Archive of Our Own ^beta

"It's no use, dear," Her ex-Supremeness spoke idly, picking with her nails at the vulture feathers on her dress and watching as the newcomer tried yet again to get the door open. "Believe me."

"Why should I?" Carter swung around to snap at her, big blue eyes blazing with self-righteous anger.

"Perhaps because while we're here," flicking a disdainful look around the cavernous, rather garish room, decorated in what the last... lucky inhabitant had called 1980s kitsch, and overstuffed with an assortment of items disturbing even to her hardened sensibilities. "I have no reason to lie."

"From what I've heard, you don't need a reason."

Servalan lifted one overplucked eyebrow and smiled. "And you heard this from -?"

"Friend of a friend, while he was in the other room."

"Ah." The smile soured. "And this friend is now... where?"

"Somewhere better than this, for cryin' out loud. Who does She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed think she is?" Carter, finally using the genius she was born with to realise that the door was merely painted on, thumped it once more, and sat down on an overstuffed orange vinyl pouffe decorated with fading and peeling Spice Girl decals.

"Someone who - it seems - must be obeyed. At least in this reality."

"She can't do this!!!" Tears pooled in the blue eyes - the tears of a feisty, yet utterly sensitive woman who only wept when pushed to the limit, no more than three times a week and every time she gazed adoringly at her commanding officer. Who was probably having a hell of a better time than she was. The thought made more tears well up, this time of rage.

"If I find out he and Daniel and Robert Blasted Rothman are somewhere nicer than this..."

"Of course they are, you idiot." Servalan's brittle composure cracked as she stared at a black velvet wall hanging painted with luridly coloured Sinatras. "This is the place She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed stores everything she doesn't like. Everything." She glared at a row of blow-up synthetic Billy Ray Cyruses, who glared synthetically back. "Though how anyone with taste could like that fool O'Neill - or prefer Jenna Stannis's cheap charms to mine - is beyond comprehension."

"It's - not - fair!" Carter kicked three footballs, a football player or two, and James Kirk's head out of the way. "Why doesn't She like me? I'm every bit as bright as Daniel or that Sandburg guy -"

"Though, we must admit, not quite as..." Servalan rolled the word distastefully around her tongue, "cute."

"I am every bit as cute as Daniel!" The wail of fury hit a dangerously high decibel, and a stuffed... something that had been pretty horrible when alive toppled and fell at her feet. A NewWho Alien, by the looks of it.

"But not Sandburg."

That was hard to argue with - few things inside this overstuffed skull that was their world were as cute as Sandburg - and Sam huffed, kicked Kirk's head again, and thought about sulking. "The Colonel likes me better, it's canon."

"My dear woman, I do understand." Servalan's lips curled. "But look on the bright side, at least She lets you out when she wants to play with them - you're," she spoke condescendingly, "part of the team."

"The part of the team that gets sent offworld to assess the military uses of dinosaur dung and then ignored for the whole 100 pages!!!"

Servalan looked slightly ill. "She perpetrated 100 pages of your O'Neill?"

Carter looked wounded. "What's wrong with the Colonel?"

"Oh, no dear, he's handsome enough but... let's just say that military men seldom have the finesse I insist on."

Thinking on the military man Her Ex-Supremeness was linked with - oh god, that Travis! - Carter found that just as hard to argue with, so she gave the head a third kick, then threw a Precious Moments figure - that looked suspiciously like a bald, blue-skinned alien - at a 7th Heaven dartboard. "Anyway, it wasn't 100 pages of the Colonel, it was mostly Sandburg and Ellison, because She plays favourites. The Colonel was just - around quite a bit."

"I see. And you -?"

"Oh, that time I was sent out to buy kitty litter for Ellison's imaginary jaguar right at the start and spent the whole time in the OutofSightOutofMind Place." Both women cringed. "Which is worse than here, I guess. At least there's... something here, even if it's all stuff She doesn't like." She huffed again. "Including us."

"And me," Kirk's head said feebly.

"You should be grateful. The only times I get out of here is when She wants death and destruction. I never have the time to seduce anyone before expiring messily and finding myself back here. Ridiculous, really, Avon and his... Blake never have to follow canon and die, I have to do it for them..."

"You could always refuse."

One thin eyebrow lifted again.

"Okay, you can't."

"It could be worse. Before you came there was this repellent fool who called himself - what was it? - ah yes, Joxer." Servalan grimaced "I had no choice but to kill him."

"Kill - how could you?"

"Quite easily, She doesn't like guns so there are always some around here."

"But -"

"Of course, I then had to kill him another seventeen times before She finally forgot his existence and he finally disappeared."

Carter wondered briefly where anyone went when She forgot them... and decided she didn't want to know. There were worse places than...

Her gaze fell on a stuffed and mounted Jar Jar Binks.

Or maybe there weren't.

"Presumably," Her Ex-Supremeness said, slowly and carefully shredding the last of the garish, overcoloured AnywhereandEveywhere Idol pictures, then watching them reform as loud and gaudy as ever, "there is a She Who Must Be Obeyed... somewhere... who prefers my charms to Blake's rather dubious appeal. And who sees your place as with your Colonel, for better or... best."

"And likes real romance."

"Scheming political brilliance -"

"Kick-ass women rather than cute geeks -"

"And who simply adores James T Kirk." Both women thought about it, looked at the head smiling hopefully at them, and shuddered.