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

Anonymous asked: For the headcanon meme Uhura?

For THIS headcanon meme!  (You thought you were free.  You were wrong.)  I’m kind of picturing AOS because that’s what I watched most recently with Uhura.

A: what I think realistically

Nyota Uhura grows up speaking three languages fluently—English and Swahili, because her family speaks both, and a German dialect, because her cousin’s husband speaks Swahili like a three-year-old and doesn’t seem to be getting better at it.  He dotes on Nyota, calls her little star and swings her up onto his shoulders to ‘scare’ his wife and Nyota’s mothers as a monster with two heads, and he thinks it’s the greatest thing in history when she starts translating for him.  She’s six years old when she goes to a museum and meets the curator, who is a Vulcan woman of superlative brilliance.  The woman greets her family with a formal Vulcan phrase and is visibly taken aback—something of an accomplishment—when Nyota carefully, cautiously sounds out in imitation, tonk’peh, dif-tor heh smusma.

“Very good,” the Vulcan woman says in English, arching an eyebrow.  “But the correct response is sochya eh dif.”  Nyota parrots it back, and the Vulcan woman offers her a salute.  Nyota comes back the very next day and plunks herself expectantly in front of the woman’s door, and more or less bothers the woman into agreeing to teach her the language.

Nyota, talking to her teacher, learns about Star Fleet, where she can learn every language in the galaxy (“that is quite impossible–”  “EVERY language in the galaxy,” Nyota insists) and spend her entire life speaking them as a job.  She never looks away from the stars again, and she remains in touch with her teacher, until finally it’s Nyota who offers the lessons, in the grammar of Russian and the guttural tones of Klingon.

Nyota’s teacher, very formal at all times, is the one who begins calling her ‘Uhura.’  Nyota knows that her name means star, but to her, Uhura means linguist and she holds it tight with both hands.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Uhura and Jim are actually great friends by the end of the Enterprise’s first year, once he feels less like he has to prove himself at all times and once she gets past some of her ingrained horror about his casual disregard for the rules when he thinks it’s necessary.  (The first time Uhura sees herself observe a rule and then toss it aside because, well, this is more important, she has this moment of total exasperation because He Has Infected Her.)  Jim speaks not a few languages himself, and more to the point he’s actually not the trash can she assumed him to be.  He doesn’t harass his subordinates, he would clearly die for any of them, and even though at first she’s convinced he’s going to drink on the job and sleep with everyone on the ship, there’s no sign of it.  He drinks sometimes with the rest of the alpha shift command crew, but never to excess, and she’s pretty sure Jim would rather take a phaser shot to the chest than risk his crew by sleeping around—it’s like command has turned him into a real person rather than the caricature he worked so hard to project and goddamnit she likes that person.  No one is more shocked and aggrieved than Uhura herself.

Uhura is also rational enough to date a Vulcan, so after two months she huffs out a breath and plops her tray down at his table during breakfast (Jim eats in the mess hall with the crew, rather than a private mess, because he likes to know his people, damn him).  She has the same stubborn look in her eye that once strongarmed a Vulcan into agreeing to teach her language to a small human child.

“Um,” Jim says, wary, “hey, Uhura.”

“You’re going to stop hitting on me,” she tells him, pointing at him sternly with her fork, “and I’m going to stop treating you like an asshole, and then we’re going to be friends.”

Jim stares at her.  “Okay?”

“So,” she says, lowering her fork to gesture at his PADD, “what are you reading?” He tells her, seemingly too bemused to do anything else, and she scoffs.  “Please.  If you want the really weird Vulcan literature, I can hook you up.  You haven’t lived until you’ve read some of the Pre-Reform homoerotic star-crossed lovers nonsense I read during my tutorial on the Pre-Reform dialect.”

Jim laughs until he’s wheezing and flushed, clutching the edge of the table as the mess hall looks at him in mild alarm and Uhura smirks in satisfaction.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Uhura never becomes a captain, although innumerable promotions are offered to her. She loves her languages too much. She believes, after seeing Kirk and Sulu and even sweet Chekov taken by their ships and never return, that this is the reason she and Spock end up as the last living members of that first bridge crew.

She kind of wishes, sitting at the monument to James Tiberius Kirk and thinking about how he would have hated having his middle name on the thing, that she had taken the captaincy.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

LET!  NYOTA! UHURA!  HAVE!  A! BIG!  FAMILY!

Listen I literally could not care less about what canon says, Nyota has like three siblings and a bunch of cousins and her grandmother and her two moms and her aunts and uncles and they all adore each other to little bits and pieces.  

Nyota’s sister is dying to know about Spock from the first moment she hears about him, and the poor guy is totally overwhelmed the first time Nyota brings him home to celebrate [insert slightly ridiculous reason that the family came up with on the spot because Nyota was on Earth and they were excited].  They immediately adopt Spock, he’s really kind of alarmed about it.  

Nyota brings Jim to meet her family one time too (and McCoy because his wife has his kid currently) when it’s his birthday and he just desperately does not want to deal with Star Fleet and the Kelvin and the whole hero thing, and they all love him too.  

Basically give me Nyota Uhura who travels the stars because she loves them too much to stay on the ground, but who has very real ties to Earth because those are her people.  She’s met by the quintessential embarrassing family whenever they make earthfall.  Her cousin (the one who still sucks at Swahili) has a sign. Her sister and her twin brothers have a banner.  She’s going to murder them all but also she can’t stop grinning.

Today I went to a restaurant, a newer place in town.  It filled a building that had stood empty for three years, and before that, it was a Denny’s. The tables were clean and the accents were blue, and the waitress’ eyes were wide and edged with white.

I told my dad, sitting at the new table, that the aura of the Denny’s lingered.  He asked when I had been to the Denny’s in town—never, I said, but all Dennys’ are the same place, you know?  There are many doors, but they all open to the same strange otherworld, a place where another plane of existence opens at the right hours of the night.  

The Denny’s was gone and has been for years, but it stuck to the walls and whispered from the speakers when the music paused.  The bar was untended in the middle of Happy Hour.  When we walked in, the hostess stand was empty.  Our waitress had a sharp note in her voice, strained, and her lips moved strangely around her words, and her eyes were ringed white, like a startled animal.  She was a pretty girl, just a few years older than me—I might have gone to school with her, but I didn’t recognize her, and she didn’t seem to know me.  When she walked away, the faint shadow of a red-shirted figure seemed to cling to her back like mist.  Hi, I’ll be your server tonight, she said with a perfect toothy smile, and I heard the rapid welcome-to-Denny’s-can-I-take-your-order in my mind before she kept talking, can I get you anything to drink to start.  

I wonder what she’ll dream about tonight, our waitress with the white-ringed eyes and the unfamiliar face. If she dreams about her job, but decked out in another primary color and filled with the transient souls who end up there at odd hours.  No one goes to Denny’s, someone told me once, you just end up there, usually at late hours and with a mild degree of confusion about what brought you to their door.  If she dreams about the red-shirted shadow, and about how that stranger arrived for work one day—another day, another dollar, a waitstaff lackey of the boss but also a keeper of the door to an elsewhere—to find their job simply closed, the sign gone overnight like it had never been.  We don’t know what happened to the Denny’s in town.  It didn’t even go out of business, it just stopped, like a hand had flicked a light switch and taken the whole building with it.

I wonder if she’ll dream about doorways and dark lots.

The walls were decked with black and white photographs, of serious faces and beautiful landscapes, so neatly tiled that there was never more than a hand’s breadth of clear wall in some places.  Their eyes didn’t follow you, and the water didn’t ripple out of the corner of the eye, but there was something…close about them, I told my mom.  Like you might pass your hand over the front and then reach through, past the paper and ink to the otherplace just beyond.  Not a trap, if you were clever, but a gateway, which is almost the same thing.  Cut off from the other Denny’s doors, I told her with a smile, the restaurant had to find new ones.

Ginger ale and a burger. The food wasn’t a binding contract—the terms of the deal are set out at the beginning, at a restaurant, even at a Denny’s.  You come and they serve you, you pay and they allow you to leave.  Our waitress brought us the check without a fuss, not so much as a wheedling don’t you want dessert to keep us there.  Deal observed.  I looked out the window as my mom pulled out a credit card, overheard part of a conversation about checks.  No, we don’t take checks, cash or credit. Checks aren’t signed in blood, I mused, but then neither is credit.  Digital lifeblood, maybe, a new bond for a new age, modern contracts to match a modern elsewhere.  Deal kept.

I don’t think I would want to dine and dash, at that restaurant, in those walls.

Two crows spent almost forty minutes on the grass outside, idly strutting through the all-day dew that still clung.  They chattered at each other, and eyed the window where I watched them, black eyes like drops of intelligent ink.  I looked outside every few minutes, and every time I expected to see another view, something new, something other than the shoe store and the vast expanse of pine trees. It was the feeling of lying on my back on the ground with my eyes closed and feeling the planet spin beneath me, but the stars being the same when I looked again.

When we walked outside, the pearly grey sunlight-behind-clouds had faded to a sulky, dull twilight, and there was fog wrapping thick around the restaurant. The parking lot was empty save for our car and two others, even though there had been several more families inside. We laughed about the old Denny’s in town, about how it had lost its hold on this reality, and didn’t talk about the empty bar or the wide-eyed waitress or the way the kitchen was so quiet, even though every staff member was supposed to be behind the swinging doors.

The Denny’s in town is gone, died quietly in the night without so much as a flatline.  But I think it might be haunting its replacement.

almost twins

SWEET GIRL, Death sighs, sliding through the motionless candle flames of the cave.  The Slayer is weeping into her hands, horrible ripping sounds as she stands with the water of the pool lapping at her feet.  She is dressed all in white, and so is Death, and they could be twins.  The Slayer is still afraid of Death, this time.

“Please,” the Slayer gasps.  “Please, I don’t want to go.”  

Death smiles.  DO NOT BE AFRAID OF ME, MY DEAR.  WE ARE MUCH ALIKE, YOU AND I.  AND BESIDES, Death soothes her, IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET.

“Thank you,” the Slayer sobs, and Death rests a bone-pale hand on her shoulder to press her back into the body in the pool.

***

The next time, it’s been a few years, and the Slayer–the Slayer, Death always thinks of her as such, even though there have been two, one passed through Death’s own hands and the other very close now, since last time–isn’t afraid of Death anymore.  They are allies, even friends, well-known and often met in the course of the Slayer’s duties.  Almost twins.  She’s not dressed in white, she’s dressed in her own blood and vindication and hospital paper, and she’s sitting on the foot of a hospital bed.

DEAREST, Death croons, sitting down next to her and stroking her hair with a hand while she lets her fingers hover just above the hand of the body in the bed.  She cannot touch the body, but Death can offer her this little comfort.

“I can’t die,” the Slayer says, looking at the unhealthily white skin of the body in the bed.  Even the golden hair looks washed out.  “The Ascension is tomorrow and I have to be there.  And–and, God, he’ll never forgive himself.  It’ll kill him if I die from this.”

I HAVE MET LIAM MORE THAN ONCE, Death says, somewhat disapproving.  HE WAS RATHER QUESTIONABLE THAT FIRST TIME.

The Slayer almost smiles, but tears break over her lashes instead.  “I’ve heard.”

Death allows, HE HAS IMPROVED TREMENDOUSLY.  THE LAST TIME–  Death stops, and the Slayer’s shoulders are stiff as stone under the thin paper of the hospital gown.  HE IS A GOOD MAN, Death finishes.

“Yeah,” the Slayer sniffs.  “Try telling him that.”  She raises her head and looks back to Death from the body in the bed.  “That’s why I won’t die here,” the Slayer says, iron-clad.  “You can’t take me from him.  Even if he’s going–even if he’s going to leave me.  And the Ascension…you can’t take me.  I won’t go.”

Death laughs.  ALMOST I BELIEVE YOU COULD STOP ME, DEAR GIRL.  BUT DO NOT WORRY.  THIS WILL BE NO BATTLE.  IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET.  And Death presses her back into the body, and the Slayer clutches gratefully at Death’s wrist before she goes.

***

It is longer, before the next time, and this time the Slayer does not resist, throws herself weeping into Death’s arms and lets herself be held close to the thin body under the white cloth, and buries her tears in Death’s neck.

DEAREST CHILD, Death whispers into her golden hair, YOU HAVE FOUGHT FOR SO LONG.  COME WITH ME, AND YOU CAN REST.

***

Death has never considered mutiny before, but seeing the Slayer torn back into life almost brings it to mind.

***

They meet again, and again, for years.  It is not frequent, but it is not infrequent either, the Slayer brought close to Death’s hands more than once by her burden.  The Slayer doesn’t stare at the body anymore, sits at peace and smiles when she sees Death, and they talk like old friends, like family long parted.

“How is Tara?  How is Jenny?  Tell me about Cordy, is she doing all right?  Did you see my mother, is she okay?  How is your work?  Is it my time?”  The Slayer asks her questions like there’s nothing to fear, and Death tries to keep a mental list, tries to check up on all her loved ones so that the Slayer can be assured of their wellbeing.  The Slayer’s list of loved ones is long.  Death hates to have to tell her, when the soul of Liam has passed through Death’s hands again, and always makes sure to let her know when it is restored.

LOVE, Death says quietly, every time, at the end of their talk, DO YOU WANT TO REST?

“No rest for the wicked, didn’t you hear?”  This is always the only time that the Slayer’s eyes glisten, her lips tremble.  “I still have so much to do.”

LET THE OTHERS DO IT, DEARHEART.

“Maybe next time,” the Slayer says, looking away, as ever, to hide the tears threatening to slide down her cheeks.  “Maybe next time I’ll rest.”

Death takes her face in bone-pale hands and kisses her forehead, a benediction.  They are almost twins.  YOU ARE THE BRAVEST OF YOUR KIND, SWEET GIRL.  And Death presses the Slayer back into her body

Anonymous asked: Keith (VLD) for the headcanon meme?

For this headcanon meme!

A: what I think realistically

Listen, I see and appreciate the hell out of the general headcanon that Lance has ADHD, but I propose ADHD Keith?  Like, hear me out here.  Fixated on aliens for his whole life, hyperfocused when he’s flying (pros in battle: very hard to shake him up; cons in battle: he doesn’t always react emotionally when or how he’s supposed to, which can be rough on the others during a merge), prickly around most people but also v e r y attached to His People, and that specific combination of “intense emotions that can burst out at unpredictable times” and “extremely controlled emotions when under pressure” tbh all of it just kind of reads ADHD to me.  Possibly because I myself have ADHD and am basically just like this terrible sword boy.  Especially the look on his face after he dumps a massive amount of information about his aliens theory at the start of the first episode–it just screams ‘fuck fuck fuck someone please shut me up I can’t stop talking and I can feel you getting annoyed with me’ which, like, same.

Unrelatedly, I feel like Keith knows how to pickpocket people and hotwire most vehicles.  He knows how to knife fight and he lives in a shack with no apparent form of income, and he definitely stole that hoverbike in the first episode.  He has some Weird Life Skills.  At some point I expect this to become pertinent in the show with Keith boosting a spaceship.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Keith scores a solid C in Emotions generally, but more specifically he just fucking sucks at noticing when someone’s interested in him.  Like, in terms of friendship and romance and/or sex, he just won’t notice.  He and Shiro were hanging out on the regular in their big brother/little brother relationship for solidly eight months before Keith looked up from a book and went “Wait, we’re friends” and Shiro was like “…yes?”

This is pertinent because Lance, within Not Too Long, realizes that he’s actually pretty into Keith (he’s horrified, they are rivals, he can’t have a crush on Keith).  Once Hunk and Pidge–mostly Hunk, because Lance burst into the kitchen yelling ‘SOS’ and once they got him to explain, Pidge laughed so hard they gave themself a black eye on a table corner–talk Lance down off the ceiling, he spends a while waiting for his feelings to go away and then goes back to hitting on Keith casually at every opportunity, but With Intent this time.  Keith, on the other hand, spends months being confused and distressed about the unidentifiable physical sensations that being around Lance causes and that all translates straight into Prickly Mode.  Two conversations that happen within days of each other are:

> Lance telling Hunk, entirely depressed, that he just really thinks Keith hates him?  Like, clearly he has no shot there.  And Hunk is a good friend and they lie on the floor while he listens to Lance go on at length about Keith.

> Shiro sitting Keith down and asking what’s wrong and listening to Keith’s mildly panicky outburst about how he DOES NOT UNDERSTAND what’s going on with him and he feels bad for lashing out at Lance but he can’t??? Stop???  And Shiro is just like “Oh my god Keith you’re into him, you’re fucking into him and people on the other side of the star system know he’s into you, just fucking kiss him and see what happens.”

No one is more confused than Lance when Keith corners him alone and goes “I’m going to try something and if it’s a disaster blame Shiro” and walks up to Lance like he’s a wild animal and just.  Fucking plants one on him.

Anyway, thesis statement: Keith is a failure, and Lance is a disaster, and Shiro and Hunk deserve plaques, and Pidge gets nothing because they believe that getting front row seats to this mess is it’s own reward. 

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Keith has always wanted answers about the mysteries of the world, but not like this.  He has never been so bone-deep sickened as he is when he’s told that he’s not human, he’s Galra, he’s one of the monsters fighting to put the universe under a boot heel.  On that shuttle trip back to the Castle, Keith locks himself in the bathroom and sits on the floor until he feels like he can open his mouth without hyperventilating or vomiting or both, and Shiro has to coax him out.

“Come on, Keith,” Shiro murmurs, once he’s gotten Keith to unlock the door.  He wraps his flesh and blood arm around Keith’s shoulders as a support, and Keith dimly thinks about how Shiro tries to touch them with the Galra arm as rarely as possible.  He gets it, now.  “Come on, Keith, let’s go.  We should be at the Castle soon, it’ll be okay.”

“No, I–no, I can’t,” Keith says, digging in his heels.  Shiro is easily strong enough to move him by force, but he doesn’t, lets Keith press back against the wall again and makes a soothing sound under his breath.  “I can’t,” he says again.

“It’s okay, Keith,” Shiro says, and his voice is low and soft and calm, soothing even though Keith doesn’t care to be soothed right now.  Something clutches hard in Keith’s chest, and he hears a ragged keening sound as if down a long hallway, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s him.  “The others will understand.”

“I–they’ll be so angry,” Keith says blankly, clutching weakly at Shiro’s vest.  “They’ll be right to be angry.”  His stomach lurches and he might throw up if he had anything left.  “Allura will never speak to me again.”  He can see the look on her face already, the grief and disgust and rage that twist over her face every time they face the Galra, and he can’t see it directed at him, he can’t.

“They won’t be angry.  The princess will understand that you didn’t know, and you’re a part of the team.”  Shiro gives his shoulders a squeeze.  “Come on, everyone understood about me,” he says, clearly trying to be encouraging.  “And you’ve met the Blade, they’re good people.  Our allies.”

Keith can feel tears burning behind his eyes and clenches his teeth against them.

It takes Shiro another twenty minutes to talk Keith out into the body of the shuttle, and another ten to get him to walk out into the Castle dock.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Keith finds Allura a few hours after his heritage comes to light.  She’s standing alone on the bridge, her hands folded behind her at parade rest, and Keith finds her by accident on his quest to find somewhere to stand alone himself.

“Hello, Keith,” she says coolly as he stops dead in the doorway, apparently identifying him without looking away from the starscape.

“Um,” he says, wishing that he could curl up and die instead of having this horribly awkward interaction.  It takes a few tires before he can force another sentence through his throat. “I can leave, I’m sorry.”

“The Castle is your home as well,” she says, turning halfway to present her profile.  “Do as you like.”

Keith hovers in the doorway, frozen between the impulse to beg her to forgive him–please, please, he’s sorry, he didn’t know–and the impulse to run and never come back.  Allura doesn’t say anything, and the silence is tense and uncomfortable and he hates everything about it.  He’s kept his gloves on all night, because whenever he looks down he sees himself scratching at his arms like he’s trying to peel his blood vessels out of his body and Shiro had quietly recommended that he keep the gloves on so that he doesn’t hurt himself.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts again.  “I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know, that–I didn’t know.  We don’t have to, um.”

“Discuss it?”  Allura turns her back on him again, but this time her shoulders curve as if she wants to curl up on the floor too, maybe.  As if she wishes she wasn’t the last of her kind–wiped out by his.  God, Keith is a monster.  “It is not your fault, Keith,” she says, stiff and clipped, as if she’s trying to convince herself.  “And the Red Lion chose you.  We are in a brief pause between battles and we do not have time to have elaborate conversations about the finer points of the Galra, so.  I trust that you will not turn on us.  Everything else can wait.”

“Right,” Keith whispers.  The words should be reassuring.  He feels more like he’s been stabbed in the gut.  “That’s good.”

After Shiro disappears, he finds her on the bridge again, in almost exactly the same place.

“We must get him back,” she says lowly.  

“I know,” Keith says.  “We will.”

“Keith,” Allura says, and this time when she half-turns to him, she beckons minutely, and he hesitantly steps up beside her.  “I’m sorry, for the way I’ve treated you,” she whispers, looking away from him toward the stars.  “You did nothing to deserve it.”

“I feel like I did,” Keith mutters.

“You had no hand in what happened to Altea,” she says.  “It may take me time to let go of my anger, but.”  She sets her shoulders, looking over at him, and offers a tiny smile–the most genuine smile she’s directed at him since they found out.  “If you bring Shiro back to us–back to me–that will go far.”

Keith stares for a moment, then allows a tiny smile of his own, and nods.

Anonymous asked: You mentioned Parker and Sophie in your John Wick tags so can I request some Leverage for the headcanon ask?

Let’s go steal a headcanon meme.  (shut up, I’m hilarious)

A: what I think realistically

The brew pub’s microcosm, at this point, is bolstered by layers upon layers of gambling.  The old staff bets on how long new kitchen hires will last, and if you last out the first three months without quitting in a mild panic about what the fuck is happening here, you get formally inducted into the wider pool of bets.  The three top questions are:

The date of Nate and Sophie’s wedding: the pot is a handsome $700 despite the relatively small bets placed and regularly reupped (it took them two years to properly exchange names and thirteen years to sleep together, don’t tell me it wouldn’t be an ongoing question)

Who exactly is dating whom, among their three bosses: there are a scant three people who put their money on a poly triad, and they’ll be splitting the $1100 between them when someone figures Eliot and Parker and Hardison out

No, Really, What The Fuck Is Happening Here: There is one person who put their whole paycheck on “fuck it, they’re fucking criminal masterminds, they probably take down governments in their fucking free time” after seven pints of Thief Juice, and they are walking away with a cool two grand if they can ever actually prove it

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

So, the FBI thinks that Hardison and Parker are official agents.  Like, the FBI is so convinced of this, so convinced of this, that Hardison actually discovers they have valid badge numbers–they are all but being paid by the federal government as part of their Portland white collar crimes office.  Agent McSweeten and his partner have benefited handsomely from Hardison and Parker’s involvement, and they vouch for their ‘old buddies’ at every turn, to the extent that most of the feds they could run into in a number of cities (Boston, Portland, probably NYC) are like ‘yes, they’re undercover again, c’est la vie.’

Which is all well and good until Interpol shows up and has to work with the FBI on something quite unrelated, which results in Sterling tearing his hair out because “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY’RE NOT FEDERAL AGENTS THEY’RE CRIMINALS, OF COURSE THEY’RE CRIMINALS.”

The Feds honestly pity the poor guy.  Damn, their people are good, their undercover personalities even managed to convince Interpol, damn fine.  McSweeten tells Parker the story next time he sees her and she laughs for literally days.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Eliot believes–no, he knows–that he’s going to die for Parker and Hardison.  He’s actually pretty comfortable with this, but he knows that if he ever brings it up out loud, the pair of them are going to mutually implode.  I wrote that into a fic, actually.  Also, listen, we all know this is canon.  “Until my dying day.”  Eliot, please be a little less obviously worshipful of these people.  Some of my Eliot Spencer feelings can also be found here.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

I like to think that there’s a Leverage Mark II comprised of some of the kids they run into over the course of their jobs, I even wrote out like 2K words in headcanons for it.  Members include: 

Mastermind: Olivia Sterling, from The Queen’s Gambit Job

Hitter: Molly (who now identifies as Matthew), from The Carnival Job

Hacker: Trevor, from The Hot Potato Job

Grifter: Widmark (Mark), from The Fairy Godparents Job

Thief: Josie, from The Boost Job

Client: Luka, from The Stork Job, whose little sister has been kidnapped

I just really want this, okay?  I want to see them become the greatest criminals around under the tutelage of the Leverage squad and take up the torch when Eliot and Hardison and Parker decide to dial it back a bit and buy a restaurant somewhere.

(Related headcanon that Leverage habitually starts training up new generations and like in five hundred years humanity’s in space and the Leverage has an ancient oil painting hanging in their mess hall and whenever someone asks why they don’t transfer it to a hologram, the crew of the ship puffs up and declaims at length about their honored founder Harlan Leverage III and how they would never insult his memory like that!  In the afterlife, Nate S C R E A M S.)

corinnetags replied to your post “what is your thesis about that youre blogging about baron von steuben…”

Okay, I am going to need the link to your historically researched Hamilton fic. (Unless it’s The War series, I totally binged that last week)

Right, so, here’s the two halves of that Schuylkill fic I wrote once.

Here’s a Valley Forge fic I wrote another time.

Here’s the Monmouth smut fic I wrote once, and also on AO3 if you prefer that format.

In all of these, diversions from actual history or places where I don’t know specific details are usually noted, so don’t take them as gospel, but they’re as well researched as I could make them.

Aaaaand I think that’s pretty much what I’ve written that’s period Hamilton fic, and I think every bit of it’s been requested by @lathori because she puts up with A Lot of AmRev digressions.  Obviously there’s also the Star Wars AU (FYI that tag also contains the Borgias Star Wars AU I wrote because I screwed up the tags) and the AIOS AU but those aren’t historical.

Oh and of course here is my rant about the Baron von Steuben and the first underwear kegger in American history, for those of you who are interested in that situation.

skymurdock asked: for the headcanon meme: Steve Rogers the angry little chihuahua.

On Monday, the very angry Stevie got beaten up in one parking lot, but he was still angry.  On Tuesday, the very angry Stevie got beaten up behind two diners, but he was STILL angry.  On Wednesday, the very angry Stevie got put through three experimental procedures, but he was STILL angry.  Anyway, gonna do me some Steve Rogers for this ask meme.

A: what I think realistically

Adapting to the 21st century isn’t really difficult, once he can face the reality of it properly.  It reminds him, more than anything, of that first week after the serum–everything is too bright and too loud and too fast.  But now the world is unfamiliar to boot and there’s no one who cares enough has the time to help him adjust.  It’s a rough couple of months before he masters the situation.

Unrelated to the above, Steve was actually great friends with most of the chorus girls.  At first they were…uh…suspicious, to say the least, because he was a massive brick house of a dude who could lift a motorcycle and looked like the ultimate version of the assholes they put up with on the regular.  So they didn’t speak to Steve past the most basic courtesies for a week and a half.  

Then they went out drinking after their first performance in a new city and Steve sat quietly in the corner with a water until he saw Cheryl sitting stiff and toying with a fork as a man’s hand crept up her leg.

“Back off,” Cheryl said sharply.  The guy did not.

No one was more surprised than Cheryl when Steve loomed up from the corner like the wrath of God and sharply announced, “Buddy, if you’re not going to leave the lady alone, you and me are gonna have problems.”

The next day, Steve showed up to the theater ready to sit off to the side as usual.  Instead Cheryl plopped down in front of him, held out a handful of bobby pins, and said, “I need an extra set of hands to put my hair up.  You braid, Cap?”

“Um, not really,” Steve said, blushing.  “But I can learn.”

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Highlights of Steve in the modern grocery store include:

- Steve And The Grudge Against Weird Bananas

- Steve And What The Fuck Do You Mean You Want Five Dollars For This Tomato

- Steve And Wow You Can Get Vaccines At A Grocery Store–Wait What Do You Mean People Believe Vaccines Are Dangerous

- Steve And Hey You There Leave That Cashier Alone Unless You Wanna Settle This Outside

- Steve And The Girl Scouts of America

- Steve And The Struggle of Grocery Shopping Without Getting Recognized

- Steve And Really What The Fuck Is Wrong With Bananas

Needless to say, Steve isn’t really allowed to do the grocery shopping anymore.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

SHIELDRA dumped all their files onto the internet, courtesy of Natasha’s salt-and-burn solution to HYDRA’s infiltration.  Steve has been in the modern world for a good few years by now, so he sits down and starts searching through it for information.

He shouldn’t be doing it.  He knows it’s just torturing himself.  He hasn’t known where Bucky is since Insight went down, and none of this will help him find the Winter Soldier if he doesn’t want to be found, Natasha assured him of that.  But…he just has to know.

Capture.  Surgeries.  The arm.  Missions.  Cryostasis.  “Programming.”  More missions, more cryo, more programming–torture, it’s torture, God, all this time he was mourning his best friend while Bucky was being tortured.

Steve lasts through five files before he throws up.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Y’all, Steve is Wanda’s weird adopted big brother and no one can stop me from believing it.  He shows her a bunch of Disney movies that she missed out on as a kid and she asks him for advice about Vision and he jokes about how he’s definitely the wrong person to be asking for romantic advice.  They have a good weird relationship.

Anonymous asked: Adrien (from Miraculous Ladybug) for the headcanon meme?

HELL YES.  For this ask meme.

A: what I think realistically

We all know, in our heart of hearts, that Adrien and Marinette are the local masters of all physical activity.  Like, I recognize that the kwami magic is what makes them super strong or agile or whatever, but like.  Y’all.  Some of that is just pure organic buff-as-fuck muscle.  Over the course of their first school year of having the Miraculous, Adrien and Marinette both get so fit they could easily be sports stars.  During a game of dodgeball, Adrien accidentally convinces everyone he’s a gymnastics master because he does a back handspring to avoid a ball, totally on instinct out of habit because combat.  Marinette starts wearing tank tops because Summer Ugh and Adrien walks into a door because holy shit Marinette has back muscles wow oh my god.  A bunch of them go swimming and everyone’s like “You are both tiny teens, how do you both have a sixpack.”  Adrien’s modeling agents are baffled by where he’s finding the time to pull this off, but like, hey, as long as he’s putting on lean muscle instead of bulking up, they’re not gonna…like…stop him.

Anyway flash forward to post-identity reveal when Marinette and Adrien are playing dodgeball again and she literally vaults over him to nail the last member of the opposing team and Adrien catches her on the drop and they run around celebrating like morons with Marinette on his shoulders while the entire school gapes at them.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Listen, I know we all like to talk about Marinette’s response when she finds out that Adrien is Chat Noir, but.  For a hot second.  Let’s just talk about how Adrien is going to react when he finds out that Marinette is Ladybug.  He thinks Marinette is great, clearly, even though her inability to speak to him has obviously convinced him that she doesn’t like him much.  But Adrien admires Marinette so much, she’s such a strong-willed person, she’s so clever, she’s so funny, and honestly if he wasn’t already so head over heels for Ladybug he’s be crazy about her.

After he finds out Ladybug’s identity, Adrien spends three hours lying flat on his back in his bedroom, staring up at the ceiling.

“Plagg, she’s so cool.  Plagg.  Plagg, Marinette is Ladybug and she’s amazing.  Plagg.  Plagg, are you listening to me?  Plagg, I think I love her.”

Plagg is absolutely not listening to him.  Adrien doesn’t care.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Fam.  Let’s talk about akuma!Chat Noir.  I have no idea if this is ever going to be a thing, but I want it to be a thing and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since I saw THIS AMAZING COMIC.  

Ladybug is wounded in battle with Hawkmoth, and Chat Noir…well.  The akumas are attracted to strong negative emotions, and for that moment, Adrien is nothing but a bit of driftwood being dragged out to sea on a riptide of grief and guilt and rage.  And Hawkmoth, he does like his dramatic irony, and what could be more ironic than this, one hero destroying another.

He miscalculates a bit, though.  His akuma melts into Chat Noir’s bell, and the magic sweeps over him, and, indeed, Adrien feels the akuma warp the lines of his thoughts.  Until all he feels is rage, white-hot and protective.  His lady is bloody in his arms and it’s all because of Hawkmoth and he is going to destroy anyone who comes near her.

Chat Blanc is going to make sure of it.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Anyway Adrien’s mother was a Miraculous holder and he got his sense of humor from her (”You know me,” she used to say, winking at him as she did her elaborate blue-green-violet eyeshadow, “vain as a peacock!”) and also she used to tell him about what it meant to be a good person.  He tries to live up to her memory every day.

littlestartopaz asked: Harry, Corlath, and Mathin! For the headcanon meme!

Topaz, coming through with the obscure fandoms!  For this ask meme, and Harry, Corlath, and Mathin are from The Blue Sword.

A: what I think realistically

I have said this before, but you can pry the headcanon from my cold dead hands.  The Damarians have some tradition in which the family of the bride (and normally the husband, but Corlath is the last of his family and it’s terrible) gives her away at the wedding.  Mathin stands in as Harry’s father, a parent from the Hills, and gives her away as the Daughter of the Riders after riding roughshod over Richard’s protestations.  Mathin cries a little and Harry cries a little and Corlath cries a little and no one ever says anything about it except in songs and stories where the devotion of them all is hailed as Serious Business.

Corlath very quietly slaps Mathin with a small title, whatever he can get away with, as the father of the new Queen.  It takes Mathin a full year to notice.

Alsooooo, Corlath can draw, although paper is expensive and therefore rare in the Hills.  He goes to the trouble of getting himself paper and charcoals during the winter rains for something to do with his hands and draws pretty much only Harry, Harry on Sungold, Harry bringing down the mountains, Harry laughing at dinner, Harry smiling at him stretched out on their bed.  Harry thinks it’s adorable.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

I think we’ve discussed this but THE RIDERS HAVE TO GET BORED DURING THE WINTER RAINS.  

Y’all.  My dudes.  Hear me out here: the Riders playing pranks on each other.  Normally, the way these things shake out is “everyone is afraid of Corlath not because he’s the king but because he’s frankly terrifying between his tactical training and his kelar, but they’re more terrified of Mathin because Mathin is the ultimate Prank Lord.”  And then Harry shows up and radically changes the balance of affairs.

Because listen.  Harry has a bit of a learning curve to catch up with, so they go easy on her at first.  But then she lays a trap for Mathin after a little bit of idle conversation with Corlath and she gets him good.  Mathin, for three days, is dyed bright red with the concoction Harry managed to mix up.  And it’s war.  After a week and a half, Corlath and Harry make a truce of necessity–no pranks allowed in their own chambers–but otherwise Harry is an ally of whoever charms her most at the time.  The fact that the servants in the City all adore Harry means that she becomes the unquestioned champion by the end of her first winter.  Corlath doesn’t take it personally, honestly he’s kind of thrilled that she kicked his ass so handily–tbh Corlath is eternally that Will Smith picture when it comes to Harry, even when they’re fighting.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Corlath is the last of his family.  His mother always had a fragile constitution, and died of a plague sweeping through the City.  His father died not long afterward–officially in battle, but everyone agreed that is was from a broken heart.  He just couldn’t face the world without her.  Corlath rose to power quite young, even by the reckoning of the long-lived Hill Kings, and quite alone.  The Riders were all he had left, and for all that they tried to be enough, it made the City ache to see their joyous child prince grow into a serious warrior king.  Corlath still smiled, of course, but not as easily, and his bright laughter was hard-earned–it wasn’t that Corlath was depressed, it was that he was controlled, and stiffly so, at all times.

It’s hard to have close friends, let alone anything near family, when you can’t be sure of meeting anyone’s eyes.  Both Corlath’s parents had kelar, and he envies them for that security–he, who carries more kelar than anyone in living memory, is always aware of how much damage he can do.  He drove a servant mad, once, by accident when he was a young boy, and cried for two days until his mother managed to restore most of the man’s mind.  Corlath has had few friends and fewer lovers, as a result.

Beyond all that Harry does to endear herself to the Riders, the thing that truly wins them over is that they haven’t seen so much emotion–anger and joy and frustration and everything in between–on their king’s face in long years.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

First of all, canon is not shit and you can fight me.

But seriously, I’ve said this before too but I’m so serious about it, Harry meets Aerin in the flesh at some point.  And also Aerin visits Harry in her dreams and at first Harry’s very deferential and nervous, but she lightens up over time, and Aerin gives her advice on being a queen and being a legend and being a mother.  (At some point, when Harry is just exhausted of everything and frustrated with everyone and ready to ride off into the desert just to get away, Aerin turns up and tells a story about a very vain girl named Galanna who got her eyelashes shaved off and could have been rolled out a window, she was sleeping so heavily.  Harry laughs herself sick in the dream and wakes up smiling for the first time in weeks.)

thanatoswrath asked: Minerva McGonagall

Lol. I feel bad. I mean Minerva McGonagall for the prompt thing of yours. Sorry for not clarifying

I got you, my buddy.  HBIC Minerva McGonagall, coming right up.

A: what I think realistically

McGonagall is widely hailed as The One That Got Away through every Auror’s department in the world, in much the same way that Dumbledore is hailed as The One That Got Away regarding the Minister of Magic.  Stories get around to the tune of “wow, did you hear, Minerva McGonagall took a dozen Stunners straight to the chest and they think she’s going to recover fully” and “wow, did you hear, Minerva McGonagall animated every statue in Hogwarts” and “wow, did you hear, Minerva McGonagall tortured a Death Eater in Ravenclaw Tower.”  (This last is not true, and McGonagall puffs up in a combination of fierce pride and genuine offense whenever she hears it.  How dare you but also my House, goddamnit, he belongs in MY House.)  And the older Aurors are like “Goddamn right, she’s Minerva Fucking McGonagall, she could have run this place if she didn’t like teaching so much.” 

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

It was definitely Minerva McGonagall’s idea to, A, make James Potter Head Boy, and, B, drown the Dursleys in letters.

The thing about James Potter is that he wasn’t a prefect.  Remus was a prefect.  Remus, however, was also reliably flat on his back the two days around the full moon, and Somewhat Indisposed that one night a month, and so someone had to cover his duties.  The first time McGonagall found James doing Remus’ patrol (and look suspiciously exhausted about it too) she almost gave him detention for life.  But…  

“One chance, Mister Potter,” she says stiffly.  “If I hear you’ve been abusing this, I’ll take it straight to the Headmaster.”

“You got it Minn–I mean, um, yes, Professor.”  James offers her a smile that makes the circles under his eyes stand out.  McGonagall does some mental math–the full moon was last night, what does James have to look so tired about?  With Remus out of commission, they’re hardly getting up to elaborate shenanigans without him.

James Potter, for three nights a month, is beyond reproach.  Impeccable, in fact.  McGonagall half recommends him because she thinks he’s genuinely improving with the weight of responsibility and half because…come on, she just has to.  She has to.  No one is more horrified than James Potter himself when he gets the letter.

The thing about the Dursleys…they’re terrible and Minerva dislikes them supremely and she COULD go herself but she suspects that it won’t get them any further.  So she enchants two dozen quills to write identical copies of Harry’s letter and comes up with every terrible idea she can to make their lives miserable.  Because fuck them, that’s why.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends awful just awful I’m sorry

McGonagall has a list of students that she never meant to start keeping.  It started years ago, by accident, when she opened the Daily Prophet and saw a name on the front page–little Jacob Hanover, a Muggleborn fourth year who was murdered in the street when the Death Eaters first started to rise.  He was a sweet boy, with a wicked sense of humor and an eye for Charms that was downright ingenious.  He had tried to defend himself, a Gryffindor at the end even though his House had been something of a quiet mystery, but it hadn’t helped.  The list is long, grows by the day, but then…oh, then it stops, with four names inscribed at the bottom on the same date–James Potter, Lily Evans Potter, Peter Pettigrew, and Sirius Black.  

(The boy she remembers, the boy who had three times been given detention for calling her ‘Minnie’ to her face, the boy who had once sent every Black in Slytherin an identical Howler full of insults, the boy who had laughed at his best friend’s wedding and danced the bride around in circles until they were both dizzy–he’s dead, she decides the second she gets the news.  He’s dead, and he died when he betrayed his friends.  She has no idea that the boy wishes the same thing, with all his heart.)  

The book containing the list leaves the corner of her desk where she’s kept it all this time, and she puts it on a bookshelf with every intent of never opening it again.  The war is over and she will not lose more students to that monster’s mania.  Minerva McGonagall will not raise another generation of children to march into battle.

Thirteen years later, she opens a book from her bookshelf and very sternly does not cry as she adds another name.  Cedric Diggory.  Flipping through the remaining pages, Minerva has a terrible premonition–there will be a lot more names before this is done.  

Alternatively: Minerva McGonagall attends Lily and James’ funeral.  The child reaching into the coffins, calling in confused distress for Mama and Daddy is bad enough, but she has never seen anything more heartbreaking than Remus Lupin, standing alone in the front row and clutching blindly at the photograph in his hands–the whole lot of them, the Marauders and Lily, at the wedding all those years ago.  They’re smiling in the picture.  Remus, three of his best friends murdered at the behest of the fourth, looks like he’ll never smile again.  That’s what breaks Minerva, finally, and sets her sobbing into her hands.

Eleven years later, Harry Potter looks her in the eye (he looks so much like his parents) and says that he and Ron miss Hermione, so much, please, they just want to see her, even if she can’t hear them.  Even if she’s Petrified.  

McGonagall knows when she’s being played, she does, but right then…pale and desperate and a little griefstricken, Harry doesn’t look like James, or Lily, or even wild and proud Sirius.  He looks like Remus, looking for friends who are far outside his reach.  She lets him and Ron go.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

MCGONAGALL HAS A WIFE, SHE’S CHARMING, CANON CAN SUCK A DICK.