Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

wildehacked asked: DEFINITELY write the tragic soulmate AU. 1000%.

Okay but see it would be great terrible.

James McGraw grows up being told that he’s lucky, so lucky, he has three soulmates and it’s wonderful.  Everyone tells him that the world has so much love for him.  

Thomas and Miranda meet and she has his words on her skin and she doesn’t care that he has someone else’s because HE doesn’t care, and they’re so happy, and then they meet James McGraw, who has them both, and Miranda tells herself (and it’s truth, at the time) she can live with this, she can live with being James’ soulmate while James is Thomas’ soulmate.  Because James adores them both.  And God, she loves Thomas, and he loves James, and James loves her, so it’s all okay.  They lie in bed and giggle together like children, wondering about the third line of words on James’ skin.

Things go horribly awry.  Miranda is still one of James’ three soulmates, but he is not hers and she cannot quite stand to call him hers when her soulmate is gone and her soulmate’s soulmate is sinking into dark water.

James meets his third soulmate.  It is a strong contender for the worst thing that has ever happened to him.  It’s certainly in the top five.  James swears to himself that he will never, ever let on the truth.

John Silver meets his soulmate.  It is certainly the worst timing he has ever experienced.  Captain Flint, scourge of the seas, doesn’t bat a goddamn eye, and Silver decides that this match must be unrequited, because the universe hates him so goddamn much.  When Madi, proud Madi with her unmarked skin, touches the words and asks, an unusual tender moment, he tells her (and it’s the truth, at the time) that his soulmate bond is unrequited.

At some point the truth comes out.  There is angry sex.  I do not have the plot figured out past this.

Other miscellany: Anne Bonny is Jack Rackham’s soulmate and he is also in Something (no one is crazy enough to call it love) with Vane.  Anne is in love with Max, whose soulmate is Eleanor, much to Max’s profound distaste.  Eleanor and Max had the potential to be the only functional soulmate bond in this whole mess until Eleanor fucked it up, because Max is also Eleanor’s soulmate.  Anne’s soulmark leads her to a man who is actually a woman who has Anne’s words on her ribs, and Jack is only a little bitter that Anne is not bound to him as visibly as he is bound to her.  Anne has never shaved her head, and so they do not know that words are written, neat and small, at the base of her skull.

Anonymous asked: *slides in* you're probably gonna hate me: Xavier/Erik, "Stumble into my Arms"

(I don’t actually…ship this…which I know makes me weird…so here, have another Real Dark Thing)

AO3 summary: “It’s going to be okay, Charles,” Erik says quietly, brushing dark curls away from where tears have started to dry under Charles’ closed eyes.  “You’ll see.”

“He’s a madman, Erik,” Charles says dully, past caring if Apocalypse hears them.

“He’s going to fix us,” Erik swears, like a man clutching to the last thread of his own reason.  “You and me, Charles, he’s going to fix us.”

“Go to hell,” Charles says, and turns his face away when Erik bends down to pick him up from the ground.

Actual summary: It starts with a missing scene that’s like 98% Erik being obsessed with Charles and Charles being in mourning for the man he used to know and also the whole entire planet.  Apocalypse lied to Erik about why they needed Charles and Erik is shattered, pretty much clinging to Charles as his last anchor point.  So when he discovers that this plan doesn’t end with Charles converted to his viewpoint and by his side, Erik goes off the fucking rails.  The fight is a lot shorter, since Charles is in better shape and Erik doesn’t do a heel-face turn halfway through.  On the other hand, Erik is in pretty bad shape, mentally and emotionally speaking, and his worldview is pretty well shattered, after the battle.  Jean rebuilds the house herself, alone, and the fic ends with Erik broken on the floor of Charles’ reconstructed study begging for forgiveness.  Charles presses his lips thin and does not answer.

If you want bonus pain feel free to imagine this as a soulmate AU.

Anonymous asked: I love the idea of all of those animorphs crossovers, but especially the star wars and avengers ones.

HONESTLY I MIGHT WRITE THEM.

But like for a preview: 

STAR WARS: General Leia somehow ends up on Earth and has a Very Grim Conversation with Jake that’s mostly about brothers and warriors and how to live through living through battles and loving someone who doesn’t carry that weight half so harshly.  Alternatively, Rogue One is caught by the Death Star’s blast wave and shunted across a universe, and the Animorphs find them broken and bruised and Cassian and Jyn look into their eyes and see themselves.  Chirrut and Baze call all of them ‘little brother’ and ‘little sister’ and it makes Rachel prickle.  The Animorphs go from six to eleven (Chirrut morphs a mountain lion and Jyn morphs a wolverine, I don’t have the others sorted).  K2 doesn’t make it to Earth at all.  Rogue One still dies for the cause.  The End.

AVENGERS: I have two ideas here.

1. The obvious, in which the Animorphs get a “gift” from the Ellimist (”DOES HE OWN A DICTIONARY” Marco demands) and are sent to a world the Yeerks never touched and pop up RIGHT in the middle of the Battle of New York and handily freak out the Avengers.  Especially Steve, who almost has a heart attack at the sight of a teenaged girl in a leotard sprinting at him and shouting “Toss me”, and literally almost gets his head cut off when he watches her vault off his shield and turn into a fucking grizzly on the way down.  Tony almost throws up when he sees a gorilla get disemboweled and start turning back into a teenager as a bunch of people yell <No medics, no medics, someone protect his head!>
   
2. The one I haven’t really seen yet, in which the War happens a little later (like it ends maybe 2001) and thus the Animorphs are only about 26 when the Avengers are formed.  Still pretty young.  SHIELD kept the whole Yeerks thing under wraps (so. many. NDAs.), so imagine the Avenger’s surprise when the late Phil Coulson is replaced with a young dude build like a football player who tells them to call him Jake, and who introduces his team of equally young people plus one bird as their new backup.

Both of these include Marco and Tony basically talking shit about each other incessantly, Bruce and Cassie talking in soft honest tones about how it feels to be afraid of yourself, Tobias and Clint making horribly unfunny jokes about their childhoods, Steve taking it upon himself to make sure Jake actually talks about the stress of leadership and about how afraid he is of getting someone killed (Bucky and Tom get compared…especially if this is still a thing post-WS) and Natasha and Rachel being really weird friends where mostly they spar.  Oh, and also Ax and Thor bonding about Poptarts.

I also saw Wonder Woman today and I feel like there’s a great AU where that crossover also happens.

wildehacked asked: Marco/Rachel + "Jerry Springer, not Casablanca".

(I like your setup for these so I’m stealing it)

AO3 summary: It’s not a gin joint and it doesn’t belong to him and she’s not the love of his life.  Some days he’s not even sure they’re friends.  They fuck anyway.  (PWminimalP, Angst, Longer War AU, Unsafe Insane and Consensual, Light Bondage, Blood)

Actual summary: It’s about year six of a war that burned them all out about year three.  They’ve managed to keep their secret through increasingly brutal means over the years.  Rachel and Cassie haven’t spoken except on missions since Rachel killed a member of the Yeerk Peace Movement in order to keep them from giving the Animorphs up.  Jake looks like the walking dead and hasn’t smiled–really smiled–since they failed to save Jake’s parents.  Tobias is less human than ever since Rachel left him, and morphs Ax more often than he morphs his old body (his old body is barely fourteen, glaringly young among the others).  

Marco and Rachel aren’t dating.  Marco is still their tactician and their sense of humor, but their sense of humor is bitter and cutting, and when Rachel kisses him, she bites until his lips bleed and ties his hands with rough cord, he fights her and leaves bruises and cuts.  They don’t have a safeword.  Rachel needs to feel in control and Marco needs to feel like he’s not the one guiding Jake’s hand on the trigger.  It’s a bad system, but God they need it and if anything happens…well, they can just morph it away, and wash each others’ blood from their hands.

Anonymous asked: u wanted prompts: steve takes it upon himself to stand outside planned parenthood clinics and fight people who attack and harass pp

Listen, I see and observe your ‘Steve’ up there, but I raise you Forty Percent of the Marvel Universe because I am bitter about the current direction of the whole comics thing at the moment.  *Max Rockatansky voice* I guarantee you, a hundred and sixty days out, there’s nothing but salt.  Anyway, if you’ve read my Claire Temple AO3 fic that may or may not get more stuff added to it when I feel inspired, this is technically that universe, but prior knowledge IS NOT REQUIRED, okay good let’s do it.  Also I believe that movie canon only applies to me when I feel like it so everyone is in New York and the Avengers live in the Tower, no one is dead and everything is F I N E.  I dunno, this is only like the first half of a much longer thing that covers this whole day and, if I had my way, would be a full-blown elaborate media fic with tweets and Trish’s show and everything.  But here, it’s real long, so I left it alone.  It’s on AO3.

Steve got the call pre-dawn, just as he was leaving the Tower for his run.  

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY said politely from the ceiling, “you are receiving a call from an unknown number with a New York City area code.”

“If it’s a reporter, let it ring out,” Steve said, knotting his running shoes.

“Reporters do not have your personal cell number, Captain,” FRIDAY said, and there was a trace of genteel condescension in the artificial voice this time that made Steve grin down at the floor.

“Where in the City?”

“Hell’s Kitchen.”

Steve frowned, straightening up. “That might be Daredevil in trouble. You better put it through to my phone. Thanks, FRIDAY.”

“Of course, Captain,” FRIDAY said. Steve’s top-of-the-line, not-on-the-open-market-yet, Jesus-Cap-does-your-shit-phone-even-text-here-let-me-replace-it StarkPhone rang, a jaunty tune that sounded distinctly like the National Anthem, and even more distinctly like the foreboding of Bucky getting his ass kicked.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve answered, hitting the green button and raising the phone to his ear.

“Um…hi, Captain Rogers,” the voice on the other end said hesitantly.  “This is Claire Temple, I don’t know if you remember me, but–”

“Of course I remember you, Miss Temple,” Steve said, grinning.  “You pulled a piece of rebar out of my chest, hard to forget a first meeting like that.” She laughed, the same slightly worn chuckle he remembered from her.  “And it’s just Steve, please, ma’am.  I think once you’ve been up close and personal with someone’s lung tissue you can probably skip the ‘Captain.’”

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maelace asked: Okay, for Steve Rogers prompts: Steve is leaving the grocery store and hears some guy yelling at the little Girl Scouts selling cookies about how Feminism Is Ruining This Country and Girl Scouts Are Evil for Supporting Abortion and Lesbians. (Because this actually happens, it happened to me when I was a kid. And once you are like 13 you are allowed to sell without an adult, so me and my friend were alone).

Ahahaha yeah, good times, been there, done that.  Right, so, I’m picturing this as like a month or two after Avengers, while Steve is still Figuring Out the 2000’s.  Also featuring: Steve swearing like a Brooklyn kid who went into the Army, and my weird obsession with time-displaced super soldiers who are angry about bananas.  WARNING: 100% WISH FULFILLMENT.  Some general assholery and Steve losing his temper a little under the cut because…this is longer than I meant it to be.

Steve was sure it would shock any number of people, but his biggest problems with the 21^st century weren’t the televisions, phones, or coffee makers (thank you, Stark).  There was a learning curve, but it was reminiscent of the learning curve after he’d gotten the serum—hell, he’d gone from a colorblind, partly deaf asthmatic with more chronic illnesses than you could fit on a chart to a walking talking superhuman.  The whole world had been brighter, louder, and faster-paced than Steve had ever been remotely prepared to deal with, so he went onto stages and into battles until he adapted.  The 21^st century was brighter, louder, and faster-paced than the forties could have dreamed, so Steve got on his bike and went to tour the country without help.  By the time he got back, he was pretty sure he could manage technology well enough to Google shit like ‘what is Facebook.’

(Google was good.  Steve fucking loved Google.  All the answers were on Google.  Including answers to questions he never needed answered, but he had gotten better at choosing his search terms.)

No, Steve’s biggest problems with the 21^st century, other than the obvious fact that it wasn’t his century, mostly revolved around money.

Example: who in their right goddamn mind paid seven dollars for a pound of apples?  Had anyone ever heard of affordable bread?  What the fuck was happening with the price of potatoes—potatoes, for the love of God.

“Inflation’s a bitch,” a passing college student said in dry amusement, obviously picking up on his bitter muttering. Steve’s scowl deepened and he put the apples in his cart.

For the first time in his life, Steve actually didn’t have to worry about money—apparently seventy years of back pay totaled up to a significant amount of cash—but that didn’t mean that he didn’t wince as he did the math for his food.  If this was usual for one person, what the hell were families paying? Bucky’s family had been Bucky, his ma, his dad, and all three of the girls, plus sometimes Steve.  How was a family of seven affording this food?  He added it to his mental list of things to Google, along with what is wrong with bananas.

Bananas.  Of all the things for the future to fuck up, fucking bananas were weird bland not-bananas now.  Steve had never had strong opinions on bananas before, but live and goddamn learn, apparently.

Anyway.  The money thing was why, upon entering the grocery store, Steve hadn’t paused at the table set up just inside the door, save to read the sign hanging in front of it—it was good to see that the Girl Scouts had survived.  Nonetheless, he could bake cookies his own self and probably get a better net value than six bucks for a tiny box, thanks.  To be polite, he’d waved a little to the girls at the table, both wearing green sashes and winning smiles as they did a slow but respectably steady business, and then he’d gone on his damn way like a civilized human being.

But God forbid that other people could do the same.  Steve checked out with his apples and cereal and soup ingredients (and no bananas), put them in pair of reusable grocery bags, and started for the door just in time to hear raised voices.

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On the one hand, I want to write a whole bunch of crossovers where the Animorphs meet characters from other universes.

On the other hand, every single one of them would basically be “[insert character here] is confused and alone and the world is probably ending way worse than they ever expected; the Animorphs are having a normal day.”

For @littlestartopaz : Steve catches Wanda sulking and invites her to Disney Night with Nat and Clint.  Wanda teases him, and Vision ends up there too.  Better yet, not MCU so we can also have her brother.  Or just ignore that part of the MCU.

GOOD. Also, Quicksilver is alive and healthy after a while in a healing coma, as speedsters do.  I read a wild AU once where he was shot and died, and the comments were full of complaints about how it didn’t make sense.  I am RIGHT THIS MOMENT deciding that this fic and this and this and possibly some others with small tweaks exist in the same universe as this one (I do not have a timeline to speak of) and also I’m disregarding that same wild AU’s belief that Clint lives?  On a farm?  Rather than a shitty apartment building in NYC and the Tower/Mansion?  And that Nat and Clint are not soulmates on a level that makes romance look downright petty, kay-thanks-bye.  AND also I’m so glad we all remember how Wanda and Pietro were kids who were pressganged and conned into service of HYDRA rather than being voluntary recruits.

It wasn’t like Wanda had expected her relationship with Pietro to be all roses after he came out of his coma, but her worry had also done a spectacular job of blurring out some of his less desirable qualities as a brother.  Like, just for example, his overwhelming, pointless, overprotective bullshit.  She muttered a bitter Sokovian curse under her breath and stripped off her jacket, dropping it on the bed without a care for the soot that would certainly stain her sheets.  The rest of her uniform was given the same careless treatment, abandoned on the floor as she yanked on a pair of leggings and a soft shirt two sizes too big.

She wasn’t even sure who she was more frustrated with—Pietro, for yanking her out of the way of a spider ‘bot that she could have taken care of, or herself, for losing focus for long enough to let him take the hit for her.  Someday, he was going to suddenly realize that his fragile twin sister had gone and turned into an adult while he was busy fending off the world.  She hoped it was sooner rather than later, or she might have to beat it into him.  Assuming he even lived that long, which was beginning to look increasingly unlikely.

“Stupid nervous bastard,” she muttered in English, and flopped down on her bed, flat on her back with her fingers laced over her face.  “Martyr.”

“Hazard of the profession,” Steve’s voice said, amused.  Wanda turned her head, untangling her fingers to look toward the door, where Steve was leaning against her doorjamb.  He was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, standard fare for any of them after showering upon returning from a mission.  His hair was a rumpled mess and he had a nasty purple and blue bruise marbling over one cheek, where Bruce had diagnosed a cracked zygomatic.  In combination with the blood that had been leaking from a split in his lip, Natasha had cheerfully commented that he was looking very patriotic indeed.

“Put ice on your face,” she said, frowning at him across the landscape of her comforter.  Steve grinned at her, and winced, raising the cold pack in his hand back to his cheek.  

“Like I said,” Steve said.  His voice was muffled, but his eyes were bright and wild with adrenaline, like blue fire.  “We’re all fucking martyrs, or so I’m told.  Your brother just wants to keep you safe.”

“Well, I just spent months at his bedside because he took eight bullets to the chest and severed his spine,” Wanda said, sitting up sharply.  “So he can get over it.”

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lathori asked: Star Wars Camelot AU Fucking Go <3 Your Wife

• CLEARLY Finn is King of Camelot, destined ruler of all Albion, hero-king snatched from a training center designed to churn out devoted soldiers for a dangerous faction rising in the wake of the previous wicked king’s demise (Palpatine, obvs)

• Rey is his queen and court enchanter, and Finn met her after being separated from his guardsan attack by bandits—she whomped him good with a staff and threw him into a lake with magic.  Naturally, he brought her back to his citadel and was like “This is our new court enchanter, she used to be a feral mountain child” and within a few months everyone went “Hey Finn what if you got married” and he went “Sounds great, meet your new queen!”  And everyone was EITHER really delighted OR completely horrified.  They’re a kickass couple and Rey is really good with seeing possible lines of influence and Finn is actually a killer diplomat and basically they rock.

• With the help of their Most Loyal and Trusted Knight, who would DIE for his king, especially since Finn swooped in and saved him when his quest went horribly awry in the process of booking it from the First Order.  Obviously this is the adopted son of the Lady of the Lake, Sir Poe Dameron (du Lac)…  

• You see where I’m going with this.

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In another of your regular “this is the kind of person you follow” updates, I would like to remind you all that, in my latest novel (the “earth is where the trouble comes from” one), I have created an entire race of super OP plant mages who are descended from dryads solely so that I am able to point to my MC’s right hand woman and say “She’s asexual, and before you ask, yes, she is a tree.”

Because I think I’m funny.