comment_fic 936-940: Avengers & original
Title: untitled
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: pre-canon
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount:
Point of view: third
Note: Okay, so, I'm fairly sure it's canon that Steve Rogers was born on July 4, 1918? And there is some dispute about Bucky Barnes' actual birthday (3 different dates given in the movieverse alone), so I'm just picking a date and going with it: March 18, 1918.
Another note: yes, I know it sucks.
Prompt: Any, Any,
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
James Buchanan Barnes was born on a Monday. He was a happy and healthy baby, and his mother thanked God. He smiled and he laughed and charmed everyone he met.
“That boy’s gonna be somebody,” his grandmother said, helping his mother with the chores. “Just you watch and see.”
He grew up handsome and he grew up strong, and become somebody he did.
.
Steven Grant Rogers was born on a Thursday. He was small and sickly from birth on and nobody thought he'd make it. His mother prayed and his father came home from war angry and frail, and soon enough, his father wandered away and never came back.
His mother did the best she could, praying every night, begging God that her boy would grow strong, would live.
Steve Rogers fought every day of his life, and live he did.
Title: sleep wake hope and then
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my character; e.e.cummings
Warnings: post-Winter Soldier; aftermath of torture/brainwashing
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 255
Point of view: third
Prompt: Captain America movies; Winter Soldier; Sleep doesn't come easy
He does not remember how to sleep. He knows that he must have known it, once: every organic being requires sleep so as to recharge, to let the mind rest. Without sleep, he knows (though he does not know why, or how he learned, or when) people go mad and then die.
He does not sleep outside of the cold, but there is no cold, here. He will not return to the cold, submit silently to the handlers and technicians.
But without the cold - he lies down on the ground inside an abandoned warehouse. He knows the site is secure; he has made it so. He lies down, arms at his side, legs straight, and closes his eyes. He is tired, dirty, and hungry. He is not cold.
He does not sleep.
For six nights, he does not sleep. He is exhausted. Barely functioning. He almost kills half a dozen homeless people and a stray dog, so he stops going out. He spends days on the ground, ignoring the hunger and thirst.
How do people sleep? His mind does not quiet. His body trembles.
He must rest. He does not want to die -
He blinks, staring at the ceiling. He does not want to die.
If he does not want to die, then he must resume caring for the body. Sustenance. Water. Cleaning. Maybe -
He heaves himself to his feet. Water, food, bathing. Maybe if he does not hunger, sleep will come.
(It does. He wakes an hour later, but it is a start.)
Title: whose dust was once all fire
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Byron
Warnings: AU during The First Avenger; AU for everything after; post-apocalyptic
Pairings: Steve/Bucky
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 720
Point of view: third
Prompt: any, any, sleeping for 100 years
He wakes up shivering. It surprises him because he was fairly certain he'd died; he remembered hitting the ice, remembered the cold creeping in --
But he's awake and it is so cold. He rolls over, wincing at the pain. Everything hurts but he doesn't seem to be bleeding. It takes him three tries to reach his feet and he stumbles over to the radio, tries to call somebody. The whole thing is dead. The glass is broken and an icy wind sweeping in.
It’s so cold.
He knows where he went down, and he knows what direction to walk, and someone must be looking for him. He tries to scavenge what supplies he can, but everything is frozen. It takes about an hour (he thinks?) to chip his shield free and it is the only thing he takes with him when he slips out of the carcass of the plane.
.
He does not know how long he wanders south. He walks until he must sleep; he wakes only to walk some more. He barely feels the cold anymore. He’s grown used to the hunger; he eats ice when he can’t handle the thirst.
When he hears the aircraft, he stops. He watches it hover in the sky and then a rope is thrown down. His fingers barely work as he ties it around his middle and he’s mostly unconscious by the time he’s pulled in.
.
He wakes up warm. He’s in a white room, dressed in white, and he’s warm. He’d forgotten what that felt like.
“You’re a puzzle,” a voice says.
He turns his head to look at the woman watching him. She’s maybe 40 with short red hair, wearing some sort of uniform. “Coulson swears you’re Captain America; her dad was a major fan. All records, of course, were lost in the invasion.”
“Invasion?” he asks.
She nods. “The Chitauri, the start of the Mad Titan’s attempt to reign. It failed in the end, but it tore everything apart. We’re still rebuilding.”
That doesn’t make any sense. He looks around the room; the equipment he’s hooked up to - “What year is it?” he asks.
The woman says, “2050.”
.
When the red-haired woman, Natasha, determines he’s no threat, they let him out. The Allies won the war, but more wars followed. Natasha’s people have a few historians who don’t mind telling him, who are trying to rerecord millennias’ worth of history.
In 2012, aliens invaded. In 2020, while the world was still reeling, Hydra tried to massacre millions of people and nearly succeeded. Tony Stark managed to stop it, but it cost his life and about a million more.
Steve doesn’t recognize anything anymore. He wishes he hadn’t woke up
.
He’s sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon at dawn on March 18, 2051. Bucky would be 133 today. But Bucky died 107 years ago.
So did Steve.
.
On July 4, 2051 (a day that’s no longer celebrated because the USA doesn’t exist the way it did), Steve is riding a motorcycle along a highway. He knows that he could help Natasha’s people with the rebuilding effort, try to restore order - but he’s just. This isn’t his world. He died for his world, and then he woke up into a frozen wasteland of a hell, and he’s done.
He’s 133 years old but he’s only lived for 28 of them. He shouldn’t even be here.
.
He’s in Brooklyn, looking around the ruins, and he hears, “I didn’t believe her. I had to see for myself.” It’s a voice he knows better than he knows his own.
“Wandering around the Arctic - your sense of direction was always awful,” the voice continues, but Steve can’t move. Can’t turn to see.
Can’t be wrong.
“Steve,” Bucky says, right behind him. “Please look at me. I have to -- please.”
He turns, lifts his head, and Bucky is standing there. His hair is longer, he’s wearing some sort of body armor, his left arm is metal… but it’s Bucky.
“How?” he asks, reaching out to touch Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky’s smiling just as wide as he is, and Steve doesn’t even try to hold back the tears as Bucky pulls him into the tightest hug they’ve ever shared.
“Fucking Hydra,” Bucky says. “Oh, fuck, Steve, you’re alive.”
.
Steve’s glad he woke up.
Title: Good Fairies are not necessarily Nice Fairies
original, gen, 310 words
Warnings for past animal death, cruelty to animals
Prompt: Fairy tales, Any, a Fairy overhears someone saying animals don't feel pain the same way humans do, and decides to prove them wrong by changing them into an animal.
Katia hears the man complaining about the litter of kittens his mouser just bore, how he'll have to take time out of his busy day to do drown the useless things, how inconvenient it is that the cat keeps mating.
"Papa!" a little girl shouts. "Don't hurt the kittens!"
The man scoffs, pulling out of her grip. "They're just beasts," he tells her, hurrying towards the river.
The little girl is crying, but an older boy guides her back to the cottage.
Katia flies after the man, invisible and insubstantial, and keeps pace with him all the way to the water.
The kittens struggle in the sack; when the man throws them towards the river, Katia catches it gently and carries it to the other side, where she sets it down gently. The man has already turned away and doesn't notice. Katia summons the mother-cat with a Word of Power and releases the kittens back into her care.
She watches the man go with narrowed eyes and murmurs another Word of Power -- where there had been a blacksmith whistling there is now a field mouse. Katia sends a Well-Wish to the man's family; they will be fine without him for however long until he realizes the lesson he must learn.
(And if he never realizes, or if a predator catches him, well... his children will be fine, his wife will be fine, all will be well. Her Well-Wish ensures it.)
“Care for your children, Little Sister,” she tells the cat and then she continues on. There is a princess waiting for her Blessing to the south; maybe she’ll give the girl All-Speech, or Shapeshifting. It is time, after all, that royals again remember how all creatures are connected, and when one Life suffers, so do all the rest.
“Bless you, Lady,” the cat calls after her as Katia takes to the sky.
Title: the taste of the sky
Original, gen, 340 words
Prompt: any, any + any dragon or pegasus character, riding/flying in the moonlight
Skychildren are rare; Etana hasn't seen one of her kind in -- a long time. Not since she left her mother's nest, and that was uncountable ages ago. She has flown the world over, seeking companionship, and though she has visited the Flamechildren in their infernos and the Earthchildren in their warrens, and even spent a turn in the ocean with the Seachildren, she has not seen one of her own in all her days.
She has had no one to fly with since she was small and it grows lonelier with every rise of the moon.
And then, on a night like any other, she sees something shimmer in the moonlight, wings singing as it rises higher and higher, and she rises to meet it.
She trumpets a greeting and it laughs, “Well met!”
Beyond their wings, they have nothing in common. But they spiral around the moonlight, they race through the clouds, they chase each other to the ground and back.
As the moon sets and the sun peers over the far edge of the world, Etana and her companion settle down in Etana’s nest. “I am Yvere,” the creature tells her, “daughter of the First Flyer.”
“I am Etana, Skychild,” Etana replies, tucking herself up small beside Yvere. “You are the first I’ve found who could keep up with me.” No bird has ever managed it. Most of them flee. There was a phoenix, once --
“And I, you!” Yvere laughs. She rests her head on Etana’s shoulder. “It’s been so long since I had such fun. Not since I left the herd.” She sighs, wings rustling.
“Sleep, sister,” Etana tells her. “I’ll guard the sky till you wake.” Skychildren need little rest, and Etana’s excitement will keep her awake, anyway. A companion, at last!
“I’ll need to feed towards dusk,” Yvere murmurs. “I’ll wake then.”
Etana hums, low in her throat, and Yvere laughs a little. “Exactly so,” she sighs, and then sleeps. Etana softly trills her mother’s lullaby and cannot wait for the moon to rise.
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: pre-canon
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount:
Point of view: third
Note: Okay, so, I'm fairly sure it's canon that Steve Rogers was born on July 4, 1918? And there is some dispute about Bucky Barnes' actual birthday (3 different dates given in the movieverse alone), so I'm just picking a date and going with it: March 18, 1918.
Another note: yes, I know it sucks.
Prompt: Any, Any,
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
James Buchanan Barnes was born on a Monday. He was a happy and healthy baby, and his mother thanked God. He smiled and he laughed and charmed everyone he met.
“That boy’s gonna be somebody,” his grandmother said, helping his mother with the chores. “Just you watch and see.”
He grew up handsome and he grew up strong, and become somebody he did.
.
Steven Grant Rogers was born on a Thursday. He was small and sickly from birth on and nobody thought he'd make it. His mother prayed and his father came home from war angry and frail, and soon enough, his father wandered away and never came back.
His mother did the best she could, praying every night, begging God that her boy would grow strong, would live.
Steve Rogers fought every day of his life, and live he did.
Title: sleep wake hope and then
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my character; e.e.cummings
Warnings: post-Winter Soldier; aftermath of torture/brainwashing
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 255
Point of view: third
Prompt: Captain America movies; Winter Soldier; Sleep doesn't come easy
He does not remember how to sleep. He knows that he must have known it, once: every organic being requires sleep so as to recharge, to let the mind rest. Without sleep, he knows (though he does not know why, or how he learned, or when) people go mad and then die.
He does not sleep outside of the cold, but there is no cold, here. He will not return to the cold, submit silently to the handlers and technicians.
But without the cold - he lies down on the ground inside an abandoned warehouse. He knows the site is secure; he has made it so. He lies down, arms at his side, legs straight, and closes his eyes. He is tired, dirty, and hungry. He is not cold.
He does not sleep.
For six nights, he does not sleep. He is exhausted. Barely functioning. He almost kills half a dozen homeless people and a stray dog, so he stops going out. He spends days on the ground, ignoring the hunger and thirst.
How do people sleep? His mind does not quiet. His body trembles.
He must rest. He does not want to die -
He blinks, staring at the ceiling. He does not want to die.
If he does not want to die, then he must resume caring for the body. Sustenance. Water. Cleaning. Maybe -
He heaves himself to his feet. Water, food, bathing. Maybe if he does not hunger, sleep will come.
(It does. He wakes an hour later, but it is a start.)
Title: whose dust was once all fire
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Byron
Warnings: AU during The First Avenger; AU for everything after; post-apocalyptic
Pairings: Steve/Bucky
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 720
Point of view: third
Prompt: any, any, sleeping for 100 years
He wakes up shivering. It surprises him because he was fairly certain he'd died; he remembered hitting the ice, remembered the cold creeping in --
But he's awake and it is so cold. He rolls over, wincing at the pain. Everything hurts but he doesn't seem to be bleeding. It takes him three tries to reach his feet and he stumbles over to the radio, tries to call somebody. The whole thing is dead. The glass is broken and an icy wind sweeping in.
It’s so cold.
He knows where he went down, and he knows what direction to walk, and someone must be looking for him. He tries to scavenge what supplies he can, but everything is frozen. It takes about an hour (he thinks?) to chip his shield free and it is the only thing he takes with him when he slips out of the carcass of the plane.
.
He does not know how long he wanders south. He walks until he must sleep; he wakes only to walk some more. He barely feels the cold anymore. He’s grown used to the hunger; he eats ice when he can’t handle the thirst.
When he hears the aircraft, he stops. He watches it hover in the sky and then a rope is thrown down. His fingers barely work as he ties it around his middle and he’s mostly unconscious by the time he’s pulled in.
.
He wakes up warm. He’s in a white room, dressed in white, and he’s warm. He’d forgotten what that felt like.
“You’re a puzzle,” a voice says.
He turns his head to look at the woman watching him. She’s maybe 40 with short red hair, wearing some sort of uniform. “Coulson swears you’re Captain America; her dad was a major fan. All records, of course, were lost in the invasion.”
“Invasion?” he asks.
She nods. “The Chitauri, the start of the Mad Titan’s attempt to reign. It failed in the end, but it tore everything apart. We’re still rebuilding.”
That doesn’t make any sense. He looks around the room; the equipment he’s hooked up to - “What year is it?” he asks.
The woman says, “2050.”
.
When the red-haired woman, Natasha, determines he’s no threat, they let him out. The Allies won the war, but more wars followed. Natasha’s people have a few historians who don’t mind telling him, who are trying to rerecord millennias’ worth of history.
In 2012, aliens invaded. In 2020, while the world was still reeling, Hydra tried to massacre millions of people and nearly succeeded. Tony Stark managed to stop it, but it cost his life and about a million more.
Steve doesn’t recognize anything anymore. He wishes he hadn’t woke up
.
He’s sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon at dawn on March 18, 2051. Bucky would be 133 today. But Bucky died 107 years ago.
So did Steve.
.
On July 4, 2051 (a day that’s no longer celebrated because the USA doesn’t exist the way it did), Steve is riding a motorcycle along a highway. He knows that he could help Natasha’s people with the rebuilding effort, try to restore order - but he’s just. This isn’t his world. He died for his world, and then he woke up into a frozen wasteland of a hell, and he’s done.
He’s 133 years old but he’s only lived for 28 of them. He shouldn’t even be here.
.
He’s in Brooklyn, looking around the ruins, and he hears, “I didn’t believe her. I had to see for myself.” It’s a voice he knows better than he knows his own.
“Wandering around the Arctic - your sense of direction was always awful,” the voice continues, but Steve can’t move. Can’t turn to see.
Can’t be wrong.
“Steve,” Bucky says, right behind him. “Please look at me. I have to -- please.”
He turns, lifts his head, and Bucky is standing there. His hair is longer, he’s wearing some sort of body armor, his left arm is metal… but it’s Bucky.
“How?” he asks, reaching out to touch Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky’s smiling just as wide as he is, and Steve doesn’t even try to hold back the tears as Bucky pulls him into the tightest hug they’ve ever shared.
“Fucking Hydra,” Bucky says. “Oh, fuck, Steve, you’re alive.”
.
Steve’s glad he woke up.
Title: Good Fairies are not necessarily Nice Fairies
original, gen, 310 words
Warnings for past animal death, cruelty to animals
Prompt: Fairy tales, Any, a Fairy overhears someone saying animals don't feel pain the same way humans do, and decides to prove them wrong by changing them into an animal.
Katia hears the man complaining about the litter of kittens his mouser just bore, how he'll have to take time out of his busy day to do drown the useless things, how inconvenient it is that the cat keeps mating.
"Papa!" a little girl shouts. "Don't hurt the kittens!"
The man scoffs, pulling out of her grip. "They're just beasts," he tells her, hurrying towards the river.
The little girl is crying, but an older boy guides her back to the cottage.
Katia flies after the man, invisible and insubstantial, and keeps pace with him all the way to the water.
The kittens struggle in the sack; when the man throws them towards the river, Katia catches it gently and carries it to the other side, where she sets it down gently. The man has already turned away and doesn't notice. Katia summons the mother-cat with a Word of Power and releases the kittens back into her care.
She watches the man go with narrowed eyes and murmurs another Word of Power -- where there had been a blacksmith whistling there is now a field mouse. Katia sends a Well-Wish to the man's family; they will be fine without him for however long until he realizes the lesson he must learn.
(And if he never realizes, or if a predator catches him, well... his children will be fine, his wife will be fine, all will be well. Her Well-Wish ensures it.)
“Care for your children, Little Sister,” she tells the cat and then she continues on. There is a princess waiting for her Blessing to the south; maybe she’ll give the girl All-Speech, or Shapeshifting. It is time, after all, that royals again remember how all creatures are connected, and when one Life suffers, so do all the rest.
“Bless you, Lady,” the cat calls after her as Katia takes to the sky.
Title: the taste of the sky
Original, gen, 340 words
Prompt: any, any + any dragon or pegasus character, riding/flying in the moonlight
Skychildren are rare; Etana hasn't seen one of her kind in -- a long time. Not since she left her mother's nest, and that was uncountable ages ago. She has flown the world over, seeking companionship, and though she has visited the Flamechildren in their infernos and the Earthchildren in their warrens, and even spent a turn in the ocean with the Seachildren, she has not seen one of her own in all her days.
She has had no one to fly with since she was small and it grows lonelier with every rise of the moon.
And then, on a night like any other, she sees something shimmer in the moonlight, wings singing as it rises higher and higher, and she rises to meet it.
She trumpets a greeting and it laughs, “Well met!”
Beyond their wings, they have nothing in common. But they spiral around the moonlight, they race through the clouds, they chase each other to the ground and back.
As the moon sets and the sun peers over the far edge of the world, Etana and her companion settle down in Etana’s nest. “I am Yvere,” the creature tells her, “daughter of the First Flyer.”
“I am Etana, Skychild,” Etana replies, tucking herself up small beside Yvere. “You are the first I’ve found who could keep up with me.” No bird has ever managed it. Most of them flee. There was a phoenix, once --
“And I, you!” Yvere laughs. She rests her head on Etana’s shoulder. “It’s been so long since I had such fun. Not since I left the herd.” She sighs, wings rustling.
“Sleep, sister,” Etana tells her. “I’ll guard the sky till you wake.” Skychildren need little rest, and Etana’s excitement will keep her awake, anyway. A companion, at last!
“I’ll need to feed towards dusk,” Yvere murmurs. “I’ll wake then.”
Etana hums, low in her throat, and Yvere laughs a little. “Exactly so,” she sighs, and then sleeps. Etana softly trills her mother’s lullaby and cannot wait for the moon to rise.