Fic for Iron Fist Week
Links go to AO3 for longer fic; shorter fic is under cuts.
1. Eurydice Ltd (gen, Ward & Danny, 900 wds)
Prompt from
sovay: Danny has to retrieve Ward from the underworld.
2. Prompt on Tumblr: Danny and Luke forming Heroes for Hire after the blip and deciding to help the city in honor of the rest of the Defenders. Posted on Tumblr here.
They never did make a deliberate choice to use Jessica's office as their base of operations. It was a sort of interim office until they found something else, at first-a decision they made to keep from having to make a decision. It seemed to make sense because it was already outfitted as an office, and neither of them wanted to do it from Luke's club, or from Danny's dojo. It just felt right.
They left the Alias Investigations sign on the door; after all, Jessica's name wasn't there, so it wasn't as if they were pretending to be her. But that wasn't quite right either, because investigators wasn't what they were, not exactly. Whenever they discussed putting their names on the door, it devolved into a (mostly) friendly argument over whose name to put first, Cage & Rand vs. Rand & Cage. And also, it felt slightly disrespectful to Jessica to take her name off.
Neither of them could quite shake the feeling that she was going to come back, that they were all going to come back, walking back into their lives from wherever they'd gone. But she didn't, the rest of them didn't; Luke and Danny and the rest of those left behind were stuck with a shattered city, struggling to fix it. After staying out 'til all hours, Danny got in the habit of sleeping in the back room apartment at Luke's club more often than he went back downtown to the dojo. Meanwhile, Colleen and Misty had their own thing they were running out of the dojo; they were calling themselves Nightwing Restorations, these days.
"Cagerand," Danny said, grinning. He was finding it easier to smile these days, with the broken pieces of the city starting to go back together, and the grief for Jessica and Ward and Matt and Claire and everyone else they'd lost becoming a little less sharp, day by day.
"I hope that's a joke, Fist."
"Hey, I put you first! I don't know what you're complaining about."
But what they eventually came up with wasn't a joke. They decided on it together, and Danny got the work done, and then the office door read, in glossy letters:
ALIAS INVESTIGATIONS & HEROES FOR HIRE
"I think that covers all our bases," Danny said quietly.
That night they broke out one of the bottles from Jessica's stash, which they hadn't touched up until now-neither of them drank that much, and there was Luke's nightclub for that, anyway. But that night they sat around the office and shared the bottle.
And in the morning, they got back to work.
3. Waiting Game (Colleen & Ward, 1800 wds)
Combination of prompts from
booksarelife (hurt/comfort, and Colleen and Ward interacting with each other) - waiting for Danny to wake up after another surgery, post-canon.
4. Prompt from
yhlee: Ward, Danny, and Joy playing Oregon Trail as adults. Posted here on Tumblr.
Ward reflected gloomily that this might be genuinely the dumbest thing Danny had ever gotten him to go along with. And considering that their shared history included rappelling down a thousand-foot cliff while being chased by warrior monks, that was really saying something.
"Ward, don't look at the screen."
"Is there some reason why I shouldn't look at the screen?" Ward said, of course looking at the screen immediately.
Ward has died of exhaustion.
"Exhaustion?" Of all the ridiculous things to die of. "I thought I had a broken leg."
"Colleen has a broken leg," Danny corrected him. "And then she broke her arm and got bitten by a snake and, um, died."
"Remind me never to go to Oregon with you."
Oregon Trail really wasn't a multiplayer game, at least the ancient version with the sketchy graphics that Joy had, for some reason probably related to hating Ward, helped Danny get running on his laptop. Joy was currently lying on the couch in Danny and Colleen's dojo, phone propped up on her knees, supposedly answering work emails but actually watching Danny playing, at least some of the time. Danny and Ward were on the floor with the laptop.
"Do you have any living party members left?" Joy asked, looking around lazily.
"You are!" Danny said. "And Claire too. She's our medic," he explained to Ward.
"I don't think the game works that way. You have to pick an occupation for the whole party, don't you?"
"I thought you said you didn't remember playing it."
"It's coming back to me in horrifying flashbacks."
"Am I dead yet?" Colleen called from the kitchen.
"Snakebite!" Ward yelled back.
"I'm sorry, Colleen!" Danny called back. "Oh, uh, sorry, Joy."
"What'd you do to me?" Joy asked in a resigned tone.
"I didn't do-so you have cholera, basically."
"Sounds fun," Joy remarked, going back to her phone.
"At least you have Claire to take care of you," Danny said brightly. "Oh, uh ... never mind."
"What'd Claire die of, Danny?"
"She's not dead yet, she's just got dysentery."
"Cholera and dysentery in the same wagon train," Ward said. "Your basic food safety protocols obviously need some work. This is what you get for ignoring Old West medic Claire."
"Ward, I'm trying to hunt here before we all starve, leave me alone."
5. Tumblr prompt: any characters, arguing about the best takeout in the city. Set after the big fight in 1x13. Posted here on Tumblr.
"You've never heard of Joe's Pizza," Claire said, in a tone that suggested Ward had never heard of the Empire State Building.
Ward looked up, scowling, and winced as he fingered the sutures Claire had placed along his hairline. "Sure, Joe's Pizza, how could I forget, we catered them for our last company event."
"It's the best pizza in the city! Stop squirming," Claire added to Danny. She was picking broken glass out of the palm of his left hand. His right was swathed in bandages, resting on his knee. "Come on, I know you two are billionaires and all, but you can't call yourselves New Yorkers if you don't know Joe's."
"I like Pizza Hut," Danny said.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. Colleen?" Claire appealed. "Back me up here."
"Sorry," Colleen said from the kitchen. She came back, carefully balancing cups of tea. "This is Armando's erasure and I won't stand for it."
"I'm surrounded by Philistines." Claire sat back on the couch and stripped off her gloves. "That's the last of it. Meachum, stop picking at your stitches." Ward jerked his hand down. "Colleen, do you have any stab wounds or anything you need me to look at?"
Colleen gave a little smile, a tug at the corner of her mouth, and set the cups on the edge of the coffee table. "I'm okay. There's tea here if anyone wants it."
Danny started to reach for a cup and winced. Colleen handed it to him, placing it carefully in his relatively less hurt left hand.
There was an awkward silence while Claire closed up her first aid kit, a general sense of things unsaid. Colleen settled down with her shoulder resting against Danny's. Ward looked like the only reason why he hadn't bolted for the door already was because he wasn't entirely sure if he could get up.
Then Claire said firmly, "We all need food. Since it's my apartment, I'm ordering Joe's, and with two billionaires in my living room, I am not paying for it."
6. Oranges and Chocolate (gen, Ward & Danny, 1600 wds)
Ward tags along when Danny visits his parents' gravesite. He's forgotten that Danny's grave marker is still there too. This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1381819.html with
comments.
1. Eurydice Ltd (gen, Ward & Danny, 900 wds)
Prompt from
sovay: Danny has to retrieve Ward from the underworld.
2. Prompt on Tumblr: Danny and Luke forming Heroes for Hire after the blip and deciding to help the city in honor of the rest of the Defenders. Posted on Tumblr here.
They never did make a deliberate choice to use Jessica's office as their base of operations. It was a sort of interim office until they found something else, at first-a decision they made to keep from having to make a decision. It seemed to make sense because it was already outfitted as an office, and neither of them wanted to do it from Luke's club, or from Danny's dojo. It just felt right.
They left the Alias Investigations sign on the door; after all, Jessica's name wasn't there, so it wasn't as if they were pretending to be her. But that wasn't quite right either, because investigators wasn't what they were, not exactly. Whenever they discussed putting their names on the door, it devolved into a (mostly) friendly argument over whose name to put first, Cage & Rand vs. Rand & Cage. And also, it felt slightly disrespectful to Jessica to take her name off.
Neither of them could quite shake the feeling that she was going to come back, that they were all going to come back, walking back into their lives from wherever they'd gone. But she didn't, the rest of them didn't; Luke and Danny and the rest of those left behind were stuck with a shattered city, struggling to fix it. After staying out 'til all hours, Danny got in the habit of sleeping in the back room apartment at Luke's club more often than he went back downtown to the dojo. Meanwhile, Colleen and Misty had their own thing they were running out of the dojo; they were calling themselves Nightwing Restorations, these days.
"Cagerand," Danny said, grinning. He was finding it easier to smile these days, with the broken pieces of the city starting to go back together, and the grief for Jessica and Ward and Matt and Claire and everyone else they'd lost becoming a little less sharp, day by day.
"I hope that's a joke, Fist."
"Hey, I put you first! I don't know what you're complaining about."
But what they eventually came up with wasn't a joke. They decided on it together, and Danny got the work done, and then the office door read, in glossy letters:
ALIAS INVESTIGATIONS & HEROES FOR HIRE
"I think that covers all our bases," Danny said quietly.
That night they broke out one of the bottles from Jessica's stash, which they hadn't touched up until now-neither of them drank that much, and there was Luke's nightclub for that, anyway. But that night they sat around the office and shared the bottle.
And in the morning, they got back to work.
3. Waiting Game (Colleen & Ward, 1800 wds)
Combination of prompts from
booksarelife (hurt/comfort, and Colleen and Ward interacting with each other) - waiting for Danny to wake up after another surgery, post-canon.
4. Prompt from
yhlee: Ward, Danny, and Joy playing Oregon Trail as adults. Posted here on Tumblr.
Ward reflected gloomily that this might be genuinely the dumbest thing Danny had ever gotten him to go along with. And considering that their shared history included rappelling down a thousand-foot cliff while being chased by warrior monks, that was really saying something.
"Ward, don't look at the screen."
"Is there some reason why I shouldn't look at the screen?" Ward said, of course looking at the screen immediately.
Ward has died of exhaustion.
"Exhaustion?" Of all the ridiculous things to die of. "I thought I had a broken leg."
"Colleen has a broken leg," Danny corrected him. "And then she broke her arm and got bitten by a snake and, um, died."
"Remind me never to go to Oregon with you."
Oregon Trail really wasn't a multiplayer game, at least the ancient version with the sketchy graphics that Joy had, for some reason probably related to hating Ward, helped Danny get running on his laptop. Joy was currently lying on the couch in Danny and Colleen's dojo, phone propped up on her knees, supposedly answering work emails but actually watching Danny playing, at least some of the time. Danny and Ward were on the floor with the laptop.
"Do you have any living party members left?" Joy asked, looking around lazily.
"You are!" Danny said. "And Claire too. She's our medic," he explained to Ward.
"I don't think the game works that way. You have to pick an occupation for the whole party, don't you?"
"I thought you said you didn't remember playing it."
"It's coming back to me in horrifying flashbacks."
"Am I dead yet?" Colleen called from the kitchen.
"Snakebite!" Ward yelled back.
"I'm sorry, Colleen!" Danny called back. "Oh, uh, sorry, Joy."
"What'd you do to me?" Joy asked in a resigned tone.
"I didn't do-so you have cholera, basically."
"Sounds fun," Joy remarked, going back to her phone.
"At least you have Claire to take care of you," Danny said brightly. "Oh, uh ... never mind."
"What'd Claire die of, Danny?"
"She's not dead yet, she's just got dysentery."
"Cholera and dysentery in the same wagon train," Ward said. "Your basic food safety protocols obviously need some work. This is what you get for ignoring Old West medic Claire."
"Ward, I'm trying to hunt here before we all starve, leave me alone."
5. Tumblr prompt: any characters, arguing about the best takeout in the city. Set after the big fight in 1x13. Posted here on Tumblr.
"You've never heard of Joe's Pizza," Claire said, in a tone that suggested Ward had never heard of the Empire State Building.
Ward looked up, scowling, and winced as he fingered the sutures Claire had placed along his hairline. "Sure, Joe's Pizza, how could I forget, we catered them for our last company event."
"It's the best pizza in the city! Stop squirming," Claire added to Danny. She was picking broken glass out of the palm of his left hand. His right was swathed in bandages, resting on his knee. "Come on, I know you two are billionaires and all, but you can't call yourselves New Yorkers if you don't know Joe's."
"I like Pizza Hut," Danny said.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. Colleen?" Claire appealed. "Back me up here."
"Sorry," Colleen said from the kitchen. She came back, carefully balancing cups of tea. "This is Armando's erasure and I won't stand for it."
"I'm surrounded by Philistines." Claire sat back on the couch and stripped off her gloves. "That's the last of it. Meachum, stop picking at your stitches." Ward jerked his hand down. "Colleen, do you have any stab wounds or anything you need me to look at?"
Colleen gave a little smile, a tug at the corner of her mouth, and set the cups on the edge of the coffee table. "I'm okay. There's tea here if anyone wants it."
Danny started to reach for a cup and winced. Colleen handed it to him, placing it carefully in his relatively less hurt left hand.
There was an awkward silence while Claire closed up her first aid kit, a general sense of things unsaid. Colleen settled down with her shoulder resting against Danny's. Ward looked like the only reason why he hadn't bolted for the door already was because he wasn't entirely sure if he could get up.
Then Claire said firmly, "We all need food. Since it's my apartment, I'm ordering Joe's, and with two billionaires in my living room, I am not paying for it."
6. Oranges and Chocolate (gen, Ward & Danny, 1600 wds)
Ward tags along when Danny visits his parents' gravesite. He's forgotten that Danny's grave marker is still there too. This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1381819.html with
comments.