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Fic: Greatest Show on Earth
Title: Greatest Show on Earth
Fandom: Hellboy (movies)
Rating: PG
Characters: Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Professor Bruttenholm
Summary: Liz Sherman is 17 years old, and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is pretty much the last place she wants to be.
Notes: This was written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vega_ofthe_lyre for Yuletide 2008. I owe Chokolatte for the last second beta!
Newark, New Jersey - December 1991
"I believe you'll find it quite comfortable, here at the Bureau."
Hellboy's head rose sharply at the muffled, familiar voice. He had approximately three seconds to shift himself and remove the evidence, after hearing it, but he still found time for a hissed, "Crap!" as he moved.
When the doors swung open, he was standing innocently in front of the desk (rather than sitting behind it with his boots up), cigar held behind his back.
He opened his mouth to greet the white-haired professor -- and then he saw her.
Walking beside the professor was a girl, dressed entirely in shapeless black layers and carrying a duffel bag over one skinny shoulder. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, a scrawny little thing with a sharp face and black bangs. Her eyes were dark and shrewd, flicking from object to object in the library.
When they landed on Hellboy, she stopped in her tracks.
Hellboy narrowed his eyes, tail thrashing, and opened his mouth to ask who the runt was -- and then he blinked. She had halted, but she wasn't staring at his horns or his tail.
She looked him right in the face from across the study, brown eyes on gold, and then she said, "So you're Hellboy, huh?"
He shot her an amused look and stepped down off the raised platform, closer to her. She didn't flinch. "Got it in one," he said. "Who're you?"
Bruttenholm stepped in. "This is Miss Sherman, to whom," and he was raising bushy eyebrows at the girl, "I did not mention your name. Miss Sherman, my son."
"Come on, Professor," said acid-tongued Miss Sherman, who didn't look much like a 'Miss Sherman.' She looked like she belonged in the crowd at a grunge band show, her hood up and her hands shoved into her pockets. "I'm a ward of the state, not an idiot."
Hellboy grinned a little bit, though he quashed it when his father glanced his way. "Hey," he said, and he took the last step in and discovered that he towered over her. He offered her his left hand. "Hellboy."
She glanced up, and she put her small white hand in his and firmly shook it. "Liz. Hey." She let her eyes flick away, with the ease of someone who spent her life avoiding eye contact, and she stepped past him, taking in the sights; the glass panels of Abe's tank, the statues, the desk, and -- most of all -- the shelves upon shelves of books.
Hellboy winced as the girl stepped past him; he shifted his weight. She had stopped several feet behind him, but his father was in front; his fingers twitched on the cigar still pressed against the small of his back, but he didn't (couldn't) turn.
"Wow," the girl said. She craned her neck, staring up at the tallest bookshelf. "That's a serious amount of books."
"Knowledge, Miss Sherman, is the best defense we have against the dark," Professor Bruttenholm told her, stepping to the lectern set up in front of a water tank wall panel. He flipped the pages of the three books resting on it. "Son, have you seen Abe?"
"Not in a couple hours." Hellboy shrugged. "He's around." He made a vague gesture toward the gold doors with his stone hand.
The girl crossed behind Hellboy, combat boots scuffing. He took a surreptitious look down and to the side as she passed (and as his father was momentarily preoccupied with one of the books that Abe was reading). Her eyes moved in a telltale slide, from his lower back, up his side and shoulder, to his eyes.
Clearly, she'd spotted the cigar.
She looked, for a second, like she was thinking about smiling.
Hellboy grinned at her and tossed her a sneaky wink. Liz Sherman's mouth twitched; her gaze quickly lowered and she stepped past him.
Hellboy glanced across the study, at his father. "He might've gone down to medical," he offered.
The professor looked up, eyebrows furrowed. "Oh?" He straightened, with the help of the lectern. "I suppose I had better fetch him, then. I trust I can leave the two of you to become better acquainted."
The pair shared a glance. "Sure," said Hellboy.
"Whatever," muttered Liz Sherman, arms folded.
"I won't be long," the professor said, with a final glance between the two of them, and he limped out of the study, leaning heavily on his cane.
Hellboy peered after him, then pulled his hand out from behind his back and flexed his wrist. "Thanks for not tellin' him." He put the cigar back in his mouth. "He don't approve of smoking."
Liz Sherman rolled her eyes. "I'm not a tattletale." She watched him for a long moment. Then she said, "You got a light?"
"Do you have any nicknames?" asked Liz, lit cigarette pressed between her fingers. She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, hood still covering her head against the biting winter wind. There wasn't a star in the sky, the taste of snow in the air.
"I mean, 'Hellboy,' " she continued. "It's a little Biblical."
Hellboy sat with his tail and lower legs dangling over the edge of the roof, cigar embers in counterpoint to the glow of the cigarette beside him. He shrugged. "Couple of the guys call me Big Red."
Liz's mouth curved up, as if against her will. "Wow. What a bunch of poets," she muttered, and he had to grin.
"Hey, you don't like it, you come up with a better one," he told her. "Next question's mine." He puffed on the cigar; exhaled a stream of smoke. "You stickin' around here?"
She glanced at him. "Officially or unofficially?"
Hellboy considered, then said, "Can't go wrong with both."
"Officially, I'm here til my eighteenth birthday next year." She flicked a piece of gravel over the edge of the roof; watched it til it was lost to the darkness. "Unofficially, if this sucks, I'm taking off."
"It ain't that bad," he told her. "You got missions, cable, six squares a day. And I'm this close to gettin' a cat."
Liz stared at him. "You like cats?"
Hellboy pointed at her with a stone finger. "That counts as a question. Answer's yeah, I do." He grinned at her; she gave an irritated huff and looked away. "Mine now." He thought about it for a second, and then: "What're you doin' here? Pop doesn't bring a whole lot of strays home." He shrugged one shoulder. "Pretty much just you an' me."
Her mouth twisted and she pressed her chin to her leg. "I'm a freak," she said, quite clearly, into her knee.
Hellboy laughed. "You're a freak?"
"Yeah," Liz retorted fiercely, raising her head and glaring at him. "I'm a freak, and apparently, somebody decided I'm enough of one that I've got no shot at fitting in or ever living a normal life, so I've gotta be locked up underground in some -- some creepy secret government facility!"
She didn't seem mad so much as trapped, defensive; that (and the desperate edge in her voice, the hunch to her shoulders) was what wound up dictating Hellboy's response.
"Whoa," he said, frowning and lifting a hand. "Easy. First off, it's not creepy. Second -- all I'm sayin' is me? Abe? We stand out in a crowd. You? Unless you're hidin' some floppy ears and a horn under that hood, nobody's gonna look at you twice."
She exhaled sharply and pushed her hood back, revealing a mop of short black hair, normal ears, and no horn. She rested her chin on her knees, shut her eyes, and said through her teeth, "When I get mad, I light on fire."
Hellboy took a second look at her, appraising. "--What, literally?"
Liz nodded, her face set in tight lines. She took a deep drag on her cigarette.
"Huh." He tapped his cigar over the edge of the roof, letting ash float away on the wind. "Never met anybody who could do that before."
"Like I said." Her boots shifted, just enough to crunch in the gravel spread across the B.P.R.D.'s roof. "I'm a freak."
He snorted softly. "Join the crowd, kid," he said, and Liz's eyes darted to him. Slowly, one side of her mouth lifted.
Hellboy thought she was kind of pretty when she smiled.
End Note: For anyone who's interested in that sort of thing, I babbled a little about this fic here when I was finally able to talk Yuletide after the reveals.
Fandom: Hellboy (movies)
Rating: PG
Characters: Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Professor Bruttenholm
Summary: Liz Sherman is 17 years old, and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is pretty much the last place she wants to be.
Notes: This was written for
vega_ofthe_lyre for Yuletide 2008. I owe Chokolatte for the last second beta!Newark, New Jersey - December 1991
"I believe you'll find it quite comfortable, here at the Bureau."
Hellboy's head rose sharply at the muffled, familiar voice. He had approximately three seconds to shift himself and remove the evidence, after hearing it, but he still found time for a hissed, "Crap!" as he moved.
When the doors swung open, he was standing innocently in front of the desk (rather than sitting behind it with his boots up), cigar held behind his back.
He opened his mouth to greet the white-haired professor -- and then he saw her.
Walking beside the professor was a girl, dressed entirely in shapeless black layers and carrying a duffel bag over one skinny shoulder. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, a scrawny little thing with a sharp face and black bangs. Her eyes were dark and shrewd, flicking from object to object in the library.
When they landed on Hellboy, she stopped in her tracks.
Hellboy narrowed his eyes, tail thrashing, and opened his mouth to ask who the runt was -- and then he blinked. She had halted, but she wasn't staring at his horns or his tail.
She looked him right in the face from across the study, brown eyes on gold, and then she said, "So you're Hellboy, huh?"
He shot her an amused look and stepped down off the raised platform, closer to her. She didn't flinch. "Got it in one," he said. "Who're you?"
Bruttenholm stepped in. "This is Miss Sherman, to whom," and he was raising bushy eyebrows at the girl, "I did not mention your name. Miss Sherman, my son."
"Come on, Professor," said acid-tongued Miss Sherman, who didn't look much like a 'Miss Sherman.' She looked like she belonged in the crowd at a grunge band show, her hood up and her hands shoved into her pockets. "I'm a ward of the state, not an idiot."
Hellboy grinned a little bit, though he quashed it when his father glanced his way. "Hey," he said, and he took the last step in and discovered that he towered over her. He offered her his left hand. "Hellboy."
She glanced up, and she put her small white hand in his and firmly shook it. "Liz. Hey." She let her eyes flick away, with the ease of someone who spent her life avoiding eye contact, and she stepped past him, taking in the sights; the glass panels of Abe's tank, the statues, the desk, and -- most of all -- the shelves upon shelves of books.
Hellboy winced as the girl stepped past him; he shifted his weight. She had stopped several feet behind him, but his father was in front; his fingers twitched on the cigar still pressed against the small of his back, but he didn't (couldn't) turn.
"Wow," the girl said. She craned her neck, staring up at the tallest bookshelf. "That's a serious amount of books."
"Knowledge, Miss Sherman, is the best defense we have against the dark," Professor Bruttenholm told her, stepping to the lectern set up in front of a water tank wall panel. He flipped the pages of the three books resting on it. "Son, have you seen Abe?"
"Not in a couple hours." Hellboy shrugged. "He's around." He made a vague gesture toward the gold doors with his stone hand.
The girl crossed behind Hellboy, combat boots scuffing. He took a surreptitious look down and to the side as she passed (and as his father was momentarily preoccupied with one of the books that Abe was reading). Her eyes moved in a telltale slide, from his lower back, up his side and shoulder, to his eyes.
Clearly, she'd spotted the cigar.
She looked, for a second, like she was thinking about smiling.
Hellboy grinned at her and tossed her a sneaky wink. Liz Sherman's mouth twitched; her gaze quickly lowered and she stepped past him.
Hellboy glanced across the study, at his father. "He might've gone down to medical," he offered.
The professor looked up, eyebrows furrowed. "Oh?" He straightened, with the help of the lectern. "I suppose I had better fetch him, then. I trust I can leave the two of you to become better acquainted."
The pair shared a glance. "Sure," said Hellboy.
"Whatever," muttered Liz Sherman, arms folded.
"I won't be long," the professor said, with a final glance between the two of them, and he limped out of the study, leaning heavily on his cane.
Hellboy peered after him, then pulled his hand out from behind his back and flexed his wrist. "Thanks for not tellin' him." He put the cigar back in his mouth. "He don't approve of smoking."
Liz Sherman rolled her eyes. "I'm not a tattletale." She watched him for a long moment. Then she said, "You got a light?"
"Do you have any nicknames?" asked Liz, lit cigarette pressed between her fingers. She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, hood still covering her head against the biting winter wind. There wasn't a star in the sky, the taste of snow in the air.
"I mean, 'Hellboy,' " she continued. "It's a little Biblical."
Hellboy sat with his tail and lower legs dangling over the edge of the roof, cigar embers in counterpoint to the glow of the cigarette beside him. He shrugged. "Couple of the guys call me Big Red."
Liz's mouth curved up, as if against her will. "Wow. What a bunch of poets," she muttered, and he had to grin.
"Hey, you don't like it, you come up with a better one," he told her. "Next question's mine." He puffed on the cigar; exhaled a stream of smoke. "You stickin' around here?"
She glanced at him. "Officially or unofficially?"
Hellboy considered, then said, "Can't go wrong with both."
"Officially, I'm here til my eighteenth birthday next year." She flicked a piece of gravel over the edge of the roof; watched it til it was lost to the darkness. "Unofficially, if this sucks, I'm taking off."
"It ain't that bad," he told her. "You got missions, cable, six squares a day. And I'm this close to gettin' a cat."
Liz stared at him. "You like cats?"
Hellboy pointed at her with a stone finger. "That counts as a question. Answer's yeah, I do." He grinned at her; she gave an irritated huff and looked away. "Mine now." He thought about it for a second, and then: "What're you doin' here? Pop doesn't bring a whole lot of strays home." He shrugged one shoulder. "Pretty much just you an' me."
Her mouth twisted and she pressed her chin to her leg. "I'm a freak," she said, quite clearly, into her knee.
Hellboy laughed. "You're a freak?"
"Yeah," Liz retorted fiercely, raising her head and glaring at him. "I'm a freak, and apparently, somebody decided I'm enough of one that I've got no shot at fitting in or ever living a normal life, so I've gotta be locked up underground in some -- some creepy secret government facility!"
She didn't seem mad so much as trapped, defensive; that (and the desperate edge in her voice, the hunch to her shoulders) was what wound up dictating Hellboy's response.
"Whoa," he said, frowning and lifting a hand. "Easy. First off, it's not creepy. Second -- all I'm sayin' is me? Abe? We stand out in a crowd. You? Unless you're hidin' some floppy ears and a horn under that hood, nobody's gonna look at you twice."
She exhaled sharply and pushed her hood back, revealing a mop of short black hair, normal ears, and no horn. She rested her chin on her knees, shut her eyes, and said through her teeth, "When I get mad, I light on fire."
Hellboy took a second look at her, appraising. "--What, literally?"
Liz nodded, her face set in tight lines. She took a deep drag on her cigarette.
"Huh." He tapped his cigar over the edge of the roof, letting ash float away on the wind. "Never met anybody who could do that before."
"Like I said." Her boots shifted, just enough to crunch in the gravel spread across the B.P.R.D.'s roof. "I'm a freak."
He snorted softly. "Join the crowd, kid," he said, and Liz's eyes darted to him. Slowly, one side of her mouth lifted.
Hellboy thought she was kind of pretty when she smiled.
End Note: For anyone who's interested in that sort of thing, I babbled a little about this fic here when I was finally able to talk Yuletide after the reveals.
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I stumbled upon this over at Yuletide the other day during one of those spells when it seems like a good idea to venture forth into the wilds of the internet in search of a) decent Hellboy movieverse fic b) preferably of the Hellboy/Liz variety, which has only rarely if ever paid off in the last six years, so I didn't exactly have high hopes or really any hopes at all, AND THEN. And thennnnnn. I read this story and embarrassed myself so bad, EVEN THOUGH I WAS ALONE, because oh my God this story! !!! DOLPHIN NOISES. HAND FLAPPING. ROLLING AROUND HELPLESSLY ON THE FLOOR IN WORDLESS DELIGHT AT EVERYTHING, EVER, BECAUSE OH MY GOD THIS STORY EXISTS. It exists and it's amazing! Oh, my gosh!
Acerbic, defensive, angry teenage Liz who is my favorite, always, and Hellboy, and ugh, I'm sorry, it's just, I have so many feelings. Awkward burgeoning friendship! And he thinks she's kind of pretty! And Liz not really wanting to be there, but not having anywhere else to really go, and oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. But I love this A LOT and to be honest, chances are good I could exceed the character limits for comments several times over listing every single thing I love (their voices! Professor Bruttenholm! Knowledge is the best defense! Bonding whilst illicitly smoking on the rooftop! He's getting a cat! Liz!!), so I should probably stop before this gets out of control.
Anyway, uh, you could say I'm a little excited to have finally found Hellboy fic that isn't just decent, but totally and completely excellent, and I'd like to close with saying thank you, thank you, thank you. And also I'm probably going to leave equally incoherent/horrifying comments on all your Hellboy stuff, which I have read far too many times (impossible) over the last day or so, so consider yourself warned.
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(Your username is so familiar. Were/are you in Iron Man fandom? I know I have seen you places; I just can't think of where.)
I feel your pain. I write Hellboy fic because there is none. Or there is some, but it is by and large completely horrifying and most of it is either Hellboy/Myers, which is not for me, or Hellboy/OFC while bashing Liz, which I do not stand for. And I got angry and fed up that I decided to start writing the kinds of things that I wanted to be reading in the fandom (so basically, I started writing Hellboy/Liz). It feels very lonely a lot of the time so HURRAY SOMEONE ELSE WHO CARES ABOUT THEM! :D :D :D
Have you read
Again, thank you!!! Both for your fabulous words, which absolutely made my freaking night, and for the reminder that I am actually behind on putting fic on my LJ; I keep forgetting to post stuff from my AO3 account. *makes note* Thanks again! ♥
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Hahaha, yes, every year or so I think, "Well, surely things have improved!" because I never learn, and then I go out and it's just a crushing disappointment every time, because yeah, it's all Hellboy/Myers (which, you know, I get it, sort of, but I don't dig it, with apologies to all those who do) or Liz-bashing, which not only do I not dig, but I do not get at all. (What, what, WHAT IS THIS, NO, LIZ IS AWESOME AND SHE IS THE BEST, WHY DOES THIS EVEN EXIST. STOP BEING WRONG ON THE INTERNET, PEOPLE. >(!!)
So, er, yes, THANK YOU so much for writing the kinds of things you wanted to read because it turns out those are the kinds of things I wanted to read, so this has worked out very nicely for me. Obviously. (But ugh, seriously, thank you so much, oh my gosh, I legit made some seriously horrifying noises when I found out you had written more! More! Not just this one story! IS THIS REAL LIFE.)
Oh, my gosh, no, I haven't! Thank you so much for the rec. I intend to investigate IMMEDIATELY or as soon as I get off work, which is close enough. Thank you. <33333
And haha, I feel weird saying this, but you're welcome! But actually, no, thank YOU, because ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh and stars in my eyes and I really just have so many feelings, so many terrible feelings. I will try not to explode them all over you like some kind of feelings monster.
(And I really am going to leave feedback on the rest of your fic; it's just a matter of figuring out how to do so without coming off as a total internet creepster or breaking my shift-key.)
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See, I can get the appeal of the Hellboy/Myers fighty dynamic, but it just DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE and never will. You could maybe make a case for OT3 fic, maybe, but Hellboy/Myers in which Liz is suddenly entirely disregarded (or, even more hilariously, totally ships the two of them together) disregards every single bit of canon on how all three characters feel about each other. That's what drives me crazy.
(Every once in a while, I check fanfiction.net, because I am a hopeful masochist, and every time, I come out of it screaming.)
I actually have wayyy more works-in-progress (roughly fourteen bazillion of them) than finished fics; I am just the slowest writer alive and it takes me forever to finish things. But post-Golden Army and the Pittsburgh incident from before movie #1 are my two biggest projects. Maybe someday I will actually finish them!
FEEL FREE to make use of the shift key as you please; you will not be judged for it here. Most of my public entries may appear relatively calm and even in their tone, but that is deceptive. My f-locked entries are CAPSLOCK AMNESTY zones. They are also giant font, blinky text, and sparkly text amnesty zones. Um. Maturity in typing is for losers? Also, it is highly doubtful that I am going to be offended by feelings explosions, or that I am going to find you a creepster. zomg I just clicked over to your journal and YOU HAVE WRITTEN FIC AFLSDG. *bookmarks for post-work* LET'S BE FRIENDS. *adds*
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But post-Golden Army and the Pittsburgh incident from before movie #1 are my two biggest projects.
Uhhhhhh, so, this is HIGHLY RELEVANT to ALL OF MY INTERESTS, because YES to everything. I wish I knew how to adequately express the degree of YES-ness I am feeling in my soul, but maybe that's for the best because that is a lot of YES(SSSSSSSSSS). And haha, no-o worries on the slowest writer alive front; that is a front I am often at myself. Writing is hard! Words! Meaning! Structure. Things. WHATEVER.
THAT SAID, if you should ever finish those stories, haaaaahahaha oh boy, LET ME TELL YOU, I will be breaking some shift keys. All of the shift keys. Everywhere. omgggggg.
AND YES, YES, LET'S BE FRIENDS, i-if that is okay. I promise I will only stalk you a tiny bit!
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Now that I have actually read/am reading your fic: HAHAHAHA! OMG! I had no idea when I wrote that just how closely our interests lie! But it really does take me, like ... six months to finish 1000 words. I really enjoy writing fic when I first start, but it's always a battle for me to actually finish. Some day, the one where they live in a big old formerly haunted house in the Boston suburbs and their neighbors just have to Deal With It will be finished. Some day!
I'm cool with stalking! As you will see very quickly, I unfortunately don't do or say much that is stalk-worthy; I am a little boring. :D
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