which means the Yeerk can morph. It’ll escape. And it knows who we are. It gets away from us, we’re finished. All of us.”

“Mike,” Sam says. “It’s Emily.”

Mike flinches. “Look, we’re Earth’s only line of defence. Right? There are hard decisions—”

“Mike—”

“—there are things we have to do to keep everyone safe—”

Mike!

Mike looks at Sam for a moment, and then he lowers the gun.

“I’m so fucking glad you’re here, Sam,” he says, fervently.



Until Dawn, 300 words, prompt: Sam/Hannah

“Look, Mike, I get why you feel guilty, okay?” Sam says. (From Mike’s flinch, she suspects he’s taken that as ‘you have plenty to feel guilty about’.) “But you couldn’t have known this would happen.”

“She—” Mike gestures at Hannah’s diary. “She had to eat her sister. And now Jess is dead. Because of me. Fuck, I should just let her kill me.”

“The prank was Jess’s idea,” Sam says. “Do you think she deserved what happened to her?”

“Don’t say that. That’s not what I mean.”

“We can’t just stand around blaming ourselves. What matters is what’s happening now.”

“Easy for you to say,” Mike mutters. “You didn’t have anything to do with the prank.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t feel responsible,” Sam says. “I could have stopped it.”

Mike shrugs. “At least you tried.”

“And...” She hesitates. “I still keep thinking, maybe she’d never have ended up with that weird fixation on you if I’d never broken up with her.”

Mike stares at her for a moment. “What?”

She shakes her head. “Never mind.”

“No, what?

“You can ask me about it if we get out of this alive.”

-

She’s forgotten she’d told him about it by the time he asks, a couple of months after they get off the mountain.

“Was it true, what you said?” he asks. “About you and Hannah?”

Her name is still painful. “What, that we went out? Yeah.”

“Huh.”

A moment’s silence.

“So does that mean you’re a lesbian?”

“Hmm,” Sam says. “Let me just consider for a moment whether that’s any of your business.”

Mike clears his throat. “Well, it might be my business. In... certain specific circumstances.”

“In the very unlikely event that any of those arise,” Sam says, “I promise I’ll tell you.”



(The last one came about because a friend challenged me to write some Sam/Hannah. Their response was 'Damn it, you managed to make my ship about your ship,' which is, I'll admit, a fair accusation. It's the only thing I can write!)

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