((These are my attempts at the 26 theme challenge))

A: About-turn[/u]

Fingers were pressed to lips, shushing noises made, and hands sought out each other to lead and follow. David hated bringing a girl around during the day. It was easier to see the shoddy conditions he lived in when there was light. Faded wallpaper, a couch that was patched together with tape, no two lamps in the same room matching. Anna wanted to see where he lived, and when he suggested coming after his parents had turned in she simply smiled and nodded her head.

Neither one could keep a straight face as they fumbled their way through the dark, and it was all they could do to keep from giggling. They were young, it was late, and they were sneaking about in the dark. He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss before side stepping a beaten up pair of boots. She was absolutely bril. Popular, but he still remembered when she first moved to the area, fresh off the farm and wearing her wellies to school everyday. In his eyes there could be no angel as beautiful as Anna. Anna understood the shame he felt, she didn't judge him.

The hand that wasn't occupied with Anna's reached out for the doorknob to his door. This was the tricky bit. His door always creaked as it was first opened. Anna squeezed his hand, pulling a bigger smile out of David. Suddenly he found the courage to turn the knob.

"Eh-hmm," came the stern, and rather loud sound of his da clearing his throat. David let go of the doorknob, spun around on his heel, and started leading Anna back the way they had come, his head ducked low.

I've decided that I'm also going to say what age Sledge is in his stories.

B: Beg-off
Age: 24

"Wake up,"

There was a loud thump of a cardboard box holding something metal. Sledge groaned and tried to find a place in his pillow that offered comfort and kept the overhead fluorescent light out of his eyes. Already the stench of stale petrol and oil flooded his nostrils. No, he was not going to wake up. Charlie can go to hell if he thinks I'm budging, Sledge thought, grabbing tightly to the pillow. The cot in Charlie's office was hardly comfortable, but it was the closest thing that he had to a bed. "Go away," Sledge mumbled into the pillow, scrunching himself into a smaller ball.

Charlie had no mercy. "I want you to get the grease off these parts today," he told his younger brother, the tone of voice allowing no nonsense, "Consider it a down payment on all the times I've bailed you out of jail."

"Piss off," Sledge grumbled back. Someone in the shop called good morning to him, using the dreaded, and much hated "Davie". His name was David, not Davie. "Me 'ead's wrecking." He rolled over, opening one eye to glare at Charlie. The two looked nothing alike. Charlie was fair haired, blue eyed and old. For years Sledge had thought that Charlie was an uncle instead. "Wha?" he asked, seeing the shop owner's disturbed stare.

"I know you get into rows with your mates, but this," Charlie said, staring at the plaster that covered the conman's forehead. His gaze turned next to the bruised eye, the roughed up patch of skin on the chin. "Wreck is right. Who's to blame this time?"

"Car," Sledge answered. He sensed a way out of the pointless labour that Charlie had wanted him to do today. "I've been tucked up in hospital all night." Rubbing his ribs he sat up. The car crash con hadn't panned out the way he thought. There had been the large amount of money that he had anticipated in addition to his stitches cost paid for. "Let me rest and I can give you the plates. They'll need some works."

C: Conspire
Age 18

Briggs pulled himself deeper into the warmth his jacket provided. It was a dry winter, free of great amounts of snowfall, but what it lacked in blizzards it more than made up for with biting cold. This sort of deal always seemed to be struck up in an out of the way street corner, a place where the only signs of heat came from streams of smoke dribbling up and out of those chimny sort of things. Heaven forbid that David do this in the cozy stores where the scam always started.

David, for his part, didn't seem to notice the cold while the pigeon fumbled with his billfold, grumbling under his breath. The teen wore a thin jacket, the sort meant for a windy summer day rather than the dead of winter, unzipped and a jumper that was starting to pile. His Mum would have slaughtered him if he had gone out without a hat or gloves, thankfully she never noticed his gloves were missing the fingers. A long scarf hung loosely around his neck. "Price's gone up," he said to the poor sap. A paper bag was securly tucked between his feet, holding this season's must have. "Cost you a hundred."

Briggs knew that had the shops been able to hold on to their goods it would cost their mark only about thirty quid. Thirty quid for some flashing lights and annoyingly high pitched animated voices. Their supplier had asked for seventy percent of the profits. David had made a suggestion as to where that offer might go, and what sort of actions it could do once it was there. He had other suppliers that he could seek out, and it was only as a favour that he had returned to him that year. Seventy dropped to sixty five. Haggling continued until David had gotten him down to fourty five.

"That's extortion," the mark complained. David shrugged his shoulders. Of course it was extortion, the man knew that before he arrived. If he was going to complain and walk away it was no skin off of his nose. He had plenty of goods to go around and the demand was high.

"How badly do you need it?" he asked the mark, picking up his bag. More hushed protests before the money was handed over. Without handing over the bag David counted the money, confirming it was there. "Merry Christmas then."

Briggs and Sledge started to walk away, the larger man feeling a cold that wasn't just from the weather. It didn't feel right dangling toys out for sale at a higher marked price. "You're a regular Grinch ain't you?" he asked. David stared blankly. He had no clue what a Grinch was, the same as he didn't know the Smurfs or Donna Noble. That program had never been seen in his house before. There was no telly.

"Normal holiday spirit," he defended himself, "Just a Saint Nick."

D: Data[/u]
Age 32. Age of Sebastian

It wakes him up at night sometimes. Some days when they can't find anything to eat, or if the kid has to get into a scrap, or sleeping on the cold ground too many nights in a row. Hell, sometimes all it takes is a torn page from a book and David’s stomach prevents him from the lightest of dozes. It’s not hunger that keeps him up. Hunger is an old familiar friend to the man, and he has learned how to tuck it away and ignore it. Hunger has never struck his stomach so sharply that white light fills his dreams and he wakes up with the corners of his eyes wet. Worse are the nights when it strikes not his stomach, but his throat. Each time his throat is to blame his mind has to race through each individual item that they ate that day, or what he touched, or even where they were, because if a fish was anywhere near him he was royally screwed. Medicine was hard to come by, and his epinephrine perscription had more than likely expired. When he realized that he could still breath, the sensation that his throat was about to burst was less frightening, but still prevented him from closing his eyes.

Traitor his mind hisses at him, Judas. You puff yourself up with the knowledge of the truth so few know, but you are as much to blame as him. Sledge remains as still as possible, his fingers clutching onto the edges of his jacket. He doesn’t want anyone knowing that right now his gut is full of daggers, or that he was awake. First rule of survival in this age was don’t show signs of weakness. The voice that scolds him sounds uncomfortably like Charlie, and it makes his stomach ache him all the more. To keep things comfortable for yourself you betrayed them all. Are you proud of yourself? Proud of counting all those steps, making those maps? Sledge tries to tell the voice to drop it, that what happened happened, and that he never cared for his past actions.

This, he is learning, is what guilt feels like.

E: Error
Age 29

Anna was in England, not in New York City. What's more there was no reason why she would be in the states. Her family wasn't from here. Hell, Sledge knew that she still went up to her Gram and Gran's farm to help out right when the weather started to turn crisp and cold. Her roots were too firmly planted in the earth of their motherland for her to pack up and set off for the new world.

No matter how much he wanted that.

But that ship had sailed. He had told her many things. Like how his family never seemed to have enough of anything. Not enough food, not enough heat, not enough money. Or about how he did things that he should be ashamed of for the sake of getting ahead. She had accepted that, and even played a part in a con or two. And while she claimed that she wouldn't do it again, he could see the troublemaker in her, a touch of the devil, and knew that Anna wouldn't rat him out or raise objections.

But he couldn't bring himself to tell her the most important thing. She didn't know the reason why he couldn't be held in a detention center for long, only that he suddenly had turned cold. David no longer wrapped his arms around her and held her close while chatting away with his mates. Their special way of saying "I love you", pinkies linked together whenever they stood shoulder to shoulder, had vanished. He just kept his hands in his pockets, refusing to touch her.

Of course he had wanted to. But with his powers coming so late and so strong Sledge didn't trust himself with a cuppa coffee, let alone something as fragile as a life itself. His hands had become dangerous, an evil that had isolated him from the rest of the world. When she saw him with that hacksaw, what must she have thought?

Sledge shook his head, banishing the thought as his mind turned once again to the girl at the club, the one who looked so much like Anna, but at the same time so unlike her.

"Sorry, you just look like someone I know."