NO EASY WAY DOWN (PG)
Title: No Easy Way Down
Author:
iamshadow
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Captain America (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: PG
Word Count: 8,900
Summary: “So, some rich white dude walks in yesterday, says he’s gonna make me a robot arm,” Bucky says scathingly. “What an asshole.”
Content: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Male Character of Color, Mentors, Disability, Physical Disability, Prosthesis, Hospitals, Permanent Injury, Injury Recovery, Education, Identity, Foster Care, Group Homes, Homelessness, Humor, Friendship, Cross-Generational Friendship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, Penance - Freeform, Returning Home, Civilian Life, references to Battlestar, Gen Fic, Veterans, Amputation, Missing Limb, Trust Issues
A/N: This story owes a lot to the people who steered me straight and helped me avoid making dreadful unintentional errors regarding race and culture. Firstly, to musesfool, who pointed me at the wiki page for Battlestar, which allowed me to write my way out of the same problem Marvel ran into in the eighties, rather than having to scrap the whole story or, heaven forbid, posting it as it had been, unknowingly. Secondly, to whizzy and sandt250, who gently corrected and educated me on why some of my questions were culturally inappropriate. And lastly, to Foxy, beta extraordinaire, who read over the whole story and helped me tidy up the rest.
This story is a weird amalgam of AUs. It's non-powered, in a lot of ways, but not completely. Steve Rogers is a returned vet, and an extraordinary one, but he's not a super soldier. Tony Stark's story arc is very similar to the films through to mid IM2, but not the same - he's still kidnapped, still frees himself by building a suit, but he's not 'known' as Iron Man, if he even still is Iron Man in this 'verse. (I've left that ambiguous.) It's very much an AU for how certain characters meet, but I've taken some mild influence from early comics canon where James Barnes was a teenager, rather than Steve Rogers' age peer. I've taken closely from Battlestar's reimaging by Marvel to avoid perpetuating unintentional racism, but the character in question is an African-American James Barnes, not Lemar Hoskins. And while I have shifted the race of a character and written a lot about physical disability, this story isn't really primarily about either of those things, so much as it's about the walls we build around ourselves in the wake of trauma, how we hold ourselves back from healing, and how sometimes, the hardest thing isn't the obvious, physical thing, it's taking that mental/emotional step over the wall and learning to live again.
Read on AO3 * Read on DW * Read on LJ
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/397951.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Author:
iamshadow
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Captain America (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: PG
Word Count: 8,900
Summary: “So, some rich white dude walks in yesterday, says he’s gonna make me a robot arm,” Bucky says scathingly. “What an asshole.”
Content: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Male Character of Color, Mentors, Disability, Physical Disability, Prosthesis, Hospitals, Permanent Injury, Injury Recovery, Education, Identity, Foster Care, Group Homes, Homelessness, Humor, Friendship, Cross-Generational Friendship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, Penance - Freeform, Returning Home, Civilian Life, references to Battlestar, Gen Fic, Veterans, Amputation, Missing Limb, Trust Issues
A/N: This story owes a lot to the people who steered me straight and helped me avoid making dreadful unintentional errors regarding race and culture. Firstly, to musesfool, who pointed me at the wiki page for Battlestar, which allowed me to write my way out of the same problem Marvel ran into in the eighties, rather than having to scrap the whole story or, heaven forbid, posting it as it had been, unknowingly. Secondly, to whizzy and sandt250, who gently corrected and educated me on why some of my questions were culturally inappropriate. And lastly, to Foxy, beta extraordinaire, who read over the whole story and helped me tidy up the rest.
This story is a weird amalgam of AUs. It's non-powered, in a lot of ways, but not completely. Steve Rogers is a returned vet, and an extraordinary one, but he's not a super soldier. Tony Stark's story arc is very similar to the films through to mid IM2, but not the same - he's still kidnapped, still frees himself by building a suit, but he's not 'known' as Iron Man, if he even still is Iron Man in this 'verse. (I've left that ambiguous.) It's very much an AU for how certain characters meet, but I've taken some mild influence from early comics canon where James Barnes was a teenager, rather than Steve Rogers' age peer. I've taken closely from Battlestar's reimaging by Marvel to avoid perpetuating unintentional racism, but the character in question is an African-American James Barnes, not Lemar Hoskins. And while I have shifted the race of a character and written a lot about physical disability, this story isn't really primarily about either of those things, so much as it's about the walls we build around ourselves in the wake of trauma, how we hold ourselves back from healing, and how sometimes, the hardest thing isn't the obvious, physical thing, it's taking that mental/emotional step over the wall and learning to live again.
Read on AO3 * Read on DW * Read on LJ
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/397951.html. Please comment there using OpenID.