2015 in review
(Some links go to my AO3 page, some to my Tumblr; re-doing all of the links for DW/LJ seems a waste of energy)
Originally posted to tumblr as: Part One (Jan-June) | Part Two (July-Dec)
Preserved [link to series, 80k]
After the rescue of the 107th, Steve Rogers cashes in all of his favors and makes what deals he can to get Bucky a medical discharge from the Army, sending him home to Brooklyn and far from enemies and curious scientists both. But Steve’s war goes on until it ends badly, in an exploding plane over the Black Sea. Captain America is presumed dead, his shield recovered and returned to a grieving America while his body remains undiscovered.
Seven years later, a new danger is threatening to unbalance the already-roiling Cold War, a Soviet assassin let loose from behind the Iron Curtain. Peggy Carter isn’t sure she wants to believe that the assassin is a super-soldier because of what it could mean, but she does know that whoever it is, she’ll have to break her promise to keep Bucky Barnes far from danger.
Inherited Characteristics [Tony Stark, Peggy Carter (Rhodey, Howard Stark]
It’s 1986, the Sox are going to the World Series, and sixteen-year-old Tony Stark has just gotten himself arrested for trying to sell nukes to the bad guys.
Reprise [4800 words | Peggy Carter, Nick Fury (Steve Rogers)]
In 2011, Peggy Carter gets news she’s been waiting sixty-six years for. (Coincidental with Rock of Gibraltar.)
Landsmen [1800 words | Peggy Carter, Howard Stark]
English is the official language of the Rebirth lab, but Yiddish is the unofficial one, the language of frustration and jubilation and anger and affection. The project is documented in English, but it is lived in Yiddish and Peggy, like everyone else not already fluent in the language, has picked up words here and there. Mostly terms of endearment, addressed to both her and the test tubes of successful experiments, and the many (many) ways to call someone an idiot.
Blister: [750 words | Steve Rogers]
Captain America was a target as much as a hero and when the shots aimed at him struck true, Steve had to be there to pick up the pieces and that’s when he realized how little there was of that man, how completely he’d been subsumed by the costume and the role. He’d never meant for it to happen, of course, never meant to lose himself so completely to Captain America. But he had and now he had to fight to get himself back, to become Steve again.
Blues in the Groove: [31k words | Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanova, Steve Rogers, Maria Hill, various Avengers]
Bucky Barnes is in from the cold and ready to take the first steps toward resuming his life. He has all of his memories, but Steve isn’t the only Avenger eager to have someone around who remembers their past.
A tale in which there are embarrassing Captain America stories, occasional realizations, swing-dancing SHIELD commanders, missions gone awry, culinary adventures, uncomfortable revelations, trips to Queens, bromances, romances, repeated threats of arson, and the couch is a metaphor.
Powerful: [3k words| Steve, Bucky, Avengers]
Steve loses the effects of the super-soldier serum. This is not a tragedy.
Captain Marvel (MCU spec): [2500 words | Carol Danvers, Tony Stark, James Rhodes]
In which Carol is professionally awesome and personally a mess, Tony Stark is Tony Stark, and Rhodey is the designated adult.
Moment: [8800 words | Thor, Jane Foster, various Avengers]
Thor is a prince of Asgard with the duties incumbent upon the heir to the throne. He is Jane’s love and lover, weaving their lives together with careful hands. He is an Avenger fighting alongside teammates who are becoming friends. He is a thousand years old with the wisdom of his age. He is a callow youth still making mistakes. He is not where he expected to be. He wouldn’t be anywhere else.
We Were Soldiers [1500 words | Steve, Bucky]
It’s 1944 and the lesson Bucky has to teach Steve is that in war sometimes you have to kill good guys as well as bad guys to fight bullies.
Tiny Daredevil (mcu) burp: Matt as the Battle of New York begins
The Velveteen Spider [26k words | Natasha Romanova, et al ]
Natasha thinks that accepting Nick Fury’s offer to join SHIELD is the end of her old life and the beginning of her new one. In hindsight, she had no idea of what that really meant.
Tribe: [900 words | Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers]
Sam gestured to the room around him. “We build a community in rooms like this so that there is a place to talk and a place to listen and a place to heal. So that we can be reminded that we’re not broken, just a little different. That we went through a trauma and it will get better. And so that we know that we’re not alone. That is why I suggested you come hang out.”
Duty [8300 words | Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, et al. ]
An assassination to protect a source from reprisal. An act of loyalty that might get him killed by his own people. Clint Barton and the various costs of keeping one’s word and one’s faith.
Civil War vignette:
Steve and Natasha, friends and enemy combatants.
Fulcrum: [1700 words | Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers]
Bucky really wishes that Steve understood all of the ways that this wasn’t a back alley in Brooklyn, that this was war, and that he had a half-dozen men who would follow him to hell but he could try a little harder to keep those excursions to a minimum.
MCU/Leverage opening: The aftermath of the story Eliot doesn’t have to tell in ‘The Big Bang Job’ because Parker doesn’t ask. Or, Clint’s got questions when his search for the butcher behind a massacre in Sokovia leads him to a familiar face.
Hiatus: Field-stripping the weapon that is Eliot Spencer.
Cloud Cover [1100 words | Peggy Carter, Angie Martinelli]
Peggy followed her nose into the kitchen, the smell of coffee and bacon making her stomach grumble. She could hear voices, upbeat and carefully modulated, and knew that Angie had the television on. Howard’s apartment had three of them, one in the kitchen, and Angie would have it on whenever she was in there.
The news was playing, including a sanitized report of what had happened in the Rockaways a few hours ago. (The fireball had been seen from miles away, let alone at Fort Tilden, the would-be target of the bombers.) But then came the smiling face of a cartoon lamb bleating out a jingle about the weather forecast to come.
And that’s when Peggy, startled by a memory, began to cry.
Vise [3200 words | Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Scott Lang]
“It’s a trap,” Bucky says hoarsely. Steve gave him what water he had on him, but it was half a bottle. Bucky’s been here for a couple of days; he smells less like piss and sweat and more like ammonia and when Steve calls Sam, he tells him to bring his PJ kit and whatever is needed for treating dehydration. “It’s a trap.”
“I know that, Buck,” Steve tells him as he tries to pull the contraption apart with his bare hands. The factory’s clearly been raided for everything from tools to copper wire and there’s nothing to be used to help, no pry-bar or power tools to hand, and the angle is crap. “Not important right now.”
MCU/Leverage stuff
1) The SHIELD file on Damien Moreau is this…
2) Clint is totally not internalizing the hunt for Eliot Spencer…
Asunder
3500 words | Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Laura Barton (Steve Rogers, Tony Stark)
Natasha chooses her side in the Civil War as pragmatically as ever, with her eyes on the long game. Clint has no such luxury because the stakes are too high for there to be any choice at all.
Untitled Iron Man drabble (no, really actually 100 words)
Lacuna
1300 words | Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff
“A very wise woman once told me that if I truly loved someone, I had to respect their agency and their choices,” he said as they stood on a hill overlooking the cemetery. They’d walked up here by accident and by intent, her aimless direction and his determination to stay by her side. “Even if those choices had led them to following me where they didn’t have to go and dying because of it. Or worse.”
POV shift for Revenant: Bucky Barnes, poor decision maker
It’s not that Bucky’s not aware of what kind of a spectacularly bad idea this is, how much it’s going to fuck him up, how pissed off Natasha’s going to be with him, how pissed off Steve will be. He knows all of this. It… it doesn’t not matter, but it doesn’t matter enough. And he lacks the words to explain why.
Resonance [Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, etc.]
Tony’s reasons for helping Bucky Barnes can be entirely attributable to general do-gooderism and a love of science. (Because he really, really hates it when people rub his personal growth in his face.)
True Faith and Allegiance [2000 words | Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton]
“Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?” means something else in the Twenty-First Century. Bucky Barnes has the same answer. Sam Wilson, former Avenger and current fugitive, appreciates that on many levels, including the ones he’s sure he’s missing.
Creation Myth [870 words | Steve Rogers (Howling Commandos)]
Smoke, mirrors, and the true birth of the Howling Commandos.
Allies [1500 words | Bucky Barnes, Peggy Carter]
It’s less strange bedfellows and more complementary parts: Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter have more in common than Steve Rogers: they have a war to win. And a war to survive.
Renovation [3800 words; Bucky Barnes, Wanda Maximoff, Steve Rogers]
In which Wanda uses her powers for good and Bucky starts sorting through his past, both metaphorically and kinda literally.
.
I’m not going to list everything that happened on the meta tag, save these:
Sam Wilson, Actual Badass
The requirements for becoming a USAF pararescueman. Or, why Sam really wasn’t kidding when he said that he did everything Steve did, just more slowly.
The comics context for the Bucky-Tony fight in the CA:CW trailer
It’s a (spoilery) giant flaming arrow pointing to the future or a red herring the size of a kaiju.
Also posted at DW.
Originally posted to tumblr as: Part One (Jan-June) | Part Two (July-Dec)
Preserved [link to series, 80k]
After the rescue of the 107th, Steve Rogers cashes in all of his favors and makes what deals he can to get Bucky a medical discharge from the Army, sending him home to Brooklyn and far from enemies and curious scientists both. But Steve’s war goes on until it ends badly, in an exploding plane over the Black Sea. Captain America is presumed dead, his shield recovered and returned to a grieving America while his body remains undiscovered.
Seven years later, a new danger is threatening to unbalance the already-roiling Cold War, a Soviet assassin let loose from behind the Iron Curtain. Peggy Carter isn’t sure she wants to believe that the assassin is a super-soldier because of what it could mean, but she does know that whoever it is, she’ll have to break her promise to keep Bucky Barnes far from danger.
Inherited Characteristics [Tony Stark, Peggy Carter (Rhodey, Howard Stark]
It’s 1986, the Sox are going to the World Series, and sixteen-year-old Tony Stark has just gotten himself arrested for trying to sell nukes to the bad guys.
Reprise [4800 words | Peggy Carter, Nick Fury (Steve Rogers)]
In 2011, Peggy Carter gets news she’s been waiting sixty-six years for. (Coincidental with Rock of Gibraltar.)
Landsmen [1800 words | Peggy Carter, Howard Stark]
English is the official language of the Rebirth lab, but Yiddish is the unofficial one, the language of frustration and jubilation and anger and affection. The project is documented in English, but it is lived in Yiddish and Peggy, like everyone else not already fluent in the language, has picked up words here and there. Mostly terms of endearment, addressed to both her and the test tubes of successful experiments, and the many (many) ways to call someone an idiot.
Blister: [750 words | Steve Rogers]
Captain America was a target as much as a hero and when the shots aimed at him struck true, Steve had to be there to pick up the pieces and that’s when he realized how little there was of that man, how completely he’d been subsumed by the costume and the role. He’d never meant for it to happen, of course, never meant to lose himself so completely to Captain America. But he had and now he had to fight to get himself back, to become Steve again.
Blues in the Groove: [31k words | Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanova, Steve Rogers, Maria Hill, various Avengers]
Bucky Barnes is in from the cold and ready to take the first steps toward resuming his life. He has all of his memories, but Steve isn’t the only Avenger eager to have someone around who remembers their past.
A tale in which there are embarrassing Captain America stories, occasional realizations, swing-dancing SHIELD commanders, missions gone awry, culinary adventures, uncomfortable revelations, trips to Queens, bromances, romances, repeated threats of arson, and the couch is a metaphor.
Powerful: [3k words| Steve, Bucky, Avengers]
Steve loses the effects of the super-soldier serum. This is not a tragedy.
Captain Marvel (MCU spec): [2500 words | Carol Danvers, Tony Stark, James Rhodes]
In which Carol is professionally awesome and personally a mess, Tony Stark is Tony Stark, and Rhodey is the designated adult.
Moment: [8800 words | Thor, Jane Foster, various Avengers]
Thor is a prince of Asgard with the duties incumbent upon the heir to the throne. He is Jane’s love and lover, weaving their lives together with careful hands. He is an Avenger fighting alongside teammates who are becoming friends. He is a thousand years old with the wisdom of his age. He is a callow youth still making mistakes. He is not where he expected to be. He wouldn’t be anywhere else.
We Were Soldiers [1500 words | Steve, Bucky]
It’s 1944 and the lesson Bucky has to teach Steve is that in war sometimes you have to kill good guys as well as bad guys to fight bullies.
Tiny Daredevil (mcu) burp: Matt as the Battle of New York begins
The Velveteen Spider [26k words | Natasha Romanova, et al ]
Natasha thinks that accepting Nick Fury’s offer to join SHIELD is the end of her old life and the beginning of her new one. In hindsight, she had no idea of what that really meant.
Tribe: [900 words | Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers]
Sam gestured to the room around him. “We build a community in rooms like this so that there is a place to talk and a place to listen and a place to heal. So that we can be reminded that we’re not broken, just a little different. That we went through a trauma and it will get better. And so that we know that we’re not alone. That is why I suggested you come hang out.”
Duty [8300 words | Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, et al. ]
An assassination to protect a source from reprisal. An act of loyalty that might get him killed by his own people. Clint Barton and the various costs of keeping one’s word and one’s faith.
Civil War vignette:
Steve and Natasha, friends and enemy combatants.
Fulcrum: [1700 words | Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers]
Bucky really wishes that Steve understood all of the ways that this wasn’t a back alley in Brooklyn, that this was war, and that he had a half-dozen men who would follow him to hell but he could try a little harder to keep those excursions to a minimum.
MCU/Leverage opening: The aftermath of the story Eliot doesn’t have to tell in ‘The Big Bang Job’ because Parker doesn’t ask. Or, Clint’s got questions when his search for the butcher behind a massacre in Sokovia leads him to a familiar face.
Hiatus: Field-stripping the weapon that is Eliot Spencer.
Cloud Cover [1100 words | Peggy Carter, Angie Martinelli]
Peggy followed her nose into the kitchen, the smell of coffee and bacon making her stomach grumble. She could hear voices, upbeat and carefully modulated, and knew that Angie had the television on. Howard’s apartment had three of them, one in the kitchen, and Angie would have it on whenever she was in there.
The news was playing, including a sanitized report of what had happened in the Rockaways a few hours ago. (The fireball had been seen from miles away, let alone at Fort Tilden, the would-be target of the bombers.) But then came the smiling face of a cartoon lamb bleating out a jingle about the weather forecast to come.
And that’s when Peggy, startled by a memory, began to cry.
Vise [3200 words | Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Scott Lang]
“It’s a trap,” Bucky says hoarsely. Steve gave him what water he had on him, but it was half a bottle. Bucky’s been here for a couple of days; he smells less like piss and sweat and more like ammonia and when Steve calls Sam, he tells him to bring his PJ kit and whatever is needed for treating dehydration. “It’s a trap.”
“I know that, Buck,” Steve tells him as he tries to pull the contraption apart with his bare hands. The factory’s clearly been raided for everything from tools to copper wire and there’s nothing to be used to help, no pry-bar or power tools to hand, and the angle is crap. “Not important right now.”
MCU/Leverage stuff
1) The SHIELD file on Damien Moreau is this…
2) Clint is totally not internalizing the hunt for Eliot Spencer…
Asunder
3500 words | Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Laura Barton (Steve Rogers, Tony Stark)
Natasha chooses her side in the Civil War as pragmatically as ever, with her eyes on the long game. Clint has no such luxury because the stakes are too high for there to be any choice at all.
Untitled Iron Man drabble (no, really actually 100 words)
Lacuna
1300 words | Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff
“A very wise woman once told me that if I truly loved someone, I had to respect their agency and their choices,” he said as they stood on a hill overlooking the cemetery. They’d walked up here by accident and by intent, her aimless direction and his determination to stay by her side. “Even if those choices had led them to following me where they didn’t have to go and dying because of it. Or worse.”
POV shift for Revenant: Bucky Barnes, poor decision maker
It’s not that Bucky’s not aware of what kind of a spectacularly bad idea this is, how much it’s going to fuck him up, how pissed off Natasha’s going to be with him, how pissed off Steve will be. He knows all of this. It… it doesn’t not matter, but it doesn’t matter enough. And he lacks the words to explain why.
Resonance [Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, etc.]
Tony’s reasons for helping Bucky Barnes can be entirely attributable to general do-gooderism and a love of science. (Because he really, really hates it when people rub his personal growth in his face.)
True Faith and Allegiance [2000 words | Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton]
“Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?” means something else in the Twenty-First Century. Bucky Barnes has the same answer. Sam Wilson, former Avenger and current fugitive, appreciates that on many levels, including the ones he’s sure he’s missing.
Creation Myth [870 words | Steve Rogers (Howling Commandos)]
Smoke, mirrors, and the true birth of the Howling Commandos.
Allies [1500 words | Bucky Barnes, Peggy Carter]
It’s less strange bedfellows and more complementary parts: Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter have more in common than Steve Rogers: they have a war to win. And a war to survive.
Renovation [3800 words; Bucky Barnes, Wanda Maximoff, Steve Rogers]
In which Wanda uses her powers for good and Bucky starts sorting through his past, both metaphorically and kinda literally.
.
I’m not going to list everything that happened on the meta tag, save these:
Sam Wilson, Actual Badass
The requirements for becoming a USAF pararescueman. Or, why Sam really wasn’t kidding when he said that he did everything Steve did, just more slowly.
The comics context for the Bucky-Tony fight in the CA:CW trailer
It’s a (spoilery) giant flaming arrow pointing to the future or a red herring the size of a kaiju.
Also posted at DW.