Fluff, Relationships, and Traditions
This entry is part 52 of 52 in the series 365 Challenge
So characters have habits, ways they interact with certain people and situations, things they do and like to do, stories and histories together. I've known a lot of my characters' for a long time but getting them all into fic is interesting, particularly for the ones I don't know that for.
I've ( Read more... )
I was about to start in on a non-fluffy version of one of the prompts, and I figured after that, I'd shift to an off the wall one that is probably not going to be as funny as it first seems.
*shrugs*
It's writing, though. Staying writing is important.
I remember asking why Storm put Red in charge, I am now strangely curious about his past before the Department, and there was the stuff with Ricki and Burnfire... plus case stuff with Justus.
I think there might be more. I will have to think about it and see if I have any more questions to ask for meat and potatoes type stuff.
And there was Ilsa walking the city, though I haven't figured out that one yet. Too nebulous. Sounds weird, but yeah, it is still. I have to find a concrete angle into her ( ... )
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Rett woke coughing blood. His muscles ached and his skin burned, but he lay still and felt. There was no blood on his back. He listened carefully and heard nothing. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and glanced around.
He was in an empty, grey-walled room on a thinly carpeted floor-no windows, door in the corner. He forced his body to uncurl and forced himself to ignore the pain screaming through him as he did. He stood, trembling but able. He had practice.
Rett was almost seven years old, but in his short life, he had already learned how to stay under the radar, how to not, and how to hide his weaknesses. He stepped up to the door and listened until he was sure no one was waiting on the other side. He tried the handle. It was unlocked.
The little boy stripped off his bloody shirt and put it in a heap of ruined clothes he would need to replace later. He had school, and neither of the children were willing to wind up in protective services ( ... )
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Even here, though, he shows the leader he becomes and that strength he always had, and his protective nature.
Still... Hugs for him. Lots of them.
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That self-sacrificing streak by the way? That's what makes a third. They're the ones who take the heat for the rest of the team.
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Ah. That is part of why he made Wolf first and went to third?
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It is why after he made Wolf first he took third instead of bumping Whisper down. He doesn't have the temperament for second, never has, and Whisper doesn't have the willingness to do third. She's not a loose cannon, which is kind of what it takes.
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That makes sense.
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When she walked in the cell where Justus was being held, he knew he was looking at unadulterated danger-not so much beautiful as fascinating. Physically, she was all soft edges and dark auburn hair; she made you want to look at her and never stop. Inside, she was all sharp-edged and fierce; you knew if you touched her, you would come away bloody. He looked into those dark eyes staring into his, the gently tilted appraisal, the hand brushing against the stubby black gun at her hip. Pity, but not like any he had previously seen. This pity knew what he was losing. He knew with utter certainty, she was going to kill him ( ... )
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He woke with another presence nearby, someone quiet and waiting for something to happen, but not threatening, so nonthreatening they barely registered. Then Shift handed him a knife and taught him to spar. Justus had fought before, rough-housed, learned to handle a gun before he was eight years old, learned about God and country the way his father had taught it, but he had never fought a girl, let alone a woman and it showed.
"D- it,"-he flinched at the curse-"you think all your enemies will be men?" she demanded harshly, enough to make him wary, expecting something worse, he didn't know what.
She launched at him, pure, vicious fury, and something inside him snapped with survival instinct.
He yanked himself back, staring at the blood welling out of her side, the knife she slid out from under her ribs where he had put it as ( ... )
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They had both seen something they shouldn't have, heard shattered glass, and seen dark figures exiting the high window of a building and more, and now were praying silently together they wouldn't be seen.
Gravel hit the box in front of them and Justus told himself, don't look up, don't look up. But it was too late, and he wasn't sure what set Ben off, but he knew without doubt they had been seen and that was why Ben grabbed his arm and sent them running for their lives, splitting up. He almost got away. He almost got away... He heard the thump of flesh on flesh and Ben struggling, slipping on the street ( ... )
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On the flight back from Lascek, a country prone to small but effective terrorist groups, Shift slid back from the cockpit into the hold where Justus and Protector were cataloging confiscated materials. Shift's eyes watched him darkly, almost black in the nonlight. She didn't look like Shift at all; instead, she was wearing heavy bones and thick curves under a knot of luscious golden hair-a native.
"We call this an easy assignment," she said suddenly, quietly, faint curve of a sweet smile that belonged on this skin, but not on her.
Justus nodded shortly. He heard what she wasn't saying. Easy assignments were rare.
He hadn't realized she meant most assignments would slam you in the gut ( ... )
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"Destroying the cell is fine," Ben interjected abruptly, "but detonation would be a thousand times cleaner."
Justus shifted his gaze sharply to his one-time friend. He looked anywhere in that face for something familiar, something good that he remembered.
"Where's the fun in that?" Shift grinned back sharply.
Ben's expression closed to something significantly harder than it had been. It wasn't an expression Justus recognized. It wasn't Ben. It was all the horror of this place and what it represented slammed in his face. It was all his softness gone and replaced with a hardened warrior in perfect control that Ben had never been.
"I agree that we should wipe out the entire cell," he said coolly.
The fair-haired man, Maker, disagreed. "We're talking about potentially having families with them."
Justus shoved his anger tightly under a lid and spoke as a fourth for the first time since he became an operative. "As a blind. They want to keep their base a civilian target, but footage ( ... )
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Painful, but good.
I mean that in all the insights into what happened to him, how it changed him, how he changed himself, even how Red Wolf changed.
There's so much... information here. I had to read it a couple times, and I'm sure there's more there that I need to go back for.
This would be more than I was hoping for back when I asked why Wolf and Justus didn't get along, what it was like when he first saw him again.
It's good... Terrible in some ways because of what is going on, but very good.
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That's half the trouble of this stuff. You pick at one thread and a mess of them come unraveling with it. Why did it hit him so hard and why those two can barely stand each other is so wrapped up in what each of them separately became. And I was able to work in the rank thing, so that made me happy.
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