crack_van | Here There Be Dragons by Elflingskitten (R)

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Fandom: STARSKY & HUTCH
Pairing: none
Length: short
Author on LJ: not known
Author Website: HERE
Why this must be read: It’s my last rec this month and it’s a special one. This story is a lesson in how to fight dragons and how to win over them told from the POV of a young girl.

Not long ago, her school had sent her class on a field trip to the museum downtown. It was a place where, back when she had been awake and had cared, she would have been beside herself. Now, it was just her and forty-five other kids who didn't care, shuffled through by rote by adults and chaperones who didn't care. Just before they left, though, one thing did catch her eye. She stared at a large display of the history of the Norse people. There were artifacts, books, and paintings--copies of mind-boggling art. It was one of the paintings she had looked at then. Something she thought long dead stirred in her mind. It was so...beautiful. Dark and majestic. The title was 'Thor's Fight with the Giants,' and she couldn't tear her eyes from it. A Viking, terrible and terrifying, stood in pitched battle, a heavy weapon held high as he swung it at his enemies that surrounded him. She had never seen anything like it and could have stared at it all day. She would have, too, but her teacher came back to fetch her, angrily hissing something about dawdling and keeping up.

She saw that same visage again, now. As she stared dry-mouthed, his gun clicked on an empty chamber. In one smooth motion, he cast it away and crouched over the other cop, reaching under the brunet's jacket and right arm. He came up fast and ready with the other man's gun, thumbing off the safety even as he stood, so that when he opened fire with it, the echo was still rolling from the revolver. He poured fire now into the swerving sedan, and the painting came to her mind. She beheld that cop, that man, standing bravely over his friend—tall, resolute. His hair was the color of sunlight, and the breeze stirred it around his face. She wished she could see his face. She was sure he would look like the Viking in her painting—fair, and terrible, and deadly.

Mentally, she shook herself. What is he doing? Is he really not going to move? Just as she was about to close her eyes, she sensed something had changed. In the driver's side window of the car, she thought she could see spots of spattered blood. The cop crouched again over his friend, quickly sliding his left hand under him, as though to grab him up. He never stopped firing, although he must have switched the target of the semi-automatic's fusillade because, just as he began to pick up the other cop, the right front tire of the sedan exploded. The car lurched hard to the right, unmanned now, and veered slightly away from the cops. The blond now hunched his body completely over the brunet, carefully draping his arms over the other's head.

Here There Be Dragons by Elflingskitten